{"id":113,"date":"2014-10-30T07:09:00","date_gmt":"2014-10-30T06:09:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/musemagazine\/?p=113"},"modified":"2018-10-11T20:03:08","modified_gmt":"2018-10-11T18:03:08","slug":"hollow-birds-other-poems","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/musemagazine\/2014\/10\/hollow-birds-other-poems\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Hollow Birds’ & Other Poems"},"content":{"rendered":"

Image<\/strong>: John Tenniel’s illustration for Carroll’s The Hunting of the Snark<\/em>. Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Author<\/strong>: Charlotte Courdesse<\/p>\n

Hollow Birds <\/em><\/p>\n

The void of the mind, trampled and crippled,
\nIs written with a typography of desire,
\nUnconsciously torn between urge and stagnation,
\nSaturation of shattered leaves and thinned-off glass.
\nNothing moves, but drifts slowly towards a stillpoint,
\nThat awaits the flood of lapsarian minutes.
\nMeanwhile, lasses perform Saint Agnes\u2019 rites,
\nLovers stand near the withdrawing sea of Dover beach,
\nAnd a Nicean bark flings itself away
\nIn the ever-tossing waves of poetry,
\nImages of yore, fantasies of old,
\nWhose existence is doubtful, less coherent,
\nExpressions of the self, set up to coy and object
\nThe imaginary real, and the nature of dreams,
\nOriginate from, and head to,
\nthe deep alloy of philosophical thoughts,
\nthe proto-hotchpotch of humanity,
\nthe syntagms, phonemes, lexemes of truth,
\nthat evince inspired crackpot, literature,
\nborne by putative beams of historic tradition.
\nThere they lie, surfaces of black pauses,
\nAwaiting to be picked down by the bleak hands
\nOf ravenous rovers.<\/p>\n

Worship<\/em><\/p>\n

Over the heel of multiple amber voices,
\nFeather-wise, trimmed with brilliant eyes,
\nUnder the ponderous feet of gilded thoughts,
\nLeathered and trite in their burnished vagaries,
\nThey plummet and dive, they rust and rot,
\nSalt of the hard core, the European gods.<\/p>\n

Over the years of multiples ardent hooks,
\nSilver embroidered, weapons armed, and yet
\nUnder the potent helmet of rigorous princes,
\nSharpened but weak in their pitying squalor,
\nThey flaw and dodge, they deny and dye
\nThe tenure of their arms, the worldwide army.<\/p>\n

Tis no run-in in the drawback of their battles,
\nThey know what they are, defined, not altered,
\nAlbeit the gallivanting pleas of the whirlwind,
\nThey die and march, resurrection for a ticker-tape,
\nStrolling in mid-air, they defile the wrongdoings,
\nAwaiting no graces: capstone of the vanquished hassles.<\/p>\n

In a Spencerian rhythm, they mount epic ravens of yore,
\nAnd speak in monolithic A the plosives and the loves
\nOf numerous languages,<\/p>\n

In a burst prose of purple tinges, they slide along the heroic shores,
\nAnd address the question of Clarisse\u2019s and Acteon\u2019s soars,
\nFor the sake of euphonious staves,<\/p>\n

Over the clouds of multiple gone off verses,
\nThey modernize and dovetail the fingers of our chronic past,
\nUnder the studied cant of their immortal spirits,
\nThey rehearse the eyewash limbs of our words,
\nA cut from above, a cerulean window splits open,
\nWatchers of old times, quenchers of nigh nights.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Temple of the Ancient <\/em><\/p>\n

Fake statues, upright erected, winged and frail,
\nMade a half-stifled cry, marble vibration,
\nCasting to the pending sky a marvel of doggerel.<\/p>\n

Fascination took us, with its quills brazen,
\nScripturient and demonic: that was the initiation,
\nFlow spouts us astray, and the flood of hell.<\/p>\n

Gyrastic columns, Delic acanthus leaves, solemn
\nSalutes: they murmur their names, critics of ancient cultivation,
\nAnd sound the ivory statements of Aphrodites of stone,<\/p>\n

Frozen ecstasy, gullible to the brink of madness,
\nTies up the esthetic shackles of tantalization:
\nThey indulge in gripping the void, rosary of invention!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Cheshire Hostel<\/em><\/p>\n

Chain of substitutions \u2013 was it only a fantasy,
\nOr something easily removed from the path of dreams?
\nWindows wide closed in the downtime of isms,
\nDoors tightly open for the throwback to begin,
\nFleabags I know not, but to them I return, continuously,
\nMy rucksack in rag and my ring disposed,
\nLooks of dismay on my face, and defiance ahead,
\nWhen I book a room, and a gallivant around,
\nSteps patch up the cracks, on the crushed ferns,
\nIn the sounds of the drills, and forests away,
\nI am the frontrunner, the wanderer,
\nIn whom every belief crumbles and soars,
\nI sell highlife and hobnobbing,
\nSandbox of departure, sold-out from the beginning,
\nFor a minute of frenzy, antics follow, disreputably
\nVulgar, but meaningful, for the hearers of will,
\nFor my cause is mighty, and good,
\nThat transmogrifies the void, for good,
\nThat glitters with nuclear sparkles and bombs,
\nThat spurs the soldiers of fortune to try their death;
\nThere I reign over thousands of kingdoms of dawn
\nPurple and gild, across the mind, plunged deep in sea,
\nThick and fast they bid me to admonish torments,
\nAdvices I give them, nonplussed they depart
\nTo dingy motels and gasoline stations, to filthy closets
\nOf evenings much distanced,
\nThey ask for a homespun redemption, in the squalor, in ditch,
\nThey remember me not, the merchant of magic, the knight of nights
\nHalf-lit but rich, verbose and profound.
\nThey have forgotten already the Forthcoming for the Candyfloss,
\nThe hunchback for the witch.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Image: John Tenniel’s illustration for Carroll’s The Hunting of the Snark. Source Author: Charlotte Courdesse Hollow Birds The void of the mind, trampled and crippled, Is written with a typography of desire, Unconsciously torn between urge and stagnation, Saturation of shattered leaves and thinned-off glass. Nothing moves, but drifts slowly towards a stillpoint, That awaits […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1258,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[36],"class_list":{"0":"post-113","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-october14","7":"tag-poetry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/musemagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/musemagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/musemagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/musemagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1258"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/musemagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=113"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/musemagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/musemagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=113"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/musemagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=113"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/musemagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=113"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}