bkk UNZINE Issue 28

Loving THE UNFINISHED

Published: 1st January 2023

BKK Unzine Issue 24 - Loss

It is very appropriate that this theme was chosen at the end of the year, meaning that our job, if we decide to call it that, never ends. Art is an insatiable beast that doesn’t care about your Humanness. We are imperfect because we are unfinished, it’s not the finishing part that is fun but the “working on it” part. Maybe that’s why many projects look complete when unfinished as if they had minds of their own just like this…

Thank you as always and Enjoy.
Maia, Jam, Venky, Boris

Artists in this issue

Piya Profile

Steven Sills

Moe J

Gemstone

Steven

Andrei

Piya Profile

Andi

Moe J

Sketchman Boris

Venky

Venky

Canto 8
A War Poem

War Poem: Canto 8

(Click/swipe on left and right to read further)

And, from beds, what, in the days, (nights, 
With the Russian destruction of
Electric power plants, a national
Darkness thick as thin
Air in a pit), 
But count, another time, 
Sordid rain stains
On ceiling like tree rings,
Memorize, rememorize really, 
The patterns of floor tiles--
These embedded
Images becoming the
Prototypes for the  
Devouring shapes of nightmares, or
Feign, to oneself, this sense
Of not knowing 
Of the corners of the room
That have cobwebs,

page 2

To  have 
Some form of discovery, 
Some sense of learning
To the wasted hours, days, and months, 
Do any of the convalesced do
When having no stilted wands 
Of ambulatory appendages, 
To facilitate, 
By the act of mere walking, 
The magic, the parting, the disappearing acts  
To all these oppressive
Baneful fixations of thought--
Thought,  all respective thought, like a scratched record 
Replaying on the player disrespectful, 
All tortuous thought torturous replays when
The game of resilience and stoicism 
Is only able to  
Be played for so long, and so
We must be drunk on something;
Thus, we, alpha males
Imbibe the pain, sucking it into our breath
When we can. 
The spider, dear spider
Crawl,  now, my pet, over to the
Foot of the bed 
With the missing foot. 

page 3

Yes, many wistful souls in this room
No doubt like me, revert
To past events
As horrific as they might have been-- 
Childhood, abused as it usually was, 
And the mad monkeys that we  always were
Drunk on fermented fruit of thought, 
Believing life to be
Scent and song of the present moment
There forever, 
Families a permanent fixture. 
They, these patients, go there, into the past, 
For some  winsome solace
Especially when the mortars of shrieks in night
In this large room, 
Are this loud (romance of candlelight
Tried before but to no avail
But burned bunks and bunkers) . 

page 4

How in such devastation--
Ruins and debris this deep, 
One once again
Becomes engaged
In the small connections
Of life ( the taste of food that will be served, 
How it will be cooked--
It will be cooked with the
Viands of the slaughtered hides of men,
That one can be sure of, 
Russian and Ukrainian men, men;
The mellifluous voice of
The nurse's assistant
When one is able to hear it, 
When one can find it) 
Is nothing short of a miracle. 

page 5

Sometimes
When pills come
And one can briefly
Step outside of pain, 
Nursing assistants, 
Occasional nurses, 
Creatures with hair in buns, 
Cause us to salivate 
Like hungry hounds
No different than Russians
Who would rape anything from 7 to 70
If given the chance. 

Electricity needs conduit of wires, 
Fire a dry carbon object as fuel, 
But when the Russians blow  up
Our nuclear plants
Or vaporize neighborhoods
With tactical nuclear weapons, 
No spider web of circuitry would be needed
As conduit 
When air itself was conduit enough. 

page 6

When man so needed to be distracted
When thought so needed to be diffused--
Its air of noxious smoke 
Its hot ashes
That shroud
The way those  in Pompei were shrouded
In hardening ash
What do we do
But awake, startled, by those tiled patterns
That in nightmares
Became the deceased in mass graves
Talking amongst themselves
Of the aesthetic qualities
Of  fully decomposed
Noses or earlobes
Beginning to mold. 

page 7

And in the days
(Death is the nights) , 
We count rain stained lines
Of a ceiling, or formulate
Inane questions to self like
What is dust, 
Answering, "What is it if not
the decay of organic matter
Filling empty corners". 

Fire a dry carbon object as fuel, 
But when the Russians blow  up
Our nuclear plants
Or vaporize neighborhoods
With tactical nuclear weapons, 
No spider web of circuitry would be needed
As conduit 
When air itself was conduit enough. 
Forlorn, touch me, radiate me
To oblivion.

Steven David Justin Sills

Poet and literary novelist 

Unfinished DOT Art

unfinished-gemstone

Most of the time I like to draw a whole picture, sometimes I will draw a picture in pencil and outline it. After that sometime, I will color it the same day or leave it for another day. When the theme unfinished came around, I had the idea about drawing a butterfly. So I have a picture that is a full butterfly drawing a butterfly. So I have a picture that is a full buterfly next to a butterfly that is only drawn with lines. Then I freely did some dot art to create the orange and yellow dot flower.

Gemstone

Unfinished Day

This is an unfinished 3D animation made with unreal engine 5. This was the first sequence of a longer animation. Second sequence is, You will have to wait to see it one day. 🙂

Andi

(A Life) Unfinished

Piya - Thorns of Grief

Digital Art: Procreate on Ipad
We, as much as we want, never really finish what we were born to do. More often than not, We’ll find our ash crumbling under the harsh sun, mid-way through our journey. And yet, nature still bloom.

Andrei

Unfinished Ideas for too long

Piya - Thorns of Grief

Digital Art: Autodesk Sketchbook with Huion Sketchpad
This artwork is about attempting to finish those unfinished thoughts and bring closure to those that are destined to remain unfinished forever. Lately life has given me many opportunities to let go of all that did not end as I expected it or to not end at all, and focus on things that I could start now and redefine myself based on projects that I have completed and not the ones I never did. Thank you to those who bare with me in all this.

Venky

Burger Blues

Piya - Thorns of Grief

Digital Art: Clip Studio Paint
I feel sad just like the Burger in this first page of this French webcomic I started to illustrate this for WEBTOON app/website. This unique story was written by my friend Romain, unfortunately, we weren't able to finish this series. Hopefully we'll be able to get on this project again and give a satisfying ending to Burger Blues. You can read the story.

Sketchman Boris

New Artists

I like drawing with pencils for most of my work. I sometimes use pens and paint as well. Drawing is only a hobby for me.

Gemma

My name is Andrey, originally from Vietnam.
I am a self-taught art lover who is lucky to be able to do a bit of drawing. I've never officially ben to art school before, but I played around a bit with pencil,charcoal and water color before settling down to digital painting, all of which affect a lot of my current styles. I am really not good at expressing myself, so do my art, which are some of the visions I encounter in my dream. They are, mostly about a lonely world beyond, in which, I try to find some home through each painting.

Andrei

Join our community

Subscribe to our mailing list to be the first to receive our fresh issues on the first of every month.