poetry issues #27

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poetry issues #27

learn to listen

Poetry Issues #27 is the journal that poetry issues was always meant to be: A newsletter containing all the latest work (from January to April 2023, beginning from the oldest). It includes poems, objects, paintings, essays, videos and songs. Thinking back to those months... They were difficult, tumultuous, full of happenings and life events and stresses, sickness and winter, responsibilities, early wakings and all-night parties and early wakings, reflections and self-reflections. Yet there was always the time – no, there was no time; there was always the need, to create. And some beautiful things were made, some wonderful ideas were born.

chapter #1

The first in a series of illustrated dialogues, #chapter I goes wild in the combination of image and text embracing punk aesthetics and posing an important question: How important is the legibility of text for expressing its meaning and how much can we omit before the narrative breaks?

#chapter I

january 23

The earth had turned upside down

so I woke up and saw the moon

where it had never been before

or was it me that had changed place?

No, no, you said

the world has turned upside down and

I am sisyphus or maybe

it's the summer that's coming.

In case you get lost, I made a

map

We walk through deserts

in alien lands.

Our mouths

are running

dry.

Another little boxed world. Boxes represent the confines of our existence, largely but not exclusively within society. I always try to combine playfulness with profound themes, as I believe that this playfulness speaks directly to the core of our existence, to an inner child.

Visually, technological elements (ear pods, antennas, chips) are juxtaposed to the actual act of listening, and finding meaning, while strong words demand individually and as a whole our attention.

The text of this piece is composed of found material from the text that accompanied Gernot Wieland's video Turtleneck Phantasies (2022) at Kindl – Center for Contemporary Art, Berlin. The video-art piece was highly inspirational and much of this inspiration was transferred to the text describing it. I took pieces of it and made something new, opening up the dialogue.

Learn to Listen

childhood

second skin

what remains?

a kind of obsession

protective remembrance

words

texts and drawings

dance, the absurd moments

The ubiquitous presence

all the little forms

traumatic experiences

excluded

I have phantasies

and (mostly illegible)

little attention.

What stories do I tell myself

unheard, and forgotten voices

possible ways of returning to the centre

anchor

a serious shipwreck

whose stories are told

dedicated to the murmuring, the illegible, the unspeakable,

In other words

Contemporary

The Monster Bride or Metamorphosis of the Object

I always thought that if you have even the slightest view to the natural world, you don't need television and you never get bored. There is always something happening: A cloud, a breeze, some wafting smell. Even inside, if you have a fireplace, you can spend hours watching what is possibly the strongest resemblance of a mystical dance the natural world has to offer. All these joys of the senses and the mind are connected to some kind of movement, some kind of wave.

However, there is also another level of observation: The observation of the unmoving, the still, the silent. If you observe anything long enough, something magical happens: It starts changing before your eyes. The object exists only in immediate connection to our perception of it. If the objects were conscious of their existence, they would be divided between the view of themselves and our view of them. Which view would be holding the truth? These were my thoughts, as I photographed this object and watched the monster-bride endlessly change before my eyes. Different corners, different light, different relation to space, to itself. It began as an interpretation of an amplifier by its maker (Christian Kennecke, aka @ernstunited) and in the perception of those observing it it became a bridal dress, a bride, a monster, a purse.

It has been some time since then, and I'm still thinking about the monster-bride, probably because I hadn't examined anything so intently in a long time. Watching the object for so long left a strong impression that is still growing in me. Obviously, observing hasn't stopped when I took my eyes away. My mind is still processing, my perception of the object is still changing, evolving perhaps. If you watch anything long enough, you fall in love with it: It becomes an extension and expression of you, a poem that touches you deeply. I am not sure if hate is even a possible feeling, once you get close enough to anything, or if feeling depends on the object's nature, if such a thing exists, or our own disposition. In any case, if I ever get bored, if I ever feel empty, all I have to do is get out of my head, stretch my gaze to anything my gaze can reach, and enjoy the show.

I used this nice photo (which is one of my odes to the public space) as a prompt and wrote chapter II of of a yet unnamed series of poems (look chapter I above). Unlike fight (which might by the way, be chapter 0), instead of the image here it's the text that is moving. It's the first time that I'm experimenting with animated text and I must say that I like the idea a lot.

#chapter II

We sat together.

A body's gap between us

for the wind to roam free.

We hummed an old song

in false notes. The wind

sang along.

An eternal second

– a good company.

A sad song wrapped in pink. I know microfiction and micropoetry exist, so here I introduce the micro-song. It's quite addictive when on repeat.

To Catch a Dream

You set your traps

from wall to wall

hide

in small corners

in the dark

but don't you know

that you can't catch a dream?

The dream catches you.

Lipstick (acrylic and oil pastel on canvas, 40x30) is the first in a series of paintings that question our dependence on objects for validation, attraction, confidence and gender identification. The object is larger than life, because larger than life is the space it occupies in our lives, and the text balances between existential threat and singalong lightness.

A little piece about our constructed sense of the future, our need not only to believe in it but to make it happen, our desire to be eternal.