When everything becomes permissible, permissible, permissible, I will turn off the lights as a war upon the world, and make love to sleep and time in the same bed. A woman like me, at night, devours herself, and in the morning, returns entirely whole.
Permissible, permissible— if I shatter the mirror with a laugh.
If I open the windows to the insects, and your face, leaving behind my shadow— may you swallow one another.
Or if I keep you inside my palm, hide you behind the guest china, maybe, if I sweeten your fragments, you’ll still fall short.
Permissible—your vision falls from the innocence wall like worn-out shoes, and the night sings a vulgar hymn, as it should.
I will show you my painted limbs and won’t ask you where we bury lust—in white cotton, or in a new glass. I’ll place on your grave a sacred symbol befitting tonight’s blasphemy. Everything’s permissible, where pleasure forgives sins for their loud voices and wakes in me like an animal from death.
Deferred to you— like a poem no longer fit for use. I will be just fine when I’m between two walls, where mercy and mercy—mercy.
I sleep in a bed stretched out like punishment, and beside you, I dream of an impossible crime. And when I permit you, when you permit me, when the night permits everything— we will yawn.
Hagar Youssef is an Egyptian poet and writer based in Cairo. She has published a poetry collection titled “A Damaged Memory” in Arabic and she is currently working on two collection stories: “Dreaming With Two Heads” and “One Day.” She graduated from the Faculty of Education – Department of Sciences. She has written for various platforms, including those focused on feminism and gender studies. Her work explores the essence of language, deeply influenced by philosophers Roland Barthes and Georges Bataille, in linking love, pain, and death to language, deconstructing these themes. She is also passionate about translating literature and poetry, reviewing books, and writing journalistic and critical articles.
Lemon Language Paperback – November 22, 2024 by Hager Yossef
My weather is fragmented, beautiful in its disfigurement, it writes me upon a page that quivers— like a vast, open hand.
I’ll hang my first face on the door. In the wild haste of love, I’ll let you enter.
This night lengthens over me like a mosquito.
This lamp only illuminates my fear.
My second face is dark and wicked— like a rat in hiding.
The third, I vomit onto the body of air, into a bowl of memory, like a child, retreating into his mother’s breast.
The fourth is a mask of fire. When you choke me, I think— you are making love.
The fifth, a nail in my throat. I hammer it in, and spit out a sixth face that will never be complete.
The seventh sees nothing, hears nothing— he simply cages his sorrow and mutters.
The eighth sings to you in the voices of prostitutes.
The ninth writes poetry without faith, sketches you on my back with a broken fingernail.
And I— when I sleep within you, and rise without me, like a tattoo, when you forgot my name and screamed: “Who am I?”
Alcoholic privilege night
When my beloved is drunk, I become a wound upon his cheek. He strikes my chest with an empty glass, Saying, ”This bell—this is what wakes me.”
When he drinks, He opens my mouth like a pit, Searching for his name, For a button he lost As we rushed back toward childhood.
He loves me swaying Between two chairs: Truth— And the guilt I know, When he mistakes me for a window, When he spills the wine As an apology on my behalf, Like the blink of an eye.
When he drinks, My arms multiply in his memory. He summons them to soothe his pain, Asks me to plant my tree Right here— Above his eye, A finger for his throat, And a final finger pointing to the wall: “Embodied—as if you were pure awareness.”
When he’s drunk, I draw back. He runs like a shadow Caught in light, Bleeds me Into some vague emptiness, Traps me in a space Shorter than a whisper, Inside a bottle, Inside a child’s nature.
He points often— As if he’s arrived, As if I were a mouth He must enter, Not merely behold.
Hagar Youssef is an Egyptian poet and writer based in Cairo. She has published a poetry collection titled “A Damaged Memory” in Arabic and she is currently working on two collection stories: “Dreaming With Two Heads” and “One Day.” She graduated from the Faculty of Education – Department of Sciences. She has written for various platforms, including those focused on feminism and gender studies. Her work explores the essence of language, deeply influenced by philosophers Roland Barthes and Georges Bataille, in linking love, pain, and death to language, deconstructing these themes. She is also passionate about translating literature and poetry, reviewing books, and writing journalistic and critical articles.
Lemon Language Paperback – November 22, 2024 by Hager Yossef
All rights reserved. Permission grants brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.
In case you overlooked it, this universe wasn’t lacking in ambition or size. It was putting on a spectacle with its production. The cosmos is just incredible; even haters gotta admit it’s breathtaking. Zanni, the defendant, is still waiting for a verdict. In space, sentences float around and words drift apart. His black and white checkerboard suit embodied the polarities of opposites. He is a man without a country. A joker in a deck of cards. Through gestures alone, Zanni attempted to decipher the universe’s communication. There was drama everywhere, but Zanni just didn’t understand how it worked or how it occurred. No one ever knew the truth; it died with them, leaving only unanswered questions. Everyone figured the headache meant they knew what the problem was. Less pain means clearer perception and a more optimistic outlook. Honestly, it wasn’t a matter of right and wrong. Or pain or pleasure. It dealt with items of worth later becoming trash. You could tell what things meant to people by how often they handled them. It’s a space ballad playing both life and death. No one will sing the sad cowboy songs of unrealized dreams anymore. It’s alright. We are part of a sombrero galaxy, a galaxy that is an eternal sunrise. Zanni was in a giant empty room with waves of random stuff. His world symbolized a particular responsibility of being. Special car keys for a 2025 model, a mobile wallet, a decorative cup, a gold pen, a seasonal tire, headphones from 1979, crumpled up Kleenex, a 1990 professional styling brush and a flashlight from 1899. These objects surrounded Zanni. Thankfully, a consumer digital camera from 1996 captured a pic of this. But for who? Regular waves swapped out old things for newer ones. Zanni contemplated this event. He figured the most likely explanation was that he was inside a massive vacuum cleaner. He experienced a strong connection to things he saw on his trip. Zanni speculated that the objects he couldn’t name were from a future timeline. Things appear and vanished super fast out here. Zanni drifted between sleep and wakefulness. We can refer to it as a space fog in the mind. A magnetic memory was his most beloved possession. It echoed because Zanni repeated it. He brought it back to mind in a re-run. Zanni felt the luscious lips vibrate against his ear. It was a figurine of a woman. Her name was Colombina. The teal diamonds and magenta triangles on her dress flowed together to create a pattern of doves. Hand in hand, they created poetry. The rhythm of their partnership quivered in the shared space. The couples’ bond created a constant interplay of elements through the intercourse of their geometric patterns. Zanni maintained his embrace for as long as possible before the vacuum wave separated them. He could not pinpoint the incident’s time without a clock. The arrangement of numbers magically shapes the surrounding space. A regular watch shows what’s going on between the numbers. Of all the puppets, did he alone ponder his whereabouts? Only he understood his own thoughts and feelings. Sometimes Zanni heard voices that didn’t belong to him. Intrigued by the mysterious voice, he followed it. The voice led him back to his body. Those seizures and hallucinations gave epilepsy a mystical quality. His memories of himself were likely because of thinking about Colombina. He owned the moment, his own little universe, for a single second. Zanni saw himself as a buoy, helping other objects find their way. But Pantalone, a hunchbacked old man, considered himself the universe’s ultimate authority. He was a drifting turtleback tomb from another vacuum wave. Pantalone preferred the nickname “god.” His face twisted in anger as he guarded his belongings. Losing things got on his nerves. His tailored red suit reflected Pantalone’s importance. Every item got a brand and price label from him. He believed he understood your true worth more than you did yourself. He used his talent to make you think whatever he wanted. Those close to him risked having their self-image stolen and used against them. Pantalone intended for everyone to rent from his cloud. He lost money in the vacuum wave, then recovered his losses. This activity provided him with enjoyment, a sentiment he wished to share. Provided that he had more. Scattered dollar bills wandered everywhere. The bills, by themselves in space, lacked any connections. Now, Pantalone found himself surrounded by dancing product wrappers, toenail clippings, old grocery lists, damaged furniture, empty food containers, broken appliances, crumbled up receipts and dead batteries. Think of it as a garbage cloud. Several real estate agents, their eyes wide with nervous energy, tried to appear calm as they floated past Pantalone. They pretended to own a spot by treading in one place. While this was occurring, Harry Houdini sailed by and unlocked a satellite. Intrigued by Pantalone’s possessiveness, Zanni examined the egocentric and deceitful nature of his own point of view. He observed the ego’s memories fade as the mind surrendered its ownership. Once the fear was gone, relief came. Houdini cracked his knuckles. “No worries are necessary. Don’t sweat it. It is a simple lock to open. “ The hierarchy reflects the relationships between things in a chain. An x-ray showed how brain waves link things up through information chains, like you see in neuron activation patterns. This electromagnetic wave made Zanni wonder about the engineer of the universe. It appeared the designer wrote a script for a big stage performance but remains anonymous. In the meantime, Pantalone reached his own planet.
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?
Primordial circulation approaching from a past spring, acrylic on Fabriano paper 250 gm. 35x45cm
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, acrylic and ink on Canson 300 gms paper. 11″ x 8.3
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.
Interruption, acrylic on cut Fabriano paper, on black cardboard. 18x24cm. The inclination of one of the elements is voluntary.
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.
I discovered Photomorphosis way back in 1972 while attempting to copy an illustrated article in the Times magazine article on Yves Tanguy on an office copy machine. At night, in the dark. A clandestine maneuver. Photomorphosis is the enchanting process by which an organism changes or experiences metamorphosis under the influence of light… It is a natural process in the realm of photosynthesis, photolysis, etc., indicating the importance of light on living things, akin to shedding light on the darker areas of the mind…
A Wedding in the gardens of Yemen 2021
As an external organic process entering another level of meaning, it became an internal manifestation of an evolving morphology of the psyche. Under the sway of obsessive desire, I combined the words photograph and metamorphosis to signify the photomorphic process, without realizing that such a word already existed.
Salive, Copper and Moonlight
But, further research revealed that photomorphosis was no longer used by the scientific community to denote the organic process of light-induced metamorphosis and had been replaced by photomorphogenesis. Thus, by my investigation, I have given a new meaning to the abandoned word ‘photomorphosis’… by surrealizing it. To paraphrase André Breton: photomorphosis has been given to me to make surrealist use of it. The sustained investigation of the imagination is raised to the level of delirious curiosity, by the introduction of the activity of looking inward to discover, or in effect, to shed light on, the darker areas of the mind. To illuminate becomes a perfect analogy for the photomorphic process… The depths of the imagination open, the fields widen, things become visible… and metamorphosis is inevitable.
Alusofore’s Morning 2021
I drew pictures of strange animals as a kid, tried painting as a teen, and didn’t like the smell of the oils. I did nothing really, until about 19 years old after finding an anthology of French poets… That started my writing – loved surrealist poetry. Poets like Arthur Rimbaud and Paul Eluard. But mainly Andre Breton. He was the most interesting and inventive of them all really. Extremely magical. These days, or more recently, Rene Char (but mainly during his surrealist beginnings). I really like Jacques Dupin (who toyed with surrealism but became even more interested in the realm of language.) I am inspired mainly by Breton’s vantage point in the mind.
We have marvelous weapons
Having abandoned the copy machine at the end of 1999, I discovered that I could do the same thing on the computer and more, using Photoshop, in color, and with more tools…
Armed and Dangerous 2019
Most everything inspires my work. All of which are very much similar to collage. Both visual and textural. A deep synthesis between my writing and my visual works. How I work these days, well, it all stems from my own real-life experiences. However automatic and mostly strange, it’s not art, really, but a further investigation of the psyche… between the real and the imaginary.
The luminous bodies meeting for the first time…
Many years ago, I actually did hear and experience that voice of pure automatism. It startled me completely. I think, once you actually hear and listen to it, it opens a door a little, which stays open, and whenever I feel the urge to write or make imagery, it just comes out. It is believed that one is always dreaming, it’s just under the layer of normal perception of reality. One just stumbles upon it accidentally and feels an inkling, a glimmer of something out of that persistent dream. Like a Deja Vu experience.
Resolution of Pleasure 2019
There are vast differences today between the different countries and their systems of belief with regard to surrealism; not to mention the differences in approach between various groups of surrealism. All this eventually led to the founding of La Belle Inutile and the 6 or so people who had problems with modern surrealism, academia, social groups, etc. Problems to be solved.
written by J Karl Bogartte
The Wedding Guests Have Arrived Cover for Philip Lamantia’s book Becoming Visible
J. Karl Bogartte, born September 8, 1944, of Dutch and Irish descent, is both an artist and poet, schooled in anthropology, photography and various esoteric traditions. He has been an active participant in international surrealism for more than 50 years, and cofounder of La Belle Inutile Éditions. He presently lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Bogartte, is both an artist and poet, having published eight books of poetic writings: The Mirror held Up In Darkness, The Wolf House, Secret Games, Luminous Weapons, Primal Numbers, A Curious Night For A Double Eclipse, Auré, The Spindle’s Arc, and Antibodies: A Surrealist Novella. Long aligned with international surrealism, Bogartte is also a cofounder of La Belle Inutile Éditions. His work has appeared in the following anthologies: ANALOGON#65, Melpomene, Hydrolith #1 and #2, La vertèbre et le rossignol #4, Peculiar Mormyrid #2, Paraphilia, Silver Pinion and The Fiend online journal.
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.
When the nose has dyslexia, the conventions of clean and dirty mutate amuck-
Nightmares of being dunked in vats of perfume become the norm-
Social status disintegrates and intimacy with a skunk brings joy-
The man burrows into remote dung heaps further and further away from the tyrannies of soap-
When the nose has dyslexia, predictable roles and behavior are scrambled anew-
Musk entrenched supermen get stampeded by berserk fawns in heat-
Germ-Phobics fondle dung beetles whom with freshly molested vigor, do hind leg roll ups of squeeky clean solid citizens-
A prudish school marm finds a hidden rabid snapping turtle in her soul after being bitten by rotten apples given jaws by the teacher’s pet gone astray-
When the nose has dyslexia, rampant desire surpasses grandiose expectation.
A wart on a baboon’s ass blossoms into a more fragrant-than-thou perfume garden berry infecting a bestial psychopath who then penetrates with valor the furious posteriors of mandrills shimmying with profane delight
Eager vines of algae growing up from centuries of neglected teeth, climb greedily towards the fortune of a fresh breath heiress-
Gooey-Pollyannas wash their mouths out with soap before reciting mantras of bland nicety to contrite career criminals gnawing on clean conscience bunions jutting from angel’s feet-
19 of ClubsTrio of Femme SirensAuf Die SchaukelPhosphorescent Clown SquigglesLucky LimulusBrunette March
When the nose has dyslexia, sacred values of societal dust are sculpted into new poisons by the playful rogue nostril metastasizing-
The Outhouse-Leper becomes a vengeful king, skinning the pillars of communities, turning the hides into outhouse doormats-
Blind Peeping Toms suddenly regain their sight munching on outhouse-doormat brittle–thus seeing and tasting time honored models of proper conduct-
Yeast Infected Vaginas curtsy with hypnotic finesse, flirting with clownish tumescent yam jam giraffes, spurting forth voyeurs turning into martyrs, turning into manic surgeons whittling skunky joy toys in a sleepless scalpel trance-
When the nose has dyslexia, the lightning of childhood memory strikes unlikely victims–oceans of crystallized feelings awaken from deep sleeps re-inventing the heart-
A hardened Loan Shark gets entangled, softened and diced up by the frail sadnesses evoked by the rubbery wet scent of his baby sister’s favorite dolly lost in a distant rainstorm-
A loud mouthed schoolyard bully becomes a mute wise old sage, transcending all utterance, ruminating inwardly, building shrines of cookie crumb folly from the remnants of desserts the bully once coerced from the trembling hands of weaklings entombed in the bowels of forgotten grammar school lunch rooms-
The cold stares of ultra strict baby sitters, soberly stretch a whiny little brat’s dirty diapers into an almighty circus tent tundra sheltering cleaner than clean orphans sired by soap bubbles popping-
Formative Foodchain
When the nose has dyslexia, embarrassment lurks in excess.
The man narrowly escapes the lewd clutches of Germ-Phobics hiding in lairs of undigested corn kernels waiting to leap out and fondle him.
He burrows inexorably deeper into remote dung heaps further and further away from the tyrannies of soap, eventually reaching paradise, where fragrant nirvana is sweetest, and stench lost its voice to the carrion bird who sings dirty in reverse.
The man enters The-Nose-Has-Dyslexia restaurant, ordering a Skunky-Joy-Toy kiss smothered in freshly molested dung beetle sauce.
As frail diced up cubes of sensitive Loan Shark say grace, crowds of manic surgeons saddened by lost wet dollies, serve the meal in a sleepless scalpel trance-
The man tastes paradise, blessed by the voice of stench stolen by the carrion bird who sings dirty in reverse.
Suddenly The-Outhouse-Leper-Turned-Vengeful-King appears, interrupting the man eating, pedantically assailing him with correct table manner etiquette, forcing a squeeky clean knife and fork into his dungy hands…
Richard Gessner’s fiction has been published in Air Fish: an anthology of speculative work, Rampike, Ice River, Coe Review, Another Chicago Magazine, Happy, The Act, Sein und Werden, Skidrow Penthouse, The Pannus Index, Fiction International and many other magazines. A collection, Excerpts from the Diary of a Neanderthal Dilettante & The Man in the Couch was published by Bomb Shelter Props. Gessner’s drawings and paintings have appeared in Raw Vision, Courier News, Asbury Park Press, Rampike, Skidrow Penthouse, and exhibited at Pleiades Gallery, Hamilton Street Gallery, Cry Baby Gallery, The Court Gallery and the Donald B. Palmer Museum. He lives in Montclair, New Jersey.
“The Amazing Richard Gessner, Wizard of the word, and Alchemist of the image” -Vincent Czyz May 24, 2022
THIS WRITING IS AN AUTHORIZED DUPLICATION WITH PERMISSION AND EXPRESSED CONSENT
our birthright is to know our brain and to become aware of the impact of meteorites on our language.
but first
guard the self that believes in you. the best hallucination is a healthy belief. a belief in self without vanity is sincere and free magic. magic without title, property or theft.
which older you are we anyway?
everything about the overactive amygdala is the source of insular cortex phantoms, wrathful deities averting ourselves from sapience. it keeps us from enjoying our temporal lobes, ruled by self-rejection in the temple of the body.
autoscopy, is the real spirituality with particles and waves. this tide will lead to a more balanced clonal pluralization of selves. to be one with everything, one is everything.
P.D. Newman is an independent researcher located in the southern US, specializing in the history of the use of entheogenic substances in religious rituals and initiatory rites. He is the author of the books, Alchemically Stoned: The Psychedelic Secret of Freemasonry, Angels in Vermilion: The Philosophers’ Stone from Dee to DMT, and the forthcoming title, Day Trips and Night Flights: Anabasis, Katabasis, and Entheogenic Ekstasis in Myth and Rite. The Secret Teachings of All Ages (TV Series documentary) 2023
Mitchell Pluto 