Re: ACCESS

Dateline: 5/6/97

Lobbying for access at a Web site is like asking who wants seconds at communion.

But we’ve got to start everywhere.

Expanding the possibilities of the Web without attending to the base of who has access is like trying to launch a rocket straight from the brain without a launching pad.

Computers are schools and libraries. Schools should give students a computer. And libraries should allow you to take out a computer, or a program.

You can download books on the Net, you can download programs that allow you to download books. But how can you download a computer? And if you have no computer, you have no -- here is that word again -- access.

OK, you’ve found us. All we are is a poetry Web site with the idea that poetry can change the world, ok?

Everything is poetry if you can see it you can say it
There I said it no one stopped me can you hear it
In the silence is the echo
In the echo is another breathing blazing moment before it’s history
Damn blustery blistery history! Conversate, don’t hesitate!
These words that say it are the keys to the locks that set you free
Could you say that back to me then back to you

TOTAL ACCESS: NET or Nyet?
Why Poetry is the Key to Democratizing Democracy

There’s no doubt that poetry has hammered a new home for itself on the hammer-anvil-stirrup of the collective inner Inner ear. How? So glad you asked. By asking, that’s how! Poetry is that which asks. The answer, well, that’s something else (prose? politics?). The indeterminability of existence, the multiplicity of meaning, the infusion of life with absolute individuality, the Surprise of Your Life, that’s the clear your throat and catch your breath and spit it out of POETRY.

You’ve found us. We’ve grabbed you in our net of work, of words, of wholes. . .
We are gathered here together
Birds of a single feather quill still till seeing
Writing’s exciting, reading’s bleeding, and suddenly we’re harmony agreeing
That our democracy is a'rotting from the outside in
There’s too much surface! So, begin
To plumb the under, the beaut’ous purpling "under plum"!
What’re we covering up? What’s that beneath your thumb?
The scales of justice blindly swinging
Up’s damn down insides are singing
You got no more voice than that frog croak’s boast
We gotta boost the meaning, pole-vault prejudicial spleening,
Slam the trapdoor on the beast of lies, crunch rhetorical surmise

We’ve gotta get carried away! If we plan to carry the day
And where are we taking it?
Night sounds right and round the cycle
Grab the pa system’s mike till
The guttural reference that you expound becomes the internetic sound

But if you’ve not got real audio
You oughta gotta try the body-o
Of textio, that’s nextio to Goddio

WE SUPPORT HELL WE DEMAND UNIVERSAL ACCESS TO THE INTERNET! It’s the job of the poet to crack open the con job of capitalism and let sweet Po out the Universal Revolving Door (NB: "door" rhymes w/ "po" which stands for "poetry" uh huh!) period.

Please help by writing poems constantly, jammin' the NYTimes print run with your poem "I Demand Equal Access to All to the Great Poem that Is the Internet" and send us your fave URL’s. . . and meanwhile. . .

THERE IS NO MEANWHILE!

All we are is a poetry Web site with the idea that poetry can change the world, ok?

--Bob Holman

Previous Features