Digital Poetics 2.13 Extracts from 'Water Falls in Love’ by Homan Yousofi
In Forests
.. . … . .. … . . . . . .. .. . . . . .. . . .. . . .. … … . . . .. . . . .
Know .. . .. that . . .. . . . . … coast . . . … . .. persists unceasingly
On .. … . high snowy … . . .. .. .. . . . .. . ridge . .. . .. . know . . . .. . that
.. . distant deserts . . . are .. . . smoothing .. . . .
stones . .. . over .. … . . exoplanets. . . . And a boy
wearing a red t-shirt
is holding a pasty
and thinking of a girl
named Zoe, and besides
her nothing else exists
Note on a Family Lost at Sea
The kind of melodrama where the paddleboarding break feels like the making or breaking of his marriage. Seashell shocks her terra strata shore (locked) gaze, prefacing a wide dull friscalating ocean. His melancholic dip unable to float past postscript fixations of a drowning fiction
Backpacking
My mind took off without me
Thumbing a lift to Kamchatka
where it spun the necks off chickens
with a girl from Alberta called Alberta
They decided to walk the earth
but he lost Bertie at the first border
and a pinkie finger by the next
hopping container cargos toward Tashikend
One time it stopped believing in money,
and the distinctions between things
recanting this only for the uprising
I stayed behind ironing out my stomach
missing leg days in anticipation
of an attic downpayment and
the mindfulness routines that didn't stick
I wonder if it thinks of me
for instance when it's late and
it can't fall awake or do these small infractions
like me, Bertie and the missing pinkie
hinder a pursuit of dreams?
Cloudspotting
The Neanderthal
looking up at clouds missed
Trains, guitar
a mobile phone
Looking now I must be missing
or my senses hesitate to perceive
future contraptions
Trampolines
Up hangover creek
in critical slapstick crisis
his maneuvers ruin
her acupuncture trampolines
with heavy rotations
and impossible sloshes
of white russians in
the butt ends of India
and the so-far-so-great
gyrating grip of gravity
brings you crashing up
to concrete ceilings with
day wounds and faults.
Still, we float for seconds on end
like tomboys on broomstick
moments before our inquisitions
The Odd Thing
Hold this tough thing tender
Glare on it greedily almost in love
like a Wall Street wall socket
Dance to its MRI sounds
its police car lights paying
attention like a jetstream
of orange peel shot into retina
Don’t put it down yet
not until it has run out of steam
in your hands and you've
rattle it hard to check
it is really dead.
Relax digits to drop - whistling -
Or else hurl with all might
against a wall
Candy Rock Star
Hard-won harmonies
defibrillate A-KKK
40-somethings unsure
as bengals in Kiev
The eye is a lonely
witness when tethered
to the heart or
circumventing a tribe
Elksprung Steinways / sitar
arrhythmia, Wagner's Bridal
Procession
for UKIP sikh canvasser
and Penzance candy rock
star
Their tarot card reads:
'DEFENESTRATE THE POLICE'
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Homan is an Afghan-born poet, outdoor therapeutic writing tutor, and artistic mentor. His poems explore themes of transcendence and acceptance within nature - often through the problematic lens of deliberate, postmodern self-selection of identity as a migrant. He spent 10 years living in years in the mountains of Snowdonia, where he completed a creative writing Masters at Bangor University, and began teaching in the outdoors. He currently lives in London and teaches writing at City Lit college. He continues to support young refugee women across Europe to articulate their creativity through multidisciplinary arts.
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The moral right of the author has been asserted. However, the Hythe is an open-access journal and we welcome the use of all materials on it for educational and creative workshop purposes.
