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ericabohr

'This is Tomorrow', 2013

this is Tomorrow!

contemporary amnesia:

between the sea and the sky

where silence is a howl

and the memories of the living

are endlessly echoed in misery,

floating calmly on the glossy wave,

swimming and dreaming in the cauldron of time:

we are speculating into the void.

this is Tomorrow!

the taste of the usual was like cinders in her mouth

gulf of failure: perfect doesn’t work in her bandwidth of reality.

hovering on the edge of consciousness

spending time boxing in the shadows.

this is Tomorrow!

cyberverse saturation

the contrapuntal cacophony of horns

the neo-darkness disrupting the imperative of the music

the displacement of celestial questions:

multiplicities, ambiguities, slippery, slidey, dirty knowledge,

life is too contemporary.

this is Tomorrow!

in the atrocity halls a flexible logic of screaming popes,

degenerate fantasies, unspeakable lusts.

you have a dream, she has a dream, we all had a dream

walking past the house

skirts floating on air

ghosts in her head

bouncing on a mattress of silk

wobbling precariously on post-nuclear sand.

the new worlds contain the codes.

this is Tomorrow!

in the laboratory of infinite possibilities

visionary engines

cut-price shamans of a sad little cult

auto-destructive heroes

combusting in the auto da fé of vanities

this is Tomorrow!

BELL (telephone rings)

(Pick up receiver 1)

“Helen speaking, hello.”

(pick up receiver 2)

“Helen, it’s Libby…Is my daughter Sally with a boy?”

(pick up receiver 1, hand over the mouthpiece)

Helen, staring as if she had seen the horror of all horrors:

“Yes…she’s holding his penis!”

This is Tomorrow!

Lying drugged among the bubbles is Euphoria Bliss,

the errant cow, a big dose of the blah-blah-blahs

drowsy with the torpor of no-exit dreams

drifting along a river of syrup,

the igloo between her fossilised legs colder than ever before

red peonies falling from her thighs

chic gluttony, sunshine filtering through the milky cortex of her sickly skin

discordant sounds emerging from the bottom of the sack of cottonwool balls

signifying banalities that betray nothing.

The flesh is sad, alas!

this is Tomorrow!

The carousel, the carnival , the trapeze stop suddenly,

the clown’s whistling interrupted by the thundering crash of a fallen building

eternal insomnia in the heart of the slumbering city

where buildings are made from books deciphered in moonlight on deserted balconies

freezing trips through empty streets

this is Tomorrow!

the door to the birdcage opens

fixed forever on a single meridian,

she’s flying into the unfathomable abyss of vast mirrors

reflecting an infinite succession of rooms

behold! the jeopardy of daily life.

this is Tomorrow!

in love with the shiny magpie surfaces of popular culture

in the secret vaults of her mind

she does not plot, nor plan, nor devise:

she goes for life hammer and tongs.

she collars it, and scrags it and throttles it,

traps it in the lava flow of her whimsy

this is Tomorrow!

stubborn gospels of joy

unhealthy heresies

aesthetic antennae flaccid and still

the government of the tongue

finding epiphanies in the banal

a sclerosis of the global conscience

adding strength to tyranny

the merry chorus of ignorance rising from the intergalactic darkness

breeding in its dim whirling greyness

this is Tomorrow!

through the big end of the opera glass

moon, tides, voyaging globes, compasses, constellations

and longitudinal lines:

Ecco Homo!

this is Tomorrow!

ericabohr

39: surfing the vortex

That thing that might be that

really

isn’t.

Hollow empty shadow:

the blank man’s out to get you

devil as the clown

in a well-tailored gown,

a person-suit camouflaging tentacles

twitching, creeping

long shadow stealing

stealthily into the crowd

melting away from sight

but welded to your dreams

where he stalks you relentlessly

as you breathe him in and think him

and he’s here to stay

mercilessly murmuring, whispering, shushing,

Open the door, show him his illness, squatting in the dark

like a toad

hunkered down for the winter

then slam it shut and hope you forget!

In another country

Whimsy and logic collide

and

it always comes back to the fairytale

Set in a post-apocalyptic landscape

Going for the Full Hammer Horror

Suckling at the power teat

adrift in a limbo

awash with loss

Wind-whipped desolation

Ideas are birthed,

then

churched:

the holies of holies.

Razor-edged, dangerous, slippery ideas

Written in a lingo that no one can read

the elevator shaft

into a kingdom of crookery, crockery, cockery,

Proletariat abyss of failed romantic gestures

from the sacred sanctuary of idiots

throwing marbles under horses’ hooves

Spiralling into deeper madness

Broadcasting their insanity to anyone who will listen.

Bitter remnants of their lives scattered about

like the nub ends of burnt toast.

The rest is silence

ericabohr

Living in the Borderlands

ericabohr

living in the borderlands

cut puppet strings dangling trapped in the story’s maze

she hallucinates

on the plateau’s edge golden fabrics of sound dance in the dark landscape

low-slung clouds creep stealthily flowing over jagged hilltops sliding down their flanks shrouding the land in shadows

voodoo ghost snatcher through the shimmering of spectral mists she’s

falling

through

space

with endless monotonies of effort peering into the darkness of endless corridors Supernatural silences

startling suddenness smashing glass domes of double delirium

and

noise rushes in mad women in cloisters ripping wings off angels

desperate to pin down smoke

so imagine a thing conjure it into being then dissolve it through the act of forgetting by moving back into silence

ericabohr

Titus Andronicus (by any other name)

I Said she: with this delightful engine of my thoughts, steel will write these words and I shall tell the tale and the tell the tale twice o’er…

and then said she: I am the sea, the wilderness of sea

and whilst the boatswain whistles stern to stern and is hauling on the ropes there are no shadows, no howling storms, no noise just the soughing of the slowly cooling wind, becalmed.

Across the the brightly burning skies gallops the hasty zodiac and the brilliant tapers of the night gilt the ocean’s waves and into that mirror now I stare and the winds begin to rise and rage upon the innocent.

and then said she: I am the sea, the wilderness of sea

crown me and have me aboard, I, the she-maid from the deep, and cast yourselves upon the shore clamber clumsily through lapping wavelets, collapse upon the white-hot sands slowly sinking down, swallowed, to the centre of the earth.

this is the pit

and then said she: I am the sea, the wilderness of sea

now put your eye to that crevice in the wall and cast your muffled voices to the skies to rouse the hunters from their chase in the great deserts up above and in that barren, detested vale mark the flight of the frightened fowl and witness there the trenches: trenches dug deep in summer’s drought.

and then said she: I am the sea, the wilderness of sea

fear that pretty, hollowed cage in which you find yourself

bound fast mouth stopped tongue removed, gouged out.

And in this infernal kingdom Hear a child cry out from beneath a wall and knit the cord and give me leave to sheathe my sword to seek the cabin in the cave and dive down into the flaming lakes below to escape the stinging bees holed up in the acacia trees and on those ragged stones beat forth your brains and torch your heart to cinders where it is and such withered herbs as these toss onto the flickering fire and inhale the acrid smoke then dream hallucinogenic dreams of the dead.

II and then said she: I am the sea, the wilderness of sea

Tumble her into my arms, as one possessed to melt on showers from those meteors to serve our love, our honeyed breath tender on our lips and in the flowered fields I have sung her fast asleep and ravished her, my hands and tongue as morning dew to bliss

but killing lust, this is my doom whose smoke-like incense does perfume the skies with this guilt of ours the lingering languishing loving made us feckless, honey-tongued and wild-eyed.

and then said she: I am the sea, the wilderness of sea

But I was beguiled by her, and blinded and misled

So acts of black night, feigned ecstasies stay not to talk while she gives me joy for the gods are quick to undo

and the gibbet-maker slowly closer creeps

the heavens can tell all too late, her guilt is plain my heart suspects more than my eyes can see the gnawing vultures of my mind with signs and tokens me do blind

and then said she: I am the sea, the wilderness of sea

May wrath be mute and fury dumb her house of cards collapses in a heap and a strong wind has blown it all to bits so now I coin a strategem and flattering myself as Revenge sent up from down below casting violent hands upon her tender flesh I sharpen the knife and grind her bones to dust

and then said she: I am the sea, the wilderness of sea

so I receive her blood, these sorrowful drops and I will fall, with scars of sorrow on my heart and bite in fury my own hand now bathed in maiden’s blood never to beg for grace and I vomit up these treacherous thoughts and with this hateful liquor how I mean to martyr her

and then said she: I am the sea, the wilderness of sea

Welcome dread fury, shoot against the wind and write destruction on the earth and let them speak not of funeral rites and with the gods delight in throwing her forth to beasts and birds of prey and set her breast-deep in the earth this trench, now prison to her loving bones and give her burial among the dead

as far from limbo is from bliss.

and then said she: with this delightful engine of my thoughts steel will write these words and I shall tell the tale and tell the tale twice o’er…

ericabohr

Dream Guerilla

Tarnished golden age, cut short Heavy eyelids closing in fatigue Have locked our brief dreams in that glass vase The streets look dead In the sky The stars burn red

On Earth a dog barks plaintively

(An echo returning faintly. Where from?)

I blow the lamp out

Deep night. We both murmur in an undertone

A tiny shadow hobbles into the corner Of the wilderness beneath an overcast sky

Something flies through the darkness fluttering its wings

What I was trying to approach was an invisible city Made by the wind Ever-changing Those strange geographies made manifest

‘Switch on the light! Illuminate everything! The gross total of man’s achievement!’ In a tired voice he said, 'I really am the poem-man.’ He turned around and I could see there were words written, filling the space of his sagging, yellow-fleshed back The words looked like small, fresh stab wounds I moved closer And stopping I slowly licked up the trickling blood To read the future Was that the end, or the beginning?

Dreaming a newer system of enchantment Out of chaos The horizon dancing far away Light shivers like a star from a distant sky

Then Standing on the yellow of the edge of the world People gazing weightlessly Then There will be nothing living left in the world Then The distresses of the future flare

I can see this in the darkness

'That’s the Isle of Dreams’

The sky is black Immense stars are burning as they freeze When I move my feet the withered grass snaps Echoing to silence Somewhere there is a place Where my footsteps will quietly cease I, alone forever, anywhere, Am unseen by anyone, Unseen by the stars freezing as they burn.

The black of these waves, These waves, These waves, These waves, Is all the blaze of nothing No stasis No arrival,

'Daydream Guerrilla, Could you tattoo the face of a falling star? Could you?’

Behind these doors lies the future of the dream factory At the end of time, the moment will come when just one human remains, then the moment will pass and man will be gone, there be nothing to show that we were ever here but stardust, The last man alone with nothingness…

Submerging Searching Fighting the flow Battling the eddies The currents

Sunlight came stabbing like a blade and made the sun shine on the road

But I went on squinting at the low blue sun

I shut my eyes My world extinguishes But a similar world continues in your eyes

We were recalling that season of blindness Of wakefulness So like the sea that writhes beneath the darkness When suddenly the end of the world blazed in the zenith The moonlight wept The rich life you lead in that sunlight The sea of dying The desolation of those waves Your brilliance will never know

It’s shining silently in the rain and in the mud

A red lamp never fails to peer in at the window

Waiting for the train to arrive at an unbearably distant future

All is shrouded in the mist of heat

Time falling from the clouds like dust Seeps into everything

Ah, but then the world grew as quiet as after snowfall Suddenly it was made clear to me I was just there waiting Waiting there for something It was all getting clearer The way an ant drags its own shadow On the White sands of noon I float on an idea What are you clutching? Only your shadow? A shadow trembling like a memory of the rustling grass A shadow leaning on a shadow Consuming it My heart’s as empty as that abandoned room

At the same time The hands of both Produce hairy images That are hermaphrodite Telling the newly voiceless dead How fat, how black the worms were Crawling beneath their skin Ghosts gliding noiselessly Shading their eyes, trying to read the future

Sculpting itself the wind rotates the world Flying and bankrupt

A persistent voice kept on repeating faintly 'Ten more years. Ten more years. Ten more years.’

ericabohr

If on a summer's day a traveller

If on a summer’s day a traveller heard the voices in the dark “Someone has stolen the future…” Would she turn back?

Back to find those curves of multiple nodes these interceptions On which, when we rub, that we find the most pleasure. Those curves of unstable axes, To be lost again in the labyrinth of clouds? Or Would she push forwards in the hope of finding that magical thought, The Light that envelops you, becomes you?

Breathing the stardust, falling on our dreaming eyes while sailing on a dark blue sea, She hears the whispering: “Come on, come on, the horizon is near… Touch it with your trembling fingers, see, it’s gone, but Here am I!”

Solar winds High frequency bursts Interruptions possible probable

On our own

Flying into the dead zone: the dead zone it came sooner than we thought Sending a final message home

On our own:

“The Beauty, The Terror, Wax melting Wings singeing Smoke curling from our feathers burning… Flipping the cosmic coin Of failed ambition

O Captain,

It’s time…

Make the clocks run backwards Freeze all the hours…

O Captain… ”

Then I am here, I am the I of the present You are always a possible you Photographing you from a parallel universe

Floating in polarised spectra, Crackling static Too much noise No signal heard Sucked into the chaos Churning swirling entropy, The message to be decoded Has now been destroyed

Hurtling from gravity, From cumulus of galaxies, To the place where space-time has not yet arrived Received into the arms of not-being opaque and still In bottomless caverns in the void far beyond the pearl grey sky, The weary traveller lay.

You lost track.

I know I fucked up.

Botched sequence of contact reports…

It was beautiful The dark side of mercury Too much white noise Inner space The spaces between Where words have not yet found form

Then The voice, The voice.. “Just remember the oracle: Someone has stolen the future…”

On our own

You’ll know if we made it if the sky is brighter tomorrow than yesterday

On our own Mayday

mayday

Seeking to return to the zero moment from where we set out

On our own

Mayday