Artcore, noise and poetry! Win Harms is a poet who thought that meant she could drink herself to death in Paris. Instead, she is the rebel-in-chief of an underground press, Rough Night Press and edits Rx Magazine. Originally from somewhere in the middle of nowhere, USA, she moved to a French town where she heard Sylvia Plath lived. She then followed her heart to Amsterdam, where she is the mistress of mayhem of the underground poetry scene hosting readings and performing rebel acts of light. Win used to sell her Ritalin to cheerleaders and has been a decade without an address. She published a few books of teen angst poetry that now she doesn’t care for and she is often misidentified as a feminist. Let her guide you through the rough night of the soul.
SHATTER TIME
To all the metronome mavericks and poetic paupers bouncing in basements to forbidden beats,
To the word slingers and barstool bards forever philosophizing on unattainable utopia,
To the fuck pirates and cocksucking angels who worship at the altar of our Lady of BDSM, patron saint of kink,
To the lowkey tricksters and nouveau grunge tripsters dancing with Lady Death in digital overdrive,
We raise a glass to your epic attempts at distracted expansion!
We salute the beautifully doomed ideals of a degenerate generation climbing destitution mountain on the edge of existence.
We toast our fathers' failures and our mothers' malcontent, their egocentric empires crumbling under the pressure of their childrens' confessions.
We know Big Brother watches from the shadows of this 24 hour killing floor,
The revolution played back for us as consumer culture like it's 1984.
But we will not be silenced or sent underground, to attics, or blacklists.
We are the vanguards of the future but the past is close behind.
Old men always die; So will you and so will I.
Keep
this legacy golden. Break free. Shatter time.
Win Harms, 2019
How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
shout outs to the shift workers and shapeshifters
the backbones of society
the doors of the cage were opened long ago
I had just never learned to fly
the never ending cacophony of dead loves
deafened me to you calling from behind those doors
awash in the pride of poverty
and the ever present need for self-destruction
it all seems so clear to me now
here on the eve of my collapse
I will rise up stronger than before
the warrior poet
princess of the page
whore to the written word
rejoice! for now among ye walks
a myth amongst mere mortals
drink up if we be friends and
can you get this one because I’m a little short?
freedom keeps changing its definition on me
but I’m pretty sure we are headed in the right direction
Fractal
feeling conflicted, this goes beyond the
You or I
the animal in you I HATE but LOVE
it’s the human in you that muddles my intellect
the revolution looks different than I imagined
maybe sticking it to the man is better suited to the young
it is what we DO that defines us
and I don’t want to be trailer trash manifestations of nail polish names
“I could have been Somebody!”
as glass shatters and the air becomes putrid with hops
I want to cut through the cosmic bullshit and understand connections but
dharma is often sidetracked by human drama
YOU have been MY mirror
sounding like a desolation angel ashamed of my roots
the birds are silent after my breathing
sounds from my childhood gone save the freeway
still searching for home that doesn’t exist except within
so I worship you with dirty hands and accept your primal offering
