Christmas card, by Lisa Pasold

Rewording JKD's Passages & Sean Standish's on the road Meeting three

Here I am trying to spoil all that wanting between landscape and drawing, the usual latent stationary for recycled causes. To complain that we use a language, any of them, to pull us apart, drenching the view with a different syllable. Happy holidays! Glad your envelope isn't here. (Nothing is empty.) What if we say the relationship was successful, simply not permanent. There. Lick sealed this Unicef card’s melting view of the glitter-bedecked polar bear. To find your address will require a Sunday strike-through. Pull that hat hard down for 4 minutes, for 33 seconds. And hold. 

Passages, by JKD

Rewording Sarah Larivière's Coronary Conduct and Sean Standish’s 3 Day Weekend while listening to the Youtube video of John Cage’s Dream

And here I am trying to spoil all that

is wanting,    waiting

between notes in Cage’s Dream

landscape, a 4’33 pause

between

I,

because

I, unable to draw indications,

lament striations in the latent stationary

this                  a card

holding out for a (our) destination.

.

Tips for: (by JKD)

after For Daphni, by Sean S

Sleep moresothan than to-do day before dousing your lights.

Outside suncold shadows flit birds.

Windows ghost over panes, pangs of this moment.

Drought-times or frozen lakes stretched to consider, perhaps, pink.

Songpractice, your head unpulled, plucked drifting by melody upstairs.

Soft-stretched schoolteachers: first crush (crunch). No score.

A hoodie and coat bedazzled by her latticed silhouette.

Barren: tree abetting my frozen river.

Underpursed, arm offtaken, to go.

Steps resounding like backgammon tiles.

Sitting is always the first note in (im) patience.

A Language Apart by JW

After Sean Standish's "To say how we use a language pulls us and our words apart like quarks"

A language apart, to pull us like quarks and say how we use our words.
A language to pull us apart, like quarks. We say our words and use how
we like our quarky language. Words pull us apart. To say how, and use a
language, we say to words: "pulls us and our quarks apart". How like a used

language our pulled-apart quarks: words, to say how we like. And us, a use
apart, a quark-like use - our words and language, to say how we pull us
apart - to say how we, quark-like, use a language. Our words pull us and,
like quarks, we pull apart. A language says how to, and our words use us.

leakage outtowards, by JKD

After Sean S's Pantalooz and George Vance's Oh.

I caught this drinking problem from the bartender say
(weigh)
say
(sigh)

I caught this thinking problem from the carburettor then rev
(why)
revvvvv
(ply-

-ing me home again), It is this stumfumbling in the back of radiowaves
I
caught this I
might say

“walk into a bar”
might yammer on ’bout “knock, knock” then
clipped caught caper-copper feelin’ the fandango of this

caught up in the I got, yellow snapper, snipped up in the snipe-wipe your hands clean of my, I gotta say, this paper sallow shape of the porcelain base, gotta know it, chipped, chipper
swept clear clean of myself then
outta fuel
vaporized I
fumed

Oh.

By geova, After Sean S’s pantalooz

dear wacky

yellow plastic’s

so full

so much

viewers get lost

in a second

like trousers across the globe

too flippin fast

who walks into a horse bar?

why? he says

doc’s doing my family

wait

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Only Captains by JW

After JKD's comment (quoting Sean Standish): Like captains only with sex in them

Them only like captains with sex in
them sex-captains. Them only likin'
sex with captains like them. Only in
sex them like captains, only with

them like. Only captains with sex in,
only them like sex. Captains in with
captains, only them likin' sex with
only sex in, with them captains like.

Backtracking by JKD

After Sean S's Threadjacker.

There are tunnels under skycliffs
and old bottles,
decades of cobbled raft crossings
mysteries of spindly winesacks and marriage

vows drunk in a labyrinthine corner,
yellowjackets threading
a pathway through matter,
scratching useless to get out.

The dulcet clatter of loose history
is like the rest of us,
awakened over cracked shells
pressed, listening, to hear no echo

where feet splice, bleed
maroon over volcanic sands
markers as unnoticed as trails:
there is no roaming back, or tide.

Nuts & Reverie by Jonathan Regier

After wirecannies by sean s, geese and poles by sean s, Circadian rhythm by Jen Dick, and the Moron Poems of George Vance and Jonathan Regier

The squirrels in Australia aren’t even 1% visible
And are still more visible than the squirrels of my
Heartland.

I have a theory—your mentioning the power-lines
Made me remember it. As a child I could never get over
Some basic difficulties. Walking was such
A difficulty. The learning curve was like an egg
Balanced on my head, and when one breaks it one dies
And can barely work until retirement in the stock room
Of a liquor store, or until the slow axe of diabetes or the
Old oak of lung cancer. Consider that the best runners
Wear the crappiest shoes as children. No one needs to say
What’s behind the comfort of modern footwear.

Those fucking squirrels live a true life, and everybody
Knows it. Everybody knows by their speed on the wire.
As a stupid child, learning to run and learning to speak,
And dropped again and again off the precipice of the schoolhouse,
I remember a flock of squirrels that
Ran from the sun to the tree, and from the tree into
The equal sensorium of inner space. Those I call
The squirrels of vision. And they never return unless
I return to a foreign country. But we’ve also got
The squirrels of my memory. And those are bounded
By the huge salt oceans.

Medusa, by Jennifer K Dick

After Laura Mullen’s Cituated, Sean Standish’s new poem Geese and Poles, and the poem “Neighbor” by Brandon Shimoda (remember, to read poems this one is after, just click their titles!!)



Where might she now? Drifting.

Inside her sensorium, the waterline’s sail-drenched inward swoop and scatter of will distanced and provincial

daydream.

This part danger, part reason desperate.

Solitary. Stolen.

Classically bridging into the assumption of anemic winters, women men longed for, men longed for women longing for women she is dreaming there, glassily, setting ahoy, ahail, below the aft side slipping silent below the glacier blueice slipping splinter into

Scythes scaling away fields out of reach of

Breath. As aquatic.

Dangerous parting of sleep. Here. Heal. Knee, or set strap over shoulders: only to part, only to make it

Firmly, mark her.

She is the lack of control, in release she is puppet stringlifted. Turn in on itself slowly. Gazed. Saying adieu meaning something hollow. Nightsweats pressed against lucid dreaming. Inert
day

flat angled

White, star-speckled skin in the obsidian depths, beyond the unseeing predators, the rays, the gauzey curtain. If she could last out there, beyond that

delicacy of the return

into her.

Mouthing words in the silent sleep beyond the wall of outbound REM cycles. the weight of a body bending, rent, peared upon a moistened sail when, in an effort to say echo, to say oh, a gadget’s missing.

metal, the Aegean’s obelisk or

lead mirrors drowning, anchor-heavy, as stone.

What Was Offered by Sue Chenette

after "check this box" and "very yes very no" by Lisa Pasold; "Zerochre Zerochrome" by Sean S. and "A mite giddy on-egging" and "On" by Gvance
********
**********
Under the gift wrap, no watered silk,
********
but raploch wool,
***
wound round a doll with stone for a head.
*****
What was offered.
*******
She wove it a grass placemat,
*******
drew circles of moisture at its mouth,
********
mothered it until
**********
light pushed into the bones.
********
It taught her mineral memory --
********
a hard nut meat almost Macadamian --
********
and to keep the vertebrae perishably
***********
but tightly upright
******
daring a skating trick
**********
on the oilstained woodplank floor.

Want Is A Slow Train by Elisa McCool

After "Dormitories" by Sean S, “Beachfront Properties” by JKD, “Apologies for Absence” by
Amanda Deutch, and all the other ensuing poems

want is a slow train

sleeping through the night crossroads

where

skateboards…..boys

pills…………..and blow

where want is a need

shouted to the night air

radiant as the heat off town roofs

where the town clouds

flex their want into rain

where the hills cleave

to the dark swallowed need

Regret by Sue Chenette

after "Dormitories" by Sean S and "Beachfront Properties" and "Toss" by JKD
********
*********
Slow train at the night crossroads
********
backtracking scratched contexts
********
scrabbled content
********
contending
********
with the imaginable (false)
***********
old valise
**********
flipped coin
*********
jinxed waltz
*********

Beachfront Properties by JKD

Ater "Dormitories" by Sean S

I want a slow town swallowing a
sleeping train blowing a pill
through the night crossroads
praying boys plying skateboards
up and down boardwalks to where
hill to when hill is here is there again
all of us just as we were imported stamped
the clearing backdrop cleaves into them

Toss by JKD

After Miranda’s “Never Without Visions”, Sean S’s "Old Poem" as well as Rufo Q’s "New Poem"

Whisper—the most present edge
false earth of broken—things solidify
sings—token—humidified
earth imaginable a window
fallen—view—wood, could not have
spark—sought.
...................Whisper cresting
for—in this instant, many pasts
ghosts
—ladders
the flipped coin dropping

down, drown—if
overheard, believe scratched contexts
joined—nick of every
thing said
shaped—knot, knotted nothing
showed ghosts—edged,
nudged (you) out of things.
Taken (eye) unformed
to what end of beginnings?

And—from—you seeing
(me) through (me) now
sills—thrown sashes—taken whole
imaginable false—relatively uncorpor, incolore
to what end of ?
......................Whisper more—or
less ghost are—hour—our
of whirlpools—measuring—weight
—decent
sent wrong things:
tongs, tinsel, treasured
to meter out wire
and why
in this turn, tumbled.

very yes no by lisa pasold

after sean s & Jonathan Wonham & Amanda Deutch

writing's amputations - what gets chosen, that arm, this foot,
the precious organ or childish hysteria. oh mineral memory, repeated
on the tongue or against fingertips, to be tweeted and texted but
better folded between pages. light pushes into the bones,
filling spaces. metal pins
keep the vertebrae perishably but tightly upright
like a vase, like a profile. a toyful betwixt/between, the eyes
distracted by study, graying, fraying, porcelain skin.
getting dressed again, life
as daily psycho-killer. quilted flesh, covered, rebalanced. fingerprints,
tiny buttons, a fresh wilting letter by blackberry
from the shiny physio office.

I Wanted to Tell You by Amanda Deutch

After JKD's Apparition, Sean S's Fragment 2, Lisa Pasold's On a Morning Like This Morning and a little Marguerite Duras thrown in for good measure and spice.


I Wanted to Tell You


On a Thursday
morning,
I feel the uncertainty

of phrases.
empty bottles, the sea,
an expression

I've
never seen
on anyone

but you. I
am not a blank
reproduction

of myself,
am I?
At a certain

hour, do we become
masks
of ourselves?

The voice is
mine and it
isn't.

Wary
Tender
Undressed,

our motions
implicate
the shape of the cosmos.

A morning like this one
becomes afternoon
and lasts well

into the evening,
emerges from bones
as it has been wanting to

for weeks. Words
wipe things out
replace them,

so that you can
continue
to do so.

‘So’ meaning
be
being.

I am
busy
being.

You had written
'red.'
Sometimes,

a color speaks
more
than any words.

This is driven by
chance, the harbor
and used paths.

There are many
trees speaking colors
we can't.

Hydrate
in advance?
There is little

we can do
to prepare in
advance.

Because of the
wind,
perhaps.

Let go of the past,
stand, out on street corners
simply watching faces, movements—

That’s as good as
any
preparation,

isn’t it?
My dreams
are of

kayaks that
leave me
behind.

My waking
is of noise
and clouds.

The illusion of
place,
where I am.

I've never been
able
to believe

any of this;
I don’t believe in place
or Tuesday.

And this has kept
me awake
for many years

drawing pictures
in the
night.

I'm almost aloof
about it.
Might as well be

amazed
by the colors
of illusion.


—May 15, 2009
Clinton Hill, Brooklyn

Breakfast by Barbara Beck

After JKD's Sleeplessness, fragment by sean s,
First by Michelle Naka Pierce, Twelve first lines by Rufo Q.

how cracked and empty
porcelain the bowl
is what makes beginnings
a naked receptacle
I have not done not tended

say down in the belly's
home body heaven
is squeezed orange versus
a condensation of space
I once saw from the window

border bird crossing
a clear sky curve
the result of have-to
its own hypothesis
reward as if

A First Hypothesis by Jonathan Wonham

after Fragment 3 by Sean S and First by Michelle Naka Pierce.

Even so, it was a first hypothesis. Who said
the result was a loss? Was knowing
impossible once? The possible came
with its loss. The creek became a flood
against the panes of glass and snow
fell in the microscope. But the result
was not proof. Only a tentative certainty.

And the result of it was not knowing
if rain had an angle, or if absence
could be cut. Where the floor met the pirouette
there could be no impossible result
only a hauntless wind in the mind.
Because the more it turned, the less it shone.
The less it shone, the more it turned.