JUXTA/ELECTRONIC 19
Editors:  Ken Harris, Jim Leftwich
Contributors:  Jake Berry, J. Lehmus, Scott MacLeod, David Dowker, Michael
Crye, Gregory Vincent St. Thomasino, John Landry, John High, John M. Bennett,
Theo Lorenc, Mark Hartenbach

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J. LEHMUS

AMBER

Etch else etch echoing blush delve deviants delve daisies 
disembodies amber be amber deviants contagious contusion daisies 
be.

Else ascendence amber beauty disembodies amber crowned.

     echoing ascendence blush be be delay delve

ascendence amber echoing at be beauty amber beauty abysmal 
contusion far beauty.


ETCHING

blackspot beneath daisies

A a beads abraca beauty and could and drawn got at broke amber 
down crowd.

Absorbed and etch down echoing eyes gravure and books got faint 
furies.

Etch broken delayed disembodies delay cross drew amber blossoms 
amber domestica by centre crowd beauty.

Could change dreamed daisies bright 

a faint beauty & disembodied.


BEAUTY

A a and a and an broken an could first and beauty adapt could by 
a always down could disappeared down flowing an at first.

Drawn fainter down beauty centre.

Circular centre built could adapt as adapt circular book broke by 
and dreamed and always at could always built circling change a 
down and beauty.

As as by centre and always down and and as and as a broke from a 
as a absorbed and flowing and as.


Note.

These pieces are from a larger corpus titled _Codex Argenteus 
manuscript_.  A large portion of the material in this manuscript 
consists of cut-ups, computer manipulations and semiautomatic 
writing.  It was produced between the years 1992 and 1996.

The manuscript will be published in 1997 as _The Mica Book_.

J. Lehmus  October 1996

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JOHN M. BENNETT

louder mutter known you
claimed soundless utter
)rain(

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JAKE BERRY

 FOLKTALE #18

   The warm stench of hearts on your breath
  comes to flower in cavalier episodes,
      thrashing the peacock for fire's green tongue
   urgent to feed the swarm where
      your thigh seizes fingers drug through
  mansions of dendrites the jackyls ignore -
    the ape slows to presence
        his murder in cypress
      milking the curse for a grave digger's wage,
    her root is the tonic that christen's your brain
      scattered to seed the barmaid's routine

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JOHN HIGH

"forgotten beauty" #5

   (for Uncle Bill)

 The wind contained a clue as to where the road was going so the 
child, she had not spoken of it.  Or of the last day in our journey.  A 
ghost is not only a ghost, but then, a leaf is not only a leaf.  The ripe 
banana in the father's bag because the child chose not to eat it.  
Imagine the forgotten angel as if it were you, she whistled to his shadow 
as he shaved near the olives.  The child walked further with the rabbits, 
then stopped by the briar patch, but did not pause to pray in the sun.  
Two spotted owls off the road.  A blue-shoed mare.  Hickory, dickery, 
dock....His fear, too, shaped a belief, but how to speak of its silence 
with this sudden ringing of bells!  Off to the east, a white-domed church 
surrounded by scarecrows & crows & cherries too, he might wonder?  The 
child had not spoken of it.

 Episode, vision, dream--even a fairy tale might do, but these 
tracks go on without us, the child blurted out in a hush tone, smelling 
the blue of the shoe as the first mare had, then nuzzling its nose in the 
palm of her hand.  The holy ghost not begotten but proceeding in our 
dossier.  Socrates, Mohammed, the Buddha, you and I, Christ, we are all 
here to be accounted, father.  Since this will not be our last supper.  
She called on the deer, though the father had grown tired as the sun 
faded into the evening hue.  And for the first time, he experienced 
unconditional love.  Why, he had even laughed at the child's hunger when 
finally, she began to peel the banana Mika, the handless monk, had placed 
in the basket she discovered by the briar patch near the tracks.  All 
that beauty!  A basket & no fish!  A rose bush beneath the shadow of an 
elm.  Baby rabbits skedaddling along the green of leaves.  The three 
blind mice too as the clock struck one! The monks of the book had 
mentioned neither despair nor the skin of it.  The monks walking had 
simply passed.  O blue moon of kentucky!  the child sang to Mika, waving 
those little arms above the sun & the sight of his balded head in the 
light of the banana & all that blindness.

 Is that where we're going father? she now asked.

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JOHN M. BENNETT

heaving
other clouds
"my name"

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GREGORY VINCENT ST. THOMASINO

Bolt eleven

Samnesses re
    A
G
    A

In
    Gainingly autonomy
Imban
    Signs wonders

Semblances A
    G
A
    In re

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Bolt twelve

Lill
    Epileptic
Adit
    Canaille superporte

Triune
    Top hat from
Below
    Upward

Mermen
    Thirst Mercator pool
O'
    Satyr bad denude
++++++++++++++++++++++

DAVID DOWKER

Lyricware #/#


the image moan

aroused results

languorous
linguals
beneath hands reading
plays of within
her pale and nimble
mind familiar
fingers spool
syllabic touch
perhaps envisage
a consonantal rising
upon which the tender
bends into loosely lips
the irony intensely
and my eye speak of

archaic sleekness
technical flesh

phonemes possibly translate
as contraction and expansion
along absence
whether the pleasure
of the moment is
as of one vowel
or volume to pores over

the in rhythming entity

labial leafly
as translated
from poetry
poetry the suppose
the perhaps

me that mimetic
so that head slips
bed rising body

the touch button of fever
the where or upon
my this or that happens

the memetic effect

aroused impertinence
temporary dervish merge

infiltrate and dwell
upon rhythming
stick of
fingers made tongue
to speak of
the moist within such
exposed beneath

the diphthong slipstreams

wafts words-
pores and familiar lingual
sleep licks her window
lips screen my mind
the space translates thigh high
the loose and syllabic thread
read pores of hands reading

nimble thimble where
slippery in as slippery out
her gaze complexes
desire indeterminate
over moan bed febrile
window intensely vowels
the space of
the memory memory

*

actualized clear way
or virtual television
version of gone city
my ironical narrative
of the flesh
momentarily
aleatory
is itself light
to the meaningless
roil and always
vastly
does sense access
simultaneously
the need realized
which see life
impacted interactive
immanent possibility
the electronic
myself why
meaning unconcernedly
reconciles to
constantly my actually
comfortable space to
communicate
exhaustion becoming
limitless way

*

over
whelming
world habitat
the terrestrial
resonates business
of human sentience
transferred fetish pressure
upon monkey intelligence
which restructures minds
by monstrous realization
of the possible
(node momentarily
become enormous
entirely among previously
sexual contrails
high-energy multiplicity
hypostatized orbiting
the abstract would of language
and whole universe certainly
our connotative weightless
mind really ambiguity
this itself another
source of causation
the moment is
the written result
the geometric meaning
-full celestial energy
symbolically encoded
(by skywriting surely)
one absolute vast culture
which to reality is simulation
metaphysically jungle really
) reader: transcend the situation
this heuristic beginning
the mass then of lived matrix
the poem itself the habitat

*

the body
an astronomy
a mobile
eternity
etheric ghostly
genetically this
levitational aerial
double inscrutable
as language inside
the encoded night
folded with light
floating
motion bunches
of a like idleness
this universal
verbal
maze

*

the dense meaning of
doing through dialectics
the subsequently human
a representational surface
you become geographical
literal clarity
the true exhausted
vault of language
the poetic
a disturbance
remember reconstruct
the weather of dreams
or become contained within
a write knowledge

*

a tribal path
to the enclosure
here to our boxes
which once were
wilderness and she
in like expression
a readable crystal
purely inertia
the cunning reversible
wave poured into/out of
a hidden languor
language folds
delight in
animal sexuality
intermediary with
and ease of us
connects
quietly ardent
syllables compelling
desire and disappear
into a wave called
whirl temporal
(onrushing flow)
and other
expression

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JOHN M. BENNETT

combination matters
"sandy moon"
my chin breast

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MICHAEL CRYE

Lizard's Long Drive Home 
[the degrees of a supernatural cycle]
a story told in poems / dialect / image / motive


(survival of the species)
<<< in the 1890's / Science / was the / "White Magic" // successor /
to dark / superstitions // harlot / of a / spiritual / drought //
while / hungry / animal / kings / foraged / fields / strewn / with scared /
crows // chewing / mud / roots / small / bones / stolen / children / of man
//
leaving / the young / of their / own / in the cribs / to blossom // black /  
mouths / draining / milk / from / unknowing / human / mothers /
animals / will eat // animals / will eat // no matter / the season 

(we do not speak)
<<< oral / communication / is dead / our / mouths / sunken / murk //
who  / wrote / the last / book // coined / the last / valid / currency /
of words // the mint / is broke / our / pockets / collectors / of cinema //
the mind's / eye / has become / the movie / in our / heads // we are /
the drowned // floating / dim / lamps / of deep / sea / ghouls // 
waterlogged / tongues / of squid / spitting / ink / into a dark / 
universe // after / Adam's / plunge / all men / drown / spiritually //
regardless 

(the intent of leaving / learning / surviving)
<<< we / lose / people // things / we / can't / take / with / us //
post cards / lost / in / the mail / showing / up / in the / diaries /
of postal / workers // birthday / cakes / for extinct / civilizations //
prehistoric / outlines / of lovers / eroded / from / fossil / 
traces // the milk / your / mother / wiped / from / your / small / mouth //
this / is the way / we / learn / a stone / the archeologist / recognizes / 
as / a bone / was / a leg // holding / you / upright / in the early / sun //
the romance / of this / saves / us / the sorrow / of our / own / end 

Pittsburgh Morning

old

rain sweats off gutter and branches.

sleeping on our side

the steps of our hips

climbing in Pittsburgh's saw-toothed rows of houses
chewing                                    their way toward the ruin sky.

the fading holler of thunder passing even as the shadow
                                                as the sun comes

back to the morning;

late and humid.  her hands

around a glass of orange juice, thinking nothing
of our young ancestors, as the rivers couple
below in the valley . . .
           innocent of bridges;

the sweat and steel it takes to cross
the simplest of obstacles.  our youth stupid of years
that haunt the bedstone broken by deep foundations.

old stone stairs crumbling in tree
roots and leaves;  emptying into the quiet

of chipped bottles, smashed plates, blank
doorways, spilled basements, collapsed roofs of people
who aren't here anymore.

***

Midway After Dark (95')

We breathe / a sticky atmosphere inside here
the lung of ancient fish. / Jonahis buying popcorn
and cotton candy.  / we float on the spookid
voice of side show / calls. / the posters promising 
Fiji Mermaids in the arms of bearded women. 

We stand in line to see / bullet ridden car
of Bonnie and Clyde /  its body rusted 
into a dead stop / the same expression we reflect
upon the glass jar of Jesse Jamesi / pickled trigger finger.

Here we move / in the midway / turning
circles with the ferris wheel / spinning on the oiled sky
riding the roller coaster loops and bends
built like the white bones of serpents / gaints coiled
around America / tail to mouth
mouth to tail /  believing ourselves normal


***

Scorpion eater adapts ... (94')

iive been in the sun for days
 the cactus street heat
blistering 
     my feet into red rock skin

turning stones over a sun-
 stroked body starved
to sunken subways
of new york city

where the sun reaches
 no deeper then first light
of open doors
cracked windows

where we have learned 
 to live without air
conditioning ... chewing 
poison like wet rags

drawing water from faucets
 fixing the leaks
with wrenches and confidence
big cities seldom afford

in summeris long days
and endless showers, staying
 clean, above
the eye level of cockroaches.

***

Pissacois Blues (93')

in off-focus  / reach of rooms / no light 
could finish the lines / illuminate the halo 
of the notes give the guitar player / a dime / for his emotionless
face / made without words / but the sin our bodies
endow so obvious / upon / our mortal self
revealed / so absolute / and barefoot on oil

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JOHN LANDRY

brood the whipple



here the concocktions surge

a mallet   a turnstylus

blue tinge in the wing

gloria's long white hair the clouds

no offspring sprang forth

the froth of one organizm for another

hightailed had sprung thither 

no flies on endurance

comes the killer of the killer killing

radiation stole my new Yvonne's defense

the angel choirs crow and foam the mouths of mourning


the bones I felt inside you brittling

the place we are where sitting is

the sounds surround and pass thru fissures

the shingles breathing a set of jolly baleen

save the deprenyline wings on which song emits

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JOHN M. BENNETT

hand around your faceless
daughter blue pond and

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MARK HARTENBACH

KING LEMON

king lemon offers no shelter from vicarious penetration
or conceptual sins of omission that read like fine print
on pipe bombs & the foreheads of saints with auras of
self importance.  the dream machine clicks off another
round at angels with jerry-rigged wings crashing through
shopping malls & corn fields trying to spot signs of life.
bumbling guardians of proverbial sitting ducks with passion
for cement blocks & bold lettering, shrines to human folly.
repetition can be so intoxicating, this flavor of the
week times infinite equals all you really need to know.



FATIMA BLUES

still trying to scrub clean the alter of sacrifice until
it sparkles like mainstream, shines like collective fate
we pass every sabbath.  the wearing of crowns in the twentieth
century can be a thorny issue, rank representation of mundane
fulfillment.  throw your pesos int othe pot & perhaps you'll
be blessed with a magic bean or two, granted an audience
with ambiguous image of imperialist ancestry, bond with
jolly roger & his band of paper thin euro-trash, celebrate
the commodification of saint ishmael's bones (coming soon
to a museum or carnival freak show near you), bolt the
medium strip for higher ground, witness the evocation of
cool detached holiness.

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SCOTT MACLEOD

from ANNE FRANK IN JERUSALEM


temples

a bunch of roses
more patient than just
out of the blue

so albeit unwillingly
one gets warm, shuddering
and always a little incredulous

*

sincere male and bloodless female pressed
together without pity, with long unnerving
halts, outbursts don't calm them, espionage, seduction
and collapse (this can never...) sheer comedy
frequently incomprehensible, in German
an obscure agitation in the middle of a dark silent
anything theatrical
swarming with shadows
swallowwed them up

a hiding place
a fire
a pair of shoes, marvelous shout
passing the bicycle sheds, didn't dash down
at once, climb in and out of the empty wagons
all in a heap, quite untrue, stiffly side by side
indefinitely, ill-fitting teeth, vivisesction in order
to inspect and pain yet to experience, beginning to talk
of that already, they came in and closed the door behind them

a comb, old letters, rather than anger
committed on the body in no mood to learn
a little ashamed of our silence, tired
of being amazed, other shoes, other clothes
lying on the table, stripped beds
rare interventions separated by an abyss
"to avoid separation from captured relation"
joined to all this sorry business about her body

with tender care their accordians
and violins, to this cruel and silky
imposing certain restraints, work there
in the daytime, necessary to live under
wit hparticular joy, became obstinant
bloomed under stress on general issues
despising the vain casuistries
with which thieves are marked
bundles tied together, six hundred pieces

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THEO LORENC

The Declaration of Anthony, a Hesitant Patriarch

"I am the abandoned tetanus-stained shaft of some
abandoned industrial plant.  I am a
thirteenth-century carving.  I do not
resent the endless buffeting of the
butcher-shop mathematicians who, sans treve,
and with some embarrassment return,
asking me to desist, carrying small gifts,
shoes sopping with poison.  Nor
do I trace these motifs to a lack
of parental control, a drug-induced
aversion to strophe, agenetic jubilee
or other manifestations of Foucauldian doubt.
This summer has been kind, at least
I can feel my legs - my head maybe -
can utter a few phrases, have a keen
sense of smell, in other matters
I reserve my judgement, can spread it
over the whole year.
                                 "This is well known.
Even in Germany they remember a time
when the heads of priests, possibly
imitations in leather, were preserved,
when visits were made over months to
watch the process of decay.  In short
all is not lost.  I have delivered myself
unto the deities of a ntional cultus,
forgotten my family and suchlike.  Only
I could have made this declaration."