November 26-December 2, 2007: Bill Ware and Andrew James Spaschak

Synthesizer Suzie Synthesizer Suzie plays with one hand on a keyboard in a new wave post punk band Churning out a masterpiece 3-chord melody with chicken-fried hairdos A 60s parody Suzie knows but three notes The guys maybe know four Considering their repertoire why should they know more? Acknowledging no structure they rigidly replay with repeated high precision their hit of yesterday Suzie seems unconscious But no one seems to care The audience of self-made clones isn’t wholly there Emily’s Cat Her cat’s as lovely as they come— Red and golden brown— Pads intensely towards a wren Pounces, pins it down— Methodically and peacefully fierce Dismembers songs unsung Devours the warmth of flesh and blood And bathes with feathery tongue Prehistoric Pigmentation Dinosaurs were pink and green And every color in between Mottled and striped in every hue From olive drab to DayGlo blue Despite the color schemes they had I doubt that they were ever plaid Aural Adrenaline Rush consider the scream of a cold guitar wantonly amplified by over-wound humbuckers reacting to low-frequency steel reined in—ironically—by carbon wipers fingertips hammering tensioning wire transmogrifying pitch arpeggios melting into sonic magma pulsing plastic diaphragms pounding organic membranes palpitating the pavilion clap your hands, tap your feet foot bone connected to the ear bone UNIX Eunuchs code-spewing geeks dependent illogically on technology patching dot-com URL leaks jobs secured by virus mongers, terrorists of the virtual milieu of subroutines limited only by time and space and power generation state-of-the-art devices spawned in Silicon Valley beget antediluvian quests mythology for hire pseudo-worlds of avatars, electrons coursing through their veins derivative fiction written by human digits that are inescapably analog controlled by central processing units that have no practical understanding of internal combustion (walk-behind lawnmowers have no BIOS) on Mother’s Day some technically challenged, albeit lucky, mom will receive an E-card that she can’t open (it’s the high-level cognitive process that counts)

Toy Soldiers Fresh, a slip of tongue an adolescent impulse Later he will learn not to say what he means, when he dims to mellow. Tough, he’ll learn to be a remnant of himself He’ll carve days of dollars they’ll rise and fall, sink or swim. Later, he will gaze at the slip curl of a summer moon thinking of lead army men, and G.I Joe. June, such a lovely month for a man to be born, again, and again, dying in-between each blink of sun. Stranger, what kind are you Gray or blue? I’d really like to know if you ever won at Stratego. Before, we begin our dance of words and impressions, here beside the middle-age of life, still taking sides and building walls. Tomorrow, you may find me beside a hemlock picking small cones for a Marigold potpourri no less, or more a man. Until, that day arrives we guard ourselves enough to be at ease to give each other what we plan. Free, Is a large word it comes in moments when the soul is loud, then quietly slips away hanging just beyond our reach. Me, I chose the ones in the prone position blue, they fought at rest hidden in the black grass bullets whizzing by.