CAUGHT IN THE NET - FIVE

AUGUST 2001

Editor - Jim Bennett

Hello again. This is Caught in the Net edition number FIVE.

My thanks go to everyone who has submitted work for inclusion in this issue and my apologies to those I could not include. I am swamped with an embarrassment of riches and I want to get as broad a selection as possible. I also follow a policy of publishing several pieces by the same author in order to enable the reader to see the range of the poets writing, but if space does not allow I will publish the same poet in several editions.

Please note that no particular spelling convention has been followed and the spellings used reflect the usage of each contributor.  We are always looking for new poets and poems for CAUGHT IN THE NET and our other, web based, magazine TRANSPARENT WORDS both of which are hosted on the site of PK POETRY LIST   The PK Poetry List is a poetry workshop and discussion list.  Anyone interested in joining the list or in finding out more can do so at the main PK site which is at -

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Aegean/9952/index.htm  

There are already over 900 subscribers to CITN but please feel free to pass it on to your friends.  

Copyright Notice - All the work produced in this ezine is the copyright of the individual authors and cannot be reproduced without permission. All writers have exerted their moral rights to be identified as the author of their work.

Submissions - always welcome - please send to - caught_in_the_net@hotmail.com

Contents

Holiday

by Jim Bennett

 

Away from home

we turn our vision outward

don't see the flaws

a holiday renews comittment

for a while

makes fuck sweat nights steam

while mobile home rocks

to the sound of old tunes

and new ideas

 

Icicles

by Lorilee Couture

 

Like snow melting on the rooftop,

my words inch toward the edge

freezing before reaching the ground.

How to say it's not him

whose love can warm me?

My words are frozen, like the sharp

shards of ice on my eave.

If they fall they

would puncture his innocence.

To know another is on my mind

when I smile that smile that fills him,

will hurt him.

Forty years of winter have made my soul glacial.

Best to let the tundra tend itself,

remain barren, hard, cold,

than to harden another soul.

Accept what he can offer,

keep the other trapped below,

living just beneath the surface,

never allow the sunlight to melt

and expose my secret love.

 

LAUNDROMAT

by Taylor Graham

 

"Please empty

pockets of

pencils, coins, hair-

pins, nails, bolts &

bullets.

They will damage

the machines & hamper

their efficient

operation."

 

My Levi's & your

shorts pursue each

other

through the metered

heat.

Out on the

street some-

thing backfires.

We duck.

Our coined

machines go

on spinning us

clean,

dry, efficient,

for the moment safe

from bolts

& bullets.

ERRANT

by Taylor Graham

 

 

All the dogs are barking.

A homeless knight has strayed

into the street, unsettled

weaponry on small wheels

questing for adventure (or at least

your cast-off aluminum

recyclable cans). Does he peer

through curtains at a laden table

set by a butcher mother? or

a father’s private film-show

starring somebody’s daughter?

Innocence of morning,

he’s freed the dragon that lives

in your trash. He knows

every maiden’s secrets.

 

 

THE WINE LOVER

by Taylor Graham

 

He toasts her, drooling purple

from the corners of his lips.

He slurs the love-songs.

The wine goes green

in her glass

but when she turns away

he howls like seven wolves.

The echoes whirl

her floor astray.

It won't be the first

time she falls.

Not Netsex and Erosion Soliloquoy

by Lewis Lacook

 

Baby smoking in a lavender nightgown

cat-slanted eyes

my mouth hurts for

 

listen to th' alarm plummet down our dreams plumes

weaving into sex rubbed raw 'there'

of th' alarm beating us to brunch or

like work we suffer lite sleeepe

 

Baby sighs/snores/breathes

absent from the room: inside her

 

our hair a messy halo

twined into each other just like

talking over us (th' CLOCK)

our skin: messymessymessy

where I'm sore from rocking

to her moaning and now

can't touch right until it heals and

what if you have to go to th'

DOKTOR? what will HE say?

 

'i'm a horrible little man all

dreamy with dewdrops of

pink newly liquid skin fills

where her gown just about

the backs of her white puffy

knees is the sex of desolate

tongues loving twine

 

or lean into me now flowing

flower forever flowing walls and cupped

needles'

 

Baby grunts.....Baby gurgles...

 

See more at -

Websites: Idiolect (online zine): http://www.geocities.com/Paris/Lights/7326

X (hypertext experiment): http://www.lewislacook.com/xindex.htm

The Little Book of Viruses (online chapbook): http://www.angelfire.com/or/lacook/index.html

 

POLITICAL COLLECTORS

by Lewis Lacook

 

After I remove from the room my books swallowing dust, a hole

opens behind me, and the walls seem lighter beneath them. With

hands smacking of dust and chalk I box them with that width of

sound of swallowing books, I wholly box them in four boxes with

words covered up by cardboard perhaps muttering, prayerful motors

I hoped for once in the traffic of kids and concentration. I mean

they slide right in, so I'm thinking of what she'd like to read.

Can she swing with Clark Coolidge because her house is complete,

excepting me sitting nerded in the pastel fragrance of a mint

shirt, sketchy blue grids? And what about this book about Africa,

and The Norton Anthology of Postmodern Poetry? As I'm sshooshing

the dust on all my eyes in the words unhooks and something snaps

beyond the window; probably an animal, I heard them feverish in

revelations, I swallowed some sweating and some vacant with

perusal. Meanwhile I'm sorting the books by political wraps of

electric light: I toss aside a book about gestalt psychology, and

even one about semiotics, and the whole time the night's

bleaching the windows to this room I'll vacate in three days.

Nothing really gets done but the conjunction of floods in

electric yards. While a hole behind me opens, and I'm brushing

two years' writing from their spines, I nudge from this scalded

white to fluid land bobbing, and I excuse myself from the room;

choking on the purity of everybody's variables.

 

See more at -

Websites: Idiolect (online zine): http://www.geocities.com/Paris/Lights/7326

X (hypertext experiment): http://www.lewislacook.com/xindex.htm

The Little Book of Viruses (online chapbook): http://www.angelfire.com/or/lacook/index.html

 

CROWS WITH BLUE WINGS

by Duane Locke

 

 

The spider on the gray wall

Above the piano is blue,

Turns into a blue-winged Italian crow.

Caws come from the mouth of the chandelier.

The light throughout the room is black feathers.

In this shiny darkness, the philosopher is back in Italy.

The cobblestones become mountains.

He is walking from mountain top to mountain top.

The clouds that touch his shoulder are her luminous hair,

The Slavic-Teutonic blonde in a blue dress.

Her bare shoulders when touched

Leave the shadows of crows on his hands,

Send the sounds of crows to the center of his body.

MARRIAGE

by Duane Locke

 

 

The moon was marrying

The pine,

Marrying without priest or notary republic.

The moon and the pine

Were married

According to the authority

Of the song of the mockingbird.

The philosopher sat in an old,

Cat scratched, black leather chair.

His imagination had torn down the walls of house.

Although enclosed, he sat in his old chair out in the open.

He watched the marriage of the moon and the pine.

The philosopher thought how much more beautiful

Than the human marriage ceremony

With its artificiality and false authority.

When the girl with golden twists for hair returns,

He will tell about the power of the song of the mockingbird.

 

It could've been me.

by Mick Moss

 

Next to the painting it said

"Mother washing baby in sink" - 1953

the year I was born

we bathed one after another in a tin bath

that was kept outside on the coal bunker during the week

on Sunday nights, bath night, just before supper

it was dragged into the scullery

which was what you call a kitchen now

and filled with scalding water from the copper

which you call an immersion heater

and scrubbed from head to toe with Wrights Coal Tar soap

you don't have that now

 

you have herbal body wash from the body shop

and use a nice soft natural sponge

our mum used a wooden scrubbing brush

that took your top layer of skin off

these days it's called exfoliating

and is supposed to keep you looking young

we called it torture and made us look like burn victims

you smell like the scent of a summer breeze

we smelt like disinfectant

 

you have organic pizza and low fat chips

with sugar-free juice

and watch satellite TV

before going to bed in your own centrally heated room

under a cosy Teletubbies duvet

we had toast and as a Sunday treat cocoa made from condensed milk

and slept head to toe under sheetless blankets

when we eventually stopped shivering.

See more from Mick Moss at - http://www.geocities.com/emcsquareduk/index.html

"wicked fingers"

by Sherry Pasquarello

 

bruised sky

swells around

the rising moon

backlight

for sharpened branches,

dark wicked fingers

point toward heaven

accusing god

 

"stoney fields"

by Sherry Pasquarello

 

oh christ,

i can not stand this, this nothingness

it feels as if you don't exist for me anymore, as if you

never did

a few days of silence and the eternity of my imagination runs

riot, barefoot and bleeding

through the stoney field of my insecurities

what and with who, and

was she better, better than

me? did you ever care? the

lies told, needing to be believed in those heated moments come

back now, sharp and shiny with the cold

my heart and the nearness of your smile not warming them into

comfortable whiteness

they stand dark, demanding to be asked about, picked apart

word by word and you

nowhere to answer, for you never existed after all, perhaps a

good thing, a

blessing, for what could you say but another lie or

worse,

the truth, and then?

 

window of opportunity

by salvatore

 

as I hacked out a poem

I was disturbed by the

vision of my sexy neighbor

pulling the weeds in her

garden

 

pulling weeds while wearing

a white sundress in 90 degree

heat

 

sweat was pouring off of her

and her clothes stuck

to her moist skin

 

the dress was see thru

in all the right places

and she was hot

and getting hotter

 

she bent over and tugged

out the weeds at their roots

which seemed like ritualistic

murder

 

god, how I wished she

would stop

but she kept pulling

the poor weeds up

at their roots

 

I couldn't stand it any longer

I forgot about writing

and walked up to her

and offered to lay some sod

or mow her lawn

 

because in situations

such as this

it is better to be

a participant than a voyeur.

 

Blood negative

by Alaric Sumner (1952-2000)

 

1

Blood negative

counters

space's failure

(most typical)

to engender

framed conceits

within perspectival

resolutions

 

2

Blood negative

waitss

its turn

to turn

counters

for playing games

into extensive half-lives

framed with conceit

as difference

 

3

Blood negative

lisps wetly

that time

kills all

without particular reference

to scale

or code

and space's failure

(nothing to the gods)

weakens the will

 

4

Blood negative

looks at the nexus

between the sexual

and its representation

and recodes desire

as death wish

in a phantasm of falsity

that strips plastic of hope,

sspace of its confrontations and

the possible--beyond-the-crucial

of its text

 

Copyright - Estate of Alaric Sumner 2001

You can read more about Alaric at http://www.crosswinds.net/~subvoicivepoetry/

Enquiries to Lawrence Upton, lawrence.upton@britishlibrary.net

Links to Lawrence's work can be found at - http://pages.britishlibrary.net/lawrence.upton/

The literature

by Alaric Sumner (1952-2000)

 

Description attempts revision

and to normalise the moment

until it's streamlined

and slips down

smoothly

..........................................31.10.93. 4:47 pm

 

you wait

mixing troubles

a bell

a sibilance

that nourishes

for reason

is primed

..........................................31.10.93. 5:00 pm

 

What is the meaning of a story?

I follow the plot but am left

no wiser - unless it's wise

to know the circumstances

of yet another fiction

There are no questions

except the first question -

What is the meaning of a story?

..........................................31.10.93. 5:08 pm

 

A subtle trade of tension

between lust and fear

..........................................31.10.93. 5:15 pm

Copyright - Estate of Alaric Sumner 2001

You can read more about Alaric at http://www.crosswinds.net/~subvoicivepoetry/

Enquiries to Lawrence Upton, lawrence.upton@britishlibrary.net

Links to Lawrence's work can be found at - http://pages.britishlibrary.net/lawrence.upton/

 

balletic (1)

by Lawrence Upton

 

a sprite's

..............swept in

............................baring a pixel

declaiming

characteristics

.......................in numerical tables

thin as a single digit

................................hallo

and

.......in the best position

.......................................as powerful

places the pixel

in its right relationship

.....................................giggling

..................................................sprite and pixel

pushing herself inside a rock split

sleeps out chill and dark

at dawn will she expand and spread

the ground crackles

indefinite long shadows point at throbbing sun

so cold

.............and little light

representational elements crystallise at the edge of vision

the sprite sweeps up the morning shards

Links to Lawrence's work can be found at - http://pages.britishlibrary.net/lawrence.upton/

 

balletic (2)

by Lawrence Upton

 

 

stand still!

stand still

until I say

you may relax

you may not sit

you cannot

I'll choke you to death

these things are random

but I foresee your consequences

stand still! stand still!

combine your energy with your will

spiteful sprite, spitting sprite

 

a sprite swept in

ahead of words

the music following almost immediately

folds

and soft as dough

wet paper's easily torn

but not with accuracy

Links to Lawrence's work can be found at - http://pages.britishlibrary.net/lawrence.upton/

 

balletic (3)

by Lawrence Upton

 

she sits down on the floor, curling forward, her head a dot

then spreads her arms as a scarecrow crossing an upright

but neither in supplication nor in pain; a pause

and the head with one eye open shows them a curve, slow

waves over parquet; then a pause

and then a fast roll starting but not seeing through

a Catherine's Wheel and then a pause;

stands up and bends forward clutching her stomach as a fiery

death head bulbous over the tail of her sitting

and then she makes herself a gate

Links to Lawrence's work can be found at - http://pages.britishlibrary.net/lawrence.upton/

balletic (4)

by Lawrence Upton

 

single stems pile up into a mountain of dead

spring thaws let float a single bloom

ice breaks open under pressure of blood

larvae roll over each other

Links to Lawrence's work can be found at - http://pages.britishlibrary.net/lawrence.upton/

 

balletic (5)

by Lawrence Upton

 

arm in arm

gingerbread girls

enter, running

 

their frieze melts into animate components

freezing

starting pistol report

 

starts jolt movement

they reassemble

themselves clumsily

 

they are so thin now

I'm scared they'd break

they hug each other

 

and separate

arm stumps extended

pixilated grins

 

fixing a smile

who's hungry

mummy's voice rumbles

 

technicians seek

to synchronise senses

we all are,

 

we say,

it's cold

and move towards the table

 

shuffling

trying to see

steadily

Links to Lawrence's work can be found at - http://pages.britishlibrary.net/lawrence.upton/

heat lightning

by George Wallace

 

maybe sitting next to the mountain

there is a white bear

with a cub on her knee

and she is feeding the wind to the world

one wooden spoonful at a time

wind soup with little rock crystals in it

and of course it is difficult

to hold a spoon in your paws like that

or maybe the big white bear gets distracted

or maybe the cub turns his little head

when she doesn't exactly expect it

but anyhow every once in a while

she drops the wooden spoon

and the wind spills out

and all the little rock crystals spill out too

and that sound in the mountains

that rattling and crackling

is the sound of wind soup

spilling

faith

by George Wallace

 

if you believe

an egg-shaped rock

can hatch a bird

 

then you may ride

on the back of that bird

 

out of the stone mountains

 

Afterword

 

email Caught in the Net at - caught_in_the_net@hotmail.com  tell us what you think.

email Jim Bennett - jimbennett11@btinternet.com

An archived version of Caught in The Net is available at

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Aegean/9952/index.htm  

where you can join the subscribe to mailing list and the PK Poetry List

 

Thank you for taking the time to read Caught in the Net.

Next edition due at the end of AUGUST 2001 look out for it in the in-tray

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