Interview

First of all, thank you for letting me ask you these questions:

1) Give me some background, where were you born and raised and what
are your personal interests?

  I grew up just south of Detroit in Windsor, supposedly Canada. It
  could have been mars but the media was driven by  America. I hardly
  knew who Canadian artists were which was a little strange.
 

 2) How long have you been performing, what is your music background
 and what are some of the musical influences in your life.

  I think I grew up with a piano in my mouth or something singing. My
  father was a huge influence, being a tenor and performer himself. He
  has an electric guitar and writes songs as well. Plays every day.
  I was influenced by church music and it's opposite which was street
  based rock music, poetry a la Lou Reed and Bukowski and I read a lot
  of Tolstoi, in fact everything he wrote I ate it up.
  I wrote poetry in the school newspapers and was always singled out in
  English classes for my bizarre writings like other students should be
  so outspoken from their own imaginations.

3) One of your songs "Tortured" which is a great song and a fabulous
video was featured in the movie "Urban Legend", what was it like to
get the phone call telling you Hollywood was interested in your
work, and do you have any more songs being considered for movies?

  I am especially lately getting a lot of interest in my songs for
  films and for television. It was extremely exciting to have a song
  released in a somewhat successful film, the money was definitely
  enjoyable, but mostly the exposure and the acknowledgement. It is the
  best drug going, success!!

4) Has being a part of MP3.com been a boon to your career.

  The internet exposure from MP3.com has been great. I have a great
  deal more fan mail than I ever got and can even keep up with. It's a
  whole different sub-culture in this virtual reality which is somewhat
  invisible compared to hardcore outer reality based exposure in retail
  outlets and on air radio and tv.
  I'm curious as to where the internet will take us all next. Right now
  it seems like a lot of major labels want to quell things and buy up
  the big internet music sites seemingly to put their finger on the
  pulse, but more like their thumb on it and crush the competition.
  It's confusing. But mp3.com has defined what is happening as far as
  music exposure on the internet, in conjunction with other sites out
  there.
  Having just been to San Diego for a visit has left me in awe as to
  the grandiose nature of what forms these sights. It's very very
  complex.

5) You've just released a new cd, tell me about it and how does it
fit in your musical development.

  My new cd is harder and more nuts. I love it so far. But as an artist
  I have to say I get bored quickly and am already moving into
  something "je ne sais quoi". Creativity is a curse sometimes in that
  it never lets you sit and rest on your laurels and  just contemplate
  the beauty of what you have already accomplished for too long.

6) Also, I've been studying the new photographs for the new cd, what
is the new image, vamp or goth?

  Nuts, I spend a lot of time in the bathroom so this is a tribute to
  my bathroom.

Poetry

Enjoy the poets.

"Crack The Code Of This Generic Pollution"

   Decipher the news from the web of delusion
   links to surf using only the mind
   tired wired push-button magic
   click on dotcom to further lower ethical standards
   oh let's be honest the average mouse lacks depth
   living in a two dimensional world its little nipple
   always pointing to 11 O'clock
   she doesn't know a rave from Ricky Martin
   so you provide a color-splashed snapshot
   of tribal dance culture call it a poetry forum
   for the digital age of new or lonelies get linked
   pathetic people organized very efficiently
   you can always tweak the protocol later
   but for now on to vibrato - less - voices
   and death in salty ghoulish big beat bombshell
   tricky weed soaked flow in the innerzone soap opera
   ......

   "Ivana Trump On The Subway"

   It is a heavy eyeliner I use
   slick, black as a wet rock
   to drive the train of thought;
   white steam pours out upwards
   always up --
   next the words,
   they crawl out on the roof,
   their eyes glow in the dark
   in knee high leather boots
   they stomp, jump to the ground,
   kick those bastards in the teeth
   beat 'em down!

   But this is not
   what I want to write about,
   I want to tell you about the waiters
   and how they sit,
   loom, mock, block!

   All I can do is catch a groove,
   move, dip down, squeeze through
   just in time to see Joy waltz with Sorrow
   in an empty broken bottle littered parking lot.
   .....

   "DEEP PURPLE"

   cantalope burns
   in a French poem
   spirals of smoke turn into clouds
   strung together like a string of
   soft OOOOOssss

   outside on Pine Street
   stained mattresses
   complain to the trees
   as they wait on the curb
   for the garbage man and
   his whirring motor hydraulic ram
   and the flower garden lies
   on the fringe of Holy Jnana

   inside my lipstick screams:
   PLUM! PLUM! PLUM!
   .........

   "February"

   the last romantics hover
   their ballon flight hearts
   float up

   abracadabra pale hands
   spread out red rose petals

   cupid watches
   the whole diamond tangle
   anchored in his chocolate eyes

   ..............

   "enter thru the electric eye door"

   stories gaze straight into your screen
   picture pain packed in deep
   the angel horizontal on his cyber perch
   eyes toasty spicy pools
   the dream is the daylight thinking
   past lions & tigers & sneaky patterns
    dawns truely odd obsessions
   you have discovered
   formations of perfumed slaps & turned realities
    midnite email confessions
   from net beamed beggars
   who speak softly with white eyelids
   and wooden zippers
   oh seductress you think you are whispering
   but you are really shouting
   in sudden downpour drenches

Tasha @
   https://www.angelfire.com/wv/fall/
I visited her webpage, follow the link, its an incredible page.
 
 
 

  I watched the Poet Laureate on T.V. the other night

  And The Old Poet Said

  It was getting harder to peel away the deeper layers of his soul
  That he had to ADMIT to much shit…

  And that IS it
  Because it’s tough to say
  What you HAVE to say
  When the masking layers are stripped away
  And the leering inner-demons have their way
  With your writing and your life…
 

  =====================================================================
 

  And The Time Rolls On

  Moments gone
  Gone
  Deep inside of me

  As today is
  Future memory
  And tomorrow is a dream

  “Stop! Stop! Stop!” I scream

  Still the time rolls on

  Moments gone…
 

  ====================================================================
 

  AND THE VOID

  I am
  infinity  enveloped

  Infinitesimal
  Abysmal

  And the void…

  THE VOID!
 

  ====================================================================

  MOONVISIONS
 

  Amidst worlds
  without end

  over eons
  of human tragedy

  a cold orb has witnessed…

  scarlet juices
  offered endlessly

  in trackless jungles
  and timeless deserts

  by ghastly worshippers
  their flint knives

  dully arcing into
  human breasts

  Over eons
  of human tragedy

  amidst worlds
  without end

  the mystical moon bore mute witness…

  as flesh melted
  seared from the bones

  of oriental children
  women and men

  as lives were
  obliterated

  in the mad
  magical mushroom

  so carelessly unleashed
  by heartless neophytes

  Amidst worlds
  without end

  over eons
  of human tragedy

  the forever spinning sphere
  now expectantly

  watches me…

Steve Mitchell
 
 

  Poem #1:

  annie's bazooka

  he left her
  months ago
  now,
  lying on her back
  alone in the park,
  the place where they met,
  that blade of grass wasn't here
  those leaves are now brown
  and, damn,
  she discovers she has a wad of gum in her hair

  "don't pull at it," she remembers.
  there is a trick to this removal.
  she'll calmly walk home, bazooka still dangling
  cold ice will be applied
  and then it will be easy
  but
  how does she wash that man right out of her hair?

  ============================================

  Poem #2:

  Death Car Mourning
 

  From mourning, unanswered ashes
  Dusted by a filament of nostalgia
  A newborn nation, lungs brought to life by
  Crusted, guilt-laden governments of modernity
  Emerged from its own black hole in history
  Prey to the arrows of blinded retrogrades
  Who, expressionless as the former yellow-star murderers
  Gray and already entombed in pyramids of vengeance
  Slipped their unholy war into an innocently parked car.
 
 

  Shadows of stone, a sarcophagus floats
  Porous, unceremoniously, the unsepulchered ark that it is
  No way to drown out the sounds of the
  Chorus of intractable newsprint spewed forth
  Blotted only by the gauze from a splintered child
  Who, swaddled only in stillborn hope, and
  Never suckled at the wall, will never ask the four questions,
  But we have one: "Must we always place these stones
  Forever and ever, on graves conceived in hatred?"

  ==========================================

  Poem #3:
 

    Bathtub Philosophy
 

   As I sit in my bubble bath, I take

   NEVER

   and disdainfully and carelessly submerge it
   'neath the foamy white.

   It cannot breathe for long, and the escaping,
   surfacing bubbles finally stop.
   So time's negative, arrogant prophet is dead.
 

   As I begin to wash, I grope with both my hands
   in a half-desperate search to find

   FOREVER.

   It was here when I started my bath...elusive,
   yet large enough to see.

   Could it be, that in the frantic time it took to drown
   what I feared the most,
   that my positive aromatic promise had melted away?
 

   Now I'm left to watch these moistened air-domes fizzle away.
   It is only a matter of time before the water will evaporate
   into space...

   So I tip the metal key of endlessness with one
   big toe and watch it all drain.....

   Now alone in my own coffin's residue,
   I dare not touch the
   ring
   my
 

   MORTALITY

   leaves

   behind

  Norm
  ±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±
  Norman S. Pollack
  (normpo)
  norman@unsoft.com
  ±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±
 

  The Ghost of Madame Cézanne & Other Poems By Doug Tanoury
  ____________________________________

  The Ghost of Madame Cézanne

  Madame Cézanne
  Haunts my study
  In ghostlike apparition
  She appears
  Again and again
  With cheeks painted a bit too red
  And makeup caked across her face

  Each time I see her
  I think she wears
  The countenance of strife
  The shades of sadness
  She never speaks but
  Sits silently in a chair
  Posed in resentment

  Her eyes angry openings
  Her mouth closed and pouting
  Her jaw clenched
  A face hard
  And humorless
  She is a model of domestic troubles
  Wearing a green hat
  ____________________________________

  Anna Kournakova

  She walks in shadows
  Comes in darkness
  Like a spirit
  Her movements invisible and silent
  Like the first weak breeze of spring
  Nearly here and half not

  She wears the sheerest gauze fabric
  That is spun by the phantoms of my fantasies
  Who work into the late hours of night
  Like the tired and weary women
  That labor for low wages
  In Indonesian sweatshops

  She wiggles into my bed whispering words
  And touching me like a Muse
  To awaken a Disneyland of desire
  Were I hang stappadoed
  From the highest ceiling beams
  In her most malicious dreams
  ____________________________________

  Bad Weather

  Whenever I saw him
  I felt the cold
  A kind of deep chill
  That passed through me
  Numbing my insides
  And the ice that formed
  On the outer edges of my words
  Was skin tingling
  In the same way
  His kisses were snowflakes
  Melting on my cheeks

  I would always wish him gone
  Just as I would hope
  For winter's passing
  And long for a trace of color
  In the pencil sketch landscape
  That is February
  And now that he is
  A season past
  There is mildness in the air
  And a stirring in the earth
  Of things ready to grow
  ____________________________________

  Wings

  Touching her in darkness
  My hands fly
  Across her skin like winged things
  Hovering for a moment
  Then gliding in sweeping motions
  That rise and dive to follow her form
  Aerial in their grace
  Ethereal in movement

  And when they come to rest
  Like a bird upon a perch
  They are weightless
  And she feels only a fluttering
  A brush of feathers
  Across her flesh
  On a night
  When touch became sight
  ____________________________________

  Precipitation

  In these early days of winter
  When drizzle floats weightless
  And hangs frozen in the air
  The wind in my ears
  Whispering doubt
  The damp against my face
  Frozen fear and
  The smudged grayness of sky
  Deepening suspicion
  That storms recrimination in the loud percussion
  Of hail hitting the awning
  And the downpour of rain against the asphalt
  As I stand unspeaking and exposed
  In a muteness like snowfall that
  Drifts peacefully in quiet whiteness

  Her words frozen rain and falling hail
  And me silent like a snowy night

  Doug Tanoury (c)2001
  ____________________________________

  Doug Tanoury grew up in Detroit and still lives in the area. Doug is exclusively a poet of the Internet with the majority of his work never leaving electronic form. He is published widely across the World WideWeb.
      The greatest influence on Doug and his work was the 7th grade poetry anthology used in Sister Debra's English class: Reflections On A Gift Of Watermelon Pickle and Other Modern Verse, Stephen Dunning, Edward Lueders and Hugh Smith, (c)1966 by Scott Foresman & Company.
  ____________________________________

  Visit Funky Dog Publishing at:
  http://funkydogpublishing.com/

    A while ago I received an email from Daniel Sendecki.  It was to let me know about his ezine/literary site sendecki.com.  It is an ezine which combines both poetry and photographs in a fascinating display.  It reveals talent in a number of different avenues of expression.   He is also a very good poet, in his own right, let me share a portion of his work:

                                                     My beard grows
                                                        to remind me
                                                          it is over.

                                                           I shave
                                                     To be rid of you.
                                                 For this reason, a razor
                                               Reveals its single design.

    In his own words, this ezine attempts to:  "It is an e-zine that features both established and emerging poets, artists, and writers from around the world. ... In my ongoing search for submissions from emerging writers, it would help considerably to gain some added exposure."  The address of the ezine is: http://www.sendecki.com
    It is worth the effort to discover this very well put together ezine.  Information about contributing work is available for you to read.
 

This issue is brought to you by, Paul Gilbert.  Thank you for visiting. If you want more information or would like to submit, go to avantgarde@angelfire.com.   Do remember all work is copyrighted by the various authors. Respect their rights.