CONTRIBUTORS: Spencer Selby, Jake Berry, Sheila E. Murphy, Michael Basinski, Ann Erickson, Scott MacLeod, Andrew Joron, Alex Cigale, John Noto, John M. Bennett, Heather Thomas
Address: 977 Seminole Trail #331, Charlottesville, VA 22901 E-Mail: SLeftwich@aol.com (Subject line: Juxta/Electronic)
Jake Berry ARTICULATING FREEDOM THREE BRIEF NOTES REGARDING THE CONTEMPORARY UNDERGROUND/OTHERSTREAM 1. By designating particular works as experimental we dismiss them as unproven, hypothetical, of questionable veracity. This is our means of allaying the unknown's imposition on our intellectual security. It is not until the work is analyzed, cataloged, and finally judged valid that it sheds its ignominious, obscured and burdened now by whatever aesthetic code may be in currency. Yet, what we are too apprehensive to witness directly is the very thing we profess to seek. We erect a shrine that obstructs the beneficence of the power toward which the original impulse arose. This is an ancient condition, mythically tragic. We are method's hostage. What we know of reality is not in what our terminology proposes to address but only the terminology, as it is an aspect of nature, itself. 2.A poem is not the telling of a thing, but the thing itself utilizing language, in whatever form (and however the definition of language might be extended), to transmigrate from one "place" to another. It trans-forms to awaken to itself in renewed aspect, and to awaken others to its experience. The poem and poet call one another to a common ground of being, where they constitute a single entity. To be more specific, a poet is an individual poetic entity biologically appearing. It speaks, it bodies forth being, participates in the theater of objects. What might be the essential nature of such a pansubstantial creature can only be discovered through direct confrontation and mutual dissolution with in the shared domain, the anitpersonal dynamic this union cultivates. We are speaking then of the phenomenology of the open field. Yet, we must speak in the negative only since any absolute assertion would only project an apparition onto the field. The actual projection is the whole field of poet/poem and all participants, indistinguishable any longer as individuals (and there is much that surely remains unknown, latent in the field). And further, the field itself, being open, is never subject to definition, but is realized through experience, through communion in the common nature its very appearance makes evident. 3. Finally, we should not concern ourselves with the establishment of movements or schools, by the name 'experimental' or any other. There is nothing noble in relinquishing our presence here to the status of artifact, shelved, another moment documented and weighed against the rest, even if that moment is granted fundamental importance. It falls on us to strive for a cognizance liberated from static ideologies and subservience to the symbol. The histories must be ended and the museums closed (they both are, as we now have them, closed anyway). We must find value in the moment's appearing rather than the misapprehended corpse of its past. With that approach it is our responsibility to be and allow creations presence that have in their character no tolerance for the spirit of closure no more than any other organism can tolerate imprisonment. They are creatures without dimension, the living courses of liberation through the infinite. ****************************** Sheila E. Murphy THE WORD TOAST The one who painted himself insecure to others kept using the word toast as if to beg the power of a talisman to coat his shack with bullet-proof transparency. If victimed by the fact of a transparency. Many acres since have been inhaled into his possession. Headlock mates with slides the heart's eye makes. He races to unfinish lines before his hypothetical opponents can consider factual arrivance. Do they make fun of his cleats, his hand tooled pistol, vats of acid he owns shares of. Do they make fun of eyes that fathom poverty as he has known it and consistently misplaces into future tense. Do they see all the way into his bones to know no blue blood he would feign can swim in that vicinity. Do they reduce or see him evenly. The one with life to prove yet wears a petproof winter in which shepherdly behavior leaks a frothed blue breath above the cars. Would any shoulder minus sainthood let his head be there. He wouldn't question custom. Only would continue his embodiment of big screen things no one can tender very long inside a heart however stretched toward forgiveness. Sheila E. Murphy CONSTRUCTION ZONE Prom queen glibly as a print embodied muscularity of artist's line not bandaged from her whole heart. Through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous...shells made fragrant through erosion. Downtime seemed maternal. She line segmented a cough, made plain the diseconomy of splintering. Bruised texts, up for renewal for which she was instructed to remember code word anguish from the hot line. Untended parks once neutral places left their hinges. Watching became the highest form of flattery, sand grains entering the winded place of children. Forethought requiring that one conquer through division the prime number feminine. Much charted waters attributed to blank space in the equation. Cornerstone, pure water, software, a hotel ****************************** Michael Basinski 3 POEMS from CATACHRESIS MUM nupid cupital eel elm allusion awl arch emballing the lover's ear encircle a more in music never mute will hear the lowest bus to the use of the tongue chance dance a sovereign throne torn thorn thorny squeal peel! and fill'd feel flock of forest all so hearted O lOve list wish lust knot must longer longing graze on my lips or upon ship sip rose hip tic tock but her jesses (thongs passOnion As the height corresponds to the length of the possessing zone neglecting the term of the sun and defining the mean residence time is given ****************************** Spencer Selby POSSESSION Tale of wicked dawn outside image weapon makes me accomplish consent ravenous Narcotic asserting furtive and vocal given to like advantage enduring the day the mind the house scatter dark room speech covenant no way obscure paradise hollow dream in suicide past Strike bulging maze said generation now almost sky fear abandon one another Eat matter in public intimate rage stone not look force within killing words broken cutting burning between your millions hidden and paid for empty Written with a shut door spinning faster body to inhabit when I'm out in the cold or stuck in midway country Put down drop ever wealth return years' foothold foreign music lost on such deep liquid Heaven sent ground motive blazing shell street current hand in the way of desire becoming helpless Rain over miracle sign needle facing inward light mountain roots of power finds me more at the start Spencer Selby SO LONG Life again set off by chatter ring around it rushing perverse material defended like it was a hymn Press seed charge from roots that narrow soft blow begging brightness weary intimate voice of age in advance Together with the only world I know for certain death flower petal eros nature down the appetite I'm hearing with my head I've seen black eye to carry habit look nothing break loose total be granted more work fall apart shadow I promoted Now years after there is plenty earth moaning at my embrace hidden in shades of dramatic give it a chance Instincts reawaken what I didn't think was action needs quiet blood trail and damage of a very rare moment No silence touches remorse as larval quality no tangent temporal feeling remains in the past I point toward in my strung out wish Spencer Selby REFRAIN for J.T. "The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth." --Niels Bohr Gifts are free gifts in a room I believe unexposed Line to line words to action uniform mark on the left of history space immediate on all sides always a poem about singing reasons for singing vibration period circle numerous glass to knowledge door to meaning and back around the price we pay death to shadow medium forgetting continuous negative pains to harden loop to loop talent for crossing posture pose beneath above infinite number battle with motive ring for wonder surprising dominant room of light remaining in darkness divine affliction around and around what it is you answer what it is I question In the middle unfolding in the present we're trying to have ****************************** Scott MacLeod THE LIFE OF THIS PERIOD being freely passed from hand to hand we can only react to it with complete disdain forget the reciprocal nature of its duties above all confessions of men obsessed against any and all professional risks the simplistic theatrical portrayal of the beyond [into a diamond, all blind and interior] these footsteps occur in a region desire to proceed beyond the insufficient hold it to be specifically modern [to hold the cult of men in deep distrust] unhesitatingly the notion of jumping off the track all the betrayals lost their footing [too late for the seed] burned, if we can believe his words for derisive laughter rumbling is not any number of men constituting a closed circle for the suppression of everything and informers run around loose, the time lost in waiting years, leaves them perplexed, psychic force by a means which is nothing, an animal from a flame or stone -- heaven help the most typical and characteristic, though it were true conviction I mean of the acceptance or the nonacceptance of this regime, no way competitive partly understood, confused, in defiance our allegiance to the principle of historical materialism there is no way to play on these words noticeable decline in the ideological level of the most undesirable intellectuals a progressive loss of awareness, this control cannot be exercised in political circles "working" and scheming together, [a pleasure seeker] in a harum- scarum sort of way in less time than it takes to tell those mysterious friends forced to confess the talent and force of Trotsky (your name grows larger week by week) such divergences, about-faces and betrayals of confidence wheat from the chaff, the sincere problem of human expression as though for the pleasure of travelling, dumbfounded at first admirably and perversely, to annihilate this ridiculous romanticism anything but the first cry, sovereign and limitless truly harrowing, finding its end in itself and aspiring only to serve just as pointless to protest no longer any "useless mouths" shamelessly castigating hitherto exercised to the full extent of its powers torpedoing...the idea in the midst of the sentence, he retires into the happier world no one had ever dared conceive of lucid, awake, he would be terrified, capable of opening that how-to-swim, into the water, now forced to say completely consumed the other beneath the tropical stars of all human constraints the ridiculous tradition young after the passage of centuries, this reconciliation rendered absolutely impossible the baleful bread to the birds the sordid quests for every integrity to run absurdly, learning it in snatches, submitting oneself anew to discipline, befouled, senile, rank, sordid, lewd, doddering the fact of the matter is that M. Battaille is simply very tired the light that will cease to fail brief beauty concealed dangerous sentiment of living welcomes the discharge of his sad rifles ****************************** Ann Erickson (having lost all) the moon is (like the Turkish flag) below the star and the sky like smoke in stripes of blue and green and red Ann Erickson cult leader waits for a sign from god assuming the rational but having taken my pleasure in the universe I cannot be disturbed by dropping bombs I await orders from the semaphores of hyacinth the signal plum battalions of daffodils smiles of the shopkeepers freebox clothes donations of salads mailbox existence the sun blares wisps of clouds dark reasoning video screen recollection lost where are the files ****************************** John M. Bennett TORRENT Past the luminescence-ceiling crawled flow of noodles steps shine bath oil and light I eat my shirt with parsley garlic lick the radiant bulbs with heat slowed //clicking in the flower bled where's, under, hawk chatter swaying table//OK, was you, over, the last tumescence reeling through your small law//knew less brine, wrath of//boiling kites and feet sly hurts lists hardly ticking. The "Radiant Bulbs" with meat glowed mixing in the shower-head//air's plunder gawking nattered preying's fable (Oklahoma's blood) the new sower's task (effacing, peels of skin,,,,, John M. Bennett SLIGHT Spam truth sun sings fatty wind the looser tooth reserves loitered phone or puling armpit hair, slats of putrefaction stones fall off your foot noose returns charming lists of repetition better than. Your bones in guttered rain of birds... John M. Bennett RESIDUAL Pall ignored chants of seed chance stayed sandy table glass floor ladder stepped within your swept delay across the roof wings of acid wash or clothes oasis stacking trucks I guess, the tense display of rust vapid chaw or else. Asking stuck shawl slept (planted in the gas tank roots ****************************** Andrew Joron INVOL Just as Chaos keeps its hidden orders -- assuming that Beauty is beyond scale -- if, & only if its iteration is driven to Fury -- so you have crosst my Tongue with the oldest knife. Skepticism must ban the sight of Utopia: a straight line is the deepest labyrinth. Natural language has no author. The reddening of the landscape coincides with the movements of a clock. Fascicle 1 The first line was completely crossed out, the second barely legible. The words were enumerative and blood-linked. Each possessed a shadow that hovered over us in the shape of a hand; abode of a star-gripped paralysis repeated in the gestures of Inhuman objects. Fascicle 2 The terms were perfect sections of the voice, skewed in consequence of a dreamt assassination. The letters, neither flame-like, nor flower-like in that world without sound, were aligned within a lacerating machinery. Denuded, then left to wander through rooms of interlocking narrative. Do immeasurable spaces exist inside one point? Here, you have painted the walls to purify my eyes, littered the floor with objects too cold to touch. Yet I am consoled by your philosophy of the Infinite Cage. ****************************** Alex Cigale Angelton -- James Jesus Nervous spies always crave locked mouths. Your staff, your Honetol victims were tested looks. The uses of your ancient safes to conceal the identities of spies from loose security were substantially safe, "beyond peer review", "worse, no one had the combinations",as you played favorite W.C. Fields with roll-top desks filled with deliberate "detritus" a bodyguard of lies concealing "the precious Nick Nack marine file", sound long term precautions to safeguard the exits of spies who trusted you alone. You didn't believe in the technology, weren't going to share information through terminals blinking secrets throughout the building. An "elusive mole" was able to "blink" computer secrets just as your alleged "paranoia" foresaw. (See: Index, The Cold Warrior, "Angelton James Jesus -- paranoia of".) When the great battle was over the gravediggers came and, while cutting their dead throats, told the corpses what they had done wrong. "Angelton did not believe in the technology." You and the ancient "Grandpa" safe mocked on agency parade will always march in the First Cohort of spies that accepts seared beaten warriors as normal. Still you would not disclose, not even to your death in dishonor, the identity of Nick Nack(s) held by you in so silent a place the inevitable traitor could be identified in some distant year on activation. You alone correctly foresaw what would destroy world trust in the capacity of the covert services to keep their mouth shut. The final disaster. Marlowe and Helen still carry the Eagle on a Trojan horse with Nick Nack and Ann not far behind. Did Nick Nack die? Not while your safes had him. Where is "Grandpa"? Clearly your Fermi Accelerator Laboratory for the wisdom of ancient treason, always and forever bringing mirrors to Mother from the Cockroach Universe of spies, endlessly recoding into your DNA computer bases the precise mutation to mass defined on impact by the elusive scattered particles of new treason, flipping the coded bases the norm calls errors to razor balance mirrored Dirac universes, CJD fusing Angelton neurons by infinite mirror coding into strong forces top vomit quarks mutating by pulse down the DNA spine of your and Kim's beloved great spongiform game of Trojan basics: if two mouths know the name of a spy spies die. Ask the Guardian Editor! You are entitled to a closing argument. ****************************** John Noto ROBOTIC- BIRDSONG NOCTURNE: POWER-DOWN Late last night on microcassette I felt ribbons flown in the beaks of sparrows slash the lips of metropolitan aexual steel mascara gliding over crucible landscapes in patient stilettos Voice activated through lipstick banners of blood and current drawn from small reaching hands you've wired eyes for crying down incestual cheeks spilling over with rouge and flour Shaped like a bright doughy bird cut from paper dolls for a cat's eye sucked through the failure-to-please conjunction Wind-tunnel I reel in the shadows of your knees in daughter-of-the-nails fatherhood on hard-drive Flame-retardant living in the age of writhing on-screen strange tender dreaming Deflects toothmarks deeper than I thought gnawing your temples my palms Grasp the glandular language tuning speech amplitudes honed to knives pulled across two mouths slurring puffy intercourse sectioned to kill phonics screaming your voiceprint on my lips disassembles me ****************************** Scott MacLeod HOW BEAUTIFUL THE REPUBLIC WAS DURING THE EMPIRE! our territorial admission and denial [whatever. nevermind.] albeit at intervals well spaced out from one the other. (1924) he knows what women he has had [daily more discontent] abandons a portion of the terrain there remains madness, the generous supply... Some German girls with birds in their hands. The author attacks a character. Where we really find them again is (at the point) where Stendhal has lost them. by far the most important part below the surface in a waking [preceding day, dark foliage, stupid branches] I am sorry to have to speak about it idea, this woman, disturb it, only the marvelous (long) before the author has been freed painfully inflicted, the spirit of demoralization. we contemplate taking it seriously: regions clearly marked sibylline for the uninitiated irrevocably my point of view. deriving from hunger, akin to spoken thought, offering this one slight criticism: [one of the sonnets composed] in this supernatural dream-state, in malice, simply to orchestrate the marvelous score. of so many echoes literature is one of the [saddest] roads that leads to nowhere, silence (threatens) to settle in, incapable of failure, against death, lightening-like, highly unlikely. there is no conversation in which some trace of this [disorder] does not occur. mysterious effects and special pleasures. beauty of the spark obtained, these images which enrapture it equally imperfect, dangerous and inadmissible territory a burst of laughter, daily artisan in memory. when that happens, this system is as good as any other, indifferent to all the world's ballets. existence [is] elsewhere. ****************************** H.T. hand.made this time only the man with the shortest memory survives (inside now, how far can we go?) he will dig a hole (the obsolescence of a hand-made life) in hypertime only leavings, arrivals (screen of special effects) he will dig a hole and plant late bloomers with shared history we can only invent trees, a broad-leaf magnolia protruding tied with a red bandana half the people in America are looking for (inside now, how far can we go together?) setting the light, washed away in the glare of version upon version ****************************** Jake Berry PHASEOSTROPHES #1 5 blue legs grown from the bark. and waves of moss pour through her eyes anemones, pulsing fossils in rays nailed to rock oracle bone wept to choke neon bleat te deum sckek-idl-loam schek-idl-loam :|| (repeat) #2 paschal lamb glistens stethescope blue tin . Venus . lavender lapse into hypervalic seizure cool length of worlds strung through diaphanous wells or eons randomly dispersed in exquisitely decorated rooms across an antique couch lost in the stain #3 tinsel ivory deer thistle steel roam is scales at rusting lunation phase ground to dust latitudes where Draco bolts from twin graves across the threshold a covenant adultery baal pissed to fission stigmata wheat achings flood #3b (mesopotamia) -dorphin: prolog green labial refradction barley weight 6 to measure & each worker his mettle enough to conspire betray isotopic fresh catilage wound these pulleys failed sediment: bone partial upper plate, sinus vault holy is to meat the bargain #4 tithes in leather law breaks an abhuman rite inversions fixed to clay spokes catherine dead elegance abuse salivating tiers of corpse & treacle dollar-a-mug till 9 commands sloth his revenge #5 flame hollow edge clangs rack in pelvic cage, sol mare ab-synthe preterdeciduous winged cloy mantle the arguments' cynical buttress shoals where reeking carp soothes idolatry miniscule teeth aloud stale dys #6 ouranous spread violenly the ledger of bullets detailed ashen : extremities ovary : (deletion) imaging pox and rat shale wagon leaved with Cypress Osiris scattered full-throttle drivetrain mollusk "her performance as pigeon hingedx (a murmuring flight) #7 (anticon) for Jim Leftwich future lapsed into Lethe against dry swollen legs ache for no reason movements toward naming designating "that which" some non-particular invoked from hole, vowel Scarab sun infinitude So why designate-define? The chisel is toy to ejaculate web #7b Marium thrust her large hands into her pockets found the match till clumsily borne jackyls pose antiquities nitrate plow shifter Ovid screwed the badger royal & found Black Sea in teapcup, food processor, distillery heaved the vitals into his lap