BENJAMIN HENRY ****************************INTER\FACE 3********************************* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * ****************************INTER\FACE 3********************************* I am pleased to present to you the first virtual copy of inter\face, a magazine published at the University at Albany as an efforto to provide an open "forum" for the publication and distribution of creative work. inter\face is a private venture, and we are open to comments, suggestions, and submissions. E-Mail to bh4781@albnyvms via bitnet or bh4781@rachel.albany.edu via the internet. **** We hope you enjoy this. Please forward, mail, print, send and/or distribute this document freely. ****************************INTER\FACE 3********************************* Nancy Dunlop with doors the woods would not be woods where they end not always knowing the knocking the interlocked branches a question is permission a soft field cricket under your finger branches locking across your palm edged by corn stalk sounds in wind i am you soft cricket singing the lock of us wielding (song) too solid to fully compass a rock permitting entry to pressure moss on its smooth surface no branches she is confused when she is that small cricket her legs rubbing not knowing beyond grass stalks or what makes green heat or day light a smooth surface to press against (like) a rock with no fissures to rest in she is out in blue air under the sun she is afraid (to call attention) and yet cannot stop she is double-natured wanting solid in a green field soft (as) grass filtered through wind (to call attention) and yet cannot stop she is double-natured wanting solid in a green field soft (as) grass filtered through wind (above written with Sam Turner and Charles Straney--nd) F-R-E-E-D-O-M-C-O-M-P-U-T-E-R --an invocation to the Techno-Muse Your screen is a stretch of beach. Words are shell-fragments, crunching under the hammer of your fingers. * * * Your screen is the night-time woods, your hands small animals foraging in the brush. * * * Your screen is still water. A school of fish effervesce its glassy depths. * * * Your keys are the bones of a thousand dead. Your fingers are souls dancing happily upon them. * * * Your screen is the inner curve of a skull, the capsules of stored sensations propel themselves within its amber caverns. * * * Your screen is an open plain. Numberless wild horses thunder out of the hills toward your face. * * * Your screen is thickening smoke. Your fingers are flames lapping the smouldering keys. * * * Your screen is a rib cage, and you are the heart beating and echoing within its chamber. * * * Your screen is a holy temple, your hands the worshippers at its portals. * * * Your screen is an open sky over a field. You are a kestrel cutting through it on sharpened wings, and its prey panicked in the grass below. * * * Your screen is the eye of heaven. Angels scale its margins. Their wings sweep against the keys like beatitudes. You are one of their company. * * * Technogram: ALCHEMY POSSIBLE EVERY MOMENT STOP VERBAL GODHEAD TO MANIFEST ANYTIME STOP PURSUE WITH FULLEST HEART NEVER STOP Eros Rising tell me again how we met, rows of brownstones, boxes, a tracking of wires in smoulder-light. you are my musec. i want to give you postcards, a small pair of party gloves. a scarf. a scroll. this ring of keys. take my hand, isis-drop part my poor seas. tonight there it all was, spilled like treasure from the envelope. the singer i know opens his mouth. when the angels hear his song, they stop their dancing. dance for all my lilies. how did we meet again? you are sky sounds. imprint of wings flapping ground level who are you today? it's as if the whole world were his thigh and i could just clasp it. tongue my way over its surface. it's cream for this parched throat. it's delicious and unfurls me in hillocks and smooth streams. careening. ow. ow. it readies me for its own taking. Stefano Resta The Procession Slap-lizzard tattoo neck in the opening rose! These palms are psychic and the lines that streak across them are nothing but human. Metallic strips of leather becomes the singular feather, a simple fetish, in contemporary American heritage. March, marching, movement in D major somewhat allegria...the Procession! Shopping carts, pioneers, expansionists, gold-diggers, and metaphors. Then the chiggers, and the blue lines on yellow paper. Trot, gallup, doorbell. Souls chained by the sea. The procession commences! Step one, step two, step three. Three step waterfalls on Willett Street! The silver flash in New York and step one, overlooking apartments. Always the flash. Procession of fires. Hooks and Cylinders I have been thinking about hooks and cylinders and Hat Creek skepticism, but nothing could repair the chronological order. The word "Seduction" is an attempt to answer the contemporaries; the hierarchy of Isis and Poseidon (and later Neptune) all demand a seaport. So it becomes unfortunate that most anglers have a detrimental effect upon the stream, a great experience like a fragment of a song. At any rate, money is interesting. The splendor of stretched sunlight in the afternoon rather impressive rather Spanish, Andalusian in the rosemary and basil. You may ask: is there any original nostalgia? Help restore the holiness! Self-defense through creativity from a small, persistent canvas. I have been thinking about hooks and cylinders and impressions from the underwater angels. Wild river through high red canyons and thousands of buzzards, circling. Palms in the Texture of Wind Palms in the texture of wind, a domus, home, or interesting book of poems and 3:00 a.m., the talk completely still; or am I to be refused in the process of grief? The arrows come wearily in order to equal the great depressions. Power then, whether you be a goddess or tread on a branch in the grove. A truly whole humanity, jaguar exulting in victory, the highlands blazing, white hair drying up. This shapes complicated demarcations and suppressed memory. Lucky to have suffered the wounds, groaning in unrecognized devotion. O blood sheltering tree, the sun has fallen and the shores pronounce a specific hue of green and the leaves have frozen to stone. Allay the mango, the totem. My pocket is filled with plans so to meet would suggest language dressed completely in memoirs or memories, simply deceptive. Besides, this is merely personal, a chaotic variation of form deciphered by the morning light. This was an Egyptian statue and the passage now is loaded with common faults. The Moon-Room To mention something simple: saffron or abysmally approaching twilight, one or two artists hope there is a foundation of Truth. Damn it all! The mood spoiled into sensual flowers, fixed, obsessive; or love incarnated resembling that Mendocino Coast or that similar important struggle. Transparencies belong to the river, the body only in part a river: in part fire flesh bone voice. My heart is all stained with blackberries. Random insecurities; imperfections gleam. Tromos, or a sudden trembling. The tides rise and below us wide stingrays forage. My selective desire is to be standing in a slate of rain or flanked by waves. Simplicity has gotten all tangled up in vitreous perceptions. My hands wish your mysterious mouth to body, Eros ablaze, the moon-room ablaze, your clitoris molten lava. The ceremony grows green, fills the air as the daughters are changed into vines though it sounds past belief. All night long the sea absorbs ghosts and sings in discordant harmonies. People (self?) People (self?) out of touch with time or meteor showers after the moon in October. Animal. Cold under the maples; leaves burning red through a crisp air. A return to splitting wood and tugging our donkey through the soccer field. Flight in the sun of lavender robes. The difficulty is in the hurry. The bark of a dog. If I walk with you on this beach sand, will the columns of rock fall? Where is the monastery? The light is covered in footsteps. But we were speaking of Canada, and Oregon, where the rock of columns stand. And one of the seven streams. How long, how meditative must it disturb, or a Buddha on a photo. The holy men are out in force beneath a blazing sky. And the rock-fish has bloody gills from the jabs of spear. I always seem to return to a similar place, out place, out of touch with time. Flash. Benjamin Henry My Sister's House I sit on the couch in my sister's living room and realize: she is still six years older than me, weaned from my parents earlier, some mistakes they'll never make again my mother thinks as she plans my future and asks me what I want to do with my life and what will make me happy and all the responsibilities I have to make and pay for and plan for and look forward to what? What lies ahead of tomorrow in a society I alienate myself from I know because it tries so damn hard to take me in and make me happy and rich but all I can see is ambivalence and ignorance and I know that they are just words and I make myself unhappy with these thoughts that come from who knows where, maybe something bad from the Bible or that Rock Music dope dealing Pink Floyd kids that will ruin this country and everything it is and stands for our children to grow up and appreciate is all ruined because these damn kids go out and look and see what is really there, even though our every day practiced have a nice days, now who could beat that? Even the glorious technology, a gift from the brilliant minds of Our Generation put to waste by troublemakers and perverts and MTV -- long-haired lunatics taking up too much time between Our commercials that clearly show them how life should really be, let's forget the pornography of Christ in Piss and homosexuality and marijuana because we know it's wrong -- how can we call that art when America is really Norman Rockwell, -- I know it's true it was never that way when I was young. A college kid on state financial-aid, I sleep in a bunked bed and look out a window at carefully manicured lawns and stone fences and rows of cars and buildings being built and potholes in roads fixed and a recycled garbage dumpster. Is this America, I ask; it must be it says on the map and the tv that sits in the corner: I watched Dan Rather for five years every night he told me America was something else, like Miami Vice and Tom Sellek with guns and sports cars racing in paradise. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * The window glow yellow from streetlamps casting shadowed squares on her glass coffee table; I fall asleep in my sister's foreign home. GARBAGE MENDING WAYS: repeated the salesman "I will believe you!" apologetically wavering, alphabetically, numerical order is the way they go sorted into the social infra/structure- meandering vs. the totalitarian! (he's back) hiding behind his pillow shoes moved to show emotion wavering under all cost ingesting a steady diet of gelatin/ insulin, melting way in the fabric pot, migration south for the mean-time, leaving behind the Greyhound station (through a portal) he sees dry land a vision counteracted by none I am lost in the iron-ore, smelting, sifting, sand- shifting away. Katie Yates ^ 1. Dark far thought Clasps Daisy root in response to terror of terror unseen alone & not habitual how to build Wither drowsy from the outset seen of night: thought Terror built of child structure such as the purpose: to do. The children learn that sorrow that mathematics of utter generality and common knowledge e.g. lyric vocabulary of "perishability" that one carries far. Hither. Drowsy. Not repeatable, World falsehood. I do not believe - having explored the question e.g. breakdown the structure terror of earth end unseen. Just Night Vigil. Such as one's singular. End unseen. In the rhyme of how one must live the first question alone in the shelter of bees. This may be the time. Where she addresses world deeply at odds in a letter to Andrew. Susan West. Pattern in sleep. Not repeatable. One learns falsehood, knowledge, massacre blind. DESTINY. Is practically nil. Is talent & frenzy. Formal catastrophe. Menacing question. Rhyme or their anarchist forms. Or moral thought. This may be the Time for the perishability of ancient beauty, of Nature. Formal memory. Nil purpose to Ancient Beauty. Flint. Intact fury. Is literacy. Carrying a banner of Truth in the pattern of History. What do you know asleap? Am welcome drifting to operate mystery computers. Pierce how to live as a bride Oh welcome repetition of requirements of my Seagray ~ 2. Carved out of a monotheistic god. Welcome O distant sorcerer dim 99aC ^miracle or hissing together bent on itself, bent to the Northwind bent to where she turns into seagray phase shift perhaps cancerous obedience shall approach love eros even more hissing pausing to repress and countless father can sacrifice northwind proud secrets hissing to gather loneliness asleap in exploitation "how to die" how together? how lyric how manifest how poison how hid how to access knowledge in this desire to land mobile compensation gesture of the jongleur to expound or are we just speaking in High Middle habits this having to run home this afternoon this squall the whole idea of another genius be/side you managing to hold night pastures seem hostile to occupy their dichotomies as the proper ambition is to sit hour out - The Rules of the Disciple even the murmuria for her sake & others for life itself deemed balanced the species ego wheat straws out of so awkward to love faceStone face reaching into it trying to pull apart the efficacy 3. So knell to their own ends drowned dust prospective attatched to conventionality. On the open telling Self resurrection and Anti-self. Such a comparison - alone and alone smile statue was mostly double talk by academic wing flapping bright ship Bright drown-ed ship. Mirror for Nature for sake her. Studied, he showeth so much of my face Stone like a woman accursed, accused in the Fall. Remembering attackers. Keepeth us rebelling. Divide. Conventionally. Sun alightingso awkward her sentence Alone and haste to calme the Word. Lost work in pastoral freedom and strawboy. From all the evil. Old uneven sunbite. Fair my head. "Exile." Like magic. See the Nightingale. Lie no accident. Vague revolt. Round the fire. Lie. Elopement of hills. Himself to the object. Going (sometime both) (mummer) This experience of bed down the birds. Ensnare & scatter the ravens. Shivering. A gain into empty interior. Himself eaten by poet. Creator. Downwoods. Held on to craft. Vague north in one's mouth. Three times is murder. Thrown. Sometime indignant. Scattering streams of written. Traces. Of necessity. Woods. Never complete. Nameless threshold. Nameless sleep. Making of. Scatter. Records of Conquerors. Inward. Of course a raw non-place. The pure signification. Secret of half of my face. In excess of the technology which depends upon the moral fathers. The watery ebb of pure knowledge. Of high virtue itself. Shell. Fragment of Liquidation introduce Aesthetics. A raw, beautiful case of Stella. No longer. The humble Angel of proposed marriage. Attributed to beautiful phrases. Exchanged. Frozen in the spiritual. Illegitimate. As for Patrick's bird. Travels Will be k unable to fly after Accurate. Yes. If he be willing. The Most Fascinating freedom. We study the murmuring. Skepticism. Churchyard of criticism Mouth of river Famine wisdom. Inlet task Liberties unperceived. Language with treachery. Aura. Inlet system measuring ^ this is a part of my response to D. Byrd's Manifesto: Culture War mediated through S. Howe's poem Defenestration of Prague Inter\face is: *Inter\face 3 is a publication of poetry, what we take that to be in relationship to our investment in the fact that the word is not so much written down now as it is down loaded or it exists momentarily between cursors late in the night's impermanent cybermind.(ky) *Cyberspace has been termed a new "frontier" by many, a new space that needs to be explored and mapped. We offer a collection of perspectives on this viewpoint, a way to look at the net, at life, incorporating technology and humanity. (bh) *i am in my new sweater. i am at a keyboard. sometimes this small corpus imprisons sometimes offers new rooms. the screen to me is a room. a series of quiet conversations late at nite or early a.m. sometimes it becomes easier to read screen words than book words. to watch them float toward you from ephermeral agitation.(nd) *We're not anti-intellectual. *We do promote: the letter press, the etching, the lithograph (old) & laborious (body) printing processes *We have to acknowledge the limitations of thoughts so finely stored in their (material) casings that they don't make it out into the late twentieth century. *I want to talk ie. there is a place to talk - seemingly an a crest of "spontaneous prosody" that is much in the keeping with a tradition of lyrical poetry which seeks to define, to glorify, to tell, to heighten, to worship, to soothe, to pray, to gather the strength we have left to care - gather in the words --- *Words, language, data stream: we encounter these things daily, accept them or reject them. This is an offering, a contribution, a step toward our ever-changing, temporary definition. We encompass and gather and collect to present. (bh) *we are seeing new meanings course from curser light. we are learning each day to speak in this new vision-voice. (nd) ****************************INTER\FACE 3********************************* Thank you for reading the first virtual copy of inter\face, a magazine published at the University at Albany as an effort to provide an open "forum" for the publication and distribution of creative work. inter\face is a private venture and we are open to comments, suggestions, and submissions. E-Mail to bh4781@albnyvms via bitnet or bh4781@rachel.albany.edu via the internet. We hope you enjoyed this. ****************************INTER\FACE 3*********************************