Week of September 14, 1998-September 20, 1998
Jonathan Penton
unlikely@flash.net
Bio(auto)
Jonathan Penton (Atlanta, GA) took the last train for the coast the day the music died.
The following work is Copyright © 1998, and owned by Jonathan Penton and may not be distributed or reprinted in any form whatsover without written permission from the author.
saying Yes is the greatest of privileges:
to experience dalliences-in-waiting
who attentively
wait for your permission;
hoping that you deem them worthy of your affection,
your response the word upon which they stand or fall
Sometimes,
when lovers are absent and loves are disinterested,
I have been known to scream Yes to the emptiness,
affirming my willingness
to infinity,
time,
and all the uninterested ether.
untitledWhen I am frightened
My flesh drops away and
I become a quicksilver bundle of nerves I am a paranoid mindreader, then;
I detect every thought through
an eardrum of self-defense,
Perfectly aware of the threat you pose to me
I am fat and fleshy now,
But I have been frightened, sometimes, for years.
DichotomySometimes, people
burn with unquenchable misery
And live wrapped in straight-jackets
that were sewn to custom fit
by unseen, sexless hands
Other times, other people
(or occasionally those same people)
burn with a beautiful passion;
with the weightless wonder of a God or a Goddess,
with every plant that breathes,
and every creature that sings ecstatically of its own existence
Either burning can become a subject for literature Inexplicably, those writers that write of love and beauty
are often ignored;
considered frivolous or superficial by
those who read and write of hatred and pain This sometimes causes the beautiful writers consternationBut the issue, for me, is this:
The burning misery
always happens to me
And the burning happiness
is always happening to someone else.
SylviaEveryone gets what they want He wants you to be one thing, and now you won’t dispute it I want you to be something else, now you can be Your children well, it will be a little while
before you can fulfill their desires, but perhaps you can fulfill their
fantasies more easily now
In the end, everyone always gets what they want Good people go to heaven and
suicides go to hell
and everyone’s happy, or why be good?
Why commit suicide?
Poets die young and actors live forever
People under the dirt
slowly dissolve into their heroes
which are never caught by scandal
never lose a battle
and never miss a show
Rumplestiltskin gets the maiden’s first born;
George Washington gets his slave girls;
Romeo has Juliet and Tybalt
Maub has Shakespeare and Merlin Below us, no desire goes unsated,
everyone gets what they want
Lovely, hopeless woman;
Maiden, mother, corpse:
Why did you seek fame?
If no one loved you, you would have died in peace, but as it stands
Parts of you live on in a million lovely, hopeless women I thought you wanted to die, but you now conform to the desires
of everyone you know and so many that you don’t How can you die before you are forgotten?
Do you think we will forget more quickly now?
Liz Casey
such_intensity@hotmail.com
Bio(auto)
Liz Casey thinks 34 year old women from New Haven, Connecticut should only have bios written posthumously.
The following work is Copyright © 1998, and owned by Liz Casey and may not be distributed or reprinted in any form whatsover without written permission from the author.
dronehe, the treble clef
this formication, circling the note of g
spots, strings and other miscellany
carefully orchestrated
slides
between an arpeggio apology
and a staccato fuck you
we wax the scales of injustices
methodically
a rhythmic do (re) me
he’ll rhapsodize, i’ll compromise
by humming mellifluous harmony
for a taste of common time
in clips and stills“time was; the time has been,
the time hath been; you can’t go home again”
[Vergil]i’m wearing your sweat
slung sideways from my shoulder
to my hip, remnants of extremities
twisted, wrapped around me like the aura
emanating from your being
five in the morning prone, night-lit
photographic memory
in clips and stills
i’m placing the shots
in no chronological order, for reason of
a seemless replay, i’ve forgotten my nameflashback
i remember it, falling off your lips
liquid and lyric, decrescendo to a sigh
would that i could have sung along
instead i danced, kama sutra once again
the reciprocal, a silent taste
of your name on minehours short of conscience burdens
i don’t want to sleep
i can’t remember my name
there’s no moon and i can’t see the watch
time would never stand as still as you lie right now
and the urge to wake you diminishes
lightly i trace the lines of your exhausted body
the bottom of pandoras box found in
an unconscious quiver and smile
the sheets we tore, now taut across your skin
are caught up in my legs and the folds of my memorywake up call
the tile floor, liquid nitrogen
in contrast to your sleeping embrace
still proved a tepid confirmation
of time and all it’s related adages
while the rush of reality poured against my flesh
woke me from the dream i chose not to sleep through
your sweat stolen and carried away
i fixated on the irony of time
standing still in a counter clockwise rotation
i began to remember my name
the reflection in the mirror, soft
focus in steam evaporated
this, an invitation to a reverieand i am wearing your sweat .
untitledi can hear
with as much
certainty
as i can muster
the clock
ticking
in your absence
i can see
with salacious
clarity
two hands
moving
a futile attempt
at fighting
the biting irony
of time
divisionthe lines
i’ve drawn fade
before i get the chance
to color outside them
perhaps that’s why
everything’s blurredor maybe, just maybe
it was the euphoria
of snorting them
there’s the deviation!
no, the reasons for division
caused by crossing them
two too many times
fall short of twenty seventhere’s the blur!
your feet as i dragged you
across them with meanother line
nice shoes, knew i wore them well
better than the ones showing my age
cfm’s through crows feet
maybe it’s a metaphori don’t want to be bisected
or dissected or rejected
i need a fucking parallel
a line i can’t
draw
cross
or trip over
