. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - S A N D R I V E R J O U R N A L - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Welcome to the Sand River Journal. Our goal is to provide a proper setting for some of the better poetry associated with the newsgroup rec.arts.poems. We aim at an objective standard, if such exists for poetry, but also strive to include diverse voices, not excluding our own work. These poems have all been previously posted to r.a.p. and appear by authors' explicit permission. They constitute copyrighted material, and we claim ownership only to any poems we have authored. Sand River Journal is posted to r.a.p and related newsgroups and to regional forums, and is archived at etext.archive.umich.edu/pub/Poetry. The PostScript version features high-quality typesetting and is well worth printing to hardcopy and sharing. We hope you enjoy this unique selection of poems. Erik Asphaug asphaug@lpl.arizona.edu Zita Marie Evensen * ac869@freenet.hsc.colorado.edu John Adam Kaune jkaune@trentu.ca _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Issue 14 --- May Day 1995 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ -------- Lovenest -------- Two cream fledglings and yellow beaks click wet, knife and stone's ringing strokes in jagged nest. But jelly eyes and soft membrane push through fresh lids and blades fold, and beaks nestle in downy necks when I've been as honest as eggs. Ron Rankin u9205147@muss.cis.mcmaster.ca ------------------ Bring to Me Spring ------------------ Arrives the Burpee catalog, Canterbury Bells peal Springtime's chimes. Wishful mass of floral flash - page upon page, like the budding roses unfolding, each turn, each aspect of the unfurling petals a divergent portrait of splendor seeded... I plot my plot, paint my patch in pastels, with Pinks! Clumps of lowlying crops cover the border bricks I dug in, dirtied kneed and broken nailed eons ahead of this year's new arrivals. Stakes impaled Impatiens sturdied, I plan my planting cycled with the moons and tides, germinating when the Lilacs bloom, bury the Mums by Mother's Day- my mother's dead, but the day survives like perennials, always room for another Hallmark sowing. Burpee's Best are always better in pictoral propogation, anticipation - my best attempt to burrow the Four O' Clocks beside the Morning Glories o' course creates Circadian conflict - time and Cicadas wait for no woman, they grow when they feel like it, no matter what Sam Burpee says, and grasshoppers do eat Marigolds... Susan DeCarlo susanccrn@aol.com ---- Dawn ---- waking to the light rising from water the new dawn turns wind swirls to buddha robes flapping orange across the surface of a dark animal eye Jody Upshaw jupshaw@hfm.com -------- Pleaides -------- Butterfly flapping chromatic dots Sparkling around a dark illumination Careless determined flight In a jellyfish bag Chalk-black shroud evades Organ humming city lights Spasmodic dancing In quick personal orbits Eternal brushstroke On a thick-dark molasses masterpiece Twinkling command performance In a spectator sky Christopher J. Hynes cricket@cybernetics.net ------------ Of the Night ------------ My love rides the night, And the fortunate have not laid eyes upon her. Which of the rising mists is she? What paw print or black wing Off the corner of sight Tells of her passing? For she has become the great evil Stalking the land, the stuff of legends Future and past. Her skin has grown cold, and her eyes Blacker than her hair. Her love has turned dark, into lust For any blood of the human. She will come for me. My stake and mallet await, Ready to pierce the heart That once I cherished, And free her to sleep. When this is done, the world Will be left to contend with merely the evils Of average men. Eric Thomas edt@iii.net ------------------ in shamrock, texas ------------------ (Note on pronunciation: "hoooo" is an unvoiced "who", like blowing wind, 3 seconds.) find me, brush me, pocket me, keep me. to the longing in the clouds i say, in the high, high heaven, please do away with your forever blue hugging you and drop them jeans in a sacred rain onto this forever plain that's wrapped in a forever hoooo. now i'm a pony buckling under you, dear load. dear load, please grant me thy grace and guidance and don't withhold your sweet open thighs either while you are in the granting garment-chucking mood. should you weigh so heavy on me in your absence, dear load? immortal kisses, kindnesses and an afterwife. this is the land of divorce, there is virtue in widows. however, i want to hump with innocence. miss innocence, oh, to throw the good book at you and put a ski on our child... and a mac on our table... and to teach you how to pour your charm into e-mail what's that and to show you off to other women show what? like a he'll-marry-me! ring. i wish to watch you brush our moments out of your swollen hair. heaven is, if heaven were, helping you with a stocking or two. there is no discipline i would not abandon to learn the texan twang from you that patient, exacting kindness: no, silly goose, you say it like this... in the cleavage of the dark, in the bluebells of the blossom ...sweetness... i don't want anything else... of a country house porch swing ...moreover, i never wanted less... across the unfinished kitchen table ...this is enough for me... in a plastic booth in a dairy queen ...you make me so very dizzy... in the tall grass pearling up around us ...i once was lost but now i'm found... miss innocence, i have a prayer to offer: let us take this moment, dear load, in pails like pig slop or manna from heaven my lady of the immaculate nails a red like a church-going ford pick-up truck and 14k jewelry and may i have me granted thy welcoming pussy. on my way to the bloodkissed santa fe, new mexico i stopped here, with friends but i could have settled instead on your shy open hand and drunk your scent at full strength. the texan sun raineth on your head for 20 years. okay. monday to sunday, sunday to monday. okay. from it you soaked some mysterious rays. and they produced true love, aimless and wanton. until it has. yes? seeped into your lashes, dripped into your eyes. slipped into your speech, leached into your walk. my walk? and now it wisps out of your pores. at the slightest shift of your perfect. perfect? ass. and it is gleaming in that look. in those eyes. my eyes? trapped under that hair. what about my hair! focused in your face. and it says. hi... boy... you crazy on me yet? you've got 5 minutes to axe me out... i'd never say thaaaaaaaaaaaat! you are a walking country diction sweeping succulent idioms aside with your scentful breasts and so my heart gets yanked from san francisco on arrival, out of breath it says: girl... we have... not... yet met... but between you... and me... i would have you... framed... in this voracious sky... dry... framed... in your... sweetness... swarming... like bees... all hot... and bothered... warm and wet. Marek Lugowski marek@mcs.com ---------- The 1950's ---------- The doctor thinking he's got to learn about the world all over again from square one start Looking over words as he'd peer over a newly trimmed hedge seeing something just beyond and to one side The doctor doesn't think he knows anything for sure only the hula hoops and twinkies, the blues and violets of his mind very late at night He doesn't know what he's putting down only that he's noticing, noting, noticing his stethoscope here and here Red and pink lipstick cases with a little mirror on one side, hats, stockings, garter belts and gloves There is sound there's the refrigerator and the water dripping He bought a shirt in 1950 the most remarkable feature of which is a snag or tear will reduce it to nothing. It's a shirt made of a single cell that, when it's reduced to nothing, a single cell remains. The original cell of that fabric. What he is seeking is a quilt made up of the original cells of all the fabrics. What the l950s does like a blow to the back or side of one's head it relocates your mind The doctor in Intensive Care where he belongs if anyone else is here or still here that's fine. * * * What were the 1950s? Teresa Brewer and the Korean War It was hard apples and the popularity of DDT Popularity was a word heard a lot of in 1950 It was James Dean and Peter Lawford, TV's Karen and Chubby, the Mickey Mouse Club taken seriously It was the time many people who came into their own in the 1960s first got laid or had wet dreams the last wet dream the doctor had was sometime in the 1950s Basketball games on Chicago's north side and the walk home at 5 o'clock carrying a switchblade knife, the two Rosenbergs frying in the electric chair McCarthy and his crony Roy Cohn the atomic bomb already five years old Plastic surgery and nose jobs fame in a new light * * * Nixon saying, "California politics is a can of worms" Captain Kangaroo, Howdy Doody Arthur Godfrey on television. the Outside the Inside Outside Inside Fresh hot toast with butter on it from the mother of a friend the doctor's own mother dead at 42 the knowledge there were two different worlds giving taking Epistemology Involved elaborate schemes for not making up your mind anyway "Saturday night is the loneliest night in the week--" Taking No-Doz and staying up all night for exams Right-handed angel playing a trumpet and Moses coming down off the mountain not with the 10 Commandments but a set of scrolls and where the commandments would normally go double sets of chimes. Moses coming down with castanets Saul of Tarsus with a set of drums Christ fluting Buddha blissful at the keyboard * * * The jazz was good Death was softened, advancements made in the salesmanship of everything The doctor's own deepest impulses were not to nurse or nurture but to attack Hanging out at Sonny Berkowitz' Pool Hall, wearing blue suede shoes, Levis and navy blue shirt, he bought a zip gun, joined a street gang Once, doing reconnaissance, exploring the intricacies of the Chicago Drainage Canal, he entered a sewer and ambled deeply as he could reflecting all the while on his chances of surviving the synchronizied flushing of three-and-a-half million toilets. For the first time in 2,000 years one went four years to a University without saying one true word going to work for Hallmark Greeting cards or the phone company one knew something was at hand because things became easy. Richard Wilbur's poems arrived at one's door in little four-line stanzas Tin-Pan alley people in college dormitories subscribing to the KENYON REVIEW and listening to Pat Boone Five foot two, eyes of blue, cotton candy hair strapless white lace dress zipped up over a snug corset seated on a sofa in a dormitory in Champaign, Illinois, touch me, touch me black patent leather belt open and matching black patent leather pocket book beside her, `petting' it was called, one foot touching the floor at all times ("that's right you two, or I `ll have to ask you to leave"), ejaculating beneath her dress somewhere or other discreetly as possible Birds flutter and when they walk they flutter too. The doctor sees giant mushroom cloud father of the H-Bomb Edward Teller Police Action Korea Harry Truman and Dwight David Eisenhower, each with six legs and arms dancing to the music of Lord Shiva and Judy Garland doing it on a pink velvet loveseat. The doctor makes a mental note to turn his socks inside out to empty out the sand before putting them into the laundry bag. Robert Sward robert_sward@macmail.ucsc.edu --------------------------------- monet's old studio is a gift shop --------------------------------- I received the dream of the six gardens: wandering the peculiarities of light - painting again the damp stacks of hay by the edge of the Seine, eating lunch. the old man's celebration of a simple pond of lilies - the reflection of long-armed willows hanging limp in remembrance of modernity. please, can i return to the studio now, so i can buy that small reproduction? thank you. John Adam Kaune jkaune@trentu.ca -------------------- this place in winter -------------------- snow blows through an open door and I curse him for being so careless inside blue pears no longer ripen on the settee flurries blur a windsor castle watercolor a lincoln family lithograph from the pantry you can look up at the sky where paraffin has crumbled from the lids of mason-jarred preserves clover and violets uprooted in the marriage bed have I forgotten something? family bible promises on a homemade altar I forgive him for not closing the door on his way out this time I feel a coastal winter wind slam. Elizabeth Haight haight@ipl.rpi.edu ---------- Boundaries ---------- The old man went with me when I walked the line, checking boundaries. We drove round the mountain to an unkempt farm on its western slope, parked, and ranged its pasture for a survey marker, dividing blatting sheep among the trampled sedges along a line of willow. The sign of success was a cap of brass, much chewed by bush hogs and sickle bar mowers: the section corner. We cut a pole from willow for our chain, and taking compass in hand, set out south along the invisible section line, straight up one knee of the dark mountain, floundering through viney maples, over old hemlock logs, around the huge stumps of shipped-out firs, with their deep-set eyes, which were the notches cut by men to set their spring boards in to stand on, drawing their singing misery whips through the bellies of the silent giants. We flagged the line as we went, hanging the orange strips from chittims, blackcherries, huckleberries, bigleaf maple. Across to the south side of the hill we shanked, breaking out into sun sometimes, waist deep in bracken ferns and trailing blackberries, pushing through young Douglas firs with their rich Christmas whiff, down to the alders with ancient yews lurking in their shade, and crawled through tall salmonberry at last into my new-made clearing by my new-built house, hanging a flag only fifteen feet off the flag we'd hung before we drove out. The old man admired the results, and said to the old woman, standing by, "That boy is just the same in the woods as I am way out on the water; always knows right where he is." She nodded, and handed him a cup of coffee, with cream, no sugar, and not too hot or cold. Richard Bear rbear@oregon.uoregon.edu -------------- Northern Skies -------------- The sky above this garden is ablaze With shimmer running almost to Orion; A ghostly movement crosses half the sky A living luster trembling through a phase. Finding star-to-star form we plan by, Remembering by murmuring of ion, Here between a willow and the stream, Let's wait awhile to watch our planet dream. Robert Temple templerl@aol.com -------------------------- reflection in the fountain -------------------------- i smell the smell of entire tribes, order and a grass as fine as hemp, in the division of water below my potted palms. bourbon-minced saliva creeps like cloth. lips curve an alleyway, a hardened rot of spilling for substance and down the coil; i fall into small thimble, tip myself into relic without a thought for foe or even the flinging out of love that will replace my lips for conversation. the waking mouth hangs just so, off to one side and then parted. underneath tongue rises and falls and rises and falls. sharp-tuned tunnel catches and i spin out into stain, rubbed and postured for future. swells of water ripple form and swoop the snail in me - my criminal in apathy. i regard my shadow with malice and adorn its shape with giggles. boots loop my feet, bulging ankles strapped in leather as to walk on glass without fluttering. naughty speaks through the fountain, hickeys and tenor visions like stalks. what do i see but hiding? Hillary Joyce haj2@cornell.edu --------------------- The Changeling's Wife --------------------- i am like the piano you play that always falters somewhere up ahead a man but also a dog needing something to be brave for i praise the day you filleted me zipped away the offending spine pull me to bed with you tonight let me sleep this curiosity off the way that the lion feels for his mate when she brings him red meat it's the love of the dog that sleeps curled at the monastery gate Michael Finley mfinley@mirage.skypoint.com ---- wind ---- an empty poem that has lost its heart, a sky as hollow as the mouth of heaven. Erik Asphaug asphaug@lpl.arizona.edu ------------------- The Death of My Son ------------------- I sit in a smoke-filled room A half-empty bottle sits near me. Glowing cigarettes walk around In the mouths of black-suited guests. Mourners, they call themselves. I know him, he who lies within Though the bottle takes away his name. A boy. He used to be my son Though he never once called me Dad. I used to see him once a year. I haven't seen him at all for three. His mother sits next to another man. The man is rigid and staring at me. He is angry that I have come. I drink again from the bottle. I find little solace in its contents. I sense that something is missing. I sense the wrong one is dead. Justin Taylor taylorju@ucs.orst.edu ------ Enigma ------ cryptic dissertations seek to enlighten those despaired existential incantations espouse revelation behind reverential masks can light emanate from between dark, parted lips? Ron Stewart ron.stewart@tssbbs.com -------------- another NYC-ku -------------- Penn Station after midnight: even the shadows have echoes. Paul David Mena mena@cray.com ----------- bellybutton ----------- bellybutton through cigarette glasses waves slippery still silver and black bearing unblemished taut ripples either freely poked loose or blasted gasping desperate cotton shrieks remove me young pedophile listen to my pupils resonate Jon Litchfield jlitchfi@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca -------------------------------- Imaginary Lovers' Conversation Overheard on the CNR Spurline Trail ----------------------------------- I would steal you a water tower in winter my dearest and we would walk around its smoother bevelled edges. I would climb the circular stairs and use my largest ray gun to puncture the unruly strands of steel. Not even all the lawyers in the office nearby could stop our rivers of empire from unfurling in frozen abandon. And we would kiss each of our blue lips desperately, wanton in the existence of frigid solitude. Kate Armstrong kmarmstr@uoguelph.ca --------------------- having fallen in love --------------------- for the first time real time frying bits of white onion in a cast iron pan with olive green burning to jump sauteeing sweet smoke and wanting desperately and coldly to put my hands into the oil Karen Hussey ai500@freenet.carleton.ca ------ Coffee ------ Out his kitchen window, he watches a bus pull away from the corner. He holds his coffee cup, swirling it although there is no coffee in it, considers taking a bath. She always told him not too much coffee, just the one cup in the morning, and that he should remember to bathe every day, as these were just the kinds of things he would soon forget once she was gone. He places his cup among others in the sink. The bathtub is clean and damp, still warm. He sits on the toilet watching as the tub fills. By custom, he draws too much water, so that some always runs out the overflow as he gets in, leaving behind as much water as will fit, making a sound he always liked hearing. He images a spider trapped in the overflow, washing down the pipes. As he slides into the water he thinks of her, so many years, and although she is not here to scrub his back he smiles. His toes surface and submerge: he watches them break through floating rafts of bubbles, then sink again, like a shipwrecked crew of drowning men. After his bath he watches the water circle down the drain, but without his glasses he cannot tell if the whirlpool drains with or counter to the clock, although he understands or thinks he remembers it always turns the same way, like a dog circling nose to tail on a carpet looking for that one best spot. The word "coriolis" surfaces slowly and submerges again, and eyes closed he watches it as from a moving vehicle, experiences it as he would a neon sign flashing past in the nighttime. He makes a note on his mental blackboard to watch closely next time which way the water circles as it drains. He smiles again, as he can have his coffee now that he has bathed. Michael McNeilley mmichael@halcyon.com -------------- Elses laughter -------------- In March,1993 totally without warning I changed the way I eat apples and the way I laugh - I'd been borrowing someone elses laughter before then. Ross Munro rmunro@yarrow.wt.com.au ---------------- The Lotus Flower ---------------- If you cannot find the rose That tireless, blooms, Here within these arms, Find instead the timeless lotus flower Which once you offered and I refused In a white-hued winter, Drawn in brilliant colour, Under a cloudless sky. If you will not speak of these Silent whispers, There within the day, Speak instead to the snow white lilly Which grows within my only cavern In a heart filled with light Grey and lifeless in pallor, Under this cooling skin. Scott Cudmore scudmore@peinet.pe.ca ----------------------- Leave as you have Lived ----------------------- You are costive in your imaginations, like Corundum in muddy thought sinking to the complaisant image of a prosaic, adequate Self - All for sake of comformity. And wiping out your individuality as you content yourself out of being. And you will leave as you have lived your life: Dead. Kirian Chowning moonspark@aol.com -------------------- The wind is a pillow -------------------- The wind is a pillow. It rustles like bed clothes in the temperature of night. I can sense your skin. It feels like molten glass wrapped in cashmere. It's singing! I love it like this. Ross Munro rmunro@yarrow.wt.com.au ------------------------- City Square, Buenos Aires ------------------------- An outdoor room of bowed walls and low defining trees, the city square is railed off to enclose what no cloister could: a fountain made of broken columns and a squat equestrian general who spurred civic pride by surpressing laws, punishing foes, curtailing lives with a high necessity. This is Borges city, a place of traffic, where grey historical clouds define oppression in other terms, other pantomimes: the fidget of pigeons and old men pensioned since the last revolution or the last coarse drought. Yet the boulevards are wide enough for tanks, close enough for walks, the city square more barren than sunlight on catafalques. David Barton 75344.124@compuserve.com ---------------------- South Seas Rumba Party ---------------------- The Wind flew softly to my side Playfully lifting my hair from my eyes Kissing my cheek in passing On his way to a South Seas Rumba Party .Party on, dude, I said! The Rain flowed down my face Tickling my sides and legs Licking my ear in passing On her way to a South Seas Rumba Party .Party Hearty, sweets, said I! The Lightening sped across my sight Electrifying my every orifice Shooting sparks in passing On her way to a South Seas Rumba Party .'s Party, I slurred, dazed! But when Thunder came rumbling my way Growling up my spine to my head I roared at him in passing NOT on my way to a South Seas Rumba Party .Now your Party's mine! (and I swallowed him!) So if, by chance, you happen upon A South Seas Rumba Party in progress Just know in passing Thunder won't be there, oh no, not him .Party'd out, we'd say! Terry Schorer dragnfox@ix.netcom.com --------------------------- everybody's favorite lunger --------------------------- and even pussyfaced doc told wyatt to leave coughed blood and gargled the way to live life ain't sittin' here to grieve. then he died, laughing. end of movie. hey pistol pete would you believe i need a mean ol cowpoke. or a pussywhipped eyetalian, movie-sized. this crimson a on my chest ain't like the rest, for school spirit, boys. i want that stain. michelle vessel michellv@co.dona-ana.nm.us ------------- copper of age ------------- take dilaudid in a spoon add water heat quickly till a foul smelling smoke is produced and the liquid bubbles and seethes this burns off the impurities and the things that will kill you. add a bud of cotton wool insert the needle into the cotton and draw back the plunger notice that no matter how carefully you do this there is always a small bubble of air in the syringe this must be removed so depress the plunger until a droplet of solution glitters at the end of the needle. it is now safe. you may find it easier to wrap a belt around your upper arm watch for the large vein insert the needle if you do it right, then a tendril of blood should shoot into the solution. you may now slowly press the plunger. sit back. relax. sleep. Adrian Preston te_s343@atlas.kingston.ac.uk ------------- Danny & Andre ------------- Danny finds a throw away medicine cabinet burned out bulbs sliding mirror jagged, tarnished frame pried from wall. Danny props it atop concrete fencing next to Lady Luck Laundromat - he preens picking his face, nose wiping fingers on tan corduroys. Andre slides up in chrome wheel chair spray painted red with green glitter flecks. Chicago Bulls emblem brands the back rest in black magic marker and dyslexic hand. Danny turns round high fiver - high fiver. +Ma boooy+. He dances everything - tribal incantations, polkas, jigs, Swan Lake. Andre's rag doll legs impact with callused palms. He mouths every instrument with rhythmic echoes. Danny yo yo's Andre out and back out, back. Twirling round popping wheely's. Andre's vision flies up to sky, the world circles, Andre's arms raise hallelujah. On the outspin Danny catches his profile and stops, throwing Andre forward. He sneaks up to glass mumbling eyes unblinking. Andre readjusts his legs. Danny tilts his head left then right, then behind and in again. pointing dirty fingers blackened nails, spitting the reflection. Danny pulls his hair. clumps of blonde oiled and gritty curls sprout from knotted fists. Andre pulls Danny's corduroy leg. a dog begging attention. He pulls harder the second time. Danny flies round inhales a gust of wind, propels forward. the curls sprinkle Andre's high-low fade. Danny belly laughs, grooves, skipping, knee slapping, butt shaking, high fiving down Park Street. Andre pulls Danny's medicine cabinet into his lap. Leans forward curled to view his upside down image. Danny beckons from the corner +yo brother get ya dumb ass ova here+ Andre tosses Danny's medicine cabinet into the busy street. The glass breaks. You and I swerve. Erica L. Wagner wagnerel@maspo2.mas.yale.edu ------ pauper ------ you stand on the street corner like a blind man waiting for the clink of money in an upturned fedora my pockets are empty please do not hold your heart in your hands i am a pauper i do not have gold coins to fill the emptiness zita marie evensen ac869@freenet.hsc.colorado.edu ---------------------- Standing Prematurely Before Benedictio's Tomb ------------------------ I have never looked for Guy's name in The Funerary Times or Gestalt World, Preferring to chuckle on finding it In unexpected indices. Adroitest of scholars, Impeccably reticent, He understood the commonality of Socrates and oaken tables. It took two generations for me To comprehend that the internal link Between the elegant poet and my blunt father Was the purity of their honor. Dave W. Mitchell dmitchel@ednet1.osl.or.gov ------------------------- nightmare in bflat, op.31 ------------------------- parades of soft vienna clowns with lanterns of the hungarian princess swung before my eyes, laughing their hungry thirst for smatterings of shattered love letters which hung like ice crystals on a clear prairie winter morning living in the shadows of deaf giants who stole the show right out from under me leaving me naked for no-one to see but me i've played these same scales over and over and candles burn down over scores of songs i will never play in these nights of forlorn horror of stampeding ghosts and heckling monotonies there lies only wicked prostitutes of time by my side selling me short selling me.... peter j. tolman an445@freenet.hsc.colorado.edu -------------------- Ruffage For Ruffians -------------------- Whore mold creeps soft like flu fingers, picking ear-wax, slave to sleep, while onward it comes, somnambulant -- hungry for the earlobe, the drum -- and blunders an awkward chicken-motion, clucking this noise: our charters, our hooks, our redundancy sunders the waffle-irons of suburbia, out there gleaming, twittering like nerves before the numb. Skulls satiate on raw beans and these words are the bean curd clusters of the middle-man, supply and demand. Throw thrift to the dogs, brackish clog of my love there sitting, there sleeping, there pissing on the cushion And you were house-broken, trained to beg for coffee grounds in s. america before the whip rode miles of thigh, Forced you to cry. Door slam, I'm fucked. I'm outta here. I'm not writing poetry for you, for approval, for me -- even amounts of discourteousness: I frown on the artform and the hyphen -- but you've crawled this far, you've sucked my spoo and here we meet at last: toothy plumage blooming in the sweaty hole-mind of hate. Whatever this means. b-rev.john numen@halcyon.com --------- Go Figure --------- Ten tuna tins with fifteen fins. Zero zebras and twenty twins. Thirty ponies pull three red wagons. Six sneaky snakes chase four dumb dragons. Seventeen seagulls in the sky. Eleven hippopotami. Eighteen red headed boys named Willy. Don't story problems drive you silly? Grandpa Tucker oldcoach77@aol.com