ANAMNESIS by Abolaji Adekeye & D.C. Wojciech

It wasn't the puppet master driving the birds further south?

Then who stands here in this shadow passing flowers through a black hole?

I apologize if all my advances were read & blue.

The dream body's strait jacket is head to toe & never has a mouth.

Whatever you do to keep civilizations off yr back.

Wherever you may find a night for these words to pass through unnoticed.

I am the flutter of dreambirds, they flatter.

Some soft beds are concrete comfort for some.

Some cumbersome tombstone to lay my hat again.

A thousand-year-old breath pausing in the doorway of an oak tree.

I am the difference between what wolf does & rabbit says.

What was taken in amnesia was given to mountains.

Do you remember the Catalinas before they were the Catalinas?

Satisfaction can only go around peacocking for so long.

I am the melody the songbird failed to learn, the riddle ponder’d

like the waters of the coconut's middle.

I'm the thorn. I'm the blood clot.

A tidal wave of fiery tongues.

"All that I am is becoming all that I am." 

I apologize if I had mistaken a wilting rose for a lovecoat.

Sugarblossoms only bout is a wayfaring drum.

Mine is a boney neck & grapefruit skin.

The secret of paradise

is never guessing the weight of yr tongue.

Abiku came and was gone.

A contradiction of hues is no armor against the amorous bees of still life.

I see what I see.

I am the monocle of Horus.

An acapella requiem to a silenced chorus.

A revolution of colors. Guillotines awash in blood.

Broken gourds & swollen saguaro.

That some come from night & some come for it.

Whether or not a gooseberry explains a promise.

Or a song becomes aperture.

When the fleeing of Wawel refuses monuments.

Was it by sundown or by moonrise—

what was spoken on the hunt will be heard by generations in the future.

Let pompous castles remember Pompeii pummeled by eruption of pumice.

What thresholds pry at the precipice of a reborn Earth—

Within the plumage preening story plucked apart by ravenous eyes.

Flowers assemble, become wreaths—thirsty raven sings a dirge to rainwater suspended midfall.

In the swollen cactus a desert struggles to flourish.

Abolaji Adekeye writes from Lagos.

D.C. Wojciech is from Sacramento, California. He edits Silver Pinion.

Source Materials:

I Am that I Am (Wikipedia)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_that_I_Am

Blackalicious Featuring Saul Williams & Lyrics Born - Release (YouTube)

https://youtu.be/_5J4y9nhYWs

Looking Back 70 Years: Wawel Under Occupation (Krakow Post)
http://www.krakowpost.com/8702/2015/02/looking-back-70-years-wawel-under-occupation

Remedios Varo's 'Floral bouquet with birds, 1960' (allpainters.org)
https://allpainters.org/paintings/floral-bouquet-with-birds-1960-remedios-varo.html

Two Poems by D.C. Wojciech

Incandescent

the way the light houses are guarded by memory.

to love what is now set a fire inside yrself &

kiss the dead buds falling from a tree of shadows.

no coincidence the two hands of prayer point up.

the way we learned to live by visitation hours.

the words will have to be cut from a stronger metal.

fled into a mist of becoming:

the story of original sin is all spectacle in a recession.

I remember when we first thought the stars had fallen

for good & walked on egg shells for twelve summers.

rebuilding the city with water & wine.

beyond the corner store where the world is sugar & salt.

beyond sky scrapers & temples of commerce.

cracks in the sidewalk spelling out either polarity of ascent.

why the sun is full of blood—

resuscitating empty gardens.                

leaking clues across yr search lights.

or is it the fistful of black marigolds asleep in the mind

emanating all that cannot be taken from you—

The Illusion of Stillness

the hounds of silence invade the cell walls

of my laughing sunflower.

their hungry ghosts create the facade

between what is known & unknown.

some who saw through their own eyes.

the day we woke up & everything was a wind instrument.

when the congregation decided to be unborn again.

every book at the library on keeping gardens was deemed lost or stolen.

the illusion of stillness falls

like an urn from the mantle of time.

from present to past.

all those hours running off yr watch.

who will have the last laugh

, the eyes turned inward

or the battering ram—

anywhere you can tell the difference between seeing & looking.

spell it out if you have to.

the only downside to window shopping.

the muse has taken an oath to let the headlines die today.

& not vice versa: let time tell you—

dreaming is self-preservation.

D.C. Wojciech is from Northern California. He edits Silver Pinion. Selected work can be found online at relicwindows.blogspot.com.

Extremities by D.C. Wojciech

Sky is Raining Coyotes by Ricky Armendariz

EXTREMITIES

Through the open window coyotes
enter my skull. They pick at the mind
with their singing teeth. In an empty
room I've been smoking the same joint
since 2002. Turning sharp corners
and breathing like an animal. The plane
inside appears only after splitting
the tongue. I'm speaking to you and
the orbs & spectres circling your crown.
Pacing and weaving incense in the air.
To revere what vision cannot still.
Rings of oleander unfold my throat inside
the color of daylight. Their shadows are naked &
smuggled in from temporary deserts. Those
to follow will be lonely & full of joy. Seeds
of reckoning found in lean undulating hours.
In renounced rhythms. In the eyes. Swaying
from its center. The gleam of another world
ripens the original fix.

FAREWELL, SPRING

Summer by Frank Lobdell

FAREWELL, SPRING

Daylight strings in fissures of fear & joy
streetwalk settling
pushers pimps
cabbies thrifties
& other gone galaxies
subluxed from the source
in this concrete jungle
tumbleweed imagio
the warm blade of air
turning faces
meat in the windows
going fast and faster
so you find my ancient
voice
in the aftermath
of dawn's chariots
one look at your domed eyes
and she disappears
—from what bus stop
bench or green plastic
fern was the oasis staggering
to greet you? I am hungry
for ink & eucalyptus. I turn
the other cheek & shadows dance.
I become adjacent & contaminated
with ecstasy.
If you must follow me,
follow g-d
all the way past 5th avenue
in rags of south & west
I will show you strange rhythms
of tears I will tell you the
mountain's eyes I will open
relic mirrors. There are voices
within every voice.
I'll let the sun
be another star. I'll
salute the black crows
twist last night's smoke
beg of the piano rain
and
leave

- d.c. wojciech

Intrinsic

How the voice bends—
were we not born
to love & die
easily as a desert
opens palms,
the contour of sorrow
faded into peaks
of cheek bone & empty
bus stops of the mind

ribbed moonlight etching
alley ways across these hours

(a candle crawling the wall
or vestige of benediction,
a trembling synapse
tying together
midnight winds)