Artzine Featuring Art and Written Work by Artists
DANZA
La verdad está del lado de los oprimidos (Malcolm X)
una ave migratoria busca el humedal bajo sus astros
siempre ha viajado entre continentes
desde siglos sobre el ocre de los mapas
entre líneas desteñidas bajo los soles
los que nos ven y los extintos
quienes atestiguan las extensiones sin nombre
ni líneas punteadas
sólo arterias hídricas y nubes.
Violenta y sometida África americana
buscando la libertad
entre vudú, santerías y rebeliones.
written and illustrated by ©Enrique De Santiago
Toda ciudad hiede a sombras
las cuales son a su vez sus cementos,
que la ocultan,
a ella, la de la piel perlada
y ojos evocadores.
Filo emergido del océano antiguo bajo la oscuridad nubosa de la palabra
sonido del reino animal que dibuja su notocorda (o notocordio) por consejo de los cantos cámbricos de células turgentes
y cada cuerda se compone según designio
con ese diseño urdido en los albores del primer sentir del todo
música que continúa con su decibel arcano y transversal.
written and illustrated by ©Enrique de Santiago
Enrique de Santiago is Enrique González Chouquert
Born in 1961, he entered the Faculty of Arts of the University of Chile in 1980, from where he was exonerated at the end of 1981. There he had classes with artists such as Luis Lobo Parga, Adolfo Couve and Luis Advis among others. It was then that he began his studies in fine arts at the Institute of Contemporary Art, where he was a student of Sergio Sosa, Milan Ivelic, Gaspar Galaz and Enrique Zamudio, among a long list of notable academics.
He interrupted these studies to enter Graphic Design, where he would meet great masters, such as his friend Claudio Cortes, or the outstanding Antonio Pérez and Patricio de la O. At the end of this training, he returned for one more year to the Institute of Contemporary Arts, and finally , studied a Color diploma at the Catholic University of Chile during 1992.
He is considered one of the most notable representatives of surrealist painting; His works have been exhibited in Italy, France, Spain and the United States.
Featured Image: The clock that survived the paleozoic, acrylic and ink on Fabriano paper 250 gm. 21 x 28 cm. Enrique de Santiago
The dream of the sphinx
Bounded by the breath of time
Rush me to the shore
from the young chimera.
SUM OF OPPORTUNITIES
“If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to men as it really is: infinite. “
William Blake
And I saw the impossible behind the possible
clinging to its subalternative limit that varies by century
because it responds to the movement of utopian tides
as I look into your eyes from the night glass
there everything was infinite in a tear lodged in your pupil
where she calculated the proper time
to go out into the light of tornadoes
and to the thick porcelain of desire.
From the clouds held for centuries
of the air that snakes the knot violates sense
and every dark way that embraces the sound of the world
STARS TOPOGRAPHY
Only from the heart can you touch the sky. (Rumi)
So many times announced about my bone marrow
while the diligent memory of your laughter
still loathing the twilight
and you will know by the occasional spurs
that had not taken my hands away from that oniric praise
and neither from the damp condition that bounced from his promised halo.
written and Illustrated by ©Enrique De Santiago
BLENDED IN THE HOURS
From the place where the abrupt sound of the loica ventures
(1)
the evanescence of your future breath appears
among the vegetation that hides your name
and the blue and gray stones of the primal mystery
there I will drink from the mist that shouts the perpendicular miracle
the only reason at all
that moistens the vegetal belly of the beloved
and shines the incessant desire.
How long does the star take to announce your coming?
or there will be no signs in this already long life of chordates
(2)
while the empty horn waits for its winds
and the opaque flame of sleep leans into oblivion
(1) Signature and unpredictable bird before being (A) bird
in the light areas that are shaken by the wind
mythical and loving red that drew a smile on a child
to open the celestial fields of my pupil
that stirred my early neurotransmitters
before the new cycle (B)
(A) Before being
Before discriminating the gray hours from the clear ones
I inhabited the only and always proud clarity of my imaginary friend
(B) New cycle
My lymph is rocked by the wind
in a theater of new opportunities
those that favor the sweetness of the coots of sober stride
mating in the repetition of miracles
so that the aromas perpetuate my arcane name
and the wandering clouds welcome their polar persistence.
I had the option of ascending to lightning by the cosmic warp
where perhaps the root of the word would have questioned
in coming times of etheric colors
where time would have curved for your eyes
and I would raise your elusive silhouette that lies in the angle of a sunset
irretrievably withers the thaumaturgical vowel (B1)
as simple as a smile
or the collapse of a galaxy
since everything is corresponding
and apparent
with its prodigious lightness (B2)
Like a breath from the forest.
TRAVEL
I went down to the inside of your belly
caressing the rafters of your cosmic cloud
the one that received me with the aroma of the sacred bulbs.
There you were the clear love of wood
and the vegetal wisdom that embraces the ancient verb
when the wind ceases its journey on the shoulders
of the floral liturgy
How many skies inhabit your seed that furrows the seer’s eye?
Is there a niche of smoke that hides your salty voice?
Or simply the root of everything has its home in that mystery.
Each step collects behind you, the daffodils
that inevitably lose your mark
the one that wanders in the deep sands
that in the empire of shadows shelters you.
The messenger has a singular noise
I’ll feel it that dreadful day
I will know then that the epitaphs for the sepulcher arrive,
where nothing else needs to be done,
the metal swallows are an illusory replacement,
since the truths remained in the lock,
and blind to certainties,
I only rest for a few moments
to give me strength in the pilgrim sea,
the one who confuses the epistolary tides
and enjoys seemingly innocuous sacrifices.
I will kiss your lips according to the prophecy
while the breeze will speak the unfinished language
And you will see me with your green eyes
that are not green
are brown
But when you laugh they turn green
and you can draw a different morning
with an approximate solstice
with snakes in the window,
so my useless life becomes useful
because I’m a hobo of solar systems
and I become a wanderer in your body,
as a geographer of your corpse altar
and intruder in your zodiac cenith.
At this moment the end of the thread
talk about the miracle of one day
unrepeatable and mild luck
How strange of an eclipse
under the brief abyssal tides
like ghostly cardamoms approaching
in the deserts of disease
appealing to the late corrections
as it did for millions of years
moss persistence with its epicness
selecting the right humidity
with your organic and fruity hug
in that I put my hope
in what you find in front of your eyes
because I am the one who reads in the borrascas
as I advance toward your directions
who fires violent canines
before those who offend you
to heal that sadness
that leaves the middle of the night when you slip
inevitably and persistently beneath
out the door.
Chandelier in the mornings
this useless armor
And the leaves are blank
soaking up her violently dance
they burn in front of the cabinets of dubious origin.
I hear the birds giving birth to the woods, in the upper angles of a nebula.
At this moment the end of the thread
talk about the miracle of one day
unrepeatable and mild luck
How strange of an eclipse
under the brief abyssal tides
like ghostly cardamoms approaching
in the deserts of disease
appealing to the late corrections
as it did for millions of years
moss persistence with its epicness
selecting the right humidity
with your organic and fruity hug
in that I put my hope
in what you find in front of your eyes
because I am the one who reads in the borrascas
as I advance toward your directions
who fires violent canines
before those who offend you
to heal that sadness
that leaves the middle of the night when you slip
inevitably and persistently beneath
out the door.
written and Illustrated by ©Enrique De Santiago
.
Featured Image: “Beyond the visible world is the non-Euclidean horizon for the dragonfly” acrylic and ink on 250 gm Fabriano paper by Enrique De Santiago
Huge old stars leaning out of the
horizontal cobblestone sheets,
were dictated by an ancient manual of glorious epic forms
where I did not read the cunning locks,
from there fall lights like eagles
what they hang before your pale fortifications
and despite the fact that I descend without air
I cling to the dissected edges of this abyss
walking away from the waves of floral promises
with summer mentions that anoint you.
The amaranth silence rocks the star again
and like the silent lymph
you seek to break beyond the fundamental shell
the one that you came to know in a primitive way
in the sweet stays of belief.
Blows the hydrogen on the leaves
and many cycles are enough for oblivion,
while the trees stand
because they keep their memory in the roots,
to later give shelter to life
vertical.
I am the extended earth,
I still have memories of that
Winter will come without you realizing it.
The specificity of the meander
winding secret of the air
like the grass with its distant star.
written and illustrated by ©Enrique De Santiago
(Unpublished texts from the Poemas de sur)
Oath
The flowers will throb in my silence
The eyes will hear the flames of the river
We’ll whisper at night
And nothing will be necessary
This accumulation of absences today fills our chest
And there are no more traces on the dry Sunday afternoon
Although the smoke witnesses some ordeals
The eyes release their huge blocks
But none of this will be necessary
Nothing will be noticed at the bottom of the lakes
Not even in the thickening of the clouds.
We Return to Earth
The sound of the night falls towards the earth
The pastures surround us with their white moans
Again we walk the bare earth
And we keep the secret
A word wrapped in unreality
My lost sunflowers are from autumn
When they wither in the shadow of the cliffs.
(Unpublished poems taken from the book Escritos para Beatriz)
Strange Certainty
The water rises to the hives
The brightness of the air stops my desertion
And the precipice of the birds is deep
But the route digs a new image
Where did we forget the road?
What drill did you lose my name in?
The moon is your own emaciated conscience
Climb towards the light the wormy face
They fill it with sounds in the jungle of the world
An image is that you in pain
That serpent coiled in the maelstrom of the waves
Who can love you from silence?
The flora of time cradles sad animals
And disintegrates in the ropes of the river
That temple opens their bodies towards the solitudes
And send us four different kingdoms
Your flight is a mirror in the mask of the world
Eyes conceive other authentic materials
We like to dye ourselves from nothing
Succumb to the harassment of existence
After the light has departed we only have
distance
And the objects thrown on the floor
But your being unexpectedly illuminates this corner
and flee to cold countries
where the last sailors go
That silence is part of our ancient voice
And bring down the places
Draw an island in the middle of everything
The moon rests in my female arms
And unwind four seasons
A sign disconnects my primitive bursts
And he starts to sing
The wave once again throws its homicides
The certainty of that shadow strangles us
That figure stopped at dawn.
(Poems taken from the unpublished book Ciénaga)
9
Unexpectedly I open my eyes towards you
I like to hear whispers from the outside line
Your eyes open other doors
And they stay sheltered from the shade.
10
Since that time I remember you
You slowly invade my landscapes
Cold voices bring the threads of that web closer
They surround the absent body.
11
I will open my eyes once more
When the stars dwell in our bodies
And a drop slipped through the skin
Suspend all reefs high.
12
Violet petals fall successively on us
The wind is gone, but the shadow remains
Water slides streams into the night
And the last fire extinguishes my stars.
written by © Claudia Vila Molina
09-22-1969
Writer born in Viña del Mar, Chile. Professor of language and communication at PUCV, poet and literary critic. In 2012, she published her first book, The Invisible Eyes of the Wind. She has published in renowned Chilean and foreign digital media: Babelia (Spain), Letras de Chile (Chile), Triplov and Athena de Portugal, among others. During the year 2017 she participates in the Xaleshem group with poetic texts for the surrealist anthologies: “Composing the illusion” in honor of Ludwig Zeller and “Full Moon”, in honor of Susana Wald. In 2018, she integrates the feminist anthology IXQUIC released both in Europe and in Latin America. In 2020 she participates reviewing the conversation book “Shuffle poetry, Surrealism in Latin America” by Alfonso Peña (Costa Rica), also writes a poetic prose text for the book “Arcano 16, La torre“, by the same author. Likewise, she participates in the book “120 notes of Eros. Written portraits of surrealist women” by Floriano Martins (Brazilian surrealist poet, writer, visual artist and cultural manager). In this year (2021) she publishes her second poetry book Poética de la erotica, amores y desamores by Marciano editores, Santiago.
Feature photo art by Enrique De Santiago
It is then when the tree that tomorrow will summon the thorns loses its leaves,
and the bumblebee falls, prey to the polar trails,
to reinvent the powerful patient engineering of lytic promises,
Well, that’s where I shelter, and where I rescue the omens,
there I drink from the Paleozoic salts, which today move the migratory herds,
those who come to the eyes without ears, of those attending Sunday services.
By nature, I approve!!
They speak of love, and my bet is more on compassion, which is a kind of continuum in a collective warp, of an ineffable equation that they will never understand.
Because perhaps love (like that image shown to us) does not exist and if it does exist it is a sum of chemical reactions where a set of hormones stimulates our syntax, and which may also be subject to the need for genes to be perpetuated. Maybe?. But there is also one who breaks this previous theory; crazy love, passionate love, eternal love, etc. that love that becomes unclassifiable. I only know that I know nothing.
After all, I believe in love.
Does the egg use the chicken to make more eggs?
It is possible, but in a global and precisely circular analysis, the plot of existence is supported in a shed crossed by the polyform reality of infinite logics and illogics, where each of its corresponding paradoxes and balances avoids its critical tension.
But, we can order them in the not well understood compassion, which could be a feeling deeper than that of the corruptible flesh (physical theory and cognitively plausible), which leads to understandable and celestial simplicity. But what if an infinitesimal were more than an integer, or if that time circulated in all directions? or love will not mean more than a necessary impulse to take risks in order to live the contradictions, so that the soul, when dying, will return with the pertinent knowledge to correct, deconstruct or ratify the whole of the so-called divinity .
For this reason, the next step opens the temporality to dedicate more time to essential reflection, and to put aside an imposed competitiveness for the accumulation of objects that lead to the void that means pursuing a way of life that is subordinated to the symbolic relationship. of the object or objects, which is useless and inconducive (a simulacrum of the society of the spectacle) for our true purpose in this brief transit called life.
Ars longa vita brevis. Or your existence is just an accident to offer a limited amount of data to accompany the equation that gives additional information to find the way out of the answer.
By the way; nobody takes me into account, since my infallibility is very poor since periodically and statistically, my failures are more abundant than my certainties.
And therein lies my wisdom; in realizing that my hypotheses are only attempts to find the truth within infinity. To think otherwise would be to err drastically and in the process lie to them. It would be, subjecting myself from the ego to an option to dress elegantly, but in the end, it would strip my limits. It is better to be honest in clumsiness than false in an inane and temporary charade.
But:
What if love were one of that unknown design in my intrinsic astral writing, waiting for you?
So the wide dividing width
will unload its useful molecules
in this useless impertinent distance
there where the lightning reigns
without asking for their
blind blows.
Is when my pale measures
they embrace their designs devoid of elytra
to save the waters
possessed of salt and fire
that bathe the limits of my suffering body
without entering the first cause
that brings me down from within
the muscle periphery.
EROS PHASIANIDAE
Yo
And she saw the chicken rise from the ground
a brilliant and ectoplasmic epiphany
and she remembered the words of the feathered prophets:
“before the primordial egg was the verb”
and the pyrrhic evolutionary expedition embraced me
so necessary and indeterminate
where we are more but under sheds
and I saw the grayish uncertainty that shakes my being
h = 6.626 0693 (11) x 10 – (34) J. s = 4,135 667 43 (35)
x10–(15)eV. s
and the beast arose from the miasma
without the feminine warmth
it was in the offensive of the arches thousands of years ago
on the Cartesian line of Har Meggido
under the law of y = m x + b
and those tears originated at 32°34’59″N 35°10’56″E.
II
huge old stars
leaning out on the horizontal cobblestone sheets
were dictated by an ancient manual of glorious epic forms
where I did not read the cunning locks
and from there lights fall like eagles
that are suspended in front of your pale fortifications
and despite the fact that I descend without air
I cling to the desiccated edges of this abyss
turning away from the waves of floral promises
with summer mentions that anoint you.
Thus the amaranth silence returns to rock the star
and like the silent lymph
you seek to break beyond the fundamental shell
the one that you got to know in a primitive way
in the sweet rooms of belief.
GOLDEN VISION
The nothing, the void
hold my duplicate fragments
(Φ2 = 2.61803398874988…)
It is the hollowness of the past and the future
what you don’t have and don’t want
the illusion of time and line
Infinity
so love surrounds swelling wisdom
while on the musty boards of a camp
absent light filters
to tilt reciprocal reality
that drives your transformation
(1/Φ = 0.61803398874988).
Maybe this reality is true
on this twilight island
where the already worn bones falter
by the persistent violet stings,
and there is no choice but to live among the cyclones that guard the whimsical and invisible knots
with its container meshes
that hide half-open portals,
those that I will leave like this for a while,
since everything circulates in the promised packaging.
Mycelial Visions is a work that I have been maturing for months and that deals with the wonders and mysteries that the Fungi Kingdom contains, a name that is used to designate a group of eukaryotic organisms where fungi or mushrooms, molds and yeasts are found. This kingdom is one of the 5 great ones that make up others, such as animalia, plantae, protista or monera, having very own characteristics that distinguish it from these others due to its taxonomy and complex life cycles.
Specifically, the so-called mushrooms of the Psilocybe family caught my attention and their role as sacred psychotropics (hallucinogenic or neurotropic) in vast cultures, with records of this use, from the Paleolithic (Siberia, Sahara and Spain) to the present day. The power that these have to expand the mind and open unsuspected portals is well known, and that it has a certain analogy with what Eliphas Levi explained, regarding the 3 states to know the secrets of the universe, such as the embryonic state, dreams and delirium.
Thus, since the dawn of animism, these mushrooms have revealed, with the guidance of healers and shamans, that which is invisible and also ineffable, since those who experience these trips cannot express or relate what they have experienced on these trips to what is supposedly the depth of being and soul. These mushrooms usually occur in the dung of animals and it is plausible that prehistoric nomads followed herds not only for their meat but also to collect these mushrooms that were found growing in the feces of the herds. Among these mushrooms are the Psilocybe Mairei in North Africa, Psilocybe Cyanescens, present in Europe, America and Oceania, or Psilocybe Zapotecorum in Mesoamerica, to name three of the most recognized.
They are heterotrophic organisms, that is, they acquire their nutrients from abroad. Their form of reproduction is by spores and they have specific anatomical structures for their production, such as asci (contain ascospores) and basidia (with basidiospores). In fungi, reproduction can be asexual (without formation of a fruiting body) as well as sexual. Like the other kingdoms, they have different shapes, colors and sizes. Its habitat and location varies according to species, being able to grow in treetops or at the foot of it, as well as on rocks or soil, preferably where there is humidity and shade.
written by Enrique de Santiago. The art works are acrylic and ink on 300 gm Conqueror paper. Each painting and poem is a door.
FULLNESS
A secret freedom opens through a crack
that you can barely see.
Rumi
The morning and its ancient mystery
with his new cycle
embracing my vertebral calm
with dawn light steep in aerial stays
of a non-Euclidean flight
and its fertile messaging that awakens the annelids
to caress my future memory.
CONCILIATION
There are times when all the accumulated anxiety and effort
they rest in the infinite indolence and repose of nature.
Henry David Thoreau
I have heard the incessant whisper of the maitenes
and felt its impetuous root that sings its light music
mounted on the invisible verticality of design
that escapes geometrically
by the high pendulum cusp where I found the voice of the origin
so I became a body in the bark
adding myself to the essential channel that pulsates in the hollow
where the bird flies
with his outburst of winged love
that awakens the astral eyelid
and light the new dawn.
DOWN
From the labyrinth of white meats
where the filaments fractionate the divine eye
the wise thread emerges from the molten magma before time.
DREAMS
in the belly of the stone
the dragon’s breath is hidden
and in every cosmic cycle
stir your energy that moves
the suns and their destinies.
You’ll know when the word goes on
in that object that radiates silent voices
by a demiurge who lost
love in a vortex
in that surprising weather.
HUGGING THE BELLY
Diverse waters nest
in the hidden embryonic embraces
where the blade of time
pick up the promise
made to the stem
in that sacred way.
And I saw a new way
and their metals hugged tightly
the sign of the night
dropping urgent shadows
as field dams
one upright and down
in his immobility.
LIGHT
The universe came down to my domain
Opening the lights before precarious
those who entered
In the bones of my soul.
Light of the hidden.
SEEING EYE
the flesh of god
opened the sky
and my inner eye
saw the route of the serpents.
HEAVENLY LANDSCAPES
In the surroundings of the uranic gem
the voices of the magicians are raised
that bear ancestral flowers
to heal the wounds of oblivion.
REVELATION
There was his high imponderable crown
on the distinguished and lukewarm verticality of the mystery
without leaving a shadow in the mirror of the high magistracy
of the verb
pouring her violet love towards his moist horizon
and restlessly embracing your silhouette that I don’t know
That’s how I saw you behind the meanders of destiny
in the sudden revelation of the morning birds
Will you be the trail to be followed in unknown times?
perhaps I will drink of your honey under the sign of the equinox
coming
As soon as you feel your eyelids full of the light of your
redemption
and rest the incandescent pearl that comes down from the dew
this will be the floral beginning of the silent explosion
like the one that leaves the pollen in the aerial possibilities
while I await your coming.
Someday they’ll die out under the rust
the gears that bind us to reality.
DIRECTIONS
My constellations that guide me
pushing my mild matter
in this immense sum of fiery spheres
and finite
inside the womb of mystery
with its unsuspected breath of flowers
because as above so below
since nebulae have their own pistils
and here I am with my steps apprehended
waved and sacramented
right and wrong
taking up the path dictated by the stars
smiling under high serene clouds
looking for other paths
that will bring a new hand to dream.
THE GNOSIS OF THE MIRAGE
“Relativity makes distance meaningless, but the situation is even worse when quantum mechanics intervenes, since it questions the idea of place.”
Paul Davis.
Of the clouds contained for centuries
of the air that winds the violet knot of meaning
And of every dark shape that embraces the sound of the world
the lit line of the labyrinth emerges
contemplating ourselves immersed in this myriad of fluids
that embrace us from the beginning
and from before in its reverse reality
to end up drowned in the crack of fate
and never know what the essential source of the moon holds
nor the celestial song of the plumage found in the boreal bosom
this is how the air is thrown into being
Without measure
no understanding
while diligently it oxidizes and hastens its decline.
WINGED PHOTOTROPISM
nothing ends,
just a keep going around in a spiral,
at the command of vector dreams,
that rest on the moon that raises the stamens,
Like the names I’ve forgotten
my own,
and the name of my destiny,
while I move hugging the clouds
with my numbers on the side of my brain
and my breath laughing again.
MANDRAGORA, ASTRAL ROOT
telluric resonance
with its harsh echo that stuns reason
magmatic word that arises from the refusal of the verb
black poetry on its sharp path
the one that hurts the one who goes into its mystery
with the blessed dagger of the fallen angels
that are arranged on the sidewalk of dawn
illuminated by the forgotten star
between rivers of multitude of bones
council opening submerging volcanic fire
where the salamander dances
at the right time and hour
when the word that unleashes the lightning is released
with its fractal memory
that renews the solanaceous plant
what is the mandrake of the damned
and of the saved.
PERPETUAL FLORA
From foliage ancient and forgotten,
when time was captive in the womb of time
even before the language of birds appeared,
that lost and extinct star arose,
loved from her nebula
and awaited by the early cicadas,
it was so that she sang her scrolls
and she danced the mystery of the nymphs,
hidden in the mystery of her and in the first number of her name
because this is found in the sum of the rings of a forest,
and her dress is the transmutation of the nymph
something like that, like a thousand and eighty times the face of the moon.
THE PAST OF THE FOREST
I love your origin from the unknown
with that particular elliptical aroma
like an elk that descended from a learned galaxy
there between the sources of light and condensed matter
close sister of the unchanging logos
the one you robbed by surprise
On the oblique ship that was hidden
with their inverted masts on the sleepwalking skins
begin to awaken from amazement
of so many days of your destiny
without knowing why ??
away from the inanimate pavement
that carries with your long steps
in the certain uncertainty
in the sacred place
that goes off
and it bares to oblivion.
THE RELENTLESS OUROBOROS
beyond the wind
in a northern region of the universe
an uncertain number of names
dissolved by the golden flame of oblivion
They descend from the crevice of a nebula
while the bird as watchman of the secret
sing their celestial nomenclatures
to revive them in their new sap.
DISTANCE
The lightness of your poetry taught me to look beyond
in that place where we don’t understand each other
a room of emptiness and fullness
where there is enough space to brush your hair.
NGC 6753
When a star collapses, does part of your destiny end?
Do you know the emptiness that will come in the litany of the dream of the demiurge?
Each sphere engraves its own ellipse so as not to perpetuate it
because the grass kisses the constellations
until it loses sight of its splendor
and the turn announces its sunset
like love dissolved in nothing
where the word is not perpetuated
And these verses will disappear when the screens turn off
so too the leaves yellow following the dust
Of expired stars in forgotten hells
parked in some empty universe
waiting to speak from the past
and the future.
CYCLES IN COSMIC WETLANDS
rising winds
without becoming storms
They spring from the soul until they inhabit the shadow
that takes the lonely measure
of the one who forgets the kiss
when long ago life rocked its cocoon
unaware of his hypocrisy
looking for the fierce copper mascada
while we smell that inexorable time
that snatches the lights rapidly in the twilight
where every month is the same for everyone
and between the mist and the pit
the same efforts start
the same young people with their ideals
who see their elders leave
clinging to clothes like the smell of tobacco
and the humidity of the asphalt
every year is the same for those who do not see the clouds
but in the long run it’s the same music
fashions are fashions and your makeup is the same
and when you cry a black line tears your face
similar to the one that tears your soul
love that sucks life and releases it
leaving us exhausted for months
Until I return for another rest of life
like a pleasant and hostile embrace
and there is no way to draw life
to know how to color it
it only comes around every corner
sneaky and silent
distinguishing itself in a fissure of time
when it’s too late to decide or repent
Well, it installs, without further ado…
with his elastic suit that loses his memory
in that last station
when everyone wants to change their habit
nothing more like life
that first puff of cigarette
strange, pleasant and bitter
slight time that will end in ashes
hopelessly.
The bodies remained weightless
next to each other
faced with the cosmic dilemma
and to the protocol of the farewell,
he perceived the aroma of the bones
while she expired her step at night
with a certain harshness
the one that evaporates with the days
slow and silent
like that subordinate hatefulness of truncated desire
GRAVITATIONAL CONDITION
On the edge of my lithic archetypes
sweet new grass grows
that with its solemn verticality
wants to hug the moon
in serene times
like your memories
before forging the tides
and unleash the liquid of his beloved
burning oblivion
and shadow
permian knots
skeletons
going down the river of oblivion
everlastingly
in its exact ritual.
ANIMA WORLD
Mother Earth exhaled the perfume of redemption
while the useless man and dismembered course
listened to the night without name or shadow,
in order to gain oxidizable objects,
at the midpoint of his fecal abyss,
with the emptiness left by fear
and so he names himself among the speechless faces
that day when chemical weddings were prepared
without finding for your optic cells
when the leaves of the forest fall slowly
and to my ears comes the roar of the terrestrial kiss
which is a sound to be ocher dust in solar memory
in the end of time
With its circular principle in the appointed mystery,
while third world children are murdered
to make toys that were not for them.
Before knowing the sky and the gods
she appears from the beginning taming the chords of silence
she, well, she knows the key to love in a sleeping place
and she licks the perpendicular voices of the waters
like rivers that arise from the carboniferous
she well she knows how to offer the womb
to spawn the world.
blank slate
“My soul is from another place, I am sure of it, and I intend to end up there.”
Rumi
Reset the inconsequential
To restart with the fruitful
All poems and art ©Enrique de Santiago
Every time I ordered my papers I found these poems that correspond to my years of militancy in the communist youth under the period of the dictatorship, which in my personal case took place between 1979 and 1989
Already a couple of years ago, around 1977, my concern for writing verses had been awakened, and I still have those first poetic stammers. Those sheets speak of those attempts to provide something different to the word, since when adding two, these would give a different meaning and significance, more subtle, in short, that it had a broader meaning.
I had finished high school, and shortly after I met a landscape painter and an art student, who showed me the secrets of easel painting, it was then that I was already clear that my destiny was the visual arts. Parallel to the instruction, I received from these two friends, others close to the cultural circle that was forming in the neighborhood, they enlightened me about the dark passages that happened daily in our country. There was the coup d’état, the intervention of the United States, the disappeared detainees, the torture, the prison and the political persecution, which were some among many the prison, and the political persecution, which were some of the many atrocities that devastated our people.
poetry was still present, and names like Nicolas Guillen, Ernesto Cardenal, or Roque Dalton had been added to my library. I wrote in my spare time, and much of that poetry served the cause of the offended and their fight for liberation for the construction of a new, fairer life. It was then, during a sunny winter afternoon that one of my friends invited me to join the Communist Youth.
I accepted and from that moment my new name was Freddy. The following year he entered the Faculty of Arts of the University of Chile, where the student agitation had restarted after complex years where the repression was brutally violent. Now there were more of us and all the universities were setting up Student Centers ready to fight for student and human rights. They were two hard years, of strikes, street actions, propaganda, and confrontation with the repressive forces-Carabineros de Chile, which at that point was a militarized police force trained for repression-Between art classes, paintings, and struggle, of from time to time some of these poems that I have rescued arose. Others were lost among notebooks or were forgotten on a table in my school.
The months went by one after another; meeting, bells, protests, repression, hiding and reappearing, that’s how the years went by, with a lot of political activity, little appearance, and some verses that are being accommodated in these sheets.
At the beginning of 88, love came with force, since one day in January I met Valezka, who would be the mother of my three beloved daughters. That year, party activity would turn to the campaign for the October plebiscite and find a way to insert myself into the workplace, since by December there would be three of us in the family. It was a tough year for both of us, but we went to all the big marches where we joined the people who had said enough to so many people of darkness and opprobrium. The triumph of the “No” option brought hope for the daughter to come and the verses changed color, approaching a less arid and somber texture. 1989 I arrive with a stable job, my party life is focused on the union. That year Patricio Aylwin was elected, he would be the President “as far as possible”, or put another way: what was impossible for the people, while everything possible was given to the de facto groups and the oligarchy. Those were the years of asking for permission from the dictators and fascists who held key positions in the Armed Forces, Parliament, and the production and communication media. Large state companies continued to be privatized and neoliberalism deepened. From the 90s onwards, were the years of shame, of a protected democracy, and of the deepening of the model
Enrique of Santiago, December 2021
The Smoke Base (1979)
the base of the smoke
it is base without eye
for the bell
a lock vibrates ten times,
and the bewildered sight writes
How many broken ideas are there in the mirror?
for the bell the ear is deaf
with pain of 10,000 years
the crazy race has an end everywhere
lips are pursed,
the exit is praised,
spitting black earth
and the black earth spits us to the sky
burning the pupils
since the base of the smoke has no eye
The base of the smoke has no eye
and the ash drowns a siren
and they crash by the thousands
Well, it’s the autumn of man
the bell screams in fright
and the eardrum tells him to shut up..
but the cry is crying
dog crying,
of worms
of mice
human crying
shoes melt
and the frost boils in its hour
pine is charcoal
and the race burns and burns
The base of the smoke has no eye
but the beginning yes,
but underlies its lock
Carnival and duel (1980)
Dreams have been trampled in the mud
and the moans are silenced with screens and neon
fun to lead the century
on the trembling of absent birds
but one day the crystal clear rain will come
and after the sun
with your new water
kissed by the moon
while the rebellious ligaments
they give off longings on the gray asphalt
under waiting stars
the smooth flight of lepidoptera
The Pedaling (1981)
On a colorless bike
pedal to a sleeping atoll
in that corner of the skin of a rosy vision
under the dark green chair
so that the sole kisses the yellow sands
the contemporary chip
already inside my starry pants
I think it is appropriate to say with a red voice:
Long live this surreal expression!
I then say:
Your violet rifle jumps from the dark
tides
Stepping on the shapes that you don’t have yet
and you were submerged in your numerical sea
where they surprised you between mastabas and whips
and embraced the heavy centuries
under the belly of the galleys
to cross the maps of the centuries
chasing the useless and ephemeral
Night (1983)
Have you felt that the bats
They come to your room one day agitated?
They laugh and denote expired fangs
while the music falls, abandoning each note,
and I look for an onomatopoeia to simulate
my brain hitting the floor,
so as not to perceive how it is extinguished
the spent life of those who do not have feathers
I just want my fingers intact
to pull a certain trigger
and make my way through the gray tangle of his name
Observations (1984)
They are cloudy days
vermin crawl and abound
the palace beasts
the city wears its best corruption suit
and in each office a crime is perpetrated
but there are still your kisses and your moisture
in a brief but broad sincerity
in that street that corrects my face and faith
Reading in Heaven (1985)
The fly refrained from ascending
and stopped at folded hopes
perceiving a usual odor
had drilled all the diameters
known and unknown
of the present medieval apathy
Repelled by bullets the nonconformity
wears black tile
and resume the flight
causing the last ulcers
to existing weight
Tomorrow the cage is undressed
before the soup gets cold
Painting (1986)
Alone, in front of the support
clinging to thousands of flaming voices
and be one and all following the thread of Ariadna
in that challenging labyrinth
where she is shipwrecked and pales her life,
next to the truth and hers custodian loves
be both and call what principle
Without us realizing
that we always carry with the fear of what ends
Dream (1987)
In the courtyard of my memory
I did not pave stone *pastelones
and on the most humid and fertile land
grow a red flower
burdensome and geometric
without the language of capitulation
and got up watered with the brief bravery that drives
almost irrationally to the martyrs
from every barricade in this city charnel house
Demystifying (1987)
The feather vortex
perishes before the litigation of stillness
and from so much looking for potions
on nights covered with the moon shell
I then went to the annals of oblivion
while the image of the eroded sky appears
under the uncertainty of its dim flashes
going through the rubble of your memory
My withered pupil arrived there
to forget you
September Notes (1989)
They will hide my lean meat, under the cover of earth and parallel,
where the traces left by my dreams will not be visible
in those coordinates where the dragonflies nested
In the softest parts of a solstice
insistent the consecrated spells
will be hidden for future generations
while I drink from a larval porphyria
since each wing contains the history of time,
what takes my breath
to set your levels without further limits
that the one that extends in the red slope of a fallen
where each segment of the man fulfills
with the fragility of his own destiny
In vain many look at their savings account
on the gray sidewalk,
when in reality
life goes by insignificant
before your eyes
Now do you understand why?
of the sound of crafty sabers in spring
Art and Poems Written by Enrique de Santiago ©
Enrique de Santiago, Born in Santiago, Chile (1961). Visual artist, poet, researcher, essayist, curator and cultural manager. He studied a Bachelor of Art at the University of Chile and at the Institute of Contemporary Art (Chile). Since 1984, he has exhibited in individual and group exhibitions, counting to his credit around more than 100 exhibitions.
He has edited five books: Fragile Transits Under the Spirals in 2012, with La Polla Literaria; Elegía a las Magas and the book essay: El Regreso de las Magas, both with Editorial Varonas. In 2018 he edited La Cúspide Uránica with editorial Xaleshem and Dharma Comunicaciones, and Travel Bitácora with Editorial Opalina Cartonera.
He has participated in various poetry anthologies, both in Chile and abroad. He has collaborated in the newspaper La Nación with articles on new media art, and in magazines such as Derrame, Escaner Cultural and Labios Menores in Chile, Brumes Blondes in Holland, Adamar from Spain, Punto Seguido from Colombia, Sonámbula from Mexico, Agulha de Brazil, Incomunidade de Portugal, Styxus de Rep. Czech, Canibaal de Valencia, Spain, Materika de Costa Rica and other printed and digital publications.
Mitchell Pluto