JUXTA/ELECTRONIC #7
JUXTA/ELECTRONIC #7 February 1996
Editors: Ken Harris, Jim Leftwich
Poets: Chris Stroffolino, Jacques DeBrot, Thomas Lowe Taylor,
Don Hilla, M. Kettner, Theo Lorenc, Dale Jensen, Dan Raphael,
Jake Berry, John M. Bennett, Amy Trussell, Holly Day
*************************
Don Hilla
FIXED PERSPECTIVE
the subject as object seeing as a sense of touch
Sidewalk skate
board boys
buzz by-
passing through.
Interior frame
of reference.
The doorway
of the drunken bar.
where the "telling is the thing" words function uniquely in use forced
metaphor form commentary on the process itself
A sensation.
Next to him,
a woman,
with one eye
on his crotch.
instantaneous impressions unconscious sensations registering forgotten
prior to conceptualization learning a new discipline to choose the perfect
details to use being very aware
He painted pain.
The truth came out
in flying colors
of triple entendre pretending.
Thought-sap seeping
through his skull,
slipping from his mind.
He weeps
as he sits and sips.
Pity dripping from his lips
into his drink.
the act of perception conception itself an act the visual unit isolated
complete an instant removed from time forever
Blithe dust pastel wastes settle.
Pale face of dusklight sets.
Shades drawn at noon,
trapping neon colors bright.
Night must not be made.
To wait.
*************************
Thomas Lowe Taylor
Relinquisher QUIETUDE
- as one goes, rain falls -
*
1
Formation of the bride
delayed your heart no longer;
this was the anchor in time
white light flowing free
yrs at the center gleam
Eye them downer soon, too soon
to seem, but then again....
Then had at (seeming forms--
underhand she yields against me,
touches underneath and signs.
Come at time no time this sign
(autism of the heart's benign)
*
2
"Business at hand & one
Alternate"
enhanced outer tube nosotros
elevator formos delineate
the plod, the plodder
choice/i'd write all the time
affaire du plume masterbo
thrown outer glint, husto prelim
nixed the nature of, sighing
between partings you hold moon
alert fries are husted bloom
I nark yr plenty, overboon
to the neater pin; elope.
*
3
I'd heard yearning within me
belittle calm in nature's pain
nor keep me silent in wreathing
lets this days's disdain become
what's new within tides spinning
nor the earth's begun, here at
the center tune, marked at the
longing site, I call you down
within me singing one in one
Then meant the tuner due, here
at freedom's spin, here at today
and mark from signs as left
the tide was bent this longer
from the rest and easing
e
wrath no detail
*
4
bewildered substances unite
next door now she flames
but the innert calm respelled
afar nor fixed, but central
to the spine's endeavor.
remix, as remembered doctrine,
you Were there before
in the white arrow, aformed.
delete to timer unrepont
eye heald'd sin within'r deal
at song a barrier tune within
yu hear me in repose, yr hieing
history's language at the total scam
beats at the mirror'd spoon
but not without un certainty, ah!
*
5
seas on one
one sees
r loaf
leaded shriner scrim flo
amaz s nealix prater no (
f 33 e-shrim for sl lietz
f f thlitls orkope x-se
norther's spud chick flin
eye struk ned lai f arx'l
MI EM N flought epixels
escaping thoughts net hart
"shooting [some] beaver" sic.
"Phraseology--style relates
to language and thought
while diction to language only"
em* * * * * * * em
linguica delinee' pasta
good for itself
estable consuelo-meter
ice the day out, plant
lurker erbit f f claz//
Im powrfl to kil
or
stroke the beauty in your hand
dreamleaver spunk
i'm at dictive, ur diet
forward throat
yr my girl
f f f f f f f
*************************
Jacques DeBrot
00
In AURA the cherished bough is radiance long
hermaphrodite. You, who change
CALL fates remained, of women, this
living hand: Archangel night,
bare stalk, flower, untouched
root. Their floating world in the spires of His treed EDEN
revived. Glowed in confusion.
0
FLOURISHED the hundred waves of external night. Or
by day UTTERLY. This
creeping eye to a beloved
body its twin fire delerium BELIEVE
and precocious altered.
Wilderness thus. The self,
my tongue, for that sweet
Word it rent. Or by love
ever accompany will unlace that region early foreign
borne to you, angelic intelligence.
1
Nor of death by WATER this PrayerHand
hovers wooden ever of generation.
Unhardened into HARVESTING. KNEEL
Itself, many leafed again
of my BREATHING.
Thus by life alone. WHO HEARS, unmade, the winged hour every
distress infected. Remotely, the intimations of a sign
heavenwards into CLAY. Tree-BLURRED as pearl, the pure rains
your voice embower.
*************************
Chris Stroffolino
Via Negativa
Seasons are either broad brushstrokes or little dots.
There is no in between. The TV is either on or off.
I'm not over my head in love yet. Or is love life?
Wriggling dusts itself on, a Nestea plunge seen as
a leap of faith. What is the time that passes
terribly slow if no one knows what time is?
What is lumber but kindling in a scorching summer?
And why is meaning such a proofless cross to carry
when you feel you make it or break it, but never both at once,
since it costs more to eat than shit, except at christmas,
as if one bad apple can spoil the whole DDT sprayed bunch
and the voice has not made the wilderness it winks in
in a myth we have to pass through, but no doubt should
edit out for the kind of network cameras we make fun of,
as if we're out of time.
We'd reject such dreams if the end were analysis, or
we can afford to flunk the final and are gamblers, all of us,
cunning in our alienation and our wonder and that cunning
is what keeps us together, as if glued to our seats so long
soon paranoia seems a vacation where once it was but a price
to be paid for the pleasure of being watched. And this is nothing
if not involved with love, though someone stole my name
and robbed theft as well and there is no drama but memory
and hope even in the hottest chicken so the zoo
can yawn in the garbage of fertility to bring is to the body.
Hope For The Wicked
Is like hell for the heavenbound, a threat
of piety polluting what otherwise would
endlessly earn the name of comfortable freedom
that doesn't need to be fleshed out but slips
in and out like what the corpses call a ghost
like what men and fish call a frog...
to itself no hybrid, music and meaning, the mistletoe
of estrangement, all the fucking flags flooring those
who thought the war was over.
But perhaps there is no way out - -
just because you know what comes up must come down
doesn't mean the man with the house on his head
doesn't have to worry about plumbing
when the go between proves harder to seduce
and the bridge didn't take the flood into account
and the message gets tangled in the messenger.
You're invited, almost commanded, to blame
the ideals even the body can become
and position yourself upon
the dotted line of seemingly antiseptic doubt.
It harbors passion, but must seem as dull and cold as stone,
to itself at least if not to those who pretend to sing
Strictly from an alien perspective
Where hope, an ambulance, is life's abundance,
Safer than average, a complex gong.
I am destroyed. Let them fuck with me.
*************************
Holly Day
With Lower Bit
old bald guy in a suit of our
annything after swamps and
women gypsies at teeth with your
stomach longer than the almost
the first time I heard this song I
was pinned beneath the body of
someone I didn't really like
someone my best friend had a crushon
whole around her neck you cried
already on my back either my
nose or it on teetering a
precariously forced head sings
alone, years later, bittersweet
dreams of closet doors, the laundryroom,
pushed up against the wall and
liking it, naive, thanks
for calling
*************************
Theo Lorenc
*****
devil isthmus spat-on maypole
visceral appetition in fascism's
unfortunately backwards yes novelist
of course intercoastal specious
drumming won't Benjamin spurt
into harvest jackpot bewildered
even decaying principle herds
own suspension across downtown
this fuck-up pidgin hello
*****
1. Total colourblindness: the perception neither of colours
nor of light and shade, just the generalized sensation of
masses, movement, depth.
1a. "No, I know he doesn't. No. No. Look, why doesn't he -"
2. The knowledge of the presence of sound; with the stereo
effect, a vague sense of position, and with movement of the
head, a more precise three-dimensional image.
2a. "By the river. No, the other side, across the road."
3. The perception of greater or lesser pressure (and the
abstract translation of the extremes into physical pain).
*****
Remember
solder
sparking
burn
allover
left-blister-hand-man
defined by
solitude, grossesse,
a certain
retarded
lasttime
Ten thirty five
*************************
M. Kettner
INTEGERS NOT DISPERSING
all yellowed and drowned-looking/kick burst/payment in rain unwise
to accept wearily or jump over too soon court documents revealing
the liver and onions of the non-matter debased by personal
conflagration over-heaped and closely stacked mud oozing out the
bottom integers not dispersing
asleep for the rest of the week the dark a sad suppository passed
out in its own reproaches while the lake sings to itself postcards
arrive from afar clouds the color of mail sacks
lop-eared steamy-breathed ready for stains paragraphs march
relentlessly forward in oversize shoes: losing rivets belching
semen license up for review eyes vacant dormers
sunset, mare's-tails like daggers dripping bull's blood a savage
stare and feral kiss beyond the conception of upright libidos:
their slats all in order bacon never burnt
tide line just below the knees meiosis only beginning bifocals
failing camouflage not working: flies at twelve o'clock/dog fat
sizzling mush growing thicker pots up-side-down pilot light out
audience seated ten rows back
SIN VERSUS HYPOCHONDRIA
sin versus hypochondria
punch card brethren
schematics indicating a dubious progress
no matter how low one stoops
treading oil, threading through narrow passages
qua this, qua that
nothing remains up-side-down long enough
governed by a mincing randomness
which is NOT what is desired or groped for
poorly strung together, in need of revitalizing
outwardly silky and chatoyant
osculations performed though primarily on inanimate objects
*************************
Dan Raphael
On the Chin
we take upon the chin
voluminous napkins open like frenzied clouds
drop all of rain's disguises threaten to sprout like grey pregnant elves
arguing with so many arms the light of interrupting matches
reminds me of saffron temple bells replacing my ears in prenuptial sanskrit
the first steps in untanned boots, boots still mooing,
brown eyes challenging the horizon's bravado--
keep pulling the mountain closer, pulling the ground over my head
like a blanket of allergen ferns, action heroes with black belts in massage
fiercely liberate my back's litany of stress and lost chances
if only I could smell the loam of drums celebrating every phase of the moon
sliced finer than diamond pizza:
everybody must get toned and tuned,
resonated with their first vowel brooklet acrunch with decomposing grunge:
food of the night, food basking in the warmth rising through the solid dawn
that never tides, dusks that never stop to inhale, an ululating equator, the
greenwich om
stringing the pearls of my spine, oyster the world
with mother-of-spectrums, father-of-spineless-pictograms
we take to the streets to hear and read without houses on heads, without
schedules
ticking our flesh maps desiring bone's piano roll improvising a blues sonata
for unwashed leather and silver ring trio.
the first
shall be bleeding,
the last will never wake up. weeks that sing like licorice whips, minutes of
nuclear tension,
the weight of billions of dollars penetrating each skin pore:
the deficit is cancer of the imagination,
the deficit is every junkie's excuse, a shell
game
with hollowed grand parents and
grandkids
searching for the pea palmed decades ago
we're 2 inches tall and trying to escape the banquet table.
when we hug we transcend our size and stress, forgetting our place,
not biting the carrot of potential, repulsed by the sweat behind the bait
*************************
Dale Jensen
DISCOVERY ON THE BEACH
i rolled down the windows in the fourth year
of on the coast highway
the smell more destructive than any fishy
drifted into the car and people were out of work
millions of families were pulse of the music
stardust it isn't
other and i was thinking in fear
a world as warm and dark outside
a car parked by the beach
the last one in the farthest had yet to meet
halfway also searching for now then
a vague shout
he led the american around
he located the nation to victory
after his car there was good
the sudden bumper cars rickety
a constitutional amendment
families with kids
the range
was given other parked cars
not seeing them made me nervous
PERSONAL IDOLS
install a new statue as the paper cup of bad coffee
come up with asking their angel
wanted to cast their vote for toil
and fell down
historians who've chosen dead
with a spear in their van get
your mother with self body-shifted
taking the inside of the cranium another address
make them sound like car
fbi agent
had bought lots of fair
anger was the only person
i was no one to talk
sometimes what inferno i'd be in
oh those elephants
igor straight to the melt early
look
wanted to cast a vote for thread
install a new statue in the even stuff she could use
life of wave this will live asking all their angel fur
crucified for resemblance to the future
personal idols among the work for myself
i just baby
had bought lots of body shifted
and i told her friends
*************************
John M. Bennett
*****
just boobs? shade) rising cross the snow fabled-sheet
(concision or expansion) sheety grin breathing-
window ("sheet") tossed and flapping in the tub or
diction (damp spoons) "don't fold that" sheet of
sprawling marks our sign nature RISEN caps and
sheets of sign for sign glue clanging in the wind.
Chair compaction foaming bones my head sways beneath
your swollen signage skin hat ("chewing sill"):
tabled bloomers signing, light, wearing nothing
but a (watch
*************************
Amy Trussell
"Sometimes The Wind Is A Loa"
Sometimes the wind draws off
a magnolia
sometimes the wind is a skunk
Legba drank a mint julep
in a monsoon
and rode a motorcycle
through the yard
Lenore had a breakdown
From this slanted veranda
the distance between
two points is nothing
in a flash of lightning
she's on the other side
Of Lake Ponchartrain
dripping wet
*************************
Jake Berry
PhasEoStrophes 3 Illumined Strata
31
Vapor trails through blackheart terrain embossed with
circadian membrane figuring tongues in the hollow shaft
of delerious acumen.
Technique's wan disguise, liar's poker from red algae
burned cold as the loaf-keeper's stallion on a sperm
drenched sun.
Not automatism, or tracing an ancient claw, but
conception's raw manner of bleak release.
Steel into xylem moaning.
Roots character form, and subsequent mojo.
31b
The clutches were caught in her razor, and a tenth of
them elephants, strode through the needle...
Behavior weights the serum with planetary inquisition.
of it could be said that prophecy takes a fall.
In other words the roofs have been reconstructed along
the blood ironies of blind faith as if wildflowers did not defy
concrete perpetually.
The full stellar colostomy.
Parallel faint.
*************************
Amy Trussell and Jake Berry
Lava At The Gate
Wind in the volcano
I stumble towards Pele
inebriated from her vapors
the figs that have landed as a necklace
now carbonize-
shrunken heads of my longings
Those eyes that draw me from the stone
or roses beneath a turbulent moon
wrestle me til dawn
their tongues through my bleak language
caress the apparatus
of a lioness sniffing, reading the breeze
Soon her nose is pushed
all the way into my fear
I bolt like an ibex
bu she's out for blood
now I'm backing up
lava before a cliff
She is white and seductive
she is red and waiting
she is black and rich with stars
I bow to her ruptures
and wail in crisp air
for her presence
flowering in all these shattered spines
Light the citronella spikes
skin a spathe drum
at the center of the quincunx
all is warm and still
in this scarlet deliquesce
through the sluice gate of her call
*************************
John M. Bennett
*****
unless some case) float
til a
rinsed reef
and gloam
*****
FATS
phone facts the
glandser time
(clave)