2 Poems by Key MacFarlane

An alumnus of Colgate University, Key is currently working at an environmental consulting firm in Baltimore, Maryland. His poetry has been published or is forthcoming in Full of Crow, Eunoia Review, and Sleet Magazine.

News Feed (Internet Death)

 

Pretty sure my dishwater is broken again

Does anyone know where I can get one cheap?

What does it sound like?

Do the plates clash around or do they fill

With rotting fluids?

Maybe run it on one cycle after all

Famar Volat. I think.

Sorority sisters take vacations

And I am very excited to see Ford again, alone this time

Even my blind grandmother would have thrown a flag at that one

Move on man

Get a better job

Because “In a completely sane world, madness is the only freedom!”

Yeah, a little outdated but you can still read his books here

For free tonight at 8pm in the old courtyard

Next to the arcade (Ford was here)

They’ll be square dancing:

Dude we were so hammered that night

Look at the girl passed out on the floor

I know her from somewhere…

Somewhere stones meet stones and fall unbruised

Across many time zones and video clips

I admit this made me laugh for hours in England

May he rest in peace, much too soon

It came to me unformed, an ancient gesture—

Some sepulcher of restaurant reviews

We bury Ford on Monday, donations taken here

And our thoughts

Yes our thoughts too

Moving across the globe today! Wish us good luck!

Break a keg Billy

Haha I guess those pictures are still up

Aren’t they?

Who’s to take them down?

I think “art is pun” or something I found

Like when life gives you lemons

Or some other iteration

Jesus!

I’m telling you I only like limes and said it first

We agree with your assumption completely and completely

Sympathize with your choice of outerwear!

Do those boots come in indigo?

Well it does get cold sometimes in San Diego and I have to…

Look at this cat and this cat and this cat has my same eyes

I want you to know this in case

You ever have to piece me back together

I miss you dearly – at Pub Dog Pizza and Drafthouse.

 

 

 

Exchange Value

 

All electronic encryptions

Lose their beginnings—

Don’t think you could read this

Alone, or could hope to find me

Again, you could always rewind

And find me again—

The cane is in fashion again these days,

They say, we wear taqiyah on Tuesdays

And stroll about aimlessly—to a place

Where moments are traded as hyperlinks

And you can find each of me

On the same plane, hijacked (I am told)

It was all very democratic—

Don’t you see?

Or have my stitches dissolved in your nectar, the fractals of

memories and half-F thoughts

the veiled currency is used

everywhere the banker can get

away with anything these days—

And so can I—

 

 

 

 Key MacFarlane

Special Feature! John Brnlv Rogers talks about his new ebook with extracts and new poems

John Brnlv Rogers is a dauntingly prolific London-based writer who is currently burgeoning forth onto the poetry scene. John talks about his latest ebook ‘Keep Yr Heart in the Cloud’ with extracts and new poems.

 

What was your idea or your thinking behind Keep Yr Heart in The Cloud? What inspired you to write it, did you have a method behind each poem?

This piece came into being very spontaneously and easily. Image macros are really interesting to me as a form. I come from an art background and I’ve been making text/visual work for years, like printed cards mailed anonymously, with compliments on them or surreal statements – from “your hair looks nice today” to “freedom has been removed”, or objects painted with slogans. But image macros allow for quick production, distribution and sharing – they take full advantage of internet culture.

This series is an imagining of “the internet” as a utopian space – the images are drawn from google images of incredible, almost fantastical natural beauty. After making a collaborative piece called ‘oh, inverted universe‘ with Ashley Obscura I’d started imagining this kind of imagery as the dreamlike inner-space of the internet. The text is an adaption of love poetry – romantic sentiments, sometimes a play on words, sometimes a powerful cliché, or a phrase that anyone with Facebook Chat has probably typed to a loved one at some point. So this series is kind of a dreamy wander through the cloud, packing wryness, familiarity or reverie…

Is there a narrative to the piece?

They were initially a series of stand-alones, but there’s a narrative that emerged as I started to arrange them together. For example, the cave image ‘leads’ to an inner cave, then back out into a forest – this little image-journey is something I’m looking forward to developing further. I think the tone and subject matter of the slides allows a certain feeling to emerge, perhaps more so than the textual narrative.

Some of the text in Keep Yr Heart in the Cloud is reminiscent of IM conversations, did the text come from a real conversation or not? Do you think this matters? In what way does your ebook engage with the issue of New Sincerity, if at all?

I have always been quite an open person, and I’m into honesty in all things, the power of ‘being real’. I’m into the idea of decompartmentalising personality, and trying to reveal an honest impression of the self. So I’m completely down with heightened sincerity as a means to that end, to the point of a kind of cultivated naiveté. I’m interested in the power of this to nullify knee-jerk or ‘automatic’ cynicism – in life, and in art.

If you look up ‘sentimental’ in the dictionary, it’s something I’m fine with being: “expressive of or appealing to sentiment, especially the tender emotions and feelings, as love, pity, or nostalgia”. I think my 100 Things piece is maybe the most open I’ve managed to get  an ‘autobiography in objects’, each one with a story from my personal life or history attached. Several acquaintances (and a few total strangers) have said they feel like they know me very well because of that piece, which I think is really special as an outcome.

A couple of these slides are things people have said to me in chats or IRL. Most of them are made up, but based on real states or feelings and emotions.

Beach Sloth reviewed Keep Yr Heart in the Cloud as holding the banner for love as it exists on the internet, I think he’s right but how do you feel about this interpretation? If the ebook is a love story, what kind of love story is it?

I was really happy with the interpretation in the review. I think Beach Sloth read between the lines pretty well. If it’s a love story, it’s a love story played out in the internet, and therefore there’s an element of longing. Perhaps that physical distance between people in love makes them gravitate quite naturally towards expressing tenderness and familiarity online – internet love, of a sort. The internet has doubtlessly led to lot of improbable but strong bonds forming between people who are far apart, and there’s frustration, humour and beauty to be found in that equally. I think people who’ve been in a long-distance relationship, or an intense online friendship, can probably relate to aspects of this piece.

Beach Sloth also said ‘macros feel sweeter thanks to John’ do you think that your ebook has helped to develop the image macro? If so how? 

I like that line, very generous. I take influence from others in making memes and macros a form for poetry, and I moved quite instinctively in the direction of trying to imbue the form with something of my own. I’m not sure if it’s new, but I feel that it is working well and seems to have struck a chord with people. This usage shows some  exciting potential for more macro-based work to me, at least.

You recently read on the ‘Brit Lit spreecast’. How was the experience?

Terrifying, tbh – it was my first ever reading. But it was great and I came away with some new friends and a lot of positivity and inspiration. Michael Scarborough and Crispin Best really blew my mind – there was a lot of talented writers there across a broad spectrum of styles. It was great to read with my close friend Tegan Christmas, and also to get feedback from Spreecast contemporaries from America. I watch a lot of Illuminati Power Hour and Not Your Mom’s Poetry Reading, so it was good to get involved.

How does ‘Brit lit’ compare to American Alt Lit in your opinion? What do you think the future of Brit lit will be like?

I’m not sure if there’s a stylistic divide along geographical lines. Of alt-lit in general, I feel like there’s a pleasing breadth of work from both sides of the Atlantic. From the more cynical and knowingly modern realist stuff, to performance poetry bordering on stand-up comedy, to quite raw emotional work – I think it’s a scene that’s tied together perhaps more by a certain energy than a style, and by the community being located largely online. Lots of people operate in several of these styles and flick between them. I think it’s just thriving, it’s energised and exciting, and it’s only going to get better.

John also writes dream state poems like the two below: ‘I write in a “half asleep” state sometimes and wake up with a phone screen full of lines and images, sometimes without remembering writing it. And then I wrestle with the structure and rhythm for a few weeks, editing bits in and out so that it “phases” between fantastical or unreal imagery and recognisable “conscious” passages’.

Mansion

Face down sprawled out

Up here, in summer clothes

In the attic, sweat beaded, dust gathering

Flapping leaves, half-sleep, mower roar

The heat settled on the house like a heavy weight

The rowing boat still, the ball unkicked

Adrift on damp sheets

We are sluggish beneath the afternoon.

Take what you need and leave

they’re making things down there

nesting under rolling rocks she smiles a grey smile

and beckons in the kitchen gloom

the food turns on the table

the light grows thin

We’re going down the stairs from here

I’m in the basement,

There is no basement.

Dortmund

Behind the curtain lies the world
The quiet roar of waterfall
Cars scything through puddles like everything is a foot deep but
I am asleep, and it hasn’t rained.
Yes, we had a lovely day, yes, thanks
The speeches were in German but we,
nodding along, smiled when the crowd laughed
And drained the open bar.
I held the gaze of a female Polizei
in the lobby I’m not sure why
We went for a drive A story about a father, shouting at his two year old
in the street to “grow up”
Street graffiti: “don’t drink and fuck”
As if there’s anything else to do in
This endless city, this sun-beaten sprawl,
this dirty kitchen of Deutschland.

 

 

John is still working on macros, below we have a brand new one with a promise of more to come