bkk UNZINE Issue 27

Loving MEMORIES

Published: 1st November 2022

BKK Unzine Issue 24 - Loss

We can’t choose which memories to remember whether they are good or bad. When we introduce our themes with the word “Loving” each time, of course this is to remind people to do what they love. The best of our mankind has struggled in defining what love is but we can at least put forward what it isn’t. Love isn’t giving your attention to something or someone for a logical reason that would bring benefits but rather giving our attention for the sake of the existence of subjects, people, ideas.

Thank you as always and Enjoy.

Maia, Jam, Venky, Boris

Artists in this issue

Piya Profile

Ban Rak Sun

Moe J

Dainel Romano

Moe J

Steven

Piya Profile

Jirat Sueapa

Steven

June

Steven

Christian

WAR POEM CANTO 7

Brothers, phantoms of the deceased,
My own brother included,
Never ceasing the mind, their haunt;
Especially, in this place of moaning and wailing,
But any place, any venue whatsoever,
As mind goes where body goes.  Thus,
There is no such thing as emotional healing – –
Just this everlasting constructing
Of new neurological corridors
To the present, as dark as it might be.

Brother gone–mind still
Not able to fathom it, not that
Any who stay now,  those who still are,
These liquified fluid men,
Really exist
(hard to fathom that as well), and
I grapple, seeking exact memories
Of him who is gone
But they too
Are blown asunder,
Whole dismembered, liquified, and strewn,
Riddled in shrapnel

And there are times, certain moments,
in inexorable grief, the dead alive in the mind,
The living fluid stuff, not substance,
I find myself falling, the weight
Of “self” breaking the shallow ice,
This tenuous construction of
Of a “me,” as it were,
To some shallow perennial fall
Instead of watery substance and depth
The way someday the corporeal
Will decompose to elements
But now after breaking the mental seal,
Falling and  energy dissolving into the air
But only for some moments and
Then, in spite, I return, despite
Not wanting to return.

We languish here
On what is more like
Hospital gurneys
Than beds–
Here where there
Is lack of food
For the weak, and where
The feckless are like
Superfluous nestlings
Denied parental rations
(Only the strongest,
Given that of substance)
Emaciated frames falling
To be ravaged by disease to
Eventually become the fodder
Of predators, like most birds.

Each singular,
Each discrete life form
So sui generis,
So anatomically,
Psychologically,
Biographically distinct
And yet,
Specialization notwithstanding,
So inconsequential
In the fecundity of life
On this plane of savage rapine
For consumption, for survival,
Whirrling violently in space

And me
Barely hovering
Above the Bermuda Triangle
Of Madness,
Barely able to brush aside
This fly hovering and landing on
This sweaty, oily countenance–
Maggots already in the infected
Bits that remain of the leg
Or so I think, but
What do I know–
Or is it even a fly?
Maybe it is a figure skater
Waltz jumping
Or toe looping
On a slush of ice
Needing resurfacing.

So is that it?
What delusionally
I thought as a “me” is
Merely
A slush of ice
A rink needing resurfacing;
But, says an antithetical thought,
Ice skaters
Don’t stay in mid-air so
It’s a fly, with flies
Having no artistic sensibilities
That are known of.

Derealized to this extent
I try to regain an “I”
The way Russia
Regained Russian
After it was relegated
To peasants
Under Catherine the Great–
English the same
Relegated by the French in England
To farmers
Before being subsumed.
But for a minute,
Maybe longer,
I was that slab of ice–
That slab of ice
Am I that still?

My brother, my brothers,
Tortured sinews,
Tortured bones
In mass graves,
Hands tied
Behind
Their backs,
How did I
Make it
Out alive
And you didn’t?
For what reason? – –
Everything random!
Corpses of sons of god
(So says the Russian/Ukranian
Orthodox church)
Decompose like trash;
Successful gestation,
Or ectopic pregnancy
And miscarriage,
Mothers who abort
Or bear it all,
All random chance.
It is all random chance:
This machine gun firing
Of sperm cells, live amunition,
at a distant target.
Whether succsessfully gestated
Whether passing
Through the first years
Of childhood,
With the stay seeming more certain,
More preordained, but
This being born is
Not borne out with guarantee
(Aeschylus dying purportedly
From tortoise in Eagle’s talon
Falling on his head)
For how long.
It could just be a day.
It could just be a moment.
It could be decades
Of auspicious existing,
Of a life, leading
To that moment of coronation
And then the next moment
The throne, and the being on it,
Pulverized in change.

There was that morning
I and my brother woke up
To the plan we concocted,
Hatched eggs
In our incubating brains.
And  Malingering, we at last
Got out of beds,
Got on bicycles,
School and paper routes
Tossed like leaves
In the winds

Conception and fulfillment equally random
Good and evil figments of the imagination
Like both sides believing in this war
From social conditioning and personal experiences, ideas
Construed and misconstrued, endlessly reinterpreted,
Worthy of being disabused,
Evermore in creation and destruction
Reconstructed again.

And for twenty kilometers or more
On gravel roads
We rode on,
Resting at times
Under pine, birch, and oaks, their
Mushy seeds, and
Twigs and grasses
All smashed between our toes,
As we ate our peanut butter
Sandwiches in the shade
They provided.
To grandmother’s house
I and my brother,  we, rode.
Memories!

The rain goes on  and on
Throughout the day
But untouched by it
It has no affect on me
And yet inwardly I am wet in
Inexorable grief  that is a
Cold perpetual rain
Splintering upon me
Through the nightish days
The dayish nights
The grey
Of the rest of my life

Little food for days
Lack of food and strength so
Barely able to brush it,
The fly, aside
Or is it even a fly
But an ice skater
And this thing,
Sometimes called a “me,”
A slab of ice
Needing resurfacing.

Steven Sills

Memory in Chonburi

Piya - Thorns of Grief

Watercolor on paper
This painting is small but it has the big capacity to hold a lot of beautiful memories from the past. This piece was created in Chonburi, Thailand during my trip with friends. I was sitting at the place where I could see my friends and painted the moment they were painting. Even though it is a memory from more than 2 years ago, it is so clear to me to remember the ambience of the cafe and my feeling at that moment. This painting always brings me a happy feeling and makes me smile.

Ban Rak Sun

My first broken heart

Piya - Thorns of Grief

This is one moment from childhood that many people will never forget. Poor Littlefoot.

Daniel Romano

USB

Piya - Thorns of Grief

When I saw the USB wire and socket it’s look like they are kissing. It’s inspired me to think about a couple that save their sweet moment from each other.

Jirat Sueapa

Rory Oaklow

Piya - Thorns of Grief

This character makes me feel like she’s a rewritten version of myself, we both have problems that make us unable to fit in with people. It’s really hard for us. (I have autism and she is a werewolf) and we are sharing the same conditions.

We eat non-food objects sometimes.

Both of us have trouble with water, bathing, shower, and wearing clothes.

Both of us attack people sometimes.(I do it out of schizophrenia while Rory attacks people when she is a werewolf rampaging losing her control.)

Both of us can’t stay still or we will become furious out of discomfort pushed to go on a rampage if someone forces us to stay still.

I grew up with my condition which has always been a constant challenge challenging just like her condition of being a werewolf challenging Rory’s life all the time too.

Feeling like I am actually an animal living inside a human body pretending to be a human to survive, her story in the game reminding me a lot of my bad memories.

However, we not only share weaknesses, we also sharing some strengths too.  We are both physically strong, we each have our own straight forward attitude.

Both of us are an extremely loving and affectionate friend and partner, we love on our own.

June

Thonglor…

Piya - Thorns of Grief

2016, mixed media on paper.
One of my very first sketches/drawings in Bangkok, after coming over from Madrid back in 2015. The drawing is build around two common elements of the Bangkok scenery: the tangled, messy cables and yes, a Toyota Hilux.
The wild cabling will possibly be soon just a faint MEMORY, once the authorities finalize the re-wiring below ground. Maybe even the pickup trucks will disappear, and we all finally move around on bicycles and electric scooter.

What was the theme again, MEMORY or BEAUTIFUL DREAM??

Christian