Saturday, June 28, 2008
Erasers are awesome
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Fun is for faggots and writers.
But I am thinking 10-15 lines at the most. Introduce everyone as you see them if you were to exaggerate/diminish them into physicality and caricature and mildly intriguing sub-plots before you insert them into the Next Great American Novel.
i.e. Sampinos as a villian in Cold War Memphis/Sampinos as a hero in 19th-century Melbourne, Australia.
It would take research and brevity but I think it would be fun and challenging. And wicked fun to see what everyone comes up with.
And.
I don't have to say anyone died of ennui from reading the shit I have been turning out lately.
Let me know via comments and one we all throw in, I will start the guidelines.
What you said made a mess of me.
And her heart fell on the floor where she slipped on it. Again. Twisting her ankle.
She caught some of her balance and watched her simple-minded corazon slide across the kitchen floor before rolling under the fridge where the previous year's resolutions had gone to smoke Pall Malls and watch Cheech and Chong movies.
I'm NOT sorry! yelled her foolish heart, pretending to ignore the faraway look of stupidity on the face of our Best Supporting Actress.
Dick Van Dyke had the hots for Julie Andrews
A sweep ain't as lucky as one would have thunk.
Chim chiminey, chim chiminey, chim chim kaboom,
Bad luck will rub off when I shakes 'ands wif you.
Squm Squm Squiggle
This morning I read Harlan Ellison on the bus, and he, in Angry Candy, was lauding an author I've never read- Theodore Sturgeon- and said of him that he could grab your heart and squeeze it til your life hurt.
WHAM! Its there, somewhere. Running through my fingers like lover's hair.
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Next
Of all those things remembered was that photo on my parents' bookshelf, that big huge photo like a black and white beacon- what it means to be twentyone and not know what you're holding- most just hold their pudd and bark a lot. There was another photo too, She took it of me tumbling on a lawn; the burrito shop and bookstore and those big old funky trees.
This ain't worth all that I say it is- its gone for good now- that's its charm.
There was a time we both awoke in middling night and made love without a word-slow and easy- Do you see?
That isn't even me. This isn't ME.
I still worried after recycling, then. After carbon footprint, endangered freerange sprouted hamburgers. And now I walk outside some sort of Man that I've become- I fight and crackSmack jokes and fuck and don't much ever 'make love.' Haven't made it that far in years. I'm ManChild, Kan would say- I'm walking on my castoff selves and swaggering a bit- well, Shit.
You can't believe forever.
I walk outside Some sort of Man and know it was Her (Tripe) and let that sink (Stink), because she told me how things went. It isn't how I remember them. Some precious girl is falling for me now, and I am useless to her. I should drive the beast away. She's too sweet for me. Its meanness that I need.
This sort of talk is toxic, push a fist back through your throat and you will catch just what I mean, I'm cruising for that now- some Tom Dick or Harry wants to meet my horned eye.
And there were buds- lolling phallic newgrowth Life on every branch, the poet said.
They promised all the ruin yet to come.
Some kind of Man stood, and took the pen, and drove it through the poet's hand.
'There's life,' he says. 'Your allegory, arched wit, lifeless melancholy Twit- There is Life.'
The poet squeaked and ran out all over his watermarked pages,
Ichor, Bristle, Bled.
'Fuck, feel it,' said Some kind of Man. 'You're making pretty structures of it in your mind. Feel it, let your dick get hard, its worth no more than what it is: A shitty turn. Stop building palaces from it, fuck!'
The poet might just turn his head and swallow Some sort of Man whole; whole as walnuts, whole as melancholy whining cunts. He might listen, too. He might, at that. Might.
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
A Conversation
Hurts
Sunday, June 22, 2008
Greenstick
Anyway, here you go.
He awoke with a startled gasp, feeling the crushing weight of all that earth and stone pressing down on him, making it hard to breathe in the too close confines of... of...
He thought for a moment, trying to remember anything about where, or even who, he was. Panic settled in, and he started to buck and kick, but he realized that he couldn't feel his legs. He should have been able to feel his legs, especially in this tiny stone coffin that he was trapped in, but there was just a horrible emptiness down there, a very pronounced feeling of no feeling whatsoever. His breathing increased until it sounded like God was in there with him; an out of shape God who had just run up twenty flights of stairs, and he forced himself to calm down, to slow his breathing. After a moment, he was no longer hyperventilating.
He continued pacing his breathing, even when a horrible thought (have to conserve my air don't know how much is left) flashed through his brain and threatened to bring the panic back for a curtain call.
Okay, first things first. Inventory. He moved and twisted as much as he could, testing what still worked and what didn't, and in doing so, found that he wasn't as firmly trapped as he'd originally thought. Although the shaft or whatever he was in was certainly small, there was enough room that he could prop himself up on his elbows and still have an inch or two between his forehead and the rough rock ceiling.
He tried to pull himself back a few inches, and suddenly he could feel his legs again, a hundred different pains shooting through his legs and accompanied by a million pins and needles rushing through them. He screamed involuntarily, but he didn't mind the pain, not really. The pain was good, in this case, infinitely preferable to that horrible blankness. The pain meant that his legs might work again, someday. Assuming that he could get out of here, that is.
He tried again, pulling himself a few more inches, and this time he pulled his legs free. He looked down at his legs, wanting to see what sort of damage had been done, and he looked away almost as quickly, immediately wishing that he hadn't.
He remembered, dimly, a medical term that someone had once told him for what had happened to his leg -green stick- and he'd laughed, thinking that it couldn't possibly be a term that doctors actually used. There weren't enough syllables in it, he'd said.
But now, he could easily see how it applied. The broken ends of the bone peeking through the torn skin on his right leg had a raw, splintered look to it. It was certainly easy to imagine it as a sapling branch, roughly snapped in half and showing its tender green insides. He felt his stomach starting to revolt, and at the same time he felt the world swimming away from him, swirling away as though he were watching water drain out of a pool a hundred feet below him.
This way, Paul.
For a moment, he looked around, confusedly, as though someone had actually spoken the words aloud. They repeated, and this time he recognized them for what they were, a memory. And then, as if his acknowledgment was all it took, the memory unreeled itself in his mind's projection room, and he watched, rapt.
...up the mountain now almost to the top stephanie running as easily as though it were level ground but he wasn't running he was dragging his feet breathing hard sweat pouring down his face and she turned around and laughed and said it again this way paul...
And then it was over, as quickly as it had begun. Paul, then. His name was Paul. Paul what, though? He didn't know, and with his shin bone sticking out, he didn't think it mattered much if he was Paul Simon or Pauly Shore. Who? His mind asked, and he let the question slide by unanswered. The better question was what, as in, what was he going to do to get himself out of here?
He tried to drag himself forward, but now that he knew what he'd done to his leg, he could feel it in intimate detail, could feel the broken, raw edges of his bone grating together. Even worse was the sound, a nails-on-slate shriek that was almost certainly only in his head, but horribly loud despite this. In the depths of his pain, there was nothing else in the world but that shriek, his bones screaming as they rasped together like a metal file on prison bars.
The pain was enormous, huge, and he started to black out again. He forced himself to stay conscious, gritting his teeth against it.
The pain slowly relinquished its grip on him, and the world began to cautiously approach him again, like a nervous teenager at his first dance. Sweat poured off of him in sheets.
He looked around for something to splint it with, nearly giving up until he saw a backpack a few feet away. Had the backpack always been there, or was Stephanie...
(this way, Paul)
...helping him out somehow?
For that matter, where was she? If she'd been with him on this trip, then it stood to reason that she should be around somewhere, didn't it? Of course it did. Maybe she isn't hurt, he thought suddenly. Maybe I fell down here because I wasn't paying attention, and maybe she didn't fall in here with me, and maybe right now there's a search party coming out here to find me, with helicopters and policemen and bloodhounds and...
Maybe she's dead. The thought came out of nowhere, startling him as effectively as a bucket of ice water in the face would have done, and his breath sped up again. No, he thought. Don't think that, don't you dare think that, if you think it then it might come true. He knew that this train of thought was irrational, but nevertheless he shied away from the subject.
"Don't you dare think that," he repeated, aloud this time. His voice came out louder than he expected, echoing off the confines of the cave. He felt a little better, stronger, as though his voice had healing powers that he hadn't suspected before now.
So he said it again.
He pulled himself up into an invalid's sitting posture, legs straight, body forming a gradual slope upwards, elbows underneath him. He pulled the backpack close to him and began looking through it.
He found a bag of trail mix inside, and at that his hunger came rushing back, and he had devoured half of the bag before a single thought of conservation had even crossed his mind. A sense of disquiet went through him as he realized that he had no idea whether or not the hypothetical rescue team was on the way or not, and if they weren't then he had to get out of here on his own.
But Stephanie is bringing them back.
But what if she isn't?
He shook his head as if to dispel the very idea, and he continued looking through the bag. He found a water bottle and allowed himself only a few drops, only enough to awaken his thirst, really. A few guide books, and none of the titles meant anything to him. He wondered if he'd done some sort of brain damage that had ruined his ability to read, and he picked up a guidebook at random. Underground Utah, he read, and laughed aloud. He couldn't exactly remember where Utah was right now, but he was sure as shit underground now, wasn't he?
Next to the guidebooks was a flashlight. He flicked it on, and it gave a weak light that solidified into a white glare that stung his eyes after a few brisk whacks to the side.
Other than that, there were just a few shirts, and then underneath that...
At the bottom of the pack was a medical kit, and he grabbed at it greedily, unzipping it and taking in its contents. He didn't even see the burn creams, the band-aids. Instead, his eyes immediately found three small packets of aspirin, and he pulled them out and started ripping the first package open before his mind had even finished forming the word aspirin.
As soon as it was open he tossed back the pills and crunched it down immediately, not wanting to waste any water on the pills. Besides, he had a sneaking suspicion that his sips would turn to gulps, and then the bottle would be empty before he knew it.
He didn't think that the aspirin would take away all the pain, but he hoped it would at least take the edge off. He went back to the medical kit, his eyes seeing a pair of scissors but not really registering them yet. His eyes wandered over to the backpack again, seeing the metal support struts and yet not seeing them.
These two things triggered a third word in his mind -splint- and he was grabbing for the backpack again, dumping the contents on the ground before he pulled the struts out of the bag.
He didn't know that it would do any good, but he felt good, felt as though he was accomplishing something while he cut up two of the T-shirts and looped them around his leg, the metal struts getting tighter and tighter with each pass. When he got close to the exposed bone (compound fracture, not a greenstick- greensticks only happen to kids, and the bone doesn't poke out, it bends and splinters, but it doesn't break, his mind chimed in), he paused for a moment, grabbing for the backpack. He clenched one of the straps tightly in his teeth as he continued winding the strips around his leg, biting down so hard his jaw ached as the strips forced the bones into something at least closer to their original positions.
When he was done, he had sweated through his shirt, and he took it off and used it to wipe his forehead before tossing it aside in favor of the last shirt in his pack.
He waited for a few minutes before he started moving again, hoping to give the aspirin time to kick in, or the splint to force the bones back into place somehow so they could begin the tedious process of knitting back together, or for Jesus himself to come down and show him the door that had been here all along, but mostly just waiting because he was sick of the pain for a moment. Ever since he'd woken up, the pain had been here with him, and he was enjoying its absence, however brief it may turn out to be.
Finally, Paul began to move.
There was light sifting through a jumble of rocks near where he'd been laying, faint but enough to suggest that there was freedom just on the other side of those rocks. He'd spent a few minutes trying to shift the rocks, but they were too heavy, or he was too weak right now, or both, and he gave up when the pain got too intense.
This way, Paul.
The pain was still there, but it wasn't as bad as it had been. It was still bad, still making sweat pour down Paul's face in rivers and streams, but it wasn't as bad as it had been. He made progress, slowly but surely, pulling himself maybe twenty feet that first hour.
After two hours, the ceiling began to cut away sharply, heading up and up so abruptly that Paul could have stood with plenty of clearance, if he'd been able to stand. Even so, it was a relief to have that open space above him instead of the ceiling pressing down on him.
He stopped to take a drink
(let's rest here)
and another memory began to play as he drank in small sips.
...he and stephanie are sitting down now sitting on two rocks that seem to be custom made for the purpose nature's laz-e-boy he says and stephanie laughs perhaps harder than it deserves but they're tired and it's getting late in fact it's late enough and they're tired enough that they've reached that place where everything is funny not just funny but hilarious sidesplitting and when they're done laughing she stands up and starts to walk away and she says it again this way paul and he stands to follow her when he hears something start up underneath his feet a low rumbling sound that he feels more than hears...
The memory came up short, and for a brief moment he felt cheated.
No time to waste, he thought, looking at the bottle of water, just over half full, with a sense of growing dismay.
He continued his slow progress, the pills starting to wear off, and he stopped just long enough to crunch another two down before hitching himself backwards again.
He didn't know how long he'd been moving when he realized that it was getting lighter in the cave.
He looked around for an exit, and saw that the light was coming from a hole in the ceiling. It wasn't terribly bright, and as Paul pulled himself over, he saw that it wasn't sunlight but the bone-white gleam of the moon shining down on him.
There was a pile of rocks in the center of the room, directly under the site of the cave-in, and two words flashed through his mind -burial mound- before he could stop them. No, he thought. She got out.
He had no sooner thought this than he noticed something sticking out from under the pile of rocks. He edged closer to it, knowing already what it was and not wanting to know, but having to know.
A hand. A hand wearing an engagement ring. And as he sat looking at the hand, everything came back all at once, displaying itself in high definition in his mind's eye.
...this way paul and he stands to follow her when he hears something start up underneath his feet a low rumbling sound that he feels more than hears and stephanie is frozen up ahead looking more confused than scared she still looks confused even as the ground below her starts to break apart and she disappears into the hole so quickly that it would be comical if paul weren't shit scared right now and all that's going through his mind right now is two words the two words she'd spoken to him last night in the tent that had filled him with equal parts anxiety and joy and then they'd made love and lain together afterwards talking about their future together and now here he was watching the future the future was here and now her slipping down this hole and the hole getting wider and wider and she's still not screaming and all he can hear is those two words again but now its more than those two words now he hears her say paul we need to talk i've got some good news you see...
Paul grabbed her hand, tears streaming down his face, and he sat there crying even as the memory continued, playing now on every screen, no escaping it now, and he hears her say again
...paul we need to talk i've got some good news you see i'm pregnant...
Paul barked a harsh sob at this, willing the memory to stop; crying harder when the memory continued on inexorably.
...he jumps down the hole after her and he can't see her down there and jesus he's been falling for too long and he sees that he's falling towards a mound of rocks sharp jagged rocks and he tries to adjust his descent but it's too late and as he lands he hears a sharp crack and sees the bone shoot out of his leg like a battering ram knocking down the doors to a castle in a medieval epic sees all this in horrible clarity and then he is rolling and then he is crawling away from that mound away from the hand that he sees jutting out from underneath the mound and after a while he finds light but there is another rockfall in the way and he lays his head down and cries and sometime while he is crying he falls asleep and when he wakes up he can't feel his leg...
Paul sat for a long time, holding her hand in his, not caring that it was cold and stiff in his hand.
I'm going to die in here, he thought. Don't you dare think that, he thought immediately afterward. Don't think that, don't you dare think that, if you think it then it might come true.
He hauled himself up to his elbows, setting Stephanie's hand down gently after giving it a single, soft, goodbye kiss.
It was faster to get back to the rockfall than it had been to get to Stephanie, but once there he was out of ideas. He just wanted to sleep, maybe drink some water and finish the trail mix before he fell asleep, but he realized that he'd left both of those back by the cave-in. No way he was going back there. In fact, the only thing he had left was his splint, and somehow he'd managed to keep the medical pack in his pocket, but what was the point in taking the last set of pills when there was no way he could shift the rocks unless he had some sort of excavator or at least a lever of some sort?
He sat up again, his eyes focusing on the splint again. The struts he'd used to make his splint had felt fairly sturdy, but how sturdy were they, he wondered. Would they shift the rocks?
It's worth a shot, he thought, and he crunched the last two pills down in anticipation for the work to come.
Saturday, June 21, 2008
Wild...
Wokka-wokka
It's been agreed the whole world stinks so no one's taking showers anymore
Chelle scratched the scab on the back of his hand. There was nothing left but some dried bits of crusty epidermis-death clinging to a dreidel-shaped itching pink spot brought into existence by a vat of broccoli cheddar soup. The molten potage slopped over the side onto the back of his hand while he staggered down the hall past the distractors and commuters of addiction, chain smoking outside the kitchen door or huddled on the couch with all their knitting and needlepoint.
Fucking AA meetings. The ability to get through the weekly circle jerks to the frailty of self and the subsequent celebration therein, was fueled entirely by a well-appointed glove box holding the flask of Jameson to wash down the quick kiss from Mary Jane who slept in a Children's Tylenol bottle underneath an Illinois state map and a pack of Big Red.
"Jeanne, I can't help if the fucking job hasn't begun yet. Shall we just head to Jupiter and ask if anyone wants to let us stay in their basement? 'Hey, my job doesn't begin for 6 weeks and I am a convicted felon. My girlfriend here is struggling with bulimia, baby-hunger and mild alcoholism. She can't work because she finds work either too boring or stressful. I promised her I would take care of her because she tolerates my disappearing every now and then and she gives great head which I enjoy after finishing a plate of lasagna- which she cooks very well. I also guess that I love her. So, anyway. Mind if we crash here until I can begin my new job? We don't have savings or anything because, see the first bullet point- prision made it hard to save up and what with Miss B&P not working...."
Jeanne stood and walked out of the room, his tshirt slinked over the pink panties that hung grumpily off her round little ass as she stormed down the hall toward the bedroom. Talking to her in this hot apartment while black branches scratched the salty grey windows on November's last Wednesday made him feel uncomfortable. Yes but. Uncomforatble like he was sitting in a hot tub wearing a sweatshirt and jeans.
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
A Toast to Dylan Thomas
Then lets you go.
'I've put down thirty Guinness in a whip,' the two-armed man exclaims. He waves his cane.
The lad and the Irish twat go on. 'You're a funny one,' she drones against his backwards leer, driving back towards one ear.
He sighs, and starts, his forceful heart propels him: 'The force that through the green fuse drives the flower,
Drives my green age...' and he leans, not heavily, on the redheaded girl, and manages to paw her leftmost tit.
'Woke up on the strawcart. What's a strawcart, ask you?' The two-armed man was agitating, stirring batter. 'Had a prick like concrete, then.'
'What is it with you?' she shoves him off, and glances about. 'There are people about. People downstairs. There are people downstairs all over the World, you know.'
'Concrete, lass! In the strawcart! Was a coalcart, innit!' His cane rings the hardened floor.
'There are girls,' the lad snaps, setting his elbow in the Neufchatel, 'Behind these sliding doors, these weeping walls, women stuffed in every corner, bed, and cupboard, Lord! Girls with ankles like winestems, necks like porcelein arched above the Thames!'
'I was a milkmaid,' comes her lament. He hooks a pinky in her dress and tugs for glory, She, nostalgia-lost, allows it.
'I am sure,' he replies, 'you were.' Her bosom heaves like seal puppies. 'Women waiting for MY chance, I tell you.'
'There was a boy not unlike yourself, promising love, and I lost my post.'
'A revolver stuffed inside my belt.'
'THERE was your CONcrete,' cries the cook beside the two-armed man. 'The gun, you billygoat!'
'Harridan! You'll taste my Crete, for truth! My Greek eyetooth!
'A tragedy out on the coast,' the lad has wormed his jutting chin into that nectar-cleft.
'A tragic lad, as full of poetry as you.'
'As full of seed, of shit, of meat.'
'You'll pay your bill, wanting talk like that,' the Cook advances big as fuckMe hams, strapped into an apron like a sail.
'Ah, wanting,' wheels the two-armed man, 'wanting only mountains of your eyes, Cookie dear, and love what springs from midden heaps and soiled old garments in the Southern reaches.'
'Git on,' the Cook spits, grinning hugely.
'The meat was the problem,' snaps our Irish twat, and drives the lad from her Eden with a heave.
'The meat?' he cries, 'and not the seed? What sort of lad- how unlike me!'
'You'll have my leave,' she warns.
'No, no, sweet dove.' The lad crinkles face into a mourning grin. 'Lets talk of poetry again: Two pints of Bass
One Pint of Gin
I found a haven for my chin--'
'You're rhyming,' notes the Irish twat, and takes her leave, as quick as that.
The two-armed man is buried in the Cook's embrace. They'll soon renew in kitchen depths, they'll breathe, and drip, and die that little death.
The poet starts in fingering the suds amid the splintered wood, and rubs and thrusts until he's bleeding, mixing dark sweet Bass and heart-thinner, pushing all that youth and fear and need and ugly EgoDrive into a rut until he's dizzy, and the Cook comes back and whacks him hard along the earhole with her spoon, her monstrous jowls still pink with swoon, her oer'sized lips all pinched and fat from bites the two-armed man laid snipSnipSnip along her teeth and gums, and poet lad falls sobbing in his torn-hand Filth and sleeps till bouncers come.
They arrange him soft as kittens gainst the kerb, and whisper middling lullabies in his ear;
Have no fear, my youth, young Lover,
Have none of that- no fear.
For there are girls behind these sliding skies, with dewdrop teeth and honeyed eyes,
All waiting for the Wolf and his soft words to tear and bite and rip and thrust and puncture up till hipbones grind her lily thighs to canted bruise and moan and walk like horseman, lad, you'll see-
You'll knock the bounce from every knee. These girls in cupboards, under stairs, waiting for their gait impaired.
So sleep like ivy covered books.
And have no fear.
No fear.
The city holds such pleasures for your poet's driven hand. And coming yet: You'll be a man.
Found it.
A curved spoke, unfolding slow beneath the body of machine, could tell a hundred thousand things you might believe.
'There once were forests, end for end, from here to Cathay, back again.
Cain't climb no trees, cain't split no bread,
We won't be rich until we're dead' The caliph of the spoke, it said.
It once saw grease, but then saw gravel, a judgement sure as robe and gavel-
Now it sits, and sits, and rots, and unfolds slow in vacant lots,
This slender bit of arm and gear, this Caliban,
this metal Queer-
Questing for that bit of real
it knew here once,
Inside a wheel.
Friday, June 13, 2008
Schmentle
They Came, They Went.
Liz clutched and hammed and made Monroe, of pretty bits of blue and wind;
The first two chucked, she opted for the third of pictures took above that fan.
Mah platinum-beast she curled and growled, those bruises livid on her skin;
And told a story bout what made a beatin man.
Protest- I am-
but lost for kind, and waiting to hold up that what I preach.
I'd never bruise such lovely bloodFilled peach.
but Soft, what glove through yonder cheek I pierce.
It is the Would I were a hand upon that Sun;
I miss this one.
Found This one
It slaps you out here, when it comes. Not because its harsh- the wind- because weather’s weather, out here. Rain lashes, fog consumes, and the wind, it slaps you.
They crest the Olema hill, verdant lush down to the blackberry eucalyptus jungle, down to the sea. The pickup’s seen better, though in summer weather it’s a coastal dream- the hardtop lifts right off and slap! comes the wind from everywhere doing 35, 40, 45, 50, till you’re used to the howling and it’s a fullbody massage. The pickup crests the hill, its hardtop locked now, in November, and they stop their bickering for a breath or two, the clouds over the headlands, the Irish roll of Bear Valley sucking the fight out through their eyes.
He grumbles, grinds a gear, and takes the slick turn too fast. She stomps an imaginary brake and stretches against the window, hands on dash, face drawn. “Goddamnit, slow down.”
“Yuh,” he says. He downshifts again and they jounce down to Highway one’s Bed and Breakfast infestation. He stops at the T and sits, grinding palms against the steering wheel. He could have cut hard left at the last turn, flipped the wheel back right. She was smaller. He would have lived. When they pulled him from the crushed wreck of the truck he would have been crying, and everyone would feel terrible for him, and he could go on a bender that would never end.
“Are you gonna sit here?”
He looks over at her, the steering wheel making friction noises under his palms, and a strange stab of emotion hits him. He wants to cry, high in his chest where it feels like a rollercoaster dipping back into his throat. He blinks. Turns left.
“What’s the matter with you?” He just shakes his head, the choking tears receding back to somewhere in his stomach. It would be so sad, if she died in a car crash. Terrible, if she slipped off the cliffs. Everyone would feel so bad for him, and drive him home when he collapsed in a corner of the bar.
“Where’s this joker live?”
She stretches her neck before answering. She’s pretty enough. Nice legs, eyes, skin. “I told you, out toward Agate. I told you enough times.”
“Right after Dogtown?”
“Yes.” She was pretty enough. Everyone would feel so bad if she died in a car crash. He pushed the tears down again, and knew clearly what a shitbag he was. The pickup lumbered down toward Bolinas, wet-season wind slapping at it. Even with the windows up it smelled like fairytales, out here. Like luscious rotting earth and dripping trees.
He could slip the wheel on the wet road and smash into those trees.
You fuck. You coward fuck. Just pull over here, tell her its over.
Everyone would feel so bad for her. He’d have to move towns.
They made their way to the Doc’s house, she directing by grasping his shirt and stabbing fingers at a turn ahead, he shaking loose and hunching further into his shoulders. She turned the radio on, and couldn’t find a clear signal. He exhaled, too loudly, and switched it off. Every tree beckoned, and he knew that he should break up with her.
Break up with her before it’s hell for sure.
“You believe?” he asked, as they switched from paved to dirt and back to paved.
“Believe?”
“Yuh. Were you brought up religious?”
She looked at him funny, grabbed his shirt and pointed at a left turn. “No.”
“No Earth-mother mumbo, no redpath, even?” She stared at him. “Christopher Hitchens,” he said, twisting the wheel under his hands, “when Jerry Falwell died, Christopher Hitchens said he wished there was a hell for Falwell to go to.” Stared. “You think there’s a hell?”
“Christopher Hitchens? And who’s Jerry Falwell?”
“Loudmouths,” he said, and hunched down further. “Both of ‘em. Hitchens wants Henry Kissinger hung.”
“Kissinger?”
“Christ- you don’t read?”
She stared at him, a pickled fish. “There it is,” she said.
Ramshackle, clapboard… veneral came to mind. An ageing hippie in overalls stood next to the onestory, a picnic basket in one hand, no shirt under his straps. The wind slapped his loosetied hair. She opened the door before he’d cut the engine, and they both got out into the encroaching fog, the pickup adding steam. “Hey,” the Doc said, and put his basket down. “I was gonna go pick agate. Thought you wouldn’t make it.”
“The storm’ll bring it in, huh?” he said, popping the pickup’s hood to help it cool.
“Yessir,” the Doc said. “Storms turn up all sorts of treasure.” He grinned. “I’ll get my scrip.” She came over suddenly and snuggled against him, twisting like a cat, nuzzling in his neck. He wanted to cry again. You fuck, he told himself. You fuck.
“Mmm… this’ll be good,” she said, tracing the line of his jaw. He pulled away slightly. “We can make some money.”
“Violence,” he said, and she rolled her eyes. “Paranoia,” he insisted. “Fine things to bring home with you.”
“Don’t be a shit,” she growled, and stepped away from him. “You smoke enough of it, so don’t be a shit.” The Doc came back outside, and stood before them in his overalls, apparently comfortable in the cold and wind without his shirt.
“So, what seems to be the trouble, young man?”
“Hell,” he said, and blushed, because no one else would think him clever. You fuck. You fuck. She stared at him, and jerked her eyes toward the Doc.
“Your back,” she hissed.
He rolled his eyes. “I’ve got lumbar amnesia, Doc. Spinal halitosis, and my dick won’t get hard after a fifth of whiskey.”
She shoved him, hard, and he was happy for a moment. It started to rain. “Well, son, maybe I can help. A heinous set of symptoms, that.” He eyed the intensifying drizzle. “Step inside my office?”
He went before her into the shack-house, and she whispered harshly at his back: “Do you think he wants you makin fun, you stupid shit, do you think Celia called him so you could be a shit if you fuck this up I don’t know-“
“So,” the Doc said, and gestured toward a stinking couch, a television set playing silent San Fransisco daytime across from it. “Lumbar region, repetitive stress damage, affecting your… virility.” Raised his forearm violently, a fist-salute.
He didn’t answer. On the TV, a woman left her car and leapt into the arms of a man in a suit. His eyes stung before the urge to cry passed. Did they love one another?
She shoved him, and it hurt, this time. He breathed too deeply, hiding his face from them, and reached into his jacket for the envelope. Tossed it onto the television. “Yuh,” he said, and didn’t look at the Doc.
“Depression?” the Doc asked.
“O,” he answered, meeting his eyes. “O-pression.”
“Fuck you,” she hissed.
“You know,” the Doc said, retrieving the envelope, thumbing it open thoughtfully, “I do a bit of couple’s counseling.”
“The scrip,” he said, and the Doc nodded, disappearing the envelope beneath his sagging chest. He scribbled on a pad, and held the result out. She snatched it hungrily from before his outstretched hand.
“That’ll do for the club,” he said. “I got to examine you, just in case a polygraph ever comes into it. Stand up, son.” He did. The Doc came over and pressed on his back, right above his jeans. Harder. Harder still. The Doc dug a knuckle into his kidney, sighing in exasperation.
“Shit, ow!” He shoved the old man away gently.
“Just as I thought,” the Doc intoned. “Repetitive stress. Now get the hell out of my house.”
They mounted into the pickup silently, and the Doc came out and gathered his picnic basket, waved cheerfully.
“Don’t you want a shirt?” he called, but the Doc just walked off.
“What was that?” she hissed at him as they pulled out. “Celia does us this favor and you act like a complete shit, I think he’s her uncle, what is wrong with you?”
“All sorts of things,” he said, and almost cried, again. You fuck.
She looked at him intently. “You’d better get real,” she hissed. “This isn’t playtime any more. This,” shaking the scrip, “is going rent a house for us. Some land. Pay for school and clothes and a new fucking car, you understand?”
He looked over at her and reached out. Gentle though the gesture was, she recoiled, surprised. He rested his palm on the swell of her belly, already pushing her tits skyward when she sat, making an arc of the loose pants she wore. He rubbed the swollen globe, and the tears battered against the wall in his throat again, again, again.
You fuck, he told himself. You fuck.
Thursday, June 12, 2008
Devilish Cunts
I've had it up to here with them, the whole lot.
If another female missionary comes to my door talking about Joseph Smith, I'm just going to shit.
& I will. ha-ha-ha-ha.
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
Epidemic
You know you want to. Take note of the tiny text, when I pasted it in it pasted too wide. Blah, blah, blah. The formatting kind of sucks on this thing.
Please read it.
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Lobbazob
Monday, June 9, 2008
Refresh
Bands of pale light, cast through dilapidated blinds, lay across the room like strips of tape. Tremulous fingers hovered above a yellowing keyboard, waiting.
He couldn't shake the pitiful sense of absurdity that had overcome him. Maybe if he where a painter himself he could conjure some surreal, bear infested landscape that, with the right kind of eyes, could appear moving or meaningful or at least fucking funny.
He clicked refresh. Nothing.
Stravinsky's Firebird was reaching a pitch as the tea kettle began to cry out in antiphon from the kitchen. Its awkward dissonance spoke of a duality that recalled the magical bird itself. Everyone had their firebird: that which signifies to the individual that life and death are contrapuntal.
Whiskey. It burned like fire going down or coming up and it was now his sole source of inspiration; his firebird. If he could get enough of it down all his dull, dun, dead words would start to seem florid and even insightful, if only for their ambiguity.
He clicked refresh. The tea kettle kept screeching.
Crawling toward the kitchen in search of sweet, caramel colored inspiration, he bumped a table leg and was showered in mail. He paused. Slightly bemused by the beurocracy he was always avoiding. Sifting through the postal detritus he discovered three unpaid rent bills, one uncashed mental disability check and one notice to evict Why the fuck hadn't they come and thrown his sorry ass out on the street?
Nevermind. Words were coming now.
"Feathers formed of dollar bills, we glide.A specie of raptor, surveying the night. We are lank weeds outgrowing gardens and vines, festooning walls of time, we degrade our own delineations."
Between muttering each line over and over again, he had somehow found the composure he needed to stand, turn the stove off, poor tea and whiskey into a wretched glass and drink. He felt better. If the world had ended outside his windows, he hadn't noticed. Still, standing there wraith-like in nothing but his bed sheet, he found himself considering the possibility.
