A QUESTION OF FAITH

Whose complacencies lie
so tightly woven a hood blinding
inner eyes of the hawk
that no gods
are seen walking hillsides,
no goddesses
turning breasts in pools
to catch the moon's
gleam on aureoles,
no demons breaking out
of root and brush tangles, no
beings slipping, eccentric
to the flesh, from
bodies, expanding
beyond bone held boundaries,
no silvered ghosts reaching
from the sleeping
lover for meta-
caress, no
realm and inhabitants
skewed out of the ordinary
to rest, demand
deposits to redeem
a poet's checks
and balances?

So, now it's a question of spreading the faith. My mind will be like a flea on a hot skillet for this one, with a few suggestions about Juice itself, but mostly how to talk to people about it - about it as a prototype from the future, about it as not just an ezine, by a hyperzine (better than the metazine in my Art for Art's Sake blab). And about it as itself, Juice online 2005.

A thought about Juice online 2004. Pull it out of the TOC and put it over on that list top right with bios and all. Right at the bottom of the list, just above the link to buy. Call it Juice 2004 - browsing copy. Over on the left where you have the details about 2005 have a boxed item (not pop-up) in a semi-headline position reminding them that the hyperzine is being edited all year. Here's a crazy "trial balloon (or box)

Come browse often! -- Juice online is written, rewritten, edited, changed, fixed, by contributors and editors through its entire year. At the end of the year, it's declared "complete", packed up on a CD and offered for sale to those who want to put a chunk of early 21st century literary history into their book-bag (or laptop)....

Hey, I just noticed that I'm officially contributing shaman. Gorsh! I better get to work on a sand painting and a dance here.... Anyway, box content might be a little less wild, but you see the idea. Pull any visitor quickly into the fact that something different is going on here - and we've faith carrying us. Us bein' anybody touching what's going on here in any way. Includes readers.

Individual letters, not flyers, but like this one with flyer qualities. In fact, under the address and "Dear..." line, paste in, maybe center, maybe not, what I've pasted in above. And, possibly, the next paragraph before a separate paragraph for the letter's recipient.

Then, tell them what you're doing, briefly, in an informal paragraph or two. That you've online issues going back to [first year]. It's been becoming what it is. Tell them they can purchase completed issues through 2004. They can purchase (it costs a little more for disks) a "collection edition" of Juice online 2005. This will include (since it's March now) April and August "dated" snapshots (with labels calling them this and dated) as well as the final issue next January. This is an intriguing way to think about e-"bound galley proofs" or whatever - and it's something to put in their collection newsletter or whatever. All such activities help us spread the faith.

Anybody who has a link to Juice online (not your press, or your personal pages) is ripe for asking if you can have a bit of text over the link.Ask if you c'n have the box above under a line saying "Juice online 2005 is up for browsing...."

"Virtual" doesn't stop the eye. This might be a place to plug in that hyperzine -- but, leave publication. And it skips right over the back of ezine which is almost as dead as virtual.... Still, the -zine keeps it from baffling even the sleepiest. Blanketed / World asleep / A far hyperzine ruffles....

Now, you've backed the new and the old right up against each other. If you make that change and use the paste-up a few paragraphs above, remember to change it there, too. Be ready to explain to anybody who asks about hyperperfect-binding (always including, first, what perfect-binding is, bridging for even those who should know) and how that frees up "in the mind" the "binding". With ezine, you've just gone electronic, with the hyperzine you've taken it all to another level. First rule of a practicing shaman: keep everybody unsettled, on the edge of vertigo. you have ten thousand devises for doing that. Maybe you've noticed I almost always talk about attending where the expectation is that I will talk about attention. The latter doesn't really name anything. It's just a (desperate) command. Don't ever get so comfortable about hyperzine that you say it without feeling a little squiggle of static electricity along your teeth edges. But be able to do a sand-painting on hyperperfect-binding when some heckler tries to point out that you must be nuts....

THE WAY

The wandering shaman

owes

to teach
'sposed to teach.

After five nights at the cookfire
dipping horned, cupped palm
into the pot
some bastard asks, "What
you teachin'?"

Damned if I know.
Better not tell 'em that.
Look,

The baby knows.
The baby has the secret.
The baby puts
everything

into its mouth!

Now, I learned how
to do that,
learned

to put everything
into my mouth.

Taste it!

Develop taste!

They don't look convinced.

Better edge over toward an
escape route.

Pebbles, metals, tree barks,
road tar, clits . . .
Everything.

Lips tell shape. Tongue tells
resistance.

Taste!