Not sure why I use that quote by Sonny Boy. It's good to follow your instincts at times, regardless of what structure we may think we're supposed to follow. But the quote really feels right for what we're feeling here at the Philly Sound, resistance to enter the snake any way but directly.

Groups of poets have always understood the magic of shared spark. It's not to build a wall to keep others out (at least, not in our case), it's more of a pow wow of sorts. As Frank Sherlock said at one point, when addressing those who feel left out, feel bitter about our collective Philly Sound poetic friendship, "Yes it's a scene, but with a small 's,' so show up, and you're it." As always, Frank has a way of making what's true clearer for everyone.

Philadelphia has just lost its great Sage. His name was Gil Ott, and for those of you who are not familiar with his work, trust me when I tell you you will want to be. Our Philly Sound Blog has been a memorial page, of late, for his many fans to share their thoughts and feelings: http://phillysound.blogspot.com And I was able to interview him one last time in January of this year: http://banjopoets.blogspot.com/

In many ways Gil Ott's spirit of collaboration and community is exactly what the Philly Sound poets aim for: real democracy, sincere generosity.... When Frank Sherlock and Tom Devaney held the first Philly Sound Festival in 2003, it was very clear to everyone who participated, and to everyone else who showed up, that the Philly Sound was and is, all about building coummunity with poets outside the mainstream.

Enjoy the poems from The Philly Sound, guest editor, CAConrad, a Philly Sound poet

--------

FEATURED WRITER: GREG FUCHS

Greg Fuchs is a writer and photographer living in New York City. He has published and exhibited his photography widely. Recently his work was included in Critical Consumption, artists engage the politics of consumerism, at the Rotunda Gallery in Brooklyn.

He is the author of Came Like It Went (BD Books, Washington, DC 1999), New Orleans Xmas (Range, Eureka, CA 2002), Temporary (Unarmed, Minneapolis 2004), and Uma Ternura (Canvas and Companhia, Portugal, 1998). His poetry is included in many anthologies. Fuchs has performed at Beyond Baroque in Los Angeles, Small Press Traffic in San Francisco, the Writers House in Philadelphia, and the Poetry Project at St. Mark's Church in-the-Bowery in New York among many other venues.

Fuchs co-curated the Highwire Reading Series with Kyle Conner and the La Tazza Reading Series with Frank Sherlock both in Philadelphia. Fuchs is a member of Subpress and is the editor of Brett Evans' After School Session. Fuchs helped to establish the Philadelphia and New York City Independent Media Centers. He is an affiliate of MediaChannel.org and a regular contributor to Clamor. Fuchs is columnist-at-large for Boog City, a community newspaper based in and around New York City's East Village.

You can find more work by Fuchs at his Web site, www.gregfuchs.com. His birthday is May 24, 1968. You can e-mail him at greg@gregfuchs.com.

--------

ASTRAL

Sometimes we do learn
even if it costs a life.
Bangs hit the high note
discoursing Madame George.
The music sends me
crisp winter of discontent
in a run down art deco apartment
dropping-out to find the high note.
Least we had a choice
to be welcomed to shopping
or throw it all away
for the music that loves to love.
 

--------

DARK ROOM

Shoot out the light
Tulsa devastating tragedy.
Fucking speed freak country kids
daredevils remind me of junky friends
from Beaumont Texas oil workers
shoot drugs all weekend, week off.
Can't help but think of you
in New York becoming the greatest poet
fresh from Tulsa. Damn their pretty poetry.
M. Schmidt's lives of the poets,
damn polite society university credentials.
But damn fucking country speed freak country.
Ain't no stunt being fucking country
speed freak. Shoot out the devastating light.
 

--------

WRECKING BALL

New York: it's like any town just more.
Developers waited two years for Jones Diner,
surrounding it with old retaining walls.
Drove up gloaming Lafayette Street.
So few have survived but nostalgia
is a useless emotion for an often useless
world that enjoyed no such golden age.
You could be naming animals in a garden.
Thunder in the window.
Siren off a highway.
The next battle in a history of battles
defining new boy tastes for gadgets.
A helicopter in the sky.
Every attendent at the gas station looks up.
Buy a pig nose from Halloween Adventure
to be General Porky Franks tomorrow.
"Evil minds that plot destruction."
Recycled railcar cheap lunch demolished.
Incoming chic downtown luxury loft living.
 

--------

FEATURED WRITER: FRANK SHERLOCK

Frank Sherlock is the author of 13 (Ixnay Press) & a collaboration with CA Conrad entitled, end/begin w/ chance (Mooncalf Press). Ace of Diamond Satellite is forthcoming publication in 2004. He curates the La Tazza Reading Series, and is collaborating again with CA Conrad on a project entitled, The City Real & Imagined: Philadelphia Poems.
latazzaseries@hotmail.com

--------

SMILE

This postcard is to make you jealous

        Knife put to paper language

                          to cardboard The box

beyond the mouth goes on speaking

           Close-cropped shots

of miss/mister doctor the one-inch

slice at the eyebrows Rubber

                
bands ran through the earholes face

the worn as mask Beget it off

on pavement unwrapped forgotten

 
Your lunatic nods in the chalk

silhouette The well-known sleep markers

& unidentified die spots dot town

Vivisected street bird tries to

        hold profile of scarred groundbound

families of beaks caught in music wire

     plucked to soundtrack a pornography

But wait wait there's more act now
        
spanking at cheeks fingers won't reach

No time no limit no sweat no baby

 no pain no rest no bump no thanks

just EatEatEatEatEatEatEat

Postmark this fat & inverted wish you were here

--------

ACE OF DIAMOND SATELLITE

Welcome to the wedding     news          puke-out     talent scout

                news          first date      survival     news          

ship date          orange high          news          hot tub

        personality          news          you've been X'd     card deck

news          trading space          temptation          news

        I'm hot          you're punk'd          news          blind date

don't change          news          it's all     right          here

--------

CLINK

Memory continues to grow

once the clouds have gone

        Part of me is the enemy

There is a scorched equation

plus fuel times the sense of loss

Sent up & presentation

have open hands between them

Here is an artery

You have one too      What

needs to sever to have

us connect     Brass fiction

blow it thru

another text burial

        A part of you is the enemy

Everyone will remain both

above & beyond surface

--------

FEATURED WRITER: TOM DEVANEY

Tom Devaney is author of The American Pragmatist Fell in Love (Banshee Press, 1999) and Letters to Ernesto Neto (Germ Folios, 2004). Devaney's poetry and essays have been translated into French in the magazines Double Change and Poesie. He is a regular free-lance writer for The Philadelphia Inquirer. Devaney teaches Creative Writing at the University of Pennsylvania where he is coordinator of the Kelly Writers House.

Visit Devaney's home page at
http://www.english.upenn.edu/~wh/devaney.html

--------

IT'S NO FUN LIVING IN THE NO-FUN ZONE     

At his funeral they said he was, "Never a downer."     
It takes a day every day.

They're filming in your area-code.      
The director asked if you'd stand in.          

Things are good people are over.
Drama, drama, drama, drama.      

Grow angry, proofread slop.
Lose days-

The specific emotional quality of former sex.
Know the cat knows.

Tomorrow on Oprah will be called, Creating Damage.
Soup tastes better the second day.

Phone up the hotel. There isn't a job.     
All the same, there's no more time.
        
Go to where you feel a river. Scan in the ocean.
Remember what you once thought.

You were wrong. It's not dark.
Something's stuck in your gut. You still need to eat.

--------

AT AND NEAR THE GEORGIA GUIDESTONES

The shaky skinny guy at the catfish pond
(no teeth) threw his little rat dog in.

The pebbles in our shoe made it difficult.
We live in the country, it suits us.

"A lucky penny." "A dirty sidewalk."
"A hardboiled and salted egg in your mouth."
"A star at nighttime."

The song continued longer than it needed
to continue, that was the song.

It wasn't "Your infinite spicy mouth,"
or "The soft water sunset," "Old house,"
"The bay," the memory sunk
in the fluffy bed, noises in a pillow.

Signs in the SMAL-MART:

WE NO LONGER TAKE BAD CHECKS
WE STILL REFOLD MAPS

The most incredible thing about the whole thing:
Thick pieces of brown bread;
all polished wood and clean; lots of pillows.

(Dumb-ass energies that should never see the light of day).

"Ifns my tree got a birdies,
then i'd experience the true Ho Chi Minh trail!"

Like the red-rubber face of the goose
that walked like a chicken up Mosquito Road.
Cool red turban this old lady wore.
Color of the shirt I liked.

--------

FEATURED WRITER: MOLLY RUSSAKOFF

Molly Russakoff's poems have been published in The Paris Review, American Poetry Review and other literary magazines. She was recipient of a Pew Fellowship in the Arts for poetry in 1995. She is the poetry editor for The Philadelphia Independent and proprietor of Molly's Cafe & Bookstore, where she hosts a full schedule of literary events. She also co-edits Joss Magazine with Ish Klein and Daniel Labeau. She is currently working on a memoir of her time as a student and teaching assistant at The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa Institute, back in its infancy in 1978. Molly lives in Philadelphia's historic Italian Maket with her two kids, Carla and Johnny.

--------

THE OLD HAG SCRATCHES AT THE PAVEMENT WITH HER DRY BROOM
 
The doctor told me my mucus lacked viscosity
and my ovaries were shaped like a gutted fish
rather than a cartoon puppy dog's head, as they should be.
I thanked him and paid his receptionist a cool fin.
However lovely the human vessel is said to be, lovelier
than the Cutty Sark as it crosses at the intersection
against the light, I was ashamed to parade mine about
with my newly bought knowledge, even in my grass skirt,
fragrant lei and exposed breast. I could only think
of my shrivelled innards and wonder at their disruptiveness.
 
How did this shapely soap bottle come to be filled
with watery ink? What makes plumbing suddenly
clank? Am I too verbose? Am I embarassing myslef?
Have I gone crazy in my housedress and scuffs, my lipstick
ground about my mouth in a frightened O!?
 
When you met me I was beginning to rot. You might've noticed
that slight stench, the gaseous helix of spirit as it exited
my nostrils with a little whistle and began to navigate heavenward. I hope
I didn't frighten you when I smiled and my teeth shifted
slightly, when I adjusted them with my thick tongue. I know
I should apologize for nature, but I do. Apologize,
that is, but only to you. Oh, youth, you little harlot, when you leave
go through the back and remember not to slam the door.
 

--------

MY MOUSE
 
I hear his slight voice in the cave
behind the tufted sofa. He is softer
than the splattered flowers.
His fragile hands hold a single seed
to his mouth. HIs slender tail
paints and invisible line on the floor
as he traces the perimeter
of the yellow room, makes cleanly
beneath the door. He appears
and disappears. My heart leaps.
He pants behind the toy box.
He peeks from the black shadow
of the cabinet where the china
is lined. He retreats. He peeks again.
Wee mousie, who once dragged the trap
to center stage and left it
and his outline as evidence,
who has chosen the kitchen corner
to shit and beneath the hamper,
who has given all my bait a wide berth,
ignored the unreachable cheerio
which I am so intent on, butter knives
and chop sticks and skewers,
startled and startling, our hearts
meet nigthly, quickened. I lumber,
gigantic. He is so small
and fleet, an apparition, mistaken
for the blown shape
 of the baby's shirtsleeve.
I stomp to scare him. He skitters,
light as a leaf, and vanishes.
The exterminator laughs
as he lays the glue boards.
The mouse and I shiver.
As a boy in Lancaster County
the exterminator fed them
from his hand, cheese and wheat.
He laughs, remembering.
He calls them soft.
He calls them delightfulful.
 
--------
 
HANGING AROUND
 
It happens that I am tired of being morose.
It happens that I go to the kitchen supply
all breathless, irrepressible, like a bulb horn
blasting itself into a red poppy.
 
The smell of tar reminds me of Atlantic City.
I want nothing more than to recount the inconsequential.
I want to revive the vanished piers, the arcades,
the spangled ocean, the diving bell and diving horse.
 
It happens that I am tired of the amorphous
sweater and black copy books.
It happens that I am tired of being morose.
 
Just the smae, it would be delicious
to confess my murders in court
or blurt my desires to my handsome neighbor
It would be beautiful
to leaflet the avenue, maddened
by the splinter of God.
 
I do not want to go on being a packet of words,
demure, contained, measuring my smile,
stiff in the wet tripe of conversation
mouthing advice and platitudes, my nostrils quivering.
 
I do not want to be the rattle of so many thoughts.
I so not want to continue as a hung coat and as shoes
holding a place in line, as a bouyant brightness
forced beneath the surface of the bay, repressed.
 
For this reason the telephone rings merrily
on the night stand by the open window
and coos in its cradle
and its lines are criss-crossed in a big jumble.
 
And paper voices splash from the mouthpiece
like paper bouquets of flowers with wire stems
like paper scroll of musical notes
like a conversation at a luncheonette, urgent as ice cream.
 
There are hash pipes and intimations
passing between students in apartments on Pine Street
there are mothers on benches with Styrofoam coffee cups
there are dime stores
where the insane go to with cashiers
there are hone poles everywhere and billboards and sunflowers.
 
I stride along with an empty spleen, with wings, with packages,
with breathing, with cleanliness
I pass, I cross schoolyards and lumberyards clattering with yellow planks
and Asian groceries with spears of sugar cane
bok choy, daikon and signs in characters
I can almost under stand.
 
 
 
--------
 
FEATURED WRITER: ETHEL RACKIN

ETHEL RACKIN was born in Philadelphia in 1972. Her poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Brooklyn Review, Colorado Review, ixnay, Skanky Possum, Volt, and elsewhere. Her manuscript, The Unpredictability of Plant-Life, was a recent finalist for several first-book awards and is currently seeking a publisher. The author currently resides in New Hope, Pennsylvania. She can be reached at ethel_rackin@yahoo.com.

--------
 
 
(previously published in the ixnay reader, vol. 1)

YOUR DOG ISN'T THE FIRST TO GREET YOU

in the summertime
when there's a box of milk
and 3 cucumbers

it's no time to be shy!

a hip socket requires love love and the promise
of love

and a dog who barks uncontrollably
may be coaxed
to drop it

after pawing the front door of grief
with his outdoor ball

(should I forget the whispering of ancestors?
they may be good for my health
in the way opening passages for chi to flow
is good

which is not a slogan but a truism
in the sense that I am still in a lunchroom setting
wondering where my mother's been)

oh how can I tend the forest of You
(really)

and still admit that the shakes are something
and the blues are something too

--------

                                                        
(previously published in Philadelphia Independent)

A CITY YOU DRIVE YOUR CAR INTO AT NIGHT

one may learn about cut-ups
early or late

find out why paper dolls have nothing on the girl who scrubs ink from rubber stamps
for amusement rides I don't want to but must repeatedly
take

the girl who breathes through these lips
accidentally sewn together

she possesses wings which are acetate yet who gives a fuck they're stuck on
so realistically

lipstick, rain
the year the out of town guest
became the town's center

despite repeated attempts to activate the magic telegram
which boldly states her name address and phone number           

a shyness sets in

alone in the belief that alien abductions lead to a crime-filled life
she has the scar to prove it

there's a friend on Green
who turns up later

sometimes she stays up late nights in phone booths comparing stories:
 
am I old enough to form lists yet?
is this a list
in forgetting?     

--------

(previously published in The Portable Boog Reader, Phialdelphia)

--------

CAJOLE

to urge with gentle and repeated appeals, teasing, or flattery;
wheedle

to chatter like a jay

to lure
into a case

as those I coax grow mirrored
shelves
   in a sense
become wolverine

or as in my typing crooked crosses out
I tell myself I'm damn near the colored tree
and will be for the duration of this mini-gale
at which point

in a light house

sound of:
poof!

bellowrocks & debris form "I
say to myself what a wonderful..."
and here again "I see clouds of grey..."

in this trail beyond the single breadcrumb that simply
must lead

to balm
& breeze

--------

FEATURED WRITER: Ish Klein

Ish Klein was born of illiterate sharecropper parents in a coastal region of metropolitan New York; this occured May 30, 1970. And it shows; she is a Gemini. Her education (Columbia University '92 and the Iowa Writer's Workshop, Poetry Division, '97) has resulted in no monetary wealth at all. She has lived in Philadelphia for about three years and will stay if she acheives stability.

Publishing History: Gare du Nord ('96), Explosive Magazine('96,'97) Joss
Magazine ('02,'03).
She is also one of the editors of Joss Magazine which intends to put out a
third issue. Eventually.

email: ishklein@hotmail.com

--------

JACK BENNY, SPECTRE, THE DISK OF PLEASURE

In, "The Treasury of Modern Humorists" George Burns said that he
was the best comedian because he could break
Jack Benny up. What?! Jack Benny, the man the boy in me
was built for. You are wrong

George. I have always found you unfunny to a fault
your wife: a cute puppy which I mean with malice.
George Burns; how could you who are limited in every apparent way
move Jack? Jack the bear to my soft Goldilocks.

Let us stroll among the windmills out here (my mind).
I'll get my little light. See, we have many spectres.
Quiet, I multiply. In this fantasy mist I am a beautiful lad
on the balcony of an L.A. love pad. Jack's hotel!

I'm stuck, what's holding us up? Shit it's Mary. The Front.
Now see Jack as appeasement monkey.Thee Jack Benny!
See the watery baby blues inside the meaty head. What's this?
Him saying, "Now don't be silly, of course there's no one else."

I'm out here in underpants. It's chilly. Inside I see his shoulders going
up like that upstart Sullivan. He sees me.
"Get down, get down! the hand sign. Mary exits
That was Mary Livingston, ladies and gentlemen, off to make Jell-o.

Thus opens the sliding door.; Oh yes. I go, "hi!"
"Now you, I don't want any trouble." he says while backing up.
Sure he does. I am hustled upstairs.
Roughly, thank God.

Back before I cared I was buggered by Bennyesque men
and I have maintained the soft spot.
It squeaks, "love me, love me, love me
you seem suseptible and mean." I like that they can't help it.

Thing about Jack is he's a nice guy and wants to help me.
"Why don't you go back to school?" He often asks.
Well?
Weird how this affects my respect in a lowering way.

Like his wish for words of love.
"Goldie," he pinches my lower lip open from below,
"say you love your big bad bear."
"Now Jackson, you know I need the threatening incentive."

Suddenly the cock is sideways feeling, retracting.
"You mean you don't really love me? Even though I've projected
my self from death to the windmilled fields of Philadelphia?"
"Back up, Jackson. What was the question?"

"Well, if your not even following-
Oh what's the use?" Off he storms; a radio sound effect: the shoes
to the door that slams. That was Jack Benny, ladies and gentlemen,
breaking for Jell-o and maybe a Lucky Strike.

Well.
The ever-present disk of pleasure shifts further away.
Some nights I jump off this balcony to catch the edge of it. I hang on
until nausea forces me to release. Flung then I am

in the Los Angeles air. It is before the war in a neighborhood
where no one gets lynched or unwillingly humiliated. I levitate
then kick back down. Way down to the shuffling street level.
Enter dimension two

where the Gracie Allens sweetly scoot around. They are little
puppies or disgusting toddlers. Damn them! If one comes up,
I will stomp it down them wait for it to incompletely reinflate.
It will limp after me, but I will leave it!

That's me giving experience. So? I am bitter, probably.
No I am not now stomping.
I'm detached actually.
The Great Oz not at all.

I jump to get cut by the edge of the pleasure disk: Round Saw!
And up and up for more cuts. And the men, and the squeaky
females, and the lovable cuddly things .... oh so what?
I'm not even here. I'm not even hearing them.
Well.

--------

UPON A DIRT FARM I WAS SENT TO THINK

Lo, my sensors dim.
I eliminate myself
in the act
in a way.

Force!
A thing inside decides to require
           "Let's get rid of it."
Another voice. He said
he did not say
      "You are a whore."
Although I heard it.
"It's my birthday" I said.

It really was. How sad
It sounded like I wanted money
having none. And that I address
strangers. That I am out
of it maybe.

That was on the street
under the elevated, Queens.
  "You're a whore."
"Why are you saying this?"
   "I didn't-"
"Realize sir, you are up to the same thing.
How more pathetic you are with

your little standard wilting
as the train pushes the Summer
air around."

Common, common, tsk.
      Away with it then!
Put it on the train and scram
before the door shuts.

What now? Well I'm ready
in my bed getting messages
from Chinese T.V.

Plot: there is a mix up with a box
or a bag (read female insult).
My counterpart says
that she can no longer handle this
business alone.

The meat business with it's fickle bags
and germy boxes.

I'm guest appearing
and aware out there they are paying
close attention.

Believe me I care.
I give the map out all the time:
To Get To Love
through the insensitive sections
Drink! Or if that is wrong for you

it's tough and still having bugs removed
but it's like
go to
no matter what
they are worth
love.

Constant buzzing
You are beautiful
all of you.
No matter who
seriously.

--------

DISTANCE

Silent, the site, then birds. Brazen their chipping attempts
in sky to score what can be seen i.e. on Chestnut street.

Therefore more of North America's granite dawn is drawn
by quiet birds. It goes unslowly.

Sorry. I was wasting time first at the window
then pulling out hair. A start of personality?

Where was I? Now that it is night one waits.
Is that a deer? Maybe later, elsewhere

another state with an ocean upon which a satellite shines
as motion goes to the coast.

Here is tall grass on dunes
Sand Hills! People make love between them.

Remember? You were there.
You are my friend right?

You know me.
World?

Out there?

--------

FEATURED WRITER: HASSEN

Hassen writes poetry & fiction in the Philadephia area. Poems have been in Skanky Possum, Barque Press' One Hundred Days, Nedge and in the audio magazine Frequency.

--------

THREE POEMS FROM SKY JOURNAL FROM SEA

I.

HOW TO BECOME A SKILLED CEPHALOPOD

1. charger
2. resolve
3. docs on blk file
4. brn envelope
5. blk emulsives
6. paper tablet and ink
7. permits
8. 3 pt perception
     9. nerve
        10. capacity
11. swt spots
12. jetspeed
13. practice with bowling pins or balls or chnsaws or flaming stcks axes no guns! guns and skeet!
1     4. miscellaneous
15. flsafe

deep in the blood cells call for ordinary
which words pop or tunnel direct with association
i'd rather it leap and surprise of course
topics range from lore to tendril penetration and oven cleaners
or extermination of general varmints that seem too smart
presorb me with the very real situation of running in place

it the sky was steaming again
but in an orange stew between the lower clouds
of purple or a touch of terrible pink and mostly gunmetal
the color of things i wish to shoot several times several times

II.

can't trust someone to a trophic process
(don't you do well)
tail chaser of that thought and follow certain rules
(not know this love prohibition)
give me taurine and tequila
(to call mercury valid & dance around fires)
i feel ousted thinking to myself
(stop as in stop speaking command)
this belongs in another season another part of the world
(mid sentence starts and fits ethic dictation)
the colors squeeze all sides
(now is rude now is polite but mostly what is)
breath caught in severed billows
(invisible cold front excess wind)
emphysemic trap blasted
(couldn't get enough make it up)
vatted
(ask nicely)
c is something to destroy (discover) yourself for
(can't take you seriously)
there's protocol
(need more blank pages)
what we say to each other dear should never be poetic

III.

ceiling end? no expansion without sensual intimate relation of 'drifters' gain

divination:

falling out of atmosphere
how much care we are capable of
structure collapse
integrity defeated
crumpled fins
the lame arm in arm
glubbing soporific
         there there

i will bomb it tomorrow and there will be just now this disappearance
so the words they are sunk charts are needed now more than ever

or no.
cataclysm
mars will effectively
as back-up
my toxic blueprint under his heel

current swinging the creature beneath the polarity
he hoped to find about his longing but couldn't phrase a question
blood to his brain next step is to blur the seconds o that's right
what kind of dead mother won't show herself in a puddle or a purple cloud

the children sat very still in their seats when the wind blew way back

how do you
make an ideal one
outline your current