Pain

Knife nails. Scratching.

Morse eyelids. Twitching.

Water feet. Freezing.

Foam liver. Drying out.

Balloon heart. Pumping.

Jelly brain. Melting.

Wire veins. Rusting.

Vegetal nerves. Rooting.

Crystal bones. Exploding.

Thorny lungs. Expanding.

Plastic skin. Tightening.

Charcoal heart. Hissing.

Stone muscles. Cracking.

Acidic bile. Running.

Boiling blood. Crystallizing.

Continuous synapse. Shouting.

Rope viscera. Twisting.

Wavy pleura. Reverberating.

Reptilian hair. Rattling.

Open mouth. Gashing.

Pain. Growing.

The perfume dreamers / Los soñadores de perfume

Ilustrado por Viviana Hinojosa para el proyecto "Ephemera"

The perfume dreamers

Every morning they wake up with some broken aromas in their eyes. In every dream they try to figure out the perfume´s shape and source.

They exchange spices and scented pieces of cloth. With that information they draw the map that will take each one of them to their perfume.

Sometimes they wake up, sweating, trying to get hold of it, to name the place where it comes from. But rushing into waking life is useless.

You cannot control dreams. You just have to keep waiting and hoping. You have to be ready for the next piece of information. Night comes.

Piece by piece, aroma by aroma, it takes years, sometimes centuries to draw a map. It takes many dreams to find the source of one´s perfume.

Los soñadores de perfume

Cada mañana, despiertan con aromas rotos en los ojos. En cada sueño, intentan darle forma y origen al perfume que sueñan.

Intercambian especias y olorosos pedazos de tela. Con esa información, poco a poco, trazan el mapa que llevará a cada uno a su perfume.

A veces despiertan, sudando, intentando atraparlo, llamar el nombre del lugar de donde viene. Pero apresurarse a la vigilia es inútil.

No pueden controlar los sueños. Tienen que seguir esperando y prepararse para la siguiente entrega de información. La noche se acerca.

Pieza por pieza, aroma por aroma; toma años, incluso siglos dibujar el mapa. Toma muchos sueños encontrar el origen del perfume propio.

Companion jewelry pieces by Polen.

Coincidences

Kisses and murmurs

share a silence share a noise

 they speak they rattle

Glazed bile and water vapour

share a lightness share a heat

they boil and they rise

Sweet dreams and hopes

share a sky share a night

they rise and they evaporate

Inner thoughts and steps

share a rhythm share a voice

they go back and they go forth

Death and oblivion

share a stillness share a cry

that lasts and that hurts

Contentment and fudge

            share a bitterness and a lie

rancid and sweet

The sun and the moon

share a time and share a light

 they come and they go

Hopelessness and rust

share corrosion share a bite

they go deep and down

Loneliness and mold

share a dampness share a cold

they break down they infuse.

Hope and sunshine

share a light share a warmth

            they soothe they enliven

Fraternity and mist

            share a continuity share a force

                        they permeate they flow.

Lost "In the Dark Room"

James Knight, aka the @badbadpoet has a new book out. Wonderful and numbing, inspiring and frightening."In the Dark Room" is available here. And here is a little “review” originally posted as tweets with the hashtag #lostinthedarkroom:

It is intimate, like the ever present thoughts you never share, but are always there, haunting you. 

It is like madness, like the one you don’t realize you have, like the one you like to deny. 

It is the reflection of your lost twin, coming back as a mannequin.

It is like being in your house, with your mum and dad, as weird as always. 

It is like your dreams. No, not those ones, the other ones, the dreams you don’t confess. 

It is like a memoir. Like the one Punch and Judy implanted on your mind one sunny afternoon. 

Origami

Ilustrado por Viviana Hinojosa para el proyecto "Ephemera"

Inspirados por un manual de origami, las hojas de los libros se doblaron varias veces. Se crearon y recrearon en mil formas. Magia pura.

A la mañana siguiente, cuando el bibliotecario abrió la puerta, un mar de animales, flores y figuras geométricas de papel huyó en estampida.

Inspired by an origami manual, the books´ pages folded themselves over and over. They created and recreated themselves a thousand times.

Next morning, when the librarian opened the door, an ocean of animals, flowers and modular geometric figures ran away in a stampede.

Pumping

Waves

            pumping

right over

my chest

sea mist

spraying

the lining

of my heart

rising tides

            reaching

the fragile shore

of my lungs

the whole sea

            engulfing

swallowing

my whole body

the night

            falling

dark and heavy

all around

waves

            pumping

sea mist

            spraying

rising tides

            reaching

the whole sea

            engulfing

the night

            falling

all at once

pumping waves

rising tides

spraying sea mist

engulfing ocean

falling night

                slowly

                                finally

                                                fading                     away.

Art by Matt JimDog.

This poem was the result of a collaboration with artist Matt JimDog. We were both invited by Nicky Mortlock to collaborate in an Anxiety-Release collaboration in March - May 2014.

For this particular collaboration four artists and four poets were paired. The poets wrote about the theme of anxiety, and the artists, in response, engaged with the theme of release. In so doing we attempted to artistically and accessibly engage with the dynamics between the two emotions- the clashes and the spectrum between the two contrasting feelings. 

Nicky Mortlock enthusiastically runs the site ArtiPeeps where she invites emerging artist from a variety of disciplines. She is now planning a major exhibition on September 2014.

Fibonacci

Del proyecto Ephemera con la Ilustradora Viviana Hinojosa

Una idea salió de su mente dando vueltas, formando un remolino de crecimiento armónico. Fuera, se convirtió en palabras que también giraban.

Rodeado de giros y vórtices, buscó el camino fuera del mundo de las ideas recorriendo un camino elíptico, en caracolas cada vez más amplias.

Al salir vio en el cielo nubes como nautilos y dando volteretas sobre sí mismas. La suma de los elementos anteriores, el infinito giratorio.

An idea came out of its mind turning into circles, growing into a harmonic whirlpool. Outside, it became whirling words.

Surrounded by turns and vortexes, it looked for the path outside the ideas´ world, following an elliptic trajectory, like wider sea shells.

Outside, clouds like nautiluses were rotating in spirals around themselves. Each part was the sum of the previous two, a spiraling infinite.

Fog / Neblina

Del proyecto Ephemera con la Ilustradora Viviana Hinojosa

Fog

Fog settled: thick, moist and voluptuous. Laid over the furniture, over our bodies and our eyes and slowly over our hearts and our past.

We played with the fog, somehow we thought it was fun, sexy and chic. But fog soon took over our entire existence. Nothing was free of fog.

Foam came after fog, then dust, then nothing. We saw our lives and our world vanish. It vanished softly, like in a dream.

Neblina

La neblina llegó: espesa, húmeda y voluptuosa. Se posó sobre muebles, cuerpos y ojos. Lentamente sobre nuestros corazones y nuestro pasado.

Jugamos con la neblina, pensamos que era divertido, sexy y chic. Pero pronto se apoderó de nuestra existencia. Nada estaba libre de neblina.

Justo después de la neblina vino la espuma, luego el polvo, después la nada. Vimos nuestras vidas desaparecer suavemente, como en un sueño.

At the bottom / En el fondo

Del proyecto Ephemera con la Ilustradora Viviana Hinojosa

At the bottom

There was a little wooden box at the bottom of the sea. Shining. With little pulses was calling day and night, an enthralling light inside.

Many knew about the little box. Some swam, some dived to the bottom trying to get closer, to find out what was that little light inside.

Some reached it, some opened the box, some saw the light inside it and swam towards it. Some held it, dearly. All remained inside, dazzled.

En el fondo

Había una pequeña caja de madera en el fondo del mar. Brillando. Con pequeños pulsos llamaba día y noche, con su cautivadora luz.

Muchos sabían sobre la cajita. Algunos nadaron, otros bucearon hacia el fondo tratando de acercarse para saber qué era aquella luz adentro.

Algunos se acercaron, la abrieron, vieron la luz, nadaron hacia ella y la tomaron, amorosamente. Todos permanecieron dentro, cautivados.

The firsherman's words / Las palabras del pescador

Del proyecto Ephemera con la Ilustradora Viviana Hinojosa

The fisherman’s words

When fishing, the fisherman thinks of words, whispers and sonnets. When dreaming, he catches his favorite words with his fishing net.

In his dream, he knows they are words but he sees opalescent nautiluses, glossy dark sperm whales and sparkling jellyfish.

Some days the fisherman thinks about the dreams he has at night and feels the urge to release his catch. He can’t. He has to keep fishing.

He sells the fish in the market and words and sea animals mix in his head. He keeps navigating in a sea of dreams, words and sea fauna.

Las palabras del pescador

Cuando pesca, el pescador piensa en palabras, susurros y sonetos. Cuando duerme, atrapa sus palabras favoritas con su red de pesca.

En su sueño, él sabe que son palabras lo que ve con forma de opalescentes nautilos, brillantes y negros cachalotes y transparentes medusas.

Algunos días, el pescador piensa en los sueños que tiene en las noches y siente la urgencia de soltar su red. No puede. Tiene que seguir pescando.

Él vende la pesca en el mercado mientras las palabras y los seres marinos se mezclan en su cabeza y navega en un mar de sueños y palabras.