====================================================================== (begin) School Pictures: Portrait Production poetry journal by Benjamin Henry (bh4781@thor.albany.edu) ====================================================================== September 10 And then immensity filled his thoughts- -clubbed, clamored, climbing, aching: Restlessly, he compressed, severed a connection [no embrace to grip] swollen, weak fingers, wet eyes. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- September 16 Albany South Pine ruled vagrancy, translate, or re-drop for fortuitous ambiance. Imagine colors, original names out of context: blur, make judgment suffer, reduce worries to possibilities Like the thought of cold, seeping through a thin window on a day in early Autumn with the drapes pulled closed and clothed ---------------------------------------------------------------------- October 8 Re-constituted, in relative numbers, we can always add plus or minus one or take into account the climatic temperature and barometric pressure. Variables are never constant: an intricate chaotic pattern forms, we choose colors at random. An inner light pulses outward, waiting to explode or the surrounding environment threatens integrity with an implosion Sanity and equilibrium are continuously sought. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Figments keep floating and I land on them and drift with a slight breeze like dust in the sunlight One corner of my floating mattress is nailed down and roped to a stable anchor. Warm, soothing light now makes me squint close my eyes and concentrate on listening the soft hum of the refrigerator. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- October 11, Columbus Day Wandering Wobblestone, laundering laundoliers, quiet senses already allocated for yesterday and now transmuted into disturbance subject covered before, but this time more crowded, this time more diverse, Maybe the community opened a floodwall. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- October 13 Frontiers, escalating: superimposed -- floating, exists the one carpeted step and a sound like rambling toward oblivion, a clanking and litter refused at the corner a bus stop and waiting people, a table, oval, with chairs: Cushioned, I sit, comfortable access to my environmental controls Shut off more than the lights! With electricity close all of my senses! T-valve, compression, into the tank, surrounded by metal in hollow ringing. Dawn comes at nightfall. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- October 27 All-bringers, converge on this point! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- October 29 Inevitableness succeeding an entirety: perceived as circumstantial; no evidence wasted, no time waited, no wants to worry. Speaking specifically of those elements, in this context transfigured to resemble --- amorphorous, not distinctly shaped -- Relate oppositions, tie bonds, accumulate strength and power and other chemicals necessary to sustain a common feeling ... Unity taped and recorded and held together by shaking hands sweaty and beady, gloved with supple leather, restrained, amplified < Arington famble win wobbleton ifbee toomuch and angerson arlington ashberry cream Together, again here, sleeping, to dream. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Perplexed, somewhat terrified, he hobbles, for gaining ground on this fleshy turf requires carefully placed steps. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Incredulous inconsistencies and ambiance: Bright! Followed by lowly slithering and gutter. Those dents, required by circumstance to aviate and lift, move from point B to A, backwards in definition and radiance: Along a referential measurement, Increment a landmark, remember and foretell. (And if she spoke any clearer, like one past encounter, remembering an absolute, a stop ...) So to continue, ascertain certainties like texture or taste or insertion but still uncertain, still moving. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- October 31, Halloween. devices are working but worthless, combined in a compilation, a towering monolith, a phallus, a message to america of complication and harmony in work and spending dollars on air time, channeled through a tunnel underground, where workers plough through layers of lode and lay wires to connect and separate those above, way above in the open air, time rolled in negative layers, concern for Friday's arrival and checks locked at the back door constantly guarded, and waiting on break, sitting with a stare over heads and beyond resounding voices. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- November 1 Part One taken aback, back taker, take me, take my back, return with receipt, launder, wash! Plunder, abash, for no litter dare strike ground or carry purple royalty to altars or shitting cats! slumber or rollover or grab covers or cover or jump down into holes to protect yourself! I AM Coming or not walking or not driving and not flying but here I will be, and if you believe, you will receive my flesh that you so desire and dire songs and laundry sheets, lifting, curling, probing: for that program is next, a sub-process, a mental image, a plan to embrace you, fore-thought to enrapture and, waiting in silence, maybe too long too capture or enlighten -- but weigh down and cover all that has already been filled. Part Two the ambition to become and degrade, an essence of green, a monetary flame: Build a wall of ambiance, radiate only on the inside! Room and time for planned collisions, enlarged engagement, pneumatic personalities, scheduled copulation! Fly skyward by fornication, connect with ecstasy through ejaculation! And contrast with relaxation and dry comfort And towel away unwanted moisture Find absolute absolution, physically stimulated mental awareness. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- November 4 In proper sequence, memory may shift; Mr. necessity requires the following: divert attention and water elsewhere; already a flood, hunger facilitates personal growth and oxygen, bottled, captured for future use: Memorize random particles with sweeping gestures, bring into focus, articulate your desires! Bang, ki-bash, wander woodle wind stocking hunt hold for later consumption, consuming extended f o r h o u r s never end, never end, neVER END! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- November 5 Once again in absence; > defile string, hold a value in ransom, for information must, by inherent necessity, come at a cost, a penalty. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- November 10 Sweet ecstasy, sharply amplified by membrane; on a molecular level simply scientific: to embrace, weave with hands held together, separated into distinct components, Parts joined, atomic infrastructure and instructions to comprehend meaning from simplicity at the most minute level INGrained, tarnished, protected by wax polish Under your furniture find identities; you have already established shrines: worship or masturbate for redemption Confiscate this library, wealth, Transcendent instruments. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- November 15 Scanning into eyes, almost ripped and fired but long and accidental, wondering as washed. Too late for patience wasted water dripping faucet open blood wounds; Ribs smothered sheets sticking covers wet and dirty. But before warm or secure but hostile home warning life worm boring blessed and superstitious. Ambulance trucking wheat disintegrate farm for spreading and factory plumage, feathers flown brown mud ---------------------------------------------------------------------- November 16 If washing saved skin scrubbed raw, wringing, front door opening heard closed forgotten locked. Connected to half-naked, vulnerable, admitted: strangeness in solidarity like radio conversation, spotlights bare stage dusty waxed. Sterile organized hidden comparison with cold water left running and then dripping overnight unnoticed, invisible, except for sound. Grab those waves floating at you! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- November 17 Upon and enter into or on justification trends transient in opposition. The Featured forum closed to visitors, watch television news, listen to selected and appropriate radio signals. The sponsor tonight demands your justification to buy products unequaled in their individuality, standing alone in a private aisle, no need for selection, the competition is over and natural selection has pronounced a winner. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- November 22 Rendering judgment, composing facts to accommodate situations, parallel forces cross and collide. Combination inevitable but impossible: to save scrutiny and management use physical distance though we have never touched. Approach concentration, employment, advertise in bold a necessity; congealment. Proto-melt. Congruity washed Affable as understandable, and inside pure flow, saturation. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Guided or propelled, engaged in the act of withdrawal Because penetration, an old memory, pituitary or mind control. Embellish. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- November 25, Thanksgiving Day simplicity resting in intimacy, awash; here soldiers cry loosen grips, gripe for forever turn (and return) hold in arms in embrace whipped to punish remember a tomb and there rear entrance escape enshrined mantle centerpiece Plum frightened scary faces, hair mingling with long fingers Lick along ridges, water pouring animated by creation of new form help innocence kill waiver for fortune exceeds fate in Lottery Spin imbecilic fantasy, velvet table top breast support for salary dollar earnings Wake to tv ramblings and hyper-culture slang remote display and audience talk Corporate ingrain situated to recover along ambulance streamlined forest rain Gaze deep below color and texture and orgasm release forgotten. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Contrast Awaken A dizzy state Ringing to beckon Amber polish Shoe mate team. Shoe mate me. I am shoe. varnish tender wash dry in moist salt and skin. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- November 27 who desire for fortune rested, perfumed: recognition like sulfur, shining across a hay field, spotlight eyes reflected, held in trance wheels spun digging ruts causing motion making distance measuring speed against time shoulders showing slightly and to her neck: a solid stare Guiding voices finally recognized behind their disguise intensify for all rational purpose, re-order to randomize but past contact never severed Sunglasses scanning colors in black and white days of the past -- if I did create a you there is much now that reverberates -- out of necessity. My guides speak also. My mates are landmarks. My friends are comparisons. I lead in this direction simply through omnipotence and belief in my god Touching me is illegal and i guard security against rape. Truth given to trust never willingly submitted anymore -- How rash now defined ambivalence Don't believe this and take his word, the experienced and ritualized married and other virtues, virtually children and trading merchandise. Maybe I will just send you some of my poetry to explain, for this is unclear, my rhetoric cannot articulate or maybe the tools are inadequate or the theories dissolved Ambush rampage animal vehemence and studied Constant torture produce results equal to work, Directions on the back of the degree: Insanity defined as non-social-conformity Remitted forever, exposed continually to the television altar: Ordained in visual medium between relevance distinction shows a changing, emission at the apogee of perspective If the word has been said or used before I will not sin-steal but place responsibility on your knowledge ---------------------------------------------------------------------- November 29 Homogeneity? On perplexion style architecture blended to perform in a multitude of tasks or situations: who designed me right, engineered my parts, the long equations and thought processes involved prevent random chance, but pattern in chaos enlivens explanation, conforms to relativity. Capture and examine; The territory here compared to graphic landscape Enlargen, compare again to automobile distance or travel to forget time and reference. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Aspire to inspiration, the levelheaded employ an agglomeration of tools for soothing Examine for animation in unfrequented parts outside of political borders Hammering the wretched nailed to public posts for video viewing television broadcast Background ambiance surmounts musical scenery and pencil line stencils permanently engraved Beyond generational survival, beyond granite headstone past ancient monoliths and excavations and primitive pottery. The hidden speakers bleat behind mesh, their message one of magnetic variations, of amplitude modifications and unprecedented harmony. --------------------------------------------------------------------- November 30 The simplicity boasts of you in vision sequenced parts of conversation and mixed monopoly relational factors The simplicity is of golden hair and attention talk in voice low under prattle gossip that surrounds and laments Cannot follow the pattern and enjoy its complexity; bored with the leavened abridged crossing foot brick paths (not diverged) worn trodden Not easy but practiced, routine kitchen laundry bathroom work traffic sleep buying, spent invested wasted And division, pulling smoke into our lungs, holding intricate details spawning unforeseen permeations Cannot write of you; the pen degrades the simplicity like shattering crystalline lattice and complicated metaphors self-extracting critical values. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- December 1 Intricate volumes fill closely guarded spaces The watchman spies, shift ending in just under six hours and the advantage of coffee in-between Lunch continues like an old adage, is given like Christmas trees and icing for decoration and to consume electricity Hydro-electric power is sufficient for recreational purposes; Dams built on flat land can alleviate arid memories and irrational fears of a line ending. Just to be inevitable, as if chance could produce metaphor, above other organisms, God enters the cinema again; we don't feel God's presence in this hyper-space: infusion bound circumstantial to originate in purpose bound inside simple institution, intuitive raised platform speakers and followers So transcription can occur So collective memory can exist So intelligence can equal knowledge. ====================================================================== School Pictures: Portrait Production poetry journal by Benjamin Henry Copyright 1994 Benjamin Henry and HUB Press. I grant permission to transmit this document, in electronic form, as long as it is kept in-tact, in its entirety, with this trailer information. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Parts of this poem were previously published in inter\face 6, an electronic lit. 'zine. email me for subscription details. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- send any comments or contributions to bh4781@thor.albany.edu or 12 Morningside Dr. Schenectady, NY 12303 (end.) ======================================================================