HAVIK 2021
Cover art by Aydin Ermolaev
Havik: Inside Brilliance is now available. To order your copy, use the order form.
A digital version is also available for viewing, but we recommend buying the book for the full Havik experience!
Below are three Experimental works and four poems from Havik: Inside Brilliance. The Experimental works—two videos and one audio—are only available on the website.
The poems were partially published in the book, but due to an error, the full poems were not published. They are published in their entirety here and will be published in next year's edition of Havik. We apologize for the omission.
We hope you enjoy Inside Brilliance!
MOCK UP TV SERIES INTRODUCTION
By Kermen Choung
Video made with Adobe After Effects, Adobe Photoshop
First Place Experimental
Please make checks to LPC Anthology/Foundation; unfortunately, we cannot accept
payment by credit card.
Please send check to:
Melissa Korber, Havik Co-adviser
Las Positas College
3000 Campus Hill Drive
Livermore, California 94551
Order forms can be emailed to Havik@laspositascollege.edu or sent with payment.
Books will not be mailed until payment has been received. Orders received after June 13, 2021,
may not be shipped until August due to the summer break. First come, first served.
ROADS
By Griffin Messer
This is a video submission seeking to synergize visual art, music, and word
without diminishing any specific aspect.
Experimental
WE COULD HAVE BEEN A POEM
By Naomi Capacete
We were something special from the moment we met
You were the quiet one
Always sitting in the back away from the world
I was the loud one
Burning with a flame of passion
Your soul was full of music
Your heart lost in songs
Mine was full of books
My mind filled with pages of never ending stories
It was the perfect duo
We exchanged words but our eyes never met
But when they did
Oh, when they did
A spark flickered between us
We could’ve been a poem
Our nights were never boring
It was always an adventure
Walking around the city
The midnight breeze blowing through our hair
Drinks in our hands
We would sometimes end up on the beach
Running around in the sand
Or dance around in my empty apartment
Until the sunlight peeked through the windows
We were spontaneous like that
You in your ripped jeans
And worn out converse
Me in a leather jacket
And combat boots
We could’ve been a poem
Our conversations were endless
We would text each other nonstop
Morning to night
Whispering secrets
Laughing at our poor jokes
Sharing deep conversations about our unpredictable future
Talking about anything and everything
Even when surrounded by a crowd of people
It felt like it was only you and me in the room
It was always just you and me
Our lips craved each other
Our bodies melting together
Your hand always finding mine
As we held each other under the stars
We could’ve been a poem
But there was a darkness to you
You were constantly drowning in endless doubts
Sinking deeper and deeper
No matter how many times I try to call out your name
And reach my hand out to you
So I can hold you
And tell you that everything will be okay
You wouldn’t let me save you
I could only watch you drift away
Falling into the darkness
Until we were nothing
We are now strangers
As if we never met
All there is are memories
And all I can think to myself is
We could’ve been a poem
A JOY I ONCE KNEW
By Bobbi Sinha-Morey
It came to me again, a joy
I once knew, so singular
and refined in its hope; a song
coming from our music room
so awful even the mice covered
their ears; and, before me,
an upside-down teacup, a tiny
white doily on top for two
miniature dolls handmade by
Parisians, a memory that always
stayed the same over time pillowing
my head for the dreams that lay
ahead seeing miracles crystallize
before my very eyes and my heart
brightened by day, a life given me
by the unseen hands of heaven.
WHAT AMERIKKKA LOOKS LIKE POSING AS AN INVISIBLE FRIEND
By henry 7. reneau, jr.
AmeriKKKa, distancing history, a unit of measurement, from oppression
by swapping the word history with the word post-
racial, whose amorphous nature incorporates physical exclusion
& random helpings of fear, paranoia, frustration
& outrage. Blackness as test subjects
for injustices to be practiced elsewhere. Every po-lice chief statement
of aberration by anomaly of racist cop,
the cockroach painted into a corner, the attempts at evasion—
not-me—
posing as an invisible friend, as protect & serve. The official
spokesperson's lie,
like the smell of spent gunshots, chalk-
outlines the asphyxiating repetition of our grief.
We drown standing up.
Black, as the clever gaze from hooded Malcolm-tent eyes, hears
every word comes out the speakers. Blackness, always
in someone else's country, because we, as stereotype claims,
were born of water hog mud, livid with the rage of fever
that makes us ungrateful, bites the hand that starves us.
My blackness confronts me with a desperate reinvention
of itself, the militant X, by which those who cannot sign
otherwise
leave their mark.
The comeuppance of flung Molotov
into police state lines
as the whole wide Diaspora
pulses through our veins.
But all of a sudden, AmeriKKKa stands with the Black community—
a shield of aloof politeness
romancing what could have been
gracious good faith & understanding from a distance—
opposes racism, oppression, &
police brutality, vows to
continue
to amplify
diverse voices in the U.S. of Attica. All of a sudden
Black Lives Matter.
IDIOT
By Shahriar Danesh
I’m the life of a shadow, the shadow of despair,
Made a life inspired by hell and “it ain’t fair,”
On the corpse of my hopes, rotten roots, lethal pride,
Rapping rolling rocking, on the bed of Cyrus, every night.
I tell Cyrus: “take a nap, I am up,”
Cyrus peeks from the breach of his coffin,
Then he cries: “I am burning, help me, god!”
Jeez, Cyrus, what the fuck? (I look admonishing).
I chill the temperature, by the cold gaze I share, every day; in metro, taxi, a rusty bus,
While walking, crawling, howling, and running,
To the park, with a bud, buy a drug; to the dorm, runny walk, cheap weed, in a suck, yuck!
It smells like yuck! and works like yuck! and feeds us up, with one more puff, a big fat puff.
We then laugh a little, cry a little, nag a little, nothing a bit, less a little, then go to sleep.
Wake up! erected, go to college,
meet some ugly make-uped girls who deep down I want to piss on,
But I’m rejected continually by the whores of Babylon. (I’m the oldest wrinkly cock of Persia)
But I keep on,
the same bullshit again, over again, over again,
Till I get graduated, with a “U-stupid” degree, that I can marry or call a bitch,
But never a dick, to fuck a job with. (“behave yourself”, Cyrus says)
Sorry, I’m pissed.
Shit shit, popped up, my girlfriend’s knocked up.
Other dudes fucked her too, but I showed up with her, so shut up.
(Cyrus laughs)
now her brothers and cousins are coming to kill me.
She was a saint, apparently, keenly,
Sewing her virginity clit to butt, while repenting to a funky god.
I'm shocked like “oh my, what the, oh my, what the, oh my, what the Fud.”
Got a fetus, in the belly of a slut,
no money, no future, no job,
Puke on my heart, spit in my cup,
Hurt, drunk;
Sitting, by the university, pissing,
Freely, where ever I want, kidding
With professor Benjy, master of 17th century, “duck, yo, don’t be care-free?”
“You’ll trouble thyself,” says he.
Well maybe, shall the spirit of doom save me, loves me she so firmly.
He didn’t piss back and escaped me.
(Cyrus shocked, like!!!!)
Then I sermoned scholars: I ejaculate knowledge,
now I'm magic, grand witch,
and y’all my academic whores,
I ride pain on you so you ride pen on them,
I’m the prophet of beat, I’m a scar,
And like a mirror, I will break” (Zarathustra listens interestingly while smoking opium)
now,
I walk my desperate feet, on the lonely street,
Give a trash seeker a smoke, who weeps in need of dope,
To spare the night and nightmare his plight. he dreams the light.
Oh light! Lying light, Moloch, murky, monster light…
The light ghosts me and ghosts me and ghosts me,
I keep chasing and chasing and chasing.
Till I weary, then I tell me:
“Pause,
Realize,
You’re the shadow of nothing…”
Yes. I am nothing, jaded, a ghosty shadowy nothing, faded, Waiting on
the edge of a cliff,
Looking into the abyss, naked.
Cars pass by me and caress me,
My people love me and bless me.
I see my girl in a car with other guys,
Trash seeker smiles,
A kid shrills, my soul flies,
“Heaven, lies, hell, lies” epiphany cries, (Cyrus cries)
Right when My brain and spine, scattered on the pavement tiles.
Tehran Bye, Cyrus Bye, whores bye.
Moloch said:
“idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot…
Die."