Eviscerator Heaven

Eviscerator Heaven # 7 August 2009

Eviscerator Heaven # 7, 2009 Glen Still – Editor and all around guru Glen Lantz – Poetry Editor Petra Whitely – Prose Editor & Special Features Writer Glorianne Kada – Design Editor In issue #7 of Eviscerator Heaven starts off with a feature article by Petra Whitely on the poetry of Sylvia Plath.

Also, issue 7 brings you the second installment of Chris Nosnibor’s article “50 Years of Cut-Ups: (1980-2009).”

Surrealism: War by Art by Ray Dunkle A first for EH is a flash fiction piece by Kelton Goodman.

This issue contains prose by J.A. Tyler Sheldon Lee Compton Dan Kellett.

For Chris Jackson <3 Glo

Poets in this issue include John Grey Wayne Russell Kat Solomon Roberta Lawson Jon MacKenzie John Sweet Holly Day Mike Berger Ernest Williamson III Michael Lee Johnson Yossarian Hunter Mary McLaughlin Damaged Rose Jeff Sibley

If we apply the term genius as in its meaning of the distinctive talent influencing the era, we shall find Sylvia Plath as the undeniable genius of poetry of the 20th century. No other poet has sparked so much controversy and challenged credibility of definitions with the same force - from the confines of a label she has been stamped with Anne Sexton and Robert Lowell as a confessional poet to confines of autobiographical interpretation and to limitations of misunderstood reading owing to political correctness and so on. Yet neither Sexton's or Lowell's work yields the same haunting power, the cohesion of the imagery to a mythical system of the inner landscapes she mapped, the outer landscapes she critiqued, surpasses the method of confession and scopes of their poetry.

Sylvia Plath The White Goddess of Poetry Special Feature By Petra Whitely The autobiographical facts have provided a morbid fascination to many and her work’s reading and analyses have been subjected into the framework of her failed marriage to Ted Hughes due to his affair, her depression and suicide. When the movie industry decided to turn Plath’s life into a cinematic feature, her daughter, Frieda Hughes, objected to this creation of suicide doll icon out of her mother – the way she had been persistently portrayed.

The strength of her voice, especially in her late poetry, the inventive use of language to maximize the dramatic effect, the staying eerie power of her verses, render Plath much more than a poet that could be defined by a single term nor do they sit comfortably within the historical facts of her life, they surpass those classifications.

How Sylvia Plath’s poetry escapes those borders and defies more attempts to restrict and define her work - will be the primary focus of our examination.

There are many ironies involved in the shaping of this poet’s voice and vision and the way she had been perceived. Although she had been adopted by the feminist movement as a symbol and example, her major influence was ‘The White Goddess’ by Robert Graves. Many of his beliefs were prejudiced and dismissive regarding women and a woman poet was nearly equal to blasphemy within the body and structure of his interpretation of mythology and poetical theory.

Furthermore, many female figures represent menacing and threatening presence to the poetic heroines, the personae that Plath dresses her voice in. They are represented as usurpers of identity or the males (father, then husband) - who are idolized and deified and only scorned for their abandonment

(premature death, affair). The biographical elements serve not to confess, but to illustrate the psychological depth and truth that the mythology connects to and represents.

Plath juxtaposes the differing feminine qualities as those who challenge the nature of her motherhood with their barren state.

She also uses these other-female protagonists as representations of her darker self – the rival psyche that repulses and fascinates at the same time with its threat of annihilation and promise of rebirth. The themes of death had overshadowed the themes of regeneration and rebirth in many critiques of her work, largely due to interference of Ted Hughes in editing Ariel posthumously with cutting work out and rearranging poems in the order that had smothered Plath's original intent. This has been rectified by the reinstated edition.

confessional poetry of a suicidal depressive The difference between the two editions shows how the misconception of Plath’s work as confessional poetry of a suicidal depressive took its hold on the imagination of the poetry-reading public and literary criticism milieu. The version edited by Hughes creates such a picture, whilst the restored Ariel presents the mythical transcendence of death and grief into regeneration of the female (and it can also be said to apply to others in a situation of being oppressed by another) and her consequent empowerment in a vision unified with Plath’s adaptation of Moon-Muse mythology into her uniquely own.

Plath had often been criticized for her burning ambition to be an artist at first (she studied visual arts before she took up English and literature) and a poet and a writer – in her times this ambition was seen as far too masculine. Plath’s dare to challenge gender roles threatened the rigidity of the status quo, hence she was attacked for standing out of the line and not paying lip service to the male establishment and refusing to submit her craft to norms of what female poetry should be (sugary, submissive and presenting a fragile, eternal girl-child in need of protection). Even Sexton played it safe in subduing her tone and displaying lack of control (like women were supposed to) – unlike Plath’s full on tour-de-force voice, which left nothing unexposed and her perfect linguistic control created a work of art out of each poem.

Graves’s emphasis on dedication to a poet’s path as the highest activity of a human being (for Graves of a man) and especially his Moon mythology that resonated with her were the reasons

why The White Goddess was such a great influence upon her work – but she wholly adapted the concepts to her own vision, challenging the patriarchal system within his work, as well as society on the whole.

She had demonstrated the state of being as a feeling, authentic woman – as experienced, not as simultaneously idealized and abhorred imagined femininity by Graves and the society he reflected. She had used his theory to expose the authentic being - to peel away the false selves from the true self. She took Graves’s ethereal teachings down to earth and made them relevant beyond the intellectual play and stripped them of their pretentions.

Along the Moon-mythology, and its trinity of personae concepts and its motifs of The Moon-Muse-Goddess mourning her dead consort/God, the crucial conflict with the rival and the consequent rebirth/transcendence of death, runs the theme of metamorphoses i.e. as in Poem for a Birthday. Plath uses it as a demonstration of the mythical process of recovery and growth for true self from the traumas that subdued it or stunted it. The evolution of her poetic voice corresponds to the theme as a whole too – Plath lived her poetry and the life and vibrancy of her poetry do stand out – this was not a mere hobby, career, it was her calling. If the Moon-Muse is the matrix of her poetic system, then metamorphoses is the process of rebirth of the stricken Moon, where the evolution of the poet’s voice reflects the themes of synchronized organic process in the poetry and its artistic expression.

Plath’s poetry although so rooted in the mythical concepts is nevertheless a poetry that could not be labeled as spiritual New Age for the ease of a mind in need of categorization. Her imagery is deeply rooted in reality, be it domestic or found in nature. She has also an uncanny way to create nature out of the domestic and vice versa.

many of her poems address the wreckage of militant mindsets and subsequent warfare She had been criticized for delving into subjectivity far too much and especially for the post WWII and Cold War times, to some it represented self-indulgence. We posit that these critics are wrong. Plath was a dedicated pacifist and many of her poems address the wreckage of militant mindsets and subsequent warfare, her concerns about the threat of nuclear war were passionately addressed in her work.

Many of her concerns were communicated via her poetry though the subjective – but this way can very well serve in a much better way than the disconnected, many times condescending poetry that preaches verses of the world’s ills out of the pulpit above the congregation, playing the part of self-appointed speaker for righteous conscience and Savior of the human race. If the reader can identify and relate to the speaker of the poem, more self-consciousness and awareness is brought to the world in that individual consciousness affected by such work – without them being alienated or patronized by fashionable rhetoric and sanctimonious prophets of poetry.

Another element which distinguishes her poetry is her background in visual arts, it infuses her work – which is stunningly visually textured rich combination of words and expressions and the use of the surreal imagery adds to the strength and flexibility of her voice.

Her poems which used holocaust imagery (Daddy, Lady Lazarus - the most known examples) were maybe the most controversial, with the issue being politicized as much as possible. Yet what Plath conveyed is the inaccessibility of memory of trauma, the fragmentation of psyche extreme situations inflict and the linguistic and metaphorical impossibility of the experience as a whole to reach the whole truth and legacy of such events in art/literature etc.

She also targeted the moral apathy to suffering - the voyeurism of pain. The critique leveled at this particular work resembled the critique fired at Sophie’s choice by William Styron who depicted the experience of non-Jewish victim of the Holocaust.

Yet along with 6 million Jewish people, 5 millions perished alongside them (Romani people, Polish Catholics, communists, anarchists, and homosexuals, those who did not fit into the social- Darwinism etc) – the derailment of the history into political arena has played the major roles in why she was so attacked.

We suggest it was not the use of imagery – although it was the bull’s eye – it was an attack on humanistic position itself. If we de-politicize these views it is patently obvious that Plath’s intentions were humanistic concerns and nothing of the kind suggested by her critics.

The novel she published before her death, The Bell Jar, became iconic by its description of a breakdown in the honest, existential way she did and the sharp satire of society and sexual politics running through it. The novel also became symbolic for those who tried to neutralize Plath's challenge of the status quo by attempts to categorize and trivialize readers of her nov-

els as highly-strung 'over-ambitious' young women, simultaneously deviant of their rightful social roles and thus doomed for suicide, killing sprees or ripe for normalization back into the fold of the predetermined gender roles. This was evident in literary critiques, the way the particular novel had been used in films when referenced as the reading material of the dysfunctional heroine.

If we read poetry of various important poets henceforth, we will find legacy of Plath in their work – poetry hadn’t been the same and she had been a pioneering spirit of this art as much as T.S. Eliot.

The way she has affected poetry indeed attests to her special status in the cannon of literature. The way she used the language was electric and could not fail to impress itself upon her readers’ minds, together with the striking imagery and visuals, her vision, her unique and original voice and its power.

She has also paved the way for many female poets to create

paved the way for many female poets to create their art with courage their art with courage, non-conforming attitude and authenticity. She has shown that the predominantly male literary establishment had a force to reckon with. From the beginning of the written word, women were not afforded the same opportunities – be it education or possibility of publishing – the only themes they could explore were religious experience or maternity.

Each new door had been cautiously open. When Plath burst on the scene she kicked the figurative door wide open. And that is what a true artist does.

Petra Whiteley immigrated to UK in 1993 from the Czech Republic, where she studied economics, Czech, English and literature. Her poetry has appeared in Osprey, The Glasgow Review, ETC, Seven Circle Press and their CircleShow vol.1 printed anthology, The Gloom Cupboard, Eviscerator Heaven, Unlikely Stories 2.0, Counterexamplepoetics, Apt, Eleutheria, the Recusant and are due too appear in Clockwise Cat, Paraphilia and The Toronto Quarterly. Several of these e-zines also published her articles on political and current issues (leftwing position), history and methods of literary and poetic movements as well as essays on and reviews of current poets, lyricists - with more forthcoming.

Ettrick Forest Press published her first poetry collection 'The Nomad's Trail' in September 2008. 'The Moulding of Seers' - chapbook of her poetry is due to be published by the Shadow Archer Press this year. She is currently working on a children's book with visual artist Steve Viner.

underground musicians

advent of punk

cut- up technique industrial scene

50 Years of Cut-Ups Part 2 (1980 - 2009)

By Christopher Nosnibor

In the first part of this article, I traced the development of the cut-up technique from Brion Gysin’s table-top, through Burroughs’ wildly experimental Nova trilogy to his abandonment of the method at the end of the 1960s, and to its adoption by a small but significant number of underground musicians at the cutting edge of the avant-garde and emerging industrial scene. Despite these new musical directions being explored, the advent of punk saw the experimentalism of the 1960s almost completely eradicated as optimism and hallucinogens were superseded by nihilism and stimulants.

kind of conservatism – a conservatism of form, of style – had taken hold.

It is perhaps fair to say that with a few notable exceptions – Kathy Acker being perhaps the most striking in her unstinting desire to challenge the establishment and notions of ‘literature’ with her non-linear and appropriation-based approach to ‘the novel’ – the popularity of cut-ups diminished rather during the 1970s and 1980s. It is also fair to say that cut-ups have generally proven more popular in poetry than prose, and the principal of ‘montage’ and linguistic juxtaposition which lay at heart of technique when first devised by Burroughs and Gysin is a central feature of concrete and Language poetry.

There were, however, notable exceptions. Manchester band The Fall, formed in 1977 were always apart from the punk crowd, and their oblique lyrics were anything but the semi-literate ‘fuck authority’ chants which were de regeuer. Indeed, the sleeve notes to their 1983 LP Perverted by Language stated ‘that SMITH applied cut-up technique literally to the brain.’

With lyrics which included ‘Shaved / Relation with fellow age group, and opposite birds / SMILES / Wants anarchy / SMILED / The club nerve and poses / Physical awareness / Smiles’ it seemed quite plausible. Front man Mark E. Smith would later make mention of his appreciation of Burroughs in his autobiography, Renegade: The Lives of Mark E. Smith (2008). The same autobiography also features cut-up interludes, composed of phrases from elsewhere in the book juxtaposed with extraneous fragments of text.

From the crude tape-loops and found sounds which typified the early recordings by Throbbing Gristle, Cabaret Voltaire, Swans, Foetus, Perennial Divide and many others, the principles of the method have been embraced for more commercial ends and by a diverse range of musicians.

The field of literature and society more generally also presented a very different vista a decade after Altamont. Censorship may well have been dealt its final blow in the wake of the trial of Lady Chatterly’s Lover, but the revolutionary fervor of the 1960s had given way to a return to conventionality, and a different

The sample-heavy works of the KLF and the Justified Ancients of Mu-Mu (JAMMs) and the use of scratching and digital sampling and looping in countless Rap and Hip-Hop each owe equally much to the sampling methods Burroughs applied to tape and text at the tail-end of the 1950s.

However, if literature has been slow to identify the merits of the cut-up method as a narrative approach, then the application of the technique in film and music is indicative of these media being more immediate and more closely attuned to the actualities of perception and the way we experience life in fragments.

In film, pop videos, typified by rapid intercuts of often juxtaposing images ostensibly disconnected from the audio soundtrack are entirely representative of a controlled application of the cut-up method applied to film, as first seen produced by Burroughs with the assistance of Brion Gysin and film-maker Anthony Balch in the 1960s films The Cut-Ups, Bill and Tony and Towers Open Fire. But are the extreme flashbacks and flash-forwards so central to the narratives of popular television series CSI and Lost really that dissimilar from the dischronology created by the application of Burroughs’ ‘fold-in’ method, or the non-sequential time-lines of those earlier experimental films? Not really.

Another recent phenomenon is the incorporation of randomlygenerated text passages within spam emails, as a means of bypassing spam filters. The following example is typical: The first question of course was, how to get dry again: they me as I walked, the remembrance of my churlishness and that I must confidence between himself and Mrs. Micawber. After which, he for his dagger till his hand gripped it. Then he spoke.

I kissed her, and my baby brother, and was very sorry then; but not As Burroughs contended was possible when the cut-ups were first discovered, it is quite possible to produce grammatically consistent sentences in this way, and quite coherent sentences can be found within these texts. Such text is called spamoetry (spam poetry) or spam art. Since the text is often derived from actual books, this is effectively an electronic cut-up, and I myself incorporated a great many sections of text gifted to me in this way in THE PLAGIARIST (2008).

Certainly, the digital age has facilitated a new dawn for the rapid production of truly random cut-ups. In this context, to suggest that the writings of Kenji Siratori and Anthony Hitchin are in any way removed from the realities of everyday life in the current climate would be to deny the advanced stage of fragmentation our communications, the dissemination of information and our experiences have become.

Siratori, ‘a Japanese cyberpunk writer who is currently bombarding the Internet with wave upon wave of highly experimental, uncompromising, progressive, intense prose,’ has, in recent years, existed as a one-man virus, bombarding the world with a plethora of books, e-texts and recordings of an extreme experimental nature. ‘Novels’ like BACTERIA=SYNDROME (2005) and Blood Electric (2002) make little concession to conventional narrative and largely dispense with the idea o

rendering any coherent verbiage, instead creating slabs of language and code which recreate the mechanisms of digital communication and contemporary living, effectively spamming the spammers with endless reams of seemingly meaningless nonsense. But that’s the whole point: where is the meaning now?

Or has all semblance of meaning been lost in a blizzard of information disseminated and received with equal status?

The poetry of Anthony Hitchin uses a more controlled approach to cut-ups, and in some ways can be seen to apply cutups to not only reflect society, but also to attempt to unravel the fragments and make some sort of sense of it all. To this end, the way in which he applies cut-ups differs from Siratori, in that he will take a cut-up text and edit the fragments which reveal themselves to forge something approximating if not coherence, then a thematically orientated whole – however tangentially connected.

And so the history of the cut-ups returns full-circle. Or does it?

The audio experiments of Stewart Home, the formal collage construction of Graham Rawle’s Women’s World (2006) and the assemblages of journals, transcripts and news reportage which provide the fabric of Peter Sotos’ truly fringe explorations of sexuality all draw to varying degrees on the cut-up technique, at the heart of which lies the application of collage techniques and juxtaposition to text and / or narrative. Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves (2000) and Only Revolutions (2006), while not composed using cut-us per se, present narratives which are not only highly fragmented, but also take the form of textual collages of sorts, and thus take the fundamental premise of the cut-up as the basis for their construction.

It’s perhaps reasonable to say that cut-ups are everywhere. And to contend that most people will have experienced cut-ups or things that have been influenced by cut-ups without ever realising would not to far-fetched. Far from being simply an experimental form of writing confined to the margins of underground literature, the cut-ups have made the transition into the global subconscious. Like all good viruses, it has spread subliminally and exponentially. And the chances are, it will continue to mutate and spread over the next fifty years.

Christopher Nosnibor is a writing machine. His interests are diverse, as is his output, which spans fiction, literary criticism, poetry and general spouting. He is the 'author' of THE PLAGIARIST and Bad Houses, and has had stories published in a number of cool zines including Geeek, Neonbeam, Lit Up and Bad Marmalade. He was recently featured in the BBC’s on-line A-Z of authors.

Surrealism: Revolution Through Art

By Ray Dunkle

"In this realm as in any other, I believe in the pure Surrealist joy of the man who forewarned that all others before him have failed, who refuses to admit defeat, who sets off from whatever point he chooses, along any other path save a reasonable one, and who arrives wherever he can." (1) The aftermath of World War I found Europe suffering; millions were dead or wounded. The last peace treaties ratified by 1920 had made clear that what was gained by the winners meant nothing but minor rearrangements of the borderlines.

The disparity between the means and the ends revealed the absurdity of the status quo. Communism was proclaimed as the new regime in Russia via the October Revolution in 1917, a fact which had major impact upon the worldview of the Surrealistic movement in the political arena during the 30’s.

The very first surrealists such as A. Bréton, P. Soupalt, P. Eluard, G. Apollinaire, L. Aragon and B. Pérret, all war veterans, were deeply influenced by the ravages and terror of war.(2) They started the quest for their inspirations and the pioneering poetical voices in a frantic manner and they were about to discover them. From Heraclitus to the “fratrasies” of Middle Ages they moved to the 18th century’s writers such as Ann Radcliffe and Marquis de Sade, and finally to the 19th century bringing back to light individuals such as Novalis, Poe, Jarry, Rimbaud and Lautréamont. They developed a feeling of solidarity especially for the latter two poets. “From the very beginning, the surrealist attitude has had that in common with Lautréamont and Rimbaud which once and for all binds our lot to theirs, and that is wartime defeatism.”(3) The war and the pandemic expansion of the Spanish Flu, made people want to rediscover Eros, to assert they were

still alive. The Surrealists were at the forefront of this 1920s sexual revolution. Eros for the Surrealists, is violently opposing and fighting against the pseudo amorous sentimentality indoctrinated by Christian morality and by every other social constraint, totally unbound from the vulgar aspect of everlasting happiness: rather it stands as the most decisive individual human experience, delirious and corrosive, capable of reinventing one’s perception of life.

Freud is also renowned for his redefinitions of sexual desire as the primary motivational energy of human life as well the interpretation of dreams as the sources of insight into unconscious desires.

One of the Surrealist’s aims was to diminish and ultimately to completely dispose of the appalling contradictions between the world of dreams, of desires and reality, to enrich the latter with “marvelous” (according to Breton) images, objects and words, full of “Freudian slips” in order to unfold and transform the human subconscious, through internalization to re-create memory and experience; to give a new direction in Time, to unbound the human beings from the bondage of the civilization. Any forms of Art were to be conceived as a plastic transformation of poetry targeting this very procedure imposed by the cultural industry for socioeconomic reasons.

The surrealistic movement was about to launch its own counter attack by the end of 1922. Provocative, humorous and enigmatic, it used the Dadaistic know-how through journals to impose its agenda and to disseminate its manifestos across the world. Through techniques directly taken from psychoanalysis in order to reveal the inner levels of desires and passion as an antidote to the conformism of the epoch,

and keeping as the common denominator with their predecessors the wish to create “a wave of negation and revolt which for several years would throw disorder into the minds, acts, works of men” as F. Picabia stated. (4) In its intuitive period (1919-1925), Surrealism, then deeply connected with the Dadaism, was considered to be a movement of Art, and limited mostly to the area of Literature, an aspect which is dominant in the definition of the word (5), given in the First Surrealistic Manifesto. For the public opinion and the press it represented mostly a series of outrageous and quite spontaneous activities. (6) The year that signified the different course of the movement

mystified existence, a constant communion of human beings with the essence and beauty of life, a powerful adherent to the reign of Logos.

The demolition of the latter was always one of the most fundamental starting points of the movement, if not the sole one and their decision was to infuse dialectic materialism through the cultural channels of the mythologized East right into the heart of Europe.

All what was needed was a sparkle and it was shortly about to be found. France due to a monetary crisis declared a colonial war (on Spain’s side) against the Moroccan rebels and their leader Abd-el-Krim, in what was called the Rif War. Up

Surrealism is not a form of poetry. It is a scream of the spirit which is returning to itself, with the desperate decision to break its own chains. was 1925. In “The Declaration of 27 January 1925“(Declaration du 27 Janvier 1925) they wrote “We have nothing to do with Literature…We are determined to make a Revolution.” and they continued “Surrealism is not a form of poetry. It is a scream of the spirit which is returning to itself, with the desperate decision to break its own chains. And with material hammers if need be.” (7) In April of the same year, whilst the rumors of the forthcoming war appeared, the third issue of the “The Surrealistic Revolution” states “End of the Christian Era” with an open letter to the Pope by A. Artaud. Anticlerical to its very core that letter suggests "The world is the soul's abyss, warped Pope, Pope foreign to the soul. Let us swim in our own bodies, leave our souls within our souls; we have no need of your knife-blade of enlightenment." (8)

It was blasphemous. Their campaign against bourgeois morality is certainly reflected in it. What is underestimated in this case is the fact that at that time, Italy’s fascist dictator B. Mussolini ruled his country under the eulogies of the Roman Catholic Church.

In this issue they celebrated the oriental values, and the idealism it represented, including a letter to Dalai Lama and an address to Buddha and once more they appealed for the total destruction of the Western civilization (for example, R. Desnos made an appeal to “Attila’s archangels”). Europe, since Goethe’s days and later on, developed an intellectual love for the East, mainly as an opposing force to the Enlightenment. For Western culture the East stood as the region of

until then there was no coherent political, theological or social nexus for their activities.

The Surrealists among other intellectuals signed a public protest under the title “The Revolution Now and Forever”(9).The latter was undoubtedly rather confused ideologically; it none the less created a precedent that was to determine the new direction of Surrealism.

It was the mark of the separation from the whole way of previous thinking. They began to study Marx and Engels (and others) more intensively. Their convictions were close to Anarchism and Communism from the beginning, but at this point they attempted a move towards the Communist Party of France. Prior to these events, their confronting attitude to the FCP can be synopsized into L. Aragon’s words “On the ideological level what is October’s revolution? An insignificant ministerial crisis, at the most.” (10) Their approach to the proclaimed communist regime was made only with the political and social criteria, magnified under the strict scopes of the movement during the Rif War. This started, according to Bréton, the reasoning period of Surrealism (1925-1930). From then on there was no revolution of the Spirit. They clearly announced that “we’re not utopists: the Revolution is understood only in its social form” (11).Yet, Bréton as all the other surrealists thought they were ready to be motivated by the communism and they were not willing to sacrifice it for no one, including the Marxists, the Stalinists and the Moscow guided French Communist Party.

From the beginning of the movement they constantly refused any labels upon their intentions and their acts in every specter of such categorizations, in terms of art and/or politics.

Consequently, the Surrealists never enjoyed the full confidence of the FCP which kept a stance if not suspicious at least skeptical of their commitment. And at times they were openly condemned by the communists for their symbolisms, their “scandalous” art and above all for the blatant sexuality.

The expansion of the movement, against every prediction brought to light all its adversaries.

nounces any form and category of “beauty” and “art” besides the pure surrealistic ones. He also replies to one of the most usual accusations raised by the bourgeois and communist press and reflects the opinions of many readers: why surrealism does not transform its radical words into actions?

At this point he does not only states that the words are not tautologically identified with the writers but he also indicates the social hypocrisy that is beneath such accusations which are guided solely against the radical thinkers, in order to neutralize them but never to those who overwhelmingly agree with the narrow minded mass beliefs and their hysteria of cor-

Surrealist intervention has always emphasized the active imagination and the realization of poetry in everyday life.

The year of 1925 marked the spread of the Surrealism in Europe. Unofficially (and officially in 1926) in Brussels, the painter and author R. Magritte, among other Belgian artists, started a collaboration and the new branch in another European capital had become a fact. This development must be connected with the first official exhibition held in Paris that year, which displayed works by André Masson, Man Ray, Paul Klee, Joan Miró, Max Ernst, Pablo Picasso, Hans Arp, Giorgio de Chirico, and Pierre Roy. This idea was brilliant. Paris since the 19th century was considered the art capital and it had drawn a whole constellation of writers, painters, film directors and artists from all parts of the world, a phenomenon which was intensified after the ending of WW1. Even if, prior to this exhibition sporadically the artists were influenced by the Surrealistic movement, this stood as the starting point of a vast expansion in the world of Art and the perception of its role in the society.

By 1928 Surrealism was established within the consciousness of the society. Yet it is the year that one of its most fundamental works was published - Louis Aragon’s “Treatise of Style”. Through this paradoxically artificial title Aragon orchestrates one of the most lethal attacks upon the bourgeois society. He starts from the traditional critics of literature, who are seeking for barbarisms and errors, and he proceeds with a slaughterhouse of modern critics, of suicide, of Freud and Einstein, of readers, of celebrated writers, of any poet after Rimbaud and of any institution (political and especially religious). His intentions are to overthrow and demolish every value in order to set the new grounds of the Surrealistic movement, totally unbound from categorizations of any kind that want to diminish it into a movement of Literature. He de-

rectness.

Surrealist intervention has always emphasized the active imagination and the realization of poetry in everyday life. Art is dead for the surrealists (a belief taken from the Dadaists) and they denounce every notion of “artist”. They’ve had adopted a Lautréamont’s belief stating that “poetry should be made by all” and followed it to its extremes.

The Second Surrealistic Manifesto (1929) was written under this scope. The reason of erasing many members of the first Surrealistic group (such as Artaud, Soupault and Desnos) is either because they failed in following the revolutionary road of the surrealism or just because they allowed themselves to become “artists” and “poets”.

Bréton, once again states that Surrealism asserts an absolute nonconformism (12) and furthermore he establishes the necessary criteria for the realization of such nonconformism. “We combat, in whatever form they may appear, poetic indifference, the distraction of art, scholarly research, and pure speculation; we want nothing whatever to do with those, either large or small, and who use their minds as they would a savings bank.” (13) From this point of view Bréton is appealing to the complete and utter mystification of the movement bringing to light unorthodox parameters such as astrology and alchemy.

As he stated later on “We still live under the reign of logic...

But the methods of logic are applied nowadays only to the resolution of problems of secondary interest. (14) Through this brief retrospective analysis of some of the Surrealistic aspects it becomes clear that Surrealism was fed in its entire course by its own contradictions. As long it was out of any categorizations, it was able to release reconstructive powers upon the “reality” posed by the world. Yet later on many of its prominent members declined into aestheticism

and thus became artists. The movement had always a romantic wrath to it, and by denying the society they attempted “a new declaration of the rights of man” aiming for their reformation exactly into the almost demonic energies unleashed from the unconscious through their activities.

Though in order to achieve such a change they had to fight with post World War I status quo, the great economical Depression of the late 20’s, the rise of fascism in Italy, Germany and Spain, the Stalinism, the vast commercialization of its members and their work, plus they had to fight with the deliberate mass misconceptions of their basic principles. It is crucial to remember that the main surrealist group was never larger than 20-30 individuals in every phase of its course and despite all its schisms.

Footnote (1) “First Surrealistic Manifesto”, A.Bréton 1924 (2)With the words of Bréton: “Apart from the incredible stupidity of the arguments which attempted to legitimize our participation in an enterprise such as the war, whose issue left us completely indifferent, this refusal was directed—and having been brought up in such a school, we are not capable of changing so much that is no longer so directed—against the whole series of intellectual, moral and social obligations that continually and from all sides weigh down upon man and crush him.” “What is Surrealism”, A.Bréton. 1934 (3) In 1870 France was defeated in the Franco-Prussian war. See also “What is Surrealism”, A.Bréton. 1934 (4) “The Dada painters and poets: an anthology” ed. R. Motherwell, Cambridge press (5) As an homage to G.Apollinaire who first thought of the term.

(6) In the funeral of the famous (and Nobel Prize winner) writer Anatole France, they print a libel titled “A Corpse” (Un Cadavre), against the deceased.

It certainly was the most romantic attempt to change the things “as they are”, their nonconformist attitude was a call for absolute freedom of the mind and of the being, the essence of their attempt was that poetry and life are “elsewhere” and it can be conquered individually with risk and under solidarity “bringing witness to the fact that the chips are not yet down, that everything can still be saved” (15)

Ray Dunkle was born in 1972. He hates bios and to talk in first and third person about himself. He also thinks that "men are as the time is".

They consider him as the perfect representative of the disappointing role of the most intellectuals during the war, while L. Aragon sends a funeral wreath with a challenge “Have you ever slapped a dead man?”

“History of Surrealism”, M. Nadeau. Harvard University Press 1965.

(7) Ibid.

(8) La Revolution Surréaliste (The Surrealistic Revolution), issue 3 (April 1925) (9) “History of Surrealism”, M. Nadeau. Harvard University Press 1965.

(10) Ibid.

(11) Ibid.

(12) “Everything must be done, all means must be considered appropriate, in order to destroy the ideas of family, of country and of religion.”

Second Surrealistic Manifesto, 1929.

(13) Ibid.

(14) “What is Surrealism”, A.Bréton. 1934.

(15) Marcel Raymond “From Baudelaire to Surrealism” New York, 1950.

Perfect Imperfection

Flash Fiction

By Kelton Goodman I stumbled into my apartment last night after a long day of drinking and skipping class. The term drunk could only partially explain my condition for I was way beyond mere drunkenness.

After a failed attempt to lie down on the couch, I suddenly found myself awkwardly positioned on the floor. Just lie still, I thought to myself, and the room will eventually stop teeter-tottering. I closed my eyes and wondered how come I do this to myself. Every night, I become intoxicatingly inebriated and try and decide why I still drink. The answer never arrives. I guess sobriety is just out of my reach. When I finally opened my, quiet possibly bloodshot, eyes, I had a terrific view of the wall that is perpendicular to the wall that the couch is up against.

I stared at the plain white wall for a time and noticed that it was immaculate. No pointless pictures were hung to cover its bareness. No tacky posters. Not even a solitary nail, or a hole where a solitary nail had been, blemished the wall. It stood there, upright and perfect, silently in its painted-drywall existence. I felt ashamed of myself suddenly. The wave washed away though as an idea came to mind. I begrudgingly stumbled to my feet and sat down on the couch. I grabbed a pencil and paper from the nearby coffee table and hastily sketched a stick-figure that, after I finished, looked like it had been in a horrible stick-figure accident. I jotted the word â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;MEâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; at the top of the page. I wearily rose from the couch and sauntered towards the perfect wall. I placed the piece of paper against the wall and with a quick jab, stabbed the pencil through the paper and into the wall. I stumbled backwards and sat down on the couch to admire my handiwork. The wall was no longer perfect as the imperfection hung there crookedly.

Kelton Goodman is a recent college grad, a more recent dad, and a long time fan of writing.

& (fifteen)

15

prose by J.A. Tyler

The girl, flying now, sees the world in squares, in lines, in stretches and expanse of land. She sees the ground beneath her oars, her rowing, the mind of a genius, the plain of a teardrop, the mouth of forests. This girl, flying, rowing with both her arms, lines of string to her fingers, the tendons and the blood, imaginary body in imaginary sky.

She soaks in blue. She is blue. She has become the sky.

This girl, flying, rowing in clouds. & If this were the story of that girl, flying, rowing, and there were cameras on pivots, they would pan back and out, losing her in the incessant white of sky lungs. The angles would fade and blend, packing her into the tight and spiraling blue of an iris.

If this story were the story of that, this girl flying, this as a film, as a documentary of her feigned existence, the cameras scanning, roaming, she would dwindle into the flecks of blue in her motherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s eyes. The womb sensitivity of her unliving.

If this story were that story, if this story became that story, there would be a part about how she was never born. If this story were that story.

This girl, flying. Rowing. Her hands on oars, her eyes as clouds, her air exhaled in melodies. & This girl never understood any of that. She still does not. She flies. She rows. She whispers smiles to the clouds, giggles in their lack of thunder, crests on their peaks, their arms, the sky cradling her as an infant, unborn and glistening. Flying.

J. A. Tyler is the author of the forthcoming novellas SOMEONE, SOMEWHERE (ghost road press) and IN LOVE WITH A GHOST (willows wept press) as well as the chapbooks THE GIRL IN THE BLACK SWEATER (Trainwreck Press) and EVERYONE IN THIS IS EITHER DYING OR WILL DIE OR IS THINKING OF DEATH (Achilles Chapbook Series).

He is also founding editor of mud luscious / ml press. Visit: www.aboutjatyler.com.

Moon Chime

By Dan Kellett

Something of freedom in the slow sips of prenoon java. Couch bound. Committed only to scatter thought delegation. Reflecting. Easing away from the inhumane prod of weekly, worldly things.

I catch glimpses of grace sparking in sky swung stanzas that refuse the downside of gravitational command. They hover there, sway some, enough to hold my peer steady and deep. It seems they are yoked in a pristine web of amassed, flowing truths flung from the minds of searchers, and askers, and knowers. As if once synapse sparked in the presence of an oak, a river, a dragonfly, it becomes and must remain a portion of the whole, sovereign and without a single point of contention. In the same way the moon sheds glow across our heads, reflecting a light that is not it's own, but is of veracity none the less. We well that glow and scratch it's translation into something calculable, measured with emotion, the same way a chime gives the wind a voice we can call pretty.

A linear projection by brush or pen or pixel of a dimension created and perpetuated by the human mind. Perhaps our only non destructive wide reaching endeavor. The only grounds on which we can call ourselves superior beings, but I'm still not convinced.

Dan Kellett was born in the Bronx, New York. His creative endeavors have been in the realm of song writing for most of his adult life. He has written about 70 complete songs and recorded 30 or so. Dan started writing poetry about 2 years ago and has found poetry to be liberating, an escape from necessary rhyme and suffocating structure.

Passing Boxcars

By Ernest Williamson lll day is her smile night in tandem with a light of purple milky blue eyes coated in hazel urbanity find me lost and found in the willows nearby sing to me without noise make love music as it can be for the hearty gasp of the lonely freckled boy smothered in literature not of his own as infirmity levels the listless cloudy nights only when that lady sitting on the cobblestone sleeps and assuages the hush of her contentment lovely and happy all without the bothering nodes of me

Ernest Williamson III is a 32 year old polymath who has published poetry and visual art in over 200 online and print journals. He is a self-taught pianist and painter.

He poetry has been nominated twice for the Best of the Net Anthology He holds the B.A. and the M.A. in English/Creative Writing/Literature from the University of Memphis. Ernest is an Adjunct Professor at New Jersey City University and an English Professor at Essex County College. Professor Williamson is also a Ph.D. Candidate at Seton Hall University in the field of Higher Education. http://www.pw.org/content/ernest_williamson_iii

The Last Tour of

Loretta Lynn’s Old Homeplace

By Sheldon Lee Compton "An unexpected circumstance has occurred." Silence followed. A humming can be heard if one leans in close enough and stops breathing or moving.

"An unexpected circus massacre."

"What?"

"Did that say massacre? Circus massacre?"

Silence. The humming stops.

"Did that say –" "No." "Ahkay, hell. I thought, you know, it said something strange about a circus massacre."

"Shut up."

"Ahkay."

Solo and Mitch spent six hours getting to the cabin, a worn little thing against the hillside, and paid their money. They accepted introductory remarks from Herman Webb, tour guide and brother. A young kid with a crewcut and wild eyes portrayed him in the acclaimed movie of his sister's life.

For the past half hour Solo and Mitch had been bouncing from one corner of the cabin to the next.

Panic wasn't quite the right word, but it was close. A trip to see where the Van Lear Rose had grown up was becoming a bad trip all around. And now the walls were talking.

"An unexpected circumstance has occurred."

The two men stand in the very middle of the cabin.

It is one room cunningly made to seem like three

rooms. A divider of a wall stands in the middle, at the highest pitch of the roof. This wall gives Solo and Mitch the illusion of a bedroom, a kitchen and a living room. But it is one room, a wooden tent on the side of the hill.

It is the cabin where Loretta Lynn grew up and now it is speaking. "An unexpected circumstance has occurred."

"Now I heard it right that time. Circus massacre," Solo says.

"Great. You cracked it," Mitch says.

There are two doors. One just behind them, the front door, and then another at the back of the cabin, off to the right side. Mitch has tried both of these doors and neither will offer the slightest movement.

"This is messed up. What it is is there's a speaker somewhere in here and that's what's talking to us.

It's probably inside the walls somewhere."

"That was a nice story," Mitch says.

"That talk about a circus massacre or whatever?"

"Shut up."

"Where'd the brother go? Herman. The one who started the tour?"

"He had to meet with his accountant and then run to the store for a carton of eggs and some new silverware and bath mats," Mitch says.

"Is everything just talking strange?"

"How do I know where he went?" Mitch says.

"That's my point. That's the thing. I don't know. He was here one minute and then the next he was gone."

"Right after showing us the newspaper wallpaper in the bedroom, the one Loretta once slept in."

"Yep. Right after the newspaper wallpaper and

right before the front porch swing where what-thehell-ever happened when-the-hell-ever."

"An unexpected circumstance has occurred."

"I swear to God it's saying circus massacre. I mean I know it's supposed to be saying something has occurred, but it's circus massacre. I swear to God." "I give a damn."

"Ahkay," Solo says and walks away from the middle of the cabin. "Let's open a window and bail. It's starting to rain."

Solo moves to the window. He reaches for the bottom of the pane then jumps to the side. Herman, Loretta Lynn's brother, is outside the window. He is wearing a pair of New Balance running shoes.

There is no expression on his face. He looks from the window to the sky and then back at the window.

"Herman! The doors won't open and something's mouthing off at us a lot. The speakers you got in here or something. We're in lock down in here," Solo yells at the window.

Mitch pushs him aside and puts his hands against the window.

"Herman," Mitch yells and then calms to a whisper. "Heeerrrrman. Heeerrrrman."

"An unexpected circumstance has occurred," Herman says. He raises a tiny microphone to his mouth and clears his throat. "An unexpected circumstance has occurred."

BIO: Sheldon Lee Compton lives in Eastern Kentucky. His work has most recently appeared in New Southerner, Zygote in my Coffee and the Cut-Thru Review.

Poetry

By John Grey A SANE MAN LOOKS IN A MIRROR Open your eyes, mind before a dumb thought crushes you.

Half-baked, unlabeled, forest from the trees, sort through the multitudes, the excess, partition landscape, face, and the words coming at you.

Brush away the webs, tidy up the sparrow droppings, anything, anything, to get it clear.

Margins are thin, fragments are floating.

Keep a diary.

Read it back to yourself constantly.

So much traffic, can it ever be really resolved.

Accidents occur and the ambulance can't get through.

And all these other people are breaking into your head to burgle.

Or speak through a megaphone, outside, inside, your ear.

So how do you know that it's your mind that's doing your thinking.

Get to the mirror, that great judge of reason.

Razor-slash the blank brow and see.

John Grey has published recently in Agni, Worcester Review, South Carolina Review and the Pedestal, and with work upcoming in Poetry East and REAL.

Zodiac {The Surreal of Dreams}

By Wayne Russell in this time and space of gladness melting snow of hardened, hallowed, heart i am at one with the beauty of contemplation and dew drops languishing within her smile gardens of splendor, early morn fragile glances passed between souls incarnated into an electric hue the blue of her eyes soft soft, enchantress mirrowed within pastures of jade paradox she did not speak i awoke and all was gone Wayne Russell a.k.a. Zodiac has been dabbling with drawings, story writing, poetry, and other creative outlets since he was a boy of five. Since abandoning his painting work in his late teens Wayne has gone onto work upon his craft of poetry over the years and was first published in the Quill Books poetry anthology "All My Tomorrow's" in 1992. Other publications include Poet's Espresso,Deep Tissue Magazine, 10K Poets Magazine, Shoots & Vines, Inclement, and The Cannon's Mouth Cannon Poets Quarterly.

Cute little freckle faced, blonde child Perfect to use in scoring sympathy from local churches

Homeless and Clueless In Colorado

By Kat Solomon

And for cashing in government food stamps at gas stations for a bit of bubble gum Run the change out to daddy waiting in the car so he could buy some beer that night.

Brutally freezing temperatures, thrust out of the temporary shelter for homeless individually anyway.

Go to school and pretend there is structure to my white trash existence, Father disappeared again to court ordered rehab or in jail again For flipping off the cops, or fighting or driving drunk, who knew for sure except he'd disappeared again.

We found our way to a "condemned" house a few blocks from elementary school Water didn't run, electricity didn't work, but we lived upstairs, But downstairs was my heroine, I wanted to be just like the beautiful African American woman with her long limbs and confident demeanor Not like that fat cow that bedded down with so many of the transient

Making her the laughingstock and source of many a bawdy jokes told after dark.

The Mexicans that populated the apartment complex across from us were rather people of the house that they knew where to locate her dildo festive Their jovial music blaring all hours of the day and night I ventured in there one time and got felt up by many gyrating, horny and obnoxious men Talking to me in Spanish, I fled as quickly as I could Only Spanish I knew was by a girl named Mia who called me a "puta" when I was still in elementary school.

What's a naïve, fear stricken child born from Midwestern parents who were German for generations with the exception of one Native American Going to know the meaning of the word "puta"?

I could go on about the oddities of my childhood And personal traumas But it seems like my family suffered from the American disease of not taking personal responsibility And pleading co-dependency, crippling others with their addictions and selling a victims tale, Now my life's experiences have become great fodder for my great love – poetry.

Kat Solomon is proud to be co-host of 10K Poets Daily Happy Hour. She has a weekly column for the Blanco County News called "Adventures of a Midwestern Jewish Woman Living in the Texas Hill Country. She resides in the Hill Country with her fiancé.

She was fresh from the sea

“The Mermaid’s Revenge”

By Roberta Lawson

and made of salt.

I lick her with the tip of my tongue.

Carry her upon it. She is flipper without face. They say she is the murder of men in those graceful tail-flips.

I taste the word murder. Her murder is made of nectar and the knives of her fin.

We were never meant to touch her.

Lapping salt beads from my crackling ecstatic lips.

Roberta Lawson’s work has most recently appeared in Thirteen Myna Birds, Counterexample Poetics, Sein Und Werden and Six Sentences. http://mermaids-singing.blogspot.com/

By Jon Mackenzie

Liberty An acrobatic, waspish, wisp In the whispering current that carries the scent Of daffodils, tulips and wild hyacinth, Flits and flutters without concern; Its hollow rachis filled with flair, Teasing the breeze through the barbs of its vane And looping the loop in a figure of eight.

No moulted plumage here, I fear, For death gives life to lifeless down; Oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; battle-weary souvenir The irony is most profound.

How many borders did you cross, How many nests were torn and tossed, Before the final war was lost?

Jon Mackenzie moderates the group Poetry Academy at Myspace. Some of his current work has appeared in The Glasgow Review and The Recusant.

By John Sweet

*Sugar'd Street Ghost Makers* Sugar don’t call me sugar, ‘cause I will rott yer tongue, drill tiny little holes in yer teeth. & run away naked down tha street shouting for a fix.

Filling up tha holes in my arms with tha mess you left behind, my fingers will stick in tha glue, spat from yer worthless gums.

Fingering tha flesh, puss oozes, I am suddenly scared feeling how empty I am inside. Junkie ghost eyes cry, ladadadadada day wasting away in the oil stain’d roads Waxy lights drop their goo searing my eyes that stare at the man with half a face hanging from the pole, whispering jonny jonny its time to go.

So baby don’t call me sugar, melting in that street licking me with yer putrid tongue trying to clean me from tha resin of the gun plunged into tha veins, tha rosebeat of sap Pools in its fluid hue, blocking tha flow of junk and I withdraw from tha street following tha yellow lines to tha hollow of my heart, jumping round Holy hound hungry & tha pusher laughs under tha awning, his boy body with haunches of steel, shimmer shimmer stealing all tha trace of light, tha half faced man Reaches out his hand, whispering what yer seeing is tha result of patchwork blends, coke n valium racing through yer cage. So sugar don’t try to steal my post traumatic dreams.

*

She rotts at tha seams, spilling her effects all over the place all she does is cry,

*

sucking me dry my husk only knows how to wander anyone can make him for a ghost.

If you follow him you will find yer steady connection, he only disappears after fixing up filling tha husk with air he sits next to me in his ghost form, smiling & I feel sick.

Like someone wets their fingers snuffing out my wick my tears harden in their waxy spills, remaining where they are, so sugar go get tha pennies in tha jar & lets suck on tha copper, Shocking tha mercury teeth sending its waves to our groins, we climax spurting our essence all over tha room rolling sliding laughing, then it comes down & out in yellowâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d throat gases, silencing tha air, so its time to kiss my mouth kisses her rotten lips all over her face, stealing my sugar back drooling it into the spoon, heating it all up all over again. & winter will come stealing our memories, she still loves to kiss me

until we cum again drowning while tha half faced man laughs kicking the can, & we watch out tha thousand of windows & the ghost walks away, cool & luminous, phone ringing junkies singing for some sugar, yea its an easy score,

John C Sweet writes under the pen name beingjohnsweet, and lives in Dallas Georgia. John has been writing poetry, short stories since his early teens. A graduate of Central Michigan University his studies include: Special Education, Pyschology, Sociology, Amercian History. John is also managing editor for the online literary magazine http://theplebianrag.com Works have appeared in: Haggard & Hallo, DeComp, Poetry Warrior, MadSwirl, WordRiot, Ditch.com, TheStrayBranch, PoetrySuperHighway and his anthology published by InnerCirclePublishing and self published 8 chap book poetry books.

By Holly Day

Nighttime Hymn if I had known this morning that we would be over and done by tonight I never would have gotten out of bed.

I would have stayed asleep, alive beneath the covers, kept my arm dead around your chest, lips on your back, eyes closed. I would have found a way to keep the sun from rising, the bright daylight a shadow, and you from leaving.

EVERMORE

By Mike Berger Ping-pong balls rattle; timpanies reverberate.

Dark thoughts ricochet creeping from dark corners.

It's willie-millie; a stampede of butterflies.

Answers crawl out but what are the questions?

Probes die in the darkness.

Life slams the door shut.

Blackness pervades: Here, alone in my room.

I am 72 years old. I have a Ph.D. in clinical psychology and was a practicing psychotherapist for 30 years. I am now fully retired. I have authored two books of short stories. I have published in numerous professional journals. I have freelanced for more than 20 years. My humor pieces Clyde and Goliath, Good Grief Columbus, and If Noah Built the Ark Today have won awards. I am now writing poetry full-time. I have many pursuits which include sculpting, painting, gardening and baking bread. My forcaccia is to die for.

By Michael Lee Johnson

*I Am Old Frustrated Thought* I am old frustrated thought I look into my once eagle eyes and find them dim before my dead mother, I see through clouded egg whites with days passing by like fog feathers.

I trip over old experiences and expressions, try hard to suppress them or revisit them; Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m a fool in my damn recollections, not knowing what to keep and what to toss out-but the dreams flow like white flour and deceive me till they capture the nightmare of the past images in a black blanket wrapped up and wake me before my psychiatrist.

I only see this nut once every three months.

It is at times like these I know not where I walk or venture. I trip over my piety and spill my coffee cup.

I seek sanctuary in the common place of my nowhere life.

It is here the days pass and the years slip like ice cubes-solid footing is a struggle in the socks of depression.

I am old frustrated thought; passing by like fog feathers.

Michael Lee Johnson http://poetryman.mysite.com is a poet and freelance writer from Itasca, Illinois. His brand new poetry chapbook with pictures *From Which Place the Morning Rises *and his new photo version of *The Lost American: From Exile to Freedom* are available at: * http://stores.lulu.com/promomanusa*. The original version of *The Lost American: from Exile to Freedom*, can be found at: * http://www.iuniverse.com/bookstore/book_detail.asp?isbn=0-595-46091-7.* He has been published in over 22 countries. Email: *promomanusa@gmail.com*. The author is also editor/publisher of four poetry sites, all open for submission, which can be found at his website: * http://poetryman.mysite.com/*.

By Yossarian Hunter

*

flight #11*

the happy hour madonna changing twists /un/-becoming writhing in agony assuming the shape of a question whilst the poet and the manner of an error with his iambic pentameter and his glass of pinot noir later wraps around her a blanket she laid down an insulating layer of free verse amongst ashes and rubble an epigraph if you will and imagined herself a phoenix a portent of misfortune reborn a cover which */_is_/* indicative soaring over the promised land of the book that by all rights it should hide witnessing with awe its vistas and surrealistic panoramas sacrificed on the altar of Ambiguity searching for light shrouded and love she does not perish and hope or even succumb at first to sleep finding only ashes rather and the shadow of a whore she undergoes a metamorphosis

bio: born in a desert and raised in a lions den, yossarian started writing poetry when the voices in his head told him too... he'll stop when they fall silent... he's been featured in the annals of badwriter, 10kPoets, and NCLowBrow Webzine... when not writing bad poetry, you can find him drinking at the nearest watering hole or playing guitar as badly as he writes... www.myspace.com/yossarian_hunter <<<written word www.myspace.com/lyquidgypsee <<<spoken word

By Poet Echo - Mary McLaughlin

Overcoming Fragility We walk around this world Through falling waves of infrequency, The glass infrastructure is beginning to crack, So hold your stones, these walls be fragile.

The entire eco-system threatening to break down around us, Yet here you come In your designer jeans and Hummer, An alligator bag and an ostrich in your bed, Calling all who do not possess your views or money Obsolete and archaic.

Yet in all your narcissistic glory, You fail to understand the laymanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s story.

Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s the people such as you, That have allowed the mundane To run this place, Perhaps this wicked desire for wealth Is just a dream, Floating above and inside itself.

Go ahead and criticize the beat, the pop artist, The Dadaist, the Avant-garde.

They have all criticized you, These artists who deconstruct Then rebuild our opinions of The banal objects we all hold in our hands.

Using benday dots and absence of hand To show us our reality

There's this mask I wear, I'm afraid I'll be shot down, Let down, Walked around, Stepped on, But life goes on.

By The Mask

Damaged Rose

I wear the mask to hide what I feel.

The rejection, The confliction, The pain of losing everything and having nothing, To gain.

I shy away from people that want to hurt me, Use me, Abuse me.

I toss and turn at night.

I can't stand my pathetic sight.

I cover the bruises of past abuse. I hide away the shame and guilt. My mask, my walls, can not be broken.

You want to know who I am?

It's a story that should not be taken lightly, For it will haunt you nightly.

I am only saying this polightly.

Abuse through the years, Getting a grip on all my fears.

Who will calm my storm? Who will brave my tounge?

I lash out, cry out, bleed. Doesn't everyone?

Who in all Gods' creation will stand befor me and be brave enough to love me?

Not just the good, but the bad as well?

My Name is Joyce Gage. I have been writing poetry since I was in the 8th grade. I had a lot of hardships (abuse) growing up, and I learned to get through the tough times through poetry instead of drugs or violence. I only hope to inspire others to do the same. Violence gets us no where. You can read more of my stuff on www.myspace.com/joycegage and www.theblackwidowpoetrypub.ning.com

Where Here There Where Are U?

By Glorianne Kada I will not find you here I will find you out there riding down alleys at night peering into corners stairs climb up the sides of brick buildings I wonder if it was there that we first met but i keep riding because I will not find you here maybe I will never find you again instead you become the hint of rain at the end of a hot day as I listen to the sounds of the traffic theres a train that clamours through this city as i ride along beside it never more to find it i will not find you here anymore but i will find you out there somewhere i'm sure

By Jeff Sibley aka The Weatherman

Where I Am On This Day at This Time Gasping for air reaching for a dream that is blind the monotony hangs in the wind like second hand smoke all the lions have turned to butterflies no one is alive anymore there's no more doing blow off titty dancers openly drugs are now processed and hard to find shame is heaped upon pussy so the masses will produce work rather than love the dog is dying and the whores are all gone too I haven't showered today the diesel truck bellows outside like some lucid hallucinatory nightmare where machines have taken over the many and through all this the sun hides like God like the Pope like the President uncaring unmotivated and crazy as for me I'm just fine with most of it, in fact all of it the greedy rich cocksuckers don't frighten me the failing economy does not frighten me it's the reaction from mankind that scares me so I stay hidden away like the sun until it's once again safe.