— —, —
—, — — —
—, — —, —,
—; — — —, —…
— - — — - —?
— —!



Ben Davis is from Saratoga Springs NY; he is considered by some to be a silly marmshkin. He makes music and words.

Life and World, pt. 1


They didn’t choose to lift
Up the lead feet or legs,
Weighed down by life and
Stumbling towards
Unavoidable fate with a slow,
Beating reason echoing the heart.

Truth was a smoky blanket
Implicit in the rules of nature,
But not to be touched by one
Who could do no better
Than to catch quick glimpses
Of dancing shadows raising
Their soft claws to elemental
Gods as their corporeal
Selves, hidden behind
Tightly packed rows of trees
With twisted and barbed branches,
Feasted on warm flesh.

The men with blank faces could
Sleep peacefully with no eyes to see,
Ears to hear, noses to smell, or mouths
To scream dull, echoing prayers
At the endless black.
But the aberrations born with a
Knowledge beyond themselves were
Forced to look inward to
Soft, supple parts that if touched
Could crumble and turn in,
Filled with the venom of years gone
By and tears cried only in the silence
Of hearts – Tears collecting in shallow,
Reflecting pools where nine of ten
Who wade in for solace or conquest
Sink as a stone and
Are silenced.


Brian Pouliot is currently a senior at the New England College of Music in Boston, MA, where he is majoring in Jazz Studies. He will graduate in 2008 and will continue his education at the Harvard University Law School in Cambridge, MA.

You’re


Drunk, noisy, awake as a parade,
your words splitting as they
hit the phone’s
strict plastic.

It’s two a.m. in your corner of the globe,
and you’re counting slugs
among the laundry racks
on the rain porch.

I don’t care about the slugs
which you thought were shell-less snails,
I let the pauses grow longer
and refuse to talk.

My fig tree has grown
a foot, I let it sleep in the yard
all summer.
It remembers you, and shines a little.

I wanted to tell you about the
blind lady who wandered into traffic
yesterday, and called out for me
to help her cross.

When I let go of her arm-
safe on the other side-
I glimpsed for an instant
that pressing, breathless black.


Camille is an oboist and a senior at NEC. Outside of music and poetry, her interests include cooking and plants. Her favorite poets are Sylvia Plath and Dylan Thomas, and her favorite place is tiri tiri matangi, a bird sanctuary island off the coast of New Zealand.

 

here nor there
neither


nowhere
how


where



near


Caroline Park (b.1986) studies composition with Malcolm Peyton at the New England Conservatory of Music. She lives in Boston, MA.

Dear,

Help me that I may stop pretending and get on with living. It’s been nearly 24 years on
this earth and where can I locate a bathroom or a savings bank in which to store memory?
You are always as far as possible, the thick distance constantly fattening. Then, as if
speaking to oneself weren’t enough, these garbage cans in the back of the foyer give me
headaches, an announcement of my conscience arriving. Please write me back; there are
soon no more shortbread cookie tins to send as a parting gift. Then they sang the
Halleluiah Chorus while taking mescaline. The holiday concert was simply a disaster. I
miss your bunches of flesh rolling over on the couch with the dog and the children and
the in-laws. We then could consider the logic behind our crossword habit and pretend to
care about children in Afghanistan. You are missed, which has become your function.

Love,



Joe Moffett is a Boston area trumpet player/ improviser. He graduated from New England Conservatory in 2006 and has subsequently been focusing on his own music and poetry projects, including preparations for a Northeast tour with the band Boxcars in the spring of 2008.

SOME DREAM


Watched the out
side from far
away, it would
seem. Had a
hazy feeling, or
was it foggy
mist on windows.


Like Last Night,
sheets in wind:
this morning fell
ill. And felt the
body raging,
silently
as it does.


Compounded, as
with a fog. A
cloudy crazed.
The feeling
of a question
mark as it is
made tangible. Turning


like the wheel
on old barrow.
This sickness
The steadiest I've felt.


Kristin Slipp is a singer of many things. She is from Maine. She loves delicious food and beer. She is currently trying to set her poetry to music.

you've got little eyes she said little little brown eyes
peering steeply down your knows and look those ears they're
quite small and queer you little queer chuckling to
yourself don't the rest hear what's so simply evoking
about this mush in the street that bread that you eat
long for a bit more rich and snuffed with delight at the
chance to bust out they said it was this way for a long time
tested rang true study your way out but you'll never undo
the wrought bars of strength you're too tiny underweight
underpaid wrong array of features we look for today
change your face soak yourself in media sauce you don't
know that your age surely too late


Lauren Strobel is a spangled merken.

and there they were not walking or having avoided a moment to regroup their thoughts were sincerely misled hoping for less fortunate behavior than a glimpse of God could not provide resolution from doubting your self worth if only he was better equipped to instruct the guidelines to our people remind me of different ambitions set forth from guidelines that avoid intervention and then they try and invent a new purpose for falling out of each other’s bad graces of themselves that one day they will not recount towards their grandchildren and away from uninitiated future generations haven not set a thought forth away from the time being stained on my shirt that tells you to venture near at all costs coming further backwards to when your grandparents had first imagined death and you had already lived in our hearts for generations to come back so as not to regress without the unusual reiterations that should be helplessly avoided as the plague has been gone now for out thousands of decades forward with stops accordingly manifesting their inner nature as large as particles of hair relinquished from nervous scalps that can no longer hold on to secret thoughts and instead opt to think no more knowing that we have already imagined such things even outside of our own dreams of reality could possibly cease to teach us to practice enjoyment of her fruits or of his labors lingering just to disprove that unobtainable point that I wish only you could know and instruct others along with ourselves more reluctant young years draw near and our lives are over and over and over and over there we spot our perceptions swinging by the fence beyond the gate which has long since rusted shut like a love trap full of emotions gone sour leaving them to cower in fear and possibly even question self worth is deserving of my full attention is not on the matter at hand but on all that does not matter is it a pure substance guided planning on avoiding waste would be unmentionably tragic beginnings of self serving endings when it has yet to become quite apparent from the onset that there is a goal to reach to fill it with as much emptiness as can not possibly even be imagined reluctantly so as to increase their self awareness is constantly fluctuating as gills cling to breath in a squeeze box when it is inappropriate to laugh but do not know if that would not be the least honest  reaction would possibly be to hesitate explaining what one looks for in characterizing their own mistakes are the hardest chances they might ever take care to be cautious but as with the wind chance is unavoidable possibly encouraging in retrospect uncanny circumspection as comfortable as the least painful circumcision is a given when avoiding one’s own faith on the path her father has set out for the children to march on home from work with promises kept lingering till they are forgotten sex is usually the best on nerves that choose to way thin like the rack worn thin line divides pages of reinvigorated manuscripts mixing blood and semen that could make only them proud like a mothers triumphant return to school now blind learning to invent a wheel worth passing on to future generations that regard sight as a curse when it is best to taste what you want first and foremost mostly residual and appropriately deserving like the singling out of the sexes and the impolite let downs of previous generations of French peasants that want nothing less than potatoes or starvation could possibly not be a better option when a thin line divides successes and failures usually win out in the end      

Luke Moldof is a backstabbing bastard. He also smells like the plague.

Glancing beyond the frosted glass,
Through the small spines of blustery cold,
Ventures a grating mind,
Which tumbles upon a bittersweet truth.

Blades of loss protrude from steely voids
Touched by an icy sword among the granite stones.
To pierce through the blissful tier,
And glide through the ravaging veil.

Buried deep alongside the bruise,
No longer can the happiness delude.
Grasping the fallen faith within,
One composed moment of pure illusion.


Maggie Wyporek of Windsor, CT is currently a senior at New England Conservatory of Music pursuing a Bachelors of Music in Jazz Trombone Performance.

Our dusty, hi-fi speakers
warned me about you.
I didn't listen, but I should have known
because the watch that you gave me broke
a long time ago.




Nick Catino is a jazz trumpeter who has been living in Boston for the past 4 years and plans to graduate from New England Conservatory this spring.

Existence


It makes me cringe and
nervous, unimportant.
anxious. it's horrible and
i panic.


sucked in so i suffer; suffering that
refuses to leave my shoulder side
so i give up guessing.
i tell Rapunzul to stop trying,
my hopes are cremated,
dried up pain
crumbles to dust.


my shadow is too overbearing
to hold back.




Noah is a skydiving extraordinaire. He shoots down to fossil sites in Santiago, Chile via parachute and has made such discoveries that have won him a Nobel prize.  It might be added that he is a quite stunning figure, as well - www.noahpreminger.com.

One way blind
spot back
seats pass in-
jure rear view

Mere, or da river
Piss don't run cup holder

Glove cum art meant
we eels win. Though,
da ash bored on stars. Tearing,
we'll drive her seat

Ex-hoss to pipe stick
shift petal break oil
Tan keyholes clutch leather.
Uphold story, win.
Shield why?


Percy de Playa was born, and died in a car.

Don't they already
show themselves
when a thin mist
surrounds the
deep grass and
leaves
when it is
time to go.


My name is Bob. I feel silly trying to write two lines about myself.

Missing Tooth


The missing piece
The gap in confidence
The hole that pulls
Yanks into a well of despair
A little lacking
The big loss
It isn't there
Do they wonder?
The empty cavity filled with weakness
The hollow happiness


My name is Will Slater and I'm from Massachusetts and I play the bass. My favorite poet is Ben Davis.

Rain rises
against roily spray,
hissing on a faded sea.
Somewhere.

Seabirds scream,
winging over icy shapes
drenched in greyish light
somewhere distant.

Sitting still
with life left over,
the solitary tune
still lilting somewhere.

Fall criers fly
far in the raw wind,
brimming with the burn of failure
somewhere in the west.

Fat flakes drift softly down,
a seabird sails straight south,
a Fall Crier in winter's teeth.
Somewhere I'm afraid.


Kalindi is currently a senior at New England Conservatory of Music, majoring in viola performance.

untitled


darkness exempt from classical fits of kindness, watching riots erupt far and near.
blades dragged on asphalt, the risk of love, a threatening peace of mind, aber waves of the mind rustling in the slow mind waking its way to tomorrow.
another distraction, smokers coughing in harmony. hung over of lies blooming from reduced reaction.
I love you, hung over, asking about roots ruptured and turning blind eyes.


Moses Eder is an Undergrad at the New England Conservatory where he studies jazz drumset. He hopes you will join him on the astral plane.

The loom



When the stagnating swell

trickled to stillness

waning, and sought

rhythm of smallness –



emotion – a motion

in fullness

was a clot –



suspending the run

of the loom loosely strung,

was a stun,

was a sting

in the movement of string.


Raised in transit between France and California, Sophie Delphis has now settled in between, studying classical voice at the New England Conservatory.

untitled


a flaunt of splintered scapes illuminates this fluid bid of shape fallen straight upon faults of winter.

matt is.