top of page

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!

2021%20Inside%20Brilliance%20cover%20(Final)_edited.jpg

MOCK UP TV SERIES INTRODUCTION

By Kermen Choung

Video made with Adobe After Effects, Adobe Photoshop

​

First Place Experimental

ORDER HAVIK 2021

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."

bottom of page