1461 lines
34 KiB
Plaintext
1461 lines
34 KiB
Plaintext
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. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
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S A N D R I V E R J O U R N A L
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- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
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. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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Welcome to the Sand River Journal. Our goal is to provide a dignified setting
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for some of the better poetry in the newsgroup rec.arts.poems. Contributions
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are solicited from articles posted to r.a.p (not excluding works by fellow
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editors), and we vote to determine the final content. The Journal is posted
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quasi-monthly in ascii and TeX formats to r.a.p and related newsgroups, and
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is archived at gopher.cic.net/11/e-serials/alphabetic/s/sand-river-journal
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and at etext.archive.umich.edu/pub/Poetry/Sand.River.Journal. These archives
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include PostScript versions which feature publication-quality formatting and
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can be printed on most laser printers.
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Poems appear by authors' permission and constitute copyrighted material.
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Free transmission of this document (electronic or otherwise) is permitted
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and encouraged, but only in its entire and unaltered form. To inquire
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about individual poems, contact the authors by their email addresses. We
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take no responsibility for the fate of this document, and claim ownership
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only to any poems we have authored.
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Erik Asphaug (asphaug@lpl.arizona.edu)
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Zita Marie Evensen (bu016@cleveland.freenet.edu)
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John Adam Kaune (jkaune@trentu.ca)
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_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
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Issue 11 - Fall Equinox 1994
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_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
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-------
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Abelard
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-------
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They took the wrong parts of me, my love.
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Oh, the Canon knew what he wanted: a boring revenge,
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very quid pro quo and Biblical of your uncle,
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to take from me what had offended:
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not quite the mote in his eye, but it served.
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But he could not take my heart, my mind or memory:
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and those live still. The blood flows into them
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because it has no other destination:
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and it is still your blood, flowing
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through me now in lux perpetua, in memoriam.
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Kenneth Wolman
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woldoc@woldoc.jvnc.net
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--------------------
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The Aviary: Midnight
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--------------------
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A desire wakens me. Sounds -
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something like rain dying out - rise
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from the aviary beneath the bedroom.
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I hear the birds' dulling chatter.
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The brazilian cardinals and purple finches,
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aroused, sing to calm themselves. Impotent,
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I have know the immunities of darkness,
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its coolness like the rain that relieves
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a fevered world. My lover remains sleeping.
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The birds are calling me back
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to their own listless flight of sleep.
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My back touches her back; my ankle
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rests upon her calf. If I turn to her,
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it is because a second world calls me.
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Jim Brock
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brocjame@fs.isu.edu
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-----------------
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of lovers leaving
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-----------------
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it only rains like this in august when the perseids
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are falling. when another year is disappearing.
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you were born in the month of lovers leaving.
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the month when the sky takes its steroids
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and pushes up and pulls up and chins up and in the end
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pummels you with all the force of all the tears
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he wouldn't cry for you. this is august.
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it only rains like this in august.
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in september he is gone. leaves
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swing down from the trees
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skitter down the pavement.
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the rain puddles down to them and
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smooths them to the sidewalk.
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JJHemphill
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jjh54139@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu
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---------------
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Twilight Dancer
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---------------
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Time
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Loosens her laces
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unties her bindings
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Toys with her shoe
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She stirs
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A night flower burgeon
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opening in the twilight
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She sheds her veils secretly
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in the intimate
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and sustaining darkness
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The smell of her
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fresh and raw
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Timid and pink
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She blushes . . .
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In full bloom
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with the Dawn
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William C. Burns, Jr.
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burnswcb@gvltec.gvltec.edu
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-----------
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like a kite
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-----------
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washed against
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a beach of clouds
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tight hold tight
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against the wind
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just a bit longer
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higher
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then run
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dig those toes in
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stop sit breathe
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you've done well
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now more string
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Michael McNeilley
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mmichael@halcyon.com
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-----------------
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rectangle, square
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-----------------
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dear marjorie i am full
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of hope these busses stop
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at all the right stops my night
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is round is without hunger
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pleasure clean sheets stop
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i wish i could tell
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you how much i miss
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you relate my wonder
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at lights along the plaza
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wisdom delight continue
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dear with you a converse
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is always true, always honest
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always giving. once burning
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only coal i now take most things
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to be fuel without question
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you've made a good habit
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of being just as old
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as you need to be even
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when the needle dropped
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from full down to mortal
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you die more slowly
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than anyone else i know
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i thought of you as the last
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panes of glass were placed
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in the windows of the building
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across the street.
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Kerry
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shetline@bbn.com
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----------
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madversity
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----------
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Go away. She is weary.
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She cannot be disturbed.
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Simone has nearly perished from pleasure.
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She really meant no harm, yet
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she drove him toward a difficult bargain.
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Can't you see it broke him? He claims to be numb.
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Why must you flinch at the first hint of madness?
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Please pose your questions carefully,
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or he will disappear.
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He seems to be strong -- yet defenseless.
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Dennis Snow
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dhs@world.std.com
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------------
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At grandma's
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------------
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Terrible terrible terror terribly terrorized terror
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horrible horror horribly awful terrifying terrorized terror
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the depth of african violets purple in grandma's apartment
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on the windowsill where the paint opens cracks of enamel flowers
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her hirsute lips parting in a voice of tears
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she says my name and it is like a disease
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and I feel guilty that it is my fault
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that she is like this
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perhaps it is because of me
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when she calls my name
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and I do not know what she wants
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but I do not have it
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as she takes in the form of giving
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as if the tasteless food placed on the table in cracked dishes
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moved by the frail hands
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were a display of her poverty rather than of a good heart
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and I think to myself that she must be an actress
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but I do not know the play
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so stumble along in my role as best
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as worst as I can.
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Ralph Cherubini
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ralph@bga.com
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-------------
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thank you for
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-------------
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being a dear a female dear and close
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friend i send you my sincerest thank you
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and desire that
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you may offer onto someone else that which you have given me
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i see neither gain nor goodness in spinning acrimony
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there is no fellowship in felony my dear and close
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thank-you recipient i now put this note to a cleansing end
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as once you put a friendship to a messy tangled me
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now my once friend once my dear and close friend
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for which i thank you
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Marek Lugowski
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marek@mcs.com
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God is Dead
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god is dead
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she said
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we buried him
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on that hill
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long ago
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in wormy earth
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and since then
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everywhere
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flowers bloom
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without
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shame
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zazu
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an79015@anon.penet.fi
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-------------------------------
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by the river of swirling eddies
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-------------------------------
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how were we
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two small people
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looking at the river yangtze
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pointing to yellow water
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and floating mandarins
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clapping our hands with glee
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how are we
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two lonely people
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looking at the old river
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from opposite banks
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of a yellow ribbon
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like reading an ancient scroll
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pictographs of man's flailing
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against the eddies
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of recycling histories
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zita marie evensen
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bu016@cleveland.freenet.edu
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------------
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Despair 1991
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------------
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The soft wildflower scented air
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mingles with his tobacco and old urine.
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Panic, panic, panic beats my heart, a
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poisoning the beauty of the day.
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His tongue, an old gray slug
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licks away at my innocence. Though he
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is old and feeble, and I am young and
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strong, I am paralyzed.
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Guilt, guilt, guilt surges through my being
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stealing away that microscopic shred of too flat-out
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self respect that I had tucked away.
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In a burst of despair, I pull free and
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run, run, run up the hill, through the
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buttercups and poppies, begging the air
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and the sunshine to wash away the disgust
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that my stopped up, locked in tears cannot.
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I sit on a sun baked rock and dangle my
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toes in the liquid silver song of the creek.
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Light dances across the surface, lulling me,
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hypnotizing me, mercifully taking me away
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from my horrifying new discovery.
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I know now that it will never matter how big
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grow, something in me will not let me
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protect myself. My body belongs
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to everyone Very effective ending.
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but me.
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Sherry Van Dyke
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svandyke@inferno.com
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--------
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untitled
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--------
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what goes around silently
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visions empty
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a mirror
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The complexion is simple
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tooth and dimple
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a face
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Lip inflated and blue
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a womb renewed
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deadend
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what encircles the standstill
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pop-culture landfill
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truth?
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maura catherine joan conway
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conway1@muvms6.mu.wvnet.edu
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-----------
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burial rite
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-----------
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searching for a path from birth
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unfamiliar grass
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gives way beneath my feet,
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stands tall as each stride
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moves onward.
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old scents return at the center of the park,
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approaching the sod
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and stretching a finger to feel the chilly skin
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that nurtured our undoing,
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to caress limbs woodenly as she
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aside ambrosia
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a rainbow shudders
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under a grimacing half-smile,
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its head
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silken with scales
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reaches down to determine
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if I've learned any answers. did I
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come with weapons or
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bearing memorial flowers?
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and sprouts legs and arms anew.
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in a grove beyond the coils, a plot of land
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set aside long ago where crosses stare
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marked with brief titles.
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yes, I remember
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_wild idol_, she murmured,
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_even in death you'll cling to symbols_.
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to place a pear atop the grave before I turn away.
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if only I had bothered to plant the seed
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than leave the barren core in view
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again. the tree holds itself upright,
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from its fingers dangle tattered ribbons.
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we should get out of this graveyard.
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Steven Lyle Fitzgerald
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sfitzge@unix.cc.emory.edu
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-----------------------------
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yesterday there was balancing
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-----------------------------
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yesterday there was the beginning of a poem
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like the beginning of an i love you
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forming on the tips of unpracticed lips.
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it was there while lying flat.
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the grass on my back. the fire ants
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biting the sun biting too.
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this poem bloomed yellowly.
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growing then falling. and falling away.
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the edge of the i love you stayed.
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balanced precariously
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on itself. it balanced all day yesterday.
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there was balancing today.
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JJHemphill
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jjh54139@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu
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----------------------------
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Central Park, February 1861:
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An American Portrait
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----------------------------
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1
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It is a fetid skating pond.
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Frederick Olmstead's imperial vision sits beneath tissue
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on his workroom vellum, his budget frozen
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like the brackish ice before the promise of impending war.
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Squatters and beggars will fuel the Republic's salvation.
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Uprooted like the peat of Ireland,
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they rut with their animals in cholera shanties
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that surge and sway like drunken ramparts
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on the heights behind the awful pond.
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In Brooklyn, Walt Whitman, a newspaperman possessed
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by the demons of poetry and contradiction,
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lures home boys and girls who excite the nighttime streets
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with their squeals of release. His verses
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are the scandal of the age, condemned from the pulpits,
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recited by his cabal of admirers: married women
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locked in weekly estrus with their husbands' butlers
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amid the fallen fortress of whalebone hoops.
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2
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On an overcast February afternoon,
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too late and gray to catch the best of the light,
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the photographer comes to the pond from the wrought-iron fronts
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of lower Broadway to test a new lens.
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He has seen 100 frowning virgin brides this past six months,
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a genteel stew of copulants taught that they must never move;
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and too often has been called in an epidemic summer
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to an undertaker's parlor to photograph the sorrow
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of another infant's corpse.
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Now he will gladly breathe the cold,
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find it bracing after the smothering reek of a City
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he dreams as an endless abattoir where dead babies
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cry and dangle from velvet-covered meat hooks.
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3
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The pond is a sensorium undreamt of
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even in ancient Rome: a common sewer and shitheap
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where the smell of squatters permeates the light;
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and, amidst raucous giggling, the wild motion
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of windblown scarves, hats and bonnets
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desperately grabbed for in the air, slipping bodies,
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and the razor scrape of iron on the ice.
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But for him today, the stench is the fragrance of forgetfulness,
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inhaled to the heart from a frozen dumping-pond.
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Erecting his tripod, he sees a young man
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openly clutching the breast--ample even beneath her winter cloak--
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of his lady-love, who laughs and squeals aloud,
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"Can'cha woyt anither hour, boyo!"
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It is a place without the artifice of gentility or conquest,
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only the energies of desire, of passions that burn through the cold.
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And then there are the two boys:
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accidents beyond the accidental swirl of bodies
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and the pigfarmer shanties on the heights behind:
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emerging from the maze and motion, the pair stop still,
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watch him at work, voices shouting
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"Hey, mister! you here for us, mister? make our tintypes, mister!"
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These are not dead, nor sacrificial.
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Through his lens, for 10 motionless seconds,
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the boys become part of the light,
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frozen on the plate, for him an image of his City,
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immutably young, forever taken out of Time.
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When the photographer dies in 1894,
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the skating pond where he stood
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has long since vanished, filled in and landscaped
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as a path for English-saddle riders and broughams.
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Clearing out his studio and workshop,
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his wife and daughters find the image of the boys.
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They are still smiling: they have never stopped,
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and the wife and daughters smile back.
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They could not have known:
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one of the boys had died in 1881
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in a Bandit's Roost knife fight over a woman.
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The other lives to a great age, dies in 1932,
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having forgotten everything
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even as he forgot the photographer
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as soon as he turned and skated off.
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4
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The motion continues, something convulsive at the heart,
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beyond the power of the lens: a terrible orgasm
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and overturning of the earth,
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the immolation and self-consuming resurrection
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contained in the seismic motions of the City itself,
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at every moment crushing, sweeping outward
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toward its merciless, unfinishable destiny.
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It rises and it writhes.
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Self-proclaimed Confederate spies camp in Prince Street saloons,
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buy drinks for Union officers invalided home after Antietam,
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proclaim Darwin a prophet, and pray aloud in his name
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for the death of the ape in the White House.
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Flags of the Grand Army of the Republic fly from City Hall
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while immigrant Irish mobs, driven from their land
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by chattelage and starvation decreed by Victoria's ministers,
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riot against conscription to the Civil War,
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and burn the living body of a free Negro.
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Whitman flees to the Capital, wanders the hospitals, dazed,
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hears the crackbrained gibbers and cackles of gangrenous amputees:
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bathes their bodies, dresses their wounds,
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writes down their final letters home,
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and returns after Appomattox to a minor sinecure
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extended by a grateful Federal government.
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When the Calamus poems reveal his amatory tendencies,
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he is summarily dismissed, only to fade, disappointingly,
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into Respectability, the special hell of Sages.
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Olmstead receives the budget to build his Tuileries.
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His workmen, recruited from the shanties, plow under their homes,
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drive 14-year-old girls to stand in crimson silk under the gaslight.
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A drunken laborer drowns in concrete and Carrara marble
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when the foundation of Bethesda fountain is laid,
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and rests where he used to keep his pigsty.
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5
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The Park built, the City grows northward to devour it.
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The squatters' shanties are replaced and replaced again:
|
|
mansions and museums rise where squatters
|
|
bred the shoulders of the building City.
|
|
The Plaza Hotel comes to rest on the New York palimpsest:
|
|
legend says that the first guests of the great house in 1907
|
|
flee in horror and dismay because they can hear
|
|
the ghostly copulations of the displaced squatters.
|
|
Far downtown, beneath towers rising to entomb the past,
|
|
the common graves of nameless Negro slaves
|
|
undermine the Stock Exchange.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Kenneth Wolman
|
|
woldoc@woldoc.jvnc.net
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
----------------------
|
|
I Would for Thee Alone
|
|
----------------------
|
|
|
|
I would for thee alone this temple raise
|
|
Of animate muscle, hot blood and bone.
|
|
You'll wander through its ancient walls and ways;
|
|
Take rest awhile and lay upon its gentle stone.
|
|
|
|
|
|
F. Scott Cudmore
|
|
scudmore@peinet.pe.ca
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
-----------------------
|
|
Girl at the Hotel Exile
|
|
-----------------------
|
|
|
|
These Sundays I watch Father practice on the tennis court; it is
|
|
an indulgence of his I humor. I like it anyway: the red, Hawaiian
|
|
clay,
|
|
|
|
the yellow balls, the white shorts, and the brown skin are movie
|
|
colors. I drink Cokes. Life, I tell my father, is full of hotels.
|
|
|
|
Mother takes the defeat hard, and she stays indoors, still cursing
|
|
the effete generals and the communist students. Now that I
|
|
|
|
want to be an American, now that I wear make-up even though
|
|
I am but thirteen, I buy sexy novels. I read my family's story
|
|
|
|
in The National Enquirer. What I could tell would sell
|
|
big: how Mother dances through the kitchen naked
|
|
|
|
and drunk; how Father has taken to situation-comedies;
|
|
how they embraced me after we arrived, after I had broken
|
|
|
|
open my doll's head, revealing the tiny diamonds I had smuggled
|
|
from the palace, Mother crying, "My Jewel, my Jewel."
|
|
|
|
The story I know is something else. That my parents no longer love
|
|
is nothing. Me, I am only watching them in this warm, American
|
|
|
|
paradise. We are wealthy. I am not so young. I know a boy
|
|
at the swimming pool: his skin is browner than mine.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Jim Brock
|
|
brockjame@fs.isu.edu
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
---------
|
|
Sunflower
|
|
---------
|
|
|
|
The massive head, swollen with seeds,
|
|
yields to the hungry beaks of chickadees.
|
|
Wings brush the papery fringe of yellow
|
|
as I would have them brush my face.
|
|
Small black eyes watch me carefully.
|
|
The sunflower lolls its head in the August heat
|
|
and the spiral seems to rotate, grow heavier,
|
|
ripening as the minutes pass.
|
|
I have grown heavy too, giving birth,
|
|
and had that moment when I had to yield.
|
|
Followed by emptiness and relief.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Nancy Boyle Vickers
|
|
nancy_vickers@fso.com
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
--------
|
|
Jennifer
|
|
--------
|
|
|
|
Twilight brings you here to me.
|
|
Between the satin sheets of day and night
|
|
We lay embraced, reality
|
|
Forsaken.
|
|
|
|
Hidden from the sunlight's burst,
|
|
You trust desire to overcome our odds.
|
|
And no one bleeds, and no one hurts
|
|
Tomorrow?
|
|
|
|
Jennifer, I'll leave you now,
|
|
Untouched this once before again I fall
|
|
Without recourse, into your well
|
|
Of pleasure.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Brandt
|
|
brandt@hathaway.pgh.pa.us
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
-------
|
|
. . . .
|
|
-------
|
|
|
|
no words
|
|
even less thoughts
|
|
as for the feelings...
|
|
I've lost those a while ago
|
|
just a cigarette
|
|
fuck everything
|
|
I don't want this anymore
|
|
no, nothing's wrong
|
|
I'm just sick of it
|
|
goodbye
|
|
|
|
elle
|
|
elle@wpi.wpi.edu
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
-------
|
|
ProLion
|
|
-------
|
|
|
|
Gregory, Gregory
|
|
Shedding your skin like summer night
|
|
Under the orchard
|
|
Lions like the morning sky
|
|
Just as they like
|
|
To nestle their heads in fair maiden's
|
|
Lap, sweet of earth and blessing.
|
|
|
|
Lions like the rye that brushes them,
|
|
Taking bloom, taking bloom
|
|
Gregory that once was,
|
|
Will always be, circle to circle,
|
|
Pressed farther down,
|
|
Gregory that holds all to night.
|
|
|
|
It has been a year, unmet.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Bethany Street
|
|
beth@cnet.shs.arizona.edu
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
------
|
|
Melvyl
|
|
------
|
|
1
|
|
|
|
I wrote you a poem.
|
|
I walked up to the pub this afternoon
|
|
Complaining about my emptiness,
|
|
How I had nothing inside of me.
|
|
|
|
When I remembered
|
|
Watching `Eugene Onegin' from Glyndebourne
|
|
And Lensky going to his fatal duel,
|
|
And how I had then used Melvyl
|
|
|
|
In far-off California
|
|
To determine your presence, while
|
|
Sitting in Bath at my computer.
|
|
So I wrote you a poem.
|
|
|
|
I only write love poems.
|
|
This one has to be circumspect.
|
|
Something between Rabbie Burns
|
|
And `The Ball of Kirriemuir'.
|
|
|
|
I wrote you a long letter.
|
|
You have all my news.
|
|
And all my books.
|
|
Here is your poem:
|
|
|
|
2
|
|
|
|
I looked your family name up in Melvyl,
|
|
the University of California Library Catalogue,
|
|
seven million volumes.
|
|
|
|
and there was your grandfather's dissertation
|
|
from Leyden, 1911,
|
|
title in unreadable Dutch.
|
|
|
|
your father's and your mother's books,
|
|
your cousin's novels in Holland.
|
|
|
|
And finally your own little set of publications.
|
|
I have only one book in California.
|
|
|
|
Now I know you are back in London.
|
|
Working away as ever with the children round you.
|
|
|
|
It is good for you to be home.
|
|
You must visit.
|
|
There are twenty years and a dozen books to discuss.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Douglas Clark
|
|
d.g.d.clark@ss1.bath.ac.uk
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
---------
|
|
192 Miles
|
|
---------
|
|
|
|
The 192 miles that seperate us
|
|
are connected
|
|
by a single piece of blacktop.
|
|
|
|
|
|
C.Devillo Thomas
|
|
x93thomas3@wmich.edu
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
---------------------
|
|
High Tide at Midnight
|
|
---------------------
|
|
|
|
The island pines stood silent on the night
|
|
The moonless summer tide surpassed its height.
|
|
We slipped the tippy dinghy from the dock
|
|
And rowed across the stars' reflected light
|
|
With quiet slurp of oar and clunk of lock
|
|
To see the glassy blackness gulp the rock.
|
|
|
|
How shrunken, unfamiliar, was the shore!
|
|
Submerged were ledges lichen-dry before;
|
|
On foreign floating room our boat could pass
|
|
Down newly-liquid inlets, to explore
|
|
The shallow drowning of the roots and grass
|
|
By fingerlets of inky moving mass.
|
|
|
|
The world was full, suspended at the flood,
|
|
Convex, dark-bellied, an unbidden bud
|
|
Of fathom-vast unflowered force profound;
|
|
All nature seemed to sense it in the blood
|
|
And, trepidatious, uttered not a sound.
|
|
The crystal sky seemed closer to the ground.
|
|
|
|
I'd never known a higher tidal rise,
|
|
Nor seen such fascination in your eyes,
|
|
As if the moon, your sympathetic mate,
|
|
Had flexed its gravity, to your surprise,
|
|
Let slip a glimpse that made you contemplate
|
|
The pull of interplanetary weight.
|
|
|
|
We sculled the cove, cliff-lifted from the clay
|
|
That sucked our tar-pit footprints yesterday;
|
|
Our flash-light -- mirrored, filtered, dimly downed --
|
|
Diminished inconclusively to grey,
|
|
Then, gloaming-deep, the mooring-buoy found,
|
|
To surface yearning but to bottom bound.
|
|
|
|
Spin-drifting, whispering, wondering on the grand,
|
|
We rocked -- oh, how I pressed your pretty hand! --
|
|
Then pulled against the Proteanic tide
|
|
For cozy cottage, on our circled land,
|
|
As, vortex in the void to either side,
|
|
Galactic phosphorescence whirled and died.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Matt Waller
|
|
mnw@alpha.sunquest.com
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
------------------
|
|
The Honors Scholar
|
|
------------------
|
|
|
|
Every day he sleeps from dawn
|
|
To dusk. Night shifts from day,
|
|
And there he is, expecting a bullet
|
|
Behind the counter of a deli.
|
|
It's happened before on the night shift,
|
|
But it's all right, he tells me,
|
|
I don't plan on dying
|
|
Though I worry when I tell them
|
|
To put out the cigarettes.
|
|
|
|
There the folk in this backwater town
|
|
(Backwater because none
|
|
Could see him for what he was
|
|
Even if he shed skin and bone
|
|
And blinded them all)
|
|
Order without noticing
|
|
That the young blonde man
|
|
Cutting the bread
|
|
Has the soul of genius;
|
|
The cool light of perception
|
|
Intensifies his grey-blue eyes.
|
|
No, they're just waiting for the food
|
|
Served from the fingers of a poet.
|
|
|
|
He would have been best
|
|
As a British pilot during the
|
|
Big War. At dawn,
|
|
After some dangerous mission
|
|
He'd be sitting at a rough wooden
|
|
Table, drinking coffee
|
|
While watching the sun begin
|
|
To ease over the horizon.
|
|
He'd hold his warm cup with
|
|
Strong poet's fingers,
|
|
Golden light catching
|
|
On his unshaven face.
|
|
|
|
After cleaning the grill,
|
|
When things are quiet
|
|
At the end of the shift,
|
|
He mixes syrup, and milk
|
|
Into his coffee.
|
|
He drinks that while
|
|
The light begins to slide
|
|
Over the land. You know, he says,
|
|
I hate coffee.
|
|
I just like to watch the dawn
|
|
With the heat between my fingers.
|
|
|
|
|
|
lilith
|
|
lilith@netcom.com
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
------
|
|
Sunday
|
|
------
|
|
|
|
a black squirrel
|
|
slices through the leaves
|
|
of my front yard
|
|
|
|
he carries
|
|
a green spiny thing
|
|
hurrying away from me
|
|
|
|
here in my white bedroom
|
|
I have nothing to eat
|
|
but no one to hide it from
|
|
|
|
grey cars slide by
|
|
they sound like rain
|
|
on a distant wind
|
|
|
|
|
|
Michael McNeilley
|
|
mmichael@halcyon.com
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
--------
|
|
untitled
|
|
--------
|
|
|
|
shallow heart & mind
|
|
I shouldn't mind
|
|
he shines alright
|
|
|
|
. . .
|
|
. . .
|
|
in the deep dark
|
|
ness faint light and
|
|
glimpses of the making
|
|
of the universe
|
|
of perfect cruel love
|
|
. . .
|
|
|
|
so I don't mind
|
|
that shallow mind
|
|
|
|
|
|
Wlodzimierz Holsztynski
|
|
wlod@black.box.com
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
------------
|
|
three tenors
|
|
------------
|
|
1
|
|
|
|
but when, you asked
|
|
yet when will when be?
|
|
you see. it is like this - i
|
|
listened to three tenors
|
|
three magnificent magnificent
|
|
magnificent vibrations from living chords
|
|
which should be for what
|
|
|
|
why three warm apples
|
|
in the sun - i like cold fruit
|
|
fresh from a pile of ice shavings
|
|
crisp cool juice slowly dripping
|
|
down my face my breast
|
|
slowly mixing with my hot-sun sweat
|
|
|
|
2
|
|
|
|
i cannot deal with neapolitan ice cream
|
|
too much too much flavor
|
|
give me placido lento vanilla
|
|
pavarotti como chocolate'
|
|
and carreras of fresh strawberries
|
|
|
|
3
|
|
|
|
often i dream i am a silversword
|
|
on the slopes of kilauea - just me
|
|
a solitary silhouette in a field of sharp stones
|
|
i listen to the cymbals of comets
|
|
crashing on jupiter - i am
|
|
a nebula blue shifted red shifted
|
|
|
|
i walk on a balance beam
|
|
i am high cheekbones
|
|
ojos negros piel canela
|
|
in my veins run the blood of tenors
|
|
asian - iberian - european
|
|
singing the arias
|
|
of a nebula
|
|
|
|
zita marie evensen
|
|
bu016@cleveland.freenet.edu
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
----------------------
|
|
Eine Kleine Nachtmusik
|
|
----------------------
|
|
|
|
The drunk, on Seventh Avenue South, sways,
|
|
eyes searching for the focus with damaged sensors,
|
|
looks at us, slurring "Tha's
|
|
a beautiful girl you got there...sir":
|
|
"sir" my sure barometer of the life still to come
|
|
because the word slashes me open in lieu of a razor;
|
|
and leans forward, extends his hands
|
|
in supplication, lowers his head at her,
|
|
staring cuntward, and begins to loudly croon
|
|
"Embraaaaaace me, my sweet embraaaaaaaaceable you"
|
|
in a whiskey-and-testosterone basso cantante
|
|
to make Melvin Franklin sound like Marlene Dietrich,
|
|
transfixing with bloodshot lab rat-eyes
|
|
and the message: not of Dom Perignon in fluted glasses,
|
|
drained at Twilight Time in the Afterglow of Love
|
|
by dignifiedly spent lovers,
|
|
but of the beast made with two backs
|
|
in a garbage dump beneath a yellow moon,
|
|
of willfully drowning in the Sea of Love.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Kenneth Wolman
|
|
wolman@netcom.com
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
-------------------
|
|
the threefold music
|
|
-------------------
|
|
1
|
|
|
|
breath on me, cricket-whispers!
|
|
gesturing in summer's heavy air - at dusk
|
|
in slow crescendo... evidence of brisk wind's song
|
|
on water. Weird whip-poor-wills repeating,
|
|
winding through the constant
|
|
bleat of small frogs.
|
|
A Symphony.
|
|
|
|
2
|
|
|
|
The sweet laughter mingling with lilted, echoed
|
|
phrases: politics & philosophy in Portuguese.
|
|
the swirling sound of foreign voices -
|
|
small benchmarks of recognition punctuate
|
|
strong flows of words between three friends:
|
|
praise, disdain, solemn vows & contemplation.
|
|
A Melody.
|
|
|
|
3
|
|
|
|
rough-strewn epithets in English
|
|
amidst a backdrop of crackling glass. Bottles
|
|
on rocks: a thick 'poP' to end the conversation.
|
|
A few young mouths, loud radios. Murmuring
|
|
beneath the exchange, the solid throb of engines.
|
|
A Cacophony.
|
|
|
|
|
|
John Adam Kaune
|
|
jkaune@ivory.trentu.ca
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
----------------
|
|
Dirige Domine
|
|
A Funeral Sonnet
|
|
----------------
|
|
|
|
Quomodo sedet sola civitas!
|
|
Quenched are the eyes that lightened every street,
|
|
silenced her step, her salutation sweet --
|
|
gone is the city's glory, our gold all dross.
|
|
Now comes the winter of our bitter cross.
|
|
To us bereaved remains but to repeat
|
|
cold litanies, and slow with mournful feet
|
|
measure the vast vague outlines of our loss.
|
|
|
|
O child, did I not too taste bitter death?
|
|
My flesh, which you and she shared and adored,
|
|
lay once in earth -- ah, I am rich with pity!
|
|
Yes, mourn your loss, grieve deep, but know God's breath
|
|
breathes where it will, and all shall be restored --
|
|
I swear it, by my death! -- in spring's fair city.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Fr. John Woolley
|
|
jww@evolving.com
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
--------------------------------
|
|
Hyde Park, Chicago: Winter 1991
|
|
--------------------------------
|
|
|
|
Lonely crinkle of glass on
|
|
the street
|
|
Slick of ice, winter licks
|
|
the pavement
|
|
Trickle of slush in the sewer.
|
|
|
|
Buzz of city lamplight
|
|
Hum and growl of cars with
|
|
tired suspension and cracked,
|
|
dried skin.
|
|
|
|
Metered hissing, thumping,
|
|
quiet roar of music, voices.
|
|
|
|
Cold wind, chapped lips,
|
|
salty, watery nose.
|
|
|
|
Key slides in, skipping over the
|
|
tumblers -- turn, push
|
|
Creaking stairs and solitary
|
|
handrails
|
|
|
|
Open, slumping
|
|
swivel chair blues,
|
|
curling smoke and dry,
|
|
dry martinis
|
|
|
|
Droop the eyelids drop
|
|
and wintry air sneaks its
|
|
way in cracks,
|
|
open lightbulbs
|
|
stare at cobwebs, corners
|
|
dusty-bugs and water drips
|
|
in sinks.
|
|
|
|
Divide, conquer the sheets
|
|
and crown the pillow --
|
|
the kingdom slumbers,
|
|
the army sleeps.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Eric J. Blommel
|
|
eblommel@netcom.com
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
---------
|
|
Surrender
|
|
---------
|
|
|
|
the rains have come
|
|
to stay this season
|
|
streetlights swim upstream
|
|
struggling in the current
|
|
that gushes through
|
|
the iron grates
|
|
|
|
a bird shivers alone
|
|
black against
|
|
the bruised sky
|
|
but i have
|
|
turned my face
|
|
to the smothering sun
|
|
finding warmth
|
|
in my surrender
|
|
|
|
|
|
Jody
|
|
jupshaw@hfm.com
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
---
|
|
Him
|
|
---
|
|
|
|
In my mind's eye, I see
|
|
a flower, opening
|
|
its petals black
|
|
with dust and wind
|
|
a hummingbird
|
|
a whistling blur
|
|
darts in to suck the nectar
|
|
of sweet chaos, startling
|
|
the timid soul within.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Tanah Haney
|
|
thaney@ivory.trentu.ca
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
-------
|
|
the kaz
|
|
-------
|
|
|
|
we sat with saki and sushi
|
|
swapping sex theories and fantasies
|
|
then we toasted tired debauchery
|
|
as i listened to my friends - and i
|
|
listened carefully because they were buying the saki
|
|
and pouring it too
|
|
but my main concern of the moment was
|
|
getting my sufficient share of that seaweed paper
|
|
and green horseradish
|
|
- oh how i love the dainty trinket food - wrapped up so
|
|
neatly and organized like the
|
|
clockwork and conformity of mitsubishi factory workers
|
|
|
|
when the last little ceramic flask of saki
|
|
was finished - plates cleared -
|
|
we agreed that sharon had very nice thighs
|
|
and that i had a very attractive nose
|
|
and that pat looked better without his mustache
|
|
then we made a tentative agreement with our last cup of saki
|
|
that sex between us three that evening might be a
|
|
pleasant bonding experience
|
|
we paid our meek polite and always happy waitress
|
|
then left
|
|
|
|
Peter J. Tolman
|
|
ug958@freenet.victoria.bc.ca
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
----------
|
|
Transience
|
|
----------
|
|
|
|
You never knew
|
|
or so I used to tell myself
|
|
how little I really slept
|
|
most nights I slept with you.
|
|
|
|
And as the morning blues
|
|
so similarly the sky
|
|
where I am now
|
|
so many miles away
|
|
|
|
I feel the same impatience
|
|
with lightening blue.
|
|
Lying then, while the sun
|
|
stole again
|
|
|
|
another good evening,
|
|
watching, all the more
|
|
closely you
|
|
sleep
|
|
|
|
I'd stretch the minutes
|
|
with concentration
|
|
and feel the same
|
|
as then, here now
|
|
|
|
against the morning sky
|
|
that ticks, to me
|
|
insistently away
|
|
night and dreams,
|
|
|
|
if not sleep,
|
|
to the inevitable
|
|
harsh
|
|
alarm.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Michael McNeilley
|
|
mmichael@halcyon.com
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
--------
|
|
untitled
|
|
--------
|
|
|
|
Carelessly tossed aside
|
|
an orchid wilting.
|
|
A not-quite-scarlet shoe
|
|
with a very pointed heel
|
|
in my way.
|
|
|
|
Tight arms.
|
|
Slight charms. Too slight,
|
|
but tonight,
|
|
mine.
|
|
|
|
Vaguely fading,
|
|
hazy waking,
|
|
softly dreaming
|
|
still.
|
|
|
|
Liz Farrell
|
|
efarrell@ossi.com
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
-------------------------
|
|
White Autumn, Bare Autumn
|
|
-------------------------
|
|
|
|
Let us return,
|
|
and hope to discern
|
|
the concern that you showed to me
|
|
when the branches were bare
|
|
as we lay in the grass
|
|
and let the sky shadows pass
|
|
over us and all that was there
|
|
|
|
Let us revisit the falling of the ashes
|
|
and the quiet turn of your lashes
|
|
which you held closed over your eyes
|
|
when the fire between us burned
|
|
through the loneliness of the dark
|
|
and the twisted passages of the heart
|
|
until one of us put flame to what we had learned
|
|
|
|
Let us reconsider the reason
|
|
why that warm season
|
|
seemed much more deserved
|
|
to the starving who dare
|
|
to change the conventions of passion
|
|
and consume the vagaries of fashion
|
|
which now seems a little more fair
|
|
|
|
Summer for us lay down and slept
|
|
and through the silence of August the two of us crept
|
|
onto the pale skin of Autumn, as it breathed and awoke
|
|
and all over the land it extended its cloak
|
|
Shrouding us in snow, and stealing our worth
|
|
and the weight of our stillness finally driving us to earth
|
|
|
|
White autumn, bare autumn
|
|
The snows have moved us apart, now
|
|
|
|
And now it's winter
|
|
and I understand nothing.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Keith Loh
|
|
lok@helix.net
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
---------
|
|
Jethzabel
|
|
---------
|
|
|
|
The leaf, the star, the lighted moon and me,
|
|
Connected by the strings we cannot see.
|
|
|
|
A bird, a plume, the pen with which I write --
|
|
Her feather puts my thoughts down for the night.
|
|
|
|
A warm breath atomized by winter's frost
|
|
In individuality is lost.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Erik Asphaug
|
|
asphaug@lpl.arizona.edu
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
--------
|
|
Feathers
|
|
--------
|
|
|
|
When the Green man
|
|
began to hum
|
|
The mockingbirds complained and flew.
|
|
But then he screamed,
|
|
|
|
"You've hurt me and I am undone!"
|
|
|
|
And they thanked him for a song they knew.
|
|
He's quite certain now,
|
|
he'll never understand.
|
|
Spends his time meandering ...
|
|
Green man pandering ...
|
|
Rearranging rented cubicles
|
|
And puzzling scraps of paper
|
|
into different fitful views.
|
|
|
|
"No, that's not the way it was ..."
|
|
|
|
"How was it then ... more twisted?"
|
|
|
|
"God knows! I don't ... nor do I know why
|
|
Those mockers keep on squawking."
|
|
|
|
"Stay! Stay!
|
|
On the ground little hummingbird,
|
|
You're much too small to fly!"
|
|
|
|
|
|
JJWebb
|
|
jjwebb@cruzio.com
|
|
|