back to the machine gun

WAR

2009-03-20T07:28:00.004Z

Fragments from The Blast

On Rattle

Decommel de colonel

Dreamfurl brigadier

Lionel longers vidimise allin

Fanky kiddo log dis

********

sturshine traydrums rusher hollow

promendalel commandante: All new psalms hath brokloose.

Lucie: purr, un pyre how tick-tock nikinetics

Stick unter bilk tape:

Operado Appertif

The desper measure:

A fool glills pig vine

Guacamoles vade in

Occupity boroughs,

six legs beneath

Kendle burfirs, ‘e said.

Indweek celejolly indeed

Bill and the whole fast testament

‘Elder relearn swotten fingits

Curse that whore in Zekistan!

Incoronable depthcharge,

Cuntract ripen

II.

Morning Rays on Munitions Camp

Everygun pictures his flavour,

Get-on-allfours

Flour gore dung

Turin: The Hangover

Upsize Dine Kayak

Joker Favour

a belch of missed cakes

Defectors sight eerierepair

Textol is use the tissues forest strain

wear erosion like a bag

go tell rare slurs to the idler

rewire earth for the user

ergo junk maze`

riot iris

feud adieu

III.

National Constriction

Debt saps,

drove crews to independent grope

Trees took cover, insurance on the

Fire. The Ralph above Milady’s head.

Food for the kinder, litter fort cat.

How shelf, how shellfish, all these fags make me feel.

I only want to shave my country. I’m not being a

Policy, in my Panda, chewing bamboo and bulling small

Kids smoking on stout cornets.

And I don’t thrush those fame-retarded suits anyhow.

You can trust a tank.

Keep your flesh in it, some little castles and grovel.

At night I slept terror, by the light of the moog,

Then trumpets fielded bravery, the charms

Of morning drill.

‘Fa fa fa fa fa, fa fa fa fa,’ she peaks, ‘Lalalalalahhhhhh, bam-ba-damn, we’re cumin for your Borders.’

IV.

Veterans out in their wheelchairs

Raise the flags

(set sail again)

And early the same morning, manipulators set to work. From the lowest ranks, knife-and-fork bullies, to the full-fat cheeses at the top, struggling under their silverware, all is image reduction and processing, damage limitation.

But imagine someone different from the upright private. The city man, horn-rimmed spectacles, the designer of recruitment. Part of the budget has to go on all the marketing of the whole war equation. Literature filled with golden amber sunsets over ocean-bound aircraft carriers, of gorgeous jungles, videos of terrain, computer simulation.

I promote the yellow sun

I promote the yellow fire

I respect the jungle hot

I torch the leaves from the sky

I endorse the desert sand

I envy the desert man

Spreading his limbs across the borders

We bring true multi-tasking

I spread the gospel of peace

I spread pieces of the gospel

Broken down and torn, easily digestible

Communion.

Nourishment, old pornography, vintage weapons catalogues and the old scar comparisons pass and hour or two onboard. Hum his helicopter mantra.

Sam B Gill

re-load complete

2008-12-09T15:19:00.006Z

DEC 2008
back to the machine-gun has re-loaded its blog content

please use the side-bar for easeful navigation ↵ --- or flit through at random::
--- to some poems and information → about Janette Stowell, who has a book coming out ↓
---:: or to a recollection of the magazine's history → &tc

---- :: The Midnight Horror Tree by Janette Stowell

-- A launch is scheduled, as the poet herself tells us: "11th December, and it is going to be downstairs in Revolution Bar (which is just a couple of doors down from FACT)" (in Liverpool)

-- A reading of the poem GULL on youtube → about which the poet tells us: "I had to do a reading at the Whitworth a couple of weeks ago, and this is where the reading is from. I had to follow the harpist. And I was cringing: the harp music was very beautiful and I had to then read out my poems, all of which had swear fucking words in."

-- And an animation of the title poem, also on youtube →

Janette Stowell's poetries

2008-12-09T09:18:00.003Z

CODE → SMARTIES → GULL →

A gleeful malice revealing itself as simple life-ingrained
compassion is at the heart of Janette Stowell's poetry.

Things to note about her poetics:: —

— :: Narrative, rather cool, its first tensions do not come to a point. In this ebb (of a narrative, of a drama), a dry wry humour sort of shuttles us through misadventure, nastiness, dirty bits of life.

— :: Early in the magazine's history, Miss Stowell had experimented successfuly with what she called "cine-poems", wherein filmic scenes of varied connects and disconnects were conveyed in a distant voice often with the technical apparatus — camera movements, zooms, scene shifts — of film-making.

— :: Thinking of the narrative in "code" for example, as an extension from the cine-poem/synopsis technique — that these earlier poems were a way of narrating with objectivity, working through the problem in poetry of narrative until the cine-context was no longer needed. A new non-personal narration is what remains. Who and what, is being narrated, and how it is, is partly how these poems work. Miss Stowell has worked through the problem of narration, and found herself an area in which she is entirely capable.

Code

2008-12-03T12:06:00.000Z

A man was snatched from the roadside
by four men in a black car.
Blindfolded and gagged, he was driven
through city streets. There were sounds
beyond his captors’ breathing: the buses’
knackered hydraulics, the gloat of sirens,
cathedral bells.

*

Pulled from the car, he was marched
over concrete, then up steep
Piranesian staircases. Eventually, his blindfold
and gag were removed and he was asked,
Where are you?

I am here, he thought, then looked around the room:
no furniture, no windows, walls painted brown,
scruffy floorboards. One scientist
had a gold watch and a front tooth to match.

I’m in the vault of a bank, he said.

*

He is home now, sitting in his garden,
smoking. Above the elm, the sky
is an open atlas, revealing
the chartered nooks of far-flung galaxies.
He thinks back to the brown room – a back room
of an opera house (as it turned out to be).

When released, he had caught
the opening notes of the Dies Irae
and the scientists’ whispers:

...in conclusion, it’s impossible
to comprehend place until the external
has been viewed in its entirety

universe could be packed
into a tree’s trunk

latter’s markings are certainly similar
to a planet’s concentric rings, of course
just a hunch, but still

what do you fancy for lunch?...

His stomach rumbles; the sound
is reassuring. He grinds his cigarette
into an old wormhole. At least, he hopes
it’s old. Too late now. Drilling starts up
in the neighbourhood: an electric work-tool
or a woodpecker’s illiterate Morse.

Janette Stowell

Smarties

2008-12-03T08:23:00.009Z

For Margaret

Another Sunday. A stray dog sniffs
its own piss. Even the crows
are bored.

Over the road, three boys
have climbed the bus-shelter
to welly stones at passing cars
and cats.

Me and Marg have done
the slide, the frame, the swing
and are now sprawled on the broken slats
of roundabout. I’m counting out
the Smarties:

one for me
one for you
one for me
one for –

From above, a fag-furred voice:

Frig’s sake, you’d think she’d never seen
a fucking Smartie before.

It’s not God, but an older girl
with tantrum-thrower arms
and hair so greasy
it could batter conger-eels.

Our Smarties got left behind. Later,
I imagined the light bag of death
and the disappointment
when the crows discovered the brightly coloured shells
housed no sexy bugs.

Janette Stowell

Gull

2008-12-01T03:24:00.003Z


For Stevo


Above the city's horns,
the gull's dirty laughter
shatters noon.

I've heard them say
the gull is a reincarnated fisherman.
I look away
when he warms his ass
on the hot-rocks of town roofs.

A great uncle once rooted feet
on the decks of hatch-battened trawlers —
cheeks birched by driving wind, salt-chewed
eyes, his gloveless palms
guided in the nets.

The gull picks fights
over lunchtime crusts,
but once he feasted on the splintered
wood of a crow's nest — with every list,
his nostrils filled with the ocean's truth.

It's a dicey flight
between birth and death,
though I've yet to see a gull's brain
liquefied on the road's edge
or his wingtips lashing
at the bars in zoos.

He preferred to box his way
down the back streets


of every great port. The one time
he fell, old sea-dogs licked iron
from his wounds.

The gull is above the city.
Surfing the sky's rollers,
he traces slate
to dock.

Years back, he knocked
great slabs of ice
from a herring boat's mast,
knowing the vessel
would soon keel.

The wind is rising.

When the incoming gale
bludgeons the coast,
the gull will continue to fuck
on the edge of a high cliff.

Janette Stowell

birth of :: issues 1 - 3

2008-12-01T02:04:00.023Z

Back to the Machine-Gun in full-dimensioned magazine mode was first conceived of in the early summer of 2004 in the scenic beer garden of Ye Cracke, a Liverpool pub famous for its scenic beer garden and the presence of J.Lennon's arse every so often before he became famous enough to exit Liverpool and get himself assasinated by CIA brainwash victim Mark David Chapman. Already we are up to our cuff-links in history.

[1 [[2 [3-(a little below)] [4-in yellow] [5-pale, flower, below] & [7]x2]]]

1^st Edition - September 2004 (Bukowski quote inside cover) -* ‘Ceasefire’ (3 short poems by MP) * ‘don’t stand up in the middle of a room’ (insane angry Biblical rant by AH) * ‘Opposite Dew’ (poem by AJ) * ‘Johnny Cash’ (poem by KM) * ‘The Symphonic Democratic Violation Bomb - Part One (1945 - 73)’ (poem by SG) * ‘Alchemy of the Word’ (Rimbaud translation by KM) * ‘The Blade’s Sloppy Kiss’ (poem by AJ) * (Four untitled short poems by MP - begins: “There’s no hope of utopia”) * ‘Sub-Central’ (short prose by AJ)- (the dead socialist graffiti-photography project on back cover / distorted) -

2^nd Edition - November 2004 - * ‘A Cheap Box of Oranges’ (poem by AJ) * ‘Vincent’ (poem by JS - Janette Stowell) * ‘Saint Hood’ (4 short poems by MP) * ‘Shit on the seafront’ (underlined first line of poem as title (?) - poem by SG) * ‘Strange Re-Union’ (poem by NJ - Nathan A Jones) * ‘adventure story for boys’ (short story by AH) * ‘Vagina’ (poem by JS) * ‘The Symphonic Democratic Violation Bomb - Part Two (1964 - 01)’ (poem by SG) * ‘Drive’ (poem by AJ) * ‘The writer + his Annihilation Part 1’ (writers manifesto by MP) * ‘The Squeezed Juice of Midnight’ (poem by AJ) * ‘Go rimbaud, go go rimbaud’ (poem by KM) - (Rimbaud’s last letter inside back cover) - - (the dead socialist graffiti-photography project on back cover / distorted) -

3^rd Edition - the schoolgirl issue - June 2005 (1^st editorial / cut up / inside cover) - * ‘It’s True’ (Michel Houellebecq translation by AJ) * ‘War’ (4 poems by SG) * ‘A small glow’ (poem by GS - Gary Smillie) * ‘Haiku’ (by AJ) * ‘Bitter Bites Lemon, Boy’ (another prose rant by AH) * ‘On the Napkin’ (shorts from Everyman by JS and KM) * ‘The Opposite of a Date’ (poem by AJ) * ‘Two Saint Poems (10, 15)’ (by MP) * ‘Synopsis Seurre Noir’ (poem by JS) - * ‘still life’ (poem by MP) * ‘Adequate Rope’ (poem by KM) * ‘The Dissection of an Argument (How to win)’ (theoretical nonsense essay by AH) - * ‘Contemporary fiction’ (poem by AJ) - (the dead socialist graffiti-photography project on back cover / distorted) -

What seems like an ending may turn into a rebirth. As of now, Back to the Machine Gun is in an uncertain flux. Member have moved, to different cities, to different continents. All sorts of things always get in the way. It becomes hard to see what has been achieved despite all the push and pull, not only of the usual demands of life, but also of distance, of mistook words, of resentments and callous egos, the common turmoil of anything really.

more poems will be linked in the future
&
a more casual overview of all issues here →

untitled translation of Sergei Gandlevsky

2008-11-26T02:53:00.007Z

Когда я жил на этом свете
И этим воздухом дышал,
И совершал поступки эти,
Другие, нет, не совершал;
Когда помалкивал и вякал,
Мотал и запасался впрок,
Храбрился, зубоскалил, плакал -
И ничего не уберег;
И вот теперь, когда я умер
И превратился в вещество,
Никто - ни Кьеркегор, ни Бубер -
Не объяснит мне, для чего,
С какой - не растолкуют - стати,
И то сказать, с какой-такой
Я жил и в собственной кровати
Садился вдруг во тьме ночной...


When I lived in this world
And breathed this air,
I've done some things,
Not others, no, I haven't;
I held my tongue and whined,
Squandered as well as saved some,
Tried to be brave, I scoffed, I cried
Yet salvaged nothing;
And now that I am dead,
Into matter transformed,
Not Kierkegaard or Buber, no one
Can explain to me why,
What - they won't tell me – for,
It seems too easy to ask why
I lived, and why I'd sit up in my bed
Suddenly awoken in the gloom of night…

Sergei Gandlevsky - 1995

Translated by - Olia Grebenyuk (now Hercules)

Drinking Lament

2008-11-26T02:51:00.002Z


Drink this up, before you leave me
Consider what I have said.

Be careful on your way
Drink and be merry whilst you can,
Pay no mind to those left behind
Do not be pushed off course.

Drink this up, before the ship sets sail
I'll tie knots in this kerchief
Thinking of your hair in the wind.

Drink and fall around if you must
Just remember what I said,
Cut deep salt wounds.

Drink, Drink to your heart's content
I'll still be waiting by the window
Too far from the harbour to catch a glimpse.

Drink the sea spray Drink the wind
Think no more of me beyond
What I asked you to remember, but
Drink will make you forget
Of this I am sure
My request rendered pointless, but I knew.

Drink in the view
As the bow dips violently – sway, crash
Unseen rocks are approaching, still
Drink over ice, the cracks and splinters
I'll wait by the window for word
Whilst your hair tangles with seaweed, barnacles on bones.

Drink this up, before you leave me.

Alexis Hercules

untitled translation of Boris Rizhy

2008-11-26T02:49:00.004Z


I shall leave for some remote Northern city,
Squatting, I will smoke a roll-up,
I'll be pricked  by a dear friend accidentally,
He will sob over me when he sobers.

I know one cheerless place in medieval Rus,
Where cheerful people live for the day,
To stay there is scary, to leave is to lose honour,
To  gulp spirits - for soul; and to pray - into darkness.

What rivers are located in taiga,
What vastness unfolds in the morning,
Local women roam them and fugitive lifers
Are raising horizons into the third power.

Let me go, you. I'm alive only barely,
I'm nobody's forever, a Judas, a psychopath,
I am not in deep sorrow, but the gloomy, dark fir trees
Promise a certain deep sorrow ahead.


Boris Rizhy (1974-2001)

Translated by Olia Grebenyuk (now Hercules)

spare me

2008-11-23T02:30:00.005Z

the vanity of those who seek to end history
by scorning the claims of the ghost story.

We who live by mystery
have no business trespassing
on the last myths
     of the blue universe.

Take the late mist of a dying princess:

the torrid blush, the fluttered lash
    the camera flash
the visual challenge
    of the smoky glass;

the broken heart's commodity.

The wounded driver a flame
    in the eyes
of an astonished girl.

(field of landmines   tiny legs   a mirage on distant sands)

We who live by mystery wait.
‘I's cast open, eyes half closed
while the lights smoke in the tunnel
    and the car's a wreck
the heart a brain
           the palace shattered glass,

beauty shy of time.
                   
  *

In this particular kingdom of the blind
the one eyed man is too busy
      shepherding to brace the reins
            of a king,

warding off the accidents of human traffic,
the stumbling patsies of misplaced trust,
another lusty collusion of genocide and fun.

           Yet a mile high above
  in the flight paths of the blind
a stewardess advises her passengers
            thus:

‘At the command: brace! place your head
between your legs and
       pray - or trust at least

for the plane is losing
        altitude fast     
               &
we all may be obliged to acknowledge soon the moment
     in which
even the Beautiful People
     won't be leaving
 good-looking corpses

But in the locker above your head
you will find confirmation that

even the visually challenged
     will have every right
to have seen and not seen the fire at the end of the universe
       which the scriptures say
will burn seven times hotter
        than the sun.’

Ade Jackson

gate

2008-11-20T03:20:00.019Z

[ 1. ]

   funny furnishings         0           exposure
   he would see             1  to all in the mind
      heaven                2  
 as funny                   3          makes way
 dreamy furniture           4             to all
wavey lines                 5
   moved it around          6            and all
       a bit                7                 or

[ 2.] (accompaniment to 1.?)

  All the nonsense in the    0               or all
world greater                 the gummy branches
than all the nonsense       2        the body done
the world                                   in
      milked                          added on
him or his                             a thing
  bed                                   his body
  place                     7          peripheries

[ 3.] (solo)

     a mass                  0         a path
  of fuzzy problems                bodily
                              taken
                            3
  twin lip                      two
  tautly they
                            6
                         #.(one added      on

[ 4.]

      heaven by high                    infinite
    road                           dusty elements
   the magic                      about the head
            car                  of the driver
  in the elements           4  
  the magic car             5     by hook
        how far ?           6       or crook the
- the distance               7             long drive

[ 5.]

    lock in a system                the bed as it
       all loved things           appears in a dream
                           expansive, joined on
     place the bed as it                   all sides
     appears in                            by a bed
    commotion under         5          impinges on
    something                                 
    fed on loves

[ 6.] (all at once)

away from a hallowed gate,    0       light, that
 away again bigger                        funny thing?
 away from the gate or                                 fun
       shocked to pieces -   3               to the end
light passes on the                             lightened up
real world                                    a mist, beauty
tulip, mildew, and            6      of a day after mist
all light passing through                         the ending

[ 7.] (reiterate)

 shut in the brain and step   0   here was heaven at the first
out, stop, down                     step - We thought about it
it ends in rooms,I            .   and there was a car journey -
put rooms here                    We ended that wondering is
only running out by my           that anyway to go and thought
own design, enclosures        .   a heaven would answer "Love"
here,hear "bark" things          or a means, - means of "going
hungry to clean up            .  or  any way,where         on"

M Pendleton

The Squeezed Juice of Midnight

2008-10-29T03:39:00.000Z

(American dreamer; Star of Karuna; Moon of Pity; Ti Jean… . b silent & real)

Lime Street, 1 a.m.

strung between a lost train of thought

& the silence of an empty station,

tongue-tip worrying a lemon pip

in a wasted tooth, still tasting

the squeezed juice of midnight

I tease the notion that love’s a big deal after all.

When mister death

comes clawing at my threads

like a frisky leper

it’s the one thing he’ll be looking for.

As you wave at me & your ticket flutters

to the cold stone floor & limestone echoes steps

beneath the domes & tunnels as the train arrives

he’ll be the fella with the homeless rag

wheedling for nowt tonite, only waiting it out

for the chance to wrap us about his shoulders

like a widow’s ratty stole.

So walking each other home

beyond the wind’s music in the coffin groves

& the fidgety spirits of half-friends we’ve left

talking up theories in the speakeasy’s womb-glow,

fencing night’s dubious traps,

still in their cups, vibing off

their near unassailable delusions,

we’ll know that love’s a pretty good call

&the sky a benevolent madness

of hushed clouds rushing the just ice of stars.

Ade Jackson

Go rimbaud, go go rimbaud

2008-10-29T03:35:00.000Z

O rimbaud, why did you leave me
for ivory traders, accountants
a dog that pissed in the street?

Maybe I too should go,
back to the suburbs
find some wife, some dog, some job
where words are just words
just a thing we use sometimes.

But when you’ve obtained the knives of the pen
by trial and error and bleeding,
you don’t give em up so easy.

Perhaps it’s a case of attrition,
slowly but slowly the knife turns blunt
and is placed one day in a drawer
maybe thrown away or forgotten
like a childhood fascination with burning matches
before you grew up and kept them for their proper use

Making you mouth move is a subtle art.
Sure, I make it look easy,
writing poems in waiting rooms,
forwarding letters to unknown addresses,
scribbling notes to imaginary gods.

You see I can’t seem to escape the feeling
that all these people want to tie down all these words
to useful meanings for times of need,
not matches casting shadows.

Kevin Millband

CINE-POEM

2008-10-28T09:06:00.000Z


1.    EXT. IRISH SEA, NIGHT

Mid winter. Scathing
south-easterly gale. An exorcism
of colossal waves; a ship
emerging from swell

       screeching, wailing, rampant
        plucking of a rusting fiddle

an almighty thud:  violent
punch to the ferry's hull.

         Blackout.

        FADE INTO:  ampoules of colour; the lights
        of a distant rig.


2.     INT.  SHIP'S SALON,  NIGHT

A dog whines. Passengers
hunch over knees.  Last suppers
crump into sick-bags. Morbid
creaks from metal frames
         and the pitted floors
a momentary suspension

       what the  -

                      ship rears up
       behind closed hatches
      crockery crashes
                      the 'great ninth wave'
       rabid on portholes
                     the force nine gale
       fist-fucking the funnels.

V.O.    The grey wolf waits
     in the halls of the gods.



3.        EXT.  SEABED.  NIGHT

                   Silence as a lone crab
                   balances all the above
                    on its latticed back


NOTE TO DIRECTOR:   these three scenes
should be played out on a loop
in real time i.e.  seven and a half
hours of relentless misery  (which, though long
is still a lot shorter than Das Boot).

Janette Stowell

Johnny Cash

2008-10-26T02:50:00.001Z




Hands move‘cross piano
Like old man in love
With piano

Johnny cash
  you popstar you,
Tell me of the west
you won
And the price
Down to last nickel
And dime store indian

Johnny cashed up for the night
His winnings
in desert shine
Of a sunbleached mirage.

Kevin Millband

casual causal overview

2008-10-20T10:16:00.001Z

#1-----

September 2004 --had some jihadists on the cover.Only 40 or so were made, and spread about Liverpool in places forgotten and maybe bulldozed.

#2------

November 2004 -- an erased buddha for the cover.A series of Saint Poems started here.

#3------

June 2005 -- a schoolgirl in negative with geometeries for the cover.

#4------

November 2005 -- a face with thingies for the cover. At this point some poets outside the founding group were contacted, and gifted some poems.

#5------

February 2006 -- a grandmother's painting for the cover.Done in a rush for the first live event, took place in a lovely church that allowed the brisk sale of alcohols.#5's content showed an expansion in the poets featured, and the poems themselves showed similar movements into new territories.

(#6)-----------

an interesting absent issue, due to as-yet unexplained anomalies regarding arts council funding.

#7------

May 2007 -- a mussed up of prior things for the cover. This issue also commemorated a live event at the same lovely church.Also, a last meeting up for many of the founding poets.

Radio Transmission

2008-10-10T05:17:00.000Z

It is Phill Jupitus on the BBC. He seems to have been in the News From Nowhere bookshop in Liverpool. At what time, we still don't know.

notice of re-load

2008-08-31T03:51:00.002Z

. . . please be patient while we re-load . . .

our magazines so far

2008-08-30T16:51:00.000Z

[1 [[2 [3-(a little below)] [4-in yellow] [5-pale, flower, below] & [7]x2]]]

mentioned on radio

2008-02-13T12:48:00.004Z

It is Phill Jupitus on the BBC. He seems to have been in the News From Nowhere bookshop in Liverpool. At what time, we still don't know.

Drinking Lament

2007-12-07T18:58:00.000Z


Drink this up, before you leave me
Consider what I have said.

Be careful on your way
Drink and be merry whilst you can,
Pay no mind to those left behind
Do not be pushed off course.

Drink this up, before the ship sets sail
I’ll tie knots in this kerchief
Thinking of your hair in the wind.

Drink and fall around if you must
Just remember what I said,
Cut deep salt wounds.

Drink, Drink to your heart’s content
I’ll still be waiting by the window
Too far from the harbour to catch a glimpse.

Drink the sea spray Drink the wind
Think no more of me beyond
What I asked you to remember, but
Drink will make you forget
Of this I am sure
My request rendered pointless, but I knew.

Drink in the view
As the bow dips violently – sway, crash
Unseen rocks are approaching, still
Drink over ice, the cracks and splinters
I’ll wait by the window for word
Whilst your hair tangles with seaweed, barnacles on bones.

Drink this up, before you leave me.



Alexis

2007-10-17T20:53:00.000Z

Alexis

the return...

2007-07-19T20:55:00.000Z

(she don't move no more)

Culture Growth

2007-06-19T18:49:00.000Z


I mock you all too frequently,
            if to bless is to endorse
            to this I prescribe
            all my earthly possessions
     (which)
     become nought in the light of expansion –
from here to there
across land borders
erected in jest

          when drunken ancestors kicked the ball
          of others
          into far flung fields – 

whilst mother carved the turkey
father carved the land, and still
                               babybaby,
                               by the fire
                               eyes ablaze with all to come – 

the endless murder
                 unblinking,
                        a pick at the carcass,
quadruples his luck in gambling halls
paid for sexual experience
before commencing mass extermination

like dandelion seeds catch cut
                        summer breath
          he too will grip the throat
                          of the closest,
                                         poorest,
                                             most vulnerable –
          spit in their faces,
  mock them instead.


Alexis

kenshin sumitaku saint poems 7, 8

2007-06-04T10:10:00.000Z

7.                                                
 every object being something to write of          
 but the words are only a silly broke line         
 as the eye gets heavy,                            
 as the object is moved,    
 as the eye is myself, but I cannot see it, me     
 the things to write of                            
 this curtain                                      
   had I strength
     would open                                    
                                                   
8.
 yes    stop
the boundary, that means
 no motion

 this barely an
 end    a
 begin  being

 made to renounce
 I
 make   do

(car / east)

2007-03-13T15:02:00.000Z

I enjoy being a passenger in your car,
first climbing through gates
to touch the faces left back where we started – 
interrupted by radio
                 dirty “programme of abuse”,
                 hear “systematic failures”  
                 question why no one
                                 stopped.

But home in the car I’m safe,
you drive I’ll watch
for all potential left by the roadside:
                 goods and services
                 ramshackle market stalls
                 old men asleep on straw
                 dogs scratching patterns 
                 dead masters;

the difference is telling
but we drive on in silence
perfecting beliefs only when we pause.

Radio reports “feral children”
doctors fed them full for asking in sign;
is emotion taught?

Straw beds appeal
but we continue the road,
                 driven mad
by no sleep.

Each day we kiss up quick to the dawn
and he looks at me –
                 licking dew off a cut lip;
“with occasional access” 
to desperations – 
thinking too much about progress
is to miss the truth
that you are driving
and I am watching.

At speed the windows are film reels
stretched out beyond sense – 
bands of colour differing in width.

Heard “everything is together”,
when the celluloid burns
we can stop
and think about what we have done
where we have come –
                 always refusing speech.


Alexis

Spare Me " * "

2007-03-01T15:21:00.000Z

In this particular kingdom of the blind
the one eyed man is too busy
          shepherding to brace the reins
                of a king,

warding off the accidents of human traffic,
the stumbling patsies of misplaced trust,
another lusty collusion of genocide and fun.

               Yet a mile high above   
      in the flight paths of the blind
a stewardess advises her passengers 
                thus: 

‘At the command: brace! place your head
between your legs and 
           pray - or trust at least

for the plane is losing
            altitude fast         
                   &
we all may be obliged to acknowledge soon the moment 
         in which
even the Beautiful People 
         won’t be leaving
     good-looking corpses 

But in the locker above your head
you will find confirmation that

even the visually challenged
         will have every right
to have seen and not seen the fire at the end of the universe
           which the scriptures say 
will burn seven times hotter 
            than the sun.’

Ade Jackson

Spare Me

2007-02-28T12:42:00.000Z

the vanity of those who seek to end history
by scorning the claims of the ghost story.

We who live by mystery 
have no business trespassing
on the last myths 
          of the blue universe.
 
Take the late mist of a dying princess:

the torrid blush, the fluttered lash
         the camera flash 
the visual challenge
         of the smoky glass;

the broken heart’s commodity.

The wounded driver a flame 
         in the eyes
of an astonished girl. 

(field of landmines   tiny legs   a mirage on distant sands)

We who live by mystery wait.
‘I’s cast open, eyes half closed
while the lights smoke in the tunnel
         and the car’s a wreck
the heart a brain 
                the palace shattered glass,

beauty shy of time.
                           *

Ade Jackson

"GATE"(7?.) (reiterate)

2007-02-21T10:42:00.000Z

 shut in the brain and step  0   here was heaven at the first
 out,stop,down                     step - We thought about it
 it ends in rooms,I          .  and there was a car journey -
 put rooms here                    We ended that wondering is
 only running out by my         that anyway to go and thought
 own design,enclosures       .   a heaven would answer "Love"
 here,hear "bark" things        or a means, - means of "going
 hungry to clean up          .  or  any way,where         on"

"GATE"(6?.) (all at once)

2007-02-16T11:35:00.000Z

away from a hallowed gate,        0              light, that
away again bigger                               funny thing?  
away from the gate or                                    fun
shocked to pieces -               3               to the end
light passes on the                             lightened up
real world                                    a mist, beauty
tulip, mildew, and                6      of a day after mist
all light passing through                         the ending

"GATE"(5?.)

2007-02-16T11:26:00.000Z

lock in a system                    the bed as it
all loved things               appears in a dream
                             expansive, joined on
place the bed as it                     all sides
appears in                               by a bed
commotion under          5            impinges on
something                                   sweet
fed on loves                                   us

"GATE"(4?.)

2007-02-14T13:41:00.000Z

      heaven by high                  infinite
      road                      dusty elements
      the magic                 about the head
      car                        of the driver   
      in the elements     4          
      the magic car       5            by hook
      how far ?           6       or crook the
      - the distance      7         long drive

"GATE"(3?.) (solo)

2007-02-14T13:31:00.000Z

 a mass             0       a path
 of fuzzy problems          bodily
                             taken
                    3
 twin lip                      two
 tautly they
                    6
              #.(one added      on

"GATE"(2?.) (accompaniment to 1?.)

2007-02-12T14:10:00.000Z

 "All the nonsense in the 0               or all
  world greater               the gummy branches
  than all the nonsense"  2        the body done
  the world                                   in
  milked                                added on
  him or his                             a thing
  bed                                   his body
  place                   7          peripheries

"GATE"(1?.)

2007-02-12T13:51:00.000Z

 funny furnishings      0           exposure
 he would see           1 to all in the mind
 heaven                 2               
 as funny               3          makes way
 dreamy furniture       4             to all
 wavey lines            5
 moved it around        6            and all 
 a bit                  7                 or

a year past

2007-02-08T23:50:00.000Z


(i)
This man's eye sockets protrude
their ridged roundness showing everyone the view held
by all chimpanzees
barking laughing
from high jungle branches.
He shuffles with red ribbon scarf against winter's teeth
and the hooded youths mock,
aping movements as they part on the pavement.

(ii)
This man places four clocks even 
along a shelf he made himself
from iron and wood 
salvaged from the scrapheap
where he patted a friendly dog
and spoke jovially with the owner
of simpler times.

Each clock was different,
times carefully set to mark 
those hours and minutes in the cities
where his lost loves had breathed their last.

Alexis

Little 3 - 6 .

2007-01-12T11:48:00.000Z

  3.                                        4.
   rootless  berry  picked up     rain that constantly offers
  ,shoreline,  another day,  over ,          garment

  5.                                        6.
    inside,                              what offers patience
   back to the window,                      ?      future
    outside,                                  offer
                                                   things

untitled Russian translation

2007-01-05T16:33:00.000Z


I shall leave for some remote Northern city,
Squatting, I will smoke a roll-up,
I’ll be pricked  by a dear friend accidentally,
He will sob over me when he sobers.

I know one cheerless place in medieval Rus,
Where cheerful people live for the day,
To stay there is scary, to leave is to lose honour,
To  gulp spirits - for soul; and to pray - into darkness.

What rivers are located in taiga,
What vastness unfolds in the morning,
Local women roam them and fugitive lifers
Are raising horizons into the third power.

Let me go, you. I’m alive only barely,
I’m nobody’s forever, a Judas, a psychopath,
I am not in deep sorrow, but the gloomy, dark fir trees
Promise a certain deep sorrow ahead.

Boris Rizhy (1974-2001). Translated by Olia Grebenyuk

Poplars

2007-01-03T13:37:00.000Z


Wind in the poplars talks
when left alone
caught quick by branches
sitting 
for a minute,
empathising with ravens
whilst the big black shadow surfs high quick wind – 
                        (like the rugged tug of the ocean).

Green crowns
atop heads of bark
that scream when you burn them,
a little boy stood too close
and embers glowing in the iris soon stung – 
                       (forever to remember those poplars
                        that he can no longer see).

This is what they say
secretive and close 
embraced next to the beating heart 
hear roots pull water
straight from soil
flow back down with it
to witness the fossilization
of a million dead
drawn between layers of poplar leaves
like lines on a chalkboard
tell the teacher how the slate was formed – 
                       (but she won’t understand
                        that poplars talk
                        so I won’t talk either).
                        

Peace only when eyes are closed
carved in the belly
a seat,
as the wind in the poplars whispers –
                      (hear this, another story).

Alexis

2006-12-18T18:05:00.000Z


 Johnny Cash

Hands move ‘cross piano
Like old man in love
With piano

Johnny cash 
     you popstar you,
Tell me of the west 
   you won
And the price
Down to last nickel
And dime store indian

Johnny cashed up for the night
His winnings 
  in desert shine
Of a sunbleached mirage.

Le Pigeon

2006-12-09T12:22:00.000Z

from the bridge and safe we watched
as it flapped and struggled against mossy wall
and slow undulations
of tourist boat water’s swell
its chest all puffed up useless,
occasional pauses
to consider grave predicament
whilst the lovers of dancing puppets
stopped to laugh a kiss between lips
and concerned friends flew by
wondering when would be best
to pick the dead meat from its carcass.

Alexis

The Cat Poems 1 - 2

2006-12-08T14:51:00.000Z

        1.                          2.
          the moment                  a cat
          a cat dies                  lifts its head up
          it's found somewhere        out of doldrums
          else                        and makes
                                      a great
          head raised                 yawn
          from basket
          eyes waking from
          the dream

M P

existence in a thin band of dark and light

2006-12-03T23:58:00.000Z

The view from this side is better. A rarefied air talking of memories that belong to no one. One car drove the lane up to the border and everyone got out. A boy and girl child stood tip-toed to see over the wooden fence into the stained glass fields iridescent in perpetual sun. Here it existed with absent father mother in a band of monochrome; the lives of other people so fascinating.


  Like high up from a plane the intricacies of countryside.

Ancient people laid down dazzling tessellation for the future to postcard.

Colours swam in and around objects too numerous to list. Focus on one and it disappeared into another. Hopes and achievements skipped gaily through the spectral meadows but were tripped so callously by fears and tainted thought.

The boygirl perched precarious on a stile,

 transfixed by all that unravelled.

Father mother sat disinterested on the border of dark and light in order to play cards. Here the lane was bisected, two equal halves stretched out all around and meeting once again.

Now the boygirl suffered much anxiety as great grey monoliths came crashing onto the field patterns. An imposing court of carved opportunities (missed and taken) spread out in a circle.

 Infinity lay silent. Eternity watched through a mirror.

The boygirl felt the eyes of all the quarrelling heads and some innate urge pulled from within. Here with trepidation steps on the delicate ground; a walk to the centre.

  Prepared perhaps for judgement.

Alexis

Little 2.

2006-11-29T11:56:00.000Z



    rain      more

   a part 

      of    garden growing

Unknown Quote 1.

2006-11-26T16:24:00.000Z


       " . . .  a never ending postwar. 
        I, who had thought of ruins 
        only as the transmutation of 
        cityscapes, learned that ruins
        lie within people as well . . . "

Little 1 .

2006-11-26T15:12:00.000Z

  rain-fall 
            
         giggles at 

      good and bad

           parents

M P

(untitled Russian translation)

2006-11-23T22:13:00.000Z

When I lived in this world
And breathed this air,
I’ve done some things,
Not others, no, I haven’t;
I held my tongue and whined,
Squandered as well as saved some,
Tried to be brave, I scoffed, I cried
Yet salvaged nothing;
And now that I am dead,
Into matter transformed,
Not Kierkegaard or Buber, no one
Can explain to me why, 
What - they won’t tell me – for,
It’s seems too easy to ask why
I lived, and why I’d sit up in my bed
Suddenly awoken in the gloom of night…

Sergei Gandlevsky - 1995 

Translated by - Olia Grebenyuk

we, the under-signed...

2006-11-23T16:09:00.000Z

from Back to the Machine Gun issue 3

responding blow

2006-11-19T00:16:00.000Z

Alexis Hercules

Φιλοσοφική Τραγωδία

2006-11-18T22:02:00.001Z

Today I drank afternoon wine
raised up to mother who loves me
like no woman ever can
or could.

I thought of Greek gates 
and dancing alive in marble robes
           the philosophers so bent
over with too much knowledge
           excruciating on their heads
pulling in the curly fleece of beards
           they lean and need to rest
on the backs of beautiful young 
           boys skin
so fresh olive tan
           glistening with sweet salt sweat
and all that oil crushed
           straight from trees
           they break bread
           and dip it in
           soak sup enjoy
with clay jug of wine
and the rubber chew
of goat’s blessing.

Evening now in the drunken museum,
my temporary affection grips my arm,
and her finger traces body contours
of me and those
stoic statues.

He rarely spoke to me,
but adolescence brought a good man 
who told me everything,
and when I realised
mere existence is all,
I wept and carved this folly on the bust,
still reflective in his musty drawing room,
at the centre of daedal halls – 
carved from oak 
and daubed in deep olive green.

            Alexis Hercules

back to the machine gun

WAR

re-load complete

DEC 2008 back to the machine-gun has re-loaded its blog content

Janette Stowell's poetries

A gleeful malice revealing itself as simple life-ingrained compassion is at the heart of Janette Stowell's poetry.

Code

Smarties

Gull

birth of :: issues 1 - 3

untitled translation of Sergei Gandlevsky

Drinking Lament

untitled translation of Boris Rizhy

spare me

gate

The Squeezed Juice of Midnight

Go rimbaud, go go rimbaud

CINE-POEM

Johnny Cash

casual causal overview

Radio Transmission

notice of re-load

our magazines so far

mentioned on radio

Drinking Lament

the return...

Culture Growth

kenshin sumitaku saint poems 7, 8

(car / east)

Spare Me " * "

Spare Me

"GATE"(7?.) (reiterate)

"GATE"(6?.) (all at once)

"GATE"(5?.)

"GATE"(4?.)

"GATE"(3?.) (solo)

"GATE"(2?.) (accompaniment to 1?.)

"GATE"(1?.)

a year past

Little 3 - 6 .

untitled Russian translation

Poplars

Le Pigeon

The Cat Poems 1 - 2

existence in a thin band of dark and light

Little 2.

Unknown Quote 1.

Little 1 .

(untitled Russian translation)

we, the under-signed...

responding blow

Φιλοσοφική Τραγωδία

DEC 2008
back to the machine-gun has re-loaded its blog content

A gleeful malice revealing itself as simple life-ingrained
compassion is at the heart of Janette Stowell's poetry.