NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #31/NN_1992_31.iso/spool/alt/prose/1674

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From: [e-mail]
Subject: [.:.:.]  the undiscovered country, issue 2  [.:.:.]
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Organization: Pomona College
Date: 28 Dec 92 13:16:28 PST

|=-------------------=+=-----------------------------=+=---------------------=|
| login:tuc                                                                   |
|                                                                             |
| welcome to the undiscovered country                                         |
| nothing more than                                                           |
| the indomitable question.                                                   |
|                                                                             |
| 17dec92                       issue: 2  (approx. a quarter ounce)           |
|                                                                             |
| editors:                                                                    |
| reflexive_arc                 [e-mail]                       |
| s.r. prozak                   [e-mail]                   |
|                                                                             |
| this file is meant to be passed on, unaltered, so that the word may be      |
| spread to willing minds all over the universe.  quote it, include it, or    |
| just forward it, but don't charge for it or mangle it.  thx.                |
|=-------------------=+=-----------------------------=+=---------------------=|

(...)

morning's inexorable time to arrive
the hour of dawn thrice postponed
noplace in these speckled ways
is time for escape or denial
under a sky so blue as my soul
deceptive entity, descending shroud,
lacking the legs to flee for the sand dunes
finding in darkness our tumbling eyes
abandoned by our own desires.
confusing and jumping, the flamenco dance
our footfalls the lightest, crossing the end,
we find ourselves in the shadowy hall
our thoughts like the sparrows, thrown like the sand,
united at once in their condemnation
for us too shameful to dance in the sun.
                        s.r.p.
[././.]

"Continuity" -- 1992

Continuity,
Reach out across Heaven
To secure the memory
So pristine,
So that I may envelop in it
And swim in the Lake,
Long forgotten.

Continuity,
Find the pathway, grown over
It does not exist
So that I may see her face again
To know the softness
Long remembered.

Continuity,
I ask not of thee,
Too much to task,
So that I may attain
My determination again,
My shell
Now broken.

Continuity,
Defy your logic,
Embody my spirit,
Declare my presence
So that I may see
The gray again.

Continuity,
Fly with the moon,
Reach down
So that you may grant
A reprieve,
And I may see
The blue again.

Continuity,
Breathe life
Into the observer,
Transmute my soul
Across Heaven
So that I may see
The green of your eyes again.
                          r.a.
[|\|\|\]

between the thighs of memory
myself left at a loss
lining eyes of darkened halls
retribution for the cost
the spikes emerge unwittingly
from each orb's violent center
forged steel converts to gold.
deceptive in its uselessness,
foolish stranglehold.
                       s.r.p.
[_-_-_]

(stoner adventures)

    I was falling gracefully; I tripped across reality, and fell, again,
notwithstanding back onto the streets of burnt velvet and found myself
staggered amidst the stars of our comprehension, wandering slurwise among the
many things I'd saved from a repentant childhood.  My bong burnt bright,
electrifiying fractals dancing in the raging embers, smoke curling like a halo
around my bowed and fatal head.
    Park benches were too cold for my limbs, and the air was too free.  The
restlessness of a millenium's solitude soared through my rushing blood, the
roar of being alive skipping like a jumping spark through my brain.  New York,
January, 1992.
    Times Square, site of the festivities past, sung with the night, a
mirror for my unsettled soul.  Four cigarette lighthouses strung in the breeze,
windsoft snow curling my ankles and singing my nostrils.  Monks chant past in
their Christmas putrescence, the darkness swirling around their vibrant eyes,
full of delights and remebrances subsumed.  The wrapping and the children and
the brights lights of Norman Rockwell's screaming demise were far away, spun
upward and skittering through the ice like the waves of smokelike snow blasting
my face.
    Spike's battered apartment door yielded to my hand, crackling like
yellowed newspapers dying before a fire and swinging open as close to silently
as a door that thoroughly burnt an assortment of fetid browns could ever hope
to.  Newspapers snowdrifted the floor, rising above clothes and books and empty
bags once containing green bud.  Spike was in a corner, under the only lamp
in the world, his liver scarred by the yellow the light impregnated his face
with.  "Spike?" I said, and Spike turned, spat foam, and said, "Let's load this
bitch."
    Spike's bong had been a Macintosh computer in better days, but was now
a large potsucking hole to which we applied fellatio, liberally enticing the
jetting smoke into our voidsome lungs.  The traditional "toaster" shape of the
macintosh had been modified only by a large tube running out the back and a
bowl protruding from the front.  It delivered nicely large, well-cooled and
smooth hits, and Spike had named it Max.  Putting a Godflesh CD in the player,
Spike turned to me and pulled out a bag.  "Check out this schwag," he said.
    Soft, light.  Definitely not brick or antique; also moist, so probably
good.  Purplish tint, darker green.  Malthusian green bud!  "Is it malthusian?"
I asked.  Spike nodded, and then sung the last word: "scorpion," referring to
the highest potency grade of malthusian green bud.  I took the first bong hit,
sucking down an insane amount of smoke, and passed the bong over.  Spike took a
huge hit, filling what had once been a computer screen with pure white.
"Dead?" I asked the bowl, and Spike laughed, and filled another.  We smoked to
the pounding, crushing emotional haze of Godflesh to the point where I thought
I saw the smoke curling between the traces webbing together the guitar notes,
under a chorus of multicolored nuclear flatulence representing the drum
machine.  Reaganomics would have made sense at that moment.
    We staggered out of his battered apartment and into the coldest swing
of the mercenary wind, but we had our jackets and hats and sunglasses, so the
night was tolerable, slick, and empty.  Reality had become just another thing
below us, like memories made to be forgotten, and we were walking on reality
much like we gingerly toed our way along the ice.  I was still shaking
drumbeats and muffled chords out of my ears from the music, and Spike was
calmly drifting away in his uniquely contemplative manner.  Somewhere to our
right there was a demonstration, complete with rattrap cops swinging batons to
the beat of the ephemeral drum.  Skulls cracked, and exploded out bloodsauce
bearing hundreds of eyes, each one bobbing and twisting to keep its iris
focused where the empty sun would have been.  Does the sun ever fully burn up?
Maybe it does when we run out of words, thought Spike, and I was there with
him.
    Store windows were made of ice and cracked with that wonderful
coupdegrace sound of ice cubes being dropping into hot coffee, that creak of
defeat, that warping, fatal noise.  Gutsmoke of the city drifted in over the
roofs and submerged the buildings, placing a photofilter over the clouds as it
blurred in from above.  I walked past the entrance to a tattoo parlor and a
giant tentacle like the root of some ancient tree impeded my path, but I
stepped over it with an undiscovered grace, sailing past the darkened door next
to six closed orifices, each like the grave of Elvis, slatted thickly with
steel slabs and lubricated with mucuslike graffitti.  The city breathed,
coughing and hacking like a machine deranged, and we breathed, simple puffing,
gasping, and sighing beneath it.
    "We're ludicrously baked," said Spike, as we went into the third random
store in search of food.  The letters on the neon had begun to sing me
christmas carrols, and I was very much doubting my ability to remember if I had
cash or even how to make change at this point.  This time it was a grocery
store, but the only thing I could find to buy with my meagre supply of cash was
a large head of cabbage.  Spike bought a bunch of stuff; the clerk stared at us
and accepted my grimy funds, with Spike attempting to write a check, then
attempting to roll the check, but then paying with cash.  I was wearing my
trenchcoat of invincibility, which had purely huge pockets, so I tucked the
cabbage into one of them and some of Spike's food into others, leaving me able
to wander with my gloves in my pockets and my hands above them, a posture that
for some reason seemed cold.  We looked like aliens walking down the street,
identical fuzzy sockhats on our heads, carrying food and wearing Ray-Bans.
But this was New York at wintertime, where most people don't give a shit what
strange drugs you're using as long as you do so somewhat quietly and don't jump
the turnstiles.
    Speaking of which, we had encountered the subway and, as snow danced
repetitively ceaslessly uniquely, we descended the darkened staircase into the
land of singing fluorescent tubes and dark bathroom tunnels with more
fluorescence propelling them into eternity.  It was late and so the train we
picked didn't have many people on it; we could have sat, but we stood instead,
glorifying the night with our uselessness, glorifying that incredible
stretching ramble of thoughts spanning past the invisible horizon that we now
rode a steel worm through, oblivious to anything beyond our warm coats but
screaming with the ragged electric lights (spinning tracers like cotton candy)
flying past us in our hellbent journey.  Hell was there at the end of the
tunnel with no end, along with death and redemption and the visualization of
meaning, but hell was also six feet away, the stonewalls rushing past us and
the faces seen in the reflection through two panes of glass from each spectral
nebulous echoing light.  Spike mumbled something about us being really stoned,
but I knew that the continuation was forthcoming, and that there was nothing of
not being alive in our particular form of deadness.
    A sword blade into the night, we traveled on, although travel is a
deceptive word, as we weren't going somewhere but anywhere.  "Freedom is what
you take, what you create for yourself," I thought, and Spike nodded, as if
he'd heard it too.  Nothing stood in the way of the yellow light, and we rode
until dawn, transposing the bowels and boundaries of our final city.

[+!-=-!+]

From:   POMONA::SEDGWIDGE     14-NOV-1992 00:04:23.47
To:     POMONA::CBLANC
CC:     SEDGWIDGE
Subj:   RE: [...]  the undiscovered country/issue 1/07nov92   [...]


I have Jane's Addictin lyrics buzzing through my head.  Whoops!  Can you spot
the typo in the last sentence?  Can you spot the typo in this sentence?

{This is a submission to stoner adventures.

THIS IS A REALLY FUCKIN POINTLESS MESSAGE>.   It has no  significance at al
right now i want to listen to some arlo guthrie however the fuck you spell his
name

[-_-_-][/]

"Change of Heart" - 1992

To twist my soul
And extract the last
Of which I thought I knew
And was sure I'd lost

Let us continue to build
The most lasting of things
Upon which we know
Consists of lies and deceit

And I'll ask myself this question
Over and over again
Shall I steal from Heaven
To build another Hell?

I stand at your feet
And watch over as you slumber
So peacefully, dreaming why
You'd leave me alone another time

It starts again
The gray clouds roll in
I turn to run,
Trip and fall in this gaping hole

My heart used to occupy
And be content with my dreams
                           r.a.
[-<{.}>-]

memory, two-faced bitch
where once in gold is written pitch
where once was bad now is some longing
in times uncertain no memory's certain.
outside my door is well-known ground,
so well known from a furtive look
I know the rules and nature that I ride,
but in this pit of rue I suffer the quagmire,
my eternal torment is memory's desire.
                               s.r.p.
[-.-.-][.(.).]

"Montage" - 1992

He prays in silence and he asks again
Conflicting truths only result in pain
She looks his way as if to turn away
The summer's green has been replaced with gray

He'd like to claim the he doesn't care
Upon the outside he knows they're all aware
The only actor left on the stage
Only existing because he's lost his place

Her dual existence left him without life
Now it's her turn to see the strife
It took the pain to open up her eyes
Burned all the paper with deceit and lies

A comic illusion and a twisted past
He felt no pain because he knew the path
The distant one wanted to be near
He cries for passion fell on distant ears

There's no expression, there's no life at all
The dying feelings and the gray of fall
Among his certainty there is a doubt
She was sincere and now he is without
                                r.a.
[/-/-/]

pretty smiles, pretty lives,
crossed my my barbed wire lashes
irises drifting elsewhere, soon
before the trees burst into flame
before my world explodes in rage
adrift as well, elsewhere bound,
sneakers beat a solitary kicked-out trod,
toes twitching in the cold, sadly crossing years,
a broken watch, six minutes time, a photograph aged past my death,
chilly here, the wind cuts deep,
thoughts rushing like a fall,
the leaves in eddies chase my feet,
shadows warriors, painted, fierce:
angular lights serve for bloodswords,
some fingers blessed with a loss, unfeeling
retracting to a doorway sour, I escape the wind,
momentarily, before it blows within.
                                    s.r.p.
[.:.:.]

From:   POMONA::BAKERSDOZEN       12-DEC-1992 17:05:17.21
To:     CBLANC
CC:
Subj:   moterfuccer

I like sheep they are so deep they are quite fleet they sail with fleets they
have fleece they are beet they are nice to eat and eat quite well when you peep
so give it up my friend, try to send a blend of fine tobacco and sheep at your
next meet ing.

[~>~<~][..][.]

too much is beautiful, rising the sun,
a world to capture beyond my grasp,
that ruined here watchful with two small friends
all in all motion I cannot understand.
contented wtih warmth and a slight loss of fear,
abandoned my claims to the outer world,
a mass of sepulchres holding within
gather your feelings, take in your arms
suddenly finding them empty on your sides,
holding in bitter, insane laughter --
so fly to your pleasures graven in stone,
I will be watching, outside, alone.
                                s.r.p.
[@*..*@]

When I am lost and far beyond hope, will you
reach for me and bring me back?  I have to
know.  Can you have faith in me even when I
have no faith in myself?  If I'm wrong will
you tell me, and if I'm right, will you praise
me?  If I were to fail, would you show me that
I must reach past the failure and try again?
Even when I make no sense, can you listen and
try to understand?  When my words are cruel,
are you able to look past them to the hurt I am
trying so hard to hide?  Can you draw me out
of my inner world and back into the sunshine?
If I were to trust you without reservation,
would you return my trust, never let me down,
as I would never let you down?

If so, then truly I love you, and you and I are
friends...
                                      fern
[/><\/><\]

"Last Night" - 1992

I used to pray for
The warmth from the blanket of night
I could see my reflection clearly
Among the darkness
Now the fear slowly crawls in
As the safety of slumber recedes
The reflection is still transparent
Yet the image is darker now

I pick up my being and turn to run
Tripping over her gravestone
The pursuit begins again
And the black soil flows with red
Running away to futility
I can't face the pain again

Afraid to realize what
The carbon-based chain stole her away
The result of a blind accident
And God's sense of fair play
Listening to the fading breath
Of His poisonous gifts

The stones fall over one by one
And the grass drops away beneath my feet
As the gray turns to orange again
In preparation for the longest day
I open my eyes and cry
Relief or good-bye?
                    r.a.
[.][.][.]
[///](...)

astride your invented future,
throw open your aging portals,
stare into the blackness pure,
cast your eyes into slipping rain.
    tears left lost
    flowing in obscurity
where it's dark over the continent,
swarming eyes feel the rain,
looking back on serrated memories,
perhaps you might see the same.
    tears bereft
    flowing in the spanning gap
into singing darkness throw your eyes,
open scenes of sweet nightswarmth past,
stare into the eyes left there,
teeming night and silent rain.
                        s.r.p.
[///](...)[//-/]
(rapesong)

hands crossing like angels on her watered back
her eyes shaded low & hiding in steam
there in the greyness holding her head,
an only companion a lump like a stone,
bathed in resplendent water, redemption
on the smallest scale, a mimic for something unknown,
tears unknowing in so much debris,
numbness is welcome but never arrives,
once safely removed, all wounds must arise,
seething under a gravel path of eyes,
unsympathetic, a residue world,
once inhaled deeply it cannot escape,
wetting the eyes and burning lungs below,
pimping for tears which never can flow.
                             s.r.p.
[({.o.})]

If life is a dance,
then you are the sweetest song I've ever heard.
I sway gently to your tune,
eyes closed,
heart open,
hands empty.
You dance in and out of my mind,
but you rarely take me in your arms,
never dance with me.
Even when I dance with someone else,
it is to your rhythm,
and I force them to hum the melody that we once knew.
No wonder I never dance long,
no two times with the same person.
In my mind,
I am dancing with you.
I think you watch me dance,
and you might smile.
I dance for you.
When I look back,
you are gone...
if you were ever really there at all.
                                fern
(./\.)
(wednesday)

wind in the sails, bottle half-full
twotime screaming dogface bitch
briny threads stretch toward the wood
emblems of these shattered days
amidst the leaves so soft as corpses
ears before they are interred.
streets are speaking under lights
bodies fill them day and dark
and move toward a lonely goal,
the piston churns, the springs recoils.
briny threads stretch toward the wood
six days to get to Galveston.

                                horizons swelling eyes in tears
                                sun descending teams of gods
                                sailor here i send my ship
                                unbowed alone beneath sharp stars
        three golden earrings under sails
        yet one another given carelessly
        rope sings in the breeze,
        wind off the repentant sea.

raped by generations unthinking of sorrows
left in the wakes of their heedless decay
now that the calf is dead, hope-filling slaughter
we are inheritors of the rainslapped day.
needles tossed in the surf
our teeming mausoleums
proudest, useless toys,
drifting earth like pariah convoys,
alien to nature, more secrets concealed,
than every child masturbator
blinded in his sanity.
                                   s.r.p.
[|"".""|]
(stoner record reviews)

Godflesh - Cold World:  This is the British grindcore band's newest release, a
single in the classic industrial style of two songs and two remixes.  Or
alternate mixes.  Whatever they are, the last three tracks are essentially the
same song, so this ends up being a Godflesh song and then some protracted
background music that doesn't vary that much.  However, this release is
important in that it gets back to more of the core of Godflesh:  industrial
emotion, harshness, a conveyance of rage and pain and fear and resignation.
The sound has moved closer to the mainstream through the loss of the scratchy,
hellish, deathlike vocals of past albums and through a newer tendency toward
occasional mellowness through less reliance on the distorted guitar clawing of
guitarist/vocalist Justin Broadrick (Napalm Death, Head of David, Scorn).  The
title track starts softly but then progresses into the power of full drum
machine anger and distorted guitar, bringing back more of the feel of
"Streetcleaner" than anything else.  Many hardcore Godflesh fans may feel it's
a sellout, but I value this release because it escapes the formulaic nature of
some of their recent stuff.  At least the band hasn't festered, despite
Broadrick and bassist G.C. Green working on other projects, including the Mick
Harris/John Zorn colaboration "Pain Killers."  It's a newer start, a return,
but most of all some hope for an otherwise stagnant band.

Crowbar - Obedience Thru Suffering:  This album comes from the Grindcore
label, but it's the most mainstream grindcore I'd ever seen.  This is the slow
& heavy variety of grindcore, a more anguished, tortured and industrial souding
doom metal, perhaps.  Musically, it's competent, more complex than average
grindcore and more precise, given the new opportunity for critical listening
caused by the reduced speed.  Heavy riffs populate these songs, often varying
to great effect.  Drumming is mainly routine, but has some interesting tempo
changes.  Vocals are harsh sometimes, shouted others, and sung still others,
leaving a combination of the metal singing styles of the past twenty years.
It's not hard to listen to, though, sounding somewhat accessible while still
being far enough underground to attract the more serious fans.  This album
decreases as it progresses; I think it would have been better off as an EP,
with some songs removed and others edited.  It's still powerful, however, and
also has the advantage of avoiding the clone state of being; this music has a
new sound and a new appeal, which doesn't give it the automatic fan base most
death metal or black metal bands can expect but leaves it with the potential to
escape the cliches dragging these genres down.  High hopes for the next
release.

Cathedral - Soul Sacrifice:  Cathedral's doom metal heaviness comes out even
further on this EP, where they leave behind the deadpan heaviness of the past
and further develop their musical variation and melodic power.  The first track
is a new recording of the song by the same name on their "Forest of
Equilibrium" album, done with more energy but no less feel on this release.
After that, three new songs featuring Cathedral's powerful heaviness
(reminiscent of Black Sabbath on heavier days) follow, making this almost as
extension of the last album, which was no lightweight either.  If you enjoy the
music of Cathedral, a definite recommendation; if you don't know whether or not
you want to hear heavy, churning, melodic yet growlish music, this is a safe
investment to help you decide.

[oO.Oo.]
(woundspur)

morning birthed of inexorable dawn
eyes sliding open like sad ships on rocks
nervous disciples my hands, a mind struck like steel
submergent thoughts in swallowing light
bitter chipped china and bitter black brew
perched in blue fingers on hands growing old
edges whitened around the thin cup;
door falling open, the world falling in
exuberant leaves swirl around me again
choose the oblivious, take no more mind
marching like mudslides my feet take the road
wherever i wander, my mind will arrive,
spending some hours on what there is gold
then back to ponder, bent like a dead man
then back to wander, get lost in the cold.
midnight coffin
reluctant touch
reflection on the armored chest
voice miasmas lost in sobs
restrained like a dying beast
chanting voice, electric dead
metal femur slams into its joint
lid collapsing, as
i fall redundant.

                wound described
                curving sky morning
                before, recollections
                of redemption
                denied in a shower
                of silvery coins

                                        your wound detailed
                                        before the morning
                                        barely there, recollections
                                        of violence
                                        denying futures in a shower
                                        of spittle from words.
                        bitter fingers clenched
                        days undone
                        bereft, they left--
                paper shrouds for ten small servants
                        crumpled,
                cigarette scar epitaph.

our lovely hours lost in the sun
maybe seconds in autumn
maybe days, our years tearing
so much like
birth; except
the birth of
silence, and
the wetness of soft hands
in the chill of the early morning.
                               s.r.p.
[-=-=-]

There once was a man who loved sheep
He would dress up like Little Bo Peep
    With great care and great class
        He'd shave the wool 'round its ass
Take his dick out and shove it in deep.
                             tap
[_-|-_]
(sonnet)

what is time, that is in a moment lost?
defeated by a likeness floating on my palm,
briefest eyes, hair to the cruel wind tossed
this image brings me now to life in the calm
in days of fall resembling faintly spring
we left time behind under the bluest skies
the world couldn't stop us; not a thing
which could not be forgotten in her eyes
transpired during that most sacred time
winter came & through the cold and gloom
our love grew as I was hers and she was mine
something that strong must encounter doom
time yanked the reins and strained our ties
now time reigns again under these blue skies.
                                        s.r.p.

"don't hold me/me/back/back...this is/my own hell"

[././.][eof]