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


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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.


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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


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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.


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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.


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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


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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

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


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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)


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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

**********