JUXTA/ELECTRONIC #15

JUXTA/ELECTRONIC 15

Editors: Ken Harris, Jim Leftwich Poets: Jeffrey Little, Jake Berry, Gregory Vincent St. Thomasino, Steve Fried, John Landry, John High, Taz Delaney ||||||||||||||||||||||||| John High "the first letter" #1 --for Lori Lubeski The child chose this shape despite my own doubts, these reckonings.... For this reason, not the one you expected, we awoke with her sleeping on my arm in the rain after hearing a mother's voice in the road. There are those who listen to this music and those who color its sound. Choral chant, what began a dream unsayable: Cock a doodle doo, my dame has lost her shoe....The blue-gray of the father's eyes closing as the garbage trucks arrived by the river. But what does the hair mean? Please do not say it. Her life will begin here, again. The letters on the table, the sky burning outside & this image that sends the eyes walking down a road. The difference is Emphasis. You say child, God says Another, and St. Francis is whistling to the almond tree--knock upon yourself as upon a door. An angel was once in this room. His arms aflame yet calm as the sun we imagine. We spoke of the apple blossom on the edge of a cup of coffee. I doubted my own sincerity seeing the snows of siberia, hearing of the loss of our sister.....An animal appears, a rock falls, and suddenly there is the letter S. The risk is not a loss of meaning, but the ghosted quest is this journey of a life. What are the red-leaved trees saying? Where does the wind go? O monk of desire, why have you abandoned us? We find all of these voices. Peach blossom then & the mediation of hours. Waking up in the prayer. She was the one who sent the eyes walking. The child's message was simple enough. "popsickles & gasoline," #2 --for Nina's birthday memorial, July 26, 1996 There is no measuring with her body. A child...a thread of blue yarn, the closing door when I left the other country. That which you do not bring forth will destroy you. What did a city mean, the place I was going? One, two, buckle my shoe! See this road, my girl lying in the grass, praying by the gas station, the pigeons on the curb. Some parts of our life are real. Stirring about the pantry with Peter Pan, cooking eggs in the frying pan....A photograph of three years, starting again--the tears behind the taut skin of our wandering sister as the train hovered in the station. Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, baker's man. Good-bye, sister....In the apartment a bar of soap, a human face, the water in the monks' jar. Together the child & I will leave here, since like St. Anthony, we refuse to go it alone. Orpheus on the balcony beckoning to the fire trucks in the morning. Why, only yesterday at the prison, I lost my nerve! Or as the poet said, I can resist everything except temptation. We will become that person. Reading Ecclesiastes & o dear what can the matter be. A sky populated with migrating pink birds. Such pinkness! Three, four, shut the door, father....Overlooked in the sparse leaves I found her naked doll. The child giggling afterwards, our mothers dancing with the buzz of the wasps. I counted out the change. For if you can do the same thing in the exact way & time everyday, you can save the world. O, this later scene of red soil, poppy seed bagels, the ghost sculpting time with popsickles! Five, six, pick up the sticks! Eternity's hostage, an act for the sun of our day. Awakening in a five room garage where all of the furniture says I love you. Good-bye. Good-bye, sister. This day, more than any other, we love you. "these quiet children of the rain" #27 (for Vanya) As if there were other children in the bush as well. She watched them float pass in the thickets of wind. A cold moon & the red of it like too much wine in her father's mouth that night they left the road forever, began to prance & sing with the faces of the clock in the shade. One foot up, and the other foot down. Who guards the guards themselves? The problem, the child wondered, was it not in this turning to the left when the path, strewn with children, lay directly before them? See-saw, sacaradown, sacredown....O, the songs of them, high-pitched & bellowing to the sky. Which is the way to London town? Very little corresponding reality between what should be & is, she thought, tearing the root of the tiniest of our flowers. Orpheus naked not, but no longer alone--for, if the the bread floats, the river contains the drowned one. A sour scent of acorn, burning leaves, even the ash of her father's longest finger stroking her brow. Yet I am the necessary angel of earth. Since, in my sight, you see the earth again-- the poet might have hummed! Still, this river. Me old man laughing in the rain. The child studied the faces as they pranced into the clearing under the blood of the moon & in this, too, she appears redeemed. ||||||||||||||||||||||||| Gregory Vincent St. Thomasino Rudiments This face that is a vase peering left & right the nose & chin of a youth in bloom is hard won with the uninitiate Rather, this pitcher a lip veering to & fro an ear or flexure Reading Braque, there are no metaphysicals nothing is illusion This face that is a vase peering left & right the noe & chin of a youth in bloom This pitcher that is a lip veering to & fro an ear or flexure signing handle held in hand ||||||||||||||||||||||||| Jeffrey Little organ monkey swing vote 1. only when the seventh isn't the seventh only as the when isn't only. the seventh is always only, only at the grand guignol. when the seventh's seventh are is of the seventh & the grand guignol, are. i remember that i only at those moments i can only those moments, when i remember. other than that the rain. but the seventh sevenths only & if at the grand guignol's when. only at the grand guignol seventh remembers the rain. 2. january the month my wife numbers pinking. i impulse again too long for the quarter to hold court. the air, plus. my wife numbers pinking. two of two, she says, plus pinking. in a january of no particular year. 3. the sonic recall of past potions cascades from the fall. coils, then. the rattlers of higher reasoning from the potions of past call. mantooth's dish ball rag. foils of. the sonic strike takes to the roll of past potions morocco perhaps but for the rain. ***** the secret life the latest census documents the lack of mystics working in elevator repair & notes that three out of ten adult males remain convinced that congress should deputize bob barker in the all out assault against alex trebek. eliminate the bad beers & what's left - there's your answer. construction upon the papal roller rink lingers on into the night, klieg lights & cardinals & 1936. i remember nothing of the second grade, just the rubber pylons remaining upright in the wind. as such i am a statistic, & must be held to a higher standard - it's easy! - i'll no longer think about the sand crabs spawning in the flower box or thumbing a lift from the pope mobile. at this particular pin prick in time - someone - somewhere - is eating a soft pretzel fully cognizant that no good has ever come from a bright red phone sitting under a cake dome. america is waiting. the data stream rides a dogleg to the right, it continues unabated, & comes to a standstill in the glove box of a '36 ford, wholly reconditioned the milling about i repeat: circumstance dictates a ferris wheel instead of the merry mixer, & howsoever you seek to classify it there's still that wait between the floors. ||||||||||||||||||||||||| Steve Fried from PLACKETS 23/nodding denied Gift me hot hollows of shook hips hurl hesitation spit from wild lips or fist-fucked lift twist shudder turn no found child sipped from plackets a shift smiled limpid wrist of girl dipped deeper than divers sift pearl dust where bodies reviled lift to twist each pip schist can skirl mild until kissed **** 24/selfless falseface masks grace bodies to light their eyeholes whisk bare personality off faces keyhole vision's cowerings, choral ask husks of ancestors solidly sanctify earth places spyhole-ridden ply hag tasks pace brain catecholamines to frisk dipole animal magnets till flask musk pours through holed aces masks always follow us, disciples shallowing suns' disks chased across Halloween **** 25/distant instants crepe that would be soft as iron lusts in your infidel eye sirens while we loosely drape dust on the drama of a fly dying in a spider's leap spyglasses fizzle into rust lying satiate we would staple juster causes to caught cries shape into this fateful frying whizzing through crust -- why not? -- gizzards **** 26/realer lyrical Shivers donate timbre, tremolo to moans. Breath circles wetly where fingers roam slow grasps through quivering baths of moist reward, then deeply linger. Bone leverage magnifies muscular flickers tingling to rush against death. Shines of shadowed nerve flutter caressed through long-limbed wringers, shudder as gasps climb home gush from flesh's stinger at cusp. ||||||||||||||||||||||||| Jake Berry Folktale 14 When the sun comes on in a spackled nimbus funk, and the quail's too hot to take his rest, but weeps fire into the writhing script on his chest, and the man at the plow studies the acid vapor that sings from his daughter's navel to extract Cain's bleak secret drop by drop, Name is a bondage to fear's mannequin bleating lonely. Folktale 15 Equine deposits till railroad barters the priest his heartattack cassock - a hard-on for perfect clarity banging his fists into the steam driver's tentacled child. Are your fingers so full of fishermen that you ache for an ear on Gethsemane? You'll find yourself crucified ass up while mermaids pretend a chorus of fine lament. Lust is a prayer left to rot between worlds. No denial can restrain their eclipse. Folktale #16 Chac gave the ocelot surrender. 17 colors and a diaphragm in his back pocket. When Rabbit came for his head he sent the raven to gather the media with a mouthful of serpents he'd hotwired in Phoenix . The flashpans and vacuum tubes froze Rabbit to jade and forever after he read Venus as a forecast of war. Ocelot took to the hills to feast on iguana, to study TV and the sleep of the world. for James Broughton ||||||||||||||||||||||||| John Landry VARIATIONS ON THE BALANCING BALL ACT or DEATH BY ONE OPIATE OR ANOTHER "I object to being killed in wartime" Jacques Vache 1. seven seals sun themselves at low tide contentedly agitated by the cry of one lone loon 2. Military Industrial Complex be damned ! no phoenix rises from this Fire Dance hovers maybe a paper bird a thin black ash like Maui snow that sweet gone cane wing a small child's kite cut loose and sucked up toward the sun 3. anything which is inhuman I do not care for Reno is dizzied with gambling Reno is Nero sidewise fiddling with the tactics of men no revolution in letting burn the compound fracture of the everywhere cyclomyopian screen through which all I's are mesmered 4. under the unsealed sun boredom is one thing not necessary to suffer yet the fool, my dancecard is filled with patience, mercy, compassion xx the invisible chorus of all my other selves 5. come, panacea for a day or 2 if we keep up this way inebriated by power we'll be unable to detect when the rapture comes-- hell, either it's a daily rapture or it's nuthin', Baby. 6. Vache whispers through my laparoscopic wounds "Nothing will kill a man for you like being obliged to represent a country." song ricochets from breast bone to pelvis through new secret chambers singing for the gone felosdese 7. fling that organized hairshirt into the night pry your operculum open doomed are those around the ones who believe it is impractical to dream +++++++++++++++++++++++++ My Watch I rise from cat naps dizzied by the thusfar What these ears hear in silent night holy night is more than skunk along the asphalt sudden owl in and out of the dark as if I am not there bell buoys rocking rolling in the channel at the change of tide bobbing heads obligingly ringing the hell out of their bells the click of insects in the pitch black canopy I crawl up into my window open and I slink down and out and up the tree or by the dirt road where it turns to lawn the rabbits nibble at in light a raccoon barrels toward the trash can nimble in his access to our disgarded stores or the rats from the woodpile and the feed shed leap up over the rim of the 55 gallon drum we burn our garbage in at dusk the the wind's blowing toward the woods and not the neighbor's yard caring like others have not cared for fireflies and sand fleas and horseshoe crabs a rustling cuff along the moonlit shore and I among them this is my watch while others sleep their peace and here at dawn one deer one loon and I alone +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Ancient Fire Brigades Turgid flint grinds a spark from seemingly nothing between two set pelvises. Then is now now and then in night coaches secure when hands fill with still-warm torches invisible and sleep that cozy guest. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Girl w/Lotus Blossom There is an eye whose seeing the flight of birds brings flowers to unfolding there in the empty center the pinhole of vision happiness and misfortune ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ||||||||||||||||||||||||| MALOK II IIIT'S ALL AMAZIN' or A RED LIGHT FLASHES ON YOU IN BRAIN It's like a typewriter's Dummy! Some margins fall off the edge of planting eggs. It is an immutable enigma that sits merrily. A potato plants seeds in the copy's germinating orgasm - mlorshti - innotomsha!............ Too much cathode fumes will make you delusioashockian? Or is it a matter/mind regeneration cloning of Mr. Geehbetti!? Can a big brain make a Big Bash of a Bang? Can hands make light? Can the desperate nature of Earth's TV save a galaxy? Or is me just a floating aspect of a Bern Atom - 666 Meta Syncrons! I always wanted to fuck my English, teacher. But I cundent frond the Prong. It's too much dilly-womp in the troubles, my seclusion emits a center......... or so a cat's mushrooming blit! Would I erase the program? Feb 7, 1993 Dreamtime AS LONG AS THE $ LASTS, LETS LOVE OUR WORLD (AND EACH OTHER?EH).....nihilorast! As long as I was a child (and very obviouslya very stupid and idealistic von, eh!?) viscurillic what's the problem, Juka? What can be the REASON for killin""""""""." Anybody. Unless his name was SaberTooth, eh? And even then, Id havta wonder. All these hopeful peoploids lookin' towards the skies and makin' wooopeee, abducteee imagines! For god's sake!!! They be only ten-to-the-ten power tryin' to contain (and somewhat eons past ago, tryin'g to understand) the ABSOLUTE mutherfuckin' concrete requisite reality of our utter gentile-genetic factual nimbus MARS CARDS CIRCA THE SIXTIES-MARS INVADES WIT HBIG INSECTS AND SEMI-DEATH RAT-RAYS! And we know it, for godzsake!' We as a race o' man (menwomenchildrenscats) Know we're so fuckin' madly (take a very close look, eh! historybaby!) that we is just waitin! Not ror! Not watching the skies! Not wortin' on God! Not glommin' on Smith! Not hopeJesu'! WE JUST WANT TO BE! THE MOST OBJECTIVE-ALLEE! THE APEX OF REAL badshitchoicewise designate! TED! most swirling stupid greengregarious little SHIT making choices (GOD'S semi-retarded gene)... BURN THIS PLANET.... is be. june 16, 1992 (whatever he says, okay witme) ||||||||||||||||||||||||| Taz Delaney Excision surface business in black door, dereally ornate floattranquil vowelight, mansphere, mid-air, the same insiding runpanic few left... placecrafts...spells. getting dark musicpane verseskew heights but slippery and low rainvoices, these wordsong, wrung, rangtween secrets &on anon infactsand writtenhand to the seemeaning of momentsenses described as entendres. Jump about scened playgroin 'suaded a self to "swallow the outskirts "? 11/26-12/11/95 1/27/96 **********