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   ooooo   ooooo  .oooooo.  oooooooooooo       HOE E'ZINE RELEASE #561
   `888'   `888' d8P'  `Y8b `888'     `8
    888     888 888      888 888            "An Explanation Of One Of My
    888ooooo888 888      888 888oooo8          More Inscrutable Works"
    888     888 888      888 888    "               
    888     888 `88b    d88' 888       o     by Ashtray Heart [4/11/99]
   o888o   o888o `Y8bood8P' o888ooooood8
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        I had chance to run into my esteemed editor for this publication,
 Mogel, earlier today, and I thought I'd share some of what was said as an
 introduction to what follows.

        "Terribly delighted to meet you again, Heart.  I must admit, though,
 old bean" -- for, dear reader, though you may never know it from his
 writing, this is actually the way he talks! -- "something has been puzzling
 me about your last work."

        "Oh?" I said, my interest piqued.

        "Well, the bulk of it is fabulous, absolutely top-notch--" I knew
 then that he was lying to me, but I didn't hold him against him -- that is
 an editor's job, after all -- "but this one piece.  Something dot TLX.  I
 honestly can't say I understand it in the slightest, my dear chap."

        "Really?" I responded, even more bemused.  "What is it in the work
 that eludes you?"

        "Dash it all, David--

        "Dave."

        "Dave, if I didn't know you so well, and if your work hadn't been so
 consistently good, I'd almost think you were trying to put one over on me."

        "Oh, no, heaven forfend."

        "Yes, exactly what I say, heaven forfend.  But I'll be blasted if I
 can get a line of sense out of that piece.  Do you think you could be so
 kind is to explain to me a bit about this piece?  What it all MEANS?"

        "I'd be ever so delighted to, dear Moggie." -- for this is how I refer
 to Mogel, although only when the two of us are alone, for the simple reason
 that people tend to assume that the two of us are homosexual lovers when I
 call him by that name in mixed company.  Oh, a sad, sad thing it is that
 this world has lost the capacity for puckish nicknames, yet inevitable as
 well, I suppose.

        But I digress.  I was meaning to explain, for dear Mogel and for
 you, the meaning of one of my latest, and I believe greatest, works, though
 one that I must admit does not lend itself easily to the comprehension of
 the unvarnished mind.  I speak, of course, of the avant-garde poem
 CUSTENU.TLX.  Looking over the work, I can see where it might be construed
 as unclear in places, and how a detractor might reasonably make the case
 that it is, in fact, untenable shash, bottom-of-the-barrel-scraping work.
 This raises again the ancient philosophical question:  Is artistic merit
 inherent within the work, or does it depend on the perspective from which
 we view it?  Without wishing to take a position on this debate, or
 invalidate the reader's initial perception of the work, I wish to present
 some perspectives on the work that I hope will help you to appreciate its
 purity, beauty, and thematic cohesiveness.

        The title of the piece, "CUSTENU.TLX", is in fact an ironic
 meta-statement concerning the propensity of poets to revert to oblique
 imagery in the absence of real inspiration.  Applied to the standard 8.3
 DOS filename format, it becomes updated for the technological age (and the
 technological origin of the work), drawing parallels between the savage
 obscurity of many poets' work and the savage obscurity of many computer
 conventions that exist to this day.

        The first line of the work, which reads, in its entirety:

        #LID 1033 1 225

        is perhaps the most puzzling.  This line is known as the "key" to
 the work; in this case a secondary key, as much if not most of the meaning
 can be gleaned with out it, but a key nonetheless.  Checksum purposes could
 perhaps apply.  It might be worth counting the number of characters and
 words in the poem to see if the characters come out to 1033 and the words
 to 225.  If this is so, it could be a clever mathematical perspective, or
 summation, of the whole work.  Alternately, one could use textual and
 numerological analysis on this line.  It is worth noting that the first two
 groups of characters add up to 8 and the last two digits are 25.  Could
 this be a reference to the closing figure on the first Soft Machine album,
 "Box 25/8 Lid"?  The natural cadences and syllabic contents could also be
 implied.  Finally, the numbers could have some highly personal meaning
 known only to the author.  Yet none of this is visible to the untrained
 eye. Why start a work, a work one intends to be a strong work, with such a
 line?  Well, if the work is about the nature of obscurity in poetry, why
 not open with a nod to the ultimate obscurity, a tacit acknowledgment that
 some truths are too deep, too personal, to ever be meaningfully conveyed?

        The rest of the poem covers more traditional ground.  Despite being
 developed in one-word fragments, most of the words have clear cultural
 meanings to most people.  It is here that the central theme of "CUSTENU.TLX"
 becomes evident: Beauty, history, progress are found in those elements
 which are ignored by "mainstream" or "polite" society.  Indeed, once one is
 past the prologue, the first thing to strike the reader is that a goodly
 percentage of the words constituting the work are variations on the
 infamous "F Word", perhaps the ultimate example of a taboo word (though
 not, these days, the MOST taboo).  This is my most scorching challenge to
 our world, to the limitations of our "official" language, to the language
 found in dictionaries and taught in schools.  A language that denies its
 own sexuality will find it seeping out in other ways, deformed by its own
 oppression, and eventually this dwarven libido shall become our masters.
 It is a list of political prisoners.

        What other political prisoners are on the roll call?  What else must
 be freed?  The answers are often surprising, and sometimes contradictory.
 But they all ring true, they are all parts of ourselves and our world,
 good or bad, that we must acknowledge.  We find the names of Soviet
 premiers, long forgotten.  We find writers (Dostoevsky), philosophers (Ayn
 Rand), onomatopaeiac musicians (Fripp), traces of long-suppressed religions
 (gnosis, excremeditation).  We find the detritus of modern consumer
 cultures: plastic foods (cheez), plastic toys (Barbie -- also, of course,
 the name of an infamous Nazi butcher) and of course Gomer Pyle.  There are
 Yiddish words (schmuck), magic words (shazam), fearsome words (klotz).
 There are technological words, words too new to be loved, to be accepted
 into the fleshy folds of our language (emacs), great gems of words,
 diamonds in the rough (opel), misspellings (pnik), telling us that even
 words that look wrong to many can still have their own virtue, their own
 rectitude, and in the end words that can never be except in the minds of a
 chosen few, words as the ultimate personal language, the joining of a few
 minds in their own mother tongue (jiggy).

        The poem almost certainly reaches its climax around the middle, with
 the juxtaposition of the two words:

        huggy
        icepick

        Love and Hate tattooed on Robert Mitchum's hands; cuddly violence.
 Our society as a whole distilled into two pungent words.

        The organization of the poem conveys one final truth to us.  If such
 things, such words, are to be taken up, are a challenge to be obeyed, then
 they must be integrated into the proper order of things.  CUSTENU.TLX is
 not a revolutionary poem, but instead an admonitory one.  Only by giving
 the words clear order, linking them in ways other than their initial bonds,
 can we hope to succeed in these ways.  These words must serve truly as
 words, and as such be alphabetized as words.  When the unspoken becomes
 spoken, true power shall be unleashed.

        Despite such initial shortcomings as an almost preciptous fall into
 its own obscurity, then, I believe "CUSTENU.TLX" stands far and away as my
 most beautifuly, evocative, haunting, sweeping, and just plain best work.
 I do not ask for mass adulation, or even acceptance; I only meekly hope
 that I can open the minds of one person to its vision of transcendent glory
 and call to action for the future.

        I thank you for your time.

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 [ (c) !LA HOE REVOLUCION PRESS! #561 - WRITTEN BY: ASHTRAY HEART - 4/11/99 ]
