jueves, 27 de febrero de 2014

13 Medusa variations

Text and image by James Knight
1. Dreams
At twilight Medusa becomes a tree. Brittle branches grasp at the wind hissing through her leaves. She twists under mineral dreams.

2. Little Black Dress
Medusa queues to pay for a little black dress. Shell knock 'em dead tonight. But, fearing mirrors, shell never know how she looks in it.

3. Humdrum I
In Medusas kitchen, the kettle hisses and spits. She sits at the table, buttering toast. Her eyes are empty; her minds elsewhere.

4. Book
Medusa is turned into a book, bound in snakeskin. Left on the shelf for years, her pages yellow with age and envy. Her secret words will never be read.

5. Mermaid
Medusa swims through the starless abyss, harpoon in hand, hunting. Her eyes are pearls, her hair a crown of gaping eels.

6. Alice
He glimpses the reflection of a coil of Alices hair as she darts between still white soldiers. In the frame of a mirror, shes vulnerable.

7. Humdrum II
Medusas mother-in-law clucks over the baby, pecks his cheek. Afterwards, in the stony silence of the kitchen, Medusa plans a roast chicken.

8. TV
They sit in their millions, fixed by her stare.

9. Creation Myth
Medusa is the first monster. She hisses sweet nothings that become the sea. At night, shes mesmerised by the silver shield of the moon.

10. Cupid
Medusa meets the man of her dreams in a hall of statues. She shoots loves arrow through his heart, then caresses him until hes rock hard.

11. Humdrum III
She inspects her grey skin in the hand mirror.

12. Art
Medusa takes up sculpture. Her subject is terror. Her material: life.

13. Reflection

Lost in the Garden of Eden, Medusa chances upon what she takes to be a reflection of herself: a woman, ripe with sin, stroking a serpent.
This prose poem appears in "Head Traumas". You can buy the book here.

martes, 18 de febrero de 2014

Grandma’s eyes (13 unpleasant stories, dreamt up for the purpose of terrifying and mystifying)

Text and image by James Knight
1
She found the book at twilight in the silence of the forest. It was bound in red leather. When she opened it, the pages turned into moths and fluttered in drunken spirals, aspiring to the moon.

2
In Grandmas garden are gnomes, roses, a lovingly mown lawn. But her greenhouse is home to a thousand desperate twisted things, gasping, blind.

3
She pauses before the door to the forbidden room. The apple-shaped doorknob is warm, smooth. In her other hand: a key like a snake's tongue.

4
Grandma sips a cup of tea. A broken wolf stares at her from the prison of a picture frame.

5
The curtains of her eyelids are the forest. Denser and denser into the heart, into the wet darkness, into the house of phantoms.

6
Grandmas teeth are knives, hatchets, crenellations, the serrated canopy of the endless forest.

7
When she breaks the mirror she swoons into a long, restless sleep. Her lips turn to rose petals, her hair to snakes. Her sex becomes a seashell. Put it to your ear: listen to the mermaids murmuring in an ocean of blood.

8
Red roses proliferate in the Kingdom of the Wolf. Grandmas skull is a cave. Inside, youll hear the voices of the dead.

9
Her heart is a mirror whose surface reflects the witch, an apple, a rose bush, a broken sword.

10
In Grandmas eyes youll see a red moon, red shoes, secret flames, the howling storm. She shows her bleeding palms to the heavens.

11
Opening the door to room 13, she finds herself entering a candlelit bedroom. Her double is sitting at the dressing table, smiling at her own reflection.

12
In the Medusa coils of Grandmas floral wallpaper: the statue of a wolf.

13
An axe, a grin, a labyrinth of trees. The girl, now a woman, writes her name in blood on the mirror of the moon.
This poem belongs to the collection published as "Head Traumas" that you can buy here.

viernes, 14 de febrero de 2014

13 cyborg poets

Text and image by James Knight.
1
Lost in the Vision Matrix, J0hn Clare transmitted a distress signal designed to be audible only to himself.

2
T5 El10t ran on a complex algorithm that produced seemingly fragmentary results. However, if you run Imagewise an underlying order appears.

3
C0ler1dge suffered a non-integration glitch. His Narco Neurons were in permanent conflict with routines instigated by a Homily implant.

4
Walt Wh1tmans predilection for free verse was the consequence of a series of malfunctions in his Metrical Regulator.

5
The deadly Anne 5ext0n devoured boys, cars and prayers, blades whirring, shutter eyes snapping. Afterwards, sated, she cat-napped in a coffin.

6
When the archaeologists finally extricated the monolith from the embrace of the petrified forest, they found Tenny50n embedded in it.

7
Spinning a web of words, J0hn D0nnes Sp1der Appendage resembled an eight-fingered hand. In its nimble frenzy it misspelled dove as love.

8
Lew15 Carr0ll processed language through a series of Whimsy Filters, generating reams of dream words, realms and dream worlds.

9
W1ll1am Blake wrote Songs of Innocence after his Logic Node was shut down. Following a S1N upgrade, the Songs of Experience howled from him.

10
W0rsdsw0rths operating system crashed every time he looked at a lake, mountain or gorge. The problem was caused by oversensitive Sublimity Receptors.

11
Alexander P0pes Syllepsis Module strained his vegetables and his relations with other poets.

12
Sylv1a Plath smashed her way out of the iron foundry, Thanatos mode engaged. Later, she made the word BABY from scrap metal.

13

Hibernating in her Death Pod, Em1ly D1ck1n50n still emits little noises that some commentators claim are philosophical questions.

This poem was published in James' book "Head Traumas". You can buy it here.

viernes, 7 de febrero de 2014

"Head traumas" de James Knight

Head Traumas” es un libro que reúne poemas publicados con anterioridad por James Knight. Las versiones anteriores, todas hermosas en sí mismas, dan al lector sensaciones diferentes por las ilustraciones que contienen o por la forma en la que los poemas fueron presentados. En consecuencia, en “Head Traumas” el lector puede pasear suavemente por los diferentes estilos y formatos en los que James escribe y tener, en un solo volumen, varios de sus estimulantes poemas y poemas en prosa.

En este libro, se intercalan poemas que corresponden a los diversos proyectos de James, por ejemplo, los poemas en prosa en 13 fragmentos que, originalmente, correspondieron a 13 tuits publicados en @badbadpoet. También se incluyen poemas del Bird King (Rey Pájaro) un personaje incierto que igual nos hace reír y nos perturba y quien, en consecuencia, también es un reflejo de los dictadores y los seres despiadados.

“Head traumas”, como todo lo que escribe James, es sumergirse en un sueño: algunos poemas son conmovedores y hermosos, otros desconciertan por su gracia y otros más perturban. Todos los poemas, imágenes y palabras que James comparte persiguen al lector por días dando la sensación de que el sueño no ha terminado o de que uno ha sido maravillosamente afectado por un extraño trauma craneoencefálico.

A James le gusta revolverle a uno la mente. Esto lo consigue a través de su cuenta en tuiter como @badbadpoet y/o a través de sus diversos e inspiradores libros, los cuales pueden adquirirse aquí.


En las próximas semanas compartiré aquí algunos de mis poemas favoritos y que aparecen en su libro “Head traumas”. Mientras tanto, invito a las lectoras y lectores de estas líneas a meter la cabeza en el blog de James (aquí) para recibir una gozosa sacudida craneoencefálica.