Donor #14

sheltered echoes
and his world
sits still.

Author: Lisa Cousins
Lisa Cousins's Bio
Posted: June 22, 1998

Curious Vision

you stand clearly
black and white
against a blurred backdrop of color
my brain is flooded
the drain is clogged
my heartbeat
synchronized with the viscous
drip
drip
drip
of you
the twisted part
I'm drowning in your crimson elixir
I'm choking on the cream filling
of your dick
and I've yet to establish
who
you
are.

Author: Lisa Cousins
Lisa Cousins's Bio
Posted: June 22, 1998

you are lacing your boots, preparing for the day
and you wander the city streets with your fake justice
emanating from your stride
you're posing on a corner lamp post, a self-righteous smile
ruining your face
you push your beliefs about hard work and the extent of
social slandering in today's benevolent society
in MY face
the muscle of your neck is swollen
you don't believe what you are saying, you have no significant
attachment to your preachings

how dare you flash words across your chest and be oblivious
to their true, underlying meaning

your charm is wearing thin
your wretched lectures are now drooling down your chin
you have forgotten the point
you never knew the reason anyway

and you obviously don't really care
you get paid by the hour
to bullshit reality, and paint untruths and false
justifications across the air around you

has your faith gotten lost in the treacherous labyrinth of
deception
between the color of money and the dirt that it leaves
on your greedy fingers

the dark is casting its devious spell upon your thighs
and you stagger back to your empty apartment

your laces have squirmed out of their shell
now you are flat on your face

finally justice has been served

Author: Michael McGennan
Posted: June 26, 1998

against the day

What profits then,
when prophecy proves unproven,
and the evidence is there and all about that it is so,
and not so,
right in the immediacy of the blink of an eye,
a steely eye now weepy (will it rust,
or is such prophecy stainless
as assorted virgins and avatars have been said to be
and proved so by tortuous reasoning that unhinges at its base
if anyone can find it later, so tortuous is its guising?).

But,
back to the eyes,
steely and weepy then,
the immediate proof of now to come then,
and never thereafter because then will be the end of all after
as well as everything else,
what will those eyes see in seeing that it is not so,
palpably so not so,
as their own individuated prophet said it would - not might,
no possibility allowed,
all certainty - but is proving not
before their very eyes,
what then in the final inescapable now of no hereafters?

Socratic the dialogue,
or jejune, to discuss such or anythings as all comes to end, this new beginning,
dusk become dawn with no intermediary night,
no darkness,
neither gray nor pitch,
what worth words then in the surrounding crush of event,
ending event,
beginning event,
what use a word in this beginning,
any word, logos or obscenity at the conclusion that unroots all certainty,
confirms it in the same instant,
that at the end there is the end,
even if the beginning is as clear in it
as the day that has concluded without night,
there's no finding night upon the running to a finish of this day,
this day that has,
at the point when it should,
if it were a well-behaved day,
fitting in to all that had ever been known or considered about days,
become something else altogether,
Armageddon or night,
not with whimper nor bang,
more with less,
an event eventless eventually arriving
in the instant of it being missed and not noticed having slipped away,
a commonstance as if every day in Creation
had been quite the same as this,
but none quite so validating and rug-pulling for the believers,
the un-so,
and the rest of us waiting on the day
before putting our markers down
when it was clear which may the wind was blowing,
well,
here it is,
and there's no wind,
not so much as a zephyr,
and our markers are useless
in hands alternately tightening and hanging slack,
so that so many markers have fallen to the ground
the unscrupulous collectors amongst us could gather them up,
claim new identity,
or merely corner the market in markers against the day.

For that is the only certainty about the great day coming,
all believe,
even the unexamined and those who have not,
they believed,
examined the idea themselves,
all of us have known that the great day was coming,
and expected it,
gloried in it,
and depending upon the special claims made for it,
wished to be there when it did,
or perhaps ideally already in the grave
where such things as Hellfire might not lick,
nor Gabriel's horn's notes penetrate.
But the true believers,
wherever they end their individual days,
they,
of course believe, it is a tenet,
the religious are always playing tenets,
netted and faulting,
that they will be there on the day in question,
though they never do - question its coming.

If it does not, where does that leave the believers?

Amongst the unbelievers which is the believer's most gutting fear,
that the belief the faith the commitment
the sacrifice the loss the forgoing might
all have been to nothing,
worth no more in virtue's weight than
the drunkard the whore the philanderer
the careless the casual the actively sinful,
all of them,
their sins cumulative,
in making the day that ends all the days
be the day of ratification,
the day of congratulation
at having backed the right hoarse-voiced prophet,
imprecating, imprecating, imprecating
and then caught with the choir boy or the easy girl
or the questionable individual,
those prophets,
implicated in their own gloss,
which is the need to have sinned to apprehend
most clearly the path to righteousness,
'aid me Samaritan,
do you have a sister?',
because, we must fall as far as any has fallen
to rise further than any has before,
any except of course,
the one that is greater than all of us,
or the two or the three or the 144 thousand,
however many it is the religious elect to be among the elect, elected,
unsuspected,
rising, rising, rising higher than clouds,
further than stratosphere,
stretched out beyond the stars,
unseeable,
but not so far it cannot be seen by those with eyes to see,
eyelids closed,
who can guess,
the believers all in their separate camps unbridged
even by the night that does not fall
on the day that does not end but is the end,
and then,
even then,
epitome of nows,
not thens,
the camps will remain as they do,
believers and believers, unbelievers bivouacked beside.
Divided.

Who are the followers,
these discrete camps separated by not much more than a breath,
teeth-skin,
or a million miles walked around the planet's perimeter
if it had such a thing,
sphere's having neither edge nor boundary for us upon them,
who's a follower then when all is arrival,
all departure,
and there is no place to go with all places become
nowhere in particular and everywhere in general,
who'll follow then,
which prophet's voice might hope to cut through
the distance that's untravellable,
immeasurable - why,
all of us,
brother,
sister,
victim and oppressor,
all of us,
as always,
desperate and demanding.

So take those cards,
them held so tight against your chest,
that heaving chest,
that thudding chest
as your heart does the work it's a lifetime accustomed to
but nothing could have prepared it for this task,
transition,
take those cards and lay them where they always should have been,
except you never wanted anyone else to have that much on you,
any idea of your own next move,
intended or merely indicated by how they might fall,
those cards held so firmly that they never would
until such time as the aforementioned organ ceased,
and you yourself gave up your animating ghost,
gave it up but always expecting to have it back,
at least the animation when the great day came,
that much,
and scrubbed clean and in the peak of youthfulness with it,
take them,
are they shaking in your hands,
they are,
aren't they,
take them,
the currency they had is useless now,
it always was,
take those cards,
yours,
yes, yes they remain yours,
and place them on the table.
Face up.

What's to be seen there,
what's to be read,
what future scanned,
this day of all futures redundant except the one that is none,
the day without end,
the conclusion without ceasing,
the end beginning,
what guarantees are there for you or for any of the cardholders,
good all over the planet,
and the universe too,
wherever credit holds for being a consistent payer and a solid risk,
what's written on the cards then
more than too many numbers and an expiry date
that looks like a very sick joke
to anyone who's focusing on such things right now,
this great collection day,
when all credit's become what credit always was,
the staving-off-by-invitation of debt,
staving and inviting over and over
in a dance of death cycle lit by the glowing promises
of futures without expiry dates,
when anyone could have told you,
prophet or physicist,
there's no such thing as such a time when things are not,
only a then of compressed nows already transforming into was,
is and will be in a soup of simultaneity?

Surely you learnt that at your mother's knee,
had it confirmed in the interiors of lovers,
wherever they welcomed you to darkness,
and never forgot to throw it into conversations
leaning on the bar in public places
or shouting it from the driver's window at some lout
driving past you on a freeway or a tight country back-road,
gravel and grease,
spray and exhaust fumes in your face?

You knew it then,
how could you have forgotten it now?
You know you haven't,
that's it,
isn't it,
you have the full kitbag of knowledge
that this was always going to be,
the is that is right now,
this is,
this instant,
this stuffed-full immediacy of inescapable nowness,
this day of ends without end?

How will you use it then,
how will you draw upon your well of the known to enter this unknown,
how will you?

With covert look at your cards,
or another's?

With ritualized calling upon shared private myths
that only now when they are most needed seem
to shatter most into ineffectiveness?

With withdrawal into a private space teeming with others,
all avoiding each other's eyes
for fear of meeting them and falling upon each other
in a cannibalism of inconsequence?

None of that,
none of it:
you are bigger than that,
big as the day itself,
that you've been planning for as assiduously as Napoleon on Moscow,
and Hitler ditto,
but third time lucky,
eh?

That's your thinking,
isn't it?

Think again,
for what it's worth,
think again and ditch thinking,
there's no absolution here,
in thinking.

Thinking's done,
it's another thing now that'll get you through
- if anything at all will,
it's not thinking.

Moscow's best seen in brochures.

You'll be forgiven for believing,
that's the hardwire,
the bit put in whatever the snaky serpent might try,
because he/she/it too relies on the wire,
the hardwire that belief is whatever it might be
because belief has to be or there's no going on,
there's no pushing forward,
there's no throwing in the towel either
when everyone knows the towel is always retrieved
because that's the nature of humanity,
in the individual or not,
we believe because we have to,
there's no escaping it,
there's no snaky blandishment equal to it,
it's undoing anyway.

Belief's not a want,
not a desire,
not a sideline,
not an option,
it's there because it's there,
and we clamber up it
with whatever aids to the venture we take on as necessary,
even those we refuse to accept as being too easy,
too cosseting,
too trial sidestepping,
whatever is our own nature,
but the clamber must occur,
clumsy or smooth as each clamberer might be,
because it's there,
the absolute inevitability of belief,
we clamber to its best vantage point to take it in,
or like a mountaineer at Everest's peak,
have all the world beneath us,
and not have to see any of it simply
by raising our eyes,
the entirety of the Earth's mundanity
reduced by mighty elevation to the area of our soles.

So you'll be forgiven for believing because you have no choice in it.

But is that enough,
is it,
for we who must if we are anything at all,
inheritors or mere spectators,
we must have a role,
self-appointed,
or otherwise outside designated,
we must function else we cease,
without apprehension of a role,
we finish,
that's hardwired too.
That's the rub,
that's the unguessed-at wished-for
hidden message of the cards blazoned on their surface,
it's the going on that counts,
it's the moving through that reckons,
it's the being that is the end and start of it all,
conclusive as genesis,
all encompassing as anoesis,
don't think about it,
there's nothing in thought,
the thought of it all alone not worth the thinking -
there's only belief,
benighted as the day without night
that comes as the cards could not fail to show it would,
cards crystal balls feathers chicken bones auguries of every kind,
all wrong,
all right,
there is an end,
an end,
an end,
and in it,
no end at all,
all at end,
ending all,
all ending,
with the end that isn't,
the end that is.

Author: Tim Andrews
Posted: June 29, 1998

My Own Private Park

At street level the searing sun streaks
Across windows bald under the heat.
Chain fences strain to stem the flow
As concrete threatens to grow and grow.

Edge meets edge, street meets street
And windows and fence force it complete.
The windows reflect all this several times
It's hard to believe in human lives.

The soft chink of a solitary coin
In a charity tin, inaudible amid the din.
A hacking cough and no reply,
Lost between barriers and destined to die.

And crippled and homeless wrapped
In twisted metal and city crap.
And lawyer looking red and poorly
But that's another story.

I walk through all this and beyond,
Retreat to the park that I have found.
In all this chaos I find solace,
In the park I can drop my ballast.

I find solace when closing my eyes
Surrounded by trees and sweet children's' cries.
The grass loves the sun
And sun, sky and park are one.

Others come here, artists and mothers
And doctors and scholars and lovers.
But all they see is transparency
I doubt if they even see me.

I can sit here and forget the fumes
But the shadows of the buildings always loom.
Now I hear the children cry
And smell the fumes under the same sky.

Author: Dom Maltempi
Posted: July 6, 1998

Rebuke of Collie Nose

rejoice legatees of stingy lubricants

beyond all taste
the legs are swayed are swayed like
winter
Squash on play ground swings--different
speeds
WAIl SODOMY
WOE, yaws again beaming

Author: Harsha Babani
Posted: July 6, 1998

Survival

Author: Tristan Shepherd
Homepage
Posted: July 6, 1998

The Dance