coming in 2013 or possibly never

Poems by Sean Brijbasi (USA)

Published in Issue 27.

B

bend human willing

i lay awake during their nights, thinking of their deaths, regretting how i made so many of their kind suffer and how i should die of pity and regret if it were not for this jawbone and iron belly.

     The existence of the phantom is subtlety.  He is posh and exerts his fisticuffs without clumsy.  He is whimsy.  He courts ladies of leisure for the touch of velveteen on their bottoms.  It is a copious matter.  He adorns them with lather.

F

feeltrip

what mendacity is this that proclaimed itself thus upon my bereavement? It is a cold bluster of mind that turns to keep a man's soul from ascent.

     This is the way of Marstrand—passing five sins to Marga^re|t.  She is of consequence in her plastic arcade.  Some whisper in search of favorite colors and numbers and I am that boy.  Someone made the cave.  Someone made the footpath to the slave.  Someone made the slave.  It was all still and then she flew.  In the cave pictures of new animals (they say we were almost apart).   

     There is a noise that reminds me of my loss.  Those missing on the ferry to Marstrand.  The walk by the water and rocks.  The fell.  My loss saved in half bubbles floating in puddles of rain.  The boats painted [yellow and blue] with ropes drifting out to the boy. 

     I am entering now.  The place.  The skin beneath her skin that I touch (more than touch, more than skin) in the room above the sea where the bones of men mingle with those of animals.

G

grabben

one desires meanli to settle into one’s chest like pollen. Or sanding [my brother poomsi] threw Alabama wood like the porch we sat on because [sometimes] people who are at home fall and die and [sometimes] people who are not at home fall and die.

On your ear he said, so fervent and nubile in his enthusiasm, a quasi-liturgical membrane strutting from his turnip hut. Some whispered his sociopathy, others his relegation to the mutter fields, while après mort lay sidlewise and pressed their blood cabbage to the ground.

There is lip everywhere. And nose. And strump.

In the doorknob summer comes early but out here all is gray while Hiroshima father breastlespur consumes himself. His twin bourbons metastasized with youthy flailings. Oh swine but singworthy messenger. Trinkets flea like big, materializing in astonishment cymbals for the martyr. On friar purr day, the protozoa march in wiggly [wait for me oh she!], in her summer clover and glistening lips of sardine (punctuation for a whisper)

J

jespertine

gone good are days of long and lonely suffering when the window shingles (fermata, algernon, and caribou) conspire with words like reckon or dragoon master willister to confound us.

     Ours was the house seen from the road. But only the back door and the bedroom window above, framed by trees on either side. If you had a pretty dress mother or one moment to rest upon the stairs I would have told you that not far from here I impressed a girl by saying: ‘the trumpet is the most beautiful sculpture I’ve ever seen’.

R

rememory

     starting with the trees. Starting with the path leading to the trees. The trees were tall in the forest. She turned to look back. Slowly mon ami. And the leaves?  They fell did they not? So many. So many fell around her. And then she turned again. Slowly. My god she turned. So slowly, so full of grace, that we mistook her for air.

     It’s no small feat to make one’s way. It requires an understanding of the metaphysics between one’s self and the objects that orbit one’s self. It would have been no surprise to Molly and her objugates if she had awakened one morning and wished for a kind of normal that comes without explanations. But Molly’s normal came with an urgent request for the revolver. She fitted herself and boosted, earmarking destinations little by little and quite by...she and she and she…

     The pagoda before her bustled with reference. The least of which, the pole, who left because of the girl who loved, like so, ever so, in fact, just so. For if we give Molly the revolver, she will take it apart and rebuild the universe.

     And not so simple many subjects harrowed she lay in bed. And did this for many minutes. So many, in fact, that calling them minutes would understate the many-ness of them. Through the space between the curtain and the window she saw yarn (a dusty equivalent of rain). Maybe she’d cross her eyes and fall back to sleep.  She was pretty.

     And [lo] there on her pillow a capsule shaped amoeba. Brackish and then finally the. A balmy thing she held between erstwhile blah blah blah and tiger lily bleh bleh bleh. But she’ll make her way as the laid goat is ambulatory and able to suffice the pristine and scrumptious.

     There is, after all, no limit to one’s willy-nilly.

     It was now that Molly read the letter. But in a parastasis of saidbefores, no one writes letters any, uhm, longer. Not f. Or y. Or a consonant reacclimation of the punjabi, which had a sheen, thoughtful and unencumbered but was still [sidebar your honor] like this.

     Bring me the burlap cockles Thurston.

     Should Molly sit by the fire and listen to the violin while her homonym relishes different states of undress, philosophers will go through her drawers and search for truth in her lower vowels. They’ll find it and foretell events of one who entered for the implixic..imploaxic…implamative purpose of dropping the revolver. Right there. There. Over there. For her to see.

     Here is an overview of the palisade. Please remember the date.

     One surmises that the purpose of her visit is twofold:

     1. to teach us how to dance on mud

     2. so far and like pummel

     Perhaps one surmised correctly but one can’t be sure of what one can’t be certain of. And...processing...I left the revolver by her side. As I walked away, boodle kitswinny erupted and the [then the] sting of such failure [instinctual].

     Oh ache. Oh longing. Oh darn it.

     Molly knew more than anyone that beauty was painful. To see it, heartbreaking. So much so [much so [much so]] that she would collapse in a heap and cry uncontrollably. And when she couldn’t for reasons "behind her sorrow" she clenched her jaw, jiggled in acknowledgment, and mumbled god save the queen. But she happily served the greatest and least seen tyrant of them all.

     It was here that "Sad Molly the pingo" was introduced not for the benefit of humanity but for its definitive destruction. What happened to sad the pingo remains a mystery to this day. But Molly lay on the bed with the revolver and before she started taking it apart she moved the blanket to reveal her leg [pantyfruit]. What a gorgeous plot of scrubby! First the barrel. Then the spring action telemetry. When she removed the firing pin the left side of my face fell to the floor. By the time she had the revolver in pieces strewn about the bed I was the second toe of my right foot.

     Enter Cassius--

     Shall I make a memory of thine fissure and strike at the breast of merriment? Oh noble chameleon of many coloured hues, tinges, and shades. Yonder.

S

submatter

during the procedure we discovered that her dark humors failed to mutate, leading to the inoperable metabolizing of her bilirubin.

     It’s not easy to end your feelings in a good way even when you’re alone. It all starts off okay. You feel angry or sad or happy but then there’s a knock on your door or your fish die and even when they don’t there’s always that threat hanging over you, so you end up worrying about the fish dying or somebody walking in on you while you’re in the middle of feeling perplexed or in the middle of some other feeling. The butterflies did that to me. I knew they would come back but I didn’t want anyone else to know.   So I ran away from home.  I ran as fast I could but they were everywhere.  They knocked me to the ground and I figured I’d just lie on my belly and cover my head and wait until they all disappeared but they started pummeling me.  I tried to fight back but then I thought maybe they would pummel me so much that they would change the shape and look of my face and in between pummels they would realize they were pummeling the wrong person. So I stopped fighting them and I just let them pummel me. When they finished pummeling me I went home and asked my mother if there was anything about my face that had changed.  She said she couldn’t really see anything different.  Except for all that blood and petrol albumin.

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Sean Brijbasi is a writer living in America. His works include: One Note Symphonies, Still Life in Motion, and The Unknowed Things. Read more of his Ofi Press published work here. Follow him on Twitter:  @un_knowed.  And don’t forget sequence disruptor 9 about the dictionary of coincidences directed by em{m}a+ gla::s.