Heterogeneous E-Book

Anthony Anaxagorou

• Herausgeber: Out-Spoken Press
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 167

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

Heterogeneous is the defnitive anthology of Anthony Anaxagorou s poetry - an extensive and revised selection taken from several previous volumes. The winner of the 2015 Groucho Maverick Award, Anaxagorou offers the reader an insight into his poetry career with work spanning from 2009 to 2016. These seven instructive years highlight the making of a poet who has now subsequently achieved international acclaim as a thinker, writer, polemicist and activist.

Leseprobe

Heterogeneous

First Edition

Copyright © Out-Spoken Press 2016

First published in 2016 by Out-Spoken Press

Design & Art DirectionBen Lee

Printed & Bound by:Print Resources

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any other means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the author.

Contents

Foreword by Dr Louis Karaolis

New Poems

Moon Blood

How The Sky Finds Us

Mortal

The Journey Back Home

Serve And Protect

Doubt

Magna Carta

The Business Of Love

Old Men From The Wall

You

Breathless

The Pathology Of Like

Younger Years

Trying To Spell Love

Somewhere Inside Solitude

When Grandma Sleeps

When We Are Separates

The Blood

An Offering

This Is Not A Poem

Some Place Else

Crimes Of The Land

Jumping Off Feathers

Still Kicking

Condition

Skin

Tissue

Reflection

The Birth

It Will Come To You

For The Girl Who Asked What I Was Thinking

Give Hope

For All You’ve Endured

There I Was

It Will Come To You

Hurt People

A Difficult Place To Be Human

Football Results

My Father’s Walk

Broken Shells

Glasses

Talent

Lose My Voice

When the circus is full of clowns…

On Exit

Two Syllables Six Letters

Old Palestine

The Master’s Revenge

Dialectics

If I Told You

Waiting

Some poetry only works…

For You, Dear Friend

Going Inside

I Mean

To Be Lonely Always

Non-Believer

Impotent Man

Counterpart

Surgery

The Blind Beggar’s Grave

The Science Borrowed From Stars

Rain In Hanoi

Backpacker

A Dinner Candle And Me

Nha Trang City

A Sad Dance

Truth And Beauty

Refugee

The Funeral

Not The First

A Loved Silence

I Will Not Be There

Burma Makes Me Bad

When The Last Bomb Falls On Love

Said Man To Woman

A Sad Dance

Returning Stranger

For The World

Blank Conversation

Discomforted Heart

Salvation

Missing

Age & Time

Drenched In Mountains

Tuesday 3.36pm

Morning Commotion

Let This Be The Call

The Lost Definition Of Hope

This Is Us

London’s Dead

In Three Minutes

When Friday Drinks

Slow Boat Ride

All I Can Write

Nothing Dies, Love

Love’s Epitaph

Card Not Accepted

Everything

Himself

Love’s intention

Nike Shoebox

On A Journey

Wake

Waters Blue Rivers

The Poet

Acknowledgements

Foreword

The mystery of life and the complexity of the human condition serve as pabulum for this collection of poetry by Anthony Anaxagorou. Heterogeneous is an apt title for this anthology, as the poems contained herein traverse a plethora of fields and ideas, from metaphysics, politics and (pre-colonial) history, to race, femininity and alienation. Although the collection is not explicitly political, the reader can be in no doubt that an ethos of iconoclasm pervades from beginning to end. In the true spirit of dialectics, this collection of poetry establishes itself in opposition to conservatism.

In Heterogeneous, Anthony depicts not only his inner-most feelings and ideas, but also an insatiable curiosity about the wider world. The end result of this synthesis is a narrative which reveals (rather than conceals) universal principles of human nature and subverts (rather than supports) conventional thought. In a world increasingly driven by consumerism, this anthology defiantly rejects the dross. What emerges is a nuanced, though at-times destabilizing, delineation of the flux of life.

Unafraid to grasp the nettle, some of the reoccurring themes in the collection include solitude, marginalisation, imperialism, love, and death. As Anthony will testify, his poetry is not dedicated to the privileged in society, be they political elites or the so-called intelligentsia, but for those who have not been the beneficiaries of societal advantage. Yet this anthology does more than just expose social injustice and inequality. It also brings into sharp focus the splendour of nature and existence.

At this juncture, a preview of the diversity which lies ahead is apposite. In On Exit, Anthony chastises the absurdity of materialism: ‘‘billboards tell you everything you will never need to know’’. The spellbinding and timeless joy of true love is addressed in Not the First: ‘‘Yours is the first body I felt as my own, in your quiet title of simple surrender, feeling today becoming forever, and hours becoming moments’’. Solitude and soliloquy of the mind are neatly captured in The Poet: ‘‘Society throws me to the side (I’ll make note of that). The people here live fast and hard (I’ll make note of that too). I’ll make notes about making notes whilst no one notices me making notes…I spend my free time siting in my shadow just to leave my mind’’. An attack on the banality of conformity sneaks its way into This Is Us: ‘‘Money is work-Work is routine-Routine is dullness-Dullness is the majority’’. And in the rousing Master’s Revenge, reclaiming lost history is implored: ‘‘Don’t accept it, renounce it and go back, to before the Chattel, the division and genocide, before the White Jesus…discover the hidden world because history is self serving, self fulfilling’’.

A sense of wonderment about the material world also permeates throughout: ‘‘The majesty of the ocean…an island at ease…lazy olive trees and lost monasteries’’. A critique of the attempted commercialisation and commodification of love is delightfully depicted in The Business of Love: ‘‘Of course love is a business…it’s stylized, it’s airbrushed, it’s pushed and pulled, and soldered and burnt…Yet it’s even more than that…It’s within. It’s old and young. Ever-changing. Ever-knowing. It’s slap and kick and hold and cheat. It’s lust and horrid and animalistic and slowing…So of course love is a business. It’s the business of people. Of everyone and everything in a cup. Drinking together. Running lips over the waters of emptiness, in an almighty attempt to assuage the thirst’’.

Fatherhood and the corresponding entry into life of the newborn are poignantly addressed in Condition and Refection. In the former, a lovingly paternal and almost prophetic tone encapsulates the following passage: ‘‘You are of no political persuasion. Your agenda is touch… But for now you have done nothing wrong. You live only to breathe, as simple as rain’’. Eschewing any trite or glib tone, so often associated with the joy of parenthood, Refection delicately unwinds as follows: ‘‘Tonight, I imagine each star to be a carrier of wish finding your marble hand. In time you will learn the torrents of your own waters and you will try to unravel the knots of their tightening swells. In time you will learn the nature of the sky too, its infinity and chaos. You must recognise yourself in it and see how you are already a part of its body’’. Anyone who is even faintly familiar with Eastern philosophy (Taoism in particular) will appreciate the essence of those last lines.

In closing, and on a personal note, I will put to paper that which I have said to Anthony many times, namely that whilst the social scientist decodes the world using pure logic, the poet views the world through a more artistic lens. The poet realises that life is not some sort of problem to be solved or question to be answered. Rather, life is a mystery to be experienced and articulated. Heterogeneous represents Anthony’s visceral interpretations of the mystery of life.

Louis Karaolis

Doctor of Philosophy in Law

University of Oxford

For Tabari

New Poems

2014 - 2016

Moon Blood

After much deliberation I decided I would write a poem about heartbreak Stars are We

now this comes easy for the neat elegist who scopes out the broken what first don't

and slides a portion of himself into the fissure of the fracture gave us the light love from

so I did what I do and that is to take my heart and use it to see what our lips an inside

to feel out my heart for breakage only this time around looked like shared of us no we

there were no irregularities no divisions or stops but now the solid space don't rather

only a thing which felt a bit like the moon between them has gone back we put our in

if the moon were to be a feeling thing to guard the cycles of the moon side out and

smooth and alive with all the light and I'm left living beneath nothing say look my love

then I remembered my love thinking of all the light I won't return to this is all I have

and how she's restored how singular my lips will forever appear left to give so please

each bit of my broken to look I am tired of forever examining whatever you do and

with a kiss a touch each crevice of starless street hoping to however you will use me

a warm heartbeat rediscover the skins of your silk eyelids the only thing I will ask is

to soften the so I went to the furthest point where night that you not be careless with

solid space falls into water and I stood with all myself what I've managed to save

between asking how many places can the ocean go as I don't have much moon left

stars before it too becomes morbidly sick of itself and nights threaten me with dying.

How The Sky Finds Us

I ask

if I could ft my entire past

into your ears

would there be enough space in your blood

to handle what they did to me?

Is your heart ready now?

Two lovers bounce a kiss

of the space between their lips

the future is a worn out

promise

a fatigued pigeon pushes the broken

edge of sky, newspaper-grey

dribbles down another hour

stabbing in fight of lost

ground, hooded youth

worn by locust and wasp

alive to be bullet-shot dead

black gun white fist, silver badge

of fire and force, skin the colour of wrong.

Graveyards become bedrooms

where the young

lay their heads down to dream

in open spirit the prison of earth

melts into stars, the sweet and unloved

hang like lavalieres around the neck

of a tree older than thought

we could list them all like door numbers

we could list them all like genocide

but we won’t, instead we will march

them straight into heaven

Trayvon, Eric, John, Michael, Tanisha,

Tamir, Mark, Sandra, Stephen and Smiley.

There is no grave like the ocean

paper mouths try to close

of the leak, quick breathe back

the drowning, pray away

the food

pencil boats snap like rage

into shattered fractions,

a thousand lives break from

within it

lives so giant and small

finding the end of the sea

and the top of a headline

with eyes still fixed on God.

Council estate manor, drawn to

rusted meat, licking the fat of teeth,

lager hands hammer-beaten

by government cut-throat Tory

blue razors

tribal hate-march the scum and slag

Union Jacks bursting open the air

like death hounding the royal sails

of weddings and births.

Blame the white collar of canard and fib —

old boy body snatchers remain plenty

Obama death, Cameron death,

Bush death, Blair death

the dying of life and survival of death

sand-graves fresh with innocence,

explosions at the door, in the garden,

by the sink and in the heart:-

home is a body you bury

home is a name you choke on

Arafat, Jamal, Samira, Mohammed,

Mahmoud, Zeinab, Ahmed and Suheir.

They kill all the flowers at once

all that beaut, all that brilliance

                                                         all that gone.

Two lovers bounce a kiss

off the space between their lips

the future waits as an unreported oil spill

war perverts the lights

they did it to her on a Sunday in the brightness

of her summer dress, hand to mouth, year to year

only her suicide knew

a boat rocks still against the blue

a fame waves warm under a spoon

there’s a solitary eagle

cruising its altitude like a guard

two lovers now contain rain

and the sky stays cluttered with Gods.

Mortal

The dead are made for loving

it’s in the grief of their turning,

in the haul of their distance

we live around the only evidence

that one day or night we will add

to the soil

add to the arithmetic of singular chant

and burial,

we who live with the same knowing

as all the dead once did.

The Journey Back Home

I am a locked door,

I am a zip being pulled up on a tent,

I am traces of water being wiped from the mouth,

I am the sound of a headline being typed,

I am the sound of a page being turned.

I am from a time before the birth of God,

3.5 billion years ago when dust found life

and chemicals inhaled each other pompous and brilliant

while sunlight tackled starlight

arriving from some place beyond heaven.

I am the first grace brushing hushed wasteland

and new waters,

I am the first fish feeling the sensation of a wave,

I am the first bird chasing the promise of sky

cutting tracks through the cyclic geography of clouds

I am spreading myself slow like spinal roots

cracking through the body of soil,

I am the first leaf dying,

I am the sorrow rising from behind a sunset.

I am 65 million years old

before borders were nailed into the hands and feet of earth,

I am a dinosaur roaming free the arcadia of time

I am the first constellation being recognised by darkness,

I am the first moon shifting into my corner of night,

I am movement,

I am 14 million years old

I am a season finding the knees of the first primate

which rustled the poised tip of some secret plant,

I am the arm of confident bark,

I am evolution launching itself over all things unnamed,

I am primate DNA charged with the nitrogen of starving stars.

I am prehistory,

I am 5 million years old,

I am a proto-human arriving at the sonorous shores

of existence,

I am Australopithecus settling along East Africa’s Omo Valley,

I am the strident rain hounding the delicate calcium of bones,

the prognathous of face,

I am hominoid feet darting to discover safety,

I am the first feeling of phobia but I move through

and so I am the first valiant thing.

I am the moment bones crunch for the first time,

I am the first chimp to wage the first war,

I am the screech to shatter silence,

the first line to be drawn,

I am inside reproduction,

I am intelligence swelling,

I am language in its infancy

and so I am metaphor and hieroglyphs,

I am animism and worship,

I am day and night, I am light and dark,

I am above so I am God I am below so I am Devil,

I am before these things:-

I am Osiris and Ra and Horus and Set.

I am Ma’aht and so

I am Hinduism and Judaism and Christianity and Islam,

I am the same thing,

I am more and I am less, I am the death of light,

I am the explosion of Santorini,

I am a Minoan refugee being captured by a Mycenaean,

I am the birth of Greece, I am a crumb being gathered,

I am the skin Homer wrote the Iliad on,

I am Pythagoras studying at the university of Waset,

I am a black Egyptian teaching Pythagoras,

I belong to everything which came before me

and still

I cut and fight and manipulate and distort

to deny all that I am, all that is me,

because today

I am a skyscraper’s window collecting rain,

I am an e-minor cord being strummed in Syria,

I am the tabloid press,

I am the last train home,

I am a west end bar,

I am a broken bell on a night bus,

I am distance searching for home,

I am a cold kerb holding homelessness,

I am a news report burning inside an explosion,

I am the last bit of earth being patted down on a grave,

I am a stick hand searching for a girl’s blouse,

I am the sweat of voyeur,

I am sickness of mind and the terror of spirit,

I am repetition,

I am a frozen auto-cue and I am live,

I am a politician picking dirt from out my little finger,

I am a room where war is signed of

and where water jugs are refilled

and the air-con never stops blowing,

I am a famine in Ireland, I am a famine in Sudan,

I am the opium being pushed onto the Chinese,

I am Tony Blair in 2005, I am Rupert Murdoch now,

I am a prayer in Calais, I am a wave goodbye,

I am a sinking boat,

I am a swollen ocean,

I am a music concert in Paris

and I am gunfire mixed with blood and diesel,

I am a parked car in Lebanon,

I am the number 147 on a Kenyan news report,

I am a tired mind searching for nuance,

I am a wheelbarrow dying of rust,

I am a coffee shop in Highgate and beard oil in Shoreditch,

I am a nod to a waiter,

I am privilege and social media,

I am the French fag flying,

I am genocide and colonialism,

I am selective, I am a protest march,

I am Muslim, I am not radical,

I am not a terrorist, I am peaceful,

I will not apologise for the extremism of others.

I am the KKK holding a fame to a crucifix,

I am a Klan member ironing his white robes,

I am a Nazi solider praying to a dead Jewish prophet,

I am a Palestinian boy ting up his shoelace,

I am a last minute goal, I am the roar of a stadium,

I am the right colour, I am the wrong colour,

I am not white, I am not black,

I am invisible,

I am a genius in Mumbai,

I am a genius in the ghetto,

I am a genius in my mind,

I am a woman playing drums,

I am a woman writing code,

I am a man breaking down,

I am a man breaking up,

I am a solider cursing his grip,

I am a mosquito trying to suck blood from a gun’s trigger,

I am eyes looking outwards, I am eyes looking inwards

and I am going to live forever in your mind

and I will govern the banks of your imagination

with the waters of my sewers

and you will shoot me because I am black and unarmed,

and you will wish me dead because I am gay,

and you will punch me because you think I’m weaker,

and you will rape me because you think I’m smaller,

and then you will forget me and look for something else to hate

because you’ve killed yourself so many times that history

has dedicated an entire epoch to your ghosts

but I will still be here

in you

until the day comes when you remember

that you too were once a baby

who gripped the finger of your mother

and cried when you were left alone

you will remember how your mouth was once toothless

and pure and a heartbeat was the only thing you needed

to make you human

you will think of breast milk and the smell of your mother’s skin

and you will see how we share the same eyes

and same nose, the same mouth, the same ears

then you will remain silent

until your hate drowns itself in its own acid rain

and your humanity will breathe in the sunlight

of every summer that’s ever happened.

I am a child picking himself up

from of the shore of a Turkish beach,

I am drinking tea with my father,

I’m a Palestinian girl who’s no longer just a Palestinian girl,

I am a fishing boat that never needs to leave its harbour,

I am an olive tree that grows,

I am a house that remains,

I am an open window in spring

I am nothing more complex than the bristles of a broom.

I am a door unlocked

and I am falling into a million open arms

while our song can be heard from here

to the beginning of time

we have arrived

and you are by the grace of our heart

home.