BackIssueArchive

inter\face 12

Fall/Winter 1996

Featured in this issue of inter\face

* Allegra Sloman

* Thomas Bell

* Arrange Renga

* David Hunter Sutherland

* David Joseph Dowker

* Benjamin H. Henry

inter\face is:

a

connection of minds / separation of minds

through

variation in space & time

met 

in the ethereal / technological

transmission of thought

Allegra Rivett Sloman

The Net-Maker

the stream I go a-fishing in

                        (hook this,
                        if you dare)

The net-maker has been here
with his scuffed knuckles
and book of knots

(a bond of union; bow,
cockade or epaulet; a place
where several...lines
etc...meet or intersect
and form a thickening )

yachtsmen & pirates
know about knots -

                                overhand harness hitch cat's paw
                                sheepshank single double surgeon's
                                thief's timber hitch becket square
                                sheet bend hawser figure eight
                                slide bowline Turk's head
                                Englishman's tie

I will plait my hair,
                          go
down the stairs
                     and meet you
on the beach.

You will teach me about netting needles.
They are odd-shaped things, made to mesh
with a working hand.

As many ways to make a net
as net-makers, but some
work better than others.
                                After
day's end and praise
for the sea gods,
                        we
fall to the repairs.

Our eyes run up and down
the lines and knots
that make this livelihood.

                Dream shift and pleasant wait
                in a garden, o twine me
                a bower, arbour for the mind-
                flowers. You're late again
                but hours become elastic
                in your absence.

                The hammock leaves its markings
                on my flesh, pine needles
                drop into my hair, convolvulus
                coil and blossom
                by the door.

I call the animals
to order - shrew tracks
criss-cross the lawn; the world
collapses, takes another
shape.

Over the chain-link fence a satellite
dish embraces the sky. There's more
to this than meets the eye. Say hi,
say hi to Mom. Now say good-bye.

The whole world is a wire,
vibrating. I am the same stuff,
moving at a different frequency.
There is a song we sing together.
Harmony under the words.
Departures, misread cues.
It is the warp and weft of
consciousness.

                      I spin
myself, draw threads from my own
sentience, "quote" myself.
The pattern      holds
        for a little while,
                              maybe.

It's hard to say
how much of this is
obvious.

The world which we make reference to
has changed. The Bible quote slides by,
unimpeded. Greek does not stick. The Latin
tag reads FIRE SALE. Delphi & Jedi
swap arcane lies, agree to rewrites,
lunch sometime.

The pose is yogic.

I am a starving orphan left to guard
a thorny cornucopia. Hold up the hieratic
head and see if the sun will, indeed,
make it cast a shadow.

                Quechua messengers, binding an empire
                with mnemonic knots. It is called quipu .
                Like any language it has its subtleties
                and dialects. Coloured knots fray into
                meaning. From here to Macchu Picchu
                much has fallen away, uncaught or stolen,
                lost or rotted. The string is gone, reclaimed
                by nature. The quipu-camayoc are dead.
                All that remains are cities earthquakes
                cannot move.

Sift this. The Brobdignagian desk
at C-SIS. She reads the newspapers
and clips the good stuff. Note the biases,
none of which are suspect. The obvious
is in-built, uncorrected.

You filter my attention
from the afternoon.

Systematic warping of rectangular
frames  - and them on tenterhooks,
poor Yankees, handing in no problem
dispatches prior to the fall of Iran.
Miracle or debacle? Prompted by
a network strung along the Ayatollah's
speeches (available on pliant metal,
coded on cassette).

                Call it something. Call it anything.
                Put it someplace. It's hard to look at.
                It's worse not looking at it.

We are crazed with the idea of being
understood. Despite our best sabotage.

I'll see you in my sleep
 - the gathering place.

            The dream:  you followed me through
                an enormous house, holding
                out your arms. I asked you
                about that but I didn't get
                a straight answer. I can't say
                for sure after all this that
                straight answers are
                the answer.

I'm reminded for no reason
of the case of Budweiser. Every
label pasted on upside-down. I can
dream or not dream, about that.

Thomas Bell

Biographically speaking I am a psychologist in private practice who returned to poetry only a few years ago.

Tech Sonnets

                    Medact


So far, such phrasings have seemed abstract
and possibly poetic to many Western thinkers.
The doctors take quick control in a square 
squat room drably.  On the book of my body 
I have permanently inscribed a tree.  One lumpy 
legion conceals treacherous intent.  The doctor 
holds my hand.  She retreats the moment 
I catch his glance.  He nurses her wound.

A poor old tramp explains his poor old 
steps on poor old soles.  The bad burn 
waits with his head unbandaged.  The 
gunshot attracts a foreign correspondent.  
The heartburn falters.  And so 
through the anaesthetic shows my life.
         
                           Chaos

Self-regulating questions.  Neuropeptides show how
conventional explanation systems.  Chaos heart 
dynamics cardiovasculate psychophisiological-information 
energy. Complexity self-organizes conceptualinteractions.   
Psychodynamic subsystems meta-frame emitted modulation.  
Self-transformative grammatical submissions per-
collate emergences of soul.  Spatiotemporal interacts
magnetocardiograms.  Event-synchronous awareness DNA.

Quanta dynamics neurotransmit arousal AND wave.  
Anomalous processes particulate intravenous love. 
Cognitive-behavioral prana chi qi gong evoked soul 
potential.  Operationalizing factoral personally intra/
interr.  Bioelectromagnetic consciousness processes
emote coherence.  Start here unraveling the knitted sleave of

Arrange Renga:

Lisa Samuels; Tom Bell; Jordan Davis; Gabrielle Welford; Jorge Guitart; Chris Cheek; Chris Scheil; Rod Smith; Maria Damon

Contributors range from psychologist to academic to poet worker, from Hawaii to the UK. The customary procedure (sometimes not followed) is to add one line at the beginning or end of the existing poetry thread over email. They are called ranges rather than rengas. A range can be declared ended by any member of the group, many of whom have never met in real time.

cow-cow can

  on the edge of the abysmal cliff
    
                I Lived
                               once in a land where even the stones let 
                               me weep
                               I left
                               because it was boring as the silt in which 
                               I sleep
                               I laughed            I Lived
                               once in a land where even the stones let 
                               me weep
              they called me...charlie simic, the wild boy of
              of the laughing rhinos, the pride oy the yankee lions
              slept among monstrosities lupin sequences frank laughter
              charlie tuna and bunches of brave daffodils flounder
      high on hills of mountain lard
              and the cow-cows are lowing
    and the davenports glowing
    
                                            I died

pick up sticks

   disconcerted alphabets dribbled the wisdom of ancient

         and careful
                       procurements, valley-green

            peavish mists soup
                               and pinkish salad greens

         picked at by       and for the least able

                   lavish



             squash dog-eared             parchment

                            whitened papyrus

   sealed          skin-test

         rooster boxes      blackened tablets

The flower adventure

         it was a whimsical expletive, filed under chromatic
              it was a whippoorwill world, exquisitely somatic
                         and when i stooped to listen, paint fell in my ear
                     backwards, like pain
                 as clear on the nape of my intentions as
                            a tourist gone mad at forgetting the camera
                  glare "come here" hot, serious blink rugged
                             wrapped around the curling iron of attitude,
           the lightning rod of which, peremptorily,
                              "Colonel Batguano, if that is your real name"
                  "Your forehead says 'boring'"
                            But you'll not Tom-Clark me so easily, 
                   Faulknerboy
                    Oh yeah. Well my dad said your dad likes Tom Petty.
         Your dad knows my dad? How bout that.
         now there's genius resorting to narrative again when it wants 
         to 'say something'
         mmm don't know if I'd call it _genius_
        Ms V R Lang arrived this morning escorted by
      a flock of name-droppings, of which she was queen Be
      at the ballgame, lose yr golf pencil already
    the gulf between me is too great
      misery likes usury likes squeezing the
eucharist from unbeknowing

Coffee range

                   how like the eyes of a cowcow can                   
cappuci or cacatty confabulate again                 
de rigueur
  lobotomies at home            trilobite moondrift on cloud nine
follow me follow         
in ochre chambers         willow
  brew, hems plunge onto mud wand                burnt ochre pieces of
  cake     afternoon remembrance of coffees past imagining     siena
  finales of fine art climaxes     nervous but okay with keefer   quality
  control patrols the corridors   lugano lugano sing to me

David Hunter Sutherland

NIGHT MUSE

 Insomnia or exhaustion,
 poses a lucidity beyond meditation.
 In nightly vigils the literary possibility takes flight.
 In curtains and folds of drape
 a solemn dirge or Le Chant Du Depart
 plays in the breezy warmth of candlelight.

 Below cold tiles
 harden the edges of faraway corners and books.
 The modern square volumes and verse of
 Homer, Virgil, Milton, Racine;
 surveyors of incredulous centuries
 like pedant spectators
 creep down corners in sly shadows.
 Unaware when the dawn breaks this spell

 and mere elegance gestures it leave.
 In short jocular bursts their voices subside,
 musically becoming laughter or tears;
 as my notoriety lags
 degrees behind sleep.

WETWARE

 In a bottomless heart there are voids,
 infinite stretches of fluid imagination
 age-thick hysterias creeping to a half-life being
 and reflection - whose dead epilogue 
 panders to a vague immediacy.
 Were it not for Love
 perhaps august resolve against beginnings
 todays end to the next moon 
 would writhe in bewilderment.
 Neither a crow of humility 
 or chattel of sense 
 peers past its rim.

 While on perches polished and scrubbed 
 we wander its depth, silent in its passing; 
 For it is not in the spent shell markings, magazine droppings 
 or fragments of a war torn ruin.
 Not in the violent outcroppings or deluge of a backwater coup
 and not in the wailing and gnashing of a spiritual oasis
 but in a tear.

David Joseph Dowker

from A THOUSAND AND ONE PLATEAUS

*meanders and wonders*

in voluble tongue

tumult

of chemical change of the remains
we are

enamoured of the avalanche roar
or *vastness chasms*


a constellation

cast again in iconic circumstance
beyond mere chance apprehended

arrayed


traces

of our voices as we

re-verberate


*vastness chasms*

The vatic flats of this absence.
The ravine raves. Leaves hypnotize.
Once pale raven glistens. The adamantine
riven. Transistors resist her.
Lyre be her *sacred instrument*.
Though occasional plaintive flutes
arouse. Cymbalshimmer
and snare (brush) drowse
follow her. Eyes
entice and amuse, loose
laughter scrambles up the limbic
system, giggles through the ganglial
and builds a treehouse in
that epiphany.


*sacred instrument*

Read wavers.

The Thinking Weed
in puffs of constituent
lustre hovers
over
the parts we are
made of. Grammar
stammers. No other
sounds than these.

Are we being then?

Red
wafer
thin
receivers. The creature
feature display. Hexa-
decimal monkeys
at closing time.


*ascii petroglyphs*

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the starry signature encoded in seamingly meaningless
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phrases aphasic mazes the glyphs distributed as talisman
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-ic reverie achordingly aching tribute to the polysyllabic
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angles inherent in these experiments whether visible
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or indivisible acute pains taken inside and turned to
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*fervent verbiage*

~(O)~

the spectacular artifice
of these imaginary beings

@@@@@@

that hallucinate
us,

        articulate

distillate,
                this

\
/

===)


*fervent verbiage*

The spoken word verbatim,
ur-
text trance
scribed,
nested rustles
and the listening devices
echo-located, so
dictated to. Gamut
hinted at, apt
gap
in the rapture
as the reals are exchanged, rushes of
that ectoplasmic reticulum
revisioned by the moment
(-um), open
to, articulated
through, inter
-pretation, (found)
future remembered
in supraluminal glimpses as
the (light)years reel.

Benjamin H. Henry

3 poems from i_strange:meant

15.

the signature of atrophy
                                writing in resemblance
           of categorical objects
           supplied in absence of presence


creating memory, bloom of new experience
when realization hastened
a comical twist of epic logic
true wit in mastery of language
the genius of Hamlet in his personality
the man who recognize
the world-wide ever-presence
fortified against attack
from explosive technology
the weapon deemed defensive, comprehensive.

who sank in gestation, yeast measured
in inches of frost layered upon flat sheets of wood
the construction a process of re-creation

memory as invention divined by the author God
man who ate muse and her powers
gastralizing the ancient resurfaced original

complicated in patterns of dense recognition
a thought process restrained or controlled
by ownership from/of/by a corporate entity
the artificial life without physical form
conscripting lives in communal need
of services harvested anon realia


17.
Greyhound en route to NYC

traversed approximations to lend
ambiguity developed by definition
accessed or processed
        through patented algo/alga-rhythm

in complication trees spout
        bi-lateral roots
        sucking air

crying would accomplish the soothing absolution
personal hinderance
the ground withstands his impact
of every footstep
        absorption or cadence
a counting which captures time
the strides could constantly circle
a central point
        focused on perihelion
contrary forces negated
the insurgence futile

for expansion
the man declares to himself
making assumption of space
concentrating on a single subject
escaping to a previously irrelevant
now central issue, the diversion
a pursuit of unique experience.


22.

take absence for grace
imbed sign~align

mis-meant aMbigUity
connect fraction in home
partner a commute

reference of commercial
toy sociallist glazses
vision awkward to silence
a group reduced
by elite

against     ana-any
pro-scribe  against
with the collection build monuments
which would distract

but magnification implodes at x + 2
where x is a limit of tolerance
bounds of language
salvaged and cursed

sacrifice the congruity
map stretched over bumps
patch ripping seams
dripping dirty water
of dissolved metal
crumbling foundations.