MARTYR Poetry Compendium, Guest Edition #1
Thursday January 1st, 1998
Montreal, Quebec, Canada

MARTYR Poetry Productions 1994-1997

[ Intro ]

08.12.1997

	Greetings all! I suspect this may come to be a big surprise to many of you who read my last intro 
file in MARTYR Poetry Compendium, Volume Three and expected that pack to be the last ever release 
from MARTYR. In truth, it was the last ever release of poetry from the MARTYR cyberpoets. Do not 
despair, for we've moved on to the next plateau in our evolution: Martyr Phase 2 (or MP2, in brief).
	Anyway, with regards to this particular release... Over the years, I've received a lot of guest 
poems from friends of MARTYR and even from demosceners in or outside the group who wanted to be 
recognized and perhaps extend their creativity in a whole new direction. These poems have been stewing 
on my hard drive for a considerable amount of time and I thought I should give these guest poets due 
credit for their raw talent at writing poetry. I had fully intended to do a project such as this awhile back, 
but school and work got in the way so I neglected the project for some time. Then, I disbanded MARTYR 
when it became clear that we were no longer functioning as a cohesive body and there was already 
dissension among the ranks. Since then, there didn't seem to be much point in doing another MARTYR 
release considering the group was dead.
	So why not an MP2 release, then? Well, that's not an easy question to answer. For one thing, 
MP2 is not my group anymore. I have no more creative control or much of a say in group operations. I'm 
just a regular contributor and their webmaster (although I wonder how much longer I can keep it updated). 
MP2 is justice's cyberlit group and she has worked very hard to mold the group into her vision of what a 
cyberpoetry group should be like. MP2 is about members, not guest submissions, so that wouldn't have 
been a good idea. Also, all of the guest submissions were received by me before MARTYR broke up. 
These are my reasons so I hope I justified myself sufficiently.
	I suppose that MARTYR will never really ever be dead completely. Yet this is likely to be the last 
release under the name MARTYR. I still have a few leftovers from days gone by, but they didn't make the 
cut in terms of quality, at least not without some major grammatical surgery done beforehand (yeah, 
right). I kind of hope this is the last release because a lot of work goes into putting one of these packs 
together! I ought to know because I've done seven of them throughout MARTYR's history already. Even as 
I write this intro to the pack, there is still a lot of refinement work that desperately needs doing before the 
official release date.
		So... this intro file is not going to be my usual preamble about the history of MARTYR. 
There is no more history to tell of MARTYR considering it's been dead for half a year. What have I been 
doing since then? Writing more poetry, of course! Attending my first semester at university. Getting 
relatively no sleep. The usual. Still, this pack isn't about me or even MARTYR for that matter. It's about 
the contributors and because of this "guest" connotation, the pack is not even about MARTYR or myself.
	I hope you enjoy the special treat you're in store for in this compendium of a non-MARTYR 
variety. Let's face the music, people. Poetry is a dying art at the close of the 20th century despite the 
invention of the Internet which makes mass distribution of literature cheaper and easier than the printing 
press. In such a system, we get more quality poetry, but we also get a greater amount of freestyle writers 
passing themselves off as poets. I'm not one who is trivial about rules to writing poetry (as you know by 
now), however there is still that fine line between poetry and freestyle. Poetry has a certain flow to it, 
connecting its broken sentences together and giving the poem a body or structure. Freestyle has none of 
that for it is as close to randomness as writing can get. Let me assure you that none of that is to be found 
here. So enjoy the poetry and face the reality!

Blackbird / MP2
bb@cybersonic.net
http://www.axess.com/martyr/members/bb/

[ Greetings ]

My favorite tracked music groups: Five Musicians, Force Ten, NOISE, Kosmic, Future Crew, MARTYR
My favorite demo groups: Future Crew, Excused (or USED), Satire, Kosmic
My favorite poets: justice's grandfather, T.S. Eliot, William Shakespeare, Sappho, Amy Lowell, Robert & 
	Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Percy Shelley, Arthur Rimbaud, Lord Byron, Edgar Allen Poe
MARTYR members: justice, Bleeding Shadow, Luca, MorlocK, Smiles, Subliminal, MikPos, Maverick, 
	EViL SEED, Supahfly, mak0, Lord, Pergatory
All of the talented poets at #poetry on Internet IRC
Plazmanet Poetry Consortium (or just plain "poets on SOS BBS")
The women of my life who inspired my poetry: Laurie, Tukasie, Christy, Missy, justice
My family (relatives, parents, siblings et al.)
Mr. Haroun - my high school History teacher
My friends in cyberspace and beyond! :-)
Fans, critics, anyone who reads MARTYR poetry (thanks for the support)

P.S. "My apologies to any of the contributors for releasing their poems without due authorization. See 
below for the copyright status of your works. Once again, I apologize if I released a poem without 
adequate permission, but it has been assumed that I would be compiling a project like this for over a year. 
I have received tentative permission from all of you in the past so I assumed you wouldn't revoke it now. 
Please address any grievances to me should there be any and I will offer compensation. Thank you for 
your cooperation in this project/endeavor." - Blackbird '97

[ Credits ]

Ara, Depth, Frost Byter, Evil Lord (my brother), justice, MorlocK, Subliminal, and of course ME! :-)

[ Contributors ]

	Now this is where I get very specific and get into explaining some of the poetry below. If you'd 
prefer to skip this, go right ahead. This is not an analysis. I'm only telling a little about the poet, followed 
by a short description of the poems in question. My suggestion is to come back and read this after having 
read all the poems to get a greater understanding of the poet and what the poem meant. I can't give the best 
descriptions in the world as I am no scholar of the arts (just an undergraduate student) nor do I care to give 
you an academic narrative on each poem. I simply don't have the time or inclination. Without any further 
delay, here we go... :-) <whee!>

ARA : I haven't known Ara that long. To be honest, I still hardly know the guy that much. He is a friend of 
	Depth and Frost Byter's whom I invited over to my house in the summer of 1996 for a small 
	dinner gathering among some of my cyberpoetry and demoscene friends. Ara has been tracking 
	music in the demoscene for some time, at least as early as 1995 as far as my sources go (but I 
	could be wrong, so don't take my word for it). He composes for the demogroups Satire and 
	Kosmic and works for MLINK Internet, as well as attending a Bible college presently. Generally 
	an altogether pleasant and talkative guy in both #trax (Internet IRC) and in real life.

ara@mlink.net
http://www.mlink.net/~ara/

BLACKBIRD : Yes, it's time to talk about me. My favorite part :-) Well, I've been writing poetry on the 
	Internet for over three years and hope to continue writing more. I have contributed one poem 
	toward a demo that still hasn't been finished coding (hey Depth, when's the demo going to be 
	ready?!). I have an active interest in both scenes: demo or poetry related. I'm also the co-founder 
	of MARTYR and its oldest active member. Right now, I'm the webmaster and a contributing poet 
	for Martyr Phase 2 (or MP2). I live in Montreal, Quebec, Canada and attending McGill 
	University, studying History and English.

bb@cybersonic.net
http://www.axess.com/martyr/members/bb/

DEPTH : An old friend since early 1996 as far as my memory stretches. We met on a BBS he helped run 
	called Master of Shadows, once one of the few remaining official demoscene-oriented systems 
	online in Montreal. We became friends quite by accident, I suppose, but I'm pleased for the 
	encounter. A tremendous fan and supporter of MARTYR, he gave us space on Master of Shadows 
	BBS for MARTYR distribution and was constantly on hand for advice on how to successfully 
	organize a demogroup, which helped me out a lot (thanks, dude) :-) I, in turn, also embraced his 
	vision of a powerful North American demoscene to rival the European demoscene, especially in 
	the context of his demogroup USED (which eventually became Excused, more or less). His 
	poetry is primarily written in a masterful French dialect, proving my point that art has no barriers. 
	An all-around great guy who is exciting to converse with and be around. Depth is the coder for 
	Excused which is comprised of himself, plus Frost Byter [graphics] and sometimes featuring Ara 
	[music] and Fulgurator (or Fulg, in brief) [code].

EVIL LORD : This young man just happens to be the younger brother of Blackbird! :-) The poems 
	presented here as merely ramblings he wrote in his early teens to express his feelings. He is not 
	really a poet (but I can attest to the fact that he is the lord of absolute evil though, hehehehehe) 
	and is actually more of a musician who aspires someday to either go into journalism or write 
	prose novels. I have picked my favorite (which means the best ones, hehehehe) poems of his to 
	be in this release. Let's face it from reading his works: the guy is a psychopath :-) No, he's just 
	got too much time on his hands and too many morbid thoughts running through his mind. Nice 
	guy, but most con artists are, right? :-) Told you he's the Evil Lord :-)

FROST BYTER : A manic depressive of epic proportions, this guy is the most fun of all. FB rules and 
	don't ever deny it. You just can't hate the guy no matter what he says, good or bad. He has a great 
	capacity for emotion (especially that of love) and knows how to express himself even when 
	everything is crumbling around him. This has been proven time and time again in his artwork for 
	USED, dCb, and Excused over the years in demos and individual graphics competitions. He is 
	(without a doubt) the best graphist in all of Montreal. However all this talk about his personality 
	and drawing talent dwarfs his writing talent. He hides nothing from the reader and his imagery is 
	refreshing to peruse. I don't know much about what's happening in his life anymore, but he's been 
	a great pal and helped MARTYR out a lot in the past.

JUSTICE : The present administrator of Martyr Phase 2 and the former co-organizer of MARTYR after 
	MorlocK left the group. There's not much to say beyond the fact that I'm madly in love with this 
	girl! But enough of that, her main attribute is her talent at writing exquisite poetry, making her 
	MARTYR's most valuable asset. Her poems are as simple and direct as the author of my heart is. 
	At the moment, justice is finishing up her college studies to attend university next year 
	(hopefully, hehehe). She pretty much keeps to herself so all that anyone tends to hear about her is 
	second hand information. To summarize her: wonderful.

justice@colba.net

MORLOCK : A former member of MARTYR from its early days when it was evolving from a computer 
	poetry group into an Internet poetry group. This guy is the biggest Edgar Allen Poe fan I've ever 
	had the pleasure of knowing! Plus, he's a humorous guy to talk to and relatively easygoing. To top 
	it all off, he's a superb poet. His biggest flaw is that he majorly procrastinates! :-) This guy also 
	has valuable life experience considering his tender adolescent age, having traveled around the 
	world to live in many different countries during his childhood. He now lives in Windsor, Ontario, 
	Canada and is finishing off high school there before attending university.

SUBLIMINAL : The premiere musician of MARTYR from 1996-1997, Subliminal tries to expand his 
	talents in all directions. I still say that he should stick only to music, but this guy has an undying 
	creative spirit that won't be put down. He has submitted many poems to me since first joining, 
	but I have rejected the large mass of them because most were freestyle or were song lyrics. 
	Finally, I received something that I liked (and that justice agreed on) so in his poem went! :-) A 
	fun guy to talk to and spend many a late night conversing with on #trax (Internet IRC). You can 
	find him there most evenings and right now he's working on a techno music CD with C_Ray_C as 
	well as producing an independent music tape by himself. He is also the man behind many failed 
	unfounded record labels, but he may have something with his latest undertaking, Subliminal 
	Studios.

sub@plazma.net
http://www.plazma.net/subliminal/

[ Descriptions ]

BB-SOS0.TXT		"The Solitudes of Spring" (1994)

	This is the original, unmodified version of my debut poem, "The Solitudes of Spring", exactly as 
it appeared on pen and paper in its first draft. justice holds the only remaining copy of the original 1994 
draft. I copied my original version in ASCII format for all to see my first attempt at poetry. It could be 
considered a guest submission because it was written before I even considered myself a poet or MARTYR 
was even a figment of my imagination. Besides, it shows how raw my writing was before I corrupted my 
writing with complicated vocabulary. I wrote this poem around midnight on July 1st, 1994 while my 
grandmother was visiting at my parent's home in Montreal, Quebec, Canada and I couldn't sleep. For some 
reason, words were floating in my head and I just needed to write them down. I didn't know why so I did it. 
These were words that formed from nothing out of my head. In retrospect, they seem to be manifestations 
of the depression I had been feeling all summer long after being rejected by a girl I really had strong 
feelings for. I wasn't satisfied with just the words so I made sentences with each of the words and then put 
the sentences together and separated ideas into paragraphs. Voila! One Blackbird poem :-) My 
grandmother was the first to read this poem on teen loneliness and depression on our morning walk 
around the proverbial neighborhood block the next day and she loved it. I kept the poem secret for a long 
time as I worked toward perfecting both the poem and my talent. The "refined" version was released in 
Blackbird Poetry Pack #1, but this is the original draft left untouched.

M96COMPO.TXT	"MARTYR 1996 Poetry Compo" (1996)

	The first (and only, I think) co-op poem by four people. Myself, justice, MorlocK, and Ara put 
together this little ditty poem. It basically chronicles how salvation from depression and sin can occur 
from love of the other and belief in religious faith. This poem was written on that summer night when my 
parents were away on vacation, so justice and I hosted a couple of my friends from the demoscene and 
cyberpoetry for dinner and conversation. While Depth was busy playing around with my computer, writing 
a poem of his own and coding in Microsoft DEBUG (yuck!), the four poets of this work were using my 
family's computer to type this piece up. I think it worked out well, but you be the judge. I personally don't 
advocate writing co-op poems unless all the poets concerned use approximately the same style, but this 
compilation seemed to work well. There's also a hidden poem in there too. Try reading it without Ara's 
sections and draw what conclusions you may.

SB-OSIDE.TXT		"other side" (1997)

	This is Subliminal's piece and it covers the topic of loving someone without being noticed by the 
other. At least, that's what I got out of it from reading the poem literally. I could be wrong so don't take 
my word for it necessarily. Many of Subliminal's poems are like this, but this one takes less of a song 
writing style and is more generic poetry than anything else. I personally could related because it reminded 
me of the events leading to the depression which finally led me to write "The Solitudes of Spring" so it is 
certainly appropriate to put this poem of affection unreturned in this pack.

FB-POEM2.TXT		"untitled" (1996)

	This is one of those pessimistic poems to make your skin crawl with its moody language and 
distinct imagery of hopelessness. Suicidal thoughts weren't far from my mind after reading this poem, 
that's for sure and I can't imagine they were far from the poet's mind either <yikes!>. As the preamble to 
the poem warns, Frost Byter does not consider himself a poet but I felt this (his only submission to me 
ever) was too good to pass up releasing for all to see. This is the kind of nightmare world a lot of us live in 
day after day, the same old grind. There is little incentive to motivate our progression, if you could call 
living that. One of the most interesting aspects to this work is how it gives us an image of what happens to 
a person when he/she is bereft of the one thing we all take for granted in our daily lives: love.

EL-TIRED.TXT		"The Tired One" (1996)

	Interestingly enough, Evil Lord has told me that this was supposed to be a poem about none other 
than me! Scary thought, eh? :-) Hehehehehehe.... ah, well. He was probably referring to how late I sleep in 
on weekends and during the summer months when I'm off from school. He is also probably echoing the 
view of my parents that because I didn't get a job that summer and decided to sleep and conserve my 
energies, I was wasting my life away. Maybe I was, but to justify myself I did go and look for employment. 
There was none to be found so after a few weeks, I gave up and decided to sleep so as to conserve my 
energy for the difficult semester of college I had ahead of me. I am not someone to give in to sleep that 
easily, but after months on sleep deprivation, it was time to make up for lost time. Take it as you will, it is 
a marvelous jewel in Evil Lord's library of poetry. Humorous at the very least :-)

EL-DAY.TXT		"Day and Night" (1996)

	This is Evil Lord's attempt at writing a sophisticated poem about the blurred line between life and 
death cycles. I think he did a good job considering the difficult undertaking he was attempting here. Even I 
wouldn't have tried to write about this. Despite the lack of grammar and vocabulary experience, it is nicely 
done. As is always the case with Evil Lord poetry, it leaves the reader left with a question at the end. Is 
Evil Lord justified in making the claims he does at the poem's end? You decide. I think he is to a degree, 
but I won't go into semantics here. Suffice it to say, we all go through teen angst and Evil Lord was no 
different in that regard. At the time of his prolific outburst, he was feeling confined by our parents and 
probably pondered the nature of life and death from the recess of his bedroom. This is the result 
undoubtedly.

DEPTH1.TXT		"untitled" (1996)

	This poem implies exactly the origin of Depth's alias. It is deep. Funny that it was written while 
Depth was at a bar one evening and put this piece together, very likely under the influence of alcohol. He 
writes about how little there is to be thankful for considering it is a cold winter that awaits outdoors and 
the current political situation in Quebec appears grim. This is his only English poetry contribution and it 
was well structured, particularly along rhyme scheme. His choice of words was splendid, too. I'm sure I'm 
not doing this poem or any of Depth's poems adequate credit because his writing is highly intelligent and 
my interpretation is likely wrong. Good luck with your views.

DEPTH2.TXT		"Aurores, Tome II" (1996)

	One of Depth's best poems to date. I can't do much commentary as this poem's use of the French 
language far supersedes my abilities at French. To me, it seems to be a discourse on how one changes as 
one ages throughout the seasons as they pass and fade. I really don't know, but I hope francophone poets 
and readers can appreciate the grandeur of this writing as I have been in awe of it since my first reading of 
it.

DEPTH3.TXT		"untitled" (1996)

	I really can't say what this one means for it is beyond me (and that's hard for me to admit!), but I 
have chosen to release it nonetheless because from the first time I gazed up it, I fell in love with the sheer 
beauty of the words. French is such a romantic language because the structure and magnificence of its 
words roll off the tongue so gracefully. I think all of Depth's poems shouldn't just be read, but spoken.

[EOF]

Copyright [c] MARTYR Members 1994-1997. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
All works written above are exclusively the property of their original authors

