Crg Hill's poetry scorecard

Day ? of Covid-19 Quarantine

We, fortunately, have a place we can go where we don't think about the present and future of a covid-19 world. This place is nearby but also very far away. Closer to Mars than anywhere else. Saw this bird flying across the land that is a sky, immense grains of sky. The name of the bird was on the tip of my tongue, though in that place I have no tips and don't need any. When I know the name of this bird, when the name of this bird knows me, I will share.

Brainstorm, Or

 

brai sotrm

spur prise

 

 

spur prise

Before the Word

 

Before the word there was the image.

Behind the word there is the image.

Between and within the words are images; between and within the images now are words.

Before the word there was one image. The one image expanded and accelerated and formed many images. Images were teeming and seething with images. Time and space were born and became one.

Before the word many images contracted and formed images of worlds and worlds of images. Time and space were teeming and seething with images.

Before the word there were worlds of images. The worlds expanded and accelerated and concretized. Images begat the world.

In the flux before the word, in a world of image, consciousness was born but it did not know it was born and did not know for eons.

Before the word the knowing began with image. Consciousness looked and imbibed the world of images and the images of world and knowing expanded and accelerated and concretized. A word was born and the knowing that it was also was born.

Within the maelstrom of images words were born and words died. Words were born and words died and words were born. Words were born and attained maturity and diversified and died while images remained constant (never fixed in knowing but always with substance, with a weight born of words). With each word, each life and death of a word, the knowing grew.

As the knowing grew it began to connect word with image and image with word and as the knowing connected image with word knowing spread and words spread in and out across images. Singular words coupled with recurring images expanded and accelerated and concretized into constellations.

The knowing guided these constellations and these constellations guided knowing. Words gained their own time and space (never fixed in the knowing but always with substance, with a weight born of image) and gave images roots and trunks and branches as images gave words veins and blood and bodies.

For the knowing images and words became inseparable but not yet impermeable. For the knowing this was the source of energy necessary to create more knowing.

In the knowing words flourished, became writ in stone and on scrolls and on as many pages as there were stars marking time and space. Images flourished, became wrought in stone and on walls and on as many canvases and pages as there were stars shaping time and space.

Knowing moved out along branches and veins and became many knowings. Words were born and words died and words survived in one knowing that another knowing could not comprehend but this was not incapacitating. Across and around the world words were born and words died and words expedited knowing.

But soon knowing forgot words were images and words were privileged. Knowing came to rely more on word than image. Disconnect was born and thrived and words were born and words died and words impeded knowing. Words intensified and calcified and choked out other words.

Words learned how to grow anger and unrest and war. Words left tattered images in their wake. Words planned revolution and dissolution against other words, one knowing pitted against another. Words died and were not reborn. Words died and their meaning lost in time and space. Knowing doubted and starved and diminished and more words died and were never reborn.

Yet while knowing had come to disdain image, image never atrophied, never faltered. In this chaos and entropy of word there grew up a small yet widespread and vibrant knowing that believed in image and forged knowing rooted in image.

While knowing contracted image persisted within and without and at the edges of knowing scored by words being born and words fighting and dying.

When knowing finally looked beyond word within and without knowing, spurred on by the knowing that believed in image, small yet widespread and vibrant, knowing saw beyond the ruins of words that image existed.  Image never atrophied, never faltered.

For the knowing liberated of the tyranny of word doubt subsided. Words were born rooted in image and were reborn. Balance of image and word and word and image was restored and replenished.

Before the word was the image. Behind the word there is the image.

Between and within the words are images; between and within the images now are words. A small yet widespread and vibrant knowing that believes in image grows.

Youssef Rzouga, Heitu 2 in Arabic, Deutsch, and English

Youssef Rzouga, Heitu 1 in Arabic, Deutsch, and English

Frühlingstag by Herman Hesse Draft Translation

Frühlingstag

Wind im Gesträuch und Vogelpfiff
Und hoch im höchsten süßen Blau
Ein stilles, stolzes Wolkenschiff. . .
Ich träume von einer blonden Frau,
Ich träume von meiner Jugendzeit,
Der hohe Himmel blau und weit
Ist meiner Sehnsucht Wiege,
Darin ich stillgesinnt
Und selig warm
Mit leisem Summen liege,
So wie in seiner Mutter Arm
Ein Kind.

• Herman Hesse

Spring day

Wind in the bushes and bird whistle

and high in the highest blue

a silence, proud cloud ship…

I dream of a blond woman

I dream of my youth

The sky high blue and wide

is my cradle of longing

in which I remain silent

and blissfully warm

with a quiet hum

just like in his mother’s arms

a child

Draft translation

Was bin ich?

 

a b c

h

i   i

n

s

w

Wasser Dana Ranga Draft Translation

Wasser

Sie atmen mich ein, ihre Lieder durchziehen mich; ihn, den Einsamsten, trage ich.

Das Messer wählt nicht zwischen hell oder dunkel, ein Versteck bleibt mir verwehrt. Hinter dem

Spiegel und auf dem Grund, was bin ich? Sie sagen, ich sei nur ein Teil

von allem, nur ein Aspekt

• Dana Ranga

 

Water

They breath me in, their songs run through me; I carry him, the loneliest.

The knife does not choose between light or dark, I am not allowed to remain hidden. Behind the

mirror and on the ground, what am I? They say I am only a part

of everything, only an aspect.

 

- Draft translation

Out of the Fog, A Double Shovel

 

Sure, I’ve cheated more than once. The

creative writing teacher, maybe in his own fog

did not flag my plagiarism. What comes

after I’m still astonished by, based on

that incident, that poetry, little by little

saved me, possessing no nine lives of a cat,

no passing interest in anything but baseball, my feet

 

digging in at the plate. Or getting high. It

was what days were made of, the shit sits

always within reach, in mind, looking

for something better, some future over

the rainbow. Light lit then on the harbor

in my dreams, now about writing and

poetry, about getting out of that city.

I may have been one of the least likely on

any terms to succeed, my goals silent,

out of public view, but there, poised on their haunches,

gathering strength and knowledge and

a lifelong quest for experiences to then

enact into language that which moves

me past that cheating, that which moves me on.

 

Double shovel based on Carl Sandburg’s “Fog,” which I plagiarized in a creative writing class senior year, a class I took because I needed the credit to graduate on time with my peers.