"Chapter Time" by Klyd Watkins

Chapter Time
poem by Klyd Watkins

Because the living room did not lie down a super highway,
Spike had to put up signs to have the big trucks detour through.

Judy and Linda would giggle and squeal like at a horror movie
waiting for the ZZWOOOOOMMM and
waiting to stick their cheeks into the v of the wind wake.

Neofunk said, to no one in particular,
“Myth is the highest form of knowledge..
Berdyaev reminds us Plato recognized this.”

Phospher, to not interrupt this, wiggled his eyes for his wife to go
get him a coke
but she had been gargling neon and was busy speaking signs unto them.

Judy fixed up a puppet that Linda worked.
When a truck came,
ZZOOOOMMMM,
Linda dropped the puppet smack into its face.

Breathlessly they pulled the strings to see if it would rise again,
as the big truck disappeared down the road.

Phospher went after his own coke.
Neofunk continued, “Temporarily,
poetry is where myth
quickens from knowing into music.”

ZZZZWOOOOOMMMMM
said the red
sign Phospher’s wife
blew into
the air. It took off down the road after
the red truck.

Klyd Watkins’ first chapbook of poetry, pete’s improvizations [sic], was published by Owl’s Breath Press in 1969. During the seventies he produced ten lps of Poetry Out Loud with his wife Linda and with Peter and Patricia Harleman. These records are still collected. He has alternated between writing poetry and creating poetry by direct audio recording of improvisation. Since the ’90s he has sometimes combined the two, using text as well as improvisation in his recordings and publishing written poetry. His CDs include Listen The Night, as part of the band What Are We? with Mike Panasuk, and “Harp All Made of Gold,” which presents chapter one of his long poem Jack spoken over world class rock and roll. Books include Ghost Trees from Sugar Mountain Press and 5 Speed from The Temple.
His own poetry and that of friends, both well know and never heard of, appears on his website: http://www.thetimegarden.com/
http://thundershack.net/ is devoted to his backyard recording studio.

"St. John’s Fire" by T.M. Göttl

poem by T.M. Göttl

St. John’s Fire

Next time you stand at the foot of a spiral stair,
look straight up,
into the dome, owned by
the gold and green brothers, Polaris and Sirius.
And there, you’ll see
the dove and the raven,
the flood birds, entwined,
in the pupil of a god’s eye, and the
god’s double tongues—one of leather, one of steel—
carving silver peacocks
into the backs of liars and other faithless.
They fill the streets
with their gunpowder cries, but
intrepid, you kick past their glittering,
bottled hollers, approaching
the mossy queen with
tiny lions climbing
from her open collar.
Your fresh supplications, awkward and
skinless, hover near the queen’s feet,
until the twin cubs devour them
and run. You must chase them,
without wheels or engines or bullets this time;
only your untried calves and thighs and lungs, only
your untested heart.
And you chase them, every midnight and midmorning,
past the tribes of the hopeful
tending St. John’s fires,
and camping at the ocean’s fingertips.

T.M. Göttl, a member of the Buffalo ZEF Creative Arts Community, has won a Wayne College Regional Writing Award and a Franklin-Christoph Poetry Prize. She won first place on the first time she ever competed in a poetry performance competition. She travels throughout the state of Ohio, writing and performing her poetry, and her work has appeared online and in print, in places such as Deep Cleveland, The Poet’s Haven, The Mill, The Hessler Street Fair Anthology, and a bilingual poetry collection to benefit victims of the Sichuan Earthquake in China in 2008. Her first collection, Stretching the Window, was published in February 2008.

Today's Autonomedia Jubilee Saint — GERTRUDE STEIN

stein
July 27– GERTRUDE STEIN
The Mother of Us All. American writer, lesbian, art patron.

What is the current that makes machinery, that makes it crackle, what is the current that presents a long line and a necessary waist. What is this current.
What is the wind, what is it.

Where is the serene length, it is there and a dark place is not a dark place, only a white and red are black, only a yellow and green are blue, a pink is scarlet, a bow is every color. A line distinguishes it. A line just distinguishes it.

A Long Dress from Stein’s Tender Buttons, 1914.

JULY 27, 2009 HOLIDAYS AND FESTIVALS
*Cairo: Caravan of Pilgrims sets out for Mecca with the new Kiswa for the Kaaba. With cannon, kettle drums, camels dyed with henna, they proceed to the Lake of the Pilgrims, stay a few days and then set out on the long road to Mecca.

ALSO ON JULY 27 IN HISTORY…
1656 — 24-year-old Benedict Spinoza excommunicated by Jewish authorities.
1794 — Maximilien Robespierre arrested as new tyrant in French Revolution.
1946 — American poet, lesbian art collector Gertrude Stein dies, Paris, France.
1953 — Korean War ends after 575 meetings, Panmunjom, Korea.
1980 — Deposed Shah of Iran dies in exile, Cairo, Egypt.

Excerpted from The 2009 Autonomedia Calendar of Jubilee Saints: Radical Heroes for the New Millennium by James Koehnline and the Autonomedia Collective

ritual for wild dogs

by Jeremy Gaulke

we found whiskey in bottles
without labels
in charred ruins and secret places
draped in rust and toadstools

filled hub caps and jagged cans
and left near the shit and uneaten cowls
of the dogs who ran the woods
at night

we left the whiskey
to madden the dogs
the way that men are mad
to make them brave enough
to return to us

to forget the bags and boxes
after their mothers
to forget the fall
the way they broke against
each other in the dark
to forget that they were so hungry
that they had funerals
thru their intestines
eating as much as they could from the
soft jowl and haunch and sides

to give them the strength to be ghosts
to be gods

we knew they were there but could never see them
but we prayed for them
and left the whiskey
in the ruins off the road
adorned in rust and natures squalor
to make them mad
to make them strong
to make new gods of slaughter

Jeremy Gaulke is the author of The Ghost of Harrison Sheets, access to a description and excerpts from which are available here, as well as a chance to buy it. “ritual for wild dogs” is from a forthcoming volume from The Temple Inc. entitled What the Master Does Not Speak Of.

Today's Autonomedia Jubilee Saint — DJUNA BARNES

barnes
June 12 — DJUNA BARNES
Home-schooled poet, Lost Generation Left-Banker.
View Barnes’ collection of poems and drawings Book of Repulsive Women.

JUNE 12, 2009 HOLIDAYS AND FESTIVALS
*Ghost in the Machine Day.

ALSO ON JUNE 12 IN HISTORY…
1892 — American modernist writer Djuna Barnes born, Cornwall on Hudson, NY.
1963 — N.A.A.C.P. leader Medgar Evers fatally shot, Jackson, Mississippi.
1964 — Nelson Mandela sentenced to life imprisonment, South Africa.
1972 — Radical labor organizer Saul Alinsky dies, Carmel, California.

Excerpted from The 2009 Autonomedia Calendar of Jubilee Saints: Radical Heroes for the New Millennium by James Koehnline and the Autonomedia Collective

My Neighbour Has a New Girlfriend

poem by Valerie Webber

My Neighbour Has a New Girlfriend

My neighbour has a new girlfriend.
I hear her little kitten moans
through the runway thin wall.
It sounds like they’re birthing a small barnyard animal.

My partner and I reflect
on how irksome he must have found us
these past few celibate years
And how surprised we are
that the only passive aggressive mail slot note we ever got
was after that awkward 4some
that lasted ‘til 8 am.

So needless to say,
we’re trying to be reasonable.

And through the muffled *hmphs*
and off beat bed springs
I’m at once saddened and joyed
by having peeping privy
to the sounds of new lust just as they’re exhaled.

And I wonder if they stare at each other
during pillow talk, eyes flitting,
or if they spoon, with cooling breath on the neck.
And if they spoon,
is she always the inner spoon,
or do they, like us, take turns.

I wonder if they’ll still find each other
perfectly new
after one has seen the other puke
– a few times.

I can practically feel their enthusiasm,
no matter how vanilla,
through the wall that joins us;
Of discovering each other,
showing off for one another
pre queef humility.
Hitting a hundred firsts per hour.

And I regret, right now, that I didn’t
go down on my first girlfriend more
or that I don’t exactly remember
the first orgasm I had with Antoine.

Still, tapping in to the neighbour’s
first steps
helps me to retrace my own

every first time that I’ve done them.

Valerie Webber
In her own write: Valerie is a reluctant academic and proud smut peddler. She has lived in Montreal since abandoning her maritime home 7 years ago. When not writing she alphabetizes her cd collection, chews the skin around her fingernails, and shamelessly indulges in legal drama television. She generally shares too much information concerning genitals, her own or otherwise. Previous work includes thin little arms build castles (big baby books) and lignin diadem with Genevieve Dellinger (big baby books, rain ridge press & glasseye books co-publication ).

Dust off Your Lips

Dust off Your Lips, a poem by Travis Catsull

It’s morning in Texas
& deer bones
thaw in the ditch

grapefruit rot on the table
& it pours on the tin
propped against the barn

suddenly water
covers the road
in heavy puddles

& we are praying
& praying so
damn loud

we pray
for bigger mouths

Travis Catsull, from Year of the Girl

Other books by Catsull include Open Spirit and Isle of Asphalt from Effing Press in Austin. Catsull is the editor/founder of Haggard and Halloo and co-founder of The Charles Potts Magic Windmill Band Which won the Austin Chronicle’s choral CD of the year award in 2008 for The Golden Calves.

POETRY: "Dear Horizon" by Adam Perry

Dear Horizon,

It could have been an anchor I pushed into you, but the pull was something like a lighthouse. Perhaps we’re a wildfire “because of what happens between ellipses and the continuation that we make love so well we recover our virginity.” I see the city, but we can exist here all-knowing and unconscious, because we’re moving. We mystery: man and wom(b)an(d) vice and never versus – a reversal. Who has the authority to push and pull heaven and hearth from both sides of variability? If only it was like a book with cylindrical binding in the center – pages inside and out, an author given peace to please – light room on a dark horse – a shape in shadows exists while you enter and by no means exit; an image speaks with no prevention, only echo fire. Jump off a building holding hands –what’s the chance you’ll fall on someone you love like an eclipse? Would you recognize sex from a print of my fantasy palm? (My son’s line; my head line; my archer and flame and mineral line) Perception is the story of destiny; how we’re always right on time, stumble and discover we’re home, wiping stroboscopic genitals with sun-dried rags to prepare for free will. So breathe into my character, give me an overabundance of names to balance all those unnecessary superlatives on the exclamation points of a first kiss that happens every day. Circles are the only Lord of Light; they draw all possible combinations back and forth together and feather in orbit. A universal magnetism, desires tamed through indulgence vis-à-vis how blood bleeds: causal, astral, fizzle, stop and repeat. In essence, I would use your face…a photo of your grace…to describe what and how I’m feeling, but some people are out of love, so out of wearing skin that up is down and nothing moves anyway. We have become a most-favored instrument, a means of expression. Do this harmony on my hereafter, because the common gender is obsolete:

Love,
Adam Perry

Adam Perry will graduate this year from Naropa University. His first book No One Knows was published by Richard Denner’s D Press several years ago. You may have heard his music with the bands Whitford and Love X Nowhere. The quoted remarks in “Dear Horizon” are from his SO Irene Joyce and the poem is from his forthcoming collection on Monkey Puzzle Press (monkeypuzzleonline.com), entitled fotographs of bones.

Byron Coley and Thurston Moore's "Bull Tongue" column from Arthur No. 32 (Dec 08)

BULL TONGUE
by Byron Coley and Thurston Moore
from Arthur No. 32 (Dec 2008)

Of all the fucked up, nasty ass, deliriously damaged rock bands in the recent history of the American underground wonderland (particularly Texas), none come close to the squirm and hellacious sqwunk of Rusted Shut. From the incinerated skum of Houston weirdness improv outfit Grinding Teeth arose Rusted Shut in 1986. Their shows were a notorious mess, drunken and fueled by cheap-jack acid. After years of slovenly survival they’ve been somewhat rescued from universal distaste by the current noise legions. The Emperor Jones label released the Rehab CD in 2003 and AA Records did a sick lathe (“Bring Out Your Dead”) last year and their notorious “Fuckin’” track off the 2006 End Times Festival live comp is still the only loop that matters (check their myspace page for that one). It was with some apprehension of being held up by knife point that we unzipped their new Hot Sex EP (Dull Knife). But goddamn if this is not a great goddamned beast of a record. The core duo of Don Walsh and Sybil Chance (the original still alive members of Grinding Teeth) and Domokos (on drums and ‘earthscreamer’) just lay it out in an unctious smear of rawk n roll decimating any obvious pretence of hardcore, black metal, death metal, sludge, punk, avant improv goop etc.—shit is the REAL amerika full on. Salute and die.

Nigel Cross’s British label, Shagrat, only releases extraordinary material. He doesn’t bother with anything else. That means it’s always a label to watch and their newsy release, the Mariachi Riff Live and Free Music LP by Formerly Fat Harry, is a case in point. FFH were an ostensible Country Joe offshoot band, based in England, who recorded a lone laid-back, country-fried album for UK Harvest. It never struck us as wildly interesting, but Brits who saw the band live were always blowing spit-bubbles about how psychedelic they were. Some of that material finally surfaced on the Hux CD, Goodbye for Good, but this LP has the essential jewel—a 25-minute West Coast jam pinnacle that can match any ballroom band for sheer acid flash. An amazing record! The flip has two free-form pieces the band recorded earlier and they too are mind-blowers. If this material had surfaced while the band was still extant, they’d be legendary. As it was, they were so arcane only a few true believers like Pete Frame, Colin Hill (who wrote the fantastic liner notes) and Nigel had any idea that there even was a grail to seek. Easily the best archival find of the year, and an incredible record by any standard.

Continue reading →

"BULL TONGUE" by Byron Coley & Thurston Moore – June 2007

BULL TONGUE

Exploring the Voids of All Known Undergrounds Since 2002

by Byron Coley and Thurston Moore

Trans Industrial Toy Orchestra’s Alzheimer Underground LP (Ti Prod) [www.transindustriell.de] is a pip. They are a German troupe where the decidedly fluxus membership play and record by reading words without “e” with nuts cracked in a nut cracker and reading backwards while tearing a sheet. They also utilize record players in aurally illegitimate ways. Sounds dada, bizarre, unlistenable? Actually yes and no: it is indeed a fucked up thing but quite alluring in its tribute to brain blankness.

Very nice slab here from Liverpool’s Solar Fire Trio (Invada) [www.invada.co.uk]. Formed in ’05 by Spiritualized saxophonist, Ray Dickaty, alto player Dave Jackson and drummer, Steve Belger, their eponymous debut LP is classic squee-pileage in the post-ESP tradition. Unlike some Euro players, these three base their sound on loose sonic collisions and and interwoven blather in ripely extended fire-form, all revolving around theories of meat and its ability to burn. Solid, savage blurt.

Debut release by Weak Sisters is a cassette called Subterfuge (Basement Tapes) [myspace.com/boilerroomemissions]. Awesome cut up screams and dead-time pronouncements make this release unbearably savage. The fact that it’s not just wank but pretty taut and focused nihilist sense-slicing makes for killer listening. Weak Sisters is basically a solo spurt of Will van Goern of Other People’s Children and word on the streets of Fort Collins, Colorado is that this tape don’t come close to his live actions. Hopefully, we shall see.

The great Marcia Bassett is rightfully hailed around the globe for her work with Double Leopards, Hotogitsu, GHQ and plenty more. She’s been responsible for some beautiful visual projects as well, but we are here this time to praise her new solo LP, recorded under the monniker Zaimph. Mirage of the Other (Gipsy Sphinx) [myspace.com/gipsysphinx]. This album seems much more flowing and less harsh than the last Zaimph CD (not that flowing necessarily trumps harsh, it’s just different). The combination of voice and guitar here has lots of raspy edge, but there’s a deep gorgeousity to it making the record seem like it’s glowing when it spins. Long lunar notes have rarely sounded so fresh. Gipsy Sphinx also has a fine album by Bear Bones Lay Low [hets.tk] called Djid Hums. This is another solo album, cut by an 18-year-old Venezualan ex-pat living in Belgium. Guitar drones and tape loops pile up higher than kites and there are blasts of fuzz that will tweak every psychedelic bones in yr body. Beware!