April 2000 IBPC Winning Poetry

The Prize Winners:

1) The Deity Expresses Remorse
by Peter Desmond - Cafe Utne

2) The First Night Without Her
by Bret Addison - Callahan's Saloon

3) The Man With The Snake

And Honorable Mentions:

Picasso's Femme de Fermier
by Carolyn Smale - Gumball Poetry

Geek Love
by Gary Hardaway - Gumball Poetry

The Smooshing of The Caterpillars
by Magnetsky - About.Com Poetry

The Deity Expresses Remorse - Peter Desmond - Cafe Utne

I apologize
for the Korean women
forced to fuck
fifty Japanese soldiers
every night

for the Irish potato famine
the Tuskegee syphilis study
the Puerto Ricans sterilized
by the Public Health Service

for the torture in every country
from Argentina to Zaire
for the Holocaust the gulag
the great cultural revolution

I apologize
for the thirty years' war
the hundred years' war
the Punic and Peloponnesian wars
the world wars
the wars unnumbered and unnamed

for the sacking of cities
the population transfers
the ethnic cleansings
the gassings the smallpox blankets
the atomic bombs the mass rapes
in Bangladesh Berlin Bosnia

I apologize for slavery
for the naked miners
worked to death at Athens
for Spartacus crucified

for the middle passage
to plantations
of sugar cotton coffee
the masters siring and selling flesh
the whip the chains the rack
the ropes the gasoline

none of this was in My plan
somewhere I went wrong
was it the carnivores?
was it reproduction?

you worry about dragonflies
sea turtles Siberian tigers
just think about the extinction
of all the dinosaurs
I'm sorry the comet killed them
I even regret gravitation

try to understand
I was alone
I needed to create

at least you die
I have to live with this
forever

The First Night Without Her - Bret Addison - Callahan's Saloon

Although the leaves are turning,
and departing the trees,
he barely notes their absence,
a lack of core, a mere glance.
Once, when trees were ten feet thick,
he walked and felt their pulse,
the sap that oozed, was his sap,
the froth of spray, was his spray.

Sometimes she loved him
and the sky would stretch out
like the vee of geese
between her thighs.
A dark purple,
and he understood,
grass and dew and ragged cliffs.

Now, he itches his beard
and wine reminds him
of old Chinese Poets.

The Man With The Snake - Michael Hedden - Writer's Block

The man with the snake around his neck
has few friends. At church he sits
in a pew empty except for himself.
His prayers are unheard, but the snake's voice
is sibilant, whispering to the snake god,
and we hear his body slide over the pew's grain.

The man with the snake on his shoulders
is invisible. But the scales shine
in sunlight, overlapping in forest green and gold,
glinting in shimmering waves while he floats
above the sidewalk, sailing the currents down the street.

The man with the snake for a headband
has no face. But the serpent's eyes can hypnotize,
freeze passersby with its lidless gaze,
bring attention to the beauty of its jawline
and the delicacy of a tongue that tastes pleasure and fear.

Everyone has questions for the snake. What does he eat,
where is he from, what is his name, race, phone number?
If only he would speak their language, he would give meaning
to the life of the man who bears his weight.

Honorable Mentions:

Picasso's Femme de Fermier - Carolyn Smale - Gumball Poetry

Born ugly as a sack,
and concrete- planted
in this loamy scow
that chugs beneath me,

that chugs its clockwork
march past cock crow,
rows ploughed, seeds
flown, gloaming's dock.

If only I could be
Salome -one night-
and surge and spin,
roots trailing veils,

next day the digging would be fair,
toes weaving in my lover's hair.

Geek Love - Gary Hardaway - Gumball Poetry

for William Gibson

1
0-1,

baby, jack us

in and toggle on-- I

wanna be full-time, real-time and

global.

2

We've clicked

and tapped 'til dawn

and our exhaustion meet,

EtherNets become ether-mates.

Tonight?

3

Until

tonight, when Category 5

and Fiber cables melt

and servers crash,

too hot.

4

After

our electrons

kiss what bliss is there in

lips, mere flesh, compared to mingled

data?

5

Hard drive

overload! Down-

load now! A file to fill

every byte and lock you up

for good.

6

Hack me.

Break my code. Know

my algorithms. Use

my data nodes. Leave your lethal

virus.

7

No bytes

tonight. Except

triple X come-ons

and suspicious attachments from

strangers.

8

Ano-

nymity's best,

the flickers disclosing

nothing, flesh's failure staying

secret.

9

Replace

me bit by byte

with circuits and switches.

Make me one with the glimmering

Machines.

10

Replace

me part by port--

I'll flow through solid states,

transcend materiality

and Be.

11

I have

become the hum

of hubs, wink of servers,

data flow at the speed of light.

I am

12

at last,

a String immune

to time and common colds,

messenger on the way to eyes

unknown.

The Smooshing of The Caterpillars - Magnetsky - About.Com Poetry

purple grape kool-aid lips
these children in laughing and
the light of the sun different for them
that playground, red rock gravel-like
pressed into my shoes, jeans, clothes
and we laughed all day and ran up that hill
village seven where I left my dreams and fears
child-like in fancy, bottle rockets of blue
springing out over the horizon

my reality, burst fire of pikes peak across the window
too close to touch
bump city bike rides and grass in my mouth
sweet, rolling in crabtrees dust
I remember the feel of the clay in my hands when we
dug the backyard out
and the caterpillars I collected,
keeping them in, cardboard castle beneath
my bed, and the light was so different then
than it is now
and my hopes and fears, I never
could concieve my existence then

I just remember the lamp light, late night
swooning shadow-like across the street

I didn't stop dreaming of that
for 8 years at best
dad moved my family 15 times
maybe 23 homes they abandoned
I always envisioned them missing us,
my sister and brother and
little pee-wee's soul, maybe floating
around the fireplace where he was kept

here, at solid computer terminal musing time
I wish to get back to the reality of
earth
for in the concrete city my soul
divides, in half-like, where-ing
it lies next, what becomes the answer to
the questions of half-existence
I half exist in my mind
the remainder outside and I can speak
and you can hear me
and see my words
and my little movie
I wonder when and how it ends

backgrounds of sounds
my childhood lost
in village seven, box-kited nightmares
and forgiveness of the ripping of
my heart strings plucked along
on the smurf guitar

wishing and muddied faces
laughing it echoes as it does still
in the greenways

the light of the sun
different for them

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