The sea in a glass of gin

Down at the bottom, there is a reflection, there is a place where he wants to be. To reach it he must drink it all. Quickly. Drink up.

It is not the sea, it is clearer, but it is as big and as comforting. He loves it. The sea that he is holding tight. Clear and beautiful.

He cannot stop looking down the glass, the beautiful sea he owns, he can see its waves, its dancing creatures, its possibilities. He smiles.

He is falling in love and falling sleep. He is smiling, the heaviness of his body giving in. The soft caress of life over him, loving him.

A soft wave is engulfing him, a numb peace taking over. He could hear distant noises and happiness all over. He is splendidly drowning.

Everything was slowly coming back, sweet torpor fading away, the poignant undertow emerging. He must look for it: the sea in a glass of gin.

Hourglass

Time is measured in suns,

suns that navigate across the sky,

that enter and exit the vault of heaven,

that go up and down,

suns that warm up.

Time is measured in moons,

the ones that gave us light,

the ones that were not there,

the ones where we wanted to love,

and we did love,

the red moons at sunset.

Time is measured in waves,

the waves we ran away from,

the waves we dived in,

the ones we navigate over,

waves full of foam and salt.

Time is measured in words,

the ones we learned and forgot,

the ones we whispered and those we kept to ourselves,

the powerful and resonant

words we think.

Time is measured in paths,

those we walked and those we avoided,

those we created,

the paths that await us,

and those that drive us mad.

Time is measured in rivers,

those that bring us water and pebbles,

those that drag us,

the deafening rivers,

running inside us.

Time is measured in silences,

those we fear,

those that fall like a thunder,

those that get us together and get us apart,

the soft silences we look for.

Times is measured in gazes,

those we hide,

those we caress with and dive in,

the gazes we watch with,

those we understand and learn.

Time is measured in stars,

those that fall and die,

those that guide us,

the star that cover us,

with their light of distant suns.

Time is measured in caresses,

those we search with and those we find,

those we run through,

the caresses enlightening us

and opening our eyes.

Times is measured in suns,

moons,

waves,

words,

paths,

rivers,

silences,

gazes,

stars,

caresses.

The time is sand, is just sand.

The time is an hourglass.

Ver  la versión en español aquí "Reloj de arena".

Páginas adentro / Inside pages

Proyecto #Ephemera en colaboración con la ilustradora Viviana Hinojosa

Una noche, mientras hojeaba el libro por centésima vez, notó que una mariposa se desprendía de una de sus páginas y volaba adormecida.

Otra noche, notó que las hojas del libro tenía una rara textura y que cada vez le costaba más trabajo sentir cada una de sus páginas.

Después, su cuerpo cambió y parecía desvanecerse cada noche mientras releía aquel libro. Incluso sintió en su interior un hojear de libros.

Una luna nueva, sintió la succión de un abismo cuando el libro estaba totalmente abierto; esa noche llegó a sentir sus hojas como propias.

A la mañana siguiente, el libro yacía abierto en el piso mientras el viento movía sus hojas. Páginas adentro alguien tenía una nueva vida.

One night, as he was flipping pages through the book, he noticed that there was a butterfly clumsily coming out from one of the pages.

On another night, he noticed that the pages had a strange texture and that he was having trouble feeling each and every page of that book.

His body changed and seemed to disappear every night as he was reading that book. He felt inside his body pages being flipped through.

On a new moon, he felt the pull of an abyss when the book was totally open; that night he could feel the pages of the book as their own.

Next morning, the book laid open on the floor as the wind moved its pages. In the inside pages someone had a brand new life.

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.