b. 1942

industrial organic chemist in WV since 1968

Got into networking in 1990 or 1991 thru Factsheet Five which led me to 'DaDa' Bill Paulauskas' DreamWorld BBS [an experimental writing project] and re-kindled an interest in recreational, computer text 'bending'. Published TRANSMOG since October 1991. First issues exclusively my computational word 'bending'. Then met John Bennett, Jake Berry and other Otherstream poets in the mail and started including their work in TRANSMOG. Recent issues almost all others textual or graphic Otherness. Sample issue from far@medinah.atc.ucarb.com for smailaddr + postage. Surreal, fantastic, dAdA, Otherness... *Not much into ordinary reality in aRT*. Been sending Ficus strangulensis' poetry, concept pieces, visual 'poetry', whatever's in the spew to many small press-ers. Some was published.

TRANSMOG's aim is networking in the brackish, littoral twixt here'n Other and to add to it, throw out some marker buoys. I now see this network as a faint, evolving, parallel trace in our progression to transformation in 2012 [all Godz chillun / voices in the choir] when we may all realize our dream of experiencing the Universe of spirit and matter. The notion of the End of History (or Technological Singularity) in 2012 [AND the end of the Mayan calendar], taken as an hypothesis, sees different light on things like Douglas Adams' "Restaurant at the End of the Universe" or his mice as the projection into 3-space of pan-dimensional beings using Earth as a question answering tool. Then too, the Firesign Theatre back in the 70's were talking VR as THE way of everyday life alternating with scenes of what would be thought excessive regimentation, war and material poverty. Very little creativity or spirit except for Uh-Clem and that's maybe all that can 'save' us.

I get chid for not being serious but read Don Webb's "The Fictive Arcanum" in the next TRANSMOG for insight into communication of material in a medium or genre with which it seems at odds. Because it *can't* be exposed.

Shamans know that all is language / all is words / power words ... feel the magic in this keyboard, I say "EXCEL" and that daemon lifes! What clearer wakeup call than man making magic real everyday.. so excel dosen't seem very ur... a technology is magic if insufficiently understood and we think we understand excel so... coming back from the Other side [in my DREAMS! to not quote some comedy type] if we can 'understand' it, it becomes no longer magic, but to our former selves, we have become magicians.

Ficus strangulensis strangulensis Research Labs Rt 6 Box 138 Charleston, WV 23311 far@medinah.atc.ucarb.com |Home of TRANSMOG (a dAdA, surreal, OtherStream 'zine)

_Invocation_

Oh, VOID,

by thine ovoid thighs' shine

by thy shins two

too by thy toes,

By KUPFERBERG

and ATOM ANT,

By all that's wholly discrepant,

bless this, our holey endeavour!

Amen.

Do we learn too old schmardt?

but we are animals
naturally competitive.

Could non-competition
lead to rusting
our saw teeth?

If one climbs the food chain
and loses all threats to existence,
does he whither?

Cooperation may also be
an evolutionary strategy

(perhaps of our genes
to increase their concentration
in the gene pool of humans
and of animal
and of plant existence
and are we not the constructs
used by our genes
used by Those at galactic center
to learn of the Universe
and bring back a recording in 2012?)

if it is 'good' [i.e.-
makes sense,
works,
is efficient]

e.g.- a 'gene' for sacrificing one's self
to let live two or more
fertile phenotypes
carrying that same 'gene'

but we constantly,

and in best Human action typically,

diverge,
converge,
merge,
emerge

as new under the Son
but not new under the Sun

competition
as black youths dissing each other
to harden each other
to the dissing they will get
in publicity
by non-black and black alike.

Imagine,

(SF writers before us have,)

that we attain a pinnacle
of development

hothousing our growth

we shield ourselves
from discomforts

of everyday
every week
every year
ev e r y LIFE

luxuriate
in 'co-operation'

no goal
but minimizing 'work'

minimizing contact
with the Universe

thus we do not fulfill
the potential
in our genes.

Cummeth the visigoth
vandal
hun
PanchoVilla
Conan
to reap what is still goodly
in his God-given sight

by sight shall ye be known to the reppers
who will replicate that which is God
and dis guardedly nonrep rest

for the bit bucket. [Hell?]

And whither wither we?
Blame it on the Quassa Nova?
Don't take individual responsibility!
Let Congress do it! [to us]

If we don't grab this li'l, local, mutha,
it's gonna fall over.

The multiple stages,

as resolved into words
by R.A. Wilson
in "Illuminatus"

are real.

If 2012 (exact date/time?)
is the culmination.

If Rebus Ka-Neebus gets the bus

If we aren't ready ...
will there be another bus?

Is THAT rapture?

What is tribulation
twixt now and then?

Is 'God' standing
with all the soul-bits of self
of herhimself
Here and There Now?

Seeing all time
and this possible leap of evolution

Will we Leap
only by co-operative competition?

What does the historic figure Jesus,
son of God-and-(hu)Man signify?

Is the wholly ghostly
undermined
mind
sub-conscious
ratial
racial memory mythos

a communication link

with pre-carnate being
not past or future
but both from here
and all one
from there

can we remember?

Signed,

Ficus (of a Friday-coffee-induced-morning 14 August 1992 at 6:47 AM)

with the wish
that those who read(hear)
will answer

and

those who know
will tell

this incarnation

so he can bring
to gether
more
his upper and lower
as one in God.

"As it all ends..."

As it all ends, it won't be some courageous band of right-thinkers who save us from the coming collapse. It will be the seflishext among the g reedy rulers who realize that without an underclass to labor, they will have no riches. For what are true riches? The Bible would tell us the love of our neighbors, the bounty of the earth, the kingdom of Heaven to follow for the righteous (who just happen to be those who kow tow to the priest and fill the plate and deny some of those earthly pleasures labelled EVIL by said priest). Since talk is cheap and aforesaid priests talk only, they are getting paid WELL as a multiplier of their output. The fact that said talk is centuries old proves nothing. Maybe only that there is a deep human longing and that selfishest have channelled it.

Hell, now our neighbors have AIDS and the earth is a pisspot for the g reedy rich to rape the last drip of god from. The only true riches are the rape of our neighbor. Rape in the broadest sense meaning usurpation of the will of another. Talk about love of money as the root of all evil. Its really love of control.

AS IN: "Build dat pyramid to the god of MY choice ye swabs!" "Die, veriest varlet, for ye hast displeased me! [everyone watching? I love this! See how they quake wondering who's next!)

So ... if we could stop bringing up baby raping, child abusing, insecure, control freaks ... if ... i ... f ...

WANNA BET? next after a collapse, those most able to 'organize' to their own ends will STILL be in control. A parrot flew away. Can it do better behind the scenes? The seines that drag your normal soul from the waters that could be the heavenly on earthy exist ants. Worker be worker bee be worker till ya drop!

What is at the base of this? Is it the natural Natural NATURAL competitive drive ready in tooth and claw to flense ye from your body or eat your soul if it kow toweth not? For what are we to the controller? Meat machines.

Do we have to stop watching TV, listening to AM radio, watching movies, headphoning rock, reading trash novels to clean the control scum from our heads? Home schooling? Without the UnKle influence (any country's unKle). SLACK! is what we all need. Why rape the earth for resources so we can all live beyond its means so we don't feel so bad when a few live like the veriest rulers ever of the cosmos fever fuelling our greed like little clones of theirs so we won't notice that wethey are killing our Mother Earth once only last?

As I drifted I lay and uncovered dictionary dream..."Slink".. the word "slink" slipped into my mind. Mought it be that a sliver of lime and a glass of slivovitz would cure this slobbering for a sloe-eyed beauty? I crave... I look and up a slope, sloppily wet from exertion, is a slot. I observe as it slothfully slouches, a la Didion, my way.. i look up again and inhabit the entire water volume of a slough.. a clock-tick and i realize a sloven-hoofed animal nibbles my waterline, slowly imbibes my crystal essence. My tentacular tributaries move slow and sludgy... as i evolve toward end-of-training, slug-shaped tiny ones crawl upon my marge, trailing unique signatures, tropistic only. A flash of searing light and I'm slugging in the ring again, ageing fast toward burnout... the light fades.. old me is sluiced away before the water can evaporate.. for moments or millennia, i slumber... to abide speaching slurred, the animal's hooves now slurry mud in my self, I try to rise getting only slush.. caught it seems in this sly backwater as the animal's lips smack, her eyes light, my smallness increases. Parts of me feel as a small ale in its small intestine... i realize someone makes small minded small talk trying to pass it off as creating a reality... a smarty pants... i smash Him and asudden begin drifting begin talking a smattering of 'creek' thinking like a river i Roll along obscured by smaze, i catch a boat and smear it on a rock uttering the smear word 'Aaaaahhhhhhh' i toil long tubing toward the smell of frying onions feeling a smelt i wonder often if oceanward going and smile another salt fish and i smirk... i am to smite these tight saltless shores one last time having been forged in The smithy and found right i carry in me condensed smog to be purified of smoke and sly smiles carried from before to the still-pot of Gaia for desmids and whale sharks to retourn to sediments and to a subduction zone and sometime later... smoky quartz... a sharp crystal smolders and scratches my eye

i *shatter* awake, the player's diamond needle scratches the center surface of "Mysterious Mountain". I sweat. Mahn! Tha' musta been Some dream. What's for supper?

Cold 'n' dark and I gotta find a place to sleep before i see jake tomorrow.. a cave outta the wet? Ow! Damned Honeylocust to Hell! Sheeei.. a cave.... empty... one knife ready, other back in cave, do some winks...

I look and see her glowing before i see her grey mantle by starlight. A hint of bulbous beads beneath dark sockets.. motioning, she beckons and i attend, drifting over teeth floating in human soup... ants and dragonflies swarm from her tiny coffin. We float over an indistinct scape, yet clearly it exceeds today's memories... my eyes deepen like faucets.. salty milk pearls her nipples... a suspicion of feathers along my spine like leaves thrown against a believer and i stretch and Claw air leaving her shadow at moonrise... looking for... transfiguration..? for ..?.. A distant Tree, upper branches moonlit, roots deeper than fossils. Nearer i see its bark is entire craved symbols and as i read my leaves move faintly... wind stirs and i sigh back.. recalling ancient red-leaved feeding rites... i lift my arm toward...

the wood sighs and i wake in my hole... unmoving, not breathing I see/hear/smell no other... slowly exhaled steam drifts east in cold light. Not safe here. I retrieve my claw and move out. Today, we will Sing!

* (aka: "While printing _A Digital Homage to Jake Berry's 'The Tongue Bearer's Daughter_'")

The Morituri Bombers' picnic announcement at 4:00 AM

then 50 obscene christmas cards

[with santa giving the finger]

and a mass mailing to St. Jude,

plus a pile of obscene cartoons

[with crudely drawn human external genitalia]

[on rabbits]

and finally thirteen identical love letters to Babs

...no writer's cramp

but no one makes a toner that marks a wet finger

and every night i spit for an hour

Forrest Richey