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Donny Does E-mail
by John Rothfork


Introduction: Donny & Lonny live in Calliope, Texas where they took classes in computer science & American literature at a community college. Calliope is located in the Texas Panhandle between Amarillo & Thalia. Larry McMurtry fans will recognize Thalia as the town where Duane Moore grew up & lived in three great regional novels: The Last Picture Show (1966), Texasville (1987) & Duane's Depressed (1999).


E-poem: zero

preamble

okay you clattering collection of Calliope junk
boot-up / whoops / wrong file
     (dos or unix?)

okay you Calliope Junior High kids
everyone have their signed permission slip?
it's like a password before we can
start to amble & scroll

now here's the rule:
keep your dog on a string
& your laptop on the wire
we'll all stop browsing & watch
when you need to use the pooper scooper
    (or pee behind a tree)

& here's the answer for the quiz at the end:
Donny's dog is named Dumb
because he won't talk
or even answer his e-mail
& he's a shar-pei with lips that flap like Dumbo's ears
    (rude ain't he?)

I hope you train your puppies
to pour ice tea & be a whole lot better bred
    (like not humpin' a lady's leg)

now open your windows & let's get started


E-poem: one

like ships
once poems were wood
pencil marked paper
hamadryads giggled in tissue
unseen in autumn's declivitous leaves
tacking to the rustled ground

poems were black & white thread
stitching books & lectures
yellowing note cards
& a few days at
Borobudor / the Prado / the Uffizi

before Telletubbies had Intel in their bellies
feint was an electric sharpener &
a leather can quivering virginal yellow
school-bus paint undented by tooth
"where is the word?"
     (like it waits to be picked 
     a leaf elected from ground)
     (for plain Texas folk
     the word was made virtual
     & descended by wire)

hammer typed by fulcrum
licked in double envelopes &
paid for at the post office
when you were lucky
the mailman brought you manna
book-rate slow
you read your poem &
sneered at the notes on contributors

On-line Courses: Creative Writing
WTAMU: so close to perfect you won't know the difference

basics:          cut & paste
                    save picture as
                    html txt pdf doc jpg
                    fun with fonts
                    connect automatically
                    become an instant poet:
                    http://www.webcom.com/wordings/
                    artofwrite/poetrygenerator.html

writing:        the cursor blinks unbitten
                   beneath the screen syntax tangles
                   like segments of wire
                   like possible fossils
                   in the spaceless space before cyberspace
                   the screen saver erupts pixelated colors that almost
                        sediment into dreams
                   zoom up the pirated OED
                   what crashed without a sound?
                   thank your guardian angel for autosave

publishing:     shoot it to an e-zine                 
                   slam it to school to make the grade
                   edit your resume   

virtual ectoplasm in cyberspace
the file hesitates magnetically
on some unknown server
in the metaphor of memory
electrically waiting


E-poem: two

media include:
     Mexican beer (dos Equis por favor)
     embodied time:
         memories in glassine envelops of words
         the whole thing a stamp collection
     writing paper (lined or plain)
         (you could lick one of them stamps on)
     A:    /    C:      
         (the B: option a trivia question)
     internet (connection / wire)
     God
         (noun or verb?)

my poems appear for a space on:
     air
     paper
     computers (disk & wire)
     audio tape
     tee shirts
     postcards
     stickers
     the wall of an Albuquerque tortilla factory (almost a poster)
     neurons

hunched in coach flying sober
a pilgrim to academic rites
I overhear money-men reverently talk of golf
saying how white balls roll so pure
over long expanses of cloistered grass
I see confidential addresses scribbled
on the back of business cards
traded in the unsaid hunt for the bloodless body

later at a foreign school
I light a few poems like bottle-rockets
hoping they don't fizzle & sputter
     (cuz somebody's footin' the bill
     for this folderol / ain't they Sport?)
in the unblinking literal stare
I finger unseen shapes behind my back
calculating transubstantiation
until
shapes fade away
& we ceremonially lament the loss again:
that being is not a noun

now e-poetry is the thing
sliding up & down a wire
as onanistic as ever
     (what does that mean?
     Word won't tell
     paste in your engine)

an instant trip in the new vacuum
now you know
no podium / no paper / no literal stare
where do they go?
what do they mean on the next machine?

reply to sender


E-poem: three

to: waltwhit@oversoul.org
from: donny@wtt.texas.cc.edu
subject: gps location

dear Walt Whitman:
this is an electric poem
you should like it
because we read that your body was electric
my English teacher made me write it in the computer lab
but you will hardly know who I am or what I mean
because there was no internet in the civil war

in this class it doesn't make sense
to look for you under our bootsoles
because we're skating the talkways for poetry
found your homepage / you look like Karl Marx
Allen Ginsberg is dead so you can relax
he is no longer stalking you in a supermarket
they found your notebook

everything is second or third hand now
the world just a click away 
& you can save anything with a right mouse click
& paste it on your homepage
the hugging & loving bed-fellow
will probably be blocked on the school computer
unless it's a civil right
we know our impalpable sustenance
is a probably a blizzard of zeros & ones
too many to count
so we have an electric machine do it

I wanted to tell you
the infinite separate houses
are getting wired
it is form / union / plan
packets obedient merrily following
     (the direction downloaded
     let's not get carried away
     & forget)
through gale or calm
now swift now slack
yet steadily careering
if the transmission rate is okay

our teacher says we should follow your advice:
you are also asking me questions & I hear you
I answer that I cannot answer
you must find out for yourself

electrical
I & this mystery here we stand
but where?
Alta Vista / Infoseek / Excite
which channel are you on?


E-poem: four

Donny
why is this a e-poem
'stead of the regular brand?

cuz it's got www in it
wide words make it electrical

how ya mean?
ain't got no cord
can't plug it in
     (like a lava lamp
     glumping vaseline colors
     floating up)

no but the computer's plugged in
plugged into the whole wide word
www.everywhere 
everybody's dot comming these days
TV is becoming a commercial
they wanna slide everybody over to the net
so they can buy direct
kind of squish 'em together
so ya gotta TV with a cursor

okay but just what exactly is a e-poem Donny?

it's a kind of a new wave telegraph deal
dots & blips & a lot of static on the phone
I don't really know
but somebody at the other end of the modem does
if ya shoot stuff out there in cyberspace
like off your Big Chief Tablet & into orbit
a bot rolls in & docks & takes a sniff
like the vacuum on Teletubbies
it's all code
there's a course down at the community college
but nobody can understand entirely
anyway it flies like a paper airplane into one of those little folders
then ya can find it back-ordered at Infoseek
& when it unfolds it will tell ya just what a e-poem is
if ya ask with the right spellin' & syntax
ya know syntax don't ya Lonny?

some


Donny Does E-mail is continued in the next issue of Amarillo Bay.

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