DARC ARTS #2 — Cosmic Blues, Soul Dance, and Making Love to Lychees
January 2021
Cosmic Blues
Odyssey of a mystery, life is held in jacket potatoes, oven baked crisp
to the brim of receiptful doubt, pious is love as a thrush pleading in mid-air
electrochemical bells sound, unison clasped to present truth as honesty, labour force driven north
demystifying 60’s LSD trips, music moved as vibrations penetrating into the essential core
of metaphysics, freedom and liberty; expression was taped to reproduce history with a pick
deconstructing language, syntax adds grammar and double negatives hoard paradoxes
crowding the passageway to the Colosseum, Rome rose up in furious distention
evaporating noise to drown out sorry hearts, battle scars born and bruised in a cauldron
of pregnant stars, lime olive branches acting as sockets to the skull
draining Jameson whisky bottles before a guilt travelled mailing list
discreet recipients, obtuse fertilisation sparking a quest to adventure beyond midnight moons
the art of unconscious drama written down to be recited aloud is beautiful
as an evocation that binds purpose to mouths, identity found with a brown nose
reflecting fractal colours positioned in geometric isotopes, spun entirely around
an image distilled as memory, words thin meaning, replication yields devastation
eviscerate any social biases, clean your mind and breathe in the universe
Cascade
Liba Ravindran
Crunch into the corner of toast, marmalade yellow,
Stretch sequins onto blueberry headsets, designed to fit
Stereotypes blasted out at Notting Hill, exotic free
Fishing metaphors by the bedside, unlocking desire;
An echo chamber we say hello to on a daily basis,
Turning comfort into dis-ease, a minstrel show peeled,
Aesthetic portraits hang memories drawn for size,
Amputating chickpea omelettes by breaking an egg,
Yoking briskly, tired moon sets sail white;
Crisp diction turns red hot reflection of fantasy,
That weds dates splurged at an alliance for workers,
Standing up for one’s rights as lovers rock,
Autumn flushes, waterfalls roll off the tongue.
Box Freedom
by Minty Horseradish
In our tiny boxes
We dance in kitchens:
Music blasting,
Smiles erupting!
In the solitudes of our society,
In the ruined ashes of our civilization
We rise, one by one —
To the music that sets us on fire.
Outside our tiny boxes
The world as we know it
Crumbles under its own weight
And all we can do
Is dance
Ecstatically to the beat
Of our
Own
Freedom
Soul Dance
Emma Hugill
In the midst of this awakening Veiled by hazy chaos, The gates are opening Revealing a sanctuary flourishing with benevolence, A sentience and remembrance that We Are The love and guidance needed. In coalition with Mother, Nurture and kindness is medicinal, Transforming life to community for all, A lesson passed down by our ancestors Yet we fail to recall. But here is our chance To let our souls dance, Harmoniously From sunrise Into the moonlight. Envisioning each day brighter Where our woes become lighter As our spirits rise together as one.
Moonlight Kisses
Emma Hugill
Tucked into a sea of turquoise, Circulating little moans and tiny squeaks, And peeping through the curtains, Seeking where my head lay, A rosy light kisses rosy cheeks.
I awaken to your luminosity, Greeting you with a grin, You continue to kiss My forehead, my nose, my chin Until sleepy eyes and a sleepy smile Sink.
We enter into a kaleidoscopic dream A lucid world of solely the divine Nothing but the blissful essence of life itself Filling all corners of my mind.
And in this slumber Every time I roll to face you, Little kisses awaken me. Immersed in your glow You, settled in your sky blue duvet.
Have you ever made love to a lychee?
Pragnya Iovine
You present me with a box of moulding lychees you found in the bin.
I cross my eyes and look at you
fading in and out of focus
your edges softened
a watercolour wash of blurred floating pigment
bearing the quality of a memory.
The lychees remind me of nipples
“A box of moulding nipples”
I say this to you in my head
“Wash them”.
You often warn me of things:
“don’t drink too much coffee”
“be careful when walking blindfolded in the park”
“wash your fruit”.
I reach out for a lychee
and squeeze the coarse red-pink skin
watching
as the translucent flesh pierces through.
a sweltering trickle of
sticky dew
drips down my index finger.
I put it in my mouth.
You wash the dishes in the background, conversing.
Your audience: a coffee stained cup, 2 spoons and the blender you used to make peanut butter.
I hear you chuckle
and I laugh too
silently
at the thrill of this gelatinous ball rolling with my tongue.
“Have you ever made love to a lychee”?- I want to ask you
But I don’t-for fear of choking on the seed.
You sweep memories off the floor along with stale bread crumbs and an orange peel.
you dispose of them in black bin bags.
And I?
I tear the moist flesh slowly
lingering with each taste of sweetness
until all that is left is the seed
and I linger with that too
feeling its smooth surface between my lips
until it slips
off my tongue
onto the table.
Free the Artist
Villa Frankova
the artist sits
she is free
for she knows herself an image
both created and discovered
unbounded by reality
she participates fully
in the aesthetics of the mystery
she consults the divine artisans, and they her
she plumbs the wells of the psyche
as ancient and deep as she cares to imagine
and she cares only to imagine
in her infinite reworking
of the script of the historical record
into magical realist fiction
of inconceivable scope
she discusses: character devices with melting demons
in the taverns of hell
— candles charring the edges of her papers
— “poetic odes of the dream to itself”
in search of inky ecstasis and starnight hillocks in storm
— the swirling logics of her homeworld
spun like silk across the pages
tangled in the knots of ethics
like flies in morning webs
— she receives : countless thoughtful suggestions
from the faceless placeless dead
in tightly wrapped suits
clutching their iced glasses, each
pointing to a specific motif
and unpacking its origins with eloquence
— professors of the underworld
confess their wisdom
before the seeker of images
come to plunder the depths
of the dormant soul
and bring them to surface for reckoning
under the gaze of her pen
and papered room
she inquires at the doors of the asylums : have ye here a library of the madman’s dreams,
the witches curse and rhyme?
shown in, our creator is made privy to the catalogs
of the finext schizoid pluraverse
oozing from the seals
of the psyche‘s encyclopedia
(now forgotten and out of print)
she takes many notes,
stuffs her pockets with metaphors, and slips
into the stirring mist
next she whisks herself, her boundaries diffusing like a yolk attacked,
to a shoreline
a dreamline
a stretching sanded space where gather
her sisters ancestral
of bodies marked and decorated —
noses holding bars of bone
hairs clutching holy feathers
clay adorning limbs
and she invites without words, only her eyes :
show me your icons
infinite and unfathomable
and unveiled, dancing behind the intellect’s net,
a circle of deities
of fire body bird song smoke vision
of boar breath river leap blood depth
of whisker claw and wing
talons cutting her skin to transfer
the wisdom of the natural sign
the animal syllables of Earthsong
leaping home to a lost world and holing up in an eternally afternoon
lazy chocolate cafe
our artist (that is, your artist)
takes her bulging notebooks from her bag,
places them on the table
and begins to unravel her inescapades of soul flight
in patient reading and iterative noting
the vision begins to emerge:
I will create a piece so ambitious and all-enconpassing
it will embrace the whole of reality and goad it by the hand
to the crucible of perception
into which will be cast all such idols
of fixed and limited form
to be smelted and unseamed
in the infinite imaginal
in the liminal limitless freedom
of magical creation
where all is seen as soul
in the light of the Mystery’s lantern
— he sits on a rock nearby
smoking pipes with wolves and chuckling :
who has come to know me
has come to know themselves
for we are three
and free
and all who see
the waves in the night
of this here silent paradise
and so she knows
and so she sees
and takes her brushing eye to the canvas of the Goddess
which is all her
all given of the lights beyond
and applies her humour like a balm
to the fired joints of a planet who aches
for her soft but grand becoming
her art is life
her life is her art
is yours
is mine
is ours
It’s been an absolute privilege to discover the artists above (amazing, right?) and compile their work into this publication!
If you would like to submit anything at all to #3 (poems, art, writings, dreams, songs) just send it over to [email protected] and I will be in touch!
DARC = Deep Adaptation Research Community / Dharma and Radical Consciousness / Dream Awareness Restoration Council / Driveling Acid Rant Club. → DARC ARTS, an experimental art collective on a pitiful quest for beauty, magic, and liberating tragicomedy in the age of doom and bloom.
Join us!
You can read Issue #1 here.