Robert Maddox-Harle (Western Voices 2020)

Exclusive: Western Voices, 2020: Edited by Scott Thomas Outlar

Bio: Robert Maddox-Harle (aka Rob Harle) is a writer, artist, photographer and reviewer. Writing work includes poetry, short fiction stories, academic essays and reviews of scholarly books and papers. His work is published in journals, anthologies, online reviews, books and he has three volumes of his own poetry published – Scratches & Deeper Wounds (1996), Mechanisms of Desire (2012), and Winds of Infinity (2016). Recent poetry has been published in Rupkatha Journal (Kolkata), Nimbin Good Times (Nimbin), Beyond The Rainbow (Nimbin), Numerous specific anthologies, Indo-Australian Anthology of Contemporary Poetry (2013) and World Poetry Year Book (2014), Setu Journal (monthly), Asian Signature (2013). His digital artwork is concerned with the technoMetamorphosis of humanity.

He is currently a member of the: Leonardo Review Panel: Manuscript Reviewer for Leonardo Journal & Journal of Virtual World Research; Member of Editorial Board of numerous international literature journals, and Australian – NZ editor for Setu Journal. Artwork, Publications, Reviews and selected writings are available from his website: www.maddoxharle.com

Myth Mongers

The obscenity of mediocrity

cuts across the boredom of melting chocolate,

as delusions of nature's ardent love

contract into an insidious digital invasion,

cool reflections of darkness

strut the moon to space

awareness contracts into frightened frames

in a transformation of whiteness

irreverently as blue cold steel.

Sorrowed leaves fall towards the body

turning angrily into frozen Freudian fragments,

the wall of the dream

prospecting the limitations

confirms the validity of the straight jacket.

The green leaf of minimum focus

tries to obey rules which could not exist,

the catechism fails all credibility

the lies of the liturgy, venomous

separating the skins of despots,

the deceivers myth mongers

who hide behind mantles of passion and deception

their journey one of insecurity and destruction.

Enmeshed with the taste of solipsistic rapture

hysterically we scream for signs

from the uncremated dead rotting with binary toxicity,

veering from lingering toxic visions

ancestral roots are severed by an eclipse

the silhouette of a foreign homeland

guarded by silent sentries controlling cyberspace.

The Opening 

Searching for the illusive entrance

distorted pixels dance in my face,

invisible time-warp portals close

then open to reveal new worlds,

direct dynamic neural labyrinths

editing complex interconnections

harness the energy of data molecules,

they hint at the universal truth

a truth beyond all repressive doctrines,

sinister-like laser beams

bluish, hypnotise me

entangle me

my heart races erratically,

another unchartered time-warp portal opens

drawing me forward seductively,

I enter the Zero-point-field.

Sea Ghosts 

  

False hopes, empty promises

the screams resonate inside her paintings

weathered by a surgeon’s scalpel,

those penetrating eyes perched atop a scythe

drag her bewildered mind back to her head,

the deceptive spirit of mortality

is a discordant dirge,

twisted strings entangle web-like

as the cracks beneath the White lies explode.

A butcher bird descends, perching lightly

the arms of anguish pulsate

as exotic distant voices echo,

an owl screeches in the brightness

spirits of the slaughtered indigenous chill her eyelids,

the screeching,

the death-cries of the sea ghosts

howl in deep blackness across the rocky foreshore.

Setu, April 2020