featuring

signal beacon poems

  above thy deep and dreamless sleep { pdf }

  sea bed parting   { pdf }

  invisible minaret   { pdf }

  stainless compass   { pdf }

  in a sky pathless   { pdf }

  their ties to being   { pdf }

  pandora's checkbox   { pdf }

  tongues held in trust   { pdf }

  wayward progeny   { pdf }

  unleavened bread   { pdf }

texts as elemental amulets

I conceive Signal Beacon poems
as works placed and identified in both physical and web-space environments where they can act as "magnetic" text talismans. These works are characterized by both positive and negative 'poles' with a view to conduct the sparks of the intellect and, in doing so, to join the thoughts of readers to larger energies -altogether visible and invisible- that surround and support the essential life enablement of human tribes.

One might also regard these
poems as Text Buoys. What is this? A Text Buoy is meant to be ferried through the currents of a reader's mind by the inherent magnetic heft of its axial prosodic struts.

Our credo is that a poetry
that acts to manifest validity in an age of electronic manifesto ought refer neither to prosodic forms, nor to pandemic references from the 'typically received' human past. Might we instead summon the courage, for example, to erect hypertexts with no need of links? May we posit a chorus of "messages beyond borders" that are startling and immediate beyond the mundane organizational exigencies of academic lingua societies? Can we startle our innate biological sense of human urgency into stillness just long enough to look skyward into a new kind of wordscape?

What might characterize one's
experiences with such a poetics? At first sight, the reader is confronted with words largely free of tenses and temporal flow. An initial reading may begin as a "gloss" on the instant of present perception. Moments later the constellation of words is again spontaneously refreshed by the action of the brain. The intent is that the mind be invited to wake to explorations that await it within the inherent spaciousness of the offered texts.

The caustic nihilist may walk
away from such an exhibit decrying a perceived lack of potency in what he might perceive as "zipped up" texts, or "crimped" narratives. The living human anima in need of sustenance might instead, however, thrill at the discovery of a language not seen or felt since early childhood- the universe of floating, open words. It is vivid, fluid mobile witnessed just above the crib, moved not by winds but rather by a tabula rasa mind freed of lackadaisical linguistic constraints. Here the poem is a textual sculpture consisting of carefully equilibrated parts that shift inwardly, especially in response to currents of universal pattern consciousness.

Your objective as interpreter?
Take a moment simply to look, to see. After half a minute, with an insistent flick of your virtual forefinger against the stems of standing text, you may gain the sense that you are launching the word platform to float toward inward realms - as if the poem were an ocean buoy. This bobbing "textual anchor" might then find a fluid mooring place as it creates its own inevitable sounding in your reader's mind stream.

You are encouraged to attempt
to read by scanning the words of such poems --to the extent that a given text invites-- in all directions and, as near as possible, in several directions simultaneously. Might you access the words north-to-south, south-to-north, east to west, west to east, and, for some works, even on a northeast or southwest plane? Yes. But the real goal is to "read" the poem both in its entirety and at once. Return this word, these words, to the holistic soundness of your own eyes and mind. Meditate even as you mediate each array of text: ask what, after all else is discarded, can this word, these words together mean?