David Christopher LaTerre from Issue 7, 2002

This one is also from Issue 7 of Karawane. David informs us that it has been revised several times and asked if he could send an update, but I really wanted to include the one we had originally published.

This one did not have formatting problems. If you have ever heard David read--in Minneapolis, in Seattle, or anywhere on the road--then you know that he reads as he writes: in one huge breath/block of text.

So here is David Christopher LaTerre's Dogme 2000.



DOGME 2000


Interesting people are loners. you can’t meet them. get out! can’t break up their marriages or usurp their secret fire escape lovers. there are none; the walk alone. who produced these individuals? not Madison Avenue or Milan. tattoos, interesting? piercings, interesting? very long hair, very short hair, interesting? vintage clothing; high fashion? interested? interested yet? bisexual? interracial? boho? like on T.V.! not weird enough. who paved the way for identity (not these people). consider the intelligentsia of time: bit thinkers in smoky backrooms. all in ugly suits & ties. members of the Bauhaus, of Dada, private salons & think tanks. outside the university(often); outside the court. creators of the thinking-edge. can’t even read their writing! they looked like narcs! they were uncool. they were very uncool. so square, they’d level the world beyond its shrunken-head tattoos & all its affect. they freaked out. & it freaked people out. like Ulysses & The Rite of Spring. when we rant that ‘it’s just looks’ or ‘all is vanity’, we imply that there is
something else. there may NOT be! What do people care about? look at the pyramid of THINGS, PEOPLE; IDEAS(materialism, Jerry Springer, & original thought) interesting? why did the punk cross the road? he was stapled to a chicken. what do you think skinheads talk about? punk rock? they talk about their families & their jobs. WHAT is interesting? WHO is? what is radical? who made the PROTOTYPE? why copy it? my moral: why copy anything? you want to be unique but first you have to be a true individual: that means no more cliques. no more TEAMS. no more GIRLFRIENDS. no more BOYfriends.
NO MORE PROPS. but see how eventually the underground goes middleground...’Liberal’ sees expensive copper pan at Williams-Sonoma. want-to-buy. forget about grassroots & Marxism. artists& cultural neighborhoods strews with 100lb boys (crystal meth bulimia) entire city of boys & that prop: either a girl, a dog, a cellphone, or snarling or spitting on the street with that ridiculous SWAGGER. where have I seen
that before? oh yeah. EVERYWHERE!(or male couples)...the world is full of E.M. Forster women & Anne Tyler men. the barback is a D.J. Star! your girlfriend’s in a review about temping for Amazon.com. the real horror of the modern city — the unreal city — today is its hypocritical MINDSET: young, hip, plugged into the web & can’t think for itself! wait for it to be DECIDED! so we have corporate-endorsed ravewear
& syndicated prison-issue Hip Hop. all you you won’t be BEAT UP(fashion isn’t as brave as it is fearful). loners are never cool. James Dean was an interpretation. I’m lonely in this place of people only LOOKING or acting weird. they can’t access weirdness, they can only GUESS! they never had it repackaged and run up the flagpole like a trend. they only borrowed it! they just paint it on like ARMOR! I finally REBELLED against cool. they said that I ‘lost’ my cool, that I freaked out (which is VERY uncool & apparently undesirable); I must have felt PASSIONATE about something. cool isn’t dynamic in any way. how did it ever catch on? how could anyone in any century look around & be BORED, or subsequently adopt this as an identity. NOTHING WAS EVER ACCOMPLISHED THROUGH BEING COOL, BUT EVERYTHING WAS ACHIEVED BY FREAKING OUT. INTERESTING PEOPLE ARE LONERS. YOU CAN'T MEET THEM. GET OUT. —not weird enough. it’s not weird enough! when we were out there changing the tide...wanna be lonely? wanna give it a shot? oh, I don’t know; I’m not saying this right. I should ARTICULATE this better...simplify: maybe something...GET OUT!

Art Durkee, Issue 7

reading a life by Art Durkee


by a single lamp
the man standing naked
his skin wrapped in words
swirling in seven languages
rapt in the book he reads
writing himself into lists, one thousand
years old, somehow still new:
"everything indigo is exquisite"
does the flower, the paper, the ink
know he worships them: their vibrancy?
it matters only to the ribs
inflating releasing the words
"lovers" and "hijau" and "spice"
and "arigato"
and "sleep" written in the thighs
the word "golden" in Greek letters
spread across his breast
his arms spiraled with poems
to hymns to mirrors to trains, dark
terrors he had as a boy
now read in books he treasures
a library of intentions, inscriptions,

Two poems by Jim DeWitt ca 1999

These are two poems by Jim DeWitt in Issue 5, 1999, back when we were still Voices From The Well.


Middle Night Courage Needed

Know that there's only one low-watt bulb
crouching up inside my pullchain lamp. How it strains to
chew away some smidgen of surrounding roomdark.

Listening close, you might hear its valiantness-for-its-
size penetrating out into sections of the blackest
speckles swarming in to surround it.

Pressuring shadow morphs that do seem snarly
stubborn. Ever angrily swirling back, determined to
overwhelm my little dim-glo bulb, break its spirit.

And right from the veryinstant of my switching it
on, Bad-Old-Blackness has flexed its long shadowed
other self. Seeming much more than just-somewhat
disturbed out there . . .

After Six Hours Suspension

Something stirs you awake. You rise out of cozy
comforters but sight tells you you are too soon for the
coming sun. Curious, you peek out the blind's chink as if
bent on catching night with one of its secrets.

None are seen moving, so stealth helps to place
your body back in. Sinking beautyrest, it calls on that
same something which woke you to reverse-gear you into
more of that temporary suspension soft . . .

Slamming Poets by Liam Kinbrae

This was published in 1998 in issue 4 of Voices from the Well when we were young as so were the slams in Minneapolis. There was a lot of animosity between the slams and the open mics and this was towards the beginning of that animosity.



Slamming Poets - Post Kerouac


People who don't know each other shuffle scared, proud or crippled into some room...some thinking that

Laureate status is long overdue...some are curious...some bored, some are simply mistaken...and maybe there is even a poet in the midst...or the real potential for one to surface--a delicate heart in the non-participating audience that becomes calm, honest, and insightful once the Slam is done...

But the Event will happen as scheduled...poetic presence or not.

"Judges are selected at random"...the spokesman announces as he selectively scatters smiles around the room...and it really doesn't seem to matterw ho will hold up the point cards:

It's about the mood of the judge...which more often than not is stimulated by something somewhere between superficial humor or sex...with a touch of the bizarre...and the narcissistic rush of power they get when it's time to grab a 5 or a 1...to dangle over someone's vulnerability.

Some gulp beer before it starts...some sip coffee...water--each contestant has a personal preference for liquid courage...and there is more shuffling--and often it feels like Ed McMahon might materialize at any second to claim his status as patron saint of poetry slams.

And the first reader rises to read...and a false hush covers the shallow banter...and someone who wants to be overheard whispers...THIS MIGHT BE ANOTHER YEATS...YA NEVER KNOW...

And the initial reader on stage adjusts the microphone...fumbles through his hastily accrued stack of papers...lets out a frustrated grunt...closes his eyes...picks a crumpled yellow sheet...smiles...and mutters into the microphone with ferocious intensity:

UNTITLED

and reads something like this:

MOON ME, MY MOON!
I WAS WOUNDED BY THE
MOONS MOONING...AND
IT FELT SO CLOSE TO ME
THAT I NEARLY CALLED 911.

(then he tilts his head and says a sweet) Thank you.

And in the semi-circle of once hopeful faces surrounded the reader, one notices the non-verbal reactions:

*an old man lowers his head onto the table--no one knows if he is meditating,
nauseous, or just resting until it's his turn

*someone else clenches a fist

*someone's mouth hangs open

*someone moves quickly through the area--going to pee

21 Scenes by Will Roby

This is from Issue 7, originally published in 2002.


21 Scenes

1 ---

paralyzed, i wouldn't
put
it past you.
Both golden Holy
Arms stuck
standard
and Permanent
to your side.
there's a hole there.

2 ---

gorgeous is
300 lb. redneck
or
everyboy with
blonde hair
Prepping for Proms.
gorgeous = beautiful
dates on thick
chickengrease arms.
beautiful arms
nailed
w/Holy Cross letter
jackets.

3 ---

my Crucifix cried, well
my old lady's
crucifix
cried, but the tears
weren't colored.
as young
Negroes playing in this
sandbox. only
the dirt is Red.
Nails full of dirt.

4 ---

only
outed
couple, gay girls
much pierced, pleasant
"newness of
you"
but
they seem infrequent.
kissing hands
only, the
courting Lesbians.

5 ---

ohhh i could have been
Poem King
of this castle, with
my pen, but
the
little women with thick
necks are all in
BrightWhite.
Pretty Woman, there
must be a Prom.

6 ---

in BeaumontTexas
there's Peroxide rain
cancer
and smoke. how we
ever
have
time to eat or
breathe
i don't know.
but, in America
it rains
and cars slide.

7 ---

grey shirts grow
soon if
buried overnight in Beaumont.
soil, much bled on
and composted
to grow
easy
breezes, someone's wearing
my
grandmother's perfume.
this
to
sniff over coffee.

8 ---

tempted tonight to take
ten lines and
touch Teresias (old
oracle)
and be for a Halloween
the
holy space between
teen toes.
but a shoe
leather w/strap
taints tomorrow the
touching. She sweats.

9 ---

when it's time
abandon this table
and all hope. i'm hungry
but
i'm saving my cents
for books - only kid ever
with
glasses
third
grade
when the other kids
touched tits. i read.

10 ---

admit my mistake,
i
want a cigarette,
and
so
bad my ears ring.
oh, but
you don't smoke.
jesus drank wine
and
my friend Cris went
on a wagon.

11 ---

young kids have
broken
t-shirts and loud stereos
so my
goddamned head
hurts
and
my nose bleeds.
look, a spot of blood
7
on
my
shoelace.
makes red dirt.

12 ---

kid's crowns
are blonde
well
everyone is tuned
to the
same
radio station
and this town's
too
small
for broadband anything.
well.

13 ---

too many people
have too
few raincoats, so
that
if
a week is full of
rain
the fashion rules break.
a twig off
this tree turns
red
in muddy rain.

14 ---

so many new
lies
and the coffee
smells
like
money i flipped out
for a tip
out of
my
wallet once.
all the cars
are
electric blue.

15 ---

we wax cars
and
they stay dirty

16 ---

nouveau
is a difficult French
thing.
as a
concept or a
word
to spell.
art
is similar because
it's a
French complication.
we do it anyway.

17 ---

"Diana's dress"
drags dirt
in
decent
molecules
over the tile. her eyes
with a Red halo
lie
in the center
of her
Face.

18 ---

every man should
own
a pink dress shirt
or at least
a
pink tie.
every man should be
ready
to
look good
and pink.

19 ---

water
hangs in the cups
of Leaves.
it is summer
and there's an awful
wreck.
and i'm off
Balance.

20 ---

and the
car, starting,
splashes her thin
angel gown
in Diana's mud. i
clean it
with my inkpen.
"Are you ready?"

Epilogue ---

"he says he'll
pay
you
back."
"oh
my god, he
owes
me."
she smiles.

Prices and Flesh by James Oliver Smith

This was published in Issue 4, in 1998, when we were still Voices from the Well. There are some indentations that didn't come through onto the blog.


Prices and Flesh


Contact
with someone else
How I would love that
but at what price
what little white lies
would I have to
tell
what favors would I have
to lay out on the
table of my relationships
what balance sheet
would I have to
generate reports on
what body language
acrobatics
would I need to
demonstrate
in order to feel
the touch of flesh
It's all here
within my arms
within my mind
within my thoughts
ready to dispense to
the first taker
Unconditionally
unfiltered
unlimited
unmoderated
but the flesh is hooked to all the
social
Mechanics
of vanity and
industrial
efficiency
so my skin
settles
cold
in the lake of its own
passions

Moonlight by Lyle Daggett

This piece was originally published in Issue 5 in 1999.


Moonlight


a cello fills the room
with its mast and sail
dragonfly wings scratch
the sandpaper of night
vast fields of water
pour over the dam
the island
is swallowed by the river
car headlights at the corner
an empty street
a man sells newspapers
one light on upstairs
a fallen branch in the front yard
a truck has come
to haul it away.

The Universe Gives Me the Creeps

The Universe Gives me the Creeps

Your music IS the universe, the night skies, black holes, love and everything in-between. Infinity, the edge of the universe, entropy and the impossibility of quantum mechanics. Thank you.

Learning as the splitting of terminology (ezra pound)
what is red?
a color.
what is a color?
a vibration or refraction of light.
what is a vibration?
a mode of energy

look at them and invent means of seeing them better
simplified form reduced to the essentials

red, rose, cherry –

She held my hand on the snow covered bridge, flakes whirling and dropping in front and behind of us, and told me I was the most spiritually, carnally, and intellectually satisfying person she had ever or could ever be with. As she nestled into my shoulder, I knew she would leave.


Writers toil in obscurity, for no recognition and even less money.


Yes, Blank reads a lot of philosophy, and poetry. Many biographies of artists, novelists, philosphers and poets. Blank refuses to capitalize appropriately. Blank thinks a lot too. All day in fact, and sometimes at night Blank can’t sleep for fear that Blank will think Blankself to death. Why are there no women heroes? They are always victims to be rescued, or sacrifcers.

Should I tell you I read all of these things so I can constantly imagine that I am someone else? We all want to be someone else.

You don’t need to know my real name to understand what I am talking about, what I am getting to. Am I even a man? You will never know, I can say anything I want, and you can’t disprove it. Am I a reliable narrator, or character? Perhaps. Perhaps not.

God! Save me from having to write about used car salesman and General Sherman!

See, in that creative writing class I had to sit there day after day with these boys and girls who thought they were so special, better than everyone else because they could write ‘fiction’ stories. (Do you really need me to go into an explanation of how or why I was in this class? Tell you what they looked like? No, because the minute I put you into a scenario, you do it yourself.) But they were some of the least special people I’d ever met. So ordinary. So afraid of being so ordinary that it made them even ordinarier. Would you want to read a story titled, “Josh Lewin, Loser? About a not so suave guy who thinks he’s suave who gives his landlord hand jobs for cheap rent, falls for a teenage girl and let’s her rob him and thinks going to Paris will save him from failure? If you do, and maybe, sadly, you do— this is all the information you need, because to extrapolate would make it not so interesting. Or how about a story about a static man who does nothing and lets a dog die rather than face that he is static and obsessed? The frightening thing is, I am making these stories sound far more interesting than they actually were. Or how about this one, the hero’s name is creet or greet or something to that effect (I can’t even remember how to spell it correctly, but that’s how it sounds) who walks down the beach in sandals. Hmmm…or what about the teenage girl obsessed with pop culture who is into drugs and denying her sexuality? Oh wait, you have heard all these stories before? Well me too, and I am not interested in hearing them again, especially when written haltingly, with inelegant and ordinary prose. I know I have because I wrote them in the third grade and got bored. I called this class, the “stab myself in the eye” class. That’s what I would have rather been doing than sitting there listening to them say “meta-language” as if it made them smart just to say it.

Jackson Pollock is my hero even though he was a drunk and incapable of even halfway human relationships. Pollock was innately talented, intuitively marked, intuitively genius. He couldn’t express verbally, anything really…but when he touched a canvas, it was shocked into beauty. He just knew what was good. And so many people just didn’t get it. Still don’t get it. Copying things from the world is not art. So many professors are passionately anti-Pollock because they secretly wish they could be that creative. Creating things that have never been seen, that is art. I’m not saying it doesn’t take talent to paint forests or a person, but it takes genius to destroy the figure. It also takes courage to be different. Especially when you know almost no one will ever get it.
I will only tell stories that I care about. They are my stories. I will not lie to the reader, inventing plot, character, narrative. Who is anyone to tell me what a story is? I could write the stories they write the way they write them, as good or better, but why would I?

MFA FUCKER .You think you're Ben Folds, or John Cheever. You want to be like someone else, rather than yourself. I know you—standing drunk clutching onto your pudgy hipster wife talking to the singer in drunken tongue slumber as if he cares (which he clearly doesn’t).
I don’t look like a success (definition of success here).
Blank, slowly evolving lost poetic soul stuck (but not that unhappily so) in an office job that allows Blank to muse philosophically and poetically. Cannot leave Blank’s part time bookstore job because, c’mon, books! Sometimes drinks too much, but not often. prefers the easy praise for his/her poetry and fiction, it comes to him/her without effort (even when he/she knows he/she could do great things if he/she actually tried) an extremely shy lazy faux intellectual who would rather live in dreams than motivate himself/herself to do more because he/she fears change to the extreme.
Short story in which characters speak only in song lyrics?

See, this writing is life. Neat boxes and categories are not real fiction, they are counterfeits.
Intent and its definitions:
1. That which is intended; purpose. The state of mind operative at the time of an action. Meaning, purport. Connotation-adj. firmly fixed; concentrated. Engrossed. Having the mind fastened upon some purpose.
You could continue to define by also defining the words within the definitions to gather all the many nuances of words. Many want, or demand that I state some sort of intent in what I write. I despise the concept of intent. I intend nothing in particular; I have no grand scheme or plan. I write what needs to be written when it needs to be written in the way it demands to be written. That is all. If forced, I can lie. I can say; I write my life and those in it into myths. I write love. I write dreams, I write of deaths innumerable. I write hopes fears and fantasies of interest to myself and sometimes to others. I write desire, beauty and truth, in my way. It seems when we define and intend, things often lose their meaning and become something else completely. Intent comes without thought, not with it. For each person who reads, the intent is different. This is the beauty and mutability of words. In most writing I see common stories told in common ways. This does not blind me. I turn on more lights. My intent without much thinking is to make the room brighter. If you were in the room, my intent may have been to annoy you, to disturb the perfect amount of light for you. Heidegger contends there is no meta-language, that language itself is a house of being. Wittgenstein says: the limits of my language are the limits of my world. It is true, one needs endless amounts of time, solitude and emptiness to write good things.

See how life swims in memory? Sitting in a café reading fever 103, seeking meaning and someone mentions a certain kind of beer and it’s like I’m shot through a time/space canon into the old cabin. Her and I (why can I remember everything and she remembers nothing?) Drinking sickly sweet beer after a long nap she sat in my lap and I was king/queen of everything.
Why am I so different from the ones who surround me? Why are they equally intrigued and disgusted—Am I so overwhelming?
I am supposed to talk about punctuation, lineation, syntax and diction, people punctuate where necessary without symbols for signifying.
It’s as if whomever I fall for slips away instantly into memory ending before they begin. See, you are nothing but a wish, smoke and mirrors, unsolvable equations, chalk screeching on blackboard, haunted houses, fun houses fun for no one.

The work of chemistry and poetry/enlightenment and sin. I take you in like I take in air.
And how can this psychologist/scientist in a poetry class be the first to understand? Her cheeks turn red, she unleashes unexpected laughter, she reads my poems and says:

She says: Someone doesn’t appreciate the bird you are.
She says: They do not sacrifice, they don’t deserve you.
She says: Pure beauty.
She says: Emotions running wild, with wild abandon. Now that is seduction.
She asks: Are you in love?

“I am too pure for you or anyone. Your body hurts me as the world hurts God.”

She believes me to be things I never was. Creating in her memory what she wants.

Angry large moods vast woman. And see…I love you without reward.

My lot my lot
to be obsessed wrapped up
baby in blanket with love (or lack thereof)
all I can do is dream it
filmed you with focus zoom
that was my eye on you

you said: “ I always felt like you were watching me.”

and I was love, I was

you were food to me, and smiles, and the rain that made everything green and the eyes that made me see…even after you’d left me.

knowing I would rot rancid in your memories

LOVE is all. It is meat and drink. I am starving for lack.

what an elaborate prank your words
were. such a terrible joke.

now I am enmeshed , trapped, like the swirling clouds of oil and gas in dirty summer strophe.
now, I am regrets daughter.

I sometimes think hands should have lips with which to speak.
I watch your hands. I want to take your right hand in mine, the tiny slivers of fingers, rough, straws…and write. Write down love for you.

Discrete airs. Hollow mysteries.

I dreamed of turtle stories and ghosts.

My dream last night was stunning. I was in a hospital elevator, there was a well dressed woman standing in front of the doors. She had on a mid length leather jacket and was holding a cane. She looked tired. We looked at each other in that desperate way with no pretensions…. and she started to slide down to the floor, as if someone were pulling strings underneath her. I went forward asking if she was ok as she fell into my arms. She started crying, like someone who was soon to lose the weight of the world. She said, I’ve got tumors all over, I’m dying, and I’ve just wet myself, as I held her up she held on to me tightly. Looking directly into my eyes she said I looked like the kind of person one could fall into.

You have intense dreams, they often satiate your hunger. You reach a place of peace with your solitary life. In a way, you are even happy. Then it happens. Someone sets you up. A SET UP. Oh god, why did I say yes? You ask yourself all week as the day looms ever nearer. What if she’s hideous? What if she thinks I’m repugnant? Or even worse, what if we like each other and once again, all aboard steamship relationship? Destination nowhere and everywhere at once. With all of its expectations and early excitements, with its labor and discontent, with its hope and doom. With its careful manipulations and microscopic lies.
There you are, after having tried on all your clothes two or three times, after spraying yourself with various scents, after thinking of every endless possibility, you arrive. Early.
Now, already, though she claims she wants to go slowly, she looks at you from underneath and says, “You know I’m falling in love with you, right?” And yes, it sounds sweet and is sweet, yet, how? She has yet to hear you complain endlessly. She has yet to realize you rarely leave the house. She has seen you angry, that’s something. Is it because I don’t believe, is it that I realize saying these things too soon is no favor to either of us?
The next section:
I am like the kind of person my father was before he found religion. Quiet, obsessive, sometimes third eye of wisdom.
Come, walk the city with me, see the things I see.
My family, all quietly obsessive full of compulsions and afraid to leave our zones of comfort, all convinced failures, certain no one wants us.
I did apologize preemptively…warned you subtly and not so subtly that I would be the tiny little Buddha in your presence, that I would tell stories.
Winter Nights
All is quiet, darkly lit moonlit snow and most often silent-- empty of people, only tracks in the snow and your breath disappearing behind me.
And in the streetlamps there is a path I choose not to follow.
We have time and no time simultaneously.
Sleep and dreams are no waste-- time to make the meanings that keep us awake.
The only thing that could make this moment more perfect-- You, standing beautifully next to me. There is a light to the right, but when I turn to look, it extinguishes.
The quiet snowy crunch and the crinkle of paper and thoughts.
Stop wishing for what is not and start appreciating what is. This is the hardest part of living. It is nearly impossible to stop wishing for what is wanted.
A woman as beautiful as you should be completely appreciated. A woman as beautiful as you sees me, but does not see me.
The minds movement from thought to thought without pausing to think, this is stream of consciousness, this is truth.
Entry:
Sometimes I wonder if it is good that I retreat to my own minds company so readily and frequently? That I generally prefer my own minds company to most anyone else’s, and that when I enjoy others I enjoy them too much. And well, wherever you go, there you are. It seems simple, but sometimes you shouldn’t go where there is.

So quiet and empty after a snowstorm, oddly comforting to think no one lives in these houses built by fools and I'm driven I'm driven to write because of all of you who I have mistakenly assigned meaning to the tightness in my chest is you, The tightness in my chest is you, from my heart to my lungs I'm drowning, I cannot breath while you are leaving me. Already every woman small, luxurious brown hair you. What I started with. It's possibility that destroys me, not no-thing. Wayside leaves, it's the prairie in my heart, flat and lonely—solitude touched by the wind. In your eyes there are sphinxes. What I stayed with and what I became. A small cat begins a conversation...she is tiny and slinks. And it is hard for me to see that I am all of these people, and they are me. And it is impossible for them. It seems this woman needs something like passion, something like intense. She is older, academic, lost in cavernous house and guests of thought. What I supply is awkward, indescribable fear. What I have is innate and cannot be taught.
Secretly

“Seeing you today
My heart broke into a thousand pieces
I wouldn’t lose one”

Seeing you today memory scatters thoughts like sand elemental particles portrait of curves rises, gasps from my heart splintered tiny shards like glass break like rays of light
from skin disperse into tiny fragments from these shine moments we sauntered from star to star black night sky foreshadowed one of us would tumble burn out in a streak explode
I will not lose feeling the size of desire weighing the want interpreting sighs and looks translating into the language of touch my words are fierce but cant be forced seeing you today, keep trying and the contradictions will seem like truth and not like part of a circle angelic, beautiful past is present is future is past and they’re all in the river Siddhartha would row his little boat across when I am happy the words don’t come language swims through eternity am I beautiful without poetry? cradled in my strange strong arms sleep in perfection I want to tear words from the air seeing you today I do not command them, they command and I say a presentiment (foreboding), so timorous (nervous) am I nothing but a chauffer of words? first falling into things fluid words fell like rushing waters down skins marble smoothness touching you washing away past indecencies making you new 30 seconds or 60 where everything is dispersed blissful, non existent peace in pleasure my pen is lightening but I’m speaking concretely beauty and death beauty and longing quietly beautiful slowly sinking falling and dispersing like the people who watch them something must touch me spark words from thin air more pleasure in anticipation than action caught a glimpse of you today sometimes I feel like a word whore every journal, scrap of paper nakedly lazily laying around me all to make words for you for me dreams of a starry night forced. anger and nightmares rainless skies incandescent light Cupid and his rosy pink snout are hunting me skies full of rain and truth behind erotic curtains time has come sun breaks through peace, love, all my cards will soon be on the table nothing is hidden in sleep shameless so that you will hear me I write I watch my words consumed to be translated into you these words are mine I give them to you and I watch you from a long way off making them into endless streams imagined meanings welcoming them at a distance will I return with empty hands? you are the essential form I can admire as an idea pathways of blue veins nerves blood so clearly transparent so painfully real still I am spinning my wordy web I carry the letters with me, as if they were sacred documents, holy scriptures hieroglyphs knowing one day they will be found out as fakes reproductions, my faith mocked lofty girl divination ripe too soon in your eyes longing for someplace else and Kerouac says write! write! on endless scrolls of paper disembodied poetics for every 5 or 20 pages 1 or 3 lines spectacular but you must keep writing mind sniffs, pauses words appear my hands electric I’m meditating on you you are my sacred Aum my intellect undeveloped unripe feeling is so much simpler look, from three lines, this…started dreaming in diagrams reaching out at floating crumpled balls of paper folding them out like falling like snow sentimental fool A drunk A cynic the ever elusive (your) words come to me in dreams upon waking or walking I rarely force them if I do, they are empty and ugly when they are good they come secretly, surreptitiously from some secret place the your could be you dear reader, or it could be me imaginary the fiction of numbers, the fiction of words signifier signified Sign these days upon waking thinking of you of words theorem of a shooting star fluid words fell from her mouth down marble smoothness of skin your words sometimes breathe like stars into my mouth celestial air sniff for traces of sibilance for silence for things I’ve left behind my words are kisses waiting to tumble ardor, affinity autumnal hours skies darken, birds decree I could close my hands in prayer stare at the fine downy brown hair along the length of an arm burn out in a streak explode sometimes words come alone as falling stars unexpected 1 or 2 mind brightens then disappears your words streams of non sensical beauty falling around me truth the night sky ethnographies crashing star theorems and now, the end playing on the tip of my tongue a wish unfulfilled “Writing you today My heart broke into a thousand pieces I wouldn’t lose one word”
Bring me no more words no words mouthed from heart to head bring me outstretched hands sighs only to love before love imagining with open eyes hands outstretched clichéd but truthful expectant thundercrack skies break open rain down I feel you, like another skin covering me as I lay in the tangled sheets you left me there will be no fall thoughts I’m not thinking lying awaking what your hands have touched suns rays beat down on me, but I will not confess half pursuing half waiting safe harbor dreams feeling blankets your words between being and non being between time and sand between elementary particles and distant lands there can be no true solution ne plus ultra (beyond us there is nothing) someone is turning my negatives into positive radicals speaking words of poetry I’ve never memorized I’m speaking to you across cloudless skies my eyes, are they too sensitive to see? little births tiny collisions emissions she slips away, barely perceptible missions of pleasure what hides in your folded paper books? can you show me proof by contradiction? a poetical discussion?

Of course, Narrator, you chose your life. Your time and place of birth.

The Universe

Fundraising for a new issue!!

It has been soooooo long since we have published an issue of Karawane. I'm starting to get back into artistic pursuits and I feel like I finally have the energy to do an issue again. With websites like Kickstarter and Indiegogo, you can fundraise for things like money to actually put out an issue, for promotion, etc. I also need a couple of months to edit the magazine, put out calls for manuscripts, and things that I just cannot do while working 4 jobs! So toward that end, I am launching a fundraising campaign on Indiegogo. Please consider donating and if you can't donate, please forward this campaign on to other people who might be able to donate! I will put out a call for manuscripts probably in a month or two. We will also likely be looking for readers/an editorial board. We will put out a call on the blog and on our FB page. Your humble editrix, Fluffy

Manifesto of the Modern Woman

I did not set out to write about 9/11. In fact, I had been studiously avoiding it and all references. But still it comes out, even when trying to write about something else! So here are my thoughts, as usual, interspersed with other things, on the 10th anniversary.

I have been experimenting with using strikethoughs to show choices that I have made in the text, so I am using that technique publicly for the first time.



I am made up feelings, not memories. I do not live in the
past if pressed
I can summon(s)
the memories, remember the moment the men
in suits covered in soot slow as statues in hardening cement
walked up the streets the
disappearance of a building the
long lines to use the anachronistic pay phone in the park
sees and says strung together like tin cans
across states a continent but I prefer to let memories
fade in favor of feelings the tears that come forcefully on hearing
siren after siren after siren song the sun shining in my eyes
the darkness in my lungs the feeling of not taking abreath after breath.

I am made up of feelings that don't face of love anger courage.

I am a woman who is made of feelings once attached to memories that must fade, shed like an extra skin, an old layer, no so much to make me new, but a skin shed, no longer needed, so that can livebreathe.