ISSN 1529-0832  Vol 1 No 9 – July 2000
All Works are Copyright © their Authors 2000
All Rights Reserved Worldwide

No portion of this electronic magazine may be reproduced in any other form or by any means, except for the purposes of review, without the prior consent of the appropriate copyright owner.

 

 

FOREWORD


This foreword is only a prayer. Basically, all true artists and poets are rebellious and blasphemous. Art as Poetry of Normality sounds like a base insult. The act of creating (whatever you create!) is always an attempt to assert one’s superiority and divine connection. The rest is only squalid, average normality. Everything the editor writes, reads, watches, smells, tastes, touches, is written, read, watched, smelt, touched, as if it were a pure act of blasphemous rebellion. That is not a merely religious matter: it would be the usual father vs. son conflict. Too banal. It isn’t religious or social or political…it’s simply global in terms of rejection and aspiration for a radical mutation. Whenever you read Locust Magazine, please keep these words in mind.

July 2000

 

TWO POEMS by Townee

 

FAULT


fisherman’s pick
thaws an iceless winter
in the dirty, murky, muddy puddle
it drowns, upside down; a low sky,

full of clouds; like…whatever

broke. was
thoreau’s lake deeper & bluer?

 

NATALIE


i wanted to wave
you like a flag

in that scant
immigrant dress.

 

TWO POEMS by Jenny Howard

 

BECAUSE


Because it wasn’t you
I spoiled a romantic evening in St James’ Park.
Lamp light and still water, leaf breath.

Because it wasn’t you
I ignored the view across South London to St Paul’s.
Historic dome and the Post Office Tower.

Because you weren’t with me
In Covent Garden, drinking coffee, I planned
A short story, Ten Minutes in Tuttons.

Because it wasn’t you,
I married another man on New Year’s day.
We honeymooned in Wales.

 

BLUE SHOES


Strange how silent her dead mother’s clothes hang,
powder blue and floral pink, like a washing line
in a winter garden where mist has settled.

The daughter fills and wills once more the silhouette
of bust and bottom, the movement of the skirts,
and the creasing of the sleeves. Pretty.

The blue shoes were the only ones that fitted in the end,
stained where the dye had run, busting a little
round the bunion, so full of absence.

 

NOCTURNE
A Poem by Doug Tanoury


In the early hours of the morning,
At 2:30 and sometimes after,
I would hear my father,
Unable to sleep, couching,
His footsteps moving about,
As he transformed the kitchen
Into a concert hall,
With refrigerator doors closing loudly.
Jars could be heard opening.
Their vacuum seals hissing,
Lids rolling, spiraling and strumming
Across table or countertop,
The sound of him rummaging
Through the silver for knife, fork
Or spoon, and the glupp-glupp of him
Pouring it in the glass.

Some nights now I wake up
At 2:30 or sometime after,
Unable to sleep.
In the summer, I sit out
In the quiet on the front porch step,
In winter, in the darkened living room
At the rolltop desk, but always
Avoiding the kitchen.
Indeed, I tiptoe through it, for the
Silence there has grown
Into a monument to him,
And I fear that if I click the
Glass of the pimento olive
And the sweet pickle jars
It will disturb his peace,
And any slight rattle of silverware
Will conjure his spirit.

[Nocturne has already appeared in Megaera.]

 

TWO POEMS by Duane Locke

 

VINE ON OLD OAK


Swallows spiral in his smile
When he sees the yellow fish

That is a yellow leaf hanging from a jade green vine
That hugs the curves and contours of an old oak.

The bright yellow fins of the leaf flash
In the dark, wavy waters of the bark.

 

A YOUNG PINE CONE AND SOLITUDE


The green, brown young pine cone
Sends out a sticky, silverish light.

When the light is touched,
It sticks on the skin of the hand.

The sticky hand spurts out light,
As if the hand were a fountain.

The light in droplets falls on grasses
That surround and the grasses glow.

The birds hopping across grasses to hedges, glow.
The bird-filled hedges blossom with flowers of light.

 

ELEGY IN A COUNTRY CHURCHYARD 2000
A Pastiche by Michael Segal


The curfew tolls the knell of human kind,
The refugees wind slowly o’er debris,
The shattered house and gutted school are mined,
And share the world with darkness and with me.

The moping child doth to the moon complain,
Exhausted, fearful, terrified; yet still
The mother, haggard, wounded, lost in pain,
Carries her burden o’er the ruined hill.

A burnt-out tank stands sentry on the scene,
And keening cries disturb the twilight air,
Some mute inglorious corpses lie unclean,
Their eyeless, white-boned faces grin and stare.

What village Hampton stood against the foe,
The enemy that once was also friend?
What universal moral code doth sow
Destruction as a seemly holy end?

What village Milton wrote his poems and lays
To celebrate th’eternal seasons’ toil?
His silenced voice can ne’er revive nor raise
The living from the violated soil.

Now night descends upon my wretched sight,
The world goes on its vast indifferent way.
What God, whose God, which God, what vision bright
Decreed that man was doomed to pray and prey?

 

THE PROSPECTIVE MODEL
A Poem by J. Kevin Wolfe


come to my room
i have some grapes

they are wine in adolescence
red and green
blood and innocence
in this tiny fingered orb

hold it to the light
see the veins and freckles?

i split it
with my precise teeth
it says kitsch
but we know it lies

i place the other half
between the promise of your lips
you bite
i’ll kiss the sweetness dripping
from your chin

come to my room
i have some life

 

SWEET FANNY ADAMS
(Part 1 of 2)
Prose by Andrew Gallix


Fanny Adams. Brit. informal. Noun (also sweet Fanny Adams) nothing at all (Origin: early 20th century: sometimes understood as a euphemism for fuck all.)

Granted, it could have been an airport, say, or any other point of departure for that matter, not necessarily a railway station. Then again, I would not want you to go thinking that his choice had been totally arbitrary, although he was, admittedly, no stranger to acts of random behaviour. It did not have to be an overcrowded railway station, but it sort of made sense somehow. It’s like this: your train is due to leave any minute now. You look up from your book or paper–if you are reading, that is, but I think we can safely assume that you, mon semblable, mon frère, are reading at least one or the other, possibly even both, one after the other, or, better still, simultaneously. You check the time on your wristwatch, the kind that they advertise in The Economist and suchlike publications, something Swiss or German with knobs on (the more, the merrier) which exudes manly sophistication. Just as the Red Sea parted for Moses, the door slides open, blissfully pneumatic, to reveal a stunning Mary Poppins–stacked, stockinged, sorted–in a comely knicker-skimming skirt: entrancing entrance. Being the proud possessor of a Y chromosome, your eyes make a beeline for her A-line, zooming in on silken thighs, NordicTrack-toned. While she fafs about with her umbrella (which will be left behind, of course, accidentally-on purpose like), you are at leisure to divide her putative weight in kilograms by her hypothetical height in metres squared, thus reaching the satisfactory conclusion that the young woman’s Body Mass Index slots into the ideal 18 to 20 range. Stocky stoccado, scatty scattato, she click-clicks her way towards the only vacant space (which just so happens to be facing you) aloft a pair of chichi cha-cha heels, whereupon her petulant posterior takes a pew. As she crosses her endless legs with a hushed swish whoosh, the bright young thong hitches up her skirt a notch, pinching the flimsy fabric on either side of broad hips between manicured thumb and forefinger. At this juncture–when you are about to abandon wife and children, sail the seven seas or commit genocide because men cannot help acting on impulse–you notice that those are tear- and not rain-drops irrigating her tanned, yet still unblemished, features. Ever the gentleman, or simply embarrassed, you interrupt your ornithological study and peer out of the window which, being in dire need of a good clean, forces you to squint in the most unsightly fashion. Now is when it happens. For a few split nanoseconds, another train pulling into the station tricks you into believing that your train is pulling out.

Adam Horton–33, Caucasian, 5’ 6’’, under-endowed, thinning on top–viewed this sensation as a perfect metaphor of his stumbling through life like a sleepwalker on a treadmill, a pet hamster on a wheel, or a commuter on the Circle Line. Hence the choice of a railway station over any other leaving place. But which one? Paris offered un embarras de choix. Gare de l’Est was a definite no-no for some obscure reason. Gare d’Austerlitz was likewise ruled out: Adam, you see, had a passion for Waterloo Station. Watching the workers munching their lunch-break baps at the bottom of the up escalator, eyes cast skirtwards all the while, never failed to microwave the cockles of his little heart. Since childhood, he had conceived of Austerlitz as a sort of counter- or even anti-Waterloo; it was enemy territory. This still left Gare de Lyon, built in the grandiose style–probably the most pleasing, aesthetically. Gare St Lazare, caught between the red-light district and the posh department stores, scored a few brownie points. Proust’s lycée was close by, as well as the Opéra Garnier (a fine example of architectural eclecticism) and, more importantly, Marks & Sparks with its large lingerie section where Adam often did a stint of lingering among the petticoats and suspender belts. There was also Gare Montparnasse, where the muses hung out, free and easy. They rode around like BMX bandits astride expensive Dutch bicycles, wearing a saucy look on their freckly faces and precious little else, serpentine locks flailing the air. The area never failed to remind him of the time when he micturated on the tomb of Jean-Paul Sartre after burying his late goldfish (Botty, short for Botticelli) in the shadow of Baudelaire’s corpse. Such fond memories. In the end, however, he had plumped for Gare du Nord which houses the Eurostar terminal. Adam’s grasp of French had greatly improved over the past twelve months, but he was looking for a lady who spoke the mother tongue. Besides, the word terminal had a certain ring to it, the finality of a full stop.

The air hung heavy with Chaucerian expletives; dropped aitches were strewn about his feet. Here and there, young men sporting crew cuts were reading redtops from back to front. In the distance, a posse of senior citizens was doing the hokey-cokey. If I should die, Adam muttered, think only this of me: that there’s some corner of a foreign railway station that is forever In-ger-land. And there she was.

Sweet Fanny Adams.

Sweet Fanny Adams and no mistake.

[Part 2 will appear in Locust #10.]

 

SINPHONY
(Oil Painting by Paul Jaisini)
A Review by Yustas Kotz-Gottlieb


The artist engages us in a mysterious arena of the inner process of creation. The nature of creative work is such that it is unanalyzable. It’s a higher activity of mind when unexplained energy of inspiration awakes and rises from the lower stage to higher one.

When the mind opens the enlightenment comes to the artist, his creativity reaches its top level. Then, the artist is almost detached from his body and mind. The only existing thing left is the produced art. The artist experiencing the spiritual growth. He even feels the phenomenon withdrawal of his soul from the physical body.

The condition of trance is shown in Sinphony by an amazing transformation of the musician’s genders. Jaisini is able to unveil hidden mysteries of creation, visually. Sinphony depicts an idea, that the truth of art creation is rarely pure and never simple. The perfection is a result of an inborn gift increased by a hard labor. An artist, who felt the impetus, can never be the same person again. The recollection of his experience will become a new source of inspiration. A circle encloses. When the artist awakes from his creative ecstasy, he thinks that nothing looks the same as it did before. As one cannot communicate what sugar is to someone who’s never tasted sweet, or to a man born blind what colors are, so it’s impossible to describe this experience of high artistic inspiration. But, Jaisini does it.

The nude vulnerability of the musicians’ bodies is aimed to uncover the truth about their performance in its final beauty, when hardships are concealed. Looking at the painting, I sense a strong aesthetic power radiating from the unseen author. It seems that Jaisini has poured out all of his inspiration and temperament on the canvas, counterbalancing the overflow of colors with graphical values. The picture could be the prize for its creator. For all that he had sacrificed in his life to be able to fully integrate into his art. The artist may not be able to explain how and why he could do this, looking with astonishment at his own work. He may try to understand, to look for a reason that may exist in a form of a live sound of symphonic orchestra. The composition is ignited by the conductor’s spread hands. His right hand embraces a nude woman with black hair and red mouth. The conductor’s black figure seems to carry her nude torso.

A central cello player is a naked blond with spread legs. Her right hand holds a bow that is pointed straight between her legs. And, her left hand holds the cello handle that reminds a long penis. The keen impression of possible masturbation here creates a vibration of musical ecstasy. To the right from the central figure of cello player, there is a violinist in a black attire. Even though he is a man, his lower body is naked and has the female sexual features. This signifies the metamorphosis of creation. The absolute black color at the upper right corner counteracts with the flesh color of bodies. It creates a gap of macrocosm in the picture’s bursting color composition.

Sinphony creates a system of multiple levels of impression. Layer after layer, it opens the mind for a new vision, freed from all limitations. The picture’s space expands. The picture is an independent reality with its own absolute point of view. Layer after layer, the painting is perceived and the spectator penetrates in art and feels the pleasure in its peerless delight. The same way as the artist before, the viewer now feels that “nothing looks to him as it did before; that he is awaken for the first time.”

Modern scientific thinking has reached a stage where physicists have been forced to abandon the ordinary worlds of the so-called sense perception. In the works of Jaisini, we learn about the complex creative principles which combine the known and the unknown knowledge.

Every Jaisini’s painting has a universal sense and the unquestionable beauty. The artist perfects his senses and, therefore, is able to uncover more reality.

Our common senses delude us by bringing knowledge that changes often. That is why the great work of art is so valuable, as a last piece of unchanged harmony. Progress may bring more inventions and machinery. There is only a narrow field of the human emotions that cannot be affected by the changing world. Those are the eternal questions of human nature that will always be asked by some inquisitive minds.

Every work of Jaisini opens those sometimes dark mysteries of human soul. In Sinphony, Jaisini engages sensuality to successfully animate classical music. It is new and frivolous. It explores that narrow field of the emotions that will always touch and affect human minds. Sinphony has inspired Jaisini to continue to work on the subject and create a series.

◀Locust Eight - May 2000
Locust Ten - November 2000▶