GEORGIA KARTAS/SAINT JORGE


Naarm Melbourne /Poet, Bookseller


Georgia Kartas/Saint Jorge is a poet who is currently researching the Abyss and dark matter.


𓅔



A man has taken part stone, part tree into his body and being, for power. He did so in the forest, like two other men, but the two others paid a price whereby they became rooted in the forest, next to one another, becoming more and more rooted and stony, and very painfully sick, as they slowly became less and less human, black veins, hung heads, arms permanently raised like tired branches, or a prisoner’s.

The man thought he was strong enough in sense of self to not meet this same fate, and outwardly it seems that way, but I can see he is very sickly and exhausted. He eats insects he finds. I arrive in the city, where the man is now as well, away from the forest. I have returned from being away somewhere else. I sit on a bed which is his medical bed, like in a doctor’s surgery, in a dark walled room with not much else in it.

He says with frustration that he doesn’t understand why he is sick, that no one can work it out. I say well, you took part of the forest/tree inside you, and now you are in a city - trees want to be in forests. That’s why you eat insects I think, but don’t say.

(19/7/2021)



(3/6/2020)



I am in a timber room lit by lanterns. A corvid that is either a crow or a raven lands in front of me, facing ahead, back turned to me. It twists its head and I know I am supposed to follow it down a set of stairs, into something that looks like a cellar.

I am at a bonfire in someone's backyard. Someone I've been chatting to on Hinge invited me. We smoke a couple of blunts and he drives me home.

Home is a large theatre stage with long draping red curtains. My writing desk is at the front of the stage, and the stage drops off into the ocean.

There is a pier nearby that connects back to land, where there are large colourful trucks and wagons belonging to a carnival troupe. One of the troupe members, a tall androgynous person with fish barbels floating from their face, clothed in luminescent pale pink and white silks, urges me to leave before nightfall. They say the carnival is haunted, and their smile is malicious.

I smoke two cigarettes at the same time, and find a secret passageway backstage.

I find my cat, who has figured out how to open the cupboard to her food and is stealing the tins. When I approach her, she hisses and swipes at me.


(6/4/2020)
© Neptune and Manisha Anjali