Monday, November 01, 2004

Issue 15



Tim Martin

Steven Dalachinsky

Jason Heroux

Colin Van Der Woude

Anders


Tim Martin

Perhaps These Notions

the sky is falling
   well, maybe not
but everything looks
   underwater
and these are my
   good shoes
i need time
   to think
the phone keeps
   ringing & i know
it's about bills
   or some big mistake
on the government forms
   how many
ways can you define
   need
anyway?
   so, i'm in the dictionary
scrawling margins with questions
   they say there
is a time
   in everyone
's life
   when the question starts
being as important
   as the answer
it seems false
   that prayer
should have gone
   this far
unanswered
   i'm terrified
of predictions
   and riddles
that end
   with my
leaving
   unsolved
perhaps, these notions
   are unjustified
but
   they make the skin
jitter
   in time
with the lightening
   and
my blood
   is full
of house sparrows
   all darting
on cue
   in the same
direction




How Public Like A Frog


it comes down to this
i make lists to convince myself
it's time to buy land
i am not a first day fraud
i don't need a morning smoke
debt was worth it
in my renegotiated role of education
i should relocate
since saints often get cancer
and need to be fed ice chips
in this Andrew Wyeth field
i stare at silhouettes of crows
homesick with these muted colors
across acres of farmland




Candy from Strangers

too early
for murder
when the van

picks you up
the very air
accumulates

morning energy
in the alarm
clock ring

free from
the moorings
the villainy

the village
the weird night
time occurrences

back to the script
polka-dotted
with Maxwell

House stains
& breakfast meat
grease

these things
don't sit well
with me at thirty

like tequila
and garden pizza
have ecstatic

effects i hear
as the happy
man dances

with his hammock
before the rooftops
at the party

he throws
for the voice
of the people






Tim Martin is a writer from Bryn Mawr, PA. His plays Once Upon A River, and Tales From Turtle Island have been produced by the Hedgerow Theatre and One's Self I Sing was recently given a reading. His poetry has been seen in In Words, Autumn Leaves, Orange/Blowmoney 2 and other small magazines. He is the founder of King of Mice Press and a member of the Curio Theatre Company and the Big Mind Collective.




Tim Martin Steven Dalachinsky Jason Heroux Colin Van Der Woude Anders




Steven Dalachinsky

cecil taylor trio @ castle clinton - 7/29/04 ( for (e) shadow )


tell this   dy /// nam   is mos
useless blues & pinks
                in mentus
this is daylight when we most need it when
there is no day left
this is river in a shadow
shadow against an even/ing when
tree become sky

   no mental can the shadows stay this silent for so>long
   the bricks that never saw the war they fought for

                it is a yellow in the eye
                useless magenta that crosses our lives

the sun is behind me the sun
                          it heats my neck

   dy na mis mos    contrarios
                          one immigrant says to another
                     i passed thru here                           (too)

                          vialavitsef    feast    & live
                     tale tail's tale      to taste
                aventus      creatus rowldtercompat

the act of natural act of..................
                                    i've come thru here too
                                    the shadows never move
             the trees & sky are one
             glass & stone & steel a blding make
             fingers make things happen
one immigrant says to another
             glass stone & steel
             are the building blocks of this world

trader trapped inside the gullum
is a wink    the paper asleep
i crumble
                 in uniform your day begins
     like this:      shadows never move
                 sun behind your back
                 useless magenta
                 bricks that tell a tale
                 fingers make things happen

running spotlights cannot function before the nite arrives
it is really not the clock that determines transition
that crosses our lives
one immigrant says to another
                 it is when the sun crosses our backs like a river
         a festival a world -

                 sonic      tellin      panic
                 when the light that was created
             becomes the light that was invented
         a bet earned      a wise trade      a gorge traversed

2(      money      is the (M) angle
         we will not be fed by sunlight    a    loan
             even now as evening turns    snurt the concessions
         no time for this/that      it's obligat(o)ion 0bliGate
                 it's now dark it feels

             one immigrant says to another
feel my neck it passed this way
this is no joke
         privitize my sacrament it's cool now      hands on          it's cool now
             the useless magenta adds to the piano's song
                 this world was built by hands
                 tree & sky no longer touch
                 the shadows have become a river
                     that does not flow
                     brick is what i call your face
                                 i remain attached to my allegiance
                                 tea is a drink for two (3)
                                         this shifting desire is a wedge
                                                 between the clock & the hrs
clamusin          tourista          raditsula          bo          ard

         such useless appendages these hands              against the unmanacled day.





possessed


i am possessed
i definitely know now that i am possessed
by my/
self

we all have to pay eventually
for being on the guest-list
if i weren't here i'd have the tor-
ment of being some/where
else
even the dessert isn't any good
the water is about the only thing worth
tasting

i know now that i am possessed
posed
poised
posssed
perferated
a stones' throw away from a stone ('s)

throw

they took it down they
blew it up they took it down they blew it
up






Steven Dalachinsky: my name is steven dalachinsky i am a poet among other things who has lived in ny my entire life i have been battling mental illness for lack of a better term most of my life tho most find this hard to believe. i was hospitalized when young and put thru the ringer in many ways





Tim Martin Steven Dalachinsky Jason Heroux Colin Van Der Woude Anders





Jason Heroux

The Wound


I found a terrible wound in the street. It looked like a pothole, overflowing with blood. Everyone stepped carefully around it. I picked up the wound and brought it to the hospital, but there wasn't anything they could do. "It's a bad wound," the doctor said. "But it doesn't seem to be hurting anyone." I left the hospital, holding the wound, not sure what to do with it. There was blood all over my hands and clothes. The wound quivered and trembled. It squirmed like a jellyfish and was difficult to hold onto. I threw it back onto the street where it bled and ached without hurting anyone.





Jason Heroux lives in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. He worked in a fast food restaurant for ten years, and currently works as a civil servant. His first poetry collection "Memoirs Of An Alias" will be published by The Mansfield Press later this year.




Tim Martin Steven Dalachinsky Jason Heroux Colin Van Der Woude Anders




Colin Van Der Woude

Sunday


Every Sunday somebody...
or someone
sends me guiding light
every minute
so it seems
the duration of happiness
is hard to seem dear
to break it from my mind
Oneday. Soon.
I will find who does this with pleasure.




S


Paths shall always meet
today I thought I saw you -
sitting alone, on a seat.

Of course I remember you -
it's a glittering reversal
of how I didn't know you
Touched that sensual memory
you placed it back in my mind
not many could do, only less than a few

How we first met?
I was ashamed to forget
but you somehow noticed
and changed the path.




Well well...


Standing, oh walking I say!
you asked me something that added to a word -
may?

fascinated, you were, don't lie;
how else could you remember -
or is it that I'm an ugly guy?
You worked with your third eye
bring it back!
why?





Saint


"Keep quiet!" said the saint
"Or, I won't let you stay!"
Look at my face -
"Forget the past!" he said
a video to watch
so lost, but again the girl
the one with the imaginary gnome
It was real but nothing is real
never is
never will be
and never has been 'real'
just a silly word to me and her
tell the truth
I hear the positivity all around
go home -
keep secrets?

The guitar will begin to play...
by itself in a strange way
dancing, jumping all around
"My feet never hit the ground?"
where did I remember?
probably that innocent September
before the October
when everything began to fall over

Reggae is sweet and uplifting
it is playing while I write
Nineteen Eighty Five
seven eleven the special time
it always use to show

Call this eccentric or crazy or weird
but the backward clothing
is being worn only by YOU
open those EYES
SPEAK OUT.

Cleaning up.
Speaking my sub-conscious
the leaf was sweet
while others had a bite to the already distorted
flavour
Babylon changed its ways
never would I know -
I just speak the seeds I always sow

Decision - unknown to my eyes?
roads lead everywhere
you don't have to see them
but there is always a path,
sometimes many,
narrow some may seem,
others are uphill
but you always reach the end.

Prolific, not what I would say!
If you have the special feeling
spend what may take a day.

look back on the work
it may surprise and so much
it may feel a lie.




Colin Van Der Woude: I was only 15 years old and less than a year after diagnosis I was writing this work, heavilly influenced by late nights and music of The Cure. I am currently a 27 year old from Hobart Tasmania, Australia who loves writing emotion down in notebooks.




Tim Martin Steven Dalachinsky Jason Heroux Colin Van Der Woude Anders


Anders

Poem about an angel
         Strolling down a street
                 Hearing each of the inner voices
                         That passes.

Like Stewart in "Rear Window" -
Crippled, he enjoys sitting
At the back window of his apartment
Watching all those aquariums of lives.

                         Honeycomb - we're feeding
                 At a nest of light, inside
         A cathedral - stained glass yellow
                         Of the goddess of grain
                         Streams off your face
                 You swim to me on water light . . . . .





"you must be in a very good
mood, everything is perfect" - white tree



*



Yes, White Tree,
Everything is perfect,
Both the heft of her hips
And her disregard for the colossally
Vulgar. It's as if she was sent

To rearrange
My estimates
Of myself. Here in Indiana, where the whole Saturday
Has been overcast except for a few brief glimpses -

You can trust her. She's
Real. It is impossible
To play hound dog upon this
Field.

                 She smiles a lot,
A cracked, stoned smile - like Kate Hudson, yeah,

         Kinda like that          buttercups

Lit up her chin when she smiled





Koi


So, the Koi fish may live to be 300 years old.
If I were a koi swimming in the same pond

for 300 years, I'd fight when death came.
The owners would think they were scooping

a bowling ball out of the water if they tried
to fish me out, I'd mess with them by flapping

my fins, waggling my fish tail and pretending
I still had air in my gills. When they finally

maneuvered me into the net, I'd pucker up
my fish lips and blow them bubble kisses.





Jenni in the grass


We met at a hotel outside of Austin. It was hot
truckblown dust swirling up from the highway.

her eyes blinked sharply blue
I felt emptiness in my stomach. She was too good


I spoke like real tentative . About bullshit metaphysics
then clutched inside . I need a drink I said


wandering back out where I had been sitting
before the deserted motel pool, on a lawn chair
reading Heraclitus.
She sat on the next chair over.
"Can I have a sip of that?" I handed her

my bottle of Old Crow. Ummmmm she said
she arched her throat back a little bit to drink it. Fuck I thought

what does Heraclitus have to say about this

I flipped to a random page:

"If you do not expect the unexpected, you will not find it; for it is hard to be
sought out and difficult."



Hmmmm. I said "It's really nice out here.
I have not yet solved the problems of life or death.
I have not been able to put to rest the questions either.
My life is a continuous burning.
Whatever I write is like scorch marks."


She said, "let's go on a walk."


I followed her with my bottle
as she walked past the front entrance of the motel
past downtown Austin
out into the scrub land
past purple scorpions
past the landfill wheeling with seagulls
until we got to a place
where the bottom of the sky -
a large tarp of canvas painted black with dots of white -
shuddered against the rim of the earth
where it was latched by a metal hook.
She leaned down to it.
"Dare me to unhook this?" She said.
Before I could answer, she did


I woke up alone in the motel room.
The bottle was knocked over near the TV, empty. No smokes either. Well.


In my mind, I tried to recall what happened after she unlatched the hook.


What I saw was a field of flames,
the moments running by slower and slower,
the tint of the flames being adjusted, scaled over
slowly from red to redpurple to purple to purpleblue to blue
to bluegreen to green
the time freezing

also, the angels were being painted over
till they were people




Tim Martin Steven Dalachinsky Jason Heroux Colin Van Der Woude Anders