Raymond Soulard, Jr. Labyrinthine
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From Soulard’s Notebooks Assistant Editor: Kassandra Soulard Feedback................................................................................................................................1 From the Electrolounge Forums.......................................................................................5 Poetry by Martina Newberry..................................................................................................7 Provisional Truths [Travel Journal] by Nathan D. Horowitz...............................................................................................9 Poetry by Joe Ciccone...........................................................................................................17 Notes from New England [Commentary] by Raymond Soulard, Jr. ......................................................................................21 Poetry by Judih Haggai.........................................................................................................31 Notes on Science’s Progresses & Regresses by Jimmy Heffernan..................................................................................................35 Many Musics [Poetry] by Raymond Soulard, Jr. ......................................................................................37 Poetry by Ace Boggess..........................................................................................................67 Same Moon Shining [Memoir Excerpts] by Tamara Miles........................................................................................................71 Poetry by Tamara Miles........................................................................................................76 Poetry by Colin James...........................................................................................................81 Classic Poetry by Dylan Thomas......................................................................................................83 The Mother-in-Law Present [Travel Journal] by Charlie Beyer........................................................................................................87 Poetry by Gregory Kelly........................................................................................................93 Bags End Book #11: Algernon Beagle Wakes Up!, Part 1 [Fiction] by Algernon Beagle....................................................................................................97 Poetry by Tom Sheehan......................................................................................................117 The New Alchemy [Essay] by Alan Watts...........................................................................................................121 Labyrinthine [A New Fixtion] by Raymond Soulard, Jr. ...................................................................................131 Notes on Contributors...................................................................................................156 Front and back cover graphic artwork by Raymond Soulard, Jr. & Kassandra Soulard. Original Cenacle logo by Barbara Brannon. Interior graphic artwork by Raymond Soulard, Jr. & Kassandra Soulard, unless otherwise noted. Accompanying disk to print version contains: • Cenacles #47-105 • Burning Man Books #1-72 • Scriptor Press Sampler #1-18 • RaiBooks #1-8 • RS Mixes from “Within’s Within: Scenes from the Psychedelic Revolution”; & • Jellicle Literary Guild Highlights Series Disk contents downloadable at: http://www.scriptorpress.com/cenacle/supplementary_disk.zip. The Cenacle is published quarterly (with occasional special issues) by Scriptor Press New England, 2442 NW Market Street, #363, Seattle, Washington, 98107. It is kin organ to ElectroLounge website (http://www.scriptorpress.com), RaiBooks, Burning Man Books, Scriptor Press Sampler, The Jellicle Literary Guild, & “Within’s Within: Scenes from the Psychedelic Revolution w/Soulard,” broadcast online worldwide weekends on SpiritPlants Radio (http://www.spiritplantsradio.com). All rights of works published herein belong exclusively to the creator of the work. Email comments to: [email protected]. Thank ouy to KL, my dear friend & boss for the better part of six years. I wish for you & your family nothing but good health, long lives, & much happiness. Good luck on your new path, my friend. See ya in the spring! 2018 1 Feedback on Cenacle 104 | June 2018 From Ace Boggess: From Gregory Kelly: Martina Newberry’s poem “Her Face, on a Nathan D. Horowitz’s poem “The Feathered Sea” Prayer Card” left me mesmerized by its thought- is gruelling but soft, terrifying but gentle, filled provoking lines and bright language. What I with emotion but then emotionless. Horowitz expected to be dark and bleak instead took such brings us through the terrifyingly overwhelming an optimistic turn that I felt physically better scenario of a loved one passing. And he does it after reading it. Lines such as “her ideas / have over and over and over again. The thought of become wasps, stinging, / then sleeping in the death is numbed by the repetition, and ultimately cold dark, / then waking again to sting” were so the blow is softened upon the final approach to rich that the images and ideas of them caught me the “feathered sea.” off guard. And I especially loved her reference to the “Priests of Positive Thinking.” Gorgeous and I never like thinking of the end of life. It’s too close clever. to home. Too raw. Too real. And yet Horowitz has the boldness to brave the naked intimate * * * * * * thoughts of death, how it impacts him: “From my apartment window, I watch, / writing with the From Charlie Beyer: brisk pencil of solitude”; “he hammers my desk. / It smashes into crystals like a geode”; “my family Martina Newberry has some fine words in All“ in broken glass. / Unfazed, my father weaves Your Books.” This truth goes beyond the words, ambulance / and police sirens on a loom of which she says “means little. Almost nothing.” insomnia.” It’s OK to shut out bad writing, irrelevant words. Some people are just not worth talking to. And At first, the death is ancillary, it has no real impact. then in “Village Swallows from Austria (After But then as death repeats itself, we’re brought Josef Strauss),” I love the waltz of who is watching closer and closer until we are so close that we feel whom. And if someone is watching from space, our own feet plunging through the waters of the how silly it might all seem. “feathered sea.” Nathan D. Horowitz: Thanks for taking me back * * * * * * into the jungle, the mysterious green riot all around, the dark and opaque river coming from From Jimmy Heffernan: nowhere and going nowhere. Horowitz brings the sound of life to my ears with “rapid rhythm of Upon cozying up with Cenacle 104, I became crickets—entomo-techno trance, world beat of a delighted by Gregory Kelly’s spare but powerful beat world—and the sudden shivery silvery sing- and illustrative poetry. His words conjured in song . ” me images and sensations of a sublime nature, evoking a stream-of-consciousness type effect that Then the great simile: “cumulous clouds rest on was both subtle and vivid. When Kelly tells us he the horizon, like pawns in a chess game between wants “to be a being void of dark matter,” we are God and the Devil.” Awesome. Wonderful visions thrust down the proverbial rabbit-hole or, better of a distant reality that remain in my heart. yet, into a black hole where the laws of physics cease to exist. It is those laws of physics that Mr. * * * * * * Kelly transcends when he paints for us using his unique and wonderful linguistic palette. Bravo. * * * * * * ScriptorPress.com The Cenacle | 105 | October 2018 2 From Judih Haggai: Question: What was meant in Barton’s piece by spelling Godd with four letters in the quote Fall approaches and I’m rushed with emotions. attributed to Raymond Soulard, Jr.: “Recognize Resolve to re-commit. Nostalgia for loss of Godd = Art = I = Art = Godd = I”? summer. Sadness together with revving up energy. With these two forces, I approached Cenacle 104. Editor’s Note: The “Godd” spelling is a (somewhat) I loved Martina Newberry’s “2018.” “Hell! It’s subtle reference to the four-letter spelling of this name I (though Jewish was mother My .(ה ו ה י) Hebrew it. in been a bad year for everyone!” Love myself am more like a psychedelic pagan artist). Raymond Soulard Jr.’s review of past Cenacle years brought back two ku of mine written in 2011, * * * * * * including the line: “another chance to dance with the hummingbird.” Hmm, I thought. An antidote From Nathan D Horowitz: to my current melancholy—opening to joy. Judih’s haikus are Leia Friedman’s travel journal “Same Same puffs of air that somehow hold Shackles, But Different” spoke with a singular atmospheres of mind voice in a totally foreign environment. From the sense-filled sugarcane juice, dark green and In the latest obsessively eloquent installment of murky, to the smell of coconut oil under her arms “Sapphire Sins,” cat owner, boyfriend, and mining in the heat of the day, I’m with her, side by side. criminal Charlie Beyer fights the law and the law Her look at cultural incongruencies like shirking wins. He includes a studly photo of himself at the suntanning in a climate of bright sunshine, or end, fuzzy and buff, standing on a sun-dappled the Western emphasis on being trim in a land forest path. I am so glad I am not a girl because I of overflowing taste sensations readily available. would fall in love with him immediately. A very human insight into her