Hi all,

and here's a corrected snapshot 30 with Arni's 
"amazingly late snap" now included!

best to all,

Rebecca



Slug and I


Last night, first hot one since last summer,
we left the bedroom window open.

This morning I see across the carpet
a silver snail-trail. Which way did it go?

Do I have to hunker down and track it
under the bed? Forget it. Later I see

in the wall-corner furthest from the window
not a snail ­ a houseless slug, stalled at eye level.

Having turned tail on the lush back-garden,
it¹s seeking lusher Lebensraum in the front.

Only our dry roofed boxes, bathroom
excepted, foil the transition.

Good going, slug, but totally futureless.
Excuse me now as I take a tissue,

delicately detach you from the corner,
take you to the front door. No garden

deserves you ­ your clan here are
numerous enough already. Penalty, death.

Creature like me, defenceless. The morning is
overcast, the execution un-witnessed.

Powers above, if not blind and deaf,
grant me stay of execution.


Max Richards
North Balwyn, Melbourne
8.30am, Wednesday 19 November 2003



moves inside me
breathe rattle breathe
death an embryo
floating on sky
your card adds up the call
thinned to blood reality

far from the city
where they cover Oscar
with kisses hide Gertrude
behind the stone
there's a loss of continuity
this time of the world

Jill Jones
9.45am 19 November 2003



SUNDAY MORNING ROSE

 (“I’d like to keep going . . . “ – James Rosenquist)

Right there . . . all the colors in the universe
of paint,
so I never have to roll up canvasses.
Eye, then if we go across the room, it’s a painting.

Barry Alpert / Silver Spring, MD USA / 11-16, 11-19 (9:17 AM)



MY LIFE AS AN EXTENDED X-RAY

Transparent for years--more now.
The chiropractor points at my insides,
turned to the question mark that is
nothing new to my mind,
but's moved now to my spine.
Scoliosis. Disk degeneration.
Not the first time I've been called
a degenerate, either.
But there are upsides:
if my voice holds out
perhaps I can sing Rigoletto
or cast myself in the miniseries
"The Voyeuristic Passions of Alexander Pope,"
made when Reagan became too controversial.
In the meantime I need to buy myself
The Comfy Chair.

KTW/11-19-03



sky coming steel grey
a single snowflake falling
beyond the near pane

elsewhere bombs falling
into dark morning / amBushed by
'violent restraint'...

Douglas Barbour
Edmonton  08:10  Wednesday November 19/03



thinking too much
but newscycles drive
thinking 
just the same--
each vote cast 
for Bush/Cheney
changed
into a bullet
for Afghanistan
each bullet
also changed
into $ for
regional war lords
each bit of land
it changed
to profits for poppy
growers
each bit of horse
changed
to a nervous
system
of fear & frenzy
and bad nerves
changed
to bad news cycles
and news is
everyone's
back in business
which changed to--
yes    we    elected
all of it

West Irondequoit, New York, 12:19  11/19/03
Gerald Schwartz



guilty

 (do I have to feel - am I) guilty

I am (guilty)

 

tired_warm_comfortable_bored

 

_because of an aged day - I could have 

said nothing/smiled all the way down

it’s all set against changes

 

you end up discovering

the same old riddle

in the middle of your intention

 

ironical set of a masquerade

 

your guiltiness 

protects against daily repeated paralyses

Bozen _ Anny Ballardini_ 11.40 pm



(Stage directions for snap (in case of formatting disturbances)  poem is centered--
reading can also  at centered "i" or be read down or maybe even from the bottom up; bidirectional (although it may sound like my pet "Furby" toy))

down
they look
edge
of building
along a line

display
interactive
yet orderly
decorative
but in a row
hanging out

starlings

sky
at a november
up
look

-------------------------------------i-------------------------------------

look
again
through a veil
of twig
four perfectly ovals
identical
last of season
drooooplets
hanging on
waiting on
a breeze
a goodbye
wave

---------------------------




Deborah in NJ
6:37 pm
Newark
Deborah L. Humphreys SC



Hanging on
her every
word and
hearing not
a one, he thinks
that none
of her characteristics
are secondary.

Mark



Food drops and leafleting
disperse the crowd
our leader waddles through
on stumps of prayer.

Here is a rhetoric-
al question: by
what right if not
of election

(washed in the stream
of His love, the white
skein of water
slurring with pollution)

does he stand in his
whiteness
to bear such witness
before the people?

Dominic Fox, Leicester 19/11/03 / Northampton 20/11/03


Modemless

It's gone !
just a sad space
a square of dust
where it was
with a few
biscuit crumbs
a sweet paper
and some
cat hairs
friend said
you need a
bigger brain
or two update
screen all blank
keyboard so still
printer frozen
all cut off
from the poets
just me
and the cat
which is trying
to get out the door
deserting me
I suppose
I could try
to write
a poem


patrick 8-47 raynespark
 on some-one else's computer


Psy-ops Sonnet

There is much pain there. Across the vastnesses
between us, small birds carry messages. The sky,
wanting, above all, to be blue, arches its back,
as everlasting fire pours through space.

Men dying in burning houses wait for their
women to return, to feed them, bear their children,
mend their clothes. But even on the best of days,
in relatively stable orbits, men tremble before

women only average in appearance. A little too
much beauty is so hard to bear when souls are torn
to shreds, an infinity of detergents stretching them
to some breaking point, memory prospecting and

mining, leaving deep flooded shafts among heaped
dishes, appliances, lying in ambush in kitchens.


Hal
Halvard Johnson


SNAPSHOT 30


defenseless
my emptiness opens
as i greet him
not a shadow
of doubt when
he states that "today
is a good day"
bemused i enquire why
he tells me the reason
"i get to spend a lot
of time with you" and
my emptiness closes
around the moment a transparent
bubble that i'll carry
until matted by time




árni ibsen
hafnarfjördur
11:30 pm
nov. 19. 03