jueves, 29 de noviembre de 2012

Las cajas / The boxes



Las cajas
Desde siempre, ellos se encuentran en las cajas que se dejan mutuamente. En ellas dejan regalos e instrucciones para el próximo encuentro.

Ella deja su aliento perfumado, su desnudez, la foto de una flor extinta, una tormenta por la mañana y un abrazo cargado de besos ansiosos.

El deja un orgasmo, una tarde a la sombra de un naranjo, 10,000 palabras escritas sobre una caracola y una noche de amor bajo un arcoíris.

No se han visto nunca durante la larga noche del tiempo. Solo abren cajas a milenios alternados. Algún día, el espacio se doblará a su favor.

Cuento corto originalmente publicado en 4 tuits @minafiction.

The boxes
Since ages they have found boxes that they leave for each other. Inside them they place gifts and instructions for the next rendezvous.

She leaves her perfumed breath, her nakedness, a picture of an extinct flower, a morning storm and a hug filled with desperate kisses.

He leaves an orgasm, an afternoon under an orange tree, 10,000 words written over a sea shell and a lover´s night under a rainbow.

They haven´t seen each other over the time´s long night. They only open boxes in alternate millennia. One day, space will bend in their favour.

Short story originally published in 4 tweets @minafiction.

miércoles, 21 de noviembre de 2012

Octopus ink


I wrote a letter with octopus ink and sent it overseas. The letter never arrived. I heard rumors that an enormous Kraken sank a mail-boat.
One night, a sea of octopus ink invaded the darkness´ realm. We dreamt the worst nightmares ever imagined. We howled and screamed in dreams.
Cephalopods were conspiring, clouds of ink exploding on the ocean floor. At noon, clouds rising up to the sky were mistaken by the night.
In the beginning there was light. Then Octopus came and spread its tentacles over the universe and spread its ink, and darkness was born.
Octopus ink is running through my veins. It darkens my thoughts and my heart. Tentacles grow around my heart and I am lost in a black ocean.
By day, our love was plain and simple. By night, we filled the night with octopus ink: we became Krakens. Our love was a deep ocean monster.
There is a path of octopus ink along the ocean. Only burning ships can find it on their way to death, oblivion and eternal ocean-deep darkness.
Sepias flicker to each other in an eternal dance. Every now and then, some ink accompanies their dance. The reef, always busy, remains unaware.
Alfonsina saw beautiful words written over the sea with magical dark ink. The ink was calling her. She walked in joyfully. Seduced. Enthralled.

Prose poems originally posted in 9 tweets @minafiction.


miércoles, 7 de noviembre de 2012

Brassaї in Paris


Unknown Paris of delightful terrors
Unseen Paris of waste and rain
Paris of marionettes
Paris of iron dawns and dead streets
Paris weeping at twilight
Paris of corsets and limbs in windows and in minds
Paris of faceless men making signs across distances
Naked Paris
Paris of whores in the crying light
Paris of banal offerings
Of flesh of thighs of tits
Paris sweating through the close night
Paris stooping to put on her stockings
The anonymous customer scratching his arse
Paris of fleas of lice of rats of stale beer of dust
Buxom Paris stretching on a soiled divan
Whispering Paris
Paris of stark trees in the fog
Stark trees in the cold fog and light coming from 
     nowhere
Light coming from the hotel sign
Floating frozen
Paris of lonely benches and sleeping men
Paris of the solitary wanderer stopping to gaze with
     eyes of blind desire at posters advertising health
     and wealth
Paris of the empty boulevard
Paris of a phantom Seine and bridges bridges bridges
Criminal docks and towpaths
Paris perpetually dark perpetually autumnal
Paris of cafés where sharpfaced young men lean
     towards their darlings their eyes whetted on the
     sharp mirrors their hands not visible for now
Of cafés where smoking drudgery lifts a glass of beer
     to her cynical lips
Of cafés where eyes converge on the happy couple
Your eyes your uninvited eyes
Paris of voyeurs
Paris of look-but-don't-touch
Paris of inscrutable tableaux
Paris of signs
Paris of hieroglyphs
Secret signals riddled throughout the streets
Paris of graffiti of accumulations
Paris a text forever being written a painting never
     finished
Paris a woman applying fresh makeup while a man
     waits on the other side of
the screen
The spectral city smiling at midnight
Full of love
Paris kissing the moon
 Words and image by James Knight. You can buy his wonderful books and e-books here.

jueves, 1 de noviembre de 2012

13 Lines, Imperfectly Recalled, from a Bad Poem That You Think You Read in Last Night’s Dream.



1. The cup, falling. Wine, a red halo, a dark constellation, in slo-mo free fall. Blood runs from the corner of my eye, my little eye.

2. Watching from the corner of a room drowning in light, smooth zombies sniff for incense. You stay in the doorway, eating an egg roll.

3. The man in the bobble hat offers tea, tangerines and transcendence. Crumpled suits smile wisely, floating in a ballet of underhanded dalliances.

4. The halo of wine spreads, shifts in space, becoming a hand, a hawk, a fresh idea.

5. A handshake on the other side of your eyes. Chainsaw promises. We apologise for the recent disruption.

6. In the cabinet is a map showing your birth, your heart, your desires. The red ink in which it is drawn is a blood-sample, stolen from you while you slept.

7. The Bird King, a unique monotreme, hibernates in the empty egg of his favourite son. It’s pungent and slightly sticky inside. He loves it.

8. The nine nocturnal policemen whose electrons you stole force you to eat a quark sandwich.

9. Desperate to court scandal, the indigo terrorists transmute themselves into protons and thrill along fibre optic alleyways.

10. The eyes of the moon turn enviously from the flamboyant sun. A dead stone heart plots the next brief eclipse.

11. Your grandmother gives birth to thirteen orange squids. Hands, soft and fat as tentacles, thrash behind shower curtains.

12. On Sunday mornings the cars form gangs. Lawn mowers watch them suspiciously from neat green plots.

13. The ONEIROSCOPE stops transmitting and the world is plunged into a limbo of twitching insomnia.

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR:

The Oneiropoem

The ONEIROSCOPE is an interactive Twitter project that reflects my obsession with dreams and their disquieting poetry. Initially I invited people to request single-tweet dreams by replying to me with the word "sleep." I tried to provide tweets that would resonate with the recipients, by reading their bios and some of their tweets first, if I didn't already know them. I got some very favourable responses from those who had requested dreams; I was touching some sort of nerve!

After a while, as the project gained momentum and popularity, I thought the ONEIROSCOPE would be more fun (and more of a challenge for me) if people could specify up to three words to be included in a dream.

The previous piece is an extension of the single-tweet ONEIROSCOPE principle. I tweeted that I was writing an ONEIROSCOPE poem, and that people could request lines by replying with up to three words they’d like included. Eleven people responded, so I decided to construct a 13 part piece (13 part prose poems being to me what sonnets were to Shakespeare!), using the requested words in the first eleven parts and free-styling in the remaining two.

Many thanks to Mina for supporting my work so enthusiastically, and to those who requested lines; without you, the Oneiropoem would not be what it is! 


Lines were requested by:
1.       @DianaProbst (cup, wine, run)
2.       @TheBinkyAnnexe (egg roll, incense, zombies)
3.       @RenZelen (transcendence, bobble-hat, underhanded)
4.       @bencooper666 (fresh, wine, hawk)
5.       @kneeldowne (disruption, handshake, chainsaw)
6.       @jeffnoon (cabinet, blood-sample, map)
7.       @minafiction (hibernate, slightly, monotreme)
8.      @CharlieAlcock (nine, eat, quark)
9.       @OpinionGeeks (scandal, fibre optic, indigo)
10.   @LainadAngouleme (eclipse, sun, eyes)
11.    @sleeping46 (orange, birth, grandmother)
 
 Words and image by James Knight. You can buy his wonderful books and e-books here.