Noisy Outlaws, Unfriendly Blobs, and Some Other Things That Aren’t as Scary, Maybe, Depending on How You Feel About Lost Lands, Stray Cellphones, Creatures from the Sky, Parents Who Disappear in Peru, a Man Named Lars Farf, and One Other Story We Couldn’t Quite Finish, So Maybe You Could Help Us Out
Most of the remixes we’ve made for other people over the years except for the one for Einstürzende Neubauten because we lost it and a few we didn’t think sounded good enough or just didn’t fit in length-wise, but including some that are hard to find because either people forgot about them or simply because they haven’t been released yet, a few we really love, one we think is just ok, some we did for free, some we did for money, some for ourselves without permission and some for friends as swaps but never on time and always at our studio in Ghent. · The Personal History, Adventures, Experience, and Observation of David Copperfield, the Younger
· The Chronicle History of King Henry the Fift with His Battell Fought at Agincourt in France
· Play the Piano Drunk Like a Percussion Instrument Until the Fingers Begin to Bleed a Bit
· Squirrel and G-Man Twenty Four Hour Party People Plastic Face Carnt Smile (White Out)
· The Lemon Grove Kids Meet the Green Grasshopper and the Vampire Lady from Outer Space
· Revelations of a Sex Maniac to the Head of the Criminal Investigation Division
· Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan
· The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies!!?
· He Has Left Us Alone But Shafts of Light Sometimes Grace the Corners of Our Rooms
· Those Who Tell the Truth Shall Die, Those Who Tell the Truth Shall Live Forever
· The Difference Between Houses and Homes (Lost Songs and Loose Ends 1995-2001)
· A Collection Of Songs Representing An Enthusiasm For Recording…By Amateurs
· Who Is Harry Kellerman and Why Is He Saying Those Terrible Things About Me?
· The Blue Collar Worker and the Hairdresser in a Whirl of Sex and Politics
· Chance Meeting on a Dissecting Table of a Sewing Machine and an Umbrella
· Don’t Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood
· Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mama’s Hung You in the Closet and I’m Feeling So Sad
· Can Hieronymus Merkin Ever Forget Mercy Humppe and Find True Happiness?
· The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr. West in the Land of the Bolsheviks
· Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex But Were Afraid to Ask
· Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
· After the Wreck, I Picked Myself Up, Spread My Wings, and Flew Away
· A Joke of Destiny, Lying in Wait Around the Corner Like a Bandit
· Lifted, or The Story Is in the Soil, Keep Your Ear to the Ground
· Summer Night, with Greek Profile, Almond Eyes and Scent of Basil
· The Bride Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors, Even (The Large Glass)
· What Are Those Strange Drops of Blood Doing On Jennifer’s Body?
· You’ve Got to Walk It Like You Talk It or You’ll Lose That Beat
· Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull’s History Lesson
· Étant donnés (Given: 1 The Waterfall, 2. The Illuminating Gas)
· The End of the World in Our Usual Bed in a Night Full of Rain
· This Is a Long Drive for Someone with Nothing to Think About
· How to Eat Your Watermelon in White Company (and Enjoy It)
· The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill But Came Down a Mountain
· Attack of the Flesh Devouring Space Worms From Outer Space
· Swept Away by an Unusual Destiny in the Blue Sea of August
· The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension
· The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
· The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds
· The Return of the Tall Blond Man with One Black Shoe
· From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs Basil E. Frankweiler
· She Does Not Drink, Smoke or Flirt But… She Talks
· The Perils of Gwendoline in the Land of the Yik Yak
· Abbott and Costello Meet the Killer, Boris Karloff
· Crystal or Ash, Fire or Wind, as Long as It’s Love
· Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris
· The Incredibly True Adventure of Two Girls in Love
· Your Vice Is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key
· How to Make Love to a Negro Without Getting Tired
· The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
· Too Much Romance… It’s Time for Stuffed Peppers
· How a Strange Hero Thrice Teased an Unruly Girl
· Terror of Prehistoric Bloody Monster From Space
· The Gendarme and the Creatures from Outer Space
· The Three Stooges Go Around the World in a Daze
· To Wong Foo Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar
· Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven
· Revenge of the Teenage Vixens from Outer Space
· The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven
· For Those Whom God Has Blessed With Fingers
· A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again
· Born into Trouble as the Sparks Fly Upward
· Goodbye Enemy Airship the Landlord Is Dead
· The Lady in the Car with Glasses and a Gun
· What We Talk About When We Talk About Love
· A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
· If Footmen Tire You, What Will Horses Do?
· The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
· Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me
· Dr. Wei in the Scripture with No Words
· It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time
· God Was in the West, Too, at One Time
· Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla
· I Married a Monster from Outer Space
· KISS Meets the Phantom of the Park
· Vivadixiesubmarinetransmissionplot
· Biker Babes from Beyond the Grave
· No One Belongs Here More Than You
· Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?
I woke up in the glum, glop of the new morning, only to find myself crucified above the bed. The bed-sheets crumbling below me looked like waterless waves.She’d play games like that; her domineer was stealth, sex, love; manipulate my body, my mind, and I’d find myself in a new way, and a new place; completely unaware of what had happened, until I was allowed, until I woke, or she woke me; and sometimes not at all for weeks, or months or hours or days.
My back bled from her insistent flogging: that sound like paper tearing, like bulbs cracking, the way she angled the bedroom light with concave shades to my back, caused the rivers of blood to glow a fluorescent, decadent gashing. A river of blood, an ocean.
Late in the night she let me descend from the nailed planks of wood. I fell into a brief sleep, a few hours later I woke in a pile of sweat.
Months passed.
Washed my face. Brushed my teeth. Shaved my face with a razor. My beard she no longer desired, nor was I keen on delighting her with my appearance any longer.
Each operation took time: carefully washing my face, brushing my teeth, shaving my face.
Best I could tell, I was the only person awake in the apartment.
The sun cast my shadow, a silky flow with its shine from the plated window. The hallway was dark. I walked from the bathroom to the kitchen.
I tied my tie, then sat down at the wooden table to have a simple meal: a wholewheat muffin, bacon and organic orange juice.
About to leave through the front door, framed a tall rectangle, I heard the rustling of what was coming.
Claire, my wife, shouting from the bedroom, I want a divorce, Malcolm. I won’t be here when you get back. Claire, my wife, only for a brief moment more.
I circle 5 completely satisfied with language in it I do everything I want I can marry the strangers myself a disaster moving toward me must first fill out the forms then I will cry for nine days I will make two extra copies friends there are no limits to my understanding I understand my head off miss they say to me miss but I can’t hear a thing over the noise of breaking pencils and outlines and waves love or hate the ocean you still drown like other sailors getting wet getting wet getting wet
A Hindu family, the Mahajans, moved into the space between my eyebrows. The space wasn’t for rent, had never been, but I didn’t have the heart to evict them.People mistook the eyebrow – Mahajans – eyebrow for eyebrow – eyebrow – eyebrow, in other words, a unibrow. I told them it wasn’t a unibrow, just the Mahajans, setting the table for dinner.
In their second month of occupancy, the Mahajans asked for an extension on the rent. Seriously? I said. You’ve got to meet me halfway here. The space wasn’t even for rent in the first place. They got all defensive, as if I’d affronted them personally. They said my eyes gave them funny looks, weren’t very “neighborly”. I believed this to be ridiculous, a protective reflex. My eyes had been nothing but good neighbors.
The dandruff in the driveway needs plowing, they said. I laughed and asked them who they thought I was, the dandruff plow guy? Did I look like a plow guy? Mr. Mahajan said he couldn’t back his car out. You can call somebody, I said, but I’m not paying.
The Mahajans moved to the side of my nose in search of – in their own words – a more accommodating environment. Also, Mrs. Mahajan liked the view.
They built their home from hair (plucked from my left eyebrow) and flakes of sun-baked skin (peeled from the end of my nose). Mr. Mahajan grew a beard. Mrs. Mahajan learned to churn her own butter. At dawn, Mr. Mahajan climbed to the bridge of my nose and played “Sweet Caroline” on his sitar. I told him he’d need to stop that, and he took to practicing in his living room.
People asked about the mole on the side of my nose. I told them it wasn’t a mole, just the Mahajans, reading in bed.
I raised the rent and bought a tandem bike. So if a pretty woman ever asked if I owned a tandem bike and if I wanted to go tandem riding with her, I could answer, Yes, I have a tandem bike and I would love to go tandem riding with you.
I felt a little guilty about raising the rent, but Mr. Mahajan had a steady job inspecting for lice in the Northern Epidermis. Plus, I wanted a new coat. During my morning shower, I could feel him splashing around up there in his rubber waders, wearing a nice coat too I bet. The coat I owned had a hole in it. And the first rule of management is to dress better than your tenants, right?
They laid a plaid blanket over my left temple and had a picnic. After eating, they took a hike through my sideburn, stopping occasionally to take in the scenery.
They were a pain in my side, but they seemed happy. I liked watching them in the evenings: hand-knit sweaters, hot chocolate by the fireplace. Laughing, touching. They hooked arms when they drank, like magazine ads for Aspen timeshares. I didn’t think real people actually drank that way. Apparently they do. Sometimes I thought I could go on watching them forever, in their tiny house, by their tiny fireplace, with their tiny mugs and coasters. But then I’d find something else to do.
I bought a new hat. An authentic bowler, wool with satin lining, stitched by the Chinese. Mr. Mahajan complained about the rim, said it blocked out the light in the mornings while he was doing his crossword. He liked doing the crossword to natural light. He asked if I would tilt the bowler up, or else take it off altogether. I told him to sit tight and dug through my hat closet until I found an old sombrero.
They thought about getting a dog. No dogs, I said. What if it’s just a small dog, they asked. No dogs, I said, and sniffled, to show them I meant business.
When the weather grew warmer I buzzed my head. A poor quarter forced Scalp Wildlife Management to make major budget cuts. Mr. Mahajan was let go.
The coat I purchased claimed to be made from the fur of one hundred stoats, but I had my doubts. It would have been just as easy to toss in a few squirrels or rats in the mix and pass it off as pure ermine.
At night, Mr. Mahajan snuck out of bed, hid in my right nostril and either cried or played these heartbreaking tunes on his sitar, or both. I could feel the haunting vibrato sizzle up nasal cavity like soda fizz.
While I watched Mrs. Mahajan perform her jazzercise workouts through the bedroom window (thrusting in, thrusting out, thrusting in, thrusting out), I started to sweat and flooded the house. Mr. Mahajan was at a job interview along my mandible with National Plaque Defense at the time. Ruined was the finished basement, the hardwood floors on the first level, Mr. Mahajan’s collection of classic vinyl, and most of their antique furniture.
Mr. Mahajan didn’t get the job and they were forced to seek out less expensive housing. I asked if they had insurance. They didn’t. They asked after their deposit. I said I couldn’t rightfully give it to them without sixty days notice. But the space wasn’t even for rent, Mr. Mahajan said. Well you wrecked my basement, I said. You wrecked your own basement, he said, his voice rising. I shrugged. Let it go, Mrs. Mahajan said, and pulled her husband by the arm.
The last time I saw them I was combing my hair. They were passing through the helix of my right ear, waxed leather bags under theirs arms, eyes melancholy and gray: a solemn plea to the road ahead.
I found a wicker basket.Shaped like an egg.
I bet you could fit in it.
I could carry you.
I could take you anywhere.
You could tell me stories.
I could tell you the same stories.
I could spray it with perfume.
After you died. I could still walk
down the street with my basket.
I could meet new people.
I could tell new people stories.
Old stories that you loved.
I could even make up new stories
to tell new people. Stories that you
would have loved. Stories that would
have made you say I love it when
you make up new stories. Stories
that would have made you say OH
but how I do miss the old ones.
Later that evening in an izakaya in Ginza over beer and yakitori, Mrs. Matsuda, slightly drunk, admitted to Mrs. Nakamoto that her husband beat her. He would come home from work, eat his food in silence, read the newspaper’s sports section and, after neatly folding it, would nod his head. Mrs. Matsuda would strip naked, bend over a chair and Mr. Matsuda, taking a three-foot bamboo cane from the kitchen cupboard, would issue a dozen lashes to Mrs. Matsuda’s buttocks. ... Looking up, she smiled and in a voice Mrs. Nakamoto could barely hear Mrs. Matsuda said that she was embarrassed to admit it but, yes, she quite enjoyed it.
If, as Robinson writes, "unknowability is the first thing about reality that must be acknowledged," then Freud and Marx, Dawkins and Pinker, don't know the first thing about it.
At the intervention to stop the epidemic of obsessing I found our old King of Unrequited Love with his obsession, Samantha. We’d all brought our obsessions if we could and we wanted to know how he’d gotten her to come with him. It had been a long time since the epidemic of unrequited love—when we’d all loved Sam—the epidemic he’d always had and which had seemed to spread from him, but which now seemed to be requited. He told us a long story.During the epidemic of unrequited love Sam had carved a statue of her animal god, the thing she loved instead of us. Later, during the epidemic of magic, the animal god came alive. It jumped around destroying her apartment; she pleaded for it to stop but she’d made it an erratic and violent god. Our old King of Unrequited Love said it was a squirrel-like god with a tiny tail that never stopped wagging. As it bounded out her door it screamed, “Justice, justice." And soon it began to hunt down people and stomp them to death. (We’d thought this was the start of an epidemic of crushed bodies then.)
Sam didn’t know who to turn to, as she suffered a crisis of faith, until our old King of Unrequited Love stopped by as usual. His magic in the epidemic was full of his love for her: dragonfruit sprouted from his fingers. Maybe he seemed like a god himself. He told us how she was always looking for something to believe in, ever since she burned down her parents’ dragonfruit farm on the east side of the island and they had to abandon the home she loved. He said she’d only ever believed in what she’d believed in then, all of which was now gone.
Though probably he hadn’t seemed like a god.
He chased after the animal god and when the murders stopped he knew where to look. He climbed the hills where the forests was full of animals and found the animal god quietly holding court. The animal god gnawed on a human thigh as the other animals did its bidding, hares hopping with torches between their teeth, reindeer pouring wine from bottles stuck in their antlers. The court was in and around the trees and seemed to have no structure, no bounds, as if the whole forest was one regal plaza.
Our old King of Unrequited Love approached with his hands up in surrender, giving the animal god no reason to crush him. He was welcomed to a seat on the leaves.
“Justice,” the animal god said. “Justice, justice, justice.”
“Is this justice?” our old King asked. “Is it justice that I love someone who does not love me? Is it justice that the magic in my fingers is for her? That even the epidemics, in me, are hers? What is justice?”
The animal god said, “Justice justice justice justice.”
The King of Unrequited Love felt the magic fading as the animal god spoke, as if the island were saying, justice justice, back. His fingers tingled with dragonfruit as a last flame curled from his thumb; then he felt his skin cool. “You should know, you will soon turn back to stone,” he said.
“Justice,” the animal god said. But he seemed calm, as if something in those hills had already quieted his soul. He didn’t seem like he’d ever stomped anyone.
“I have to take you back. She needs to believe in you. I will do that out of love.”
“Justice,” the animal god said again.
Our old King of Unrequited Love rushed toward the animal god and the other animals tried to protect it. “Justice,” it said brokenly as it returned to stone. A deer put its horns into our old King’s side and he felt blood leak out of him. Justice, he thought. The animal god deserved to stay. Yet the animal god was only carved out of stone, carved by the girl, Sam, everyone had once loved.
He dodged a badger's teeth and grabbed the statue, and when the animals saw that it was a statue they started to moan. He swore to us that they moaned words. “What is love?” they moaned.
And when he had the statue in his arms he couldn’t lift it.
He took Sam up to see the statue of her animal god every day, and they were on their way that day when they dropped by the intervention. The truth was they both wished to stop obsessing.
Three days later the epidemic of hirsuteness struck and they disappeared into the hills for a long time.
Not so long ago, on our Island of Epidemics, there was an epidemic of unrequited love. All the men and lesbians fell in love with one woman, and all the women and gay men fell in love with different men, except for the loved woman, who was asexual and fell in love with a rock carved in the shape of a god. The loved woman had a best friend whom we named King of Unrequited Love. He'd been in love with her since even before the epidemic and he told us all about her.Her name was Samantha, Sam for short. She'd grown up on the east side of the island, where no one went anymore, farming dragonfruit. She'd loved the dragonfruit, even when they wriggled in her hand and beat their wings and occasionally bit her down to the bone, and had hated to watch her father sell them. She imagined their tails slurped up like spaghetti and the aftertaste of fire.
The King of Unrequited Love met her after she burned the farm to the ground in a gesture of loyalty that cruelly backfired--ironically the dragonfruit couldn't take the flames. She ran over the hills to our west side of the island and when he found her she cried little tears of ash that burned holes in his shirt and he fell in love with the smell of wet fire and heartbreak.
We'd never known about her smell and we tried to make her cry for us.
The King of Unrequited Love told us he'd helped her rent an apartment over the wine and cheese shop on Strawberry Street, and she'd been so innocent she'd let him undress her and put her to bed in his arms, her breasts like two hills flattened by the sky, and she'd let him inside her where it was warm and wet, and we knew this was a lie but we didn't care, we wanted to imagine the requiting.
He gave her a job secretarying for him, firing his old secretary, at the company where he worked. We asked which company it was and he wisely kept quiet (some of us tried to follow him but he was quickened with the secrets of love). She filed his files and he unfiled and smelled their crisped edges where she'd touched them, and we smelled this in our minds and asked to smell his hands and he let us. She wrote his letters and put them in envelopes, and he tore open the envelopes and licked where she'd licked and read his own words that now seemed different in her script, and some of us even asked to taste her licks off his tongue. It was an epidemic.
You can see musclesin my legs from running
after men like you
My husband was a shotgun made of candy.
I wanted to kill his former lovers, especially
the Strawberry Shortcake-looking one
On our anniversary,
we made love in a kiddie pool full of sugar
and afterbirth
you pinned me up against an oak in a park near where you were young and your hand
sang inside and you were the resurrection you were violent light behind the mountain
I’m going to quit my job and follow you across this great nation. I’ll live on Shirley Temples while inventing better creatures for you to talk to: walrus, fennec fox, star-nosed mole. I’ll buy us matching fuzzy moustaches and climb inside your leather bag. I’ll hide in the library with the government documents. You can dust all of us at once. Use your breath, please, if it isn’t too much trouble. If you refuse, I’ll cling to your shin until you kick at my pores. It’ll be good for the economy. You’ll see. The Dutch will love us.
My body is not
your wind and wire.
It falls like your
Don't question my holy
need for your cunt anymore.
I watch your name
fall from my mouth.
Watch your mouth.
Watch my thighs
weep for you again.
So you would love me,
I told you how I spat in the face
of the man who hit me for two years.
How I laughed, manic like the heroine,
even while he sank his teeth into my thigh.
I thought of furniture made of bone.
A feather-covered killing floor.
The body’s meat hoisted onto a hook.
How I wanted you to twist my will,
drag me into a room, and slam the door.
There is a house. A bed and its implications. A man and woman unaccustomed to mercy.
The old jokes: Stay away. We're bad news.
A kindling in the throat. Then water, metal.
There will be an oath made in blood, in hair. He will lay his knives down on her.
She will talk to him with her whole body.
I admit, I am afraid of isolation,and of the way the land breaks off here
into pieces,
and of the woman who says forever
moving her tongue along my skin
like she means it.
If I believe her, I will suffer.
If I don't believe her, I will suffer.
Who has never wanted to be unneeding?
One year since I've seen the mountains
or had proof love could be enough.
The mind loves hope.
Dumb heart, come down from the walnut tree.
All the distance is ultimately a lie.
i would really like to get fucked tonightbut the problem with this is
i am on my period
and as my friend justin knows,
that is one thing that I am not into
the other thing?
fisting
the idea makes me nauseous
period sex
i can only do it
with someone i really love
or
someone from out of town
because we have no other choice
the best lover of 2007
once
put his finger in a pool of
my blood that was on the bed
and then put it into his mouth
later he said it was to impress me
and it did
impress me
after he left, i had to throw out
my sheets
it looked like someone had been
murdered in my room
we agreed it was appropriate
because when we talked on the phone
we so often talked about removing
each other’s skin
it’s more romantic than it sounds
just trust me
but anyways,
i don’t even know who i would call
tonight, for sex
because i don’t feel like trying hard
or listening to anyone talk about themselves
which is a courtesy you must provide
if you are about to use them
for their body
oh wait – there is a third thing
animal costumes
The girl is crying. Margaret keeps the milk cold. Bruce has a box near the tree. Virginia doesn't own a fancy hammer. This is Debbie's little knife. Richard owns a dry book. He has a pen by the sea. Rita's aunt has some guitars. Ned doesn't have a camera at the barbershop. I don't have a cold knife.Do most bus drivers surf four or five times a day? Do plumbers very often weep? Do doctors shave badly? Do you jog near the tree? Don't you talk behind the post office? Do most scientists pray every night? Do most singers eat three times a day? Does Doug read in the doghouse? Do those carpenters shave all night? Do those pilots frequently shout? Do those doctors pray well?
Edgar will not burn Mr. Cook to death this week. Harry ate a lot of caviar for breakfast. Isaac is living with Kate. Peggy comes from good stock. Earl is said to have been born in Denmark. Captain Furt gave me a hint. Cliff likes anything sweet. Ruth's old canary is still alive.
Does Edgar laugh five or six days a week? Elmer caught a ball after he drank diet coke. Tony burned Mr. Chapman to death. Lucy broke the speed limit early the next morning. Jamie died the morning after he became carsick. Darrell alone became a good thief. Eugene cut Mrs. Smith to pieces. Hilda has never become a good dentist. Editor Sash's affection is cooling. Ernest's failure is out of the question. Hank learned to make a fire without matches. Mrs. Estrada's karaoke voice would put a professional to shame. Raymond burns Ms. Huntley to death all day.
Here are kilowatt hours measured from the luster of a dozen spark plugs firing. Termites drive this engine within a scorched toy clanging gongs along the floor of a porn theater. Welcome to this fragile glass gangland. Here, a knife can be a vehicle. Drive it through a foe. Foil tiny muggers. Drug bloodborne murderers. Swim in an ocean of pills. When a chair is a weapon, it’s not surprising to find the room full of darning eggs and coughing. Yes, we will wear our infants in their slings everywhere, even in knife fights, even in tilt-a-whirls. Yes, my iron lung sings. And yes, it’s in the key of X to please the queen. And yet, it appears everyone here just wants to claim their spun sugar crowns can’t stand up to a buffing. See figure 4.1. It depicts three life-sized angels sleeping inside a tiger, its captors tormenting it with paper airplanes in a cage. Then the coal cars’ clacking subtracts the blackbirds from the calibrated miles of a racehorse’s veins. Add a clef. Measure a sentence by its circumference. The die back is almost done now. A thousand false eyelashes cover the framework of the fans you use in a burlesque dance. Once again, four brothers are picking off tiles lined against the marquee above a movie theater. If a bright furriness blinds you, then it might be your guide beyond a cabin through the woods with fireworks blooming two by two above you. Wooed, you swoon. The fourth lark flew from the baby’s throat into the wishing well, where neon lightning strikes a skeleton key, the inventor of suspicion. Why? Because every good boy deserves a goat inside him. So mom, you wanted to ask me then, is in an animal again?
Mr. Duffy lived a short distance from his body.
A space opens among words. Move the words apart. Wire the sentences to the page. Lean over the spaces you’ve made. Do you think they will all be the same? It must be part of the problem that they won’t go away. Make the sentences cold and unknowable. Every single sentence you’ve written, let this happen. They won’t fight back. Sentences don’t fight back. They get empty. Fake. They get hard. At some point the words will change. Twist. The words seem to open very wide. When the sentences seem to point and grin at you, indifferent, grab the paper. Watch the words appear beneath your hands. Run your hands over the paper.”
I decided to shoot sleep until it was dead.You cannot kill sleep she told me.
I decided to kill waking up until it was dead.
Why don’t you just kill yourself she said.
One of these days I will go to bed & I will wake up & everything will feel the way it’s supposed to feel.
I was thinking about being lonely. I was thinking about feeling lonely. I was thinking about worrying about loneliness. I was worrying about loneliness. I was worrying about worry. I was worried. I was worried the thunder would wake her up & she would not go back to sleep & she would be cranky & I would have to deal with that. I was thinking about how I could always walk away when things got hard but I would end up walking really far down the road & suddenly every house I walked into was mine & all my teeth were gathered on the walls all nailed up like my mouth and smiling.
One of these days she said I will break all of your bones & use them as a tent & you will always be there.
One of these days marching bands will fill the streets & they will be far off & then they will not be anymore at all & they will be upon us like so many things have been visited upon so many other things over the course of history, which is a vast & varied course, with all sorts of openings & closings & things going in & things going out, much like the tide, but also things other than water.
I got stuck in the bathroom.When I came out I saw a sign.
Do you want to know more about birds? the sign said.
I feel sorry for people who fall in love with other people.
We wait on the boat's deck to see a whale.
What we see are waves.
Dead-hearted tomatoes bobbing up and down.
Ocean of hearts.
Here is a list of failures.I was staying in a hotel room with some people. I didn’t know their names. I wasn’t their friend. Not the kind where you say hi my name’s and hi my name’s and then you call each other names. Before I was staying in the hotel room I was walking down Market and they snatched me into their van so I was kidnapped.
What’s that called after you’re kidnapped. When you’re just staying in the hotel room. There wasn’t tape on my mouth or chains. On my wrist or anything. You could walk around in it and watch television. You could go for ice so the door wasn’t locked. From the inside.
The first time I went for ice I had to knock to get back in. That was when we made up the idea to put a thing in the door when I went for ice. Or somebody else for something else. A shoe or ashtray.
One of the men slipped the metal chain from the wall between the door and the frame. That was the only chain unless it was a metal bar. The girl had failed the test anyway. It was a good hotel room. My first.
It wasn’t the only hotel room. Sometimes there were others. One at a time. It looked like the other ones we lived in. Two men a woman and me. Four. And yes there was sex. Sometimes there was sex in the other hotel rooms. On either side of us unless we were on the end.
Sometimes when there was sex in another hotel room a man said a woman’s name or a woman said a man’s.
Sometimes in our hotel room a man said a woman’s name or the woman said a man’s. Sometimes when there was sex. Sometimes when there was not. I don’t know if it was the real names. Sometimes they were different. Sometimes they were the same which was not often. Or I don’t remember because I was the champion of forgetting.
When we got to the hotel room. The first time I got to the hotel room. After I got kidnapped. When I wasn’t kidnapped anymore. When there wasn’t tape on my mouth. When I was in the van there was tape on my mouth but not in the hotel room.
At first there was tape on my mouth and my wrists. That’s when the man who was our leader then said not to say my name. And the woman said better forget your name.
If you don’t say your name you don’t forget your name and you always want to say it. This is how I was for a while. When the tape was on my mouth. Sometimes I said my name because who even knows what you’re talking about with tape on your mouth. But when there wasn’t any more tape I bit my tongue. It hurts to bite your tongue.
When you forget your name you don’t bite your tongue. Why would you. You don’t want to say it and you don’t say it. If you do you don’t know because it’s forgotten. It’s suddenly somebody else’s and you’ve forgotten their’s too.
The Canadian government announced that it is putting the alternative rock band The Pixies on its list of “terrorist organizations” after the group cancelled its upcoming trip to Israel in the wake of the Gaza Flotilla affair.Another supporter of the move was Peter Kent, Minister of State for Foreign Affairs (Americas), who said in an interview, “If the Pixies want to boycott Israel, then Canada is at war with the Pixies.”
You may have been wondering: How does a gifted artist with a gentle nature turn to building bombs and dreaming of the wholesale destruction of his homeland?
I keep mentioning my torso because I wish I were a/zoologist. I wish I were a surgeon. Or Darwin. Or a /ballet impresario in Paris. Or a mole in the ground./Or a reptile collector. Or 5000 accidents. Made of/swans. Or Darwin. Or an injury. Or going home/in a wheelbarrow. Or moving into the Hotel Fuck. Or/bleeding slowly into a silver bucket. Or plundering./Most of all I wish I were Darwin.Or 5000 accidents.
Made of swan feathers.
Copy that. Keep a gorgeous heart. Then gone into a room with youstarring the “scars chosen.” Curtains flapping. “Minimum then.”
After which, realized people are selfless, then too, as much in -
To write poetry all day, shiver in a drafty house, held in position –
or shower beneath warm black hair, sounds heard time and again.
Our blood, reader, is ample. Our long fingers held in place.
Tungsten. Rapt. We should talk in person. That in itself is meaning.
Fitting against skin. Classic. Lovely. Sad. Absence is air.
They suspect their king exhumed himself, ever since his shadows had grown in number, ever since it was announced that “Subjects will no longer reside under the sun but in the ghost it represents.” Whoever does not avert their eyes from this false eclipse listens to a bloodstream in reverse. Perhaps he will become more common when the negative mouth is active again, and in this formation, a distant address.The singed horse doubles as an only swan. That their spawn's sword has become a stem evident in the seam between ions serves to re-divide its swells. Stings in a snake form chords in the palace. Warped by delusion, the arrow has always been part of a swarm. Spectral forces inhabit its fusion. Atlantic transformations occur bilingually in the war between mice and frogs. The herds blockade an atomized hive. There, there are no neutral storms. Nurses mirage the song of stunted hawks by speaking out of phase with the queen.
my girlfriend was fat and I didn't know why that was badI hung out at the pilot's bar on the tarmac, because there
everyone left you alone
there was little sex at that bar, it was behaved
I'd go home and try to tell my girlfriend how the guitar has evolved over time
I'd tell her "you look like a guitar"
and she'd cry and cry
"this part here, sits on my leg like a sexy woman guitar"
she would lay catatonic on the bed and I would continue
because my own voice soothes me
"at first the guitar was really skinny-
in the dark ages, it wasn't even hollow
it was tiny, it was wobbly, it had a horsehair string"
Me and Lena are twins and have been the whole time. For Halloween we used to be Siamese in a big shirt, until Aunt Kay thought it offensive. Lena used to choose what we wore, but then she started to dress tight. Now we are basically adults. We have our driver's licenses and could smoke if we wanted to. We are best friends and understand with no communication. When she has a pimple I'm extra conscience of my face, like I'm looking at it. Whenever I picture something romantic and naked, like when I'm trying to get my dreams off to a good start, I picture her the one getting done. It only makes sense, or else how am I getting that view? (the side view) (or over the shoulder) So Lena does the thing with neighborhood boys and movie men and even strangers she meets in the park. She is a slut in these thoughts, but the thoughts are mine, and she is me, so no harm done, just a lot of fun. I assumed she did the same, pictured me getting romantic in her place, but no, she says she pictures her too, and I try not to let this hurt me, but it does.
Blackjack. Between Boss' incisors. Red dice melted into the first baseman's greasy mitt. Blues Explosion. The Russian they bribe into the locker room, black roots and a mole sprouting fine blonde hairs an inch below her ear. Motorhead. Dirty Money. Teamed with a torsolette, the scratch of elastic against tongue. Bound by fencing masks, cocooned under gauze, the roommate's polaroids tacked to the walls of the loft, who lent you those little metal balls for stimulating g-spots, who built a swing in the foyer. King with an Axe: Jon Spencer, Jack White. Why the fuck not, with a bright red bow above the ass, pretty as a jukebox full of quarters. Navel orange. So filthy you want to roll it between your lips. Second-base, fencing bout, posing for polaroids in a babydoll and tights. D'Andrea Pickups. The Russian mole. Long live the Suicide Kings.Tiled guest room in Essaouira, little blue door, window in the whitewash enough for a wrist to fit through. Remember: the man who handed us the sheets hit us up for his daughter's school. Remember: We followed the tout for block after block, until we reached the shore and then thanked her and I asked her how much for just walking us that far. The boys on the streets jumping onto each other's backs, the town joke that weekend, little plastic whistles strung up between the sandwich shops. Such thick walls. La Forteresse lined with cannons. Our patio nothing but wicker chairs and ashtrays, little empty cups from our tea, dried out at the bottoms. The sound of waves, whistles. The attendant knocking night after night, you at the door trying to dismiss him, a bit of hash burning between your finger and thumb, my bare nipples, red between the rough cotton of his sheets.
Pretend we are peach. Raspberry. It needs to be like air through straw. His blond mustache and merino twin-breasted blazer. Camel filters, hot scotch candies in a box pressed against ribs. Something about that morning stepping onto the subway: the door-air that whooshed me inside, that stranger's hand skirting around my middle. Pretend we are plum. Panama City, with its bombed out buildings, clotheslines between the empty shell windows. The Merino Whoosh. The razor slitting down the center, then scales on the bottoms of our shoes. Air through straw. Thin fish blood. Flash-fried and served on the wharf on strips of Chinese newspaper. A blond mustache tucked behind a row of bottom teeth. That hand cinched around my waist— Pretend we are the Chinese Newspaper. The Hot Scotch Candies. Pretend we are Bone.
Bury the toenails in the back yard, build an entity that is nearly all soul, very little mouth; breathe, pestle fools to cinder, mount a horse and travel to Borodino like you grandfather after the war. Small mouths elicit very few altruistic neural firings, mesocorticolimbic clefts left drying like small finger holds, collecting bat guano, stale comment, little else. After the egg, after the ox, grandma and the booze and grandpa at the helm of a mad torrent of damp skin and nostalgic finger picking; you live in reverse with the past pending, a remonstrating Sullivan leering from behind barns, tossing rocks to piss the horse. You will continue to stack dirt on top, well beyond necessity, mounting a geologic oddity, unwell famous paupers beating glass, pacing the walls of an insomniac’s ant farm, unshaken. Hoot, breathe, still, patting dirt, a patriarchal mound; a fallow pubis governed by a merkinship of silent soil is bristled by wind. Crows flock. I will kiss at your sweaty face as you pat your shovel, whistling the pool hall madrigal of whipped saints. Do you realize all that we’ve done despite the taste of sour children, the ripe bruises on their small little backs, that stone throwing O’Groifa and all he’s done? When your hair was dark as clots and my smell was of March we stole away after the barn burned and the first murdering Griffin banged the slowest cow, a mewling cant of smile and wet grass and we looked at one another and we knew it was the work of O’Groifa, calling tunes from his hare-lipped rookery, hostel of intransigent bastardry. Pat your shovel. I scratch my skin, lamb’s bladder stuffed with river rock, repulsed from the inside, pressed outward by endocrine and animus and gravity and moonlight. Look, I know, we have made a leap and he cannot throw stones from a snake’s briar any longer, and yet you drink for what, a remorseless night’s rest? We know, the death, a dying, O’Groifa, at the door for a truce and a slow stew, sewing together neighbors in a grey roil of pipe smoke and cocksong, and you knew it, the hollowness of the sham; his very teeth could tell stories that his mouth would feign, eyes belie. O’Groifa, I remember how he held his neck when you stabbed him with your own hickory pipe, slamming the Dutch door to spare the carpet. He twirled, and the crows in tow picked him at his edges until he stood like a wraith pinned to the devils lorry, spurting Sullivan, folk folly, and phlegm; goodbye, O’Groifa, you shovelman’s delight, I cried. You exhaled half, and what remained issued from the broken pipe stem with the slow candor of burning peat. He fell, you hushed, I comforted; don’t worry, guilt is for the gull that spoils the picnic and you are a stone wall unturned.
Watch her squirt buckets cum covered teen honeys watch her choke on cum squirting cum cocks hot Teen sluts split wide and juicy Cum hunk slut squirts. Cum slut cum teen squirts Juicyhunks sluts gargantuan cum squirts Watch cum teen cam squirts juicy splits Hot cumming juicy squirt sluts Squirts covered hunky teen sluts Watch my teen honey juicy split gargantuan cums cam Squirt juicy hunks teen splits slut cam Watch teen sluts cum cam Hot teen hunks cam squirt cum teen cum buckets Juicy cum squirts gargantuan teen hunks split juicy sluts cam.He gave her a long, juicy taste of his magic lollipop. It was an all-day sucker. She gobbled down the sweet nectar. She would never be satisfied with just a taste. She wanted all of it inside her parched, hungry throat. This is true. She really liked lollipops. On the other hand, one thing she disliked a lot was penises.
Billy was the smallest player on the team, but when the guys kicked back to play some more relaxed games, he showed what a great receiver he could be. Even when he got pounded over and over, he sprang right up, ready for the next guy to have a go at him. He loved nothing better than getting a workout and building up a sweat going head to head with the big guys. By the end of that session, he was wet from head to foot and boy did he feel sore. The soreness gave him trouble later that evening, when he went to a gay sex club and fifteen guys ran a train on him. Billy made a mental note never to play football and bottom at a gay orgy on the same day.
Tommy started off his English class doing good work & pleasing Teacher, but he just could not keep it up all semester. Disappointed, Miss Brown asked what his problem was — did Tommy need special attention? A more personal touch? Tommy eagerly agreed and for the next two months Miss Brown took the reins and drove that boy harder than he’d ever been driven before. Her one on one efforts made him say with a smile that he never thought he’d enjoy being ridden by a teacher! Ridden hard and whenever he wanted to quit she said no, fighting back and taking him to the next level. And it must be said that Tommy was Miss Brown’s favorite pupil too. It was her last year teaching junior high — she had reached the mandatory retirement age of 65. She gave Tommy a nice pen and pencil set.
Mister Joju hairy potto. A nickel bag of hope. A nickel bag of pussy. A nickel bag of dereliction of duty. A nickel bag of angina. A nickel bag of diarrhea of the mouth. A nickel bag of Mediterranean style consoles. A nickel bag of pork. Squeeze one’s nut. Chasm one’s peccary. Notch-puncture one’s Frenchman
On one of the front windows was a paper sign. On the sign was an arrow and a message that read:DON’T USE THIS DOOR, USE THAT DOOR.
Following these directions to the appropriate entrance, I proceeded into the White Hart, as if entering a dark purple storm cloud, full to bursting.
It was raining inside. It was pelting it down. I was immediately struck by a flurry of hard wet drops, so raising my hands like a wigwam above my eyes, I peered about in a search for dry shelter, but there was none. My hair and eyebrows were quickly drenched, and my mouth was like a plughole in a bath, surrounded by the wet wispy hairs of my silly little beard. Resigning myself to the elements, I ran like a person with a limp in both legs towards the large central bar, which lay just a short distance ahead, past some outlying tables and chairs. The barmaid was in good spirits despite everything, and the bucketing water gave her the distinct appearance of an Afghan Hound beneath the ocean.
A pool table to the right of the bar resembled a large birdbath, and a few young fellows were engaged in a match with the red and yellow balls, persevering atop the waterlogged felt. When a ball was struck, the sound it made resembled that of a plump duck landing on a pond. Next to the pool table was a large old fireplace, and this was stacked high with round logs of soggy firewood.
The rain water plop-plopped into my 3 pints of English ale, and when I raised one of these to my mouth, some of the drips ran off my nose and fell into my drink.
Tomaz Salamun is a monster.Tomaz Salamun is a sphere rushing through the air.
He lies down in twilight, he swims in twilight.
People and I, we both look at him amazed,
we wish him well, maybe he is a comet.
Maybe he is punishment from the gods,
the boundary stone of the world.
Maybe he is such a speck in the universe
that he will give energy to the planet
when oil, steel, and food run short.
He might only be a hump, his head
should be taken off like a spider's.
But something would then suck up
Tomaz Salamun, possibly the head.
Possibly he should be pressed between
glass, his photo should be taken.
He should be put in formaldehyde, so children
would look at him as they do foetuses,
protei, and mermaids.
Next year, he'll probably be in Hawaii
or in Ljubljana. Doorkeepers will scalp
tickets. People walk barefoot
to the university there. The waves can be
a hundred feet high. The city is fantastic,
shot through with people on the make,
the wind is mild.
But in Ljubljana people say: look!
This is Tomaz Salamun, he went to the store
with his wife Marushka to buy some milk.
He will drink it and this is history.
The vehicle is simple. “Beauty sleep every day.”
Eight kilometers from Lisbon by streetcar, toward
the west. Reader, escaping from my baskets, haven’t you
noticed? You can’t escape from five baskets all at
once. The baskets shift like a juggler’s balls. And we were
off. We walked and walked, naked, far into the militarized
zone. Hey, handsome! You’re squinting beneath me.
You have to look into my eyes. You proclaim a new good
and a tank drives into your mouth. We didn’t slam huts like
these since little Friday’s times. You don’t even have a proper
terrace here. A duke or a horse. Kerry sends me caravans
of camels from the furthermost parts of the world.
My home is Persepolis. I accept my gifts in a factory.
I lived to see Alexander. I kept Alexander alive.
You have to read fifteen hundred books in order to write one.Flaubert put it.
An alcoholic is someone you don’t like who drinks almost as much as you do.
Said Dylan Thomas.
The very possibly not apocryphal tale that David Hume, always grossly overweight, once went down on one knee to propose marriage – and could not get back up.
He is not writing about something; he is writing something. Said Samuel Beckett, re Joyce.
A school of fish swims by. I blow bubbles in he shape of a hungry man borrowing a pen from a student who’s trapped between the yumminess of an honor roll, but they respond with bubbles of white void.She has legs that could leap tall mocha lattes in a single bound, hips like Mrs. Butterworth, and a mugshot that bathed in the unsightly stains of the police photographer. Crispin is so relieved about skipping the partiarchal ritual of spring formal past that he doesn’t mind that her bowels are spilling out of her party dress.
Then all of her guts, entrails, and fluids coalesced and swirled around together like a load of piratey garb during a washing machine’s spin cycle. It stopped, and she was together again.
My teenage son has five minutes ago gone across the street, up the stairs, to the children's dentist to get his teeth cleaned. He wants to know why he is still going to a children's dentist. I made up a lie. It satisfied him. I forget the lie. Who remembers lies? It is only necessary to remember the truth.I am multi-orgasmic. I can have 50, 100, an infinity of orgasms anytime I wish. No one, certainly not myself, has tested my full capacity. In theory, I could orgasm continuously until the moment I died.
The steroids have acted upon me remarkably fast. The knee is perfect. My face is puffy from water retention, nothing is the same. I can see Mars now as though looking at it through a telescope. And I don't mean one of those junky toy telescopes.
True. In a way. Does God know the exact line where truth and falsity meet? Half a life ago I took LSD seven times and read the "Tibetan Book of the Dead." I ate grass out on my lawn because animals do, why not me?
What is happening now is not an interruption. Just a nuisance. A policeman in an unmarked car has circled the block four times in the last 10 minutes, pretending not to look at me as he goes by, unaware—the stupidity of people—that I easily saw him, without letting him know this at all, saw him in my rearview mirror, without moving my head an inch, saw him take down my license plate number. The utter stupidity of these people! As obvious as though he left off a bomb, and he thinks I'm unaware of his very existence!
Whatever. My periods stopped 14 months ago. This is looking down on life like it is a river. I take, I start taking, steroids, three weeks ago, and the doctor says, "Your periods may stop for a while," and I wanted to shout at him, "You idiot! My periods stopped 14 months ago!" But, wisely, I said nothing, just pretended meekness. Bowing humanlike before the all-powerful God doctor. Besides he wouldn't have got the point and I find less and less energy for fools.
Beginning this—there is no beginning. Sneaking up is the trick. I will start when it isn't looking. I will even sneak up on myself, beginning it when I don't know I've begun it, slipping easily, unobtrusively into it like a small man entering a very large woman in the night.
That's something I'd love to see on the "Playboy Channel," a small man entering a large woman. Or even a large man entering a small woman. Instead, all there is boring-sized women humping boring-sized men to the sounds of modern rock. But no commercials.
Oh, well.
Whatever. My fiction, your non-fiction. It doesn't matter. Nothing is going to change the fact that the Devil—beginning now I will wait no longer will begin now this beginning is beginning. I mooned the universe 20 minutes ago when he went across the street to the dentist. I rolled down my jeans and panties and knelt here on this front seat, driver's seat, put my rear way up in the air so the whole world could see my cellulite pockets of rear thigh fat, could hopefully see my flesh-colored genitalia just like those little women do constantly on "Playboy," and I felt the cool, sweet breeze on my dear butt swaying high there in the air, two cars honked in joy as they lingered by, and then when I knew I had done it completely, at that exact moment of completion, I stopped and grabbed his history notebook from school before I forgot any part of it and have done this.
Lies. But he is coming out now. Across the street inside the building my perfect hearing hears him leaving the dentist's chair, going past the receptionist, no time now for the beginning. The lie, if I could get past...
I bought secondhand hunting attire that I only wore around the house. You corrected me when I called our apartment a house. We howled until we were gender tired. You howled when you stubbed your toe on my rearrangement of the living room. You corrected me when I called a corner a room. I called you my speech pathologist instead of my girlfriend. We had that one thing in common. You kept the windows open year round. I kept upgrading the laundry hamper. The stairs we stepped to the apartment that I called our house. The gun rack I bought at a yard sale to match the hunting attire. The cost of my constant home décor. I wondered if the stairs we stepped to our apartment were sinking. You constantly ate submarine sandwiches. You asked me to return your opinions. The cost of cage-free eggs and gluten-free waffles. I refused to return your opinions by calling them facts. You never called me a gentleman. The day you called our landlord. We would watch the birds I called by the wrong names. We would open a checking account in both our names. I would feel comfortable purchasing organic produce and tampons. You would be willing to purchase secondhand hunting regalia. I would memorize the words partially hydrogenated and high fructose. You would memorize the names of the birds I would never kill. The day you brought home oil-based cheese. The ingredients I tried memorizing for the confrontation we never had. We could finally fit all our clothes in the laundry hamper. I stared at the steps.
For a man, sleeping with a woman is satisfying. But sleeping with a beautiful woman is even more satisfying. Most satisfying of all, however, is killing a man in Marseille after he makes you a passport, then stealing a boat, kidnapping a tourist, later getting shot while saving her life, and then sleeping with that beautiful woman.During their divorce trial he asked her why she had kept so many secrets and lovers from him. She told him that she needed secrets and lovers, because he had bored her and she never felt like she was alive. He told her that she should have tried to talk to him instead of living out a statistic and blaming him for her unhappiness. She told him that they were both statistics—that he had worked too much, that they were the kind of couple who had taken the dullest path and believed in a vague idea of love that had turned brown like an apricot you keep in your bag too long. He told her that she had never been this lucid when they were married, but that he thought their love had been less like a soft apricot and more like one of those stupid theories by Plato some failed grad student taught them in their first year of college that had no application to the real world. She told him that she was lucid and even happy now because she had thrown the apricot away and nothing smelled like rotten fruit anymore. He told her that he was happy too—that he had started rereading Plato and realized it was quite beautiful as long as one thought of it as poetry.
Watching pornography is not as good as having sex. Having sex is not as good as watching pornography while having sex. Watching pornography while having sex is not as good as taping oneself having sex watching pornography and then projecting that beside the pornographic image while still having sex.
It was raining when she fell from heaven, legs up, arms down, heavy-feathered, wings like two limp doilies. The other celestials laughed. Rookie flub, they said. Showing off, doing a loopdeloop below cloud. Even with the widest, whitest, wings don’t work with wet feathers.She caught a down-draft to solid ground and hunkered. Pretty, smug thing she once was, but not much to brag about now. A celestial creature caught below-cloud can really lose her looks. Subject now to all sorts of mortal flubs, spine crushing gravity, sunburn, hunger, smog, and whatnot. And whatever the legends say, earthbound celestials are not all that good looking. Like an albino bat, but bigger.
Now it was time to settle down and she built her house from bones. She collected the bones from behind restaurants. Fried chicken places were the best. She made the furniture from wheels and other moving things that she pinned down to the ground with bits of wire. Sometimes they broke free, slid from kitchen to bathroom. She really couldn’t be blamed. She was just doing her best.
Celestials don’t have wombs so she had to gather her children from cribs or playgrounds. She got tired of that and started making them from piles of smooth rocks. Her oldest child was called Snap and her youngest was called Car. She forgot to name the ones in the middle.
They were all her children and she loved each one equally.
One day a man came to admire the bone house. The children clustered around him. They liked his hairy forearms. He decided to stay and she made him her husband. She said children should have a father. She said this with great authority, as if she had always known.
The truck driver is Bulgarian. I am sitting on a bed made up of green sheets with daises on them. My brother is in the front seat looking at the map. I am in the back trying to look beautiful.I am twenty-three years old and I have just learned that I am ugly. It is June and I am hitchhiking with my brother. It’s my first time hitchhiking. It’s my second time in Germany. It’s my first time being ugly. We are going from Linz, Germany to Vienna. The trucker has agreed to drive the entire rest of the way. I want to hug him.
Our Bulgarian trucker is smoking Russian cigarettes and keeps the radio on low.
I ask him if I can smoke. He’s enthusiastic that I’d like to smoke and shakes his pack of MOSKVAS towards me. But I have my own. I bought Bali Shag rolling tobacco in New York City minutes after I found out that I was ugly, while I was feeling sorry for myself. I have a demented view on smoking. I often think it’s going to give me something besides smelly fingers and a sore throat in the morning. I have this idea that a cigarette will give me profound thought, an exciting moment, a more memorable experience. I am hoping that this particular cigarette will give me the courage to ask my brother if I am ugly.
The day before I left for Europe I was at my lover’s apartment in the East Village. We’d met at a writing class a year prior when he’d had a live-in girlfriend. Since then, they’d broken up and he moved out. We were in love. Lucas had to leave for work in the morning and he left his keys with me. Unable to control myself, I did what I usually do when he leaves me there alone: smoke his pot and read his private journals. I read about his ex-girlfriends, his insecurities, his fears about life and descriptions of his love for me. He would not approve on any level, but that doesn’t stop me.
This time as I reached for his black Moleskin, something white fell out. A napkin with some writing on it. Inky blue pen. In the top left corner it said: Amazing girlfriend, ugly lover, still not happy.
I knew which one I was.
And now, in this foreign country, foreign truck, experience, I can only think about how I am ugly. And how it bothered me that it bothered me. I had grown up believing I was pretty. It was like finding out there is no Santa Claus. Like finding out you are not going to be a famous writer after all.
I know the Bulgarian truck driver and my brother are not thinking about the way I look. I know I look normal. Five foot three with dirty blond hair. My brother’s head is buried deep in the map to see which direction we should walk when we get dropped off in Vienna. And who knows what the trucker is thinking about: maybe his own ugly sister that he misses. Maybe that he needs gas or more cigarettes or a lover or a ham sandwich.
He calls her his bad dream. He says it’s funny, a nickname, and right there’s the tale of the tape.He buys a parrot because he says he’s lonely and wants someone to talk to. He says it’s like an ulcer eating him inside out, how hollow their space has become, how it echoes and cusses.
He takes up painting. He always wanted to be an artist and now he can be. He uses garish hues. He mixes them into a psychedelic goop and the canvas looks assaulted. She knows the feeling.
For their Anniversary he brings home a sheet cake seamed with lavender frosting. He retells the story of how they met so many years ago at the hospital café when he’d asked where the soup crackers were and she’d told him and then they’d talked and she’d said she was a nurse because she couldn’t be anything else. He cuts her a small piece, knowing she’ll never eat it. He asks her questions, knowing she won’t answer. She hasn’t spoken since that night in the parking lot at the hospital. “We can’t help you if you don’t tell us,” the female officer said, angry and offended instead of gentle and kind.
After he’s gone to bed, she sits in the darkness. When she was a girl she had to sleep with the light on. Her imagination was brave and brilliant then, capable of conjuring up the most horrendous creatures that lurked in the hall and breathed through the slits of bedroom door. The truth is so much like a lie, she thinks.
Her husband doesn’t paint anymore. It lasted two days. He said it was a stupid idea. Now he does crossword puzzles.
She misses the colors so she clicks the little white spin dial on the cord and waits for the bulb to heat the viscous glob sitting in the water like a headless bullfrog. Beside the cake, he’d given her the lava lamp as a gift and now she wants to see what shapes it will make, if there’s anything worth staying up for.
“It seems to me that the word means more than tiny pieces of cloth. It means the very dust left on every finished product in our world. That dust implies that nothing is perfect. Every bit of civilization has imperfections that will eventually lead to the demise of that society.”Georgie Angir raised his hand like all students do. When asked what he wanted he said, “Aren’t we making more of this than is intended? ‘Lint in the doom’ only means that any philosophy whether negative or positive has its dust, and that dust represents the author’s stupidity.”
“Yes, of course, there is a certainty there.” Mr. Smitt continued, “Lint and doom are synonyms. Both are very fuzzy words. Both mean that not all events are catastrophic. Some, in fact, most, are casual and quiet. Yes, many of the day to day happenings are not even noticeable. Yet, they have an impact on our world.”
...Angir had his hand raised again when the class began, “I have one further thought. Isn’t life nothing but lint and doom?” No one had any input that evening. Smitt only said, “Thank you.”
R.L. Ashley died that evening while walking to her car. She owned an old Continental. Later, it was found that Ms. Ashley was afraid of deep philosophy. She feared psychological meanings in any phase of life. Also, it was found that an adolescent named J.E.T. Jones also hated deep thoughts. After confronting Ms. Ashley the fourteen year old had shot the young woman because her purse was very dirty. Even the money in it was stained.
We go out for drinks and attack a dumpster. D takes off his pants and tries to have sex with J. My lighter is busted. I run to catch the 22. “The next step is to think like Brian.” D escapes through the kitchen. I forget to lock up the knives. Her drawer is full of strawberry condoms. I look for the green bunny poem. She drops me down the building’s side. It’s sober day. Thanks for coming to the show. There is no origin. Your emails wince. I wish they were something else, not alone. J calls me shitface with tears in his eyes. We meet at 8 and grab a bite to eat. Someone says my name is Booth. She gives me my third drink for free. Z laughs whenever a kid starts a fight. There isn’t enough sex to go around. “I can’t believe they killed-off Bodie.” I manage to see three shows a week. I’ve decided to stop sleeping you. It’s a bag of baseball bats I hand the kids. Most of the day is spent on the floor. I never open the envelope marked C. I walk down Valencia over a grate.
we like to think of our memories as being immutable impressions, somehow separate from the act of remembering them. But they aren't. A memory is only as real as the last time you remembered it. The more you remember something, the less accurate the memory becomes. The larger moral of the experiment is that memory is a ceaseless process, not a repository of inert information. It shows us that every time we remember anything, the neuronal structure of the memory is delicately transformed, or reconsolidated.
HIGGS: Let me preface this by admitting that I am probably going to sound like an asshole, but here goes: I’m uninterested in a reversion to nature because 1) I don’t like nature, and 2) I like the cushiness of civilization. I like my coffeemaker. I like my car and my computer and I like book stores and going to movies and concerts and the ballet and art museums and civilized shit like that. I don’t want to hunt and gather — I want to order Chinese food and drink Malbec. I don’t want to piss in the woods or take baths in the river. I don’t want to wear clothes handmade out of rawhide – I have very sensitive skin. Does this mean I blindly assume that since life is pretty good for me it’s pretty good for everybody else, too? No. Does this mean I’m ignorant of the plight of others, that I deny the global exploitation of workers? No. I am against suffering. I am against cruelty. But the bottom line is: destroying capitalism sounds awful because (i) it wrongly supposes there’s a simple solution to a complex problem (ii) it sounds like a lot of work, and a lot of work means I might not get to watch LOST, so fuck that. I’d rather watch LOST than destroy capitalism (even if the finale irked me), (iii) it could potentially lead to homogeneity and homogeneity, for me, is the ultimate enemy. Difference, not sameness, should always be our paramount value. This is a slippery slope, I understand, and it might sound especially terrible to the liberal ear, but I would venture to say that those who espouse socialist ideology do so from the safe position of understanding its impossibility and therefore risk nothing by their espousal. That’s my gut reaction. My intellectual reaction would be to cite Zizek and talk about how action has gotten us nowhere, now is the time for inaction, now is the time for theory rather than practice, look at what Lenin did after the first revolution failed, and so on. But really, part of my reaction is probably directly related to the fact that I am a lousy selfish cynical American, which maybe manifests in my writing somehow – I’m not sure? Which makes me wonder if you feel like being British (is that the proper nomenclature: British? or do you prefer English?) informs your writing, perhaps in terms of your particular cultural or historical position? And also, do you feel like AN ISLAND OF FIFTY is engaging with a particular literary tradition, British or otherwise?BROOKS: I don’t think you sound like an asshole. That was a good answer. I think my attraction to a reversion to nature rests also on the fact that it would bring people together, even though I’m a cynical twat and don’t like a great deal of people anyway. All that stuff you listed I’d be reluctant to lose also and I’d only do it if I could guarantee something better, some success in resistance, which I can’t, so that’s why I’m not naked in a forest planning to blow up dams right now. But I also think that above those things it is people that make me most happy. A lot of the times those things just get in the way.
Those things also only make us happy because we have been raised with them. If we were raised like you said in forests, jumping about in rivers and spearing fish, then the idea of sitting watching LOST for an hour would seem fucking horrific dull.
Also I’m not particularly sure about how smoothly these theories would translate into practice for me personally, I haven’t had much chance to test myself yet. But I wouldn’t say that renders the theory useless, just difficult.
I think it has, but not because I’m British (British is fine by me). It’s because I’m middle class, white, and at grammar school. If I lived in America and kept the same sociodemographic credentials I think I’d pretty much write in the same way. It’s just being afforded time to write and dwell on things like drunkenly fucking a fat girl or hating civilization or whatever. But I’m not sure what ‘way’ of writing is
Marsha lays paths & tears them up.The mill is in sight.
Eyes are wretched chunks of light.
I carry in my palms her heart & it throbs with the pulse of a lion. She drinks oxblood on the island. There is a mill on an island. I am weary but my feet pulse with the throb of a chariot: ONWARD.
Marsha talks of beauty with the Hotelier. He is African-American. Watch his gargantuan jaw swell with words.
They stand beside the marble monolith, beside the mill, beside the chariot, beneath the charioteer.
The charioteer, the hotelier claims, breathes saffron & lives within the trunk of a great oak. He bites into the claws of crabs & washes taste away with woodbines. He pays for cold coffee skinned girls from the ships to gyrate against his spine.
Marsha feigns horror & lifts her skirt. She draws the cross over her breast. The blades of the mill begin to show cracks & the orphans grow restless. People are checking out. There is a small man in the mill who spins thread & bloodies his wrinkled fingers.
One day they will fold, his mother says.
Let them die, he tells her.
I was in my room masturbating with a frozen hot dog, which is just one of the many examples of things that make my room truly my own. The clock turned 11:11. I made a wish. 11 x 1 = 11. I can’t tell you what the wish was and I won’t. I wish I had an apartment with art all over the walls and that the art was all linked together by one cohesive theme. And maybe that theme could be the forest, or the trees. Spooky light browns and bright, deep greens. I wish I had a second room, a sort of parlor room, and that its theme was “poodles.” And I could go there to get grounded, to not lose sight of where I came from and who I am. To think about how devastating my body image is, how I miss Katie, how fantastic I might look in a tight white sweater, if you’d let me! Oh if you would let me. Like you were ever even around when everyone was saying to “Imagine Sisyphus happy,” let alone present. I was in my room writing my name in cursive. I worked so hard for so many years, crafting and re-crafting my signature, all its intricate pleats and loops.
I awoke not in the Uruk I knew, but in an Uruk infiltrated by giant slugs. They rested giddy and smooth under the gillyflowers, blue-veined and tumored, as though they had always been there, as though they had always belonged.Initially it didn’t seem like much of a jam. We’d surpassed snail infestations, and if these large sluggards were heftier than those little gems, what of it? Ghastly gastropods of magnitude, periwinkles of power, extraordinary examples of the terrestrial genre Limax, as big as tall outdoors, they demanded an adjective appropriate to their style. They were larger than lunchboxes, bigger than pickpockets, more sizable than bulls—but surely we’d uncover new cures, a means to erase them, by echoing the old. We girdled our swords and bum-rushed the trespassing bulky bully mollusks.
But in less than one hour our lithe scorn gave way to soft moans: the giant slugs were unfazed. They giggled at the hits of our cruelest sword stabs, techniques I’d seen dispatch gibbons, giraffes, Gila monsters. Vinegar knives couldn’t bury them. The giant slugs were gifted with a thick, gingham skin, more resilient than gingerbread and gilded in a sludgy rosin that swiftly corroded our finest steel. Slurs had even less effect. Was our city inept? It sagged. The giant slugs fouled sluices and vital waterways; they obstructed any amigo running errands.
Rumors gushed: my father the king would make earl whoever outwitted the oversized amoebae. (Earls were entitled to highly-prized heaping tithes of licorice rice cakes.) The big names hatched plans, colluding to use an ooze or an oiled Uzi. One general argued for hitting the slugs dead center with a big bomb, a giant explosive designed to leave the putrid things puking. Another favored infecting these rivaling new arrivals with Wild River Virus, retrieved long ago by divers and since then kept incubated in their livers. “It’s wickedly potent,” the soldier intoned. “Rest assured, there will be no survivors.” But my father dismissed these overeager suggestions; he ruled out these measures as too extreme.
I stayed up late to eavesdrop, concealed underneath the massive war table, my shins curled below my knees, listening to these grizzled veterans hash it out. Slowly, unknowingly, they surrendered, old souls grunting ugh, refusing to accept the gaunt slog inevitably before us, all a-bustle but butting their heads like Slue-Foot Sue, sure to come to the same sad conclusion. They debated solutions till glassy-eyed. “Let’s lob at them our glass grenades,” one hawkish commander suggested. But he granted, under duress, that if the creatures’ skins didn’t break, then the shattering glass would get into all of our nice things. “What if we hired those nomadic giants to come in and carry them off?” went another pro’s position. But the negative answer came swiftly: the giants, a fiery clan, were engrossed in their own political struggles, slugging succession claims out.
During this furious fruitless business, the execrable giant slugs couldn’t be made to budge. Their thick, bulging presence annoyed us. Any act, however pleasant, soured when conducted in their shadow. Basil sodas turned to Tab. Teens who before had so eagerly nipped at one another’s lips refused to neck. Younger children who’d delighted in spying on necking siblings sulked and tied knots in their parents’ cabana packs.
More hideous peaks followed; negative energy gathered and rammed our gates. The giant slugs slowly tore our city asunder. The sight of their thick gluey feelers distressed the robins in Warka’s historic orchard; thus ulcered, the songbirds starved and fell from their perches, their signature red breasts belly-up. Without the robins around, our hedge maze was overrun by crickets, which ate all our herbs. Without our herbs, time dragged; we couldn’t bother to make guacamole or grate melting cheese. Our unused nachos rotted. Without nachos our shins looked chubby, our idle hands ached, and we succumbed to stupid tantrums. And yet we found no assassin or ally or avatar to boss around and order out giant slugs.
Stuck in a last ditch, seeing his resort’s demise, his go-to locale’s transformation into a ghost town, my father pitted his ultimate Hail Mary scheme against those obscene pituitary cases: a hecatomb. Atari, he assured us, had asserted once to him that this sacrificial expenditure would never go unanswered, but—guaranteed—would secure her righteous wrath, directed against invaders, multiplied a hundredfold for every moocow slaughtered.
Despite my mother’s protest, we dispersed our herd throughout Uruk, heifer and maverick alike, every springer and stirk. At every corner, a child, hand aquiver, laid a silver knife to the neck of a docile ruminant, our beloved unsuspecting cud-chewing Bessies and Mabels, the animals most sacred to Atari. All shushed.
At last the signal went up. My father shouted “Shazam!” and clapped, the executive order motivating the mass execution.
One hundred jets of bovine blood, torrents of flaming beef gore, sloshed into streets, overflowing the gutters, a torrid rainfall—but to no avail. When the bloodlust cleared, the giant slugs still sat still, silent, reproving and unmoved.
After that we had no choice but to flee, to strike out toward a fortune unknown in the distant icy south. To stay risked the taint of economic failure. Spitting our disgust and cursing, we crammed our camions with jars of terra cotta, and tied sacks of damask to our few remaining mules. (The majority of our pack had flown on the first day of the incursion.) The robins’ cremains we left behind in urns, an urgent warning to any who’d dock at what was no longer Mighty Uruk of the Proud Walls, but the City of Giant Slugs.
Beaten-down goons in strapless broken clogs, we got ready to go. Mounted, we mobilized and gloomily moved out, trudging the paved path that twisted away from our once-neat, once-comfortable home.
Where the asphalt ended, we rounded a pebbly bend. My decrepit mule, bloodshot and weak-ankled, stumbled. I turned back too late for a final look at the walls.
Grey Light. Bare interior. Armchair on castors. Brief tableau.Clov gets down; he gets down, he gets down, he gets down. Brief laugh. Brief laugh. He gets down, he gets down, he gets down. Finished, it's finished, nearly finished. He gets down, he gets down. Nice dimensions, nice proportions. My Mother? (Pause.) My dog? (Pause.) He yawns. (He yawns.) What dreams! Those forests! I hesitate. I hesitate. He gets down, he gets down. What time is it? Did you ever see my eyes? Pulling back the lids? What time is it?
You feel normal? (Pause.) All life long the same questions, the same answers. I’ll go and get the sheet. Forgive me. (Pause, coldly.) Forgive me. Have you bled? But can you move? Why don’t you kill me?
I never had a bicycle. I crawled at your feet.
You inspected my paupers. In your kitchen?
Exit Clov. Enter Clov. Give him a biscuit. I’m back again with the biscuit. (fingers it, sniffs it) If age but knew. True. He sniffs it. I don’t feel. Nor I. Nor I. Nor I. (after reflection) There is no more nature. But we breathe, we bloom. In your kitchen? Naked bodies? I see my light dying. Your light dying! Listen to that! Your seeds. Are they sprouting? They aren’t sprouting? What fun. (Pause. Louder.) At the end of the day. At the end of the day. Looks like it.
Ever since I was whelped, ever since. Get out. (Pause. Louder.) Lace cap. Very white. Kiss me, my pet. Day after day. Kiss me. I’ve lost me tooth. Don’t say that. Do you remember—. Don’t say that. When we lost our—. Don’t say that. Do you want to go?
Has he changed your sawdust, your sand? It was sawdust once. Now it is sand. Three quarters. (Pause.) Talk softer. (Pause.) If I could sleep I might make love. I might go into the woods. (Pause.) Nature! Laugh. Why must you always laugh? In his head, a heart. There is dripping.
Nagg. Nell. Nagg. Nell. Nagg. Nell. I am going to leave you.
(Pause.) Where? (Pause.)
What hollow?
It’s not funny. It was deep, deep. Makes me happy. HAPPY! My story. (Pause.) My story of engagement makes me happy. So white. So clean. Let me tell it.
Look—my trousers—
The bluebells are blowing and he ballockses the buttonholes. Goddamn you to hell, Sir, goddamn you to hell. (disdainful gesture, disgustedly) pause. My TROUSERS!
Silence! Silence! Clear away this muck. What blather. What blather.
Clov. Hamm. Clov. Hamm. Clov. Hamm. Clov. I’ll go get the catheter. (with alacrity) He goes towards the door. It’s a lie. Why do you lie to me? Take away your hand. Hell. Hell beyond. There, do you hear it? The wall. The hollow. Stop! Stop! Am I right in the center? I’ll measure.
If I could kill him I’d die happy. (Pause.) What’s the weather like? With the glass? Of the glass. With the glass? Of the glass. With the glass? Get the glass. Why? I don’t like that. I don’t like that. Exit Clov. Enter Clov. Telescope. He gets up. He gets down. Telescope.
(after reflection) A multitude. A magnifier. Nor I. Zero and zero and zero. All is…all is…all is. Well? Content? Look at the ocean. What? A snail? A fin? The waves. The waves? How could they be? And the sun? Zero. Zero? Gray. Light black from pole to pole.
Are we beginning to mean something? Mean something? You and I, mean something? (Brief Laugh.)
Brief Laugh. Mean something.
A flea. A flea. This is awful. We mean something. Get the powder.
God forbid other mammals. Tomorrow I’ll be gone forever. Wait! Sharks!
Bad. (Pause.) Bad.
How are your legs? A little bit of grit. It’s not certain. Why don’t you finish? I couldn’t finish. You want to leave us? To leave us? You want to leave us? I’ll leave you. Do you remember?
All life long the same questions, the same answers.
But for me no father, no home. My dog. Go get him. He lacks a leg. He lacks a leg. Go get him. There are so many terrible things. Whistle and kiss me goodbye.
The whole place stinks of corpses. To hell with the universe.
Have an idea. A bright idea. Is it not time for my painkiller? My painkiller? I need my painkiller. He’s asleep. Wake him. He wants a sugar plum. Give him a sugar plum. It’s a deal.
Scoundrel! Why did you engender me? It’s finished. (Pause.) We’re finished. (Pause.) Splash, splash, a little artery. No, no, don’t look at me. Don’t look at me. It was a glorious day down among the dead – a howling day – a day. Corn, yes? I have corn. (Narrative tone.) Corn? Yes. I have corn. Ideal weather, for my lumbago.
Deep in sleep. Three whole days. Sufficient. Unless I bring in other characters. Silence! In silence! Where are your manners? Sweet damn all. What hope. The bastard. Not yet. The bastard. One must live with the times. Order! I love order. It’s my dream under the last dust.
Tramp! Tramp! The dialogue. Who? What? Who? Keep going, can’t you, keep going? The light under the window. I knew it. I knew it. The light. Am I very white? Of sunshine. Of sunshine. Open the—I want to see the—open the—I want to hear the. What month are we?
Father! Father! Father! Father! Father! Father! Father!
The dead go fast. Kiss me. Kiss me. I was never there. Do you have the glass? Give me the glass. Quiet! Give me the dog. Give me the dog. Put me in my coffin.
Nothing... nothing... good... good... nothing...
This is what we call making an exit.
My lines keep falling through the false floor. We pick ourselvesup, one by one, plucking the green from the pine. Some feathers
are as sharp as needles; others open their tips—in reverse.
There was a keyshop on the corner of main and mimic. You would
visit at regular intervals, describing the treetops. You kept telling a
story about when you lost your substitute for writing. Something
doubled as an enchanted lake.
I/was/raining like
Quick bursts of tears. The tears surrounded me like feathers. In
their abundances they looked like clouds. You were kind and built
a tributary. We ushered my tears into the lake. Yet even years later
they felt out of place among the plant life.
It is true that in a sense I have been overly concerned with the
behavior of waves. I am constantly trying to retain my basic tear-
drop shape.
She lives in one of the crystal petals of the constellation.
In a wing she called starfish.
And in the multiple arms, or bodies when her eyes were open, along with all the others of the stone sea.
The sky, a hundred mirrors, sets once every ten days until the eleventh day when it grows. The waves came in lost languages.
The starfish looked like a country.
The official version omitted everything that didn’t glow.
She lives on the borderland, which is itself one of the feathers on the wing; she uses the pink most frequently but also the indigo and the dreaming blue.
The collar bone is always made from the most delicate shells, having been collected from long walks holding hands in the novel.
She enjoys pockets of creature comforts, handmade shawls made from unspeakable patterns back when the costume designers were open for business.
Every wall is decorated with her favorite planet.
The planets spin between worlds as ghosts.
The wing is spinning on someone else’s wall; everything but her favorite planet dissolves.
Nothing is impermanent, so when she wakes, the planets wake, too.
The sun moves easily through the stone sea; it flies assuredly through the mirror sky.
It hovers over golden skyscrapers. The people drop pearls from their eyes.
She picks up the pearls and drives to the sea, where she tries to skip them like rocks.
They roll in her hands, collapse into the waves, get caught in the crevices, vanish down impossible fissures…
Eventually they coalesce under the water in luminous patches.
After several months people go to look for their pearls. They begin with day trips but eventually stay overnight in the undersea reefs.
Each person is an explorer.
Innumerable discoveries are made.
Some discoveries are made into lockets.
Some prompt people to move.
Some discoveries heal the passage of time, but then another discovery is made and time is thought to be without passage. Thoughts require healing.
Some discoveries take years to accept.
Some are immediately forgotten.
Some are offered to friends as something else.
Some are only visible above the sea.
Some discoveries exist for just a moment.
Some make exploring easier, faster, more fulfilling.
Some can be whatever you want.
I am reading one now.
you've seen my ideas for a planet without PROFIT, you've gone through the manifesto that talks about returning power over this planet to the people, but what's the ultimate aim for FREE PLANET?you're not gonna believe this - and it's so obvious even I'm excited about it.
THE ULTIMATE GALACTIC TOURIST DESTINATION.
I want Free Planet (this which we now call Earth) to be the most seductive, the most beautiful, the most inviting, the most friendly place IN THE GALAXY. Simple as that. I want ALL SEVEN BILLION HUMAN BEINGS to share in the love of this planet and the faithful upkeep of its heritage. I want the corporations to be disbanded and the governments to be dissolved and intellectual property rights to be returned to the people so that Great Thinkers of this world can be liberated from the threat of assassination to find REAL SOLUTIONS to our living on a dangerous world where we'll have to adapt to galactic change at a moment's notice.
I want 'floating housing'.
I want 'hydroponic larders'.
I want 'energy fields' to protect the hovering inhabitants from any natural catastrophe that occurs on a GROWING EARTH but I also want the planet below to undergo a phase of rewilding, of re-diversification of the landscape from industrial farming (disease ridden) hell back to proper forestation, plants and livestock.
I want us to ban all fishing and animal slaughter in the name of Consumerism, and also for us to QUIT RUTTING already, for an agreed number of years while the rewilding takes place -- balance must be restored on this insane slave farm.
I want visitors from all over the Galaxy to SHARE with us their technology, their ideas, their morals so that we can have the opportunity to join with our brothers and sisters from other star systems in the Great Migration into the stars.
But most of all, I want to be PROUD to live on Free Planet - I want to say, "I made this the best damn place in the Galaxy. Beat that, Arcturas."
Septicaemia of bleach, bleach of supposition,Dragon pontificating, playing with one paw on the sea creature,
a mud pile – he is mud and to be played with – a phallus with a light
from which the overman extracts pollen. Tassles don't make a cape,
the cake a last resort, mud chocolate, we wallow in past tenses. Feline
wisdom draws bleak birches of the underwater, which is a long way down.
And parsing the spine finds meat. Always the guts go away. And then,
like a shower of toads, or Tom-Cruise-Realism, Dragon marinates the sea
creature in gut-fluid, or petroleum. Sashimi feasts dabble with death
from which there is no easy gill. Sometimes I have to help Dragon with
a knife, running it along what feels like a jaw, but is also a cranium. Mostly
ripping though; this is the deft hand of the Arranger, who can discover deserts.
The guts of a sea creature are the same as its head. Except more efflorescent.
Arranged, the entrails are burgeoning glass, then crystal, then natural gas and then
petroleum. They simply don't know fire. Dragon, with it at disposal, can recycle
every supposition into warm water, which is bleach diluted, which is a tender
throat that swallows all of this. I believe this ocean-home. There is no more
perilous a going-under. We make burrows of bowels and he is eating lamb again.
Flushing the wound, the joint, the lesion, the bare bone, the spine,
the bowel, the naked beach, the contusion, the cavity, the bleach, the empty
pot, the rubber washer, the lost memo, the shedded skin. Besides, I met the 60th
storey-teller from Eureka and he's a radiologist. He's got an x-ray of our man leaping.
In the video the narrative imitates a typical American sitcom, but the artsy twist here is that it’s shot in various IKEA stores, without staff permission. Complete with punchy theme music, outifts that coordinate with the showroom sets, and dialogue that centers around the value of money and family, the video is a hilarious performance piece. Rather than commercial breaks to cut up the action, scenes take place in different showroom sets, sometimes in an entirely different store. The transition between spaces reminds one of Borges, the family chatter going on in kitchens folded into other kitchens. When a certain action (dishwashing, showering, watching a porn flick) can’t be performed in the store, sound editing fills in. IKEA showroom set as narrative constraint–brilliant! Watching the family perform their lives just like the showrooms perform perfect and desirable furniture sets produces that delicious familiar/strange feeling, and leaves you wanting to run to your local IKEA store with a video camera and a script.
This is explained by synchromystic blogger, Jake Kotze, who uses synchronicities between his own life and pop culture as the guide towards unveiling the otherworldly mystery and joy embedded in television shows, Hollywood movies, and mainstream musicPerhaps the ability and willingness to be a DJ/designer of the one's own reality is a hallmark of a new, more enlightened age? Individual awakenings on a mass scale are a new form of living, breathing art – a social sculpture and sound collage of the spirit that’s shared in the form of viral videos, links, pictures, text messages and TVs. Synergistic “accidents” and synchronicities are helping spread the metaphor that I think best captures both the content and form of this renaissance: the universe as feedback. In true DJ style, I’ve sampled this idea and dropped it into the context of current events, the internet and social media. I’ve used feedback as my guide to explore remixed notions of identity, copyright, and friendship.
there is also disappearance, contagion, military murder, telekinetic fire, hurricane, catastrophic subsidence, infant death, mutation, being eaten by animals, oceanic evaporation, suicide, glutinous rain, quicksand topographies made of mud, sky lesions, a massive wall overtaking the earth and total flooding of the landscape... Far from an escape into some sort of monumentalism of destruction, this anti-realistic concentration of ruin perfectly zeroes in on our inveterate inability to actually picture the end, to consider its lobster. It’s in this act then that the true momentous dismay and oppressive compulsion to want to avoid disaster that the inevitability of apocalypse should spirit into us (but doesn’t) is recuperated in the form of an apocalypse of such total immensity it could never come telling us that we risk facing not the impossible but the all too possible.
leave Buddha alone? We make Buddha ride an elephant like the way a village boy rides on a man’s shoulder, and we let Buddha run and play, then make him cry, and we make him couple blissfully with a buttery woman and call it Tantra, but then we make him smile by himself in emptiness, make him sit, lie down, make him be born from the waist, then teach him how to walk right away, and we question him when he lies down to sleep You said this and that didn’t you? and we braid his fingers, cut off his nose and swallow it down with water, then dress him in gold, but then we cut his throat and sell his head at a store in Insadong, and we lock him up inside a cave on top of a mountain, and as if that weren’t enough we keep him inside a rock, starve him, paint his skin gold so that he can’t even breathe, have him stand far away on top of a mountain and caress him slowly as we approach him by boat, and beneath his feet we beg him to beat us up. Why can’t we leave him alone? We build a house on a cliff overlooking a blue river and lock him up, and a bunch of us go together to gawk at him. We pummel him, crush him, and push him over, then we come home and write a letter of apology in blood from our pierced fingers, and we pull his teeth and divide them up into numerous pouches and give them out to the whole world, and why do we go near him and bow on our knees till they are raw and look once into his eyes then return home with our downcast faces?
Where am I? Where is the key? I gave it to you. What’s wrong with me? Do you know what whores do? Yes, they fuck. I’ll tell you what I want. Fine.
I have been thinking about the love-hat relationship.
It is the relationship based on love of one another's hats.
The problem with the love-hat relationship is that it is superficial.
You don't necessarily even know the other person.
Also it is too dependent on whether the other person
is even wearing the favored hat. We all enjoy hats,
but they're not something to build an entire relationship on.
My advice to young people is to like hats but not love them.
Try having like-hat relationships with one another.
See if you can find something interesting about
the personality of the person whose hat you like
WORLD POETRY PROJECTIONS
2010 12,385,825,000 poems
2025 14,963,017,000 poems
2050 15,365,924,000 poems
2525 29,809,397,000 poems
First there’s the warmth. Then comes dreaming, a subject
It is the relationship based on love of one another's hats.
The problem with the love-hat relationship is that it is superficial.
You don't necessarily even know the other person.
Also it is too dependent on whether the other person
is even wearing the favored hat. We all enjoy hats,
but they're not something to build an entire relationship on.
My advice to young people is to like hats but not love them.
Try having like-hat relationships with one another.
See if you can find something interesting about
the personality of the person whose hat you like
WORLD POETRY PROJECTIONS2010 12,385,825,000 poems
2025 14,963,017,000 poems
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First there’s the warmth. Then comes dreaming, a subjectOften measured by men with calculators, although it has no dimensions.
“Suggested reading: The other two Psycho Problems
fanfics.”
Then there seems to be a period of bemusement
At stuff lying on or near the bed, then hope, a few moments
Of terror, after which, silence.
It was silence that befuddled even Zarathustra, who stormed
Out of the beyond, her arms full of mixed books and greens —
God help us!
“I really have no idea what possessed me to write
another Psycho Problems fanfic.”
This happened to me once when I was having sex with Lucy.
She shouted, “Hey Jerry. These motherfuckers are annoying me.”
She was clearly asleep. I thought it might be a night terror,
So I looked it up on the web.
Deep, dimensionless dreams, wherefore art thou? From whence
Do you usher, what distant and
“I claim only Jade. The rest belong to Haim Saban.”
You bore me. So be it.
I bore you and enjoy doing it.
Let us learn to bore each other
Without worrying about it.
You act all shy around me,
and that’s you prerogative.
If I act shy around you,
it’s because you’re pretty
and I want to kiss you.
I wish I were Canadian.
If I were Canadian,
I could be boring and
get away with it. You’d say,
This man is from Canada.
He bores me. He acts shy.
He wants to kiss me.
And you would let me
kiss you not only on the lips
but on the cheek, neck,
shoulder; belly, maybe?
Because I would be Canadian
and have scruffy hair
and big eyes. But alas,
you bore me, too. You
act like you’re from Michigan.
two women lean out a window
one glows like a planet
and one is not glowing
just casting a long shadow
on the brick
I’d be a rich man if I could seize the molecules that skate my eyes in this infected light.
Mom was out getting a pedicure. The last time she’d got light, light blue. It was like the sky was in there.
One time I got back to find plastic forks and bits of cake on colorful paper plates around the tree in my yard. It was a bendy palm. The yard was minuscule. The tree went up and up.
Turn this city upside down, and I swear that the clouds will find a way to support it.
I was going to lay off those years for a change, but here were people in what might have been asking attitudes, and from the whole of what I might have told them, I said only that in me they had yet another girl who had gone as far as she could get in life without somebody else’s body to back her up, but I for one had at least come early into the sense, thank goodness, to keep a book open in front of me at all times, a heavyweight paperback I was not so much reading as working a different, less stable shape onto, putting leisurely violences into the turning of pages so that when I was through with a book it was a lopsided thing, something far atilt that could be pointed to, publicly, as an example of someone’s having stuck something out, and then one morning I fed myself far enough into the population, thumbing people, citizenry, aside, until I came to a like-sized, schoolworn girl doing just such pointing, a girl a little unpretty but with a heart dangerously in use behind the buttony blouse, and the way the two of us instantly took to each other gave us a leg up on marriage—we each set out hours for the other to fill with just shy breathing, pinned hopes to the ribbonry we hung wherever there were bulks of hair further discoverable upon us, feigned a unisonal swoon whenever a forearm of either one of us was by chance drawn forward finally against the unsleeved upper arm to produce, at the shadow-lined seam, a mouth, surely, an unbiting mouth which, were it to break into a murmur, would let everything between us be a lesson to us—for what most of what any two people of that age together might do (we were each, you see, a drowned-out, undominant twenty-three), most of what they manage in the way of carrying forward the loveliness in each other, was in sorry, well-known fact addressed to, aimed at, an unseen and unknown but counted-on third party (it was the only progress we could see a point to), and the girl and I were now looking to each other for a glimpse of who that person might turn out to be; and for me, soon enough, it was a man I was sitting only a handbreath away from on a bus, a thick-mouthed man in need of an underling right away, who led me from the bus and down an off-cutting street and into a dark-ceilinged building where he showed me to the plasticized outercoat I was to wear while doing the rudimentary cabinet chemistry itself; and that should have been the extent of things, but the man brought me home to say hello to the sister he lived with, a woman bearing victorious versions of the man’s off-sloping chin, his wide-set nostrils, his gristly ears, and two of them, brother and blinking sister both, were pounding away from their forties under one roof with only a shared kitchen between them, the sister a little more under the weather, hoarse, watery of eye; and in no time the sister and I were impartible, and even though there was a voice she used solely on her brother (a sharp, finite voice that put things straight up into the falsifying affirmative whenever he asked if she was all settled in for the night), and a different voice altogether for persons who brought things to the door (this one bracing, salutatious), she had further voice reserved uniquely for me, a duplexity of voice, complex in address, which might have sounded, up top, to be saying only “He pushes you too hard” or “I should see to supper,” but which, if you went straight to what was lowermost in it, was saying, “Catch my cold, get yourself knocked up by the snot of it, feel it fill you roundly out, carry it round inside of you, bring the thing to term, blow out a mucousy umbilical thing, be sure to have saved every sluttery tissue, because I am going to come to you in demand”; and it was long afterward that she packed the brother off to a faraway bachelorship so the two of us could pass some agreeable, willinghearted months as a close-set couple, keeping each other looking looked-after, building the world up with our home truths and sore points, ready-handed, for instance, in our agreement that a man was just a frame from which a single useworthy but renounceable thing was suspended; she let out the prediction that we would be turning up eternally in each other’s endearances in new, unprompted, uncurbable ways; and then one night after some errands had removed her from the house for a run of days, she began wondering aloud whether our intimateness, agreeable as it might still seem, was in fact just a fluke accord of matching dank genitalia, whether the worst of life in fact gets its start when you’re attaching feelings not to other persons but to feelings those persons have already put out of themselves, whether I had not yet come into the discovery that if only one truly knew what one was doing with one’s eyes, people didn’t actually look like what they looked like, men of course above all.
The doctor recommended I drink more water. And more sunlight on your face, he said. He wrote instructions on his prescription pad and handed me the torn paper. How can I trust a doctor that stands on the ceiling? I said. I’m not on the ceiling, he said. Your posture is drooping, like this wilting flower. The flower in his shirt pocket looked fine to me but I kept quiet.
When I got home my wife read the doctor’s note and had me stand in a fresh bath. She mixed in crushed Tylenol and within minutes the ceramic under my heels felt like marshmallow. Then she decorated the bathroom in floral scented plug-ins, tea candles, and hand towels meant just for show. I love our house, she said. Don’t you love our house? You’re not walking on the ceiling, I said. She put the toilet seat lid down and sat. I taped the broom handle to your spine to help straighten you out, she said. Don’t you remember? No, I said.
She rose and drained the remaining bath water and led me outside by the hand to a square of loose dirt and buried my feet. My toes explored the ground beneath. I could tell they liked being down there, in the moist darkness. I looked up into the sun and a red hibiscus bloomed from my left palm.
My wife was decorating the patio, sling chairs with a small glass table between. When I’m better, I said, we’ll start trying again. She came forward and placed her hands on my chest. I feel good about the next time, she said. I plucked the hibiscus from my palm and put it on her ear. The sun pulsed like a camera flash, then returned to normal.
His wife dies, mouth slightly parted and one eye open. He knocks on his younger daughter's bedroom door and says "You better come. Mom seems to be expiring." His wife slips into a coma three days after she comes home and stays in it for eleven days. They have a little party second day she's home: Nova Scotia salmon, chocolates, a risotto he made, brie cheese, champagne. An ambulette brings his wife home. She says to him "Wheel me around the garden before I go to bed for the last time." His wife refuses the feeding tube the doctors want to put in her and insists she wants to die at home. She says "I don't want any more life support, fluid or food." He calls 911 for the fourth time in two years and tells the dispatcher "My wife; I'm sure she has pneumonia again." His wife has a trach put in. "When will it come out?" she says, and the doctor says "To be honest? Never." "Your wife has a very bad case of pneumonia," the doctor tells him and his daughters the first time, "and has a one to two percent chance of surviving." His wife now uses a wheelchair. His wife now uses a motor cart. His wife now uses a walker with wheels. His wife now uses a walker. His wife has to use a cane. His wife’s diagnosed with MS. His wife has trouble walking. His wife gives birth to their second daughter. "This time you didn't cry," she says, and he says "I'm just as happy, though." His wife says to him "Something's wrong with my eyes." His wife gives birth to their daughter. The obstetrician says "I've never seen a father cry in the birthing room." The rabbi pronounces them man and wife and he bursts out crying. "Let's get married," he says to her, and she says "It's all right with me," and he starts crying. "What a reaction," she says, and he says "I'm so happy, so happy," and she hugs him and says "So am I." She calls and says "How are you? Do you want to meet and talk?" She drops him off in front of his building and says "It's just not working." He meets a woman at a party. They talk for a long time. She has to leave the party to go to a concert. He gets her phone number and says "I'll call you tomorrow," and she says "I'd like that." He says goodbye to her at the door and shakes her hand. After she leaves he thinks "That woman's going to be my wife."
Blackbirds and moths formed the front yard. The trees uprooted, clogged with ropes of smoke. Mother was out there somewhere. We’d been waiting for forever. I’d bit the inside of my lip so hard the blood warmed the short shaft of my throat. My stomach eating my other parts. No more food in cans. The faucet cragged so fat with insects the water wouldn’t even drip. Something moving on the roof. In the air vents, some kind of shouting, perhaps from children trying to crawl their way in. We’d pried the nails out of the sofa to seal the windows. We’d wrapped each other’s heads in veils. Father hung still from the ceiling. The rot covered the alcohol on his breath. He’d missed the dirt come down like raining. He’d missed the worms spurting from our ears. The ruin was inside us also. Scars all up my forearms. Larvae in my hair. My teeth ached. And deeper, in my organs, something else I couldn’t put a name to. Other eyes behind my eyes. Something watching me. Something everywhere. The house groaned from the weight. Mother was coming back still, I could feel it. I’d wait for her before I bit my skin again. I’d wait to see if she found food. If not, I’d make her listen. I’d kiss the blood into her mouth. We’d wait longer. The sores would cease, or they would not. The house would one day bend.
I will put tape over your mouth and bang your head against the wall.
This is the perfect moment entering the perfect idea and vice versa.
Videotape your face and let it watch over you as you sleep. Horrify yourself.
Draw a picture of yourself and eat it.
I don't want to own anything.
I am lifting rocks to find a friend.
Don't let culture lay a finger on you.
Your skull looks cold.
Let me put my lips against your skull. Let me make it warm.
The girl doing a cartwheel in the field across the street just turned the world upside down.
I don't envy anyone.
Welcome in the mind that kills you. Kill your creation while steam still circles.
I have not taught you anything.
In the beginning there was a dingbat
who cut the durian sky in half.
The beginning stunk like corpsefoot.
The beginning was a foolish place to start.
There were also 54 leopards
split down the middle
and splayed wet over the cooling earth.
Memory of early ground
drove them to live in trees.
The pressure of having bodies
was enough to melt the iron
in everyone's chest.
Cats invented wings for birds,
pitying their skinny legs.
There are still enough of them on earth
to make a gumbo of beginnings.
The first child grew from a pit.
PEACH SEED TOSSED INTO HOLE
GROWS ARMS AND LEGS,
Genesis Weekly printed Thursday.
MAN EVOLVES FROM HOMONYM,
countered The Daily Bang.
Pity they didn't send poets to the moon.
There are lunar surfaces
that look like flounders from earth.
Plato didn't want poets in his republic,
not because we imitate truth,
but because we are most susceptible
to daemonic influence. Milosz's
invisible guest comes in and out at will.
Hire a poet, end up with a golem.
The only place we ever end up
is the beginning. The only place
we ever end up is the beginning.
All the hours we're awake or sleeping. They are illustrious. They are legendary. Dancing will get you everywhere. So will a megaphone. Matt Hart burns dear radiation in every line, every word, & The Hours is so motorcycle you might want to get naked. Beware: you may find yourself moonstomping in your sleep. Verse! Chorus! Crescendo! Read with headphones on & "Someday you should see gravity."
With the coming of the books came the story of the first woman, how it was from her body that these many shapes rushed forth. Not just the monsters, but also the domesticated animals, the cat and the dog, all the beasts of this forest which were then just beasts. Now we have pushed them back into these shapes, all sprung from the shape of the first. Now for the promise of one we drive all these others away, or else return them to the sea. This is what we have agreed to, and this is what I alone may still intend.
The students all wrote about car accidents. One by one, two at a time, sometimes whole vehicles at once -- packed as if with circus clowns -- the students killed off their parents, siblings, friends and lovers. Some, they decapitated. Some bled out. Some were made to suffer for years on lumpy suburban hospital beds in comas as even their most dutiful chums said "fuck it" and swapped strained afternoon visits for boyfriends or Wii tennis or new water bongs packed with hydroponically grown pot.
Otherwise disparate, the students narratives invariably contained cars crashing into banks or shopping malls, splashing into lakes or flying from sheer, dun-colored cliffs a la Thelma and Louise. Stolen Chevys burned through the night in bad parts of town like wounded flares. Low slung convertibles raced toward long planned dream weddings that would never end in ugly custody battles or serial infidelities or acrimonious divorce and were then unceremoniously T-boned by geriatric hog farmers with sclerotic livers and no time for love.
Putting pen to paper, the students gained the power of life and death, and not unlike most creators, their first instinct in creating drama was to destroy. A need for easy calamity compelled them to snap the necks of the universes they fashioned -- like Yahweh charring Gomorrah to cinders in a fit of eschatological pique -- as if there could be no certainty of their power to create until they saw unequivocally their ability to leave things in ruins, twisted metal smoldering on the side of the road.
Having abandoned her husband in the beer aisle, she places her youngest in the upper section of the cart with the bread and eggs. His legs stick out from beneath the handle. Her oldest squats in the main compartment, pulling items off the shelf until he's half covered in cookies and cereal. At the dairy cooler, she weights the oldest's arms with milk. "Faster," the youngest says, kicking her. She pins his legs down with two cartons of yogurt, then pushes the cart. The right front wheel squeaks incessantly. Hands pull cans from shelves, making a trail along the floor. She is almost done, her children nearly buried in string beans and sweet corn. The end-cap advertises a special on cream of mushroom. She tips a can into the cart, then another, and another, as shoppers move past. Alone, she looks for a new cart.
Instructions on the Screen Door
Stop in your tracks. Have you washed the blood off of your body? On the porch is a hose and a towel. Get the blood off your fingers or at least from dripping. Bring no animals forth: that are not cleaned. Plastic bags are a dollar. Get the blood out of the animals. Kill all animals before entering with them. On the deck is a pump, on the gazebo a gun, the terrace, a knife. Cut out their tongues so as not to drag slime in. Leave the tongues in the watery barrel as pink pickles. Wad gauze at the top of the throat. There is gauze, whips, photography in the shed. If you don't after all want your dead animal in the bedroom (there is adrenalin in the bathroom, needles in the mudroom), or in the kitchen, or any uncarpeted place (not the foyer, not our quarters, not the library requiring carpet to hush the plum-topical books) or if you need gloves (the pantry) a mask (the attic, stacked in the umber center) or if you need help (the phone, the downstairs closet), there are personal knife lockers, but we don't have the Internet (figure it out, or ask us, by black button, the stairs), or if you are in need of psychological counsel that your animal does not give you, though your heart suckles on its unctuous eyes, though your mind takes the pill of its life, you may go to the root cellar, where there are onions.
#1. The Time He Hid The Words In The Footwell Of The Car
he knows that his wife knows. she can smell the adverbs on his tongue in the mornings. but he cannot get through another evening in that house without consonants. his daughter sits in her wardrobe dappling the edge of a razor along her inner arm; the tissues stain the toilet bowl pink. his son blows up airports and builds towns full of women with beachball breasts and men with wings covered in black boils. his wife stutters home from work with arms full of carrier bags and frowns at the tiles he spent all day gluing to the walls of the vestibule: red and blue roses with thorns as big as dragons' teeth. they are the wrong colour. he knows it. she keeps frowning. he says that he will go to the 24-hour hardware shop to get the right tiles and walks down the garden path swinging his keyring around his finger and whistling the theme tune from a TV programme and he drives his car around the block and parks under a sycamore which gently vomits leaves onto the roof and lies down on the back seat and reaches into the footwell and brings up handfuls of words and he closes his eyes and he swallows them.
#2. The Time He Hid The Words At The Back Of The Fridge
in the vegetable drawer. behind the onions. far enough past their best that no-one will pull them out for spag bol but not old enough to be binned. the words will be safe there, cushioned by the softening onions, silenced by their papery skins. he feigns deep breathing until the moon has settled above the skylight, then slips from under his wife's arm. standing pigeon-toed and bruise-kneed in the light from the fridge, his neck finally stops twitching. the words are waiting, cold as milk. when he reaches for the words he feels his heels already beginning to rise, already beginning to lift him higher, beginning to move him up up up. he turns away so that the moon is hidden behind next door's chimney. he lifts the words. he shudders to think how smooth the vowels will feel along his oesophagus. he swallows.
#3. The Time He Hid The Words In The Toes Of His Dress Shoes
it is getting more difficult. his arms are in slings after he fell off the roof trying to talk to the disappearing moon. his children will not hold his gaze. sometimes he gets up at dawn to go into the woods and take off all his clothes and wait to freeze, but he never makes it past the end of the road. when he gets home his hands shake too much to hold his morning coffee. he loves his children but they are not verbs. they are only pronouns and he is a fragment. he is surrounded by the dregs of words and no matter how many he swallows he cannot focus on the moon. he plants unsteady kisses on his family's foreheads. he climbs the stairs and crawls into his wardrobe. he lifts his shoes and stares at the sickly tangle of consonants. this is the last, he says, and he swallows.
The doctor told her not to open the box of her mother’s ashes: the ashes of the dead are fatal to the living. Nonsense, she thought: this is an old wives’ tale. So she opened the box and emptied the ashes into her mother’s fish pond because the fish had loved Mother. First, the fish died; then the rains came. The rains came furious fierce and drove the pond into the house and when she fled the house followed her till she was climbing the walls of the world. The house of water home of her dead mother destroyed everything in its wake, including The White House; swallowed the President while he was watching Survivors in Syria. It was too late to realize that doctors aren’t always wrong. Lightning struck her till she was nothing but ashes.
You could make it big in the field of waste extraction. Let’s face it: there’s lots of waste. Let’s stick our faces in it.
You’re probably already a pro with waste extraction techniques. All you would need is a tool belt and the ambition. You can construct your own tool belt from the parts scattered about your house. You can construct the ambition from parts available in the catalogue.
Do not be discouraged by your parents’ unsuccessful careers in waste extraction. They would drag themselves home each night, weary, frustrated, hungry, and scatter the contents of their tool belts about the house. The field has changed drastically since their day; you will not fail as they did. Computerized robots now handle the core of waste extraction.
This is not to say there is no room for humans in the workplace! More humans are needed, more humans than ever, to service these robots. The robots drag themselves home each night, weary, frustrated, hungry, scattering their parts about the house. Humans are needed to reassemble the robots. Humans are needed to console and hug the robots. Your experience as the child of waste extraction parents has made you a pro at consolation.
Now all the really big firms are paying really big money for people like you, people still children or child-like. The children and the child-like have, for the most part, largely disappeared: curious, they ventured near the robots and were crushed. New precautions prevent the new robots from crushing. Even the stupidest robots can now distinguish the children and the child-like from waste.
The money is really big, as are the benefits. The biggest benefit is the knowledge that you are helping others. At first, some smart people thought that humans would not want to help the robots, that humans would want to help only other humans. “The humans will let the robots go hang,” they confidently predicted. But the humans have not let the robots go hang. The humans enjoy helping robots just as much as they enjoy helping other humans. Now the smart people think humans simply enjoy helping. “I like being a part of it all,” an interviewed human says, her arms wrapped tightly around her robot.
This is, of course, obvious. This is, of course, common sense. The children and the child-like will often adopt inanimate objects as pets. The children and the child-like will often pretend for hours that rocks are their friends. The child will name the rock, will hug and kiss the rock, will announce her love for the rock. The child is genuinely upset to lose the rock, to learn that the parents, weary, frustrated, hungry, threw the rock into the waste bin. The child never forgives her parents. The child never forgives her parents. The child is glad to be given a robot to hug. The robot is glad to hug back.
John does not own a wall mirror. “Sorry,” he says “we can use each other’s eyes to know we are human, okay?” He does not believe in reflections.
There are drops of semen on my lips when he says he loves me for the first time, and tears. I do not dry them.
We woke up and could do magic. It was the latest epidemic on our Island of Epidemics. We disappeared into boxes and reappeared at friends’ houses, springing out of their closets. We hovered for seconds in the air before our feet touched down again. We shot sparks from fingers and they zigzagged across the sky like banners. We made ourselves bigger or smaller.
But then we discovered we weren’t magicians: we didn’t know how our tricks were done or how we did them. We disappeared and reappeared in closets, waiting for someone to change clothes. Our feet left the ground to our surprise. Our fingers burned with sparks and we couldn’t hide where we were. We made ourselves bigger or smaller.
The man in the hills who’d grown immune to our epidemics and couldn’t do magic shouted about the noise. We could hear his shouts echo off the hills. He could hear our exploding fingers. This made us keep pretending magic was the best epidemic.
Yet we opened gifts carefully, took cautious steps, pointed our fingers at the air, ignored our bodies.
When the epidemic passed and we got over magic we relearned how to live without expecting surprise. Then came the day we could laugh about the man in the hills who would never feel his veins hot with sparks, his bones lighter than air.
He shook the bag onto the table but something stayed inside. I had the feeling he wasn't telling me some things.
"What's in the bag?"
"What?"
Earlier we had watched a documentary about people who live in tunnels. One man had built a tunnel from his kitchen to a nearby country so that he could buy cigarettes and guns. He said that when he walked anywhere above ground, he imagined the thin ground falling in certain places, and dust.
We were inside a tiny Mexican restaurant finishing a meal. A man blew smoke out of two holes. The exhaust fan sounded like bagpipes.
We took the boat and were on the lake all day. The water had been frozen until recently and was still cold; if I put my hand under for long enough, my body would forget my hand.
I put my hand that my body had forgotten on his forehead. He was getting sick or the sky had not ever been that green, milk torn out of a leaf.
He asked for the aloe because he was being burned. As I passed him the aloe he let go of the oar. He slumped forward and I noticed that the moon was rising. I held the aloe toward the moon.
"I'm afraid," the doctor said, "He's very sick." I could see the moon through her window. Outside it wasn't dark, yet when I projected my life ten minutes into the future, it seemed dark and flat, like a screen after a movie based on someone else's life.
He was lying on a gurney somewhere in a room where he couldn't see the moon. The inside of his body was exposed to a technician, who in a different room watched him on a screen.
One time when he and I were having sex, I had tried to think of the inside of him. I thought of fluids being squeezed through tight, muscular cavities. It seemed crowded in there, and when I felt his body flex against me, like there was no space for me.
On the technician's screen, the inside of him looked like the entrance to a cave or a long hallway.
I'm afraid of him, I thought. I thought of us having sex that night and me falling into him, slipping into a space I would have to travel.
The doctor pressed her fingertips together, enclosing the space in front of her face. When she spoke, her voice seemed to come out of the space closed by her hands.
She said something about seeing. Would he lose his vision? "Wait," she said, "What am I forgetting?" She dropped her hands.
When I noticed that she was wearing a mood ring, I was able to open up.
I was telling him about himself. "The doctor said…"
He turned away from me so he faced a wall. We were in our bedroom. The petals on the flowers on the wallpaper seemed too thick. Every decorative thing seemed freakish now that he was sick, and everything looked decorative, a length of ribbon tied to a fan.
In a store that sold appliances, I had tried to think of one cell making copies of its walls. I thought of a tiny cell within that cell, and then a tinier cell within the tiny cell, all the way down. This illustrated why he was getting thinner. He was caving in.
I took our boat out every morning. Something in the water communicated something to the air so that the two remained separate, though mornings they were a little mixed together, and fog rippled below each stroke of my oar, and water collected in the part of my hair.
Summer got hotter. I could tell that I was getting stronger. Fish swam to the surface early in the morning, then darted down to where it was darker when the sun reflected on the water. Everything I looked at seemed to be hiding a lot of activity, as if what I saw were just outer walls. When I poked a fish floating belly-up with my oar, a smaller fish swam slowly out.
I rowed to what I thought was the center of the water. When I got there I thought, This must be the center, because I'd just had the idea to take off all of my clothes and sit on them to keep from getting splinters.
When I was naked, I thought, I'm probably the strongest I've ever been. The sun was bright and felt good on my skin.I was looking at the smoothness of a muscle in my forearm. Just then a fish leaped out of the water and over the front of my boat. I could see each scale, and I could also see the fish. I looked behind me. My boat had not gone anywhere but I had gone somewhere and come back.
"I caught a fish," I told him. After I'd gone to the center and back, I tied up the boat and put on my clothes, took out his fishing pole and lure and fished from the dock. It took a long time to lure a fish from the dark under the surface, exactly as much time as it had taken the sun to go from noon to behind the tall pines.
"What kind of fish is it," he asked. I could see him breathing. He wasn't wearing a shirt and his chest was pale and the skin at his neck fluttered like he was breathing through it.
"I don't know," I said. I held it up. It was dead, but when it was still moving I had grabbed it with my hands, though I didn't like how it felt to hold something that was fighting against me.
"It isn't a bass," he said, "But it's still big."
"Are you hungry?" I asked. He moved his mouth.
He had stopped eating but he was still moving his mouth. He had hardly eaten. His bones looked like a lashed-stick raft. A bird landed a short distance from our table.
On the table, pushed to an edge, was a pile of bills from the doctor.
"I'm afraid for you," I told him, "But also for myself."
He wanted to know what the doctor had told me on the phone. While she talked to me I looked out to the water because that was the biggest thing I could see; I wanted the water to cancel something out.
When I looked at the table my eyes went right to a knot in the wood. "I don't remember," I lied to him.
I looked up in time to see the bird carrying a bony spine in its beak. That was the last of our fish.
"I'm going to make us dessert," he said.
I waited a long time at the table, and then I walked down to the dock. I waited until the sky was completely dark, and then I walked back to the house.
He had scooped ice cream into bowls and the ice cream had melted. I felt one of the bowls and it wasn't cold. Everything had evened out. I didn't feel so strong. The light in the room was off. I heard his breath and felt something soft around my neck.
Pulling the woman’s body from the wreckage, they found her teeth had been removed. Her gums and tongue were scorched with symbols. The nails had been plucked out of her toes, each rimmed with bright blood that smelled like money and reflected the onlooker’s eyes. The woman’s pubic hair had been shaved bare, while under her arms the tufts were braided, adorned with tiny beads, inside which could be seen several very tiny cities, white buildings gripped inside the glass. On the woman’s head the hair was also white—almost reflective—though the skin that held her body in appeared so young. Her one tattoo, across the forehead, read, apparently, her name. The only other victim, a child of five among bystanders who witnessed the woman’s high-speed head-on veer into their church’s garden wall, had been struck dead not by the car itself but by the sound that had erupted from the crashing woman’s skull.
They climb in through her window, or when her parents are gone, they moonwalk and Roger Rabbit through her front door. They want to use toilets, bend swabs into their ears, wrap gauze around their faces and sink like they're punched into the leather of her couch. Punching buttons, opening doors, they ask, How many clocks? How many clocks do your parents need to own? And then they are surprised by how much time has passed since whenever. Since food, since fucking. Since last Saturday in Phoenix, since Sunday supper in the free kitchen, since someone recognized them as familiar.
She is in love with one of them. His friends are like his clothes: smelly, weirdly matted on one side, faded on the other from hanging out too long in sun in one position. She lets them all in when nobody's home. This is after school. During school, she fools everyone. They believe she wants to go to a good college.
Nobody wants us, they tell her. She lets them in, and in further, into her parents' bed, even. She wants the one she's in love with to see her bending forward over the counter in the kitchen, so she says, Let's make a cake!
K, whatever, they say, trailing their ripped pant legs after. They think she is like some Tinsel, an over-sweet drink they had once after an after-party that made everybody feel like they were made of plastic.
The one she is in love with plucks a sun fish from her mom's aquarium and makes its tiny lips move with his fingers, saying with his high-pitched voice pitched higher, I drive a Cadillac. Then he tosses it back in the tank. The fish swims in tighter and tighter circles, then sinks with its belly up.
She says, Doesn't matter, don't worry.
I'm going to major in History, she says when anyone adult asks her. They never ask. Pierced tongues, electrified hair, rangy in their glances, they appear outside her bedroom window and tap two times, three if she's sleeping, and mouth her name, making fog appear in halos around their faces.
Who are you, a new one asks her. She shrugs. She lets him in, lets them all come in. She says a name that hangs around her throat like music, the S the treble clef for ARAH. She still plays the flute in eleventh grade. She's quiet as air rising from a cake. The one she's in love with tells her, Get some balls. Her father is a golfer. Her parents have some money. She wants to hide this but doesn't know where to. She wears gold earrings; they wear safety pins. She shows them his clubs and poses. They seem bored. They pose on the couch in matching slouches.
They watch Mallrats on her mother's rug from India. They ask when her parents will leave the continent again. They put their heads in doors and say, Food, God, I'm hungry.
They are named after cities, after states where they say they came from or were born into: Coma, Tex, Gary, Cincinnati, Weed, Madison.
They ask her, Where were you born?
Money, one says. A kind of island.
Right there, she says, and points to the faint stain beside the love seat.
Love, they call her, What's it like to have money? What's it like to have a mattress, to have a golden name?
The one she's in love with stays late after the others have shuffled across the backyard, away under her old swing set. He writes his name in capitals on her arms in black Sharpie. She met him at her parents' yard sale; he and his friends came and broke an antique clock, said they were looking for cheap vinyl, named specific names she'd never heard off.
Next, she invited them inside.
Next, her parents were leaving on a twenty-day tour of other rich peoples' houses.
Next, the one she's in love with was a week without leaving, stealing from her parents with one hand in her back pocket. She was putting on her mother's lipstick, a color called Adored, Or Red.
Next, he and she were listening to "Modern Love" and fucking on a Persian rug really from Portland.
Next, Turn that fucking thing off, someone said when they got home.
I spill a bucket of small animals and all but the fish run away.
I think, I have to stop letting the world make such slippery handles.
The fish is dying of a gene named after you.
The manual says, "a germ-line mutation in the zinc-binding region of the metalloproteinase domain shows perinatal lethality."
I carry the fish looking for a bucket of water, which won't save it.
When you call me later, after the fish has died in my hands because I failed to find abucket in time for it to die in the water, you say you've never heard of this gene, which is responsible for killing .8 out of 10 fish spilled from buckets and that bears your name.
I say I thought you should be aware.
(Then I think, that was mean, but I don't say this, and then everything is too quiet.)
I was born to Gorbachev and Reagan in a houseboat in 1982
Now they are both dead but
Since the mid-90s I have been made of hood ornaments plucked from cars that crashed
on the Autobahn
People who seem to be choking are really trying to say my name
When I am famous I collapse on the street, which I call the Rue
My arm is a young model in Berlin & my leg is a hustler in Alabama
My head is configurable to be many more heads, including a large mansion where leaders await
a suddenly disappointing day
And I am judging you, too
I wanted to be more sincere but the economy said NO
EAT MORE
So I ate some pro-football
Now I have this headache medication
It makes me fall in love with air traffic controllers
This one shouts NINER in his sleep
I feel touchdowns inside me each time he lands a plane
I think I could be a travel writer
Or a sneeze shield at the dust buffet
But I don’t know
I am very hard to talk to because I have several thousand warring villages in my head
The wires inserted beneath the skin during the cinching and draining allow me to position the limbs of each body perpendicular to the ground. This accommodates the shadows that move across the outside wall of my room. The shadows are each cast from the trees at the brake of the garden. Before I purify the bodies, I sit for a time and watch. Later I will braid the hair from where it falls and cut each braid from the hank of its root. The garments I will burn after unpocketing any overlooked possessions. I will scalpel each face from its undercarriage and mark the feet of each body with my colors. I will carry or drag or swaddle each body into the garden for its final ungristling. These are my duties. These are my evening chores. But for now I allow myself this small and peaceful time. Here the breeze off the water is lively year round. The darkness allows the moon a weak but sufficient light. The shadows of unmoving hands and feet are made to interact with the moving shadows of the trees. This overlapping of stillness and motion lobs up images of climbing and swimming and dancing. Something drops from the trees and the shadows are made to lift. The trees are not enough. There are people I still love, whom I no longer recall.
Once I flung a coffee table into the wall. Very happy feelings, an acetylcholine clatter. These wounds in the shape of archipelagos. It was like looking at a cloud. I could go, That drywall scar resembles a whiskey bottle. A cracked turtle shell. No, a police officer's head suddenly at my window. No, no, it's not a cop; it's a green condom I found clogging up my toilet. Not exactly. It's only the face of a young man named Jerry; it's only Halloween.
It is possible that human happiness is not the goal worth seeking, not the answer to the short time we have together on this earth, so let's forget this whole idea.
When you find a sleeping vampire, you jam a brick into its mouth so it'll starve. This doesn't always work—sometimes their jaws are strong enough to crush bricks. Sometimes they aren't vampires at all. I've jammed bricks into the mouths of regular corpses. There's no telling about anything. There are simply too many monsters out there.
“Suggested reading: The other two Psycho Problems
fanfics.”
Then there seems to be a period of bemusement
At stuff lying on or near the bed, then hope, a few moments
Of terror, after which, silence.
It was silence that befuddled even Zarathustra, who stormed
Out of the beyond, her arms full of mixed books and greens —
God help us!
“I really have no idea what possessed me to write
another Psycho Problems fanfic.”
This happened to me once when I was having sex with Lucy.
She shouted, “Hey Jerry. These motherfuckers are annoying me.”
She was clearly asleep. I thought it might be a night terror,
So I looked it up on the web.
Deep, dimensionless dreams, wherefore art thou? From whence
Do you usher, what distant and
“I claim only Jade. The rest belong to Haim Saban.”
You bore me. So be it.I bore you and enjoy doing it.
Let us learn to bore each other
Without worrying about it.
You act all shy around me,
and that’s you prerogative.
If I act shy around you,
it’s because you’re pretty
and I want to kiss you.
I wish I were Canadian.
If I were Canadian,
I could be boring and
get away with it. You’d say,
This man is from Canada.
He bores me. He acts shy.
He wants to kiss me.
And you would let me
kiss you not only on the lips
but on the cheek, neck,
shoulder; belly, maybe?
Because I would be Canadian
and have scruffy hair
and big eyes. But alas,
you bore me, too. You
act like you’re from Michigan.
two women lean out a windowone glows like a planet
and one is not glowing
just casting a long shadow
on the brick
I’d be a rich man if I could seize the molecules that skate my eyes in this infected light.Mom was out getting a pedicure. The last time she’d got light, light blue. It was like the sky was in there.
One time I got back to find plastic forks and bits of cake on colorful paper plates around the tree in my yard. It was a bendy palm. The yard was minuscule. The tree went up and up.
Turn this city upside down, and I swear that the clouds will find a way to support it.
I was going to lay off those years for a change, but here were people in what might have been asking attitudes, and from the whole of what I might have told them, I said only that in me they had yet another girl who had gone as far as she could get in life without somebody else’s body to back her up, but I for one had at least come early into the sense, thank goodness, to keep a book open in front of me at all times, a heavyweight paperback I was not so much reading as working a different, less stable shape onto, putting leisurely violences into the turning of pages so that when I was through with a book it was a lopsided thing, something far atilt that could be pointed to, publicly, as an example of someone’s having stuck something out, and then one morning I fed myself far enough into the population, thumbing people, citizenry, aside, until I came to a like-sized, schoolworn girl doing just such pointing, a girl a little unpretty but with a heart dangerously in use behind the buttony blouse, and the way the two of us instantly took to each other gave us a leg up on marriage—we each set out hours for the other to fill with just shy breathing, pinned hopes to the ribbonry we hung wherever there were bulks of hair further discoverable upon us, feigned a unisonal swoon whenever a forearm of either one of us was by chance drawn forward finally against the unsleeved upper arm to produce, at the shadow-lined seam, a mouth, surely, an unbiting mouth which, were it to break into a murmur, would let everything between us be a lesson to us—for what most of what any two people of that age together might do (we were each, you see, a drowned-out, undominant twenty-three), most of what they manage in the way of carrying forward the loveliness in each other, was in sorry, well-known fact addressed to, aimed at, an unseen and unknown but counted-on third party (it was the only progress we could see a point to), and the girl and I were now looking to each other for a glimpse of who that person might turn out to be; and for me, soon enough, it was a man I was sitting only a handbreath away from on a bus, a thick-mouthed man in need of an underling right away, who led me from the bus and down an off-cutting street and into a dark-ceilinged building where he showed me to the plasticized outercoat I was to wear while doing the rudimentary cabinet chemistry itself; and that should have been the extent of things, but the man brought me home to say hello to the sister he lived with, a woman bearing victorious versions of the man’s off-sloping chin, his wide-set nostrils, his gristly ears, and two of them, brother and blinking sister both, were pounding away from their forties under one roof with only a shared kitchen between them, the sister a little more under the weather, hoarse, watery of eye; and in no time the sister and I were impartible, and even though there was a voice she used solely on her brother (a sharp, finite voice that put things straight up into the falsifying affirmative whenever he asked if she was all settled in for the night), and a different voice altogether for persons who brought things to the door (this one bracing, salutatious), she had further voice reserved uniquely for me, a duplexity of voice, complex in address, which might have sounded, up top, to be saying only “He pushes you too hard” or “I should see to supper,” but which, if you went straight to what was lowermost in it, was saying, “Catch my cold, get yourself knocked up by the snot of it, feel it fill you roundly out, carry it round inside of you, bring the thing to term, blow out a mucousy umbilical thing, be sure to have saved every sluttery tissue, because I am going to come to you in demand”; and it was long afterward that she packed the brother off to a faraway bachelorship so the two of us could pass some agreeable, willinghearted months as a close-set couple, keeping each other looking looked-after, building the world up with our home truths and sore points, ready-handed, for instance, in our agreement that a man was just a frame from which a single useworthy but renounceable thing was suspended; she let out the prediction that we would be turning up eternally in each other’s endearances in new, unprompted, uncurbable ways; and then one night after some errands had removed her from the house for a run of days, she began wondering aloud whether our intimateness, agreeable as it might still seem, was in fact just a fluke accord of matching dank genitalia, whether the worst of life in fact gets its start when you’re attaching feelings not to other persons but to feelings those persons have already put out of themselves, whether I had not yet come into the discovery that if only one truly knew what one was doing with one’s eyes, people didn’t actually look like what they looked like, men of course above all.
The doctor recommended I drink more water. And more sunlight on your face, he said. He wrote instructions on his prescription pad and handed me the torn paper. How can I trust a doctor that stands on the ceiling? I said. I’m not on the ceiling, he said. Your posture is drooping, like this wilting flower. The flower in his shirt pocket looked fine to me but I kept quiet.When I got home my wife read the doctor’s note and had me stand in a fresh bath. She mixed in crushed Tylenol and within minutes the ceramic under my heels felt like marshmallow. Then she decorated the bathroom in floral scented plug-ins, tea candles, and hand towels meant just for show. I love our house, she said. Don’t you love our house? You’re not walking on the ceiling, I said. She put the toilet seat lid down and sat. I taped the broom handle to your spine to help straighten you out, she said. Don’t you remember? No, I said.
She rose and drained the remaining bath water and led me outside by the hand to a square of loose dirt and buried my feet. My toes explored the ground beneath. I could tell they liked being down there, in the moist darkness. I looked up into the sun and a red hibiscus bloomed from my left palm.
My wife was decorating the patio, sling chairs with a small glass table between. When I’m better, I said, we’ll start trying again. She came forward and placed her hands on my chest. I feel good about the next time, she said. I plucked the hibiscus from my palm and put it on her ear. The sun pulsed like a camera flash, then returned to normal.
His wife dies, mouth slightly parted and one eye open. He knocks on his younger daughter's bedroom door and says "You better come. Mom seems to be expiring." His wife slips into a coma three days after she comes home and stays in it for eleven days. They have a little party second day she's home: Nova Scotia salmon, chocolates, a risotto he made, brie cheese, champagne. An ambulette brings his wife home. She says to him "Wheel me around the garden before I go to bed for the last time." His wife refuses the feeding tube the doctors want to put in her and insists she wants to die at home. She says "I don't want any more life support, fluid or food." He calls 911 for the fourth time in two years and tells the dispatcher "My wife; I'm sure she has pneumonia again." His wife has a trach put in. "When will it come out?" she says, and the doctor says "To be honest? Never." "Your wife has a very bad case of pneumonia," the doctor tells him and his daughters the first time, "and has a one to two percent chance of surviving." His wife now uses a wheelchair. His wife now uses a motor cart. His wife now uses a walker with wheels. His wife now uses a walker. His wife has to use a cane. His wife’s diagnosed with MS. His wife has trouble walking. His wife gives birth to their second daughter. "This time you didn't cry," she says, and he says "I'm just as happy, though." His wife says to him "Something's wrong with my eyes." His wife gives birth to their daughter. The obstetrician says "I've never seen a father cry in the birthing room." The rabbi pronounces them man and wife and he bursts out crying. "Let's get married," he says to her, and she says "It's all right with me," and he starts crying. "What a reaction," she says, and he says "I'm so happy, so happy," and she hugs him and says "So am I." She calls and says "How are you? Do you want to meet and talk?" She drops him off in front of his building and says "It's just not working." He meets a woman at a party. They talk for a long time. She has to leave the party to go to a concert. He gets her phone number and says "I'll call you tomorrow," and she says "I'd like that." He says goodbye to her at the door and shakes her hand. After she leaves he thinks "That woman's going to be my wife."
Blackbirds and moths formed the front yard. The trees uprooted, clogged with ropes of smoke. Mother was out there somewhere. We’d been waiting for forever. I’d bit the inside of my lip so hard the blood warmed the short shaft of my throat. My stomach eating my other parts. No more food in cans. The faucet cragged so fat with insects the water wouldn’t even drip. Something moving on the roof. In the air vents, some kind of shouting, perhaps from children trying to crawl their way in. We’d pried the nails out of the sofa to seal the windows. We’d wrapped each other’s heads in veils. Father hung still from the ceiling. The rot covered the alcohol on his breath. He’d missed the dirt come down like raining. He’d missed the worms spurting from our ears. The ruin was inside us also. Scars all up my forearms. Larvae in my hair. My teeth ached. And deeper, in my organs, something else I couldn’t put a name to. Other eyes behind my eyes. Something watching me. Something everywhere. The house groaned from the weight. Mother was coming back still, I could feel it. I’d wait for her before I bit my skin again. I’d wait to see if she found food. If not, I’d make her listen. I’d kiss the blood into her mouth. We’d wait longer. The sores would cease, or they would not. The house would one day bend.
I will put tape over your mouth and bang your head against the wall.This is the perfect moment entering the perfect idea and vice versa.
Videotape your face and let it watch over you as you sleep. Horrify yourself.
Draw a picture of yourself and eat it.
I don't want to own anything.
I am lifting rocks to find a friend.
Don't let culture lay a finger on you.
Your skull looks cold.
Let me put my lips against your skull. Let me make it warm.
The girl doing a cartwheel in the field across the street just turned the world upside down.
I don't envy anyone.
Welcome in the mind that kills you. Kill your creation while steam still circles.
I have not taught you anything.
In the beginning there was a dingbatwho cut the durian sky in half.
The beginning stunk like corpsefoot.
The beginning was a foolish place to start.
There were also 54 leopards
split down the middle
and splayed wet over the cooling earth.
Memory of early ground
drove them to live in trees.
The pressure of having bodies
was enough to melt the iron
in everyone's chest.
Cats invented wings for birds,
pitying their skinny legs.
There are still enough of them on earth
to make a gumbo of beginnings.
The first child grew from a pit.
PEACH SEED TOSSED INTO HOLE
GROWS ARMS AND LEGS,
Genesis Weekly printed Thursday.
MAN EVOLVES FROM HOMONYM,
countered The Daily Bang.
Pity they didn't send poets to the moon.
There are lunar surfaces
that look like flounders from earth.
Plato didn't want poets in his republic,
not because we imitate truth,
but because we are most susceptible
to daemonic influence. Milosz's
invisible guest comes in and out at will.
Hire a poet, end up with a golem.
The only place we ever end up
is the beginning. The only place
we ever end up is the beginning.
All the hours we're awake or sleeping. They are illustrious. They are legendary. Dancing will get you everywhere. So will a megaphone. Matt Hart burns dear radiation in every line, every word, & The Hours is so motorcycle you might want to get naked. Beware: you may find yourself moonstomping in your sleep. Verse! Chorus! Crescendo! Read with headphones on & "Someday you should see gravity."
With the coming of the books came the story of the first woman, how it was from her body that these many shapes rushed forth. Not just the monsters, but also the domesticated animals, the cat and the dog, all the beasts of this forest which were then just beasts. Now we have pushed them back into these shapes, all sprung from the shape of the first. Now for the promise of one we drive all these others away, or else return them to the sea. This is what we have agreed to, and this is what I alone may still intend.
The students all wrote about car accidents. One by one, two at a time, sometimes whole vehicles at once -- packed as if with circus clowns -- the students killed off their parents, siblings, friends and lovers. Some, they decapitated. Some bled out. Some were made to suffer for years on lumpy suburban hospital beds in comas as even their most dutiful chums said "fuck it" and swapped strained afternoon visits for boyfriends or Wii tennis or new water bongs packed with hydroponically grown pot.Otherwise disparate, the students narratives invariably contained cars crashing into banks or shopping malls, splashing into lakes or flying from sheer, dun-colored cliffs a la Thelma and Louise. Stolen Chevys burned through the night in bad parts of town like wounded flares. Low slung convertibles raced toward long planned dream weddings that would never end in ugly custody battles or serial infidelities or acrimonious divorce and were then unceremoniously T-boned by geriatric hog farmers with sclerotic livers and no time for love.
Putting pen to paper, the students gained the power of life and death, and not unlike most creators, their first instinct in creating drama was to destroy. A need for easy calamity compelled them to snap the necks of the universes they fashioned -- like Yahweh charring Gomorrah to cinders in a fit of eschatological pique -- as if there could be no certainty of their power to create until they saw unequivocally their ability to leave things in ruins, twisted metal smoldering on the side of the road.
Having abandoned her husband in the beer aisle, she places her youngest in the upper section of the cart with the bread and eggs. His legs stick out from beneath the handle. Her oldest squats in the main compartment, pulling items off the shelf until he's half covered in cookies and cereal. At the dairy cooler, she weights the oldest's arms with milk. "Faster," the youngest says, kicking her. She pins his legs down with two cartons of yogurt, then pushes the cart. The right front wheel squeaks incessantly. Hands pull cans from shelves, making a trail along the floor. She is almost done, her children nearly buried in string beans and sweet corn. The end-cap advertises a special on cream of mushroom. She tips a can into the cart, then another, and another, as shoppers move past. Alone, she looks for a new cart.
Instructions on the Screen DoorStop in your tracks. Have you washed the blood off of your body? On the porch is a hose and a towel. Get the blood off your fingers or at least from dripping. Bring no animals forth: that are not cleaned. Plastic bags are a dollar. Get the blood out of the animals. Kill all animals before entering with them. On the deck is a pump, on the gazebo a gun, the terrace, a knife. Cut out their tongues so as not to drag slime in. Leave the tongues in the watery barrel as pink pickles. Wad gauze at the top of the throat. There is gauze, whips, photography in the shed. If you don't after all want your dead animal in the bedroom (there is adrenalin in the bathroom, needles in the mudroom), or in the kitchen, or any uncarpeted place (not the foyer, not our quarters, not the library requiring carpet to hush the plum-topical books) or if you need gloves (the pantry) a mask (the attic, stacked in the umber center) or if you need help (the phone, the downstairs closet), there are personal knife lockers, but we don't have the Internet (figure it out, or ask us, by black button, the stairs), or if you are in need of psychological counsel that your animal does not give you, though your heart suckles on its unctuous eyes, though your mind takes the pill of its life, you may go to the root cellar, where there are onions.
#1. The Time He Hid The Words In The Footwell Of The Carhe knows that his wife knows. she can smell the adverbs on his tongue in the mornings. but he cannot get through another evening in that house without consonants. his daughter sits in her wardrobe dappling the edge of a razor along her inner arm; the tissues stain the toilet bowl pink. his son blows up airports and builds towns full of women with beachball breasts and men with wings covered in black boils. his wife stutters home from work with arms full of carrier bags and frowns at the tiles he spent all day gluing to the walls of the vestibule: red and blue roses with thorns as big as dragons' teeth. they are the wrong colour. he knows it. she keeps frowning. he says that he will go to the 24-hour hardware shop to get the right tiles and walks down the garden path swinging his keyring around his finger and whistling the theme tune from a TV programme and he drives his car around the block and parks under a sycamore which gently vomits leaves onto the roof and lies down on the back seat and reaches into the footwell and brings up handfuls of words and he closes his eyes and he swallows them.
#2. The Time He Hid The Words At The Back Of The Fridge
in the vegetable drawer. behind the onions. far enough past their best that no-one will pull them out for spag bol but not old enough to be binned. the words will be safe there, cushioned by the softening onions, silenced by their papery skins. he feigns deep breathing until the moon has settled above the skylight, then slips from under his wife's arm. standing pigeon-toed and bruise-kneed in the light from the fridge, his neck finally stops twitching. the words are waiting, cold as milk. when he reaches for the words he feels his heels already beginning to rise, already beginning to lift him higher, beginning to move him up up up. he turns away so that the moon is hidden behind next door's chimney. he lifts the words. he shudders to think how smooth the vowels will feel along his oesophagus. he swallows.
#3. The Time He Hid The Words In The Toes Of His Dress Shoes
it is getting more difficult. his arms are in slings after he fell off the roof trying to talk to the disappearing moon. his children will not hold his gaze. sometimes he gets up at dawn to go into the woods and take off all his clothes and wait to freeze, but he never makes it past the end of the road. when he gets home his hands shake too much to hold his morning coffee. he loves his children but they are not verbs. they are only pronouns and he is a fragment. he is surrounded by the dregs of words and no matter how many he swallows he cannot focus on the moon. he plants unsteady kisses on his family's foreheads. he climbs the stairs and crawls into his wardrobe. he lifts his shoes and stares at the sickly tangle of consonants. this is the last, he says, and he swallows.
The doctor told her not to open the box of her mother’s ashes: the ashes of the dead are fatal to the living. Nonsense, she thought: this is an old wives’ tale. So she opened the box and emptied the ashes into her mother’s fish pond because the fish had loved Mother. First, the fish died; then the rains came. The rains came furious fierce and drove the pond into the house and when she fled the house followed her till she was climbing the walls of the world. The house of water home of her dead mother destroyed everything in its wake, including The White House; swallowed the President while he was watching Survivors in Syria. It was too late to realize that doctors aren’t always wrong. Lightning struck her till she was nothing but ashes.
You could make it big in the field of waste extraction. Let’s face it: there’s lots of waste. Let’s stick our faces in it.You’re probably already a pro with waste extraction techniques. All you would need is a tool belt and the ambition. You can construct your own tool belt from the parts scattered about your house. You can construct the ambition from parts available in the catalogue.
Do not be discouraged by your parents’ unsuccessful careers in waste extraction. They would drag themselves home each night, weary, frustrated, hungry, and scatter the contents of their tool belts about the house. The field has changed drastically since their day; you will not fail as they did. Computerized robots now handle the core of waste extraction.
This is not to say there is no room for humans in the workplace! More humans are needed, more humans than ever, to service these robots. The robots drag themselves home each night, weary, frustrated, hungry, scattering their parts about the house. Humans are needed to reassemble the robots. Humans are needed to console and hug the robots. Your experience as the child of waste extraction parents has made you a pro at consolation.
Now all the really big firms are paying really big money for people like you, people still children or child-like. The children and the child-like have, for the most part, largely disappeared: curious, they ventured near the robots and were crushed. New precautions prevent the new robots from crushing. Even the stupidest robots can now distinguish the children and the child-like from waste.
The money is really big, as are the benefits. The biggest benefit is the knowledge that you are helping others. At first, some smart people thought that humans would not want to help the robots, that humans would want to help only other humans. “The humans will let the robots go hang,” they confidently predicted. But the humans have not let the robots go hang. The humans enjoy helping robots just as much as they enjoy helping other humans. Now the smart people think humans simply enjoy helping. “I like being a part of it all,” an interviewed human says, her arms wrapped tightly around her robot.
This is, of course, obvious. This is, of course, common sense. The children and the child-like will often adopt inanimate objects as pets. The children and the child-like will often pretend for hours that rocks are their friends. The child will name the rock, will hug and kiss the rock, will announce her love for the rock. The child is genuinely upset to lose the rock, to learn that the parents, weary, frustrated, hungry, threw the rock into the waste bin. The child never forgives her parents. The child never forgives her parents. The child is glad to be given a robot to hug. The robot is glad to hug back.
John does not own a wall mirror. “Sorry,” he says “we can use each other’s eyes to know we are human, okay?” He does not believe in reflections.There are drops of semen on my lips when he says he loves me for the first time, and tears. I do not dry them.
We woke up and could do magic. It was the latest epidemic on our Island of Epidemics. We disappeared into boxes and reappeared at friends’ houses, springing out of their closets. We hovered for seconds in the air before our feet touched down again. We shot sparks from fingers and they zigzagged across the sky like banners. We made ourselves bigger or smaller.But then we discovered we weren’t magicians: we didn’t know how our tricks were done or how we did them. We disappeared and reappeared in closets, waiting for someone to change clothes. Our feet left the ground to our surprise. Our fingers burned with sparks and we couldn’t hide where we were. We made ourselves bigger or smaller.
The man in the hills who’d grown immune to our epidemics and couldn’t do magic shouted about the noise. We could hear his shouts echo off the hills. He could hear our exploding fingers. This made us keep pretending magic was the best epidemic.
Yet we opened gifts carefully, took cautious steps, pointed our fingers at the air, ignored our bodies.
When the epidemic passed and we got over magic we relearned how to live without expecting surprise. Then came the day we could laugh about the man in the hills who would never feel his veins hot with sparks, his bones lighter than air.
He shook the bag onto the table but something stayed inside. I had the feeling he wasn't telling me some things."What's in the bag?"
"What?"
Earlier we had watched a documentary about people who live in tunnels. One man had built a tunnel from his kitchen to a nearby country so that he could buy cigarettes and guns. He said that when he walked anywhere above ground, he imagined the thin ground falling in certain places, and dust.
We were inside a tiny Mexican restaurant finishing a meal. A man blew smoke out of two holes. The exhaust fan sounded like bagpipes.
We took the boat and were on the lake all day. The water had been frozen until recently and was still cold; if I put my hand under for long enough, my body would forget my hand.
I put my hand that my body had forgotten on his forehead. He was getting sick or the sky had not ever been that green, milk torn out of a leaf.
He asked for the aloe because he was being burned. As I passed him the aloe he let go of the oar. He slumped forward and I noticed that the moon was rising. I held the aloe toward the moon.
"I'm afraid," the doctor said, "He's very sick." I could see the moon through her window. Outside it wasn't dark, yet when I projected my life ten minutes into the future, it seemed dark and flat, like a screen after a movie based on someone else's life.
He was lying on a gurney somewhere in a room where he couldn't see the moon. The inside of his body was exposed to a technician, who in a different room watched him on a screen.
One time when he and I were having sex, I had tried to think of the inside of him. I thought of fluids being squeezed through tight, muscular cavities. It seemed crowded in there, and when I felt his body flex against me, like there was no space for me.
On the technician's screen, the inside of him looked like the entrance to a cave or a long hallway.
I'm afraid of him, I thought. I thought of us having sex that night and me falling into him, slipping into a space I would have to travel.
The doctor pressed her fingertips together, enclosing the space in front of her face. When she spoke, her voice seemed to come out of the space closed by her hands.
She said something about seeing. Would he lose his vision? "Wait," she said, "What am I forgetting?" She dropped her hands.
When I noticed that she was wearing a mood ring, I was able to open up.
I was telling him about himself. "The doctor said…"
He turned away from me so he faced a wall. We were in our bedroom. The petals on the flowers on the wallpaper seemed too thick. Every decorative thing seemed freakish now that he was sick, and everything looked decorative, a length of ribbon tied to a fan.
In a store that sold appliances, I had tried to think of one cell making copies of its walls. I thought of a tiny cell within that cell, and then a tinier cell within the tiny cell, all the way down. This illustrated why he was getting thinner. He was caving in.
I took our boat out every morning. Something in the water communicated something to the air so that the two remained separate, though mornings they were a little mixed together, and fog rippled below each stroke of my oar, and water collected in the part of my hair.
Summer got hotter. I could tell that I was getting stronger. Fish swam to the surface early in the morning, then darted down to where it was darker when the sun reflected on the water. Everything I looked at seemed to be hiding a lot of activity, as if what I saw were just outer walls. When I poked a fish floating belly-up with my oar, a smaller fish swam slowly out.
I rowed to what I thought was the center of the water. When I got there I thought, This must be the center, because I'd just had the idea to take off all of my clothes and sit on them to keep from getting splinters.
When I was naked, I thought, I'm probably the strongest I've ever been. The sun was bright and felt good on my skin.I was looking at the smoothness of a muscle in my forearm. Just then a fish leaped out of the water and over the front of my boat. I could see each scale, and I could also see the fish. I looked behind me. My boat had not gone anywhere but I had gone somewhere and come back.
"I caught a fish," I told him. After I'd gone to the center and back, I tied up the boat and put on my clothes, took out his fishing pole and lure and fished from the dock. It took a long time to lure a fish from the dark under the surface, exactly as much time as it had taken the sun to go from noon to behind the tall pines.
"What kind of fish is it," he asked. I could see him breathing. He wasn't wearing a shirt and his chest was pale and the skin at his neck fluttered like he was breathing through it.
"I don't know," I said. I held it up. It was dead, but when it was still moving I had grabbed it with my hands, though I didn't like how it felt to hold something that was fighting against me.
"It isn't a bass," he said, "But it's still big."
"Are you hungry?" I asked. He moved his mouth.
He had stopped eating but he was still moving his mouth. He had hardly eaten. His bones looked like a lashed-stick raft. A bird landed a short distance from our table.
On the table, pushed to an edge, was a pile of bills from the doctor.
"I'm afraid for you," I told him, "But also for myself."
He wanted to know what the doctor had told me on the phone. While she talked to me I looked out to the water because that was the biggest thing I could see; I wanted the water to cancel something out.
When I looked at the table my eyes went right to a knot in the wood. "I don't remember," I lied to him.
I looked up in time to see the bird carrying a bony spine in its beak. That was the last of our fish.
"I'm going to make us dessert," he said.
I waited a long time at the table, and then I walked down to the dock. I waited until the sky was completely dark, and then I walked back to the house.
He had scooped ice cream into bowls and the ice cream had melted. I felt one of the bowls and it wasn't cold. Everything had evened out. I didn't feel so strong. The light in the room was off. I heard his breath and felt something soft around my neck.
Pulling the woman’s body from the wreckage, they found her teeth had been removed. Her gums and tongue were scorched with symbols. The nails had been plucked out of her toes, each rimmed with bright blood that smelled like money and reflected the onlooker’s eyes. The woman’s pubic hair had been shaved bare, while under her arms the tufts were braided, adorned with tiny beads, inside which could be seen several very tiny cities, white buildings gripped inside the glass. On the woman’s head the hair was also white—almost reflective—though the skin that held her body in appeared so young. Her one tattoo, across the forehead, read, apparently, her name. The only other victim, a child of five among bystanders who witnessed the woman’s high-speed head-on veer into their church’s garden wall, had been struck dead not by the car itself but by the sound that had erupted from the crashing woman’s skull.
They climb in through her window, or when her parents are gone, they moonwalk and Roger Rabbit through her front door. They want to use toilets, bend swabs into their ears, wrap gauze around their faces and sink like they're punched into the leather of her couch. Punching buttons, opening doors, they ask, How many clocks? How many clocks do your parents need to own? And then they are surprised by how much time has passed since whenever. Since food, since fucking. Since last Saturday in Phoenix, since Sunday supper in the free kitchen, since someone recognized them as familiar.She is in love with one of them. His friends are like his clothes: smelly, weirdly matted on one side, faded on the other from hanging out too long in sun in one position. She lets them all in when nobody's home. This is after school. During school, she fools everyone. They believe she wants to go to a good college.
Nobody wants us, they tell her. She lets them in, and in further, into her parents' bed, even. She wants the one she's in love with to see her bending forward over the counter in the kitchen, so she says, Let's make a cake!
K, whatever, they say, trailing their ripped pant legs after. They think she is like some Tinsel, an over-sweet drink they had once after an after-party that made everybody feel like they were made of plastic.
The one she is in love with plucks a sun fish from her mom's aquarium and makes its tiny lips move with his fingers, saying with his high-pitched voice pitched higher, I drive a Cadillac. Then he tosses it back in the tank. The fish swims in tighter and tighter circles, then sinks with its belly up.
She says, Doesn't matter, don't worry.
I'm going to major in History, she says when anyone adult asks her. They never ask. Pierced tongues, electrified hair, rangy in their glances, they appear outside her bedroom window and tap two times, three if she's sleeping, and mouth her name, making fog appear in halos around their faces.
Who are you, a new one asks her. She shrugs. She lets him in, lets them all come in. She says a name that hangs around her throat like music, the S the treble clef for ARAH. She still plays the flute in eleventh grade. She's quiet as air rising from a cake. The one she's in love with tells her, Get some balls. Her father is a golfer. Her parents have some money. She wants to hide this but doesn't know where to. She wears gold earrings; they wear safety pins. She shows them his clubs and poses. They seem bored. They pose on the couch in matching slouches.
They watch Mallrats on her mother's rug from India. They ask when her parents will leave the continent again. They put their heads in doors and say, Food, God, I'm hungry.
They are named after cities, after states where they say they came from or were born into: Coma, Tex, Gary, Cincinnati, Weed, Madison.
They ask her, Where were you born?
Money, one says. A kind of island.
Right there, she says, and points to the faint stain beside the love seat.
Love, they call her, What's it like to have money? What's it like to have a mattress, to have a golden name?
The one she's in love with stays late after the others have shuffled across the backyard, away under her old swing set. He writes his name in capitals on her arms in black Sharpie. She met him at her parents' yard sale; he and his friends came and broke an antique clock, said they were looking for cheap vinyl, named specific names she'd never heard off.
Next, she invited them inside.
Next, her parents were leaving on a twenty-day tour of other rich peoples' houses.
Next, the one she's in love with was a week without leaving, stealing from her parents with one hand in her back pocket. She was putting on her mother's lipstick, a color called Adored, Or Red.
Next, he and she were listening to "Modern Love" and fucking on a Persian rug really from Portland.
Next, Turn that fucking thing off, someone said when they got home.
I spill a bucket of small animals and all but the fish run away.I think, I have to stop letting the world make such slippery handles.
The fish is dying of a gene named after you.
The manual says, "a germ-line mutation in the zinc-binding region of the metalloproteinase domain shows perinatal lethality."
I carry the fish looking for a bucket of water, which won't save it.
When you call me later, after the fish has died in my hands because I failed to find abucket in time for it to die in the water, you say you've never heard of this gene, which is responsible for killing .8 out of 10 fish spilled from buckets and that bears your name.
I say I thought you should be aware.
(Then I think, that was mean, but I don't say this, and then everything is too quiet.)
I was born to Gorbachev and Reagan in a houseboat in 1982Now they are both dead but
Since the mid-90s I have been made of hood ornaments plucked from cars that crashed
on the Autobahn
People who seem to be choking are really trying to say my name
When I am famous I collapse on the street, which I call the Rue
My arm is a young model in Berlin & my leg is a hustler in Alabama
My head is configurable to be many more heads, including a large mansion where leaders await
a suddenly disappointing day
And I am judging you, too
I wanted to be more sincere but the economy said NO
EAT MORE
So I ate some pro-football
Now I have this headache medication
It makes me fall in love with air traffic controllers
This one shouts NINER in his sleep
I feel touchdowns inside me each time he lands a plane
I think I could be a travel writer
Or a sneeze shield at the dust buffet
But I don’t know
I am very hard to talk to because I have several thousand warring villages in my head
The wires inserted beneath the skin during the cinching and draining allow me to position the limbs of each body perpendicular to the ground. This accommodates the shadows that move across the outside wall of my room. The shadows are each cast from the trees at the brake of the garden. Before I purify the bodies, I sit for a time and watch. Later I will braid the hair from where it falls and cut each braid from the hank of its root. The garments I will burn after unpocketing any overlooked possessions. I will scalpel each face from its undercarriage and mark the feet of each body with my colors. I will carry or drag or swaddle each body into the garden for its final ungristling. These are my duties. These are my evening chores. But for now I allow myself this small and peaceful time. Here the breeze off the water is lively year round. The darkness allows the moon a weak but sufficient light. The shadows of unmoving hands and feet are made to interact with the moving shadows of the trees. This overlapping of stillness and motion lobs up images of climbing and swimming and dancing. Something drops from the trees and the shadows are made to lift. The trees are not enough. There are people I still love, whom I no longer recall.
Once I flung a coffee table into the wall. Very happy feelings, an acetylcholine clatter. These wounds in the shape of archipelagos. It was like looking at a cloud. I could go, That drywall scar resembles a whiskey bottle. A cracked turtle shell. No, a police officer's head suddenly at my window. No, no, it's not a cop; it's a green condom I found clogging up my toilet. Not exactly. It's only the face of a young man named Jerry; it's only Halloween.It is possible that human happiness is not the goal worth seeking, not the answer to the short time we have together on this earth, so let's forget this whole idea.
When you find a sleeping vampire, you jam a brick into its mouth so it'll starve. This doesn't always work—sometimes their jaws are strong enough to crush bricks. Sometimes they aren't vampires at all. I've jammed bricks into the mouths of regular corpses. There's no telling about anything. There are simply too many monsters out there.I drank vampire blood once. The body was right there, so I figured why not. It tasted like regular blood and hasn't changed me a bit. I keep getting older, my bones and skin frailer. When I look in the mirror I still see myself. People aren't afraid of me, and when they are, it's not in a sexy way. I don't get uncontrollable cravings for anything.
Sometimes I dream about death by sunlight. I'm standing at my window just before morning. The sun climbs up over the dark houses, just like on any other day. When the light reaches me I start to burn. First the little hairs on my skin ignite, like thousands of tiny birthday candles. Then my skin catches fire with this sound like a whoosh, and in no time, I am one big roaring flame.
You should see me then: I'm like the wick of a kerosene lamp before I scatter into ashes. You'd never know it was me—so bright and hot and surprising.
White dust annihilates the windows: detritus of oaks, epidermis of kings. I’m riding the frayed gold couch toward a new world oblivion: king of whispers and bad luck. When the smoke clears, I’ll buy you a reason to live if you promise to share. I’ll rewind the tape so we can see every wrong turn in slow motion; freeze-frame your face and un-forget; gather the dust and recreate you; save you from yourself; alter your perception of depth; step out with you over the Grand Canyon.
When he gets ready to go to bed, he’s scared of the moon, because his mom never told him what it was.
because everything that comes out of your mouth
should not ever come out of anywhere
because actually i want to know zero things about you
because actually you are not an interesting female
you have not done good things
you do not think well
you are not in possession of gifts
and it is not exciting that you moved some jeans at work today
or gave your friend a discount
or totally got checked out by an old asian guy
i literally just want to sleep
Stars are whores.
I weave pubic hair for dolls and frogs naively lit by your orange lamps. If cloth is meat, what is blood? Try weaving shredded wrists, decapitated hearts. Was my mother a sacred bitch?
The earthen bridge takes me to a shallow creek. Is this the Milky Way? Babies or children on bridges annoy me. Who separates them from mothers? You?
A galaxy of moss. I’m tired of this imitation sky.
Let’s skip to your dream. How many lamps did you see? Do you remember east and west? Explain the island. Why is the bridge flat? Describe the distance between the murmuring pines. Did you love my mother? Will I remarry?
Loneliness is a dense thing. There’s no data inside a collapsed star. My tongue glides into a ring of silence. My heart beats in practical terms. There is no moon, no cycle, no time. X-rayed a thousand times, my sex is neutered. What cooks inside are sulphur, calcium, and iron—the stuff from blood and bones, the stuff from fermenting stars. Let’s not say loneliness is solitude, for distance is not marriage.
Ask the butterflies. Prostitutes can only marry GIs.
I would explode if a hot fetus pressed against my belly. Sometimes baby breaths can cause nausea. I remember mother as a river beyond reach. I saw her only at night. Her milk was white. Her breasts had hair like peaches. There were no gaps in her caress. I looked like a boy, so I attempted to swallow her nipples. Next night, she returned with tar smeared on her breasts. I never saw her again.
Detachment is easy. I thought the Herder could point me to the Milky Way. Instead he drank his head off while chasing his ox. Father, I think you are a closet weaver. Murmuring pines have told me so. They say you can’t measure distance like me and you never drink. Distance is always far like tarred breasts. What use are lit lamps, when we are both blind to blackness?
You lug buckets of shit from one pond to another. Babies fall out of wombs like ducks from Venus. When do tears split into water and salt? The universe is one vast puddle of moss with pink poker dots. One less duck won’t stop Herder from hugging his beer bottle smeared in ox shit.
Don’t be fooled by chaos of crows, they’re just messing with sonic waves. The universe isn’t as deep as you think. However, milk is deep. I forget babies. I forget to change their diapers. Like cheese, they curdle on their own. I held one and felt I could love anything. Mine had a cyst too heavy for his forehead. To feed him, I had to hold a needle between my nipple and his mouth. I learned that even milk needs distance.
You sent me to the west where the moon is always a sliver from the shadow of deformity. My loom faces the east, screeching like a starved ox. I weave for mothers without sons. Carps, peppers, noses, and oversized genitals on fine silk pulled from the inner holes of caterpillars. My feet are raw from peddling sex. I wrap the cyst in newspaper and drop it in the starry river, while you pray to the pointless sky.
Our charter does not include the killing of them except in self-defense, and so we can only drive them out, drive them on. In the forest, we find them in the form of cat, of hog, of black bird and rat and cock. They are not shapeshifters but can steal any shape, and so are often indistinguishable from the other animals we must hunt when our supplies run low, that we must make new clothes of when our own tear loose their threads. Breton drags one in the form of a giant snake from her hole, the task focusing him so he sees only the slip of her tail sliding from his hands and not what comes out the other entrance to her pit. Our voices holler warnings, but Breton does not understand until the one in the form of the snake twists her flared and mantled collar up around his face. She sinks her teeth through his cheek, flays him with her fangs, exposing his own cracked and yellowed molars. Two days pass before she finishes swallowing Breton, another four before she can scuttle her swollen body across the cracking leaves. We follow until we are sure Breton is gone, until she passes what is left of him out her body, and then we set fire to her pit, to the woods around the pit. The Breton-stink thickens the air as we stick deep our hooked poles, our lances and spears, pry her scales to leverage her free. Hours pass as we harry her toward flight, and the whole time my good man Bina argues for haste. He is eager to be moving on, but backs down against my insistence that we finish our task. Like all of us, he knows that if he leave any bit of Breton behind, then one day we will find one in his form, that much harder to drive out, to drive on until it reaches the sea.
All the hours we're awake or sleeping. They are illustrious. They are legendary. Dancing will get you everywhere. So will a megaphone. Matt Hart burns dear radiation in every line, every word, & The Hours is so motorcycle you might want to get naked. Beware: you may find yourself moonstomping in your sleep. Verse! Chorus! Crescendo! Read with headphones on & "Someday you should see gravity."
The horse in my calf is named Charlie.
And that's okay. My foot is cast in fiberglass,
and that's also okay—even par for the course.
I keep swinging and swinging, as the grass
cuts up. The sky flies green with terrible birds.
It’s all I can do to keep my mouth running over.
The virus spirals backwards and settles
in the cities. The redhead so pretty, I can't
write it in a letter. Instead, metaphysics.
I desire a bath. How much longer will I be able
to vanish in the muses, the news blasting forth
like my heart on a spring? Today alone
I read for hours, two friends meeting
in a lime-tree bower, then throwing a party
and throwing it away. Hunky dory. What
a finish. Part of me smiling in a world
with no message, and another part spitting
in the mountain's ugly face. You should see me
wallow in the pleasure of the meadow my mind
has made up in the wake of your feeling.
I don’t care if it’s starless. It’s okay that it’s ending.
But what isn’t is staring at some dumb, lost horizon—
hallucinating feeling, feeling nothing.
The psychic said in a past lifetime you were
my father, darling. So much for the shtetl,
now you wear a seersucker suit: blue and blonde,
blonde and blueblooded.
A minyan of men spent their days davening
but you were at war with a mad god. Hashem
was yours as much as he was anybody’s
though the way it was
written made you feel like a farmer without
any rain. There was no hope in anything.
Only a question: Live or die? Live or die?
In or out a door?
On one side of the door there was a small bed
and beside the bed a basin where you washed up
my girl hands, washed and dried the skin, the muscle,
the bone, the marrow.
Like soap-opera deaths, these days are not
believable, but make a week, a summer,
a few years, caught in the only plot,
quickly, muted now, repeating.
Every rough stone is smoothed, every push
of this warm river slower, colder.
This has become obvious.
What is not obvious is daytime itself
appearing in a pointed silence
like a dead relative in a good dream.
The closer that face comes
the quicker the day goes,
the louder the silence asks you to stay.
To say.
Something tells me this is my afternoon.
Something tells me this is my afternoon,
and it comes to me, like blood
from a deep cut, escaping steadily,
no matter what pressure is applied.
So a screaming woke you
just in time
An animal’s scream, or animals’.
What kind of animal it was
doesn’t matter, and cannot,
in any case, be determined.
The point is you are saved.
Your mouth has been opened.
Mairéad sits on her couch with Clio + Marina (when she's home), also Vincent.
Steve sits on his couch with Mary, sometimes.
Tyler sits on his couch with his wife, his cat, his best friend called Zach, and his parents.
Adam Robinson doesn't have a couch.
Ms. B sits on the couch with her roommate's kittens. Sometimes her roommate. Or two roommates. But never all three roommates.
Daniel sits on his couch with his girlfriend, and sometimes a friend.
Chris sits on his couch with his wife.
Sean sits on his couch with roommates, visiting friends, + drug dealers.
Drew sits on his couch alone or sometimes with his mother or sometimes with his father or sometimes with his girlfriend but mostly he sits on it alone.
David sits on his couch with his cats and his girlfriend.
David sits on his couch with his cat.
Matthew doesn't have a couch.
Morgan doesn't have a couch but if s/he did s/he would sit on it alone.
Robert Alan Wendeborn sits on his couch with people.
Nina sits on her couch with friends + coworkers.
Jason sits on his couch with his wife, his dog, his son, his daughter, his computer, his blanket, his pillow, his ego, + his sense of existential crisis.
Germary sits on his/her couch with Formals.
Milford sits on his couch with his spouse.
Marshall doesn't sit on his couch.
Trey doesn't sit on his couch regularly but when he does he sits with the dog, his girlfriend, his roommate, his computer, the television remote, the playstation controller, a pillow, a blanket, his brother, + his mom.
George sits on his couch with his mom.
Zachary sits on his couch with his son + wife.
Marie sits on her couch with her cats.
Steve sits on his couch with his cat + roommates.
Aaron sits on his couch with his cat + occasionally less furry people.
Jim's couch is in the garage.
Nathan Tyree sits on the couch with his dog, Roxy.
Jenny sits on her couch with her cat.
Laura sits on her couch with Dean.
Alex sits on his/her couch with no-one.
Mister sits on his couch regularly + not regularly with his dog + wife.
Adoley sits on the couch with his/her father.
Uli sits on his couch with his wife.
Jones sits on his/her couch with his/her hamster.
Nathan sits on his landlord's couch occasionally with Robbie, Davis, Julie, Courtney, &tc.
Andy Devine sits on his couch with his wife + their cats.
Jeremy sits on his couch with his wife.
Pho sits on the couch with Jenny.
Madeleine sits on her couch with family.
Richard Lawrence Zachary Whalen never sits on his couch but when he does he sits alone.
Peter Davis sits on the couch with his wife, his dog, his children, + his guests.
Heather sits on her couch with Hastings.
Maria sits on her couch with a dog, a man, + a fuzzy brown blanket.
Susan does not sit on her couch regularly but when she does she sits alone.
Tim prefers the chair next to it but will sit on the couch with the cat if the chair is occupied.
Margo sits on her couch with her cat Lixo.
Katie sit on her couch with her boyfriend Matt + her goldfish swims at the end of the couch.
Ken sits on his couch with a girl.
Stephanie sits on her couch with Francis.
Paul Hanson Clark recently sat on his favorite couch with a girl named Su. Sometimes he sits next to Neal or Alex on his 2nd favorite couch while he eats.
Jared Allen Ellis doesn't sit on his couch. He lays on it but only when his stepdad isn't around.
Ross sits on his couch with friends, monotony, drugs, alcohol, + his own poor self image.
Alison sits on her couch just by herself.
Shaun used to sit on his couch with various ex-girlfriends. Now he does not sit on it.
Tony doesn't have a couch.
Peter doesn't sit on his couch regularly but when he sits on it he sits on it with his wife.
Luke doesn't sit on his couch regularly either but when he sits on it he sits on it with his cat.
Liz has a couch and sits on it regularly by herself.
Bill sits on his couch with his wife + kids.
Jared Samuel White sits on his couch with a pile of books.
Charlotte Marion Baker sits on her couch with Joseph Daniel Lawlor.
Chase Kamp sits on his couch with his roommates, their cat, + some guests.
Mork sits on his couch with his GF.
Matt sits on his couch with Melanie.
Brendan Egan does not sit on his couch regularly but when he does he is often alone, which allows him a nearly indecent amount of leg room.
Kim sits on the couch regularly, with Lee and the cats.
Clio sits on her couch regularly with her mom, her sister, her cat, blankets, pillows, and a coverall that keeps falling down!
Elizabeth sits on her couch regularly, by herself.
Anna doesn't have a couch, it's her parents' couch; and she doesn't sit on it; she sits in a chair because it hurts her lower back to lay on her tummy; she sits on her couch with her laptop.
Steve sits on his couch—but not regularly—with Dave.
You arranged for the DEA to come and arrest you, which was nice, because it was right around Christmas time and you didn't want them filling you with bullets on the Lord's big day.
"It's his birthday," I reminded you. We were sitting on the couch and sometimes you got Christmas and Easter confused there.
Your lap was covered in Christmas cards. You picked one out and handed it to me respectfully with two hands. "Have a cool drink of water," you said. The card had a picture of ice cubes on it. I was worried you were holding a bullet in your mouth and was trying to get closer to check when the men broke down my door.
I was working as a wine taster for a while. I practiced at home. "This one has citrus viewpoints with a maze of smoke and berry," I said. You just wanted to buy methamphetamine because you were addicted or whatever. We were in my childhood home and the dogwoods were blooming. I was thinking this could be a good standup comedy act if I could find the humor in it. There was a toilet in the kitchen and whenever anyone used it they turned their head towards the wall. You just wanted to go to Houston. You kept bothering me. I was like, hang on, I'm almost done. I was thinking about the situation and trying to find the humor in it.
In answer to your question, I will tell you a little story: In the southern part of the country, when the space was open and when there were still people to share things with, I lived in a farmhouse with my grandmother. Often I would step outside and onto the road beside my grandmother’s cottage to greet the shepherds returning with their sheep to the village. Grandmother had a fine house just outside the village, near the main road. One day I strode along the road and may have wandered off too far. I came across a policeman who did not recognize me. But I am my grandmother’s grandson and I have lived in the village my whole life, I told the policeman. The question I should have asked was, who are you?
Following my question, the policeman asks if he can take me home. At this point, he believes that I am lost. The road is near my grandmother’s cottage outside a village. I feel the anger and indignation swell inside me. My grandmother was one of the finest people the village had ever known.
And if this is to be a story set in contemporary times, and if this is ever to amount to anything at all, there has to be a connection with what is going on in the world today. I look at my watch and I realize that winding it is a mistake. I have to live exclusively in the past if I am to excel today—dig some fine old gems out of my suitcase.
But I may have answered irresponsibly. The policeman took me by the hand and carried me all the way back to my grandmother’s cottage. I am reminded of the famous ghost story of the hunter, I believe it’s a hunter, who returns home after having been missing for some significant length of time. There is a great front window that opens directly to the living room of the family house, and when the hunter finally returns home, he steps into the house through the big front window.
I knew this female in high school.
Don’t remember her name, it isn’t important.
On the weekends she used to take sleeping pills.
She would get home from school and take two sleeping pills.
Sleep till four in the morning.
She would walk to the kitchen.
Light a cigarette.
Get a glass of orange juice.
Take three sleeping pills.
Then she would go upstairs to her room.
Lie in bed smoking.
Staring into space.
Then close her eyes and fall asleep.
She would wake up around noon Saturday.
Walk to the kitchen.
Get a glass of orange juice.
Take four sleeping pills.
Go back to her room.
Lie in bed.
Smoke cigarettes.
Stare into space.
Then close her eyes and fall asleep.
Around 9pm Saturday night she would wake up again.
Go to the kitchen.
Get ham and cheese out of the refrigerator.
Make a ham sandwich.
Get some orange juice.
Take four sleeping pills.
Go to her bedroom.
Eat the ham sandwiches.
And fall asleep.
Around six Sunday morning she would wake up.
Go to the kitchen.
Get a cup of orange juice.
Take five sleeping pills.
Go to her bedroom.
And smoke cigarettes till she went to sleep.
At 3 Sunday afternoon she woke up again.
Would go to the kitchen.
Her family was eating then.
There was pot roast on the kitchen table.
Nobody spoke to each other.
She would sit down and eat a few scraps of meat.
Then she would take six sleeping pills.
Go back to bed.
And smoke cigarettes till she fell asleep.
At four Monday morning she woke up.
Instead of going down stairs.
She would lie in her bed and smoke.
And go to school when the time came.
For some reason the Universe begins. Subatomic Particles move around. There are Atoms. The Atoms move around. Single-Cell Organisms are created. Fish are created. Lisa Jarnot is created. Lisa Jarnot sits at a computer. She has just completed a poem with rhyming structure AA BB CC DD EE. Lisa Jarnot stands, puts on a ski-mask, goes to the kitchen, places a Steak Knife in her purse. Lisa Jarnot walks outside. It is sunny. Lisa Jarnot walks quietly into a field. There is a motorcycle. Lisa Jarnot rides the motorcycle for forty minutes. "War-mongering George W. Bush," thinks Lisa Jarnot. Ahead is a river. Lisa Jarnot slows the motorcycle then leaps from it. She stumbles a little on the grass. The motorcycle goes into the river. Lisa Jarnot takes the knife from her purse. She walks toward a street. George W. Bush, one hundred feet away, is jogging on the street. Lisa Jarnot kneels behind a shrub. George W. Bush is forty feet away. Thirty feet. Twenty. Lisa Jarnot stands, runs at George W. Bush with the knife. George W. Bush blocks Lisa Jarnot's Steak Knife with his forearm. Lisa Jarnot falls, stands. George W. Bush's head is turned, he is screaming. Lisa Jarnot stabs George W. Bush thirty-five times. Thirty-two of the stabs occur after George W. Bush has fallen to the ground. A sniper shoots Lisa Jarnot in the head three times. Lisa Jarnot's corpse is taken away. Lisa Jarnot's skeleton lies in a coffin. George W. Bush's skeleton lies in a coffin. The sniper's skeleton lies in a coffin. The Steak Knife lies in a plastic baggy in a drawer. The Earth moves around the Sun at 67,000 miles per hour. The Solar System moves through the Milky Way at 100 miles per second. The Milky Way is a Galaxy. There are 35 Galaxies in the Local Group, which is a part of the Virago Supercluster. Scientists believe there are more than 10 million Superclusters in the Universe. No one knows where you go when you die. No one knows what consciousness is. No one knows why we are here. Etc.
The invisible weight of the future is strapped to the wings of the bird trapped inside the gutter of the flat-roof on which the family of fourteen sleeps. The men who eat their own skin have prayed in such a way that the young girls of the island will have varicose veins by their tenth birthday. The rumbling of chemicals in my stomach is another sign that I belong to the tribe that does not belong. I could tell by looking at her face that she wasn’t fertile. I knew right away that her older brother had thrown her baby into the river. That everything I say is a question of voice is undermined by the movements of my body. I sink into myself more and more each time I open my mouth, she said, and I sink out of myself each time I close my mouth. Each time I speak, she said, I become a little bit more and a little bit less like myself. The filthiest word to the residents of the island is visible. They do not care for what they can see. They do not want to see what they can see. For four days I ran around the island looking for a view of nothing. I finally found one atop the noodle shop in the easternmost part of the easternmost province. The four-fingered man who owns the noodle shop brought tea and special glasses that turn the air the color of smoke. I was ecstatic. I wanted nothing more than to see nothing other than an island of dust and smoke.
The amount of fish in the water is dwindling. Those who survived the floods and chemical spills no longer have spines. To see a spineless fish floating in the ocean is to see all that is human about nature. At the kiosk outside the pharmacy that caters to foreigners, twenty-seven types of consolation are available for the low cost of misery or the high cost of happiness. Yesterday we walked for three hours and still did not find the type of cobblestone we were looking for. We did not want to go inside any churches or museums. We wanted to be outside with the people, searching for the sacred cobblestone. We searched the entire island for the beige pebbles that are said to bring good health when placed inside the mouth of the sick. Legend says a legless boy grew his legs back after swallowing a handful of beige pebbles and washing them down with tea made from lemon and rosehips. On a billboard, a primitive man with a bubble coming out of his mouth asks if Jesus died on a stake, a cross, or a tree. The museum in the underground torture chambers holds the answer to this question. We considered visiting the underground torture chambers but were afraid we would never want to ascend. Two tight-rope walkers walk the tight-rope that crosses the entire island. One walker starts on one side, the other starts on the other side. When they meet in the middle, they make love, orgasm, and die, so to speak, a quiet death, in the service of their god, their families, and their nation. To die in service of your nation is more honorable than to die in service of yourself. We spent the entire evening watching a woman blow butterflies out of her mouth while juggling a kitten, a cantaloupe and a water snake. We spent the entire day inside the cave that houses the pubic hair of the martyred soldiers. However, the parade of virgins was a total snore. The little boys hid inside the white dresses of the virgins and pretended to be birthed immaculately. Tennis, anyone?
When the enormous bucket brought us down to the bottom of the sacred well, she held my hand between her hands and told me that this was just like her childhood. Everything I like about myself is contained in the words I love you, she said, as she crawled into the sewer to search for the diaphragm she had hid the night before. On the shrinking island, they do not care for prophylactics. In 1983, a man had his penis removed for wrapping it in a condom. The condom-covered penis, preserved now in formaldehyde, is encased in glass in the private chambers of the judiciary, where it is seen only by movie stars and diplomats, who are said to take great pleasure in photographing it for their friends and families. For fourteen dollars and eighty-three cents, you can watch iguanas copulate at the zoo. For twenty-three dollars and thirty-eight cents, you can watch iguanas, squirrels, beavers, axolotls, and various sea creatures copulate in the private copulation chambers of the zoo. We paid full-price to watch the animals copulate at the zoo and we did not regret our decision. Afterwards, we went back to our hotel room, stripped off our clothes, made love, orgasmed, and died, so to speak, a quiet death, in the comfort of our insulating tendencies to fucking want to kill something. Behind the castle, throngs line up to watch cats chase rabbits. The interconnectedness of everything and nothing rings truer each time you tell me I have an awful sense of direction. Everything I like about myself has already happened, she said, as she watched the shaman set himself on fire. As night fell, we sat in the rain eating pastries in the sacred garden of silence. When the sun appeared, the flowers flew away.
She lost track of the time. When she got up, she saw that she’d missed a phone call. The red light was blinking on the machine, the message light, arranged in the two-part symmetrical shape of a digital one.
She knew before listening to the message who it was; she knew before listening what her lover had to say, what his message would say.
He’d said that he’d packed up all of his things, and that he’d moved to a new apartment. He’d said that he’d found a brighter space, a single room with massive windows on all four sides.
He’d said that he wanted her to come over, to meet him there, to arrive very quickly. He’d said that when she did, they could start their relationship over. The apartment was clean. It was unmarred by presence as of yet. It bore no trace of distrust or resentment. There was no dust in it as of yet. They could open the windows and let in the breeze, let the outside air blow across their bed. It would be a fresh start. It would be a new chapter in their lives. It would be like a breath of fresh air.
Lying back down, she pictured his new apartment.
It was sparse and unfurnished and bright. It was mostly an empty space. He’d taken hardly anything with him.
The windows were open, permitting the outside world to come in, to enter in. He invited its presence, its noises and lights. Its windy movements.
The warm summer breeze sifted in through the windows, across the new sheets. It came in in a stream, untouched by the blinking sign outside.
She turned and focused on the painting that she remembered, the one that she’d never understood.
It hung on the one stretch of wall that was neither a door nor a window.
It had been hanging in the apartment when she’d arrived. It had predated her arrival.
Her lover apologized. He said that he was sorry; he still didn’t know the surrounding streets. He didn’t know the surrounding neighborhood all too well, not its cafés or diners, which places were good, where they could eat, which ones were still open, which ones had cake.
She suggested, game, adventuresome, willing, that they walk until they saw a sign that advertized “We have soufflés.”
The Decay
She thought about his message for a long time after that.
It was no word a lie; it was true; it occurred in exactly the way that I’ve described it.
She concluded that, no matter what he had said, it had been neither good nor bad.
What eventually came of it, she finally decided, would be neither good nor ill.
Recent rain great for crops and makes the figs glisten and show green.
The people of the town have never seen such a warm rain. Fat raindrops make the figs glow, showing the people of the town a new color of green that they've never known before, a green which they call Fig. The townspeople say that this rain is the beginning of things. That year, five families name their first-born sons Fig.
Oscar Chapin growing a ninety-pound watermelon.
Or is the watermelon growing Oscar Chapin? The neighbors begin to wonder. He sits all day by the watermelon, on the ground next to the watermelon in its wooden crate lined with old rags. He takes an eyedropper of water every ten minutes to strategic areas of the ground, under which he says he can feel the root growing. Oscar Chapin claims this watermelon has given him new eyes.
Train crew go to Kingsville with the engine.
Everyone makes a big fuss about it and rightly so, as it takes twenty strong men to lift the train diesel engine into the auto that will transport it to Kingsville. They also travel by train, which makes some of the townspeople think philosophical thoughts about building a train so strong that no train can transport its engine. Likely a train of this nature would need to be constructed in Galveston.
Jim Hale better train his dog.
That dog runs the perimeter of Hale's yard, treading the ground until he makes a ditch. Dog says, "Hey, come over here." When you do, that damn dog gives you a recipe for lemon bars which omits egg yolks and disappoints you sincerely.
When I am sleeping the bees are never sleeping. I wake up and the bees are never sleeping. Bees crawling over bees crawling over the inside of my walls, next to my pillow and my head. Everywhere bees. Bees in the garbage—throw a rock and they fly around. Bees trying to land on my potato salad. I say go away but they don’t listen. I wave my hands over them but they don’t listen.
I pretend murder but I never pretend bees. Murderer might hit me and drag me out of the bathroom at the mall, might throw me in the trunk of his car and drive me away. In JC Pennies I hide in the middle of the clothing racks and murderer’s legs walk past. If he grabs my arm I can wiggle out, I can scream and someone can help me. No one can save me from bees. They are swarm and angry and crawl in my ears and sting and everywhere is hurt where I brush them away is hurt and blood cries out of my hands. I never ever pretend bees.
i gave blood to the red cross eleven times today
i drew up a bunch of badges with different names and costumes
the one lady with the cookies recognized me after the 6th giving and wouldn't let me have any more cookies
she winked about the blood part, she had diamond grillz
now i'm emptied out pretty good
i hired a mexican woman to drive me home, her name was portcullis, i shit you not
i'm going to have a baby
His motives were ternary. To hook dinner unreel and provocate me to assfixiate my own fish in the oxegyn rich environs doubly pleasing his premeditations as a bother as a rube mottle or witnot and above all to validate his value to pop whos cures /circled/ onley himself. I was no amiable angler neturaly I was less than perforacte because I found it irksome fucking boring really a meter of charm luck and allure more than consisting of any farm of skull as though I may compare it to the vacuous counterpart to the messcary and subtlefugue and slaying that comes with the hunt. I never tried it should have been aparent how I just plunked there dawdling barely moistening my pole in the leak. If my worm dangled into the water it fell weightlily lured to the buttom. Upandon. Upandon. And on and on and on and on and on and on for returnity. Needles to hay I never caught any fish I should never have expeckted. But caw but cawt me now the objeggtive of this chickens scratching the point of this claw is the swift graspings the intillect compels and at that monument I was all sand an moon. While I should have been concentrating on my pole my mind was in other waters plotting my premature ejection from the house. How early early one day before classes chores or commentaries I would collect all my courage and come to this lake to see it shudder and shine only under the nights hand.
::Secret Penis:: this is how you came to be in the seventh hour, foie gras, quickly upstairs undressing past the rush in a fine mansion until the next morning when we snuck she is my stonemason my carpenter tour guide all banister capital cupboards and tiled Corinthian framework around bookcases Bacchanal flipswitch hidden to spiral passages, the belfry, march upon which phallic formation someone has left her panties, shame, for a long walk home, the long walk around a sitting room this breakfasting after, having loved but not understood, having been surrounded by the symbols of fertility like so many covens, it was legs unshaven, the sharpness of a jawbone, helix, tea-leaf, a sliding of body into body like pocket doors, it was orange oil on woodwork, mahogany skinned by flamenco fingernails, pulling out in the last moment to avoid the last honor, east wind, a catalogue unthinking, not of the earth
::Levanter:: perceived origin of the wind, namesake for the song In My Blood, Breed 77, Balearic, on balcony as the November sleet, some bird in his cage is drawn among Byrons in turban, is drawn bloodless, gavage, wet bandana folded on forehead, Romanesque with flaccid hand outstretched, reaching toward Hell with a hang-over, the body new swum across Bosporus, sleet on lead-glass, a shower of geranium incense, that stuffy smell, do shut the door, Moncrieff, I’m dying here, she says, as into common market scarves and felt-brimmed derbies hurry, for kale, cabbage, a bit of lamb, a mistress in her dreaming and a jangle of party trinkets, little napkins with rouge lips leftover, smudges, bottles of claret half empty on the mantle where an unobservant man might hold the solid frame of what she once commanded carved
::Portrait of Maude Abrantes:: Les Chants de Maldoror open on the end table, Bauhaus singing: I hold the fresh pink baby with a smile, I slice off those rosy cheeks because I feel so thirsty, she is calling, leaving messages on the answering machine, my lord, my lord, speak or be spoken, sliced lettuce on the fish sandwich makes me vomit these mornings, my eyes underscored, see me staring, soto voce, I have loved you with a most unholy love and sheathed the secret of the mansion within me, yet where in the rainstorm, my love, my unholy, are we, row me out onto the lake so that I might oversee the skyline and the absinthe and look into a mirror for the Ile-de-France, to hear Modigliani quote from it from the Montparnasse: he is with child, I float down like the lily maid of Astolat, the hunting goddess of the Boeotian hill
::Singular Neon:: in the Domesday Book as Geldeford, another morning, we meet, she’s been force-fed neon, lit up like a fish sandwich billboard above the A31, Hog’s Back, bristling, I had not expected, six months of not ignoring the possibility, just her, since France, the messages more urgent until at last, at last, I agree: I will be gentle about it: let me show you Surrey, Tudor schools and Wey and the mutilation of Alfred Atheling in the heights by Harefoot, treachery, your face glows, truly remarkable against the staid, the sleet, continual, dear lover, I, nevermind,
::Dingo:: responsible for thylacine extinction, that monster, in her wrap, with crochet shoulder, it’s not the money mind you, of course not, no, you should just be part of the decision, not mythical anymore, not symbol, just instance, I will abort and the blood money I ask from you, Dingo, with your proper manners, I don’t remember the talking that went on as we went upstairs, or the music below, you were a quick fuck, barely hard before, you’ve gone about, found or returned to your pastimes and whimsy, may they be many, merry, this is my body and I will not be held to it like an Azaria on Uluru, not angry, then, not, she reaches for my hand, we walk the length of the canal toward her waiting train, we’re late, and in the evening that follows when she cannot cross the channel home, with Bach and conversation, she is otherwise convinced, not of the machine or of the god out of, but of you
Proboscidea
will eating this bible paper offset food sources turned to home sources? protruding incisors perched on four pillars supporting possible crushing, inside the ground stirring for minerals, hybridize lips with noses gets this flexible elongation, fifth limb with one1 or two2 processes end this facial grabbing. hangs between pointed incisors only drinking air from covered in liquids for half the day, sometimes. sometime lived sealy, scientifically thinking. sometime were thriving times. in wisdom thick skins wave thin ears, blood almost turning snow. sometimes passed, never the growing stops four giant pillars of being with one predator and no allegiance to any of their religious mechanisms. predating for ivory incisors in ceased legalities burning the traded, it persists. beginning to desist, more pillars bend at knees more thick skinned bodies cease being. fallen. head down, bowed as if praying to that they needn’t believe—“maker” of all things in the image of god he created {Homo erectus}.3 preyed and made to pray, these giants grow backwards, relatively.
Eschrichtius robustus*
answering with lance for lance wails grunt, moan clack knocks, dancing twelve thousand coastal miles suckling milk till can stir sediment sideways, bed slurps of silt, sand, much, tube worms, starfish, shrimp, et cetera meet baleen plates, keratinous fraying to hair filters. ered. will be eaten. the devil fish will beaten this lagoon while multitudes of sharks rushed to the fresh blood spilled floating goons discovered calving equatorial places thirstily drinking at every new gash as the eager Israelites did at the new bursting fountains that poured from the smitten rock. taken what will: paddle flippers, dark skin, white mottling. shallow migrants stones new dodgers spinning props sparser shores these arctic to tropic imperialized traversus wear incomparably with mechanized floating defactory. the science of international cease fire melts water. deconstructed summer, bread without sanctity, fires of melted rush through keratin hairs lifting new parasites from less organic sites. swallowed, strained, and borrowed all possible attempts national progression impediment to being swimming coordinated ways. curious this science slices little known with a frightful roll and vomit, {they} turned upon {their} back a corpse1 littles understood of steaked, krills left free from seeaating plates. the Israelites have water and god gave land in miles of water, take and rape, this is my body, massively swimming, wailing sub blues, stew this tougher cut than you’re used to.
*The only extant member of family Eschrichtidae, Eschrichtius robustus, consists of two subpopulations, one found in the eastern Pacific coastal regions and the other lives along the coasts of the western Pacific Ocean. The western subpopulation is listed separately as Critically Endangered. However, the Gray whale is listed as Least Concern by the IUCN when the two subpopulations are counted as a single species-level unit.
saw a jewel tone jesus painted on the side of a house while being passed by a couple nearing 80 driving 85 in their Buick Century
they may be late for church
layers of lawn charms outline houselines sheltering wasps nests and other forms of invisibility in grey fedora hats. broken loco motives lie silent against piano music pouring cloud.
bucolic behemoths bend inward vacantly soft now settled in, like sin between their contemporarys and kin with only waning window innuendos and defenseless fallen fences
hugged by hackneyed knock kneed trees as far as the eye can see.
paintless petroglyphs in the shapes of gingerbread homesteads
school buses
boy scouts
sunday drivers on a wednesday afternoon
cairns of carrion moving across the landscape sunlit avoiding fate. something like Egypt but with evergreens mailboxes and orange buried cable markers
My mother and father separated when I was 12 years old. My mother let my brother and me pack up one suitcase each. And then we took anything else in the house that might remind my father of my mother or my brother or me. This included a huge portrait of my mother that hung in the dining room and that we laid on its side in the backseat.
The three of us sat in the front seat and we drove away from our family house in Cleveland, Ohio until got to my aunt’s house in Sacramento, California. We lived there with her for the summer, but my father didn’t know where we were. My father’s response to this was to buy four burial plots at a cemetery outside of Cleveland. It was his way to keep the family together.
Untitled, Untitled, Untitled, & Untitled
Admittedly, the Board had not realized when they had hired them that the partners of the architectural firm Dyer, Dyer & Dyer were identical triplets. However, as the project moved forward this fact became all too abundantly clear.
Still, anyone can make mistakes. We were willing to overlook it. But when, even after that, the Board hired Ford, Ford, Ford & Ford to light the walkway, we had had enough
You found a church for us to attend. It was just right for us, you figured. Half the sanctuary was a traditional church, and half was this pantheistic humanist library thing. You brought flowers for the minister.
"Welcome to our church," said the minister, facing the church.
He turned around and faced the library. "Welcome to our library," he said.
You lay the flowers at his feet. It seemed like the wrong thing. He looked back towards the altar. Everyone there was upset because a transformer box had exploeded the week before and killed the head usher, or taught him a lesson. I couldn't remember the morning after.
When the movie was over, I called my wife, nine hours ahead in Italy.
“I should come home,” she said.
“No, I’m O,K.,” I said. “Come on, you’re in Rome. What are you seeing today?”
“The Vatican.”
“You can’t leave now. You have to go and steal something It will be revenge for every Indian. Or maybe you can plant an eagle feather and claim you just discovered Italy.”
I think it's a form of desire for inertia, desire for
ubiquity, instantaneousness--a will to reduce the world
to a single place, a single identity.
I am not an artist because I refuse to be bored.
Yet a perfect action makes artDoing a reasonable proposition. A perfect action will, after all, only be boring if the experience of boredom is key to its perfection. A perfect action matches art with futility and thus with breathing, debate, poetry, kite-flying, academia, masturbation, TV, toothache, Brute Salon, pamphlets, music, mythology, heroin addiction, Ronnie Corbett, influenza, ghosts, etc, paint, etc, balls, etc, etc. The promise of a perfect action prompts me to betray my inclinations of humanity, my fear of boredom, my shiny pockets of sense and fundamentally question the severity of my manhood. Perhaps, I chuckle miserably to myself, I am an artist after all. Perhaps I can talk and not be bored. Perhaps I might be permitted this one little lapse… But then I recall my other actions – the imperfect ones, those which do not gleam like silvery breasts. They are a stark reminder that art is not for men or poets. Art is best off in a big, cloudy tank being slowly encircled by three ravenous gulls.
Things To Do With A DVD Of Point Break
Put it in a stack of other DVDs and forget which one it is.
Say it’s your favorite movie.
Say you saw it once but you fell asleep.
Say you think it’s pretty good but not as good as Repo Man.
Lend it to the guy you’re sleeping with.
Lend it to Brendan Oaks.
Lend it to your roommate’s sister
who’s visiting from DC
and says she’s never seen it
but she loves Keanu Reaves.
Put it in a bowl of water and teach it how to surf.
Put it in a bowl of sour cream and teach it how to surf in sour cream.
Wrap it in a tortilla and you’ve got a Point Break burrito.
Throw it like a little Frisbee.
See how high you can throw it.
See if you can throw it higher than your other DVDs.
Put on a bathing suit and sit on a towel on the floor and watch it.
Watch it with the sound off and pretend it’s a foreign film.
Watch it with the sound off and pretend you’re deaf.
Watch it and try to estimate how many fish there are in each shot.
Watch it alone.
Watch it and rewind it when you get to the part
Where the girl changes out of her wetsuit in the car
and watch that part again
in slow motion.
Watch it and identify with Keanu Reeves.
Watch it and identify with Patrick Swayze.
Watch it and identify with the good guys and the bad guys:
the cops eating sandwiches and the gang of angry surfers
robbing banks in presidential masks.
Watch it and think about the changing tides, about the lie
Keanu Reeves told
that turned out not to be a lie.
Watch the part with the girl
changing out of the wetsuit in the car
one more time in slow motion.
Watch it and identify
with everything.
Watch it and identify with the Pacific Ocean.
I heard you were living in a radio
as I was stuffing my nachos with countless
other kinds of nachos
There were always carts
pulling away faces like yours
dragging roots across the carpet
like everything that circles / I saw your eyes
shudder / This kind of cat dares me /
And what's a below-average pineapple slurpee
supposed to mean, anyway / I pull my limbs apart
against the window
only to find this rain tastes so neon
We see some trees as tables
and as pilots
and as such noise
The errors become a good thing
between you and me / Our submarine
pulls into Stockholm / like how that rain
meets that ugly between two poles
I sit and consume red, green branches
more ordinary pieces of grass tangling in my guts
So I live with everything / and wish
I was a shopping cart
Pinstripe pants. Tiers of red lace.
She yells after me,
Don’t dance with anyone who doesn’t have a mustache!
I was writing bumper stickers
for Colonel Troutman
to sell on the internet.
I was trying
not to go to hell.
I was trying to make a legacy.
The other one was
SOFTEN THE OVEN
written in red.
It was ambiguous and I liked it.
This won’t be like
one of those horror movies
where we open the door
and everything’s normal.
My other car was an astral plane.
I would exchange Reiki therapy
for peanut butter,
and I would cook pizzas over lava.
I took practical too far,
and I came back single,
wearing tropical clothing.
Tom Brokaw from South Dakota
had no kind words for Rambo.
Everyone was saying salary
and in undergrad.
I wasn’t gonna get up
and just get high
or get up and feel like just going out
and doing something stupid.
Dinner made and the dishes done,
there is no weird,
there’s time to enjoy fireworks,
and the closest thing we have to magic is music.
Is This a Poem For the Year 2219?
Yes, this is a poem for the year 2219
about the fact my bathroom is above
my neighbors’ bedroom, and I sing
Roy Orbison songs at immaculate volumes
during my routines, which is partly my love
of song and partly my obsession with the idea
of audience. Dear 2219, a bathroom is a private
chlorinated water repository filled with hair gel
and other methods of impression insurance,
like sleeping pills. Neighbors are people who
lock the downstairs door just because some
random bro started fingerpainting their door-
bell Sunday night. Oops, he said. You’re not my
parents. Neighbors leave notes asking you to park
considerately and curbside boxes of giveaway bins
to judge them by. In bedrooms, 2219, what you do is
sniff a cowboy shirt you’ve plucked off the floor to see
if it’s okay to wear for teaching the kids I guess you call
First Moroccan Restauranteer in Space and Single Season
Small Needle Home Run Record Holder. You leave the mandarin
peels on your bed after having awesome sex with your girlfriend
but throw them away when she leaves for work. In 2219, you may
instead want to rub the peels all over your chest. If so, history
repeats itself. Golly. Singing is a method of generating inside
you a logging road, dawn-ish, swards of sugar beets, after driving
all night, knowing it’s about to rain but it’s not raining yet, thanks
sky! Singing may also be catalogued as Christmas underwater
and hiking slowly along the railroad ties with the best candy bar
but no home. For the sub-category of song known as Roy Orbison,
ditch your footnotes, 2219! 1936-1988, popular for soaring R&B
and indoor sunglasses: that’s not Roy Orbison! Roy Orbison is a
naked knee so lovely you’d cry if you weren’t afraid of the knee
getting wet. Other things you need to know, 2219: I am afraid of
everything. We would rake the stars into piles to say what’s after
us. Happiness without certain phone calls is impossible. Your father
will die. Last Christmas, I ran into my friend Reggie at the cineplex.
His kid was cute. Me and my other friend were making fun of the movie
Reggie wanted to see. Reggie and I cussed together for the first time I can
remember, but I think we’re made of different smoke. 2219, I might be
above you or something. But I’m probably just below you. I take so many
multivitamins. Sometimes I try to make sure the best songs in my iTunes
have the most plays, but I don’t know why. Carolyn’s a better singer than
I am, and Dorothy told me that when I sing Bridge Over Troubled Water
it sounds like I’m falling apart. Is that a good thing? Wouldn’t it be more
considerate to just spend my time recycling cartons of apple cider for
you, 2219? Instead I carry a pillowcase full of laundry to the laundromat
and try to memorize my life enough to remember my life. I walk streets
named after people too dead to meet and try to sing loud enough to get
stuck in strangers’ heads. Carolyn and I go down on each other to hear the
other make their sounds. One time I saw my downstairs neighbor in a
line, and she smiled, waved at me. I couldn’t remember who she was.
She left her place to come talk. Then I remembered. 2219, they just
found water on the moon. Your love will only count before it’s gone.
You stayed in bed until all your damn dreams burned off and came out looking like a fool. "Nobody makes a good case to stay here by shitting on the couch," you announced. Someone in the house had shit on the couch and for the sake of decorum we were not going to say who.
You unscrewed one leg from the table and shaved a piece of it onto a bowl of hot cereal. You would wake up with so much less trouble than you had in your dreams yet you insisted on complicating your life.
"That fat cat is about as useful as a wet fart," you said. It was true. Not even the couch had a reason to stay at that point.
It was just you and me, and Mr. H with the pills. "This one's for metabolism," he said.You made a noise like a happy baby and put it in your mouth.
I wanted Mr. H to leave but I had a headache. "Do you have anything for headache?" I asked.
Mr. H shrugged and dug in his pockets for show. I hated him then but I hated him always.
"You could mix this one for memory with this one for stamina," he said. "That might do it."
You were slumped in your chair. "My metabolism hurts," you said. Your face was made of teeth. A greenish foam appeared at your hairline. Mr. H gave the appearance of concern. I started thinking about how we'd better get honest with ourselves. I pictured the history of my emotions like a carnival side show. I was the fat man and I wanted to keep eating forever
I detest monotheism. The shift to monotheism has been the worst shift in the history of the species. It's the numerousness of the gods that makes the whole divinity thing make sense. Xtianity tries to throw Satan in, but he's not really on par with God so it's stupid. Monotheism is sort of like a society that has just one t.v. show. How stupid it would be, in that society, to say: "I love that show!" T.v. is so great because it's so various—because it has so many stars in competition with one another. As for whether or not any of its stars actually exist—I think that's fairly irrelevant. They could all be animated—who knows? The point is: we see them, and we get to think about their various appearances and exploits. As for gods, I've become a big Ganesh fan of late. The notion of an elephant-headed guy riding on a mouse is appealing. I also like a lot of the Aztec gods—Tezcatlipoca, "He Whose Slaves We Are," is my most beloved. He's the god of the immediately present, or more significantly, the god whose presence in the moment (in every moment) insures conflict, forces decision (fortune/disaster). He's thus a sort of antithesis for the god most xtians nowadays imagine. That is, I get the sense that most xtians posit their god as quite distinct, and quite distant, from the actual involuntary smothering coming aching net of nerves and blood and light and muscle their "identity" rides upon…whereas Tezcatlipoca is that net, or in any case the wielder of the net, forcing it to catch what it's going to catch. Xtians often talk about putting their life in god's hands, but they don't know what they're saying. Firstly, there is no need to "put" it there, as it always already is there, and secondly, they quite simply overlook, or look out through, what is actual—the god, the flaming net actual conditions of every present. When they put themselves in god's hands, they mean to extract themselves from where they are. They prefer to imagine god as some psychological thing, some safe harbor out past the on-going spectacle of made sense.
A cup of coffee can be a mother.
A cigarette can be a mother.
A blanket can be a mother.
A wool cap can be a mother.
A coat can be a mother.
A booth can be a mother.
A warm grating can be a mother.
You can be your own mother.
Sara and Henry were sitting on their balcony. A garboil of birdsong swelled and shook the trees behind their house. They saw crows, doves, a little bird with a yellow tee-shirt and a blue jacket, and once a flash of red.
Unnoticed, the black one with the yellowest beak had been up on the gutter. "Look! That one was spying on us from up there." He flew away.
"How do you say 'merlo' in English?"
"I'd have to check the dictionary."
Henry went inside.
He came back out.
"Blackbird."
Jesse making crow calls, balanced atop a tent spike. Jesse lying on the roof of the chicken coop, his arm hanging through the skylight. Their small beaks pecking at his lightning-shaped scars until those scars looked like anyone else's.
Jesse folded into wooden trunks. Jesse dragging barrels of sawdust across the lot, balancing an anchor pole in the palm of his left hand. Jesse strapping himself to the flatbed and riding like that. All the way to Des Moines. Picking the guts of flies from his hair. The glitter and the sand and the sweat all mixed in there.
The hands of the tightrope walker, which were not as small as he thought they should be. Taking her to monkey swing from the water tower, both of them leveled by the rusting steel ladder. Jesse and a wooden crate against her back. The field that she would think of when he said America. A postscript that read This world is not rigged for flight.
Jesse drawing the yellow curtain in the Airstream, a woman who might have looked like me lying on the couch watching Letterman. Every week or two, Jesse disappearing. Jesse in the photographs of strangers, next to the fire-eater, next to the man with three heads. Holding a red kerchief over the cardboard box that was still empty beneath it.
You dump some huckleberries into boiling water. It's Thursday, and you're in a hurry, but there's always time for huckleberry tea. You watch the ocean on television. These days, screens show just live feeds of shoreline. You like the Pacific mostly, the Arctic when you're drunk. Seaweed and news washes up. Here's an octopus, yawning. Here's Barack Obama, wringing out his tie. Alabaster shells skitter onto the sand, followed by this year's college basketball champions. People who look like each other ride sharks who look like each other; everybody yells. Someone in a pinstriped suit staggers out of the water, hiccupping for breath. Then somebody with more hair gel breathes just fine. Driftwood is smacked by spray and tide, and the digits notched in the wood play through: stock quotes and temperatures, box office takes and the ages of the dead. An Apache helicopter rolls onto the beach. The door opens. A school of plankton fly out and drop and flop and start to die. Someone comes screaming out of a wave with a shoulder-mounted rocket launcher. He fires at the helicopter. It explodes. Wild and nervous, dying plankton bite the rocket man in his ankle, and the man suffers a severe allergic reaction. He's whisked to the hospital. The doctors take blood blots. They give each other psychological tests based on the shapes of the blots. Nobody says what means what, but all the doctors raise their eyebrows a little. One doctor shaves the dying man completely and tapes all the hair to his own body. He hides in the break room refrigerator. "Look, I'm a yeti," he whispers over and over, practicing. Finally one of the other doctors opens the fridge, groping around and not looking inside, telling another doctor off to the left "—why he never enjoyed seafood, I guess—" Then Doctor Grope notices Doctor Yeti and screams. Simultaneously, Doctors Grope and Out of Frame throw all the needles in their pockets at Doctor Yeti. His skin turns blue and bubbly. His neck melts into his shoulders. His fingers web together. Doctors Grope and Out of Frame look at each other and become a certain kind of friends that aren't friends at all but stay that way forever.
The sky rolled up and fell through the hole in Kate's roof and bounced from her forehead and floated to the floor, upon which it made a crinkly sound as it brushed the hem of her bed skirt. As it brushed the hem of her bed skirt, she sat up and said, "Who's there?"
"Who's there?" she said. She said it one more time, then got out of bed and found the rolled up sky hiding behind a plant stand holding ivy. Behind the plant stand holding ivy, she bent, and the rolled up sky trembled when she picked it up. She picked it apart and it resisted when she tried to unroll it. She tried to unroll it and it sighed. It sighed wide open and the stars exploded in her face.
#
John was long gone by then but he had a telescope trained on Kate's attic, and he saw the whole thing happen, and as it happened he screamed.
Because the trumpets in The Milk of Human Kindness precede the xylophone, the wacko curtain, the stage bursts into a flock of sparrows, the sparrows fly south, turn into librarians, drink blood, get hammered, put on headphones, and the sound pulls the red hem loose on their trousers, gulp-gulp-gulp go the crickets and frogs, the pedestrians draw wheelbarrows, bang chimes, shake maracas, fly a plane into the side of William Faulkner.
First the smell of wisteria.—a brilliantly placed em dash. Absalom! A trio of plastic recorders play a lullaby, hillbilly music, pantomime. A foxtrot, a face, a horse. Both bullets had a room and each before daylight, probably due to the pistol demonstration.
Did not use did not say had never would not be years, a face, a quality. Worm smooth of knitting needles. Peacefully ill. Steadily —a wall or a post— gold Spanish bottom land. Years of clients, not mud. Slavedealers fatalistic Latin faced wear somberly theatric determination, stark naked, bare replenished cache. Steamboats gaunt, fleeting haste of grandfather food trying to kill the legend. Hands clap, slap knees. Keyboards, wild men, plank clay and timber unaware. The women by example in a curious brute phase greet mosquitoes: the architect, the French invincible.
Decorum: weapon assault.
Protection: formal delicate smokehouses, a passing house, the hardship inexplicable, and horsemen.
Sounds from early sci-fi movies, heated bricks. Husbands. Prospective bride, Spanish coin. Electricity. Memphis. Methodist. Dissonance, cacophony. A voice like a cereal commercial or else Beck circa Mellow Gold. Zombie sounds. Chandeliers and mahogany. Speculation parties to anticipate an ironed coat. A man with uprightness drank surprise ruthlessness, a broken plate, a portmanteau. Slack-mouthed four wagons heretofore missed.
About riding which tarpaulin? Curry-comb? Baskets, parlors, furniture. Inside the worn broadcloth quizzical, contemptuous, half-eaten, dispatched, mortgaged, grandfather with the committee.
Always people. Always. A harmonica directly follows hiphop beats, a guitar is accompanied by recorder. Bees. The gallop of a horse ride, with bells and a wooden block. Police sirens compete against lazy trumpets. An anthem, a ceremony, cajoled for less than unremitting cotton, actual labor, a demand, anomalous stainless license zapping sounds of ray guns. A choral number, a church piano, another chugging western footstomper.
Creepmetal disaster of future relations. Anonymous stainless wife. A stock trader of disapprobation. The ribbons built meddling around natural regurgitated citizens. Alertness bauble. Indolence. Clonishly giraffeish. Vanity swallows outrage with insurmountable opinion and thrusting disinclination, clairvoyant nightfall pincushion. Blemish on the livery stable. Dignity, banquet torches, evidently halted mystical carriages shielding motionless remembering.
The ice cubes accomplish sinister masonry justification. Breathing creatures, probity repelling invading reputation nail. Revenge. Retribution. Robust roar and augur taught a hundred Greek interchangeable chronologies lugubriously.
Immaculate pledge, impregnable citadel, the drums fail. A twinkle, like Mr. Rogers.
When the law comes I will tell them we are apples. They’ll laugh at this and then bite. The law will wear redblue sweaters with doves stapled onto them giving a wingflap or a squawk at appropriate moments but otherwise feigning death. Darla, when the law comes you will hide in the sink faucet and I will not offer them water no matter how often or how conspicuously they allude to their thirst buds. I will tell them they should have drunk natural truck juices with high fructose computers before they dared put boots on the ground as they say. When the law comes I will spit in their faces and tell a dirty apple joke. They will pretend to understand but in fact they won’t. When the law comes with their bodies full of worry and fresh wild morals and when they tie their long blond hair back in short tight dollars and when they announce they are here to make us more competitive you like I said will hide in the sink faucet and I will try to entertain them and they will playact for thirty or so versatile seconds and then they will shoot. Yes it will hurt because it has to hurt. Bartender, I will say to the doctor, stop here on red, no turn on red, and he will laugh knowingly, and he will not stanch the bleeding. When the law comes you will urge me by the elbow and say some beans don’t fart but I will stay put. Darla, I will say, we’ll always have Monaco. That will put some tears on your cheeks hence the faucet. When the law comes and yes the law will come, I will say to them the snake was just here before you. You know they feign fearlessness but watch how they’ll get careful with every redblue footstep and pray for their troops. The snake was just here, I will repeat, the snake was just here before you, I will say when the law comes.
I cried the first time I heard him sing. Very softly it destroyed my reasoning. The pen itself resists writing down such voluptuous nonsense. I become a dull stuttering scholar. Rays of language answer whether I want them to or not.
I had funky primitive equipment. Everything was mono. All of the birds talking at once. The vacuum cleaner motor had a drone, so I played along with that:
Dearest __ (a single upper case initial inscribed on page 24 — feathers optional)
We are either going to dissolve as a human race or we are going to break through into a new understanding of what it is to be a human being.
I can picture a whole opera in my mind. A gentle puppet show traces the origin of a few ideas. While peeping through little holes an audience rids itself of itself. Reflections in bent aluminum foil watching painted replicas enjoy the tactile thing.
I am indifferent to railways and common noises. Their vibrations create a weapon inside me. I recite by heart the daily headlines to reduce their effectiveness. I can’t determine the points of pressure against my skull. But in the dark I can search a room for a small pair of scissors or even a needle and find them. It was a huge room I remembered from college. People asleep in hammocks who didn’t wake up in time. Lifelong habits. The vividness of a bird about to be eaten by a cat. Large dragon-like shapes that sit beside me when I play the notes. Insects of all sorts come out of the piano bench. They remind me of the old dances. I watch my hands move over a black and white surface in the shape of child. He’s made out of bathroom tiles. His face like slips of paper. He makes me kiss my own arrangements.
Everything had a temperature in those days. Cheese was cold. Avocados were warm. My heart was a piece of hot meat pierced by love’s thermometer.
I need an agent to deal with my agent. This was the thought. Bill was to be the buffer: Jonathan is a pathological liar, I am a pathological truthteller, and Bill was to be the man-in-the-middle, the go-between, the Janus — something intermediary, anyhoo. That’s what middlemen are for. One day Bill resigned.
On a market stall I happened to see, oh how lovely! a SARS mask within a plastic envelope. You needed protection yourself, Bill; you needed your very own personal plastic envelope. And I didn’t know. And more to the purpose, because life must go on, here was a chance to practice my Japanese! The label included both English text and an enchanting title for the object incorporating both hiragana and katakana: よyo こko はha マma スsu クku. I didn’t know that masuku was Japanese for mask, Bill, did you?
1. Pollution of coastal waters can have / the black sun of melancholy / signature of all things I am here to / test for indicator organisms such as / Love or Phoebus, Lusignan or Biron / based on weekly or fortnightly water sampling
2. The beach zone is modeled as / the grotto where the siren / (see Fig. 1) / wind-generated surface advection and / have lingered in / with parameter estimation / limit of the diaphane / with uniform pollution concentration
3. Wild sea money / dc and dt: decay and mixing / language tide and wind have silted / to a build-up of pollutants during / the night of the tombs, you who consoled me / (see Fig. 2)
4. The coastline is roughly aligned with / the sighs of the Saint and the cries of / prevailing wind positions at this / lolled on bladderwrack / in the chambers of / pollution forecasting, modeled by / the grid where vine and rose enmesh
5. Two brief field surveys, carried out to / walk upon the beach / accumulated rainfall and runoff pollution which / snotgreen, bluesilver, rust / where U is wind and T is days / have modulated on the lyre of / drainage flow-rates for / the mermaids singing, each to / the ‘first-flush effect’, as visible in Fig. 3 / forehead is still red from the Queen’s kiss
“It’s certainly — well. It’s certainly a something,” Lily murmured, upon being introduced to the Object. “But what kind of something is it?”
“This,” said Oliver, cradling the Object reverently in his open palms, “Is the something that is going to save our marriage.”
Not having been birthed yesterday, Lily had her doubts, but she was willing to be persuaded. She was desperate to be persuaded, in fact. And there was something about the something in Oliver’s palms that resisted all her efforts to resist it. Unlike most of the objects in Lily’s environs, it seemed to raise more questions than it answered. First of all, what was it?
“What is it?” said Lily.
“I just told you,” Oliver said patiently.
The Object expressed no opinion.
“Well, we might as well give it a try,” Lily said. “How do we make it do?”
Oliver squinted down at the Object for a while, then shrugged. “I think we just set it down in the corner,” he said finally. “Give it room to do its work.”
Lily considered this a moment, then took Oliver’s hand, and they deposited the object, gently and circumspectly, in the room’s nearest corner. “How long will it take?” Lily wondered.
“Ten and a half days,” Oliver said firmly. Lily couldn’t help noticing, however, that he avoided looking her in the eye. You’ll never persuade me that way, Lily said to herself. The Object chittered and hummed in its corner.
“What a strange thing it is,” Lily said. “It reminds me of something.”
“Shhh!” Oliver whispered. “Don’t talk about it. The less we acknowledge it, the better.”
It wasn’t until weeks later, when their marriage had long since been saved, that they saw the Object for what it truly was. By then, of course, it didn’t make the slightest bit of difference.
When Nechvatal speaks of “immersive intelligence” he does so in the following way: “By refusing the dichotomized, utilitarian codes of representation in favor of the free associational operations, excess triggers an array of synaptic charges. “That’s synaptic, not synoptic—but the two may as well merge into one, when he says: “Aesthetic immersion’s non-linear and indeterminate latent excess facilitates our desire to transcend the boundaries of our customary human cognition in order to fell the state of unconditional being that Hegel called the absolute.”
The absolute is a conundrum for Nechvatal, who resides much closer to an omniscient fluid consciousness that would appear anathema to Hegel, at least on the surface. The introduction of the “seminal” early 20th century mystic, Austin Osman Spare, offers an ecstatic alternative to the absolute, who is quoted as: “The artist must be trained to work freely and without control within a continuous line and without afterthought … In time, shapes will be found to evolve, suggesting conceptions, forms—and ultimately, style.”
Citing Spare, Nechvatal proceeds to anoint the crown of this Blakian serpentine misfit by suggesting a prophetic impulse, namely—“that underlying everything virtual is a web of hyper connections upon which we can exert more manipulative desire than we are normally led to believe by the society the spectacle.” Still, the most energetic part of the book veers toward the conclusion with an exalted hyper-critique of his precarious ally, Jean Baudrillard. Here, Nechvatal is annoyed that the Pope of Simulacra has idolized Warhol at the expense of the Dadaists: “By ignoring such basic Dadaist dysfunctional strategies (by over-valuating Warhol’s own appropriation of them via Duchamp), Baudrillard is able to claim rather that the masses can only incorporate media content, thereby neutralizing the meaning by demanding and obtaining more and more irrational self-contradictory spectacle entertainment.” Nechvatal goes to show that Baudrillard did little more than erode “the boundary between the media and the real.” Admonishing the presumption that “Warholian reproducibility becomes the fundamental logic and code of the information society,” Nechvatal takes a clear stand with the viractual and the quest for an immersive intelligence (in spite of its neo-metaphysical aspect) and goes on to confront the lack of internal critique that has allowed this tendency to be either overlooked, sentimentalized, traumatized, or misunderstood.
On September 16th, 2031 at 2:35 am, a temporal rift – a “tear” in very fabric of time and space – will appear 16.5 meters above the area currently occupied by Jeffrey’s Bistro, 123 E Ivinson Ave, Laramie, WY. Only the person wielding this mallet will be able to enter the rift unscathed. If this person then completes the 8 Labors of Worthiness, he or she will be become the supreme ruler of the universe.
“Dennis, Nell, Edna, Leon, Nedra, Anita, Rolf, Nora, Alice, Carol, Leo, Jane, Reed, Dena, Dale, Basil, Rae, Penny, Lana, Dave, Denny, Lena, Ida, Bernadette, Ben, Ray, Lila, Nina, Jo, Ira, Mara, Sara, Mario, Jan, Ina, Lily, Arne, Bette, Dan, Reba, Diane, Lynn, Ed, Eva, Dana, Lynne, Pearl, Isabel, Ada, Ned, Dee, Rena, Joel, Lora, Cecil, Aaron, Flora, Tina, Arden, Noel, and Ellen sinned” (the longest known name-based palindrome)
Dennis shot a man dead in Key West.
Nell told Ada to have sex with Dennis’s brother, Dan, in exchange for drugs.
Edna lied.
Leon lied.
Nedra lied.
Anita cheated.
Rolf was greedy.
Nora was greedy.
Alice was greedy.
Carol was wrathful.
Leo lied and was slothful.
Jane wore a new dress on a date with Dennis and then returned it.
Reed took naked photographs of young boys and sold them to a pawnbroker in Hialeah.
Dena worked for the pawnbroker but looked the other way.
Dale cheated on his wife.
Basil was slothful.
Rae sold used mattresses as new.
Penny should have picked Dennis up at the Miami airport, but couldn’t get out of bed.
Lana did coke and had a threesome with Dennis before he left St. Louis.
Dave suffered from spiritual torpor.
Denny suffered from spiritual torpor.
Lena suffered from spiritual torpor.
Ida ate too much.
Bernadette ate too much.
Ben hit and killed a dog while driving with his friend Ned and drove off.
Ray did a shoddy job inspecting rides at an amusement park; a ride collapsed, killing three.
Lila stole.
Nina stole.
Jo stole.
Ira falsified a work injury and sued for damages.
Mara ate too much.
Sara was prideful.
Mario was prideful.
Jan was prideful.
Ina lied.
Lily lusted after her cousin.
Arne, Lily’s cousin, lusted after her.
Bette, Lily’s mother, boasted about her daughter’s grades but was blind to the situation with Arne.
Dan, Lily’s father, left her for a much younger woman.
Reba lived in Key West; Dan came to live with her and open a restaurant; they dealt drugs out of the back.
Diane fell in love with Dan and felt despair.
Lynn fell in love with Dan and felt wrath.
Ed envied Dan.
Eva stole.
Dana was greedy.
Lynne was enraged that Dan could not tell the difference between her and Lynn.
Pearl was slothful.
Isabel, who was in love with Dan but despaired ever having him, wrote down her desires on a piece of paper, rolled it up, pushed it into a miniature souvenir bottle, and dropped the bottle on the beach behind the restaurant.
Ada coaxed Dan out onto the beach one night with the promise of sex.
Ned hit Dan with his car; when he heard the thump, he thought of the dog he and Ben had hit and just kept on going.
Dee, Ned’s passenger, felt despair.
Rena, who witnessed the accident, felt despair.
Joel, a cop, heard about the accident from Rena; he was sleeping with her while his wife was dying in the hospital.
Lora, Rena’s sister, was in the threesome with Dennis in St. Louis, and she told him that Dan was dead.
Cecil bought pictures of boys from the pawnbroker.
Aaron lied.
Flora was vainglorious.
Tina, also vainglorious, came upon Isabel’s bottle, pocketed it.
Arden, Tina’s lover, accepted the bottle as a token of Tina’s affection.
Noel, Arden’s lover, rubbed cocaine on her gums during sex with Dennis and casually mentioned that if someone killed her brother, she’d take revenge.
Ellen was having sex with Ned when Dennis burst into the room and squeezed off two shots.
We went to the Moon. We wore puffy suits & boots. We had a lunar module.
We collected Moon rock. We bounced around. Later we had a roving vehicle.
Some people said it was a set-up. That it was done in a TV studio. That there should have been stars & the flag moved.
It was a long time ago now, forty years. We went back a few times but then we stopped. There was no atmosphere. The sky was black. Everything was there but it wasn't much.
When I saw the pale sketch of the moon in the sky this morning I remembered we went to the moon. Probably.
There's so much emphasis on the individual we forget how much a single person is actually a double. For a start, we are symmetrical: 2 eyes, 2 nostrils, 2 lips with two halves in each one. Our 32 teeth can be divided in two so many ways they deserve a poem of their own. And, taking a bird's eye view—2 hemispheres in the brain. The story goes all the way down: 2 shoulders, 2 arms, 2 lungs, 2 kidneys, 2 testicles, 2 ovaries, 2 bums, each one divided in 2, 2 legs, 2 feet. We are actually really 2 people in one. And what do we do? We pair up. We get married, shackled, whatever. Why we do this I do not know. We are already getting quite enough action being 2 people in one but whatever. We have to have an outside person too, who is also more 2 persons than one. It gets complex. Now you have a 2 X 4. Kids arrive. Each kid adds 2 to the mix. Sometimes there's twins. Pretty soon you have chaos masquerading as a family. I'm thinking of Ben Franklin. Now Ben was the 15th child out of a total of 17 born to his mother. This figure may or may not include 2 children who died. The numbers are staggering. I'm thinking of Mrs. Franklin. This is a woman or, in my way of thinking, practically 2 women, who had 17 or 19 children proceed through her, i.e., 34 or 38, in addition to providing accommodation for the regular visits of Mr. Franklin. This is not a woman. This is a pomegranate. This is the fabled village it takes to raise a child. Mrs. Franklin herself was the green on which the townspeople cavorted. Is it any wonder we thought of mitosis and meiosis and all that. It's written all over us. How do you end something like this? It never ends.
SLEEP!
Free of charge!
Luxury item!
In your own home!
In-flight movies!
No skills needed!
Be your own boss!
Better than sex!
No calories!
Fat-free!
When I go to bed early, time is a smooth table, with the prospect of music, books, poems, sleep, hovering like blimps above it. Sitting on the doorstep of sleep is the greatest luxury. The sun always shines in that country. The stoop is so bleached with it, it is made of sun.
We are all of us guests on this planet
And with guests — you know how it is
Some are nice and some are tiresome
And some behave as if they were hosts
and even as they die they believe
that they have owned the sun and the air and the history that took place
even before they were born.
Some naive lovers of semantics believe
that if only our leaders
(of all sorts)
could understand the meaning of their own pronouncements
they would amend their ways.
What an illusion!
They - the leaders
know the mechanism of Language much better than all the semanticists,
linguistic philosophers,
& logical formalists put together.
It's only that they use their knowledge for their own purposes.
And when a Poet
or a Novelist becomes a demagogue
the same applies to him.
Because POETRY as well as POLITICS may be morally vicious,
and intellectually dishonest.
In such cases both Poetry and Oratory
(political, religious, philosophical)
are like Crime.
The greater a Crime is
the more impressive it is
but the less excusable.
Thus
when all is said and done
one finds that no poetic rhymes
and no politic aims
are more important
than decency of means.
Because when all is said and done
decency of means
is
the aim of aims.
“One should never hope for anything.”
“If you know that I am an unbeliever, then you know me better than I do myself. I may be an unbeliever, but I am an unbeliever who has a nostalgia for a belief.”
“But I do not believe in a metaphysical god. I am religious because I have a natural identification between reality and God. Reality is divine. That is why my films are never naturalistic. The motivation that unites all of my films is to give back to reality its original sacred significance.”
“When I make a film, I shift into a state of fascination with an object, a thing, a fact, a look, a landscape, as though it were an engine where the holy is about to explode.”
“I am a murderer but I am a good person.”
“Don’t talk to me of the sea while we are in the mountains.”
“If I have access to an administrative council or a Stock Market maneuver, that’s what I use. Otherwise I use a crowbar. And when I use a crowbar, I’ll use whatever means to get what I want.”
“I say let’s not waste time placing nametags here and there. Let’s see then how we can unplug this tub before we all drown.”
I work all day like a monk
and at night wander about like an alleycat
looking for love…I’ll propose
to the Church that I’ll be made a saint.
In fact I respond to mystification
with mildness. I watch the lynch-mob
as through a camera-eye.
With the calm courage of a scientist,
I watch myself being massacred.
I seem to feel hate and yet I write
verses full of painstaking love.
I study treachery as a fatal phenomenon,
almost as if I were not its object.
I pity the young fascists,
and the old ones, whom I consider forms
of the most horrible evil, I oppose
only with the violence of reason.
Passive as a bird that sees all, in flight,
and carries in its heart,
rising in the sky,
an unforgiving conscience.
We stayed in his house. Even when the man was gone, we didn’t leave the house. We didn’t play with other children in the area. When I was about five years old, I pastured cows with my sister. Sometimes we would lose one and stay out until five or six in the evening to try and find it. If we couldn’t find it we’d tell the man, shaking with fear. He’d take out a whip and beat us, leaving our backs bloody. Or he’d use an extension cord or television antenna. When my mother tried to defend us, he would shove her and threaten her with a machete. Anytime there was a problem, that man would hit my mother and tell her he was going to torture her, quarter her. One day I asked my mother what “quarter” meant. She told me, “It’s when they remove pieces of a person’s body when they’re still alive.”
Later that same day we find ourselves on the beach, the best place for watching the helicopters, unless you don’t want to see the heavy artillery slung below their bellies like sharp-edged lamprey nearly ready to drop off and find another shark’s guts to vacuum.
Children white in the sand. Some of their mothers are between cigarettes; some of their mothers are between geographies, always knowing that the words compass, conscience and north are related. These mothers drop their cigarettes in the surf and wade with the patience of the dead to retrieve their children from the waves. Their mothers are the color of butter, the color turtle beans. The color of Sabbath wax. The color of Jerusalem stone. The color of dirt in Missouri.
What sort of world did we come into that first night when we,
fresh from the fall and up to our shit in apples, found our bodies—had no joy,
no romance to share, all copulant rage screaming upward. And the angels,
did they weep real tears? or howl down at us, “Me next!” Did the animals watch
abashed? or turn to one another, saying, “So, that’s how it’s done.”
What sterile paradise did we shatter screaming into the dark, “O G-d, o G-D,
my G-d, where have You been?”
I hold my hand like a tin can to my mouth. It gets that bad. I speak into my hand. I hold my hand to my ear and listen.
I once heard a heartbeat and thought it was you, holding the receiving can to your naked breast. I thought of your breast.
I once heard an ocean, and I thought of you holding the receiving can to your naked body. I thought of your nacre skin, the time I held my ear to your navel and heard an ocean, how we are seas and how loud we are out there. We have nothing but ourselves to crash into.
I wonder when you’re coming back. I talk to you, I hear back heartbeats and oceans. I wonder if you’re ever coming back.
Some nights, I don’t care who comes, whether you or Vishnu, Christ perhaps or Valhalla. Just come back. Fix what is broken.
Sometimes I dream about death by sunlight. I'm standing at my window just before morning. The sun climbs up over the dark houses, just like on any other day. When the light reaches me I start to burn. First the little hairs on my skin ignite, like thousands of tiny birthday candles. Then my skin catches fire with this sound like a whoosh, and in no time, I am one big roaring flame.
You should see me then: I'm like the wick of a kerosene lamp before I scatter into ashes. You'd never know it was me—so bright and hot and surprising.
White dust annihilates the windows: detritus of oaks, epidermis of kings. I’m riding the frayed gold couch toward a new world oblivion: king of whispers and bad luck. When the smoke clears, I’ll buy you a reason to live if you promise to share. I’ll rewind the tape so we can see every wrong turn in slow motion; freeze-frame your face and un-forget; gather the dust and recreate you; save you from yourself; alter your perception of depth; step out with you over the Grand Canyon.
When he gets ready to go to bed, he’s scared of the moon, because his mom never told him what it was.
because everything that comes out of your mouthshould not ever come out of anywhere
because actually i want to know zero things about you
because actually you are not an interesting female
you have not done good things
you do not think well
you are not in possession of gifts
and it is not exciting that you moved some jeans at work today
or gave your friend a discount
or totally got checked out by an old asian guy
i literally just want to sleep
Stars are whores.I weave pubic hair for dolls and frogs naively lit by your orange lamps. If cloth is meat, what is blood? Try weaving shredded wrists, decapitated hearts. Was my mother a sacred bitch?
The earthen bridge takes me to a shallow creek. Is this the Milky Way? Babies or children on bridges annoy me. Who separates them from mothers? You?
A galaxy of moss. I’m tired of this imitation sky.
Let’s skip to your dream. How many lamps did you see? Do you remember east and west? Explain the island. Why is the bridge flat? Describe the distance between the murmuring pines. Did you love my mother? Will I remarry?
Loneliness is a dense thing. There’s no data inside a collapsed star. My tongue glides into a ring of silence. My heart beats in practical terms. There is no moon, no cycle, no time. X-rayed a thousand times, my sex is neutered. What cooks inside are sulphur, calcium, and iron—the stuff from blood and bones, the stuff from fermenting stars. Let’s not say loneliness is solitude, for distance is not marriage.
Ask the butterflies. Prostitutes can only marry GIs.
I would explode if a hot fetus pressed against my belly. Sometimes baby breaths can cause nausea. I remember mother as a river beyond reach. I saw her only at night. Her milk was white. Her breasts had hair like peaches. There were no gaps in her caress. I looked like a boy, so I attempted to swallow her nipples. Next night, she returned with tar smeared on her breasts. I never saw her again.
Detachment is easy. I thought the Herder could point me to the Milky Way. Instead he drank his head off while chasing his ox. Father, I think you are a closet weaver. Murmuring pines have told me so. They say you can’t measure distance like me and you never drink. Distance is always far like tarred breasts. What use are lit lamps, when we are both blind to blackness?
You lug buckets of shit from one pond to another. Babies fall out of wombs like ducks from Venus. When do tears split into water and salt? The universe is one vast puddle of moss with pink poker dots. One less duck won’t stop Herder from hugging his beer bottle smeared in ox shit.
Don’t be fooled by chaos of crows, they’re just messing with sonic waves. The universe isn’t as deep as you think. However, milk is deep. I forget babies. I forget to change their diapers. Like cheese, they curdle on their own. I held one and felt I could love anything. Mine had a cyst too heavy for his forehead. To feed him, I had to hold a needle between my nipple and his mouth. I learned that even milk needs distance.
You sent me to the west where the moon is always a sliver from the shadow of deformity. My loom faces the east, screeching like a starved ox. I weave for mothers without sons. Carps, peppers, noses, and oversized genitals on fine silk pulled from the inner holes of caterpillars. My feet are raw from peddling sex. I wrap the cyst in newspaper and drop it in the starry river, while you pray to the pointless sky.
Our charter does not include the killing of them except in self-defense, and so we can only drive them out, drive them on. In the forest, we find them in the form of cat, of hog, of black bird and rat and cock. They are not shapeshifters but can steal any shape, and so are often indistinguishable from the other animals we must hunt when our supplies run low, that we must make new clothes of when our own tear loose their threads. Breton drags one in the form of a giant snake from her hole, the task focusing him so he sees only the slip of her tail sliding from his hands and not what comes out the other entrance to her pit. Our voices holler warnings, but Breton does not understand until the one in the form of the snake twists her flared and mantled collar up around his face. She sinks her teeth through his cheek, flays him with her fangs, exposing his own cracked and yellowed molars. Two days pass before she finishes swallowing Breton, another four before she can scuttle her swollen body across the cracking leaves. We follow until we are sure Breton is gone, until she passes what is left of him out her body, and then we set fire to her pit, to the woods around the pit. The Breton-stink thickens the air as we stick deep our hooked poles, our lances and spears, pry her scales to leverage her free. Hours pass as we harry her toward flight, and the whole time my good man Bina argues for haste. He is eager to be moving on, but backs down against my insistence that we finish our task. Like all of us, he knows that if he leave any bit of Breton behind, then one day we will find one in his form, that much harder to drive out, to drive on until it reaches the sea.
All the hours we're awake or sleeping. They are illustrious. They are legendary. Dancing will get you everywhere. So will a megaphone. Matt Hart burns dear radiation in every line, every word, & The Hours is so motorcycle you might want to get naked. Beware: you may find yourself moonstomping in your sleep. Verse! Chorus! Crescendo! Read with headphones on & "Someday you should see gravity."
The horse in my calf is named Charlie.And that's okay. My foot is cast in fiberglass,
and that's also okay—even par for the course.
I keep swinging and swinging, as the grass
cuts up. The sky flies green with terrible birds.
It’s all I can do to keep my mouth running over.
The virus spirals backwards and settles
in the cities. The redhead so pretty, I can't
write it in a letter. Instead, metaphysics.
I desire a bath. How much longer will I be able
to vanish in the muses, the news blasting forth
like my heart on a spring? Today alone
I read for hours, two friends meeting
in a lime-tree bower, then throwing a party
and throwing it away. Hunky dory. What
a finish. Part of me smiling in a world
with no message, and another part spitting
in the mountain's ugly face. You should see me
wallow in the pleasure of the meadow my mind
has made up in the wake of your feeling.
I don’t care if it’s starless. It’s okay that it’s ending.
But what isn’t is staring at some dumb, lost horizon—
hallucinating feeling, feeling nothing.
The psychic said in a past lifetime you weremy father, darling. So much for the shtetl,
now you wear a seersucker suit: blue and blonde,
blonde and blueblooded.
A minyan of men spent their days davening
but you were at war with a mad god. Hashem
was yours as much as he was anybody’s
though the way it was
written made you feel like a farmer without
any rain. There was no hope in anything.
Only a question: Live or die? Live or die?
In or out a door?
On one side of the door there was a small bed
and beside the bed a basin where you washed up
my girl hands, washed and dried the skin, the muscle,
the bone, the marrow.
Like soap-opera deaths, these days are notbelievable, but make a week, a summer,
a few years, caught in the only plot,
quickly, muted now, repeating.
Every rough stone is smoothed, every push
of this warm river slower, colder.
This has become obvious.
What is not obvious is daytime itself
appearing in a pointed silence
like a dead relative in a good dream.
The closer that face comes
the quicker the day goes,
the louder the silence asks you to stay.
To say.
Something tells me this is my afternoon.
Something tells me this is my afternoon,
and it comes to me, like blood
from a deep cut, escaping steadily,
no matter what pressure is applied.
So a screaming woke you
just in time
An animal’s scream, or animals’.
What kind of animal it was
doesn’t matter, and cannot,
in any case, be determined.
The point is you are saved.
Your mouth has been opened.
Mairéad sits on her couch with Clio + Marina (when she's home), also Vincent.Steve sits on his couch with Mary, sometimes.
Tyler sits on his couch with his wife, his cat, his best friend called Zach, and his parents.
Adam Robinson doesn't have a couch.
Ms. B sits on the couch with her roommate's kittens. Sometimes her roommate. Or two roommates. But never all three roommates.
Daniel sits on his couch with his girlfriend, and sometimes a friend.
Chris sits on his couch with his wife.
Sean sits on his couch with roommates, visiting friends, + drug dealers.
Drew sits on his couch alone or sometimes with his mother or sometimes with his father or sometimes with his girlfriend but mostly he sits on it alone.
David sits on his couch with his cats and his girlfriend.
David sits on his couch with his cat.
Matthew doesn't have a couch.
Morgan doesn't have a couch but if s/he did s/he would sit on it alone.
Robert Alan Wendeborn sits on his couch with people.
Nina sits on her couch with friends + coworkers.
Jason sits on his couch with his wife, his dog, his son, his daughter, his computer, his blanket, his pillow, his ego, + his sense of existential crisis.
Germary sits on his/her couch with Formals.
Milford sits on his couch with his spouse.
Marshall doesn't sit on his couch.
Trey doesn't sit on his couch regularly but when he does he sits with the dog, his girlfriend, his roommate, his computer, the television remote, the playstation controller, a pillow, a blanket, his brother, + his mom.
George sits on his couch with his mom.
Zachary sits on his couch with his son + wife.
Marie sits on her couch with her cats.
Steve sits on his couch with his cat + roommates.
Aaron sits on his couch with his cat + occasionally less furry people.
Jim's couch is in the garage.
Nathan Tyree sits on the couch with his dog, Roxy.
Jenny sits on her couch with her cat.
Laura sits on her couch with Dean.
Alex sits on his/her couch with no-one.
Mister sits on his couch regularly + not regularly with his dog + wife.
Adoley sits on the couch with his/her father.
Uli sits on his couch with his wife.
Jones sits on his/her couch with his/her hamster.
Nathan sits on his landlord's couch occasionally with Robbie, Davis, Julie, Courtney, &tc.
Andy Devine sits on his couch with his wife + their cats.
Jeremy sits on his couch with his wife.
Pho sits on the couch with Jenny.
Madeleine sits on her couch with family.
Richard Lawrence Zachary Whalen never sits on his couch but when he does he sits alone.
Peter Davis sits on the couch with his wife, his dog, his children, + his guests.
Heather sits on her couch with Hastings.
Maria sits on her couch with a dog, a man, + a fuzzy brown blanket.
Susan does not sit on her couch regularly but when she does she sits alone.
Tim prefers the chair next to it but will sit on the couch with the cat if the chair is occupied.
Margo sits on her couch with her cat Lixo.
Katie sit on her couch with her boyfriend Matt + her goldfish swims at the end of the couch.
Ken sits on his couch with a girl.
Stephanie sits on her couch with Francis.
Paul Hanson Clark recently sat on his favorite couch with a girl named Su. Sometimes he sits next to Neal or Alex on his 2nd favorite couch while he eats.
Jared Allen Ellis doesn't sit on his couch. He lays on it but only when his stepdad isn't around.
Ross sits on his couch with friends, monotony, drugs, alcohol, + his own poor self image.
Alison sits on her couch just by herself.
Shaun used to sit on his couch with various ex-girlfriends. Now he does not sit on it.
Tony doesn't have a couch.
Peter doesn't sit on his couch regularly but when he sits on it he sits on it with his wife.
Luke doesn't sit on his couch regularly either but when he sits on it he sits on it with his cat.
Liz has a couch and sits on it regularly by herself.
Bill sits on his couch with his wife + kids.
Jared Samuel White sits on his couch with a pile of books.
Charlotte Marion Baker sits on her couch with Joseph Daniel Lawlor.
Chase Kamp sits on his couch with his roommates, their cat, + some guests.
Mork sits on his couch with his GF.
Matt sits on his couch with Melanie.
Brendan Egan does not sit on his couch regularly but when he does he is often alone, which allows him a nearly indecent amount of leg room.
Kim sits on the couch regularly, with Lee and the cats.
Clio sits on her couch regularly with her mom, her sister, her cat, blankets, pillows, and a coverall that keeps falling down!
Elizabeth sits on her couch regularly, by herself.
Anna doesn't have a couch, it's her parents' couch; and she doesn't sit on it; she sits in a chair because it hurts her lower back to lay on her tummy; she sits on her couch with her laptop.
Steve sits on his couch—but not regularly—with Dave.
You arranged for the DEA to come and arrest you, which was nice, because it was right around Christmas time and you didn't want them filling you with bullets on the Lord's big day."It's his birthday," I reminded you. We were sitting on the couch and sometimes you got Christmas and Easter confused there.
Your lap was covered in Christmas cards. You picked one out and handed it to me respectfully with two hands. "Have a cool drink of water," you said. The card had a picture of ice cubes on it. I was worried you were holding a bullet in your mouth and was trying to get closer to check when the men broke down my door.
I was working as a wine taster for a while. I practiced at home. "This one has citrus viewpoints with a maze of smoke and berry," I said. You just wanted to buy methamphetamine because you were addicted or whatever. We were in my childhood home and the dogwoods were blooming. I was thinking this could be a good standup comedy act if I could find the humor in it. There was a toilet in the kitchen and whenever anyone used it they turned their head towards the wall. You just wanted to go to Houston. You kept bothering me. I was like, hang on, I'm almost done. I was thinking about the situation and trying to find the humor in it.
In answer to your question, I will tell you a little story: In the southern part of the country, when the space was open and when there were still people to share things with, I lived in a farmhouse with my grandmother. Often I would step outside and onto the road beside my grandmother’s cottage to greet the shepherds returning with their sheep to the village. Grandmother had a fine house just outside the village, near the main road. One day I strode along the road and may have wandered off too far. I came across a policeman who did not recognize me. But I am my grandmother’s grandson and I have lived in the village my whole life, I told the policeman. The question I should have asked was, who are you?Following my question, the policeman asks if he can take me home. At this point, he believes that I am lost. The road is near my grandmother’s cottage outside a village. I feel the anger and indignation swell inside me. My grandmother was one of the finest people the village had ever known.
And if this is to be a story set in contemporary times, and if this is ever to amount to anything at all, there has to be a connection with what is going on in the world today. I look at my watch and I realize that winding it is a mistake. I have to live exclusively in the past if I am to excel today—dig some fine old gems out of my suitcase.
But I may have answered irresponsibly. The policeman took me by the hand and carried me all the way back to my grandmother’s cottage. I am reminded of the famous ghost story of the hunter, I believe it’s a hunter, who returns home after having been missing for some significant length of time. There is a great front window that opens directly to the living room of the family house, and when the hunter finally returns home, he steps into the house through the big front window.
I knew this female in high school.Don’t remember her name, it isn’t important.
On the weekends she used to take sleeping pills.
She would get home from school and take two sleeping pills.
Sleep till four in the morning.
She would walk to the kitchen.
Light a cigarette.
Get a glass of orange juice.
Take three sleeping pills.
Then she would go upstairs to her room.
Lie in bed smoking.
Staring into space.
Then close her eyes and fall asleep.
She would wake up around noon Saturday.
Walk to the kitchen.
Get a glass of orange juice.
Take four sleeping pills.
Go back to her room.
Lie in bed.
Smoke cigarettes.
Stare into space.
Then close her eyes and fall asleep.
Around 9pm Saturday night she would wake up again.
Go to the kitchen.
Get ham and cheese out of the refrigerator.
Make a ham sandwich.
Get some orange juice.
Take four sleeping pills.
Go to her bedroom.
Eat the ham sandwiches.
And fall asleep.
Around six Sunday morning she would wake up.
Go to the kitchen.
Get a cup of orange juice.
Take five sleeping pills.
Go to her bedroom.
And smoke cigarettes till she went to sleep.
At 3 Sunday afternoon she woke up again.
Would go to the kitchen.
Her family was eating then.
There was pot roast on the kitchen table.
Nobody spoke to each other.
She would sit down and eat a few scraps of meat.
Then she would take six sleeping pills.
Go back to bed.
And smoke cigarettes till she fell asleep.
At four Monday morning she woke up.
Instead of going down stairs.
She would lie in her bed and smoke.
And go to school when the time came.
For some reason the Universe begins. Subatomic Particles move around. There are Atoms. The Atoms move around. Single-Cell Organisms are created. Fish are created. Lisa Jarnot is created. Lisa Jarnot sits at a computer. She has just completed a poem with rhyming structure AA BB CC DD EE. Lisa Jarnot stands, puts on a ski-mask, goes to the kitchen, places a Steak Knife in her purse. Lisa Jarnot walks outside. It is sunny. Lisa Jarnot walks quietly into a field. There is a motorcycle. Lisa Jarnot rides the motorcycle for forty minutes. "War-mongering George W. Bush," thinks Lisa Jarnot. Ahead is a river. Lisa Jarnot slows the motorcycle then leaps from it. She stumbles a little on the grass. The motorcycle goes into the river. Lisa Jarnot takes the knife from her purse. She walks toward a street. George W. Bush, one hundred feet away, is jogging on the street. Lisa Jarnot kneels behind a shrub. George W. Bush is forty feet away. Thirty feet. Twenty. Lisa Jarnot stands, runs at George W. Bush with the knife. George W. Bush blocks Lisa Jarnot's Steak Knife with his forearm. Lisa Jarnot falls, stands. George W. Bush's head is turned, he is screaming. Lisa Jarnot stabs George W. Bush thirty-five times. Thirty-two of the stabs occur after George W. Bush has fallen to the ground. A sniper shoots Lisa Jarnot in the head three times. Lisa Jarnot's corpse is taken away. Lisa Jarnot's skeleton lies in a coffin. George W. Bush's skeleton lies in a coffin. The sniper's skeleton lies in a coffin. The Steak Knife lies in a plastic baggy in a drawer. The Earth moves around the Sun at 67,000 miles per hour. The Solar System moves through the Milky Way at 100 miles per second. The Milky Way is a Galaxy. There are 35 Galaxies in the Local Group, which is a part of the Virago Supercluster. Scientists believe there are more than 10 million Superclusters in the Universe. No one knows where you go when you die. No one knows what consciousness is. No one knows why we are here. Etc.
The invisible weight of the future is strapped to the wings of the bird trapped inside the gutter of the flat-roof on which the family of fourteen sleeps. The men who eat their own skin have prayed in such a way that the young girls of the island will have varicose veins by their tenth birthday. The rumbling of chemicals in my stomach is another sign that I belong to the tribe that does not belong. I could tell by looking at her face that she wasn’t fertile. I knew right away that her older brother had thrown her baby into the river. That everything I say is a question of voice is undermined by the movements of my body. I sink into myself more and more each time I open my mouth, she said, and I sink out of myself each time I close my mouth. Each time I speak, she said, I become a little bit more and a little bit less like myself. The filthiest word to the residents of the island is visible. They do not care for what they can see. They do not want to see what they can see. For four days I ran around the island looking for a view of nothing. I finally found one atop the noodle shop in the easternmost part of the easternmost province. The four-fingered man who owns the noodle shop brought tea and special glasses that turn the air the color of smoke. I was ecstatic. I wanted nothing more than to see nothing other than an island of dust and smoke.The amount of fish in the water is dwindling. Those who survived the floods and chemical spills no longer have spines. To see a spineless fish floating in the ocean is to see all that is human about nature. At the kiosk outside the pharmacy that caters to foreigners, twenty-seven types of consolation are available for the low cost of misery or the high cost of happiness. Yesterday we walked for three hours and still did not find the type of cobblestone we were looking for. We did not want to go inside any churches or museums. We wanted to be outside with the people, searching for the sacred cobblestone. We searched the entire island for the beige pebbles that are said to bring good health when placed inside the mouth of the sick. Legend says a legless boy grew his legs back after swallowing a handful of beige pebbles and washing them down with tea made from lemon and rosehips. On a billboard, a primitive man with a bubble coming out of his mouth asks if Jesus died on a stake, a cross, or a tree. The museum in the underground torture chambers holds the answer to this question. We considered visiting the underground torture chambers but were afraid we would never want to ascend. Two tight-rope walkers walk the tight-rope that crosses the entire island. One walker starts on one side, the other starts on the other side. When they meet in the middle, they make love, orgasm, and die, so to speak, a quiet death, in the service of their god, their families, and their nation. To die in service of your nation is more honorable than to die in service of yourself. We spent the entire evening watching a woman blow butterflies out of her mouth while juggling a kitten, a cantaloupe and a water snake. We spent the entire day inside the cave that houses the pubic hair of the martyred soldiers. However, the parade of virgins was a total snore. The little boys hid inside the white dresses of the virgins and pretended to be birthed immaculately. Tennis, anyone?
When the enormous bucket brought us down to the bottom of the sacred well, she held my hand between her hands and told me that this was just like her childhood. Everything I like about myself is contained in the words I love you, she said, as she crawled into the sewer to search for the diaphragm she had hid the night before. On the shrinking island, they do not care for prophylactics. In 1983, a man had his penis removed for wrapping it in a condom. The condom-covered penis, preserved now in formaldehyde, is encased in glass in the private chambers of the judiciary, where it is seen only by movie stars and diplomats, who are said to take great pleasure in photographing it for their friends and families. For fourteen dollars and eighty-three cents, you can watch iguanas copulate at the zoo. For twenty-three dollars and thirty-eight cents, you can watch iguanas, squirrels, beavers, axolotls, and various sea creatures copulate in the private copulation chambers of the zoo. We paid full-price to watch the animals copulate at the zoo and we did not regret our decision. Afterwards, we went back to our hotel room, stripped off our clothes, made love, orgasmed, and died, so to speak, a quiet death, in the comfort of our insulating tendencies to fucking want to kill something. Behind the castle, throngs line up to watch cats chase rabbits. The interconnectedness of everything and nothing rings truer each time you tell me I have an awful sense of direction. Everything I like about myself has already happened, she said, as she watched the shaman set himself on fire. As night fell, we sat in the rain eating pastries in the sacred garden of silence. When the sun appeared, the flowers flew away.
She lost track of the time. When she got up, she saw that she’d missed a phone call. The red light was blinking on the machine, the message light, arranged in the two-part symmetrical shape of a digital one.She knew before listening to the message who it was; she knew before listening what her lover had to say, what his message would say.
He’d said that he’d packed up all of his things, and that he’d moved to a new apartment. He’d said that he’d found a brighter space, a single room with massive windows on all four sides.
He’d said that he wanted her to come over, to meet him there, to arrive very quickly. He’d said that when she did, they could start their relationship over. The apartment was clean. It was unmarred by presence as of yet. It bore no trace of distrust or resentment. There was no dust in it as of yet. They could open the windows and let in the breeze, let the outside air blow across their bed. It would be a fresh start. It would be a new chapter in their lives. It would be like a breath of fresh air.
Lying back down, she pictured his new apartment.
It was sparse and unfurnished and bright. It was mostly an empty space. He’d taken hardly anything with him.
The windows were open, permitting the outside world to come in, to enter in. He invited its presence, its noises and lights. Its windy movements.
The warm summer breeze sifted in through the windows, across the new sheets. It came in in a stream, untouched by the blinking sign outside.
She turned and focused on the painting that she remembered, the one that she’d never understood.
It hung on the one stretch of wall that was neither a door nor a window.
It had been hanging in the apartment when she’d arrived. It had predated her arrival.
Her lover apologized. He said that he was sorry; he still didn’t know the surrounding streets. He didn’t know the surrounding neighborhood all too well, not its cafés or diners, which places were good, where they could eat, which ones were still open, which ones had cake.
She suggested, game, adventuresome, willing, that they walk until they saw a sign that advertized “We have soufflés.”
The Decay
She thought about his message for a long time after that.
It was no word a lie; it was true; it occurred in exactly the way that I’ve described it.
She concluded that, no matter what he had said, it had been neither good nor bad.
What eventually came of it, she finally decided, would be neither good nor ill.
Recent rain great for crops and makes the figs glisten and show green.The people of the town have never seen such a warm rain. Fat raindrops make the figs glow, showing the people of the town a new color of green that they've never known before, a green which they call Fig. The townspeople say that this rain is the beginning of things. That year, five families name their first-born sons Fig.
Oscar Chapin growing a ninety-pound watermelon.
Or is the watermelon growing Oscar Chapin? The neighbors begin to wonder. He sits all day by the watermelon, on the ground next to the watermelon in its wooden crate lined with old rags. He takes an eyedropper of water every ten minutes to strategic areas of the ground, under which he says he can feel the root growing. Oscar Chapin claims this watermelon has given him new eyes.
Train crew go to Kingsville with the engine.
Everyone makes a big fuss about it and rightly so, as it takes twenty strong men to lift the train diesel engine into the auto that will transport it to Kingsville. They also travel by train, which makes some of the townspeople think philosophical thoughts about building a train so strong that no train can transport its engine. Likely a train of this nature would need to be constructed in Galveston.
Jim Hale better train his dog.
That dog runs the perimeter of Hale's yard, treading the ground until he makes a ditch. Dog says, "Hey, come over here." When you do, that damn dog gives you a recipe for lemon bars which omits egg yolks and disappoints you sincerely.
When I am sleeping the bees are never sleeping. I wake up and the bees are never sleeping. Bees crawling over bees crawling over the inside of my walls, next to my pillow and my head. Everywhere bees. Bees in the garbage—throw a rock and they fly around. Bees trying to land on my potato salad. I say go away but they don’t listen. I wave my hands over them but they don’t listen.I pretend murder but I never pretend bees. Murderer might hit me and drag me out of the bathroom at the mall, might throw me in the trunk of his car and drive me away. In JC Pennies I hide in the middle of the clothing racks and murderer’s legs walk past. If he grabs my arm I can wiggle out, I can scream and someone can help me. No one can save me from bees. They are swarm and angry and crawl in my ears and sting and everywhere is hurt where I brush them away is hurt and blood cries out of my hands. I never ever pretend bees.
i gave blood to the red cross eleven times todayi drew up a bunch of badges with different names and costumes
the one lady with the cookies recognized me after the 6th giving and wouldn't let me have any more cookies
she winked about the blood part, she had diamond grillz
now i'm emptied out pretty good
i hired a mexican woman to drive me home, her name was portcullis, i shit you not
i'm going to have a baby
His motives were ternary. To hook dinner unreel and provocate me to assfixiate my own fish in the oxegyn rich environs doubly pleasing his premeditations as a bother as a rube mottle or witnot and above all to validate his value to pop whos cures /circled/ onley himself. I was no amiable angler neturaly I was less than perforacte because I found it irksome fucking boring really a meter of charm luck and allure more than consisting of any farm of skull as though I may compare it to the vacuous counterpart to the messcary and subtlefugue and slaying that comes with the hunt. I never tried it should have been aparent how I just plunked there dawdling barely moistening my pole in the leak. If my worm dangled into the water it fell weightlily lured to the buttom. Upandon. Upandon. And on and on and on and on and on and on for returnity. Needles to hay I never caught any fish I should never have expeckted. But caw but cawt me now the objeggtive of this chickens scratching the point of this claw is the swift graspings the intillect compels and at that monument I was all sand an moon. While I should have been concentrating on my pole my mind was in other waters plotting my premature ejection from the house. How early early one day before classes chores or commentaries I would collect all my courage and come to this lake to see it shudder and shine only under the nights hand.::Secret Penis:: this is how you came to be in the seventh hour, foie gras, quickly upstairs undressing past the rush in a fine mansion until the next morning when we snuck she is my stonemason my carpenter tour guide all banister capital cupboards and tiled Corinthian framework around bookcases Bacchanal flipswitch hidden to spiral passages, the belfry, march upon which phallic formation someone has left her panties, shame, for a long walk home, the long walk around a sitting room this breakfasting after, having loved but not understood, having been surrounded by the symbols of fertility like so many covens, it was legs unshaven, the sharpness of a jawbone, helix, tea-leaf, a sliding of body into body like pocket doors, it was orange oil on woodwork, mahogany skinned by flamenco fingernails, pulling out in the last moment to avoid the last honor, east wind, a catalogue unthinking, not of the earth::Levanter:: perceived origin of the wind, namesake for the song In My Blood, Breed 77, Balearic, on balcony as the November sleet, some bird in his cage is drawn among Byrons in turban, is drawn bloodless, gavage, wet bandana folded on forehead, Romanesque with flaccid hand outstretched, reaching toward Hell with a hang-over, the body new swum across Bosporus, sleet on lead-glass, a shower of geranium incense, that stuffy smell, do shut the door, Moncrieff, I’m dying here, she says, as into common market scarves and felt-brimmed derbies hurry, for kale, cabbage, a bit of lamb, a mistress in her dreaming and a jangle of party trinkets, little napkins with rouge lips leftover, smudges, bottles of claret half empty on the mantle where an unobservant man might hold the solid frame of what she once commanded carved
::Portrait of Maude Abrantes:: Les Chants de Maldoror open on the end table, Bauhaus singing: I hold the fresh pink baby with a smile, I slice off those rosy cheeks because I feel so thirsty, she is calling, leaving messages on the answering machine, my lord, my lord, speak or be spoken, sliced lettuce on the fish sandwich makes me vomit these mornings, my eyes underscored, see me staring, soto voce, I have loved you with a most unholy love and sheathed the secret of the mansion within me, yet where in the rainstorm, my love, my unholy, are we, row me out onto the lake so that I might oversee the skyline and the absinthe and look into a mirror for the Ile-de-France, to hear Modigliani quote from it from the Montparnasse: he is with child, I float down like the lily maid of Astolat, the hunting goddess of the Boeotian hill
::Singular Neon:: in the Domesday Book as Geldeford, another morning, we meet, she’s been force-fed neon, lit up like a fish sandwich billboard above the A31, Hog’s Back, bristling, I had not expected, six months of not ignoring the possibility, just her, since France, the messages more urgent until at last, at last, I agree: I will be gentle about it: let me show you Surrey, Tudor schools and Wey and the mutilation of Alfred Atheling in the heights by Harefoot, treachery, your face glows, truly remarkable against the staid, the sleet, continual, dear lover, I, nevermind,
::Dingo:: responsible for thylacine extinction, that monster, in her wrap, with crochet shoulder, it’s not the money mind you, of course not, no, you should just be part of the decision, not mythical anymore, not symbol, just instance, I will abort and the blood money I ask from you, Dingo, with your proper manners, I don’t remember the talking that went on as we went upstairs, or the music below, you were a quick fuck, barely hard before, you’ve gone about, found or returned to your pastimes and whimsy, may they be many, merry, this is my body and I will not be held to it like an Azaria on Uluru, not angry, then, not, she reaches for my hand, we walk the length of the canal toward her waiting train, we’re late, and in the evening that follows when she cannot cross the channel home, with Bach and conversation, she is otherwise convinced, not of the machine or of the god out of, but of you
Proboscideawill eating this bible paper offset food sources turned to home sources? protruding incisors perched on four pillars supporting possible crushing, inside the ground stirring for minerals, hybridize lips with noses gets this flexible elongation, fifth limb with one1 or two2 processes end this facial grabbing. hangs between pointed incisors only drinking air from covered in liquids for half the day, sometimes. sometime lived sealy, scientifically thinking. sometime were thriving times. in wisdom thick skins wave thin ears, blood almost turning snow. sometimes passed, never the growing stops four giant pillars of being with one predator and no allegiance to any of their religious mechanisms. predating for ivory incisors in ceased legalities burning the traded, it persists. beginning to desist, more pillars bend at knees more thick skinned bodies cease being. fallen. head down, bowed as if praying to that they needn’t believe—“maker” of all things in the image of god he created {Homo erectus}.3 preyed and made to pray, these giants grow backwards, relatively.
Eschrichtius robustus*
answering with lance for lance wails grunt, moan clack knocks, dancing twelve thousand coastal miles suckling milk till can stir sediment sideways, bed slurps of silt, sand, much, tube worms, starfish, shrimp, et cetera meet baleen plates, keratinous fraying to hair filters. ered. will be eaten. the devil fish will beaten this lagoon while multitudes of sharks rushed to the fresh blood spilled floating goons discovered calving equatorial places thirstily drinking at every new gash as the eager Israelites did at the new bursting fountains that poured from the smitten rock. taken what will: paddle flippers, dark skin, white mottling. shallow migrants stones new dodgers spinning props sparser shores these arctic to tropic imperialized traversus wear incomparably with mechanized floating defactory. the science of international cease fire melts water. deconstructed summer, bread without sanctity, fires of melted rush through keratin hairs lifting new parasites from less organic sites. swallowed, strained, and borrowed all possible attempts national progression impediment to being swimming coordinated ways. curious this science slices little known with a frightful roll and vomit, {they} turned upon {their} back a corpse1 littles understood of steaked, krills left free from seeaating plates. the Israelites have water and god gave land in miles of water, take and rape, this is my body, massively swimming, wailing sub blues, stew this tougher cut than you’re used to.
*The only extant member of family Eschrichtidae, Eschrichtius robustus, consists of two subpopulations, one found in the eastern Pacific coastal regions and the other lives along the coasts of the western Pacific Ocean. The western subpopulation is listed separately as Critically Endangered. However, the Gray whale is listed as Least Concern by the IUCN when the two subpopulations are counted as a single species-level unit.
saw a jewel tone jesus painted on the side of a house while being passed by a couple nearing 80 driving 85 in their Buick Centurythey may be late for church
layers of lawn charms outline houselines sheltering wasps nests and other forms of invisibility in grey fedora hats. broken loco motives lie silent against piano music pouring cloud.
bucolic behemoths bend inward vacantly soft now settled in, like sin between their contemporarys and kin with only waning window innuendos and defenseless fallen fences
hugged by hackneyed knock kneed trees as far as the eye can see.
paintless petroglyphs in the shapes of gingerbread homesteads
school buses
boy scouts
sunday drivers on a wednesday afternoon
cairns of carrion moving across the landscape sunlit avoiding fate. something like Egypt but with evergreens mailboxes and orange buried cable markers
My mother and father separated when I was 12 years old. My mother let my brother and me pack up one suitcase each. And then we took anything else in the house that might remind my father of my mother or my brother or me. This included a huge portrait of my mother that hung in the dining room and that we laid on its side in the backseat.The three of us sat in the front seat and we drove away from our family house in Cleveland, Ohio until got to my aunt’s house in Sacramento, California. We lived there with her for the summer, but my father didn’t know where we were. My father’s response to this was to buy four burial plots at a cemetery outside of Cleveland. It was his way to keep the family together.
Untitled, Untitled, Untitled, & UntitledAdmittedly, the Board had not realized when they had hired them that the partners of the architectural firm Dyer, Dyer & Dyer were identical triplets. However, as the project moved forward this fact became all too abundantly clear.
Still, anyone can make mistakes. We were willing to overlook it. But when, even after that, the Board hired Ford, Ford, Ford & Ford to light the walkway, we had had enough
You found a church for us to attend. It was just right for us, you figured. Half the sanctuary was a traditional church, and half was this pantheistic humanist library thing. You brought flowers for the minister."Welcome to our church," said the minister, facing the church.
He turned around and faced the library. "Welcome to our library," he said.
You lay the flowers at his feet. It seemed like the wrong thing. He looked back towards the altar. Everyone there was upset because a transformer box had exploeded the week before and killed the head usher, or taught him a lesson. I couldn't remember the morning after.
When the movie was over, I called my wife, nine hours ahead in Italy.“I should come home,” she said.
“No, I’m O,K.,” I said. “Come on, you’re in Rome. What are you seeing today?”
“The Vatican.”
“You can’t leave now. You have to go and steal something It will be revenge for every Indian. Or maybe you can plant an eagle feather and claim you just discovered Italy.”
I think it's a form of desire for inertia, desire forubiquity, instantaneousness--a will to reduce the world
to a single place, a single identity.
I am not an artist because I refuse to be bored.Yet a perfect action makes artDoing a reasonable proposition. A perfect action will, after all, only be boring if the experience of boredom is key to its perfection. A perfect action matches art with futility and thus with breathing, debate, poetry, kite-flying, academia, masturbation, TV, toothache, Brute Salon, pamphlets, music, mythology, heroin addiction, Ronnie Corbett, influenza, ghosts, etc, paint, etc, balls, etc, etc. The promise of a perfect action prompts me to betray my inclinations of humanity, my fear of boredom, my shiny pockets of sense and fundamentally question the severity of my manhood. Perhaps, I chuckle miserably to myself, I am an artist after all. Perhaps I can talk and not be bored. Perhaps I might be permitted this one little lapse… But then I recall my other actions – the imperfect ones, those which do not gleam like silvery breasts. They are a stark reminder that art is not for men or poets. Art is best off in a big, cloudy tank being slowly encircled by three ravenous gulls.
Things To Do With A DVD Of Point BreakPut it in a stack of other DVDs and forget which one it is.
Say it’s your favorite movie.
Say you saw it once but you fell asleep.
Say you think it’s pretty good but not as good as Repo Man.
Lend it to the guy you’re sleeping with.
Lend it to Brendan Oaks.
Lend it to your roommate’s sister
who’s visiting from DC
and says she’s never seen it
but she loves Keanu Reaves.
Put it in a bowl of water and teach it how to surf.
Put it in a bowl of sour cream and teach it how to surf in sour cream.
Wrap it in a tortilla and you’ve got a Point Break burrito.
Throw it like a little Frisbee.
See how high you can throw it.
See if you can throw it higher than your other DVDs.
Put on a bathing suit and sit on a towel on the floor and watch it.
Watch it with the sound off and pretend it’s a foreign film.
Watch it with the sound off and pretend you’re deaf.
Watch it and try to estimate how many fish there are in each shot.
Watch it alone.
Watch it and rewind it when you get to the part
Where the girl changes out of her wetsuit in the car
and watch that part again
in slow motion.
Watch it and identify with Keanu Reeves.
Watch it and identify with Patrick Swayze.
Watch it and identify with the good guys and the bad guys:
the cops eating sandwiches and the gang of angry surfers
robbing banks in presidential masks.
Watch it and think about the changing tides, about the lie
Keanu Reeves told
that turned out not to be a lie.
Watch the part with the girl
changing out of the wetsuit in the car
one more time in slow motion.
Watch it and identify
with everything.
Watch it and identify with the Pacific Ocean.
I heard you were living in a radioas I was stuffing my nachos with countless
other kinds of nachos
There were always carts
pulling away faces like yours
dragging roots across the carpet
like everything that circles / I saw your eyes
shudder / This kind of cat dares me /
And what's a below-average pineapple slurpee
supposed to mean, anyway / I pull my limbs apart
against the window
only to find this rain tastes so neon
We see some trees as tables
and as pilots
and as such noise
The errors become a good thing
between you and me / Our submarine
pulls into Stockholm / like how that rain
meets that ugly between two poles
I sit and consume red, green branches
more ordinary pieces of grass tangling in my guts
So I live with everything / and wish
I was a shopping cart
Pinstripe pants. Tiers of red lace.She yells after me,
Don’t dance with anyone who doesn’t have a mustache!
I was writing bumper stickersfor Colonel Troutman
to sell on the internet.
I was trying
not to go to hell.
I was trying to make a legacy.
The other one was
SOFTEN THE OVEN
written in red.
It was ambiguous and I liked it.
This won’t be like
one of those horror movies
where we open the door
and everything’s normal.
My other car was an astral plane.
I would exchange Reiki therapy
for peanut butter,
and I would cook pizzas over lava.
I took practical too far,
and I came back single,
wearing tropical clothing.
Tom Brokaw from South Dakota
had no kind words for Rambo.
Everyone was saying salary
and in undergrad.
I wasn’t gonna get up
and just get high
or get up and feel like just going out
and doing something stupid.
Dinner made and the dishes done,
there is no weird,
there’s time to enjoy fireworks,
and the closest thing we have to magic is music.
Is This a Poem For the Year 2219?Yes, this is a poem for the year 2219
about the fact my bathroom is above
my neighbors’ bedroom, and I sing
Roy Orbison songs at immaculate volumes
during my routines, which is partly my love
of song and partly my obsession with the idea
of audience. Dear 2219, a bathroom is a private
chlorinated water repository filled with hair gel
and other methods of impression insurance,
like sleeping pills. Neighbors are people who
lock the downstairs door just because some
random bro started fingerpainting their door-
bell Sunday night. Oops, he said. You’re not my
parents. Neighbors leave notes asking you to park
considerately and curbside boxes of giveaway bins
to judge them by. In bedrooms, 2219, what you do is
sniff a cowboy shirt you’ve plucked off the floor to see
if it’s okay to wear for teaching the kids I guess you call
First Moroccan Restauranteer in Space and Single Season
Small Needle Home Run Record Holder. You leave the mandarin
peels on your bed after having awesome sex with your girlfriend
but throw them away when she leaves for work. In 2219, you may
instead want to rub the peels all over your chest. If so, history
repeats itself. Golly. Singing is a method of generating inside
you a logging road, dawn-ish, swards of sugar beets, after driving
all night, knowing it’s about to rain but it’s not raining yet, thanks
sky! Singing may also be catalogued as Christmas underwater
and hiking slowly along the railroad ties with the best candy bar
but no home. For the sub-category of song known as Roy Orbison,
ditch your footnotes, 2219! 1936-1988, popular for soaring R&B
and indoor sunglasses: that’s not Roy Orbison! Roy Orbison is a
naked knee so lovely you’d cry if you weren’t afraid of the knee
getting wet. Other things you need to know, 2219: I am afraid of
everything. We would rake the stars into piles to say what’s after
us. Happiness without certain phone calls is impossible. Your father
will die. Last Christmas, I ran into my friend Reggie at the cineplex.
His kid was cute. Me and my other friend were making fun of the movie
Reggie wanted to see. Reggie and I cussed together for the first time I can
remember, but I think we’re made of different smoke. 2219, I might be
above you or something. But I’m probably just below you. I take so many
multivitamins. Sometimes I try to make sure the best songs in my iTunes
have the most plays, but I don’t know why. Carolyn’s a better singer than
I am, and Dorothy told me that when I sing Bridge Over Troubled Water
it sounds like I’m falling apart. Is that a good thing? Wouldn’t it be more
considerate to just spend my time recycling cartons of apple cider for
you, 2219? Instead I carry a pillowcase full of laundry to the laundromat
and try to memorize my life enough to remember my life. I walk streets
named after people too dead to meet and try to sing loud enough to get
stuck in strangers’ heads. Carolyn and I go down on each other to hear the
other make their sounds. One time I saw my downstairs neighbor in a
line, and she smiled, waved at me. I couldn’t remember who she was.
She left her place to come talk. Then I remembered. 2219, they just
found water on the moon. Your love will only count before it’s gone.
You stayed in bed until all your damn dreams burned off and came out looking like a fool. "Nobody makes a good case to stay here by shitting on the couch," you announced. Someone in the house had shit on the couch and for the sake of decorum we were not going to say who.You unscrewed one leg from the table and shaved a piece of it onto a bowl of hot cereal. You would wake up with so much less trouble than you had in your dreams yet you insisted on complicating your life.
"That fat cat is about as useful as a wet fart," you said. It was true. Not even the couch had a reason to stay at that point.
It was just you and me, and Mr. H with the pills. "This one's for metabolism," he said.You made a noise like a happy baby and put it in your mouth.I wanted Mr. H to leave but I had a headache. "Do you have anything for headache?" I asked.
Mr. H shrugged and dug in his pockets for show. I hated him then but I hated him always.
"You could mix this one for memory with this one for stamina," he said. "That might do it."
You were slumped in your chair. "My metabolism hurts," you said. Your face was made of teeth. A greenish foam appeared at your hairline. Mr. H gave the appearance of concern. I started thinking about how we'd better get honest with ourselves. I pictured the history of my emotions like a carnival side show. I was the fat man and I wanted to keep eating forever
I detest monotheism. The shift to monotheism has been the worst shift in the history of the species. It's the numerousness of the gods that makes the whole divinity thing make sense. Xtianity tries to throw Satan in, but he's not really on par with God so it's stupid. Monotheism is sort of like a society that has just one t.v. show. How stupid it would be, in that society, to say: "I love that show!" T.v. is so great because it's so various—because it has so many stars in competition with one another. As for whether or not any of its stars actually exist—I think that's fairly irrelevant. They could all be animated—who knows? The point is: we see them, and we get to think about their various appearances and exploits. As for gods, I've become a big Ganesh fan of late. The notion of an elephant-headed guy riding on a mouse is appealing. I also like a lot of the Aztec gods—Tezcatlipoca, "He Whose Slaves We Are," is my most beloved. He's the god of the immediately present, or more significantly, the god whose presence in the moment (in every moment) insures conflict, forces decision (fortune/disaster). He's thus a sort of antithesis for the god most xtians nowadays imagine. That is, I get the sense that most xtians posit their god as quite distinct, and quite distant, from the actual involuntary smothering coming aching net of nerves and blood and light and muscle their "identity" rides upon…whereas Tezcatlipoca is that net, or in any case the wielder of the net, forcing it to catch what it's going to catch. Xtians often talk about putting their life in god's hands, but they don't know what they're saying. Firstly, there is no need to "put" it there, as it always already is there, and secondly, they quite simply overlook, or look out through, what is actual—the god, the flaming net actual conditions of every present. When they put themselves in god's hands, they mean to extract themselves from where they are. They prefer to imagine god as some psychological thing, some safe harbor out past the on-going spectacle of made sense.
A cup of coffee can be a mother.A cigarette can be a mother.
A blanket can be a mother.
A wool cap can be a mother.
A coat can be a mother.
A booth can be a mother.
A warm grating can be a mother.
You can be your own mother.
Sara and Henry were sitting on their balcony. A garboil of birdsong swelled and shook the trees behind their house. They saw crows, doves, a little bird with a yellow tee-shirt and a blue jacket, and once a flash of red.Unnoticed, the black one with the yellowest beak had been up on the gutter. "Look! That one was spying on us from up there." He flew away.
"How do you say 'merlo' in English?"
"I'd have to check the dictionary."
Henry went inside.
He came back out.
"Blackbird."
Jesse making crow calls, balanced atop a tent spike. Jesse lying on the roof of the chicken coop, his arm hanging through the skylight. Their small beaks pecking at his lightning-shaped scars until those scars looked like anyone else's.Jesse folded into wooden trunks. Jesse dragging barrels of sawdust across the lot, balancing an anchor pole in the palm of his left hand. Jesse strapping himself to the flatbed and riding like that. All the way to Des Moines. Picking the guts of flies from his hair. The glitter and the sand and the sweat all mixed in there.
The hands of the tightrope walker, which were not as small as he thought they should be. Taking her to monkey swing from the water tower, both of them leveled by the rusting steel ladder. Jesse and a wooden crate against her back. The field that she would think of when he said America. A postscript that read This world is not rigged for flight.
Jesse drawing the yellow curtain in the Airstream, a woman who might have looked like me lying on the couch watching Letterman. Every week or two, Jesse disappearing. Jesse in the photographs of strangers, next to the fire-eater, next to the man with three heads. Holding a red kerchief over the cardboard box that was still empty beneath it.
You dump some huckleberries into boiling water. It's Thursday, and you're in a hurry, but there's always time for huckleberry tea. You watch the ocean on television. These days, screens show just live feeds of shoreline. You like the Pacific mostly, the Arctic when you're drunk. Seaweed and news washes up. Here's an octopus, yawning. Here's Barack Obama, wringing out his tie. Alabaster shells skitter onto the sand, followed by this year's college basketball champions. People who look like each other ride sharks who look like each other; everybody yells. Someone in a pinstriped suit staggers out of the water, hiccupping for breath. Then somebody with more hair gel breathes just fine. Driftwood is smacked by spray and tide, and the digits notched in the wood play through: stock quotes and temperatures, box office takes and the ages of the dead. An Apache helicopter rolls onto the beach. The door opens. A school of plankton fly out and drop and flop and start to die. Someone comes screaming out of a wave with a shoulder-mounted rocket launcher. He fires at the helicopter. It explodes. Wild and nervous, dying plankton bite the rocket man in his ankle, and the man suffers a severe allergic reaction. He's whisked to the hospital. The doctors take blood blots. They give each other psychological tests based on the shapes of the blots. Nobody says what means what, but all the doctors raise their eyebrows a little. One doctor shaves the dying man completely and tapes all the hair to his own body. He hides in the break room refrigerator. "Look, I'm a yeti," he whispers over and over, practicing. Finally one of the other doctors opens the fridge, groping around and not looking inside, telling another doctor off to the left "—why he never enjoyed seafood, I guess—" Then Doctor Grope notices Doctor Yeti and screams. Simultaneously, Doctors Grope and Out of Frame throw all the needles in their pockets at Doctor Yeti. His skin turns blue and bubbly. His neck melts into his shoulders. His fingers web together. Doctors Grope and Out of Frame look at each other and become a certain kind of friends that aren't friends at all but stay that way forever.
The sky rolled up and fell through the hole in Kate's roof and bounced from her forehead and floated to the floor, upon which it made a crinkly sound as it brushed the hem of her bed skirt. As it brushed the hem of her bed skirt, she sat up and said, "Who's there?""Who's there?" she said. She said it one more time, then got out of bed and found the rolled up sky hiding behind a plant stand holding ivy. Behind the plant stand holding ivy, she bent, and the rolled up sky trembled when she picked it up. She picked it apart and it resisted when she tried to unroll it. She tried to unroll it and it sighed. It sighed wide open and the stars exploded in her face.
#
John was long gone by then but he had a telescope trained on Kate's attic, and he saw the whole thing happen, and as it happened he screamed.
Because the trumpets in The Milk of Human Kindness precede the xylophone, the wacko curtain, the stage bursts into a flock of sparrows, the sparrows fly south, turn into librarians, drink blood, get hammered, put on headphones, and the sound pulls the red hem loose on their trousers, gulp-gulp-gulp go the crickets and frogs, the pedestrians draw wheelbarrows, bang chimes, shake maracas, fly a plane into the side of William Faulkner.First the smell of wisteria.—a brilliantly placed em dash. Absalom! A trio of plastic recorders play a lullaby, hillbilly music, pantomime. A foxtrot, a face, a horse. Both bullets had a room and each before daylight, probably due to the pistol demonstration.
Did not use did not say had never would not be years, a face, a quality. Worm smooth of knitting needles. Peacefully ill. Steadily —a wall or a post— gold Spanish bottom land. Years of clients, not mud. Slavedealers fatalistic Latin faced wear somberly theatric determination, stark naked, bare replenished cache. Steamboats gaunt, fleeting haste of grandfather food trying to kill the legend. Hands clap, slap knees. Keyboards, wild men, plank clay and timber unaware. The women by example in a curious brute phase greet mosquitoes: the architect, the French invincible.
Decorum: weapon assault.
Protection: formal delicate smokehouses, a passing house, the hardship inexplicable, and horsemen.
Sounds from early sci-fi movies, heated bricks. Husbands. Prospective bride, Spanish coin. Electricity. Memphis. Methodist. Dissonance, cacophony. A voice like a cereal commercial or else Beck circa Mellow Gold. Zombie sounds. Chandeliers and mahogany. Speculation parties to anticipate an ironed coat. A man with uprightness drank surprise ruthlessness, a broken plate, a portmanteau. Slack-mouthed four wagons heretofore missed.
About riding which tarpaulin? Curry-comb? Baskets, parlors, furniture. Inside the worn broadcloth quizzical, contemptuous, half-eaten, dispatched, mortgaged, grandfather with the committee.
Always people. Always. A harmonica directly follows hiphop beats, a guitar is accompanied by recorder. Bees. The gallop of a horse ride, with bells and a wooden block. Police sirens compete against lazy trumpets. An anthem, a ceremony, cajoled for less than unremitting cotton, actual labor, a demand, anomalous stainless license zapping sounds of ray guns. A choral number, a church piano, another chugging western footstomper.
Creepmetal disaster of future relations. Anonymous stainless wife. A stock trader of disapprobation. The ribbons built meddling around natural regurgitated citizens. Alertness bauble. Indolence. Clonishly giraffeish. Vanity swallows outrage with insurmountable opinion and thrusting disinclination, clairvoyant nightfall pincushion. Blemish on the livery stable. Dignity, banquet torches, evidently halted mystical carriages shielding motionless remembering.
The ice cubes accomplish sinister masonry justification. Breathing creatures, probity repelling invading reputation nail. Revenge. Retribution. Robust roar and augur taught a hundred Greek interchangeable chronologies lugubriously.
Immaculate pledge, impregnable citadel, the drums fail. A twinkle, like Mr. Rogers.
When the law comes I will tell them we are apples. They’ll laugh at this and then bite. The law will wear redblue sweaters with doves stapled onto them giving a wingflap or a squawk at appropriate moments but otherwise feigning death. Darla, when the law comes you will hide in the sink faucet and I will not offer them water no matter how often or how conspicuously they allude to their thirst buds. I will tell them they should have drunk natural truck juices with high fructose computers before they dared put boots on the ground as they say. When the law comes I will spit in their faces and tell a dirty apple joke. They will pretend to understand but in fact they won’t. When the law comes with their bodies full of worry and fresh wild morals and when they tie their long blond hair back in short tight dollars and when they announce they are here to make us more competitive you like I said will hide in the sink faucet and I will try to entertain them and they will playact for thirty or so versatile seconds and then they will shoot. Yes it will hurt because it has to hurt. Bartender, I will say to the doctor, stop here on red, no turn on red, and he will laugh knowingly, and he will not stanch the bleeding. When the law comes you will urge me by the elbow and say some beans don’t fart but I will stay put. Darla, I will say, we’ll always have Monaco. That will put some tears on your cheeks hence the faucet. When the law comes and yes the law will come, I will say to them the snake was just here before you. You know they feign fearlessness but watch how they’ll get careful with every redblue footstep and pray for their troops. The snake was just here, I will repeat, the snake was just here before you, I will say when the law comes.
I cried the first time I heard him sing. Very softly it destroyed my reasoning. The pen itself resists writing down such voluptuous nonsense. I become a dull stuttering scholar. Rays of language answer whether I want them to or not.
I had funky primitive equipment. Everything was mono. All of the birds talking at once. The vacuum cleaner motor had a drone, so I played along with that:
Dearest __ (a single upper case initial inscribed on page 24 — feathers optional)
We are either going to dissolve as a human race or we are going to break through into a new understanding of what it is to be a human being.
I can picture a whole opera in my mind. A gentle puppet show traces the origin of a few ideas. While peeping through little holes an audience rids itself of itself. Reflections in bent aluminum foil watching painted replicas enjoy the tactile thing.
I am indifferent to railways and common noises. Their vibrations create a weapon inside me. I recite by heart the daily headlines to reduce their effectiveness. I can’t determine the points of pressure against my skull. But in the dark I can search a room for a small pair of scissors or even a needle and find them. It was a huge room I remembered from college. People asleep in hammocks who didn’t wake up in time. Lifelong habits. The vividness of a bird about to be eaten by a cat. Large dragon-like shapes that sit beside me when I play the notes. Insects of all sorts come out of the piano bench. They remind me of the old dances. I watch my hands move over a black and white surface in the shape of child. He’s made out of bathroom tiles. His face like slips of paper. He makes me kiss my own arrangements.
Everything had a temperature in those days. Cheese was cold. Avocados were warm. My heart was a piece of hot meat pierced by love’s thermometer.
I need an agent to deal with my agent. This was the thought. Bill was to be the buffer: Jonathan is a pathological liar, I am a pathological truthteller, and Bill was to be the man-in-the-middle, the go-between, the Janus — something intermediary, anyhoo. That’s what middlemen are for. One day Bill resigned.On a market stall I happened to see, oh how lovely! a SARS mask within a plastic envelope. You needed protection yourself, Bill; you needed your very own personal plastic envelope. And I didn’t know. And more to the purpose, because life must go on, here was a chance to practice my Japanese! The label included both English text and an enchanting title for the object incorporating both hiragana and katakana: よyo こko はha マma スsu クku. I didn’t know that masuku was Japanese for mask, Bill, did you?
1. Pollution of coastal waters can have / the black sun of melancholy / signature of all things I am here to / test for indicator organisms such as / Love or Phoebus, Lusignan or Biron / based on weekly or fortnightly water sampling2. The beach zone is modeled as / the grotto where the siren / (see Fig. 1) / wind-generated surface advection and / have lingered in / with parameter estimation / limit of the diaphane / with uniform pollution concentration
3. Wild sea money / dc and dt: decay and mixing / language tide and wind have silted / to a build-up of pollutants during / the night of the tombs, you who consoled me / (see Fig. 2)
4. The coastline is roughly aligned with / the sighs of the Saint and the cries of / prevailing wind positions at this / lolled on bladderwrack / in the chambers of / pollution forecasting, modeled by / the grid where vine and rose enmesh
5. Two brief field surveys, carried out to / walk upon the beach / accumulated rainfall and runoff pollution which / snotgreen, bluesilver, rust / where U is wind and T is days / have modulated on the lyre of / drainage flow-rates for / the mermaids singing, each to / the ‘first-flush effect’, as visible in Fig. 3 / forehead is still red from the Queen’s kiss
“It’s certainly — well. It’s certainly a something,” Lily murmured, upon being introduced to the Object. “But what kind of something is it?”“This,” said Oliver, cradling the Object reverently in his open palms, “Is the something that is going to save our marriage.”
Not having been birthed yesterday, Lily had her doubts, but she was willing to be persuaded. She was desperate to be persuaded, in fact. And there was something about the something in Oliver’s palms that resisted all her efforts to resist it. Unlike most of the objects in Lily’s environs, it seemed to raise more questions than it answered. First of all, what was it?
“What is it?” said Lily.
“I just told you,” Oliver said patiently.
The Object expressed no opinion.
“Well, we might as well give it a try,” Lily said. “How do we make it do?”
Oliver squinted down at the Object for a while, then shrugged. “I think we just set it down in the corner,” he said finally. “Give it room to do its work.”
Lily considered this a moment, then took Oliver’s hand, and they deposited the object, gently and circumspectly, in the room’s nearest corner. “How long will it take?” Lily wondered.
“Ten and a half days,” Oliver said firmly. Lily couldn’t help noticing, however, that he avoided looking her in the eye. You’ll never persuade me that way, Lily said to herself. The Object chittered and hummed in its corner.
“What a strange thing it is,” Lily said. “It reminds me of something.”
“Shhh!” Oliver whispered. “Don’t talk about it. The less we acknowledge it, the better.”
It wasn’t until weeks later, when their marriage had long since been saved, that they saw the Object for what it truly was. By then, of course, it didn’t make the slightest bit of difference.
When Nechvatal speaks of “immersive intelligence” he does so in the following way: “By refusing the dichotomized, utilitarian codes of representation in favor of the free associational operations, excess triggers an array of synaptic charges. “That’s synaptic, not synoptic—but the two may as well merge into one, when he says: “Aesthetic immersion’s non-linear and indeterminate latent excess facilitates our desire to transcend the boundaries of our customary human cognition in order to fell the state of unconditional being that Hegel called the absolute.”The absolute is a conundrum for Nechvatal, who resides much closer to an omniscient fluid consciousness that would appear anathema to Hegel, at least on the surface. The introduction of the “seminal” early 20th century mystic, Austin Osman Spare, offers an ecstatic alternative to the absolute, who is quoted as: “The artist must be trained to work freely and without control within a continuous line and without afterthought … In time, shapes will be found to evolve, suggesting conceptions, forms—and ultimately, style.”
Citing Spare, Nechvatal proceeds to anoint the crown of this Blakian serpentine misfit by suggesting a prophetic impulse, namely—“that underlying everything virtual is a web of hyper connections upon which we can exert more manipulative desire than we are normally led to believe by the society the spectacle.” Still, the most energetic part of the book veers toward the conclusion with an exalted hyper-critique of his precarious ally, Jean Baudrillard. Here, Nechvatal is annoyed that the Pope of Simulacra has idolized Warhol at the expense of the Dadaists: “By ignoring such basic Dadaist dysfunctional strategies (by over-valuating Warhol’s own appropriation of them via Duchamp), Baudrillard is able to claim rather that the masses can only incorporate media content, thereby neutralizing the meaning by demanding and obtaining more and more irrational self-contradictory spectacle entertainment.” Nechvatal goes to show that Baudrillard did little more than erode “the boundary between the media and the real.” Admonishing the presumption that “Warholian reproducibility becomes the fundamental logic and code of the information society,” Nechvatal takes a clear stand with the viractual and the quest for an immersive intelligence (in spite of its neo-metaphysical aspect) and goes on to confront the lack of internal critique that has allowed this tendency to be either overlooked, sentimentalized, traumatized, or misunderstood.
On September 16th, 2031 at 2:35 am, a temporal rift – a “tear” in very fabric of time and space – will appear 16.5 meters above the area currently occupied by Jeffrey’s Bistro, 123 E Ivinson Ave, Laramie, WY. Only the person wielding this mallet will be able to enter the rift unscathed. If this person then completes the 8 Labors of Worthiness, he or she will be become the supreme ruler of the universe.
“Dennis, Nell, Edna, Leon, Nedra, Anita, Rolf, Nora, Alice, Carol, Leo, Jane, Reed, Dena, Dale, Basil, Rae, Penny, Lana, Dave, Denny, Lena, Ida, Bernadette, Ben, Ray, Lila, Nina, Jo, Ira, Mara, Sara, Mario, Jan, Ina, Lily, Arne, Bette, Dan, Reba, Diane, Lynn, Ed, Eva, Dana, Lynne, Pearl, Isabel, Ada, Ned, Dee, Rena, Joel, Lora, Cecil, Aaron, Flora, Tina, Arden, Noel, and Ellen sinned” (the longest known name-based palindrome)Dennis shot a man dead in Key West.
Nell told Ada to have sex with Dennis’s brother, Dan, in exchange for drugs.
Edna lied.
Leon lied.
Nedra lied.
Anita cheated.
Rolf was greedy.
Nora was greedy.
Alice was greedy.
Carol was wrathful.
Leo lied and was slothful.
Jane wore a new dress on a date with Dennis and then returned it.
Reed took naked photographs of young boys and sold them to a pawnbroker in Hialeah.
Dena worked for the pawnbroker but looked the other way.
Dale cheated on his wife.
Basil was slothful.
Rae sold used mattresses as new.
Penny should have picked Dennis up at the Miami airport, but couldn’t get out of bed.
Lana did coke and had a threesome with Dennis before he left St. Louis.
Dave suffered from spiritual torpor.
Denny suffered from spiritual torpor.
Lena suffered from spiritual torpor.
Ida ate too much.
Bernadette ate too much.
Ben hit and killed a dog while driving with his friend Ned and drove off.
Ray did a shoddy job inspecting rides at an amusement park; a ride collapsed, killing three.
Lila stole.
Nina stole.
Jo stole.
Ira falsified a work injury and sued for damages.
Mara ate too much.
Sara was prideful.
Mario was prideful.
Jan was prideful.
Ina lied.
Lily lusted after her cousin.
Arne, Lily’s cousin, lusted after her.
Bette, Lily’s mother, boasted about her daughter’s grades but was blind to the situation with Arne.
Dan, Lily’s father, left her for a much younger woman.
Reba lived in Key West; Dan came to live with her and open a restaurant; they dealt drugs out of the back.
Diane fell in love with Dan and felt despair.
Lynn fell in love with Dan and felt wrath.
Ed envied Dan.
Eva stole.
Dana was greedy.
Lynne was enraged that Dan could not tell the difference between her and Lynn.
Pearl was slothful.
Isabel, who was in love with Dan but despaired ever having him, wrote down her desires on a piece of paper, rolled it up, pushed it into a miniature souvenir bottle, and dropped the bottle on the beach behind the restaurant.
Ada coaxed Dan out onto the beach one night with the promise of sex.
Ned hit Dan with his car; when he heard the thump, he thought of the dog he and Ben had hit and just kept on going.
Dee, Ned’s passenger, felt despair.
Rena, who witnessed the accident, felt despair.
Joel, a cop, heard about the accident from Rena; he was sleeping with her while his wife was dying in the hospital.
Lora, Rena’s sister, was in the threesome with Dennis in St. Louis, and she told him that Dan was dead.
Cecil bought pictures of boys from the pawnbroker.
Aaron lied.
Flora was vainglorious.
Tina, also vainglorious, came upon Isabel’s bottle, pocketed it.
Arden, Tina’s lover, accepted the bottle as a token of Tina’s affection.
Noel, Arden’s lover, rubbed cocaine on her gums during sex with Dennis and casually mentioned that if someone killed her brother, she’d take revenge.
Ellen was having sex with Ned when Dennis burst into the room and squeezed off two shots.
We went to the Moon. We wore puffy suits & boots. We had a lunar module.We collected Moon rock. We bounced around. Later we had a roving vehicle.
Some people said it was a set-up. That it was done in a TV studio. That there should have been stars & the flag moved.
It was a long time ago now, forty years. We went back a few times but then we stopped. There was no atmosphere. The sky was black. Everything was there but it wasn't much.
When I saw the pale sketch of the moon in the sky this morning I remembered we went to the moon. Probably.
There's so much emphasis on the individual we forget how much a single person is actually a double. For a start, we are symmetrical: 2 eyes, 2 nostrils, 2 lips with two halves in each one. Our 32 teeth can be divided in two so many ways they deserve a poem of their own. And, taking a bird's eye view—2 hemispheres in the brain. The story goes all the way down: 2 shoulders, 2 arms, 2 lungs, 2 kidneys, 2 testicles, 2 ovaries, 2 bums, each one divided in 2, 2 legs, 2 feet. We are actually really 2 people in one. And what do we do? We pair up. We get married, shackled, whatever. Why we do this I do not know. We are already getting quite enough action being 2 people in one but whatever. We have to have an outside person too, who is also more 2 persons than one. It gets complex. Now you have a 2 X 4. Kids arrive. Each kid adds 2 to the mix. Sometimes there's twins. Pretty soon you have chaos masquerading as a family. I'm thinking of Ben Franklin. Now Ben was the 15th child out of a total of 17 born to his mother. This figure may or may not include 2 children who died. The numbers are staggering. I'm thinking of Mrs. Franklin. This is a woman or, in my way of thinking, practically 2 women, who had 17 or 19 children proceed through her, i.e., 34 or 38, in addition to providing accommodation for the regular visits of Mr. Franklin. This is not a woman. This is a pomegranate. This is the fabled village it takes to raise a child. Mrs. Franklin herself was the green on which the townspeople cavorted. Is it any wonder we thought of mitosis and meiosis and all that. It's written all over us. How do you end something like this? It never ends.
SLEEP!Free of charge!
Luxury item!
In your own home!
In-flight movies!
No skills needed!
Be your own boss!
Better than sex!
No calories!
Fat-free!
When I go to bed early, time is a smooth table, with the prospect of music, books, poems, sleep, hovering like blimps above it. Sitting on the doorstep of sleep is the greatest luxury. The sun always shines in that country. The stoop is so bleached with it, it is made of sun.
We are all of us guests on this planetAnd with guests — you know how it is
Some are nice and some are tiresome
And some behave as if they were hosts
and even as they die they believe
that they have owned the sun and the air and the history that took place
even before they were born.
Some naive lovers of semantics believe
that if only our leaders
(of all sorts)
could understand the meaning of their own pronouncements
they would amend their ways.
What an illusion!
They - the leaders
know the mechanism of Language much better than all the semanticists,
linguistic philosophers,
& logical formalists put together.
It's only that they use their knowledge for their own purposes.
And when a Poet
or a Novelist becomes a demagogue
the same applies to him.
Because POETRY as well as POLITICS may be morally vicious,
and intellectually dishonest.
In such cases both Poetry and Oratory
(political, religious, philosophical)
are like Crime.
The greater a Crime is
the more impressive it is
but the less excusable.
Thus
when all is said and done
one finds that no poetic rhymes
and no politic aims
are more important
than decency of means.
Because when all is said and done
decency of means
is
the aim of aims.
“One should never hope for anything.”“If you know that I am an unbeliever, then you know me better than I do myself. I may be an unbeliever, but I am an unbeliever who has a nostalgia for a belief.”
“But I do not believe in a metaphysical god. I am religious because I have a natural identification between reality and God. Reality is divine. That is why my films are never naturalistic. The motivation that unites all of my films is to give back to reality its original sacred significance.”
“When I make a film, I shift into a state of fascination with an object, a thing, a fact, a look, a landscape, as though it were an engine where the holy is about to explode.”
“I am a murderer but I am a good person.”
“Don’t talk to me of the sea while we are in the mountains.”
“If I have access to an administrative council or a Stock Market maneuver, that’s what I use. Otherwise I use a crowbar. And when I use a crowbar, I’ll use whatever means to get what I want.”
“I say let’s not waste time placing nametags here and there. Let’s see then how we can unplug this tub before we all drown.”
I work all day like a monkand at night wander about like an alleycat
looking for love…I’ll propose
to the Church that I’ll be made a saint.
In fact I respond to mystification
with mildness. I watch the lynch-mob
as through a camera-eye.
With the calm courage of a scientist,
I watch myself being massacred.
I seem to feel hate and yet I write
verses full of painstaking love.
I study treachery as a fatal phenomenon,
almost as if I were not its object.
I pity the young fascists,
and the old ones, whom I consider forms
of the most horrible evil, I oppose
only with the violence of reason.
Passive as a bird that sees all, in flight,
and carries in its heart,
rising in the sky,
an unforgiving conscience.
We stayed in his house. Even when the man was gone, we didn’t leave the house. We didn’t play with other children in the area. When I was about five years old, I pastured cows with my sister. Sometimes we would lose one and stay out until five or six in the evening to try and find it. If we couldn’t find it we’d tell the man, shaking with fear. He’d take out a whip and beat us, leaving our backs bloody. Or he’d use an extension cord or television antenna. When my mother tried to defend us, he would shove her and threaten her with a machete. Anytime there was a problem, that man would hit my mother and tell her he was going to torture her, quarter her. One day I asked my mother what “quarter” meant. She told me, “It’s when they remove pieces of a person’s body when they’re still alive.”
Later that same day we find ourselves on the beach, the best place for watching the helicopters, unless you don’t want to see the heavy artillery slung below their bellies like sharp-edged lamprey nearly ready to drop off and find another shark’s guts to vacuum.Children white in the sand. Some of their mothers are between cigarettes; some of their mothers are between geographies, always knowing that the words compass, conscience and north are related. These mothers drop their cigarettes in the surf and wade with the patience of the dead to retrieve their children from the waves. Their mothers are the color of butter, the color turtle beans. The color of Sabbath wax. The color of Jerusalem stone. The color of dirt in Missouri.
What sort of world did we come into that first night when we,fresh from the fall and up to our shit in apples, found our bodies—had no joy,
no romance to share, all copulant rage screaming upward. And the angels,
did they weep real tears? or howl down at us, “Me next!” Did the animals watch
abashed? or turn to one another, saying, “So, that’s how it’s done.”
What sterile paradise did we shatter screaming into the dark, “O G-d, o G-D,
my G-d, where have You been?”
I hold my hand like a tin can to my mouth. It gets that bad. I speak into my hand. I hold my hand to my ear and listen.
I once heard a heartbeat and thought it was you, holding the receiving can to your naked breast. I thought of your breast.
I once heard an ocean, and I thought of you holding the receiving can to your naked body. I thought of your nacre skin, the time I held my ear to your navel and heard an ocean, how we are seas and how loud we are out there. We have nothing but ourselves to crash into.
I wonder when you’re coming back. I talk to you, I hear back heartbeats and oceans. I wonder if you’re ever coming back.
Some nights, I don’t care who comes, whether you or Vishnu, Christ perhaps or Valhalla. Just come back. Fix what is broken.
