WHEN SHE DANCES
© Bogdan Tiganov


When she dances
she sees nothing
well with the teasing stick
it’s your age, my friend,
keeping your head in.

She manages
in the cold, in the heat
she could be complaining
at the ends of your hammock
burying her Lenin.

Take a good shot
world’s best amateur’s amateur.


SUNBATHING
© Bogdan Tiganov


Like a beach, like a trip to its curves,
opened over sea, a fish
forgetting how to breathe,
the gypsy lies awake sleeping
over cash, dollars from a gun,
dreaming of sleep’s circles
on hot sand sweltering
an embrace to cool their sense
you, your sacred tourist
with a baggage for every finger,
you point the rich out from the poor,
our undeveloped kilometre
exposed like a dictator’s feelings
sweeping, washing, cosseting,
why don’t you bring Christ?


CIPRIAN PORUMBESCU'S DWELLING
© Bogdan Tiganov


The old wool kept well
and authentic for tourism

where you brushed,
lacquered, washed,
where you slept
tired, framed,
where you dreamt
of heaven, of woman,
there I stood.
A simple peasant
staring at footprints.

Changed landscapes,
next of kin
I travelled, inside
instinct governed effort,
nature’s gift
swept through your soul.
Long spatial history
ashes left of your desires.
The creative rebel
lonely then and lonely now
a golden mist

sweet sad ballad
repeats
wistful gypsy despair erupting
tongue-tied sharp viola
vibrant weeping crowds
for the paying audience
such misplaced arts.

You seem earthy and resonant.
The snobs that you loathed
buy and study your scrapings.
The view I saw
a harmony of love and suffering.


NIGHTMARE
© Bogdan Tiganov


My bitter cut
taking revenge carving me vertically
I pan my hands in all directions
taking life after life.
Tiny tentacles wrap round my fingers.
They scare women and children.
“Come back!  They only rinse
your energy and vericose veins.”
They would have read wrongly
learning to snap and catch
I slam my shoulder to their thousand eyes
but they grow obscene, mutated shapes,
swarming to release the fears. 


THAT BEDROOM
© Bogdan Tiganov


What a memorable bedroom!
An old television, cheap comfortable bed,
books piled uncontrollably.
I look under the illness bed, to my surprise
a scurrying noble snake
crawls and its movement fascinates. 
I am young enough to be fascinated
and scared so I step back
as another beautiful writhing creature
follows the other.
They must be lifelong friends or lovers,
the one behind speeding, 
and they crawl to the outside
where there is the admired corridor. 
Through a door the third snake appears
but they are tired of my curiosity, 
their motions quicken and their jaws lengthen
snapping down and across my ankles,
teeth penetrating deep to the bones.
When telling the guardian she is kind
under warm covers I am in patches
where I lie and contemplate my stupidity.


BRAILA CUCKOO
Braila Cuckoo
© Bogdan Tiganov


Braila cuckoo
Braila lines
fences, lips,
I’m starving.

Man of Braila
tense in arm heart
attack stroke
shot every morning
locked in the dark.

Keep the shapes,
steal your needs
Braila, Braila,
he was cuckoo clock
shocked from work.

LUNA
© Robin Hislop Ouzman 2002


Selections: Part 1. 1.) i.* ii* Part 2. 1.) i* iii* vi. 
Lilliput Woods.vii.The Exaltment of the Athlete. Part 3. 1.) iii. Part.4. 1.) 
ii* 3.) i.

Part 1

1.)

i.*

If cats were heaven & the stars mice
& all the rest gestation of rice,
then  how nice.

In the eye of the beast there is
the desert & moon on water.

*Animals in the Form of Spheres.
The Book of Imaginary Beings. J L Borges.

ii*

Altitude 2000 La Baranqua
(The Slope) Castilla Autumn

A  rock terrace leads down to the valley
now a full lapping bowl of milk, on
return squalls of mist gust with menace.

Darkness rises from the shadow cast
by the earth from the descending sun.
Geological time metamorphosises with

the interactive forces of cosmic light as
the stars are pursued in their own courses
in geometrical space, to metaphors.

* 24.IV.40075.3.30pm.G Snyder

* To Andrès Fisher & Christopher Ouzman

iii.*

In the acid rain sane is pain,
Yet we call to be born again.

It  is never too much,*
For the self - for us,

Human all too human.*

* Prynne & Nietzsche.

iv.

An ear in the window
An eye in the mirror's corner
A jingle jangle in the street
An idea blown out like fuse

Part 2.

Sun in Scorpio.

1.)

i.*

Today is a day of
cripples, of the maim & lame.
Today is a day of blame.

Today is a day  I dreamt of
subterranean caverns
to which I always returned.

Today is a day when
we  are always alone
in the rain.

Today is a day when
we don´t have a name when
we ride the big aeroplane.*

Today is a day of
desultory fame, obsession,
possession & seized being.

Today is a day of
the absurdity of the cycle of pain
& mockery of the gods' game.

Today is a day
I try to remember my name
& runaway children.

* Woody Gutherie.

* To Homer

ii.

Short Story.

Tabby Jason reclines regal & royal on the video -
sooty Pufi perches on the painted TV above hunting
invisible flies. Cats eyes beam from the dark & we
follow in headlong flight from our light their
distance: not our hypnosis, their domain.

iii.*

High Basin Manzanares El Real : Autumn.

At the gully´s mouth flashing torrents
Jet its throat with cadence & cascade.

In the pool power & beauty,
Dualities chrushed into each other.

You are me. You are not me.
Say: Yes. Say: No.

* To Amparo Arrospide.

iv.

After each step
The next nearer
But never complete:
Death is never complete,
All is forehailed.

Nests in birch hang black braken
Even as the buds begin.
The heart is a fleeing fawn
Falling from an emboldened moon
& love a rose upon a thorn
that when touched blood is drawn.
These are metaphors of the hour
But all the years have fled to now
& in the fading of the light
Love found & lost return to night
& though bitterness & scorn
Still lash in the fury of the storm,
Here in this breach remains the quest
That compells this passion until I rest.

v.

(xiv.)*

Ni la mitad de
capacidad pulmonar:
bruma en la cumbre

*Haiku. Andrés Fisher
( after Basho )
to Robin Ouzman.

Written in a flash
the feather utters flame &
gutters breath again.

vi.

Lilliput Woods.

Fluttering helplessly, it seems a wet bit
of black plastic bag caught in bramble:
Only the wind caws.

Expert, the boy with hunter's noose,
wood poacher, approaches.
Darkening the sky brews to storm
but darker still the screech & swarm
gathering black gulls with beak & claw
hovering overhead poised to dive,
as the boy in terror flees through the rain.

vii.*

The Exaltment of the Athlete.

To leap the mountain clear,
To run swifter than the river
To the sea, to dive as the cormorant
From sheer face for the silvered fish,
To lift the world on your shoulders:
Atlanta & Atlas
 rising breasting
the waves.

*To Christopher.

viii.

On the way to the toilets
Icontrophs right & left
Smell of the same piss
Soon we will all sing
In it the canaries in
the bar already do.

Part 3.

Night of November Light.

1.)

i.

Remember, Remember,
The Night of November,
The Name of November,
It Heralds the Halloween,
The Turning or the Burning.

ii.

In the dualities
The mystique of the Muse,
Gilgarmesh was not reborn,
slow revolves the diadem.

iii.

Bronze god, holy palm
In July sun with legions
In the corn grass.

I walk with you in the light
At high noon, at the zenith.
In November light the holy palm

Has gone, only a few remain,
They seem forlorn & waiting,
Their blades sheathed again.

iv.

One day a vagabond
The next a king. Ah,
The life of a poet,
It´s a wil o´wisp.

v.

Blue Mountains.

In blue mountains
There are lonely blue skies,
Yet lonelier still, lonely blue eyes.

vii.*

In the window there are stains.
I want to wipe the pane clean again,
As one who is blind wipes the collage in rain
But the stains remain as grail in the grain
& you cant go home again.*

*Thomas Wulf

viii.

When the pigeon soars
Forget the wind in the tree tops.

ix.

Luna on the Slope.

This new moon
In our quarter
Shone on the other
Dancing on water
Its vanishing.


Part 4.

1.)

The Double Face of the Moon.

i.*

All too soon
the double face of the moon
on a cold dark night
on a Spanish stair, when
I paint my masterpiece.

Take a sally in the vally,
hang down your head
from a wide oak tree
Danny boy for the sake
of Babara Allen.

* Dylan.

ii.*

The moons face is overt.
Bold & free she proudly leads.
A woman's eyes lift, its nice
to be here, she humbly says.
I hear her voice as within
the chasm of echo in which I listen.

I fear the moon, I awe the moon.
She gives me life & collects my death.
Her dark side covers all secrets,
love, blood & labyrinth:
I am alone with this woman.

Aren't you sad, you are not so free,
I say, as from her eyes blaze
metaphors of Bodecea & Deborah's
chariots of flames that fall on the fell
side, suicidal on that starry hill.

It is a new moon revealing
The line of an invisible sphere.
The moon's face is covert.

* To Sylvia.

iii.*

A long blue white eye sky
with its unravelling fleece
in ferment from a tiny window
on the world seems so deep
that I seem to fly or die
its prisoner as time goes by.

* To Oscar Wilde ( Ballad of Reading Gaol )

iv.

From our tiny windows on the world
There goes by a big black bird.

v.*

Know thy self
To thy own self be true
Troll, to thy own self, be enough.*

* Peer Gynt. Ibson.

vi.

On leaving Madrid November 14th.

Under the rustings of aged
But immortal Matadors &
Torros old winos gamble
The night away burying
Their token losses & gains
Under the mattress.



AFTER THE CAVE, THE COMET
© Robin Hislop Ouzman, updated 28. 01. 03


* To Anne Friis & Christopher Ouzman.

Part 1.

(1)

i.

House of Marsh.

Waves break cold & grey
on a Danish sea – Danu.

(When first I kissed 
the rose’s blush,
how then were I to know
that rose & lips would turn
	to clay & stone
along with the falling snow.)

Night into solstice, 
lights in the window like cemetery pyres.

Dawn crepuscular, 
a full moon’s eyes mock or pity 
netting the frost through vapours,
a matrix, 
where breaches blanch black lecherously.

ii.

Frozen tears in the breeze,
years fold like strangers shaking hands.

A mocking bird sings on in plaintiff note
amidst the debris like a phoenix
to the sealed shadows always sought
yet never released.

iii.

Opaque dolls’ eyes reply with fixed smiles,  
silver birch hang their flails in windows, spiked.
Reeds lead
down to the mire’s briar 
tangled with sprites guarding its dead. 
A splintered plank hut
jabs & juts in foray at intrusion of hunters.

iv.

Dark ice swamp the stubble fields, 
in the pall of their own song sink again in moan. 
In the yule barn a taxidermist gannet swoops from rafters
& a sow’s eyes, pale in watery blue, twinkle in porcelain.

v.

The solstice grunts turning a glinting sun
through the pines into a brutal dawn.

vi.

Children’s faces drop like windfalls,
the called for are collected & the rest
become minutes again with their prepacked hours.

Fireworks emblazon the garden territories
resonating chivalry in the skies for auld lang syne.

Surviving but thriving cats mew
along with the sneaking scavenging rats.

Day furnishes faithfully its batch
with no consolations from nature. 

A taint of touch, 
ominous barrenness 
in the presence of abundance.

vii.

Give me a hut of the mountain
with axe, fresh water & lantern,
where the deer & the cattle roam
& children flutter like the butterfly,
helplessly but happily.

Are we are no more children of the sun
with daughters of the moon
to confine us to our doom.

viii.

*A rose is a rose
His eyes are black as coals
The sun is his dream I suppose,
The water flows around
Upon the lonesome ground
Where the great snowman lies bled.

Puppets play the scene
As best you can
Strings are pulled in the wizard
Star theatre & the light of the day
Is the night inside the masquerade*

*Parade…

These sudden recalled words
now refrains, as chorus echoes
born of three lifetimes ago,
so hollow, as wind in the reeds,
now wind amongst reeds 
amongst wind, 
on parade.

ix.

& now been voice stays on 
To the remaining remaining 
Waiting in its remaining. 


(2)

i.

House of Dolls.

As children play between shadows & hours
in secret gardens with faces as flowers
until they frighten away
to refuge in the land of yore,
I drift amongst this house of dolls
with her lady of the moor marsh
grown old & fat to labour out its years.

Snow steeps with lilac twilight
a new moon’s courses in orange descent
in this our winter of content turned.

Dolls eyes stare anticipating spring
knowing only they remain & that she
will protect them to her last drop of blood
stitched into their breasts congealing frayed
edges as the marsh lays concealing love nests
until kings & queens arise from the mire.

ii.

Blue reed & shadowy bush
Streak like an isle of glass
Down to the marsh.

My footsteps plough on through,
Behind softer footfalls fall
On paws of an unseen stalker

Skirting me in brush
To forage dangerous edges,
Where I dare not enter,

As the moon concealed  
in marsh cloud seems to blush 
at man & beast desolate

In its soft & snowy hush.
Tonight it retains
Its sepulchral shrine,

Where only paws of beast may pass.
Daybreak will bring the thaw
& all will be as before – nevermore.

iii.

Hanging garden trees
Hang hanged gods
Emerging scarred & skeletal 
In the mirage of the thaw
Invisible in camera obscura
Their laurels on the ground.


Part 2.

(1)

i.

So many lifetimes escape these lips, yet still
I breathe - though as whistling on the wind.

Still the nightmare returns, as we do, who seem
never to die but only seem within a dream
playing out the love game, hands on,
as light turns light through the eves,
this fall that falls & falls, 
that we have been & only been 
& nevermore,
unfulfilled in our anachronisms,
cowards & liars, evermore.

ii.

After the comet the rock blasted
After I departed that was how it
Turned out.

Are we now more compassionate,
Or am I merely holding a handful of dust. 

iii.

The yoked cart became a fiery chariot,
The treking pony a fierce steed.
In the first flight in that appetite for blood,
Victory to be through death refreshed,
Warrior & steed became one in the battle.
Man & beast fused in life & death,
From the fallen rose the first song of liberty,
Warrior & steed had drunk their glory
Through the blood of their dead, their health.
The spirit of man had been born;
The crone cackled under the moon
For the hunting time had begun
& the inheritance passed down.   

iv.

Nests in birch hang black braken
Even as the buds begin.
The heart is a fleeing fawn
Falling from an emboldened moon
& love a rose upon a thorn
that when touched blood is drawn.
These are metaphors of the hour
But all the years have fled to now
& in the fading of the light
Love found & lost return to night
& though bitterness & scorn
Still lash in the fury of the storm,
Here in this breach remains the quest
That compells this passion until I rest.