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inter\face 8
Fall 1994
inter\face is:
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the yellow light at the intersection of manic street and agony way;
the cusp of the human heart, behind rib bones of steel;
a spiraling bullet of sudden understanding;
the lead dog, steaming, pulling into Nome;
where the rubber meets the rose.
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=======================================================================
Jim Esch
<
[email protected]>
------------------------------
Certain of these lyrics have been put to music by a composer named
Jim Morris who lives in the Philadelphia area. His email address is
[email protected]
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
A SONG CYCLE...
PICTURES AND PAINTINGS
i see pictures and paintings
they are staring at me
like a tree who's lost his brothers,
the orange wrinkled leaves
and they stare at me.
he laughed and cried out
"what does it mean?"
(as he stared at me)
unbuckled on a mattress,
bracing, framed in the breeze
and they stare at me
EVERYONE HAD A GOOD TIME
everyone had a good time
till the witching hour struck
just in time,
for the brooms went
and swept them away
WE HAD IT ALL
we had it all
all we had
we had it all
all we had
tell me the gossip isn't true
brush your teeth and get dressed
oh, they'll be so impressed
when they find it wasn't you
but the gossip takes it all
all we had
we had it all
all we had
PARALLEL VOID
running through a hallway
long and narrow brick walls
there is no ceiling
there is no floor
there is no feeling
there are no doors
get me out of this hallway
take me away
I cannot stop going
nowhere today
running, falling up
the brick has no cracks
there are no cracks in the brick
rising till it meets my feet
I cannot fill the parallel void
big as the space between ears
and I can hear no tapping
the black men are dancing on Lawrence Welk's
linoleum floor
(there is no floor!)
the hoodlums are lighting
the dogshit at someone's front door
(there are no doors!)
In my hallway, my parallel void
the freeway has no exit ramps,
no winners, no champs,
no pictures, no paintings
GO TELL MAMA
go tell mama the parson died
and Frosty will be naked tonight
the church is in the valley
and the stars are bright
but the Parson passed on
on a silent night
frame him in a box,
nail it shut,
his body's six feet under,
but his soul shoots to the stars?
papa's cracking chestnuts
in a warmlit fire
the snow is falling outside
the family's sad 'bout his wooden plight
and Frosty will be naked tonight
LONGTAIL RIDES
I don't need a song,
the rain, a shoe that fits
I don't need a woman,
or a cowboy hat
just give me my long tails
Longtail will ride tonight
GIVE ME A LIGHT
the bars are too thick
the drinks are too stiff
the jailbird never flies
he dies and sleeps all day
Mr. Yahtzee said
"I have a theory that
everyone who graduates
gets a game named after him
I told you it's true
you don't need glasses
see, I'm on the box,
my goldylocks fine.
I need a light
Haven't seen sketches
of paintings on walls
in sterile brick halls
staring at me
Cannot see void
but I know that it's there
it's darkness I bear
in the valley, the void
I need a light
shooting to the stars
jumping through bars
feeling the tide
dying inside
I need a light
Give me a light
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Benjamin E Magid
<
[email protected]>
---------------------
The punishment
i can only imagine, as the shots roar,
where they land.
what they do.
who they return to earth.
perhaps a thief; a liar. a cheat.
dealing drugs.
killer of innocents, raper of justice.
i suppose he got what he deserves,
what we all deserve.
maybe a user, abuser, mother
of three children. husband of none.
paper apartment, rusty sink.
punch card, shoe box living.
wad of life under the mattress.
for new york, for broadway.
going nowhere, knowing no one.
what does she deserve?
what does it mean to you?
Maybe a gray man. with a collar of blue.
angry wife, filthy house,
a beer stain on second hand clothing.
drinking for second hand wrongs.
can't seem to see, can't be to seem.
knows rats, taxes,
rank tabloid chop, bible of man.
meaningless, hopeless,
stagnant existence.
what does he care? he deserves, right?
maybe its you,
empty soul,
caught by surprise behind the ear
in your car. on the phone.
places to go, places to demolish
are they yours?.
people to see, people to trample.
fast lane, eh?
bullets are faster,
your the liar, the cheat,
the corrosion, the rust,
your the spit and grease,
the waste and the loss
you are the poverty,
the perverse pain.
you are the cause
do you deserve death,
hardly.
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Unfertilism.
my soul,
one wandering alone.
uninspired,unfertilized
stagnant, roting, wasting away.
smoldering in a downward spiral,
longing to burn with angst
fear, frustration, growth
appretiation,
horizons of the soul,
the setting sun,
the waning moon,
the aging man,
erosion,
corrosion,
loss.
waste and crust
slippage of the hands
of time, of desire
of the need to go on .
fingers weakend by their
constant grasp on
a bewildering falsehood.
the horizon, the sapling
the dream.
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John Rescigno
[email protected] (Trout.Complex)
---------------------------------
Surrounded by fish
The helpless victims of war
Descend the food chain
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Creating Haiku
Gratuitous Adjectives
Swallow Syllables
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Xanthic circumstance
Indominable limelight
A deified man
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Aristocratic
Magnanimity failing
Sailors, faretheewell
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Rheumatic, aging
conquistador, cold whitened
; ; spoils ; ; delivery!
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Celebratory
return; to fidelity
Eternalever
[NOTE: first ever haiku trifecta: 5-7-5 words]
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Compression of years,
Magic hours pass, overnight.
Our hearts broke with dawn.
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Galactic waiter
With a flourish, serves up warm
Primordial soup
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Retracing his steps
Laws of thermodynamics
Broken asunder
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Rippling across
the undisturbed lake, a stone
mocks tranquility
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michael mcneilley
<
[email protected]>
----------------------
Michael McNeilley is editor of _The Olympia Review_,
writes for magazines large and small, worldwide, and
publishes frequent nonsense on the Usenet newsgroups.
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Hell
----
imagine brains floating in jars
small jars of saline solution
hard-wired to green
Army-surplus Kaypros
every passing truck setting up
ripples
shaking the cheap
shelving that holds us
above a dank and
unswept floor
in Invasion of the Body Snatchers,
you couldn't go to sleep or
they'd get you
replace you
it's like that here
for us podpoets
sometimes
secreting as we rant
we color their our liquid
a vile yellow
our nerve endings no longer register
the chafing of the wires
never wanted
to write you can only do it alone but
there was no choice
just the illusion
of choice
floating in production
uniquely our own
railing against
the light
we wait for the white
coats to come
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from rec.arts.iraq
------------------
hey I got these cheap used
computers over on
rec.arts.iraq
army surplus
those cool GRID laptops
with bubble memory and
the red plasma screens
seems the military
left thousands of them
in the sand hey they're
$28 each cash only
iraq needs the money for
baby food and bandages and
what the hell I bought 3
one for bush
one for quayle
one for me
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F. Scott Cudmore
<
[email protected]>
---------------------------
The Electric Siren Sings
All those with ears, her tune doubtless shall hear
As the electric siren sings her song:
Cast nets upon the electronic water
All you sailors of the quantum sea.
Boundless realms of wonder shall it offer
Out of ether and the reverie.
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A.J. Wright
617 Valleyview Dr
Pelham AL 35124-1525
[email protected]
--------------------------
tattoos on the mind
-------------------
merely a fragment of moon floats
over the early evening sky
a crescent as white as bone
rising in my sleep
and nearly forgotten tomorrow;
as authenic and forsaken
as test patterns once decorating
dark rooms across america
as safe as fingerprints
discarded on the sand.
later in the night
as an image joins the skin
we can dream
the souvenirs together.
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Gregor Wynnyczuk
[email protected]
------------------------
"[This] is as good as you will get [in this format]. The piece was
composed in a grafics program and the lines don't match up. That
last bit is meant to be half cut off on the bottom."
"You could say that I write alot and nap whenever possible. Oh yeah,
I am the poet laureate of Eagle Mills. Pretty cool huh?"
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polished aluminum alright
and the
Go ahead future I keep walking
help yourself and I figure
worry that I am in it looks
It's been a long historic entirely
time since you Savanah like a
I have have seen Alan Georgia Frank
never and his flying disk Gehry
been cardboard
here everything is experiment
before very clean alright
not a scrap although I
of dirt anywhere did worry
not a chair while I don't
sometimes out of place was gone answer
even though you are home
you don't
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Benjamin Henry
[email protected]
-------------------------
material of words:
(three poems of Judy Johnson and Poetics)
1.
transparent
conveyance
of meaning
or
resistance
and/or
use and quality of communication
impede the clear flow of meaning
defect in un-clarity
become obvious through serious study
a certain heft of weight,
to change heft to weight
and feel a physical object
apparently/subsequently
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2.
words that stop you
-like atmosphere, dense fuzz (of language/meaning)
-like (Dante's) shaggy words
-(like) a peculiar contradiction
about exploration [beyond] geographical
[and] Vasco de Gama by his song, reflected
all the way over
to the pale Vasco
coming out of language like a fault line
Alter-wise [is] Dylan Thomas - pure poetry
[is] meaning secondary or irrelevant
no word-by-word translation
surface use stops short of impedeing
hunked together consonants
half-remember
half-reconstruct places in a narrative journey
that a story has to go
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3.
historical context of poetic practice
Western history
dialetics - argument
reptesentation
thinking about <-------> doing
operative becomes invisible
natural assumption behind doings of art ---->
exhausted possibilities
smash open assumptions +
representations of art
parts of assumption of change in conflict
not useful to [those] whose
viewpoint
has not been represented
no concern with inventing
new forms to invent reality
marginalized: have a story that hasn't been told
telling [the] story is more necessary.
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inter\face 8
Fall 1994
"It is helpful to recall in this context that all the devices of the
book apparatus, which are codified in the treatise (and enforced in
practice from the five-part essay through the doctoral dissertation
to the book that secures tenure), were themselves invented as the
`interface' for print technology." [Gregory L. Ulmer, _Heuretics_]
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the header and this footer information. For information on specific
pieces contained in inter\face, please contact the individual authors
or
[email protected]. Brought to you by HUB Press, Albany.
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