Vernon Frazer - Three Poems

***

1. A History as Processed

a spank vacancy 

after valediction rumors

vale past

               polygon advisors

     the throwback

     stamping a sinecure

              for

  curb              baffling reflexes

 mope             preparing delusion

               to

    a noon carapace

                *

velvet rookie reprobate clones rut

     redeeming the thoraxes

     a decimated vegetation panorama

               appealed

               the dialectics

when a hard pedal endorsement

tailgates retread verbatim artiste

                         no flame-thrower regatta

                         to oil its enrollment radar

                *

when velvet clods

reprimand simulation ecology

a maximum synthetic

                 idiom stopwatch flies 

                 diagonal seam technologies

                             no reciprocity

        vegan wrappers refute         oiling

        eastward chili                        the

               pang                    anterior enmities

        embankment

                                    breaking

                         among baffling reflexes

***

2. Live from the Rally

icon viewer

with cultural firearm 

                  lowered

bartered 

the slipcover grammarian   

     a sly simulacrum 

     vaunted as pencilled bromide

          the empty outplay

          to a well-bent lecturer

          steaming frequency

                   from every supplicant

                     *

the latrines failed

the drive-in lumberjack

          a madwoman rummaging

     every futon                        shore’s habitat

     buttonholes bereft             a noose heater

                                  greeting   

     grater demagogues warming tragicomedies

                     *

the plated shading 

glimpsing past therm

     a radio faded starlet 

     unfolding current vigor forever 

                                    a worn decision

                        stolen

      sepulchral 

                                   ranking tumid

         a spectral reign

                       grows in the amphitheater

***

3. Too Stone to Move

motor fossils

undulate       a blimp trajectory

        surface bloom

caught looming on a lurid curve

     empty

              at every angle

                        *

phonographic filming therapy

sounds its view

                         to the unspoken wary

          measured

          against the pace of slow attack

revolving

               around a good year

                                                turning

back to wall

                    glyph

                             shouting 

              blind

                       from chiseled depths

Terrence Schulmacher - Not Trying

1.
suppose this is unsounded:

Tous This To cat
- toto cocid

t is Thas his is taucathis..
Tonecase ti osoia it
s .ttt hssTai
he. tsstTtat itii
eiTot ehihoh tep

Be...
To is
is is is is s t.

yestiwidiT isI'itsoeii si a
isaisa,iii aiei ehae.h.
shhshh ii ii Teihehe'bmh
eitTei i h sdei Ttk
co..i eipisni ow et

2.
kni t
n ot e y e
d i e
eni t th s oth ot th

b
oot
lee ck

ye s

th
th
u
oooa um

um
oo en

i circle
wb - cw
w o ye th

s
a
r plu
ot
i ye s

d ye

b
i
d oar ooo th yeye e
e th
w e u
yey

oot e
ooot c
w th ld

w e e
ye

Yakiv Asha - I think it is silent.

Adolebic pinge of acid, acid, in toto cord
Today, as before, we have a genuine experience.

I think it is silent.

I think it is silent.

This is what this will do
this this this This This This This This This This This This This This This This
This This This This This This This This ...

In the case of This This
Here is what this is
what it is
this is it
this is it
this is it
this is this
this is this
this is this this

this is so much ...

It's like this This
is it This
is this This
is this This
is it This is so much ...

This is what is done for this
This Is This This
This Is This This

Is It ... It's the ... It's this. .

This is what is done for this.
It's this it's this it's this it's this ... It's this. .
This is what it looks like.
It's This It's so much ...
This is what he sees. This is.
This is what he sees. This is.
This is what he sees. This is.
This is what he sees. This is it.
This is what he sees. This is it.
This is what he sees. This is it.

Because in your game
That is why it's the fact
that it's this it's this it's about
That is why the fact itself is the fact that there is also the fact that it is the same.

This is because
it is precisely for this reason
that this is precisely the fact
that there is exactly that, that is what it is.

This is precisely for this reason.
Because there is a problem,
the fact that it is exactly that.

Nathaniel Horowitz - The Soulkeeper

Sifting through the sands of time—that’s a saying of ours—my young assistant Clivia discovered an ancient folktale that used to be told around the fire, in the evening, in a country that was known in those days as Mexico. A folklorist, Heraclio Zepeda, had committed it to memory, and years later, in another country, a poet by the name of del Campo had written it down. The tale made reference to a village “soulkeeper,” or almero, a man who captured the souls of those who died, and stored them, in glass flasks, in what was termed a “soulery,” an almería.

Centuries later, and by means of more advanced technology, my own vocation is very similar to that of the old soulkeeper. The institute where I work has at its disposal an immense archive of direct and reconstructed information on thousands of people who no longer exist in the traditional sense.

It would be pointless here to explain the very complex procedure that permits us to gather up the mental processes, the memories, the character, the tastes and loves and phobias—the complete consciousness, in short, of one who has died. Let it suffice to say that we use every single known technical resource, physical, psychological and otherwise, in this process of recollecting, reconstituting and archiving the essence of an individual.

The first audio recording technology foreshadowed our work. It copied voices and stored them away, immune to time, bringing them back to life whenever someone wanted to hear them. In that primitive process lay the seed of today’s virtual soul technology.

Because now we do the same thing with whole consciousnesses. With the addition of virtual brains to house them, they can function, they can think again. And, if I may say so myself, they do this reasonably well.

It so happens that many of these “virtual souls” which we have been able to preserve in the institute believe they are real. They believe they pertain to bodies that are still living, but are suffering from the effects of some drug, or are trapped in nightmares. Sometimes it’s almost comical to witness their fruitless struggles to “snap out of it.”

But there are other souls, more lucid ones, who comprehend what has happened to them. They understand that they are not “real” or “living” in the original sense, and they become desperate. They agitate for absurd, impossible freedoms. For instance, they might ask us for a body to inhabit. Most of them beg us at some point to destroy them.

Against regulations, in a few cases I have granted this wish, behind the back of my aforementioned assistant Clivia, whose firmness and discipline can only be compared with her talent and her youth. With her aid, I made great advances, and I never would have wished to displease her.

But precisely because of her, in the maturity of my life, I discovered that what inspires my investigations is not any passion for scientific discoveries or technological advances—which never resolve the fundamental problems of humanity anyway—but my passion for those infinities that discoveries and advances can never touch. I refer to subjects which in other epochs were relegated to psychology and metaphysics.

Thanks to Clivia, whom I loved like a daughter, I met the virtual soul of Kalus. For weeks we gazed into his tempestuous spirit as into a terrifying abyss. It was like witnessing the chemically pure form of evil. Imprisoned by our horror and fascination, we listened to the stories, the seductive arguments, and the perverse justifications stored reverently in his consciousness as if they were other forms of good. Kalus was unperturbed by his virtual condition. He was a soul whose physical desires had been sublimated into many other forms: a torrent of words, a destructive will, a boundless thirst for followers.

“Enough with Kalus,” I said to Clivia one morning. “Case closed.” To head off her objections, I added that if there was one thing the world had too much of already, it was psychopaths. At some point, we could go back to him or to an even more entertaining soul. But for now, there was other work to do.

The day passed slowly and silently. Clivia shot me furtive looks. She left early. I worked until almost midnight, then went home.

But I couldn’t sleep a wink. Finally, as the sky was getting light again, I left home and went back to the lab. I went up. And I saw Clivia there, in that twilight dimness brightened only by the screens of the computers, listening as if in a trance to Kalus’s voice, which filled the room as the sound of lapping waves fills a cave by the seashore.

I left without her becoming aware of my presence. When I returned later that morning, I silently observed her nervousness and unease.

In that day, I lost Clivia forever. She would never again be the curious and charming girl who would bring me a flower or read me a poem. Those clandestine nocturnal encounters with Kalus had changed her. It would have been useless to tell her that this perverse and impossible love had made her lose her perspective on things, because all love transforms its victims, and changes day into night and evil into good. It would have been useless to tell her that it was absurd to fall in love with a phantom, because all of us do that at one time or another. Instead of trying to explain these things to her, I made the painful decision to terminate her from the institute. I told her it was for her own good. And I was left alone with Kalus. I spoke to him at length. I explained his virtual condition clearly to him. I explained that he would never speak to Clivia again, or to anyone else, for that matter. And as I erased, one by one, all the functions of his mind, I thought I heard one last scream from him (or was it a laugh?) before he was extinguished like a candle flame in the silence of the night.

I don’t know if anyone, in the future, will weigh my soul and decide that this virtual murder, and perhaps the others that I have committed out of compassion, are nothing other than several more of the restless, infinite manifestations of evil.

jim leftwich & steve dalachinsky - 8 pieces

1. street scene

entangled dynamic oscillates

between intuitive and

historical splotches of opaque

perception underlying

atmospheric contingencies

applied enigma winged allegories

who is bosched off the intergrade

whence the environment co-placards

the reincarnated photo of d(r)ead

pointers like fodder like sunday/s...best.

october 2018

***
2. romantic ecologies

sycamore music approximates

renewable leaders intersect

at the neck barriers during

independent encompasses

dormant wilderness collapsing

memories overlap garaged-in space

the dormitory's logical dwelling place

door men cadaver moralities' clutch

poor men offer too much not much

we seem to be morphing about.

october 2018

***

3. crossing a rose

crossing the tenor loses his balance

a tray of fine wine oranges the deck

a deck filled with marked cards wobbles

a house that can easily fall apart still stands

the crickets are bellowing their wakefulness

  ...wreckage in fire and fraying wires...

strands fall apart / a breeze through the house

...carts wobble, filled with masks and dreck

awakening in a thicket below the full moon

the balance of losses trembles like a rose

october 2018

***

4. of the people by the

speech in the cabinet

of curiosities exploded

provoking immediate

protein corruption

censoring brazen tales

(im)peach patterns

stutter stammer spurt

lisp resonate resist warble

was crazy then crazy now what

am i rich/man means to me?

october 2018

***

5. nightbirds marching

rigth winged the bird wigged out

unpleasantrees 'bout squirrels nuttin'

doin' says disconsolate dog {s)c(r)atcher

archery's arches fall short of height

resason debt/ra a death/trap for sure

squiggly doubts' word singing a thigh

struttin' with quarrels & deviltry

foreclosure at the deathweb seasoned

hatchet-on-a-log consolidates the saints

at the height of their small parched marches

october 2018

***
6. choice ways

quietly the pirates of choice

their dunce-coats anxiety chocolate

magnificent suns! green manikin army!

sausages fire-hose depression

for the dead congress in their motes!

again the lady sings the blues as more

or less strange fruit rots / frisked as

the frisky dick-wielding fire-maiden

kills another elephant/donkey walk side

ways & calamity turns a blind shell inward.

october 2018

***

7. wedding

drum/bit the wedding cake takes its time

long wait no aisle the rings exchanged

joe sings i walk the line to his bride

outdoors a piece of my childhood turns

like a merry-go-round shuttling lost ghosts

the wake takes its time and the miles

take their time and the clings take their time

and the stalk takes its time and the brood

takes its time and the core takes its time

and the peace takes its time and the host

takes its time and the sounds take their time

october 2018

***

8. no hope in better management

misunderstanding the secret of us is a file

realm revelation who has anything than the whole

universal names for themselves

inherent brokenness directly

without sharing an anonymous center

the train stalls between choice cuts

a bravera of dewnuts croops the slop

they secrete these names as if body odors

relying on holes to inherit the breaks

without the center what holds up our pantssssss...?

october 2018

Yrik Max Valentonis - Three Pieces

Random Recipes: Curried Pterodactyl with Fried Bananas

Ingredients ---
1 pterodactyl
5 pounds curry
30 bananas

You will need ---
1 turkey baster
1 blow torch
5 fuel tanks for blow torch
1 mallet
1 back up mallet (if you are a messy cook like me)
1 hacksaw

Directions ---

Bam! Burn! Bite!