A couple poems by Madrea
I'm Dying part II
The smells of fresh-cut roses,
hot coffee in the mornings,
and heavy rains
singing me to sleep.
The feels of soft silk against my skin,
hot showers on cold mornings,
and caffiene running through my viens
The sights of the sun setting on the horizon,
still waters being broken,
and beautiful people,
The sounds of the simple phrase:
"I like you",
and heavy music on fuzzy days,
and laughter that's meant.
That thing called love
Seems I can never keep it
(That thing called love)
Boredom creeps to me
or trust slips from you
Seems I'm "too wild", or
you're all worn out
Can't provide it
(That thing called love)
I'm pushing it, or
you're giving it up
(That thing called love)
You named it, and
I claimed it,
But YOU disowned it
(That thing called love)
I wish I had it
(That thing called love)
In the palm of my hand
because I would never release it.
The Underground Literary Alliance presents literature from the underground.
Monday, September 20, 2004
Thursday, September 09, 2004
Editor's note: I read this poem through once and then read it again carefully and slowly, taking in all of the images and reflecting on my own experiences with the visions that occur when one catches great flashes of, for lack of a better word, God or holiness in small and bigger objects that float freely around us. Asha is one of the underground's great treasures and her writing continues to inspire and awe me.
DRIFT
I've been up all night writing and re-writing tomorrow
watching the stars
tick across the sky
around midnight
the Big Dipper
is just beyond my window
by 3 am
only stars
no names
then
in the hush before dawn
when time slows nearly to a stop
I see my grandmother's dog
the one she made live outside
the entire North Dakota winter
his pleading
cold-crazed eyes
a sad
two-star constellation
they shot him in the spring.
The sun doesn't rise
the world
falls face first
into its light
finds its mark
resumes the
fiction of the day
with regret
I sense
before I can see
the holy dark dissolve
into grainy morning
here and there a bird
stirs in its feathers
before long
they are on the roof
rattling the gutters
pecking at the tiles
one of these days
they will pull
the house beam out
and the whole thing
will fall down.
If morning brings a promise
it is a simple thread
strung between opposites
requiring
a wire dance
in thin air.
Friday, August 27, 2004
KIMOSABE
by Marc Parker
Waiting for the Interstate line downtown, I'm flipping through this notebook when one of two women also waiting calls out, "Hey . . . hey! . . . White boy." I look at her. "What time does the bus come?" I tell her five minutes.
I hear her friend indistinctly, admonishing. "What?" the woman says, "he is a white boy." Her friend reacts, so she tells me, "You can call me, hey, Indian."
I tell her that I'm Indian, too. One-sixteenth to be exact. But they don't really get what I'm saying.
The bus comes and I go to the back. The Native American women take two handicap seats and start fucking with passengers up front.
Originally from Oklahoma, longtime zinester Marc Parker has a knack for living in the zine capitol of the USA, residing in San Francisco, California in the 1990s and now in Portland, Oregon. The above story is an excerpt from the first issue of his new perzine Kimosabe. The second issue is out now, available for $1 cash or stamps from 2000 NE 42 AVE #221, Portland, OR 97213 USA. When he feels rowdy, he is also the Zine Thug. He can be reached electronically courtesy of azmacourt (whereit'sat) yahoo.com.
by Marc Parker
Waiting for the Interstate line downtown, I'm flipping through this notebook when one of two women also waiting calls out, "Hey . . . hey! . . . White boy." I look at her. "What time does the bus come?" I tell her five minutes.
I hear her friend indistinctly, admonishing. "What?" the woman says, "he is a white boy." Her friend reacts, so she tells me, "You can call me, hey, Indian."
I tell her that I'm Indian, too. One-sixteenth to be exact. But they don't really get what I'm saying.
The bus comes and I go to the back. The Native American women take two handicap seats and start fucking with passengers up front.
Originally from Oklahoma, longtime zinester Marc Parker has a knack for living in the zine capitol of the USA, residing in San Francisco, California in the 1990s and now in Portland, Oregon. The above story is an excerpt from the first issue of his new perzine Kimosabe. The second issue is out now, available for $1 cash or stamps from 2000 NE 42 AVE #221, Portland, OR 97213 USA. When he feels rowdy, he is also the Zine Thug. He can be reached electronically courtesy of azmacourt (whereit'sat) yahoo.com.
Friday, August 20, 2004
GOING ON A BENDER WITH THE UNDERGROUND LITERARY ALLIANCE
by Will Ratblood
If you find yourself in Philadelphia, the first thing you will want to do is get drunk. And what better way to go about that than to follow in the guiding, if erratic, footsteps of your frequently un-sober ULA brothers? Come with me as we go on a little drinking tour, a little bender, with the ULA.
You will want to begin underground (and isn’t that so aptly symbolic? The underground--where we all claim to be, where we’re all pure in the earth with the hippies and frogs, squishing moist soil between our toes, beneath the surface with the worms and termites where the audience for our writing is primarily groundhogs), in Suburban Station. There are many entrances but let’s descend on the steps at 17th street and John F. Kennedy Boulevard (if you happen to ask for directions, make sure you say "JFK" boulevard--some residents here may not associate the former president with the initials "JFK", or vice-versa). Walk slowly down the stairs. As you reach the bottom breathe in deep--are you getting an overpowering stench of urine? If not, I fear there is something wrong with your faculty of smell. No time to go to the doctor now however--best to wait till our little bender is over and have him at once attend to the many problems we will no doubt have at that time. C’mon in, step through the doors.
Most people really dislike the place, but I love this dingy, smelly, hot, dimly lit underground mall. I miss the area they have since taken away--a group of chairs and tables, just across from McDonalds, which was populated constantly by homeless. There were always spills, and "stuff" on the floor and tables, completely filthy. Something about that mix of excessive body odor, urine-soaked clothing and fried food McDonalds smell--it was magical.
We keep walking however because our destination today is the Penn Center Restaurant. One reason we are at this cozy triangle of an eatery is that it opens at 6am. Another is that you can get a can of Miller for $1.75, and if you want to splurge for an imported bottle of something, like maybe if you want to buy one for your ULA guide who keeps sending off signals that he’s broke from years of supporting "the struggle" and he can tell you’re flush with cash from your cushy life, corporate job, or the huge trust fund you no doubt sip from and he’d appreciate it if you bought him a few.
Neon beer signs. Glass walls look out into the hallways of the station. As I sit here now, at noon, there is Joe Lunch Pail: drinking a quart right from the bottle and smoking a cigarette, nothing else--I guess that is lunch. This is the man for whom we struggle; he probably has consumed every known valuable work of fiction and is starved, eagerly awaiting the release of the next lauded contemporary novel.
There is another similar to him. This man looks like a painter, only he is pouring his quart of Budweiser into . . . a Styrofoam cup! Eeegads, he is more hardcore than me, I can tell you. At least he is reading the newspaper, which is more than I can say for myself today.
ULA history is all around us in this place. Here there have been several meetings of strategy and theorizing between myself, Private Balgobin and The King. A few yards away was where--in a tragically flawed scheme to either A. convince him to join "our side" or B. duct tape his body to the Rocky statue on Broad street--some of us greeted the evil Nick Mamatas as he emerged from the train that brought him from the evil place of Jersey City, just across the river from evil Manhattan, one afternoon long ago. How we could not have known we were dealing with pure evil, I can hardly say; we were such babes in the woods.
But just outside I see an Asian man taking an Asian woman’s picture as she stands in front of . . . the train directory posted on a square pillar. And a sign above our table reads, "Beer customers please do not disturb the others around you"--wonderful as it is, this is clearly not a place where individuals intent on tying-one-on, and particularly the ULA, can linger.
Don’t stumble already, my friend; there are many more establishments we have to visit as we further our buzz.
Onward!
Will Ratblood claims this is just Part I of a series, and that Part II will appear when he's through nursing his hangover. He used to be the Ombudsman for the ULA and hails from the City of Brotherly Love. He also publishes Rat Blood Soup, a zine that documents his adventures drunk and sober. Contact him at P.O. Box 26098, Philadelphia, PA 19128.
by Will Ratblood
If you find yourself in Philadelphia, the first thing you will want to do is get drunk. And what better way to go about that than to follow in the guiding, if erratic, footsteps of your frequently un-sober ULA brothers? Come with me as we go on a little drinking tour, a little bender, with the ULA.
You will want to begin underground (and isn’t that so aptly symbolic? The underground--where we all claim to be, where we’re all pure in the earth with the hippies and frogs, squishing moist soil between our toes, beneath the surface with the worms and termites where the audience for our writing is primarily groundhogs), in Suburban Station. There are many entrances but let’s descend on the steps at 17th street and John F. Kennedy Boulevard (if you happen to ask for directions, make sure you say "JFK" boulevard--some residents here may not associate the former president with the initials "JFK", or vice-versa). Walk slowly down the stairs. As you reach the bottom breathe in deep--are you getting an overpowering stench of urine? If not, I fear there is something wrong with your faculty of smell. No time to go to the doctor now however--best to wait till our little bender is over and have him at once attend to the many problems we will no doubt have at that time. C’mon in, step through the doors.
Most people really dislike the place, but I love this dingy, smelly, hot, dimly lit underground mall. I miss the area they have since taken away--a group of chairs and tables, just across from McDonalds, which was populated constantly by homeless. There were always spills, and "stuff" on the floor and tables, completely filthy. Something about that mix of excessive body odor, urine-soaked clothing and fried food McDonalds smell--it was magical.
We keep walking however because our destination today is the Penn Center Restaurant. One reason we are at this cozy triangle of an eatery is that it opens at 6am. Another is that you can get a can of Miller for $1.75, and if you want to splurge for an imported bottle of something, like maybe if you want to buy one for your ULA guide who keeps sending off signals that he’s broke from years of supporting "the struggle" and he can tell you’re flush with cash from your cushy life, corporate job, or the huge trust fund you no doubt sip from and he’d appreciate it if you bought him a few.
Neon beer signs. Glass walls look out into the hallways of the station. As I sit here now, at noon, there is Joe Lunch Pail: drinking a quart right from the bottle and smoking a cigarette, nothing else--I guess that is lunch. This is the man for whom we struggle; he probably has consumed every known valuable work of fiction and is starved, eagerly awaiting the release of the next lauded contemporary novel.
There is another similar to him. This man looks like a painter, only he is pouring his quart of Budweiser into . . . a Styrofoam cup! Eeegads, he is more hardcore than me, I can tell you. At least he is reading the newspaper, which is more than I can say for myself today.
ULA history is all around us in this place. Here there have been several meetings of strategy and theorizing between myself, Private Balgobin and The King. A few yards away was where--in a tragically flawed scheme to either A. convince him to join "our side" or B. duct tape his body to the Rocky statue on Broad street--some of us greeted the evil Nick Mamatas as he emerged from the train that brought him from the evil place of Jersey City, just across the river from evil Manhattan, one afternoon long ago. How we could not have known we were dealing with pure evil, I can hardly say; we were such babes in the woods.
But just outside I see an Asian man taking an Asian woman’s picture as she stands in front of . . . the train directory posted on a square pillar. And a sign above our table reads, "Beer customers please do not disturb the others around you"--wonderful as it is, this is clearly not a place where individuals intent on tying-one-on, and particularly the ULA, can linger.
Don’t stumble already, my friend; there are many more establishments we have to visit as we further our buzz.
Onward!
Will Ratblood claims this is just Part I of a series, and that Part II will appear when he's through nursing his hangover. He used to be the Ombudsman for the ULA and hails from the City of Brotherly Love. He also publishes Rat Blood Soup, a zine that documents his adventures drunk and sober. Contact him at P.O. Box 26098, Philadelphia, PA 19128.
Thursday, August 12, 2004
LETTING THE DEAD STAY DEAD
by K.M. Dersley
A copy of Axcess, a magazine Carl hadn't paid for, dropped onto the mat. They said, 'We hope you will subscribe, but even if you don't, please write back and say what would make you wish to send off a cheque.'
After studying this production he pulled out a sheet of white 100gsm, dipped the steel nib in the bottle--then crapped out. He couldn't give an explanation, it would take too long. The magazine was unreadable. His study of it had confirmed that the very basics were faulty. The editors lived in a different universe to himself. Far, far away from this magazine were interesting writers he'd found a kinship and community of aims with, through the mails and the internet.
Amongst other hopeless projects Axcess were still pushing this former editor of the magazine who’d died in '97. He had been long dead as a writer in '97 did they but know it, though up until that date galvanised with misplaced, ignorant praise, attention at festivals, publication (if not sales), scholarships, fellowships and a weird sort of influence that he'd gained (partly through editing the magazine) in the largely enjoyment-free zone of British poetry.
They pushed Laurence Munt too. Static, stern, monolithic, quietly detesting himself. (You'd think these people were about 108 years old. No urgency or vitality. Why anyone should want to read the stuff--which of course they hardly ever did--was not a burning question.)
David Krustenvurst was another contributor, as well as Kester Procter. They got a lot of credit, just as a matter of course, for being true artists, vital and important spirits of the times. They wore the responsibility gravely. Surely no one, thought Carl, got fired up by the sort of stuff they printed year after year, grant after grant, residency after meritless residency? He knew how it went: Ah, it's Sean, is it, come in. Where's Jo? Ah, Matthew, there you are, dear boy. He could hear the door slam behind which they'd bestow drink, flattery and laurels on each other, confident in their own undemonstrated superiority.
He'd seen one of these 'bards' on a TV tribute programme, something like 'This Is Your Life.' The 'celebrated poet' when he was introduced came on like a library assistant. He'd only got in on it all because he was a brother-in-law of the subject. They played a couple of his lines through a loudspeaker. The impact was nil, but no one was surprised at that. Of all the guests this so-called poet was perhaps the most boring. This was no Orpheus making the stones and the very roots of trees stir with his numbers, this wasn't Whitman's fabled bard either, the man you wanted to follow so you could get close and learn to be like him. In our society the poet has lost the aura of personal magnetism. Nowadays it clings round actors and rock singers, who are the new and exciting lights in a disappointing world.
Perhaps, thought Carl, he should have accepted the invitation and sent Axcess a powerful statement of his views. He could have slagged off the contributors, but they would only have thought he was remembering how they had consistently rejected his own immortal offerings in the past.
The truth was, the scene had moved on. They might have had control of the ball game a few years ago (though that was doubtful--really and truly everyone knew they were small timers, deluded into seeing significance in their feeble utterances). But now on the internet Carl could find plenty of e-zines that published (amongst the dross) lively, sparkling narratives, poems and articles. Thunder Sandwich, Unlikely Stories and Zygote in My Coffee were three. Unlike that freebie print magazine, they contained many pieces of writing which were very much to his taste. These he often printed out to keep and reread. Plus the fact, e-zines often had a fresh issue monthly, sometimes even weekly. Also, they were (all broadband or dial-up charges being taken into account) free.
Not only that, the online mags showed more interest in Carl's own scribbles and squibs than those supporters of the old network of bores ever would. The magic slate of the VDU was the way forward, Jack.
What really surprised Carl was how the partisans of Krustenvurst and the rest found the energy to keep their Whirligig spinning, albeit feebly. Presumably they encouraged each other as best they could.
British underground writer K.M. Dersley's hails from Ipswich, Suffolk, England. His book of stories and articles, Sketches by Derz, is available at his website, along with more of his work, including the cd Derzology. His latest book of poems, Between The Alleyways At The World's Fair, was published this year by Feel Free Press. Contact him electronically at clapgate (whereit'sat) btinternet.com and postally at 43 Tranmere Grove, Ipswich, Suffolk, IP1 6DU UK.
by K.M. Dersley
A copy of Axcess, a magazine Carl hadn't paid for, dropped onto the mat. They said, 'We hope you will subscribe, but even if you don't, please write back and say what would make you wish to send off a cheque.'
After studying this production he pulled out a sheet of white 100gsm, dipped the steel nib in the bottle--then crapped out. He couldn't give an explanation, it would take too long. The magazine was unreadable. His study of it had confirmed that the very basics were faulty. The editors lived in a different universe to himself. Far, far away from this magazine were interesting writers he'd found a kinship and community of aims with, through the mails and the internet.
Amongst other hopeless projects Axcess were still pushing this former editor of the magazine who’d died in '97. He had been long dead as a writer in '97 did they but know it, though up until that date galvanised with misplaced, ignorant praise, attention at festivals, publication (if not sales), scholarships, fellowships and a weird sort of influence that he'd gained (partly through editing the magazine) in the largely enjoyment-free zone of British poetry.
They pushed Laurence Munt too. Static, stern, monolithic, quietly detesting himself. (You'd think these people were about 108 years old. No urgency or vitality. Why anyone should want to read the stuff--which of course they hardly ever did--was not a burning question.)
David Krustenvurst was another contributor, as well as Kester Procter. They got a lot of credit, just as a matter of course, for being true artists, vital and important spirits of the times. They wore the responsibility gravely. Surely no one, thought Carl, got fired up by the sort of stuff they printed year after year, grant after grant, residency after meritless residency? He knew how it went: Ah, it's Sean, is it, come in. Where's Jo? Ah, Matthew, there you are, dear boy. He could hear the door slam behind which they'd bestow drink, flattery and laurels on each other, confident in their own undemonstrated superiority.
He'd seen one of these 'bards' on a TV tribute programme, something like 'This Is Your Life.' The 'celebrated poet' when he was introduced came on like a library assistant. He'd only got in on it all because he was a brother-in-law of the subject. They played a couple of his lines through a loudspeaker. The impact was nil, but no one was surprised at that. Of all the guests this so-called poet was perhaps the most boring. This was no Orpheus making the stones and the very roots of trees stir with his numbers, this wasn't Whitman's fabled bard either, the man you wanted to follow so you could get close and learn to be like him. In our society the poet has lost the aura of personal magnetism. Nowadays it clings round actors and rock singers, who are the new and exciting lights in a disappointing world.
Perhaps, thought Carl, he should have accepted the invitation and sent Axcess a powerful statement of his views. He could have slagged off the contributors, but they would only have thought he was remembering how they had consistently rejected his own immortal offerings in the past.
The truth was, the scene had moved on. They might have had control of the ball game a few years ago (though that was doubtful--really and truly everyone knew they were small timers, deluded into seeing significance in their feeble utterances). But now on the internet Carl could find plenty of e-zines that published (amongst the dross) lively, sparkling narratives, poems and articles. Thunder Sandwich, Unlikely Stories and Zygote in My Coffee were three. Unlike that freebie print magazine, they contained many pieces of writing which were very much to his taste. These he often printed out to keep and reread. Plus the fact, e-zines often had a fresh issue monthly, sometimes even weekly. Also, they were (all broadband or dial-up charges being taken into account) free.
Not only that, the online mags showed more interest in Carl's own scribbles and squibs than those supporters of the old network of bores ever would. The magic slate of the VDU was the way forward, Jack.
What really surprised Carl was how the partisans of Krustenvurst and the rest found the energy to keep their Whirligig spinning, albeit feebly. Presumably they encouraged each other as best they could.
British underground writer K.M. Dersley's hails from Ipswich, Suffolk, England. His book of stories and articles, Sketches by Derz, is available at his website, along with more of his work, including the cd Derzology. His latest book of poems, Between The Alleyways At The World's Fair, was published this year by Feel Free Press. Contact him electronically at clapgate (whereit'sat) btinternet.com and postally at 43 Tranmere Grove, Ipswich, Suffolk, IP1 6DU UK.
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