Thursday, August 28, 2008
Saturday, August 23, 2008
Why We Write
And how life seems to pass us by
How memory we hope won't fail
And every day we write our tale
To leave a legacy of ourselves
To add to books upon the shelves
As photos fade and faces gray
Our words, our phrases will hold sway
Thursday, August 21, 2008
Countdown to Apocalypse
Sing it loud to set you free
The Anthem of hope and clarity
Display it proud for the world to see
The words of truth for you and me
Tonight is the night the whole world ends.
Out not with a whisper but with a bang
We shall not whimper but we shall sing
We all look forward to eternal dream
We shall gather in the streets and scream
Tonight is the night the whole world ends.
Large and low hangs the moon
We all know the end is soon
Blood-red ocean, beach whale-strewn
Apocalypse illness none immune
Tonight is the night the whole world ends.
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Blammo
Forsooth, either. So I slipped a bit.
What I mean by 'slipped' is I ducked under the tablecloth, making a noise I thought would sound as if I was feeling a bit ill. 'My God,' some bitch exclaimed, 'has he the dysentery?'
Naturally, I grasped this interjectionist by the heel and sank my teeth into her ankle.
Who wouled have thought her husband would be so angry?
So, we played a little game. Every time he hit me, I did my best to spit on his wife. The game got better and better, as I graduated from phlegm to blood, and bits of teeth, and then some of my dinner. The other guests were huddled in the pantry to our starboard side, tittering in adulation of my cleverhood. 'You had enough?' I demanded through new holes in my smile, and spit the tip of my tongue into his wife's fatass cleavage.
When I woke up I was in a dumpster. Dear God, forgive them. For they know not bout my crew.
I called all the third graders I'd been buying smokes and mouthwash for, and told them to bring ski masks. Oh, Gotham, you will burn for your transgressions.
First things first- find the fuckers that puree duck liver into French words, and fist their bunkin holes till they swear that Cher's ass a recycled toilet seat. I love my brain.
It is so well-built. The End.
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
Taxi
A taxi tipping over on a nervous night
Skidding tires on slick street rain
Crunch of metal and swirls of light
Overturning once, twice, and again
Heaven showers still rain falls
Dripping drops tell up from down
People huddled ‘gainst the walls
One by one begin to drown
Friday, August 15, 2008
Mr. Lucky Lip Saves the Salt
***This is a work of complete fiction***
Mr. Lucky Lip cringed and coughed and looked up and laughed. His tall frame stood scarred and strong as he mounted his extra-cycle, a truly noble transport, and made his way to the Den of Ill Repute. It was there he played the delicate beautiful instrument with bow and heart. Drop-jawed they watched and wondered who this stranger was. They wondered if it was he who wrangled a tattoo-throated fisherman with a belt, or if it was he who served them drinks with a loud laugh at the lounge with hookahs, or he who sold them books with a smile. They couldn’t know that he would set in motion a chain of events leading to the downfall of the local elite, The Church. And no, I am not speaking of the fairly descent band from the golden age of hair rock, the 80s, but of the institution of a faith run by white men and their little clones.
He played until the sun came up and those who snaked around at night tightened their ties and polished their shoes and kissed their clueless wives goodbye to spend the day packed into a cubicle. They played at being bad, thought they were kings, but it was they who were the ones to act for appearances. The poor little yuppies couldn’t sleep, so they quietly crept out of the house and into the bars and showed off that tattoo they got when they were nineteen of a dragon on their upper arm, yes, that would make them look bad and cool. Those people were blind to their contributions to the churning Church machine, those poor saps, he would have save them from themselves.
Mr. Lucky Lip, or Chris, as he was known to most, began his quest by going home. He plugged in his weapon and it hummed, no sound sweeter. He loaded it with a blank white page and began to type. He would write his truth, a manifesto of epic proportions. It was all clacking and dings for seven days he didn’t stop typing. His fingers cramped and bled and still he typed. Page after page, his heart poured out as inky lines, each letter pounded with purpose until he was finished. He signed the end with a Pac-Man ghost.
He made his way to Temple Square and began handing out his truth to anyone who would take it, which wasn’t very many. He stood in front of the Temple of Doom and tried the same with similarly poor results. He decided to make large posters of each page and paste them to the sides of the light-rails. They were taken down almost immediately. Feeling slightly discouraged, he went back to the Den of Ill Repute and left a few of the manifestos on the bar for people to take as they wished. He downed a pint or two before returning home.
A shifty looking man whose name I can’t recall happened to take a copy of Chris’ truth that night and took it with him to the office the next day. The stapled pages made their way around the building within hours. Copies were made and taken home to show the wives and to be passed to brothers and fathers to take to their places of employment. A few weeks after Chris left the stack on the bar, he began to see graffiti that looked remarkably like his Pac-Man ghost signature. It was everywhere, trains, buildings, windows, pavement, and he could swear he saw a tattoo or two. He caught a guy handing out copies of his manifesto and asked him what it was all about. He was told through a hoarse voice to come to a meeting that night deep within the bowels of a local bookstore where he happened to work. Masquerading as a book club, the meeting was led by Zach, a guy who became passionate about the truth within the manifesto. He told them all of his plans to take down the temples.
“Clearly, doing this nonviolently is not going to work. We need to do something a bit more extreme.”
He paused for a minute, judging the feeling of the room.
“Bombs.”
Chris went along with it, fuck it, he figured, why not. A sultry dame wiser than her years told him it was a terrible idea and that it would change nothing, but he didn't care. So someone said they knew a guy who knew a guy who could get them what they needed and they started to plot the downfall.
Around a month or two later (no official record can be found) forty-five or so black clad figures surrounded the temples ready to rig the blasts. They crept with shadowed accuracy to the sides of the buildings and set the explosives with a timer. They went up Capitol Hill for the show.
Ten. Nine. Eight. Seven. Six… Chris’ breath quickened, his eyes widened.
Five. Four. Three. Two… With a large intake of air, he held his breath.
One.
Nothing happened.
“Oh, what the fu-” and before the ck could leave his mouth, BOOM! He felt the sound in his chest, it looked like fireworks lighting the night sky. They did it. He swigged his flask and laughed.
Thursday, August 14, 2008
Good(ish) news...
Bricktop Betty
And called the regulars to tits, she thrust that bricktop suckle, child.
'I'm come,' spake she, 'for sweating fun,
'For eloquence and catching come. Who here among you knows the eldritch ways of knocking legs?'
The old men all just shook their heads;
They peered in beer, and downed the dregs.
William Shakespeare Writes Corporate Sponsored Poetry
By William Shakespeare
I hath fallen down dead into the earth
Drained of life I lie pondering why
If only there was a source of new birth
To raise me back to sweet succulent life
At last! I hath found a wondrous gift
A tiny cylinder filled with acid
Oh positive and negative do lift
And now I am energized, death forbid!
How could I have lived without this life source?
I feel I can go on and on and on
Eternal life is now my destined course
My duel with death is now forever won!
Pink bunny so cool beating on thy drum
Energizer Batteries life comes from!
Vamos Vamos Vamos
I vote for myself, just because I want to see what strange and evil things I'm doing in your heads. Think on it and comment your choice(?)
Schmorgasbord.
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
Strippers in Atlanta
I went to Cameron's bachelor party night before last. It was fun- the strippers weren't gross.
Well, any more so than any pretty girl who wiggles her nibbly bits on guys noses for dirty one dollar bills. Strippers are gross. I lied.
The strippers kept telling me I needed to tip or get away from the rail, but that's where Cameron was, so I just pretended I was deaf and talked funny and pointed at my ears. Guys kept peeing in the garbage cans in the bathroom, which was fucking weird. Also, there was a really fat guy with a tray of cheap cologne and lotions and shit who squirted the soap in your hand when you used the sink and I think wanted tips but didn't say anything to the guys who kept peeing in the garbage cans.
I have found that paying attention to the strippers is against the spirit of the thing. Either you are coked out of your mind and full of whiskey and think the whole thing is swell, or you drink bud lite and try to stay away from the tables, and just watch, because the setup is unhealthy and pretty weird, and there are 100 guys hoping the stripper offers to go get coked out of her mind and drink whiskey with him. Now- Saturday night- we visited a true Atlanta institution (apparently): the Clermont Lounge.
A piece the newspaper did recently dubbed it 'The stable where old strippers go to die'.
Not only were the strippers on an island in the middle of the smokiest most gnar-drawling bar I've evr drank $1 PBR in, they were, almost uniformly, over forty and wobbling around like PCP had the better of them. One grandma wore a little red riding hood outfit, then a Krispy Kreme getup, and crushed beer cans between her tits. This place was both horrible and inherently honest, stuffed beneath a weekly-rate hotel on a run of Tattoo parlors. I got the inside of my lip tattooed.
The rub was- the joint filled up with an old Cuban DJ in a fuzzy white Kangol hat and more happy, drench-sweating gorgeous twenty and thirty somethings in rockabilly dresses and sunglasses and snappy shoes than I have ever seen, and danced like the paving stones were coming out of their streets and howled and gave dollar bills to women that looked as if they'd cut their hair that morning with a grapefruit spoon.
It was the best bar I've ever been to, and the girls were sharp and quick and danced too well for me and the enormous lesbian bartender put me in a headlock and called me Cuddles at one point. All I did was order a drink, and she dragged me onto the bar by my neck and called me Cuddles and told me I could have a job cleaning the dancefloor, as she gave me a painful noogie and people laughed at me. I am still confused, but the Clermont Lounge was pure 1950's debauchery- the kind of thing I imagined as a small boy when bad things were described to me.
When I first heard punk rock, or metal, I remember being reeeeaaaally disappointed, because they were candycane tame in comparison to what I'd imagined. I eventually found bands to redeem my imagination. It took longer to redeem strip clubs. That place was fucking dynamite.
Oh... there's a tattoo parlour next door.
Saturday, August 9, 2008
Oh Hell.
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
City of Strays
I
She took the cigarette like water, sucking down the smoke in gulps. The dim blue glow of the moon lit her face with shadows, her red lips puckering to blow then swirls of smoke danced circles before her. She dropped the butt beneath her pivoting foot and began to walk toward home, her high heels clicked on the concrete. Jean’s only solace was her lonely stride home through streets littered with the trash of the world in a city built for strays. Sidestepping past bums was just part of the path and turning a deaf ear to the whistles and calls from dirty old men became routine. Jean was the prettiest thing about that part of town, a diamond in the mud and the mud was drowning.
In the night there in the City of Strays things tended to change, buildings would twist and stretch and some would sink into the sand-soft pavement. Jean loved watching this happen, it seemed like she was the only one who noticed anymore, at times she questioned whether anyone else could see it at all. By morning everything would look the way it always had, dull gray buildings covered in filth, but the night, yes, the night was magic.
Jean slid the key into the lock on her front door, she felt the pins move beneath the grooves a twist and a sigh and she was home. She knelt to retrieve the mail finding only one unmarked envelope which she opened with one of her long red nails. Pulling out the folded paper hidden inside, she found a single sentence typed.
“Wednesday 7:00 p.m. Gravel Pier”
Jean tossed the note into the fireplace and followed with a match. She went to her bedroom, flipping off her shiny black heels along the way, and began unbuttoning her dress; the neck stretched to just below the chin and the hem to just below the knees, little black buttons swirled their way down the length of the blue satin fabric embroidered with pink cherry blossoms, following lines of black piping. Eventually managing to free herself of the garment, she unclipped her stockings, rolled them down her statuesque legs and placed them in a drawer. She pulled the pins from her auburn hair and let it fall free onto her slender back. And there she stood nearly bare at the floor to ceiling one-way mirror which was her window to the ever changing city, ten stories above the trash and filth and scum of the world in that muddy little part of town. She stood watching the buildings sway and bend and wondered why this was, why the city could change at night and show no signs of its dance by dawn. She sauntered to the kitchen and poured herself a drink. Moving back to the window in her bedroom, she sat on the floor before it, drink in hand, and let herself get lost.
***
The bright warm orange sun woke her in the morning. Jean had finished the drink and fallen asleep where she sat. She lay awake on the floor soaking in the sun’s embracing rays hoping the new day would be better than the previous, she hoped the night’s meeting would bring a good assignment, and she hoped that Cliff would catch her hints of disinterest. Leaving her glass on the floor, she propped herself up, stumbled to the bathroom and filled the tub. After a lengthy soak, she slipped out of the towel and into a silky blood-red floor-length dress, a slit from toe to hip let flash her long leg, a white leather holster attached to the thigh cradling an elaborately decorated six-shooter with a gleaming white mother-of-pearl handle. She climbed into her black heels and pinned up one side of her hair, leaving the other to rest on her shoulder and back. She dripped dangling pearls from her ears and painted her lips scarlet.
It was noon.
Jean locked up and walked to the Tea Tin, a tiny diner a few blocks away from her apartment, it was a small one-story building that had streams of a rust-colored grime running down its once sky blue exterior walls, the interior looked like a typical roadside/airport diner from some forgotten time that had been left to devour itself. There were tears in the fabric of the booths, gum beneath the tables and bar, the walls of the restroom were layered with thousands of markings from girls with pens, and the teal and once-white checkered floor was ever-sticky with syrup and soda. The place was run by a sweet old lady named Dot who tried her best to do what she could to keep that diner going, and to keep it from going to the Rats, a band of transients who stayed in the Strays to terrorize the town into submission.
“You want your usual, hon?”
Jean nodded while giving a friendly sort of smile. If there was only one person Jean could truly trust in the Strays, it was Dot.
II
Five-forty-five and Jean started toward Gravel Pier, two miles east. She tossed her leg over the seat, thrust her foot down the kick-start and the bike sputtered alive. Roaring and raring to go, she situated a pair of silver framed goggles on her face and curled the throttle back, speeding forward, she rode. The sun began to set over the crumbling old city just outside of the Strays. Rebar and beams were skeletal silhouettes against the orange pink sky with a few reflective panes of glass clinging to the bits of concrete and brick still attached to the once grand skyscrapers. Gullville used to be a great city booming with suits and stocks and bonds and ties, polished shoes and gallons of hair gel, a yuppie paradise built for trade. People moved like clockwork in straight lines like drones, work, lunch, home, work, lunch, home, day in, day out, no weekends, non-stop. You could almost hear the ticking of their synchronized wrist watches echoing from the shiny buildings.
Jean looked like a ruby speeding through the smokey bleak city, the side of her hair that wasn’t pinned up waved behind her. She reached the edge of the Strays and found the road she had always used to be nothing but rubble in the desert sand. Fucking Rats, she thought. She had to hope her junk-yard bike would make it across rough terrain, the tread on her tires was nearly non-existent and the sand spray not caught by the fenders would certainly leave some sort of rash on her legs and arms. This better be a damn good assignment. She rolled onto the sand slowly, it was hot, she could smell the rubber begin to melt and knew she would have to go as fast as the bike would let her. She backed up onto the remaining road, revved the engine, and bolted forward. The sand swirled around her like a hurricane, she kept her mouth shut tight and her face down. Weaving around chunks of road and rubble, she rode toward Gullville with determination. After what felt like an hour, she felt the front tire bump up and onto pavement. Jean took a moment to brush some sand from her hair and face and wipe clean her goggles before she continued on to Gravel Pier.
Six-forty-two. Jean pulled up to a rusty gate chained shut to an even rustier fence that crumbled at the slightest touch. She went to the largest hole and pushed her bike through. She climbed back onto her bike and rode along side the murky littered shore to Gravel Pier.
Jean saw two shadowed figures before her as she approached the pier wearing trench coats and hats they spoke to each other with intensity, she was unnoticed. She popped down the kick-stand, removed her goggles, and dismounted her bike. Wanting to listen in, Jean stayed back silently. She couldn’t hear anything more than undecipherable whispers, she saw a gun pass between silhouetted hands. Being two minutes to seven, she decided to join them. As she walked up to them, they kept their faces down, shadowed. The figure who passed the gun handed Jean a manila envelope and walked away without a word. She turned to the other figure, a face lifted enough for the setting sun to light the eyes.
“Hello Jean.”
“Cliff.”
“Are you gonna open it or what?”
“You know I won’t until I get home.”
“Aren’t you curious?”
“You seem to be.”
“You know, this light makes you glow.”
“Is that right.”
“You really are beautiful, Jean.”
“So they say.”
Jean left Cliff beneath Gravel Pier and walked unturning to her bike knowing Cliff’s wanting eyes were solely on her. She zipped the envelope into a pouch on the rear fender, fit her goggles on, kicked up the stand and down the start and rode toward the hole in the fence.
***
Jean locked the door behind her and sat on the couch opposite the fireplace, which she lit on the way. She lifted the little prongs holding the envelope shut and raised the flap. Reaching inside, she pulled out and eight-by-ten photo of her assignment. Her lungs emptied with a shocked sigh and her shoulders dropped. Flipping the photo, she found the explanation as to why. This is what it said:
He has been found to be the Pin of the Rats.
He can not be trusted.
We have enough evidence to prove so.
You have one week.
The next morning, Jean walked to the Tea Tin as she had everyday for the past year. To her surprise, when Jean arrived at the corner of Dent and Forty-Second, all she saw was the faint shape of the Tea Tin's roof in the ground and a few of the tiles peeking through the dirt. It had sank and failed to emerge during the night's swaying sinking stretching dance. She had never seen a building stay the way it had been at night, they always had gone back to normal by dawn. Things were changing. It couldn't be good.
Monday, August 4, 2008
A Novella Coming?
There is a city- an island city- set grandly in the center of a forest-edged bay. The bay has two inlets, and over each a Collossus stands, straddling the point of entry. The Eastern Collossus is a man, the sun piercing up into the sky behind him each day. The Western Collossus is a woman, accepting the sun into her waters each and every evening.
They are man and wife, these two, and have not ever touched.
They sing to one another, and perhaps speak, and sometimes whip the waters of their city's bay into a murderous mess for want of ways to punish just the other. At night, their city swells, and blooms, or cracks, and warps, according to the shape they've made between them. There are centuries of drought and war, of taifoon and crops curled ankle deep in every plot of earth. And then comes reconciliation, then come birds, and trade, and sunflowers the height of horses, as their love renews.
Their feet rest deep in ocean bedrock, and the people of the island city say their ancestors carved Them from basalt ranges over eons, cutting out the ships' passage into shapely legs from the solid stuff of mountain gods. The people in the woods around the bay say that They sat up, fullbent formed and seeking one another from the ocean's silty bed one day in time past memory, and froze under the sun before their monstrous arms could meet.
The Man's temper was a heavy thing, and wild, and dashed the island's people from their rocks and homes, some years. The Woman never struck so hard, but her legs stood in deeper water, and her enmity ran deeper still, and held its roots for years, and years. Sometimes the people of the island city would wake to find sharp canyons where their streets had been, and poison oak over their temples. Sometimes the water came like wolves and dragged their children off at night, and they would gather on their beaches come the morn and offer fruit and milk and tears to reconcile the feuding giants.
Sometimes there were fish so thick that they could walk across the bay to land, and overhead the Collussus sang in warbled tones along the wind; never to touch, always- just to stand.
Sunday, August 3, 2008
Just as long as your thing ain't got a thing to do with me and what I'm tryin a bring
I think a regular meeting place can easily be established over on 800 East where Chris and I lay our heads. Then I have to issue an asterisk.
If that is indeed to be the regular meeting place, some things need to be modified. My stipulations for further participation on my part- and my agreeing to allow my space, furniture and dishes to be used-include:
-Attend only if you brought writing to share and discuss (except John- who is a great reader and always offers thoughtful feedback); basically, attend only if you are contributing.
-Be thoughtful and constructive in your feedback and requests for feedback. Condescension and entitlement are a little rampant for my tastes. Defensiveness is rather present and rather absurd. The point of getting together as I understand it, is to evolve our writing while having a pleasant and sociable time. Respectful criticism shouldn't be met with jabby remarks and criticism or gripes should be void of name-calling and attacks. Be fucking articulate on both ends, you are fucking writers.
-Be critical. Compliments are so appreciated by me but snags are sooo important. We also should to be directing the focus of the group when our piece is being shared. What do you want from us? "I'm wondering about the story int his one..." or "How do you guys feel about the characters/dialogue/flow in the piece I am reading as I have been really struggling with the dailogue/plot/ending..." and then we will actually evolve. Sometimes it may just be "I wrote this, I like it and I want to share it." which is part of all this but when it's not that, tell us what you want.
-Be nice while being articulate and critical. Be nice while being articulately criticized.
-Bring a bottle. No more showing up empty handed and emptying out the booze supply. If you are going to drink, you need to be contributing. I have been unemployed for almost two months and I pay rent and I have managed to scare up enough cash for wine. Not because I am a self-righteous cunt but because I am a wino and I can't write with out sousing. I wouldn't drink another wino's wine with out throwing down my own first. I expect the same courtesy from guests in my house. There are times we can't bring anything, of course. Life is a mean thing and sometimes you need someone to give you their share. That needs to be an exception, not a rule.
-Respect the space. Breaking glasses, spilling all over furniture or floors and generally employing frat boy antics is unacceptable on my porch.
-Figure out a ride home. It is not the job of people with cars to ferry the rest of us about, I do not run a hostel (El Hostel Free for All Motherfuckers) and I have shit to do the next day. We are all adults and if you can't get yourself back to your own home in an adult way it is not on the rest of us to figure it out for you. If you want to crash, ask ahead of time and work it out, don't spring some last-minute awkward shit on the people that live there. I walked home from Chris' old joint at 4am in the winter plenty of sputteringly drunk nights, it is a drag but comethefuckon. We are adults. Bring that grown up ruckus, y'all.
-Respect each other and personal space and boundaries. For fuck's sake.
I am highlighting what I need to participate. Feel free to vote me off the team, I understand that I am not in charge and many of you may have different ideas about what makes a successful writer's group.
But my home, furniture, booze and dishes will no longer be utilized unless the above things are addressed. I feel I have been very genuine and generous with these things as well as my couches, pantry and time spent cooking. I enjoy sharing and cooking and writing and reading.
However, lately a number of instances have tried my patience and boundaries and I simply feel drained each time we get together. That and the house and yard are always trashed the next day.
Please don't respond to this on an individual basis. I am not calling anyone out. I am simply defining my boundaries for my home. Chris pays his own rent and can do what he sees fit but my shit ain't going out like that anymore.
Thanks for reading and pondering.
Saturday, August 2, 2008
Watch It
I have violence in me like breakers, doll- they swell, and ebb- but that's not what this is. It's more the way things should be, a return to the quiescent state before you grew your grand ideas. You never shammed me, doll.
I could count the drops of sweat that beaded on your young little lip.
This backlash, now- how sad, oh bunny, pobrecita, dear. Did you fuck it all up? Did you derail and lose what little respect you held cogent 'gainst your oft-flashed ass? Did you ruin something you wanted so goddamn bad you'd mark up corny books of poetry, or flowers, and leave them shivering on my doorstep?
Did you have no one else to blame?
How cute that now you're coughing up your bile. You'll lose the taste for it, sad babydoll, oh dear.
Don't let your cunt, or drink, turn you into another skidmark bimbo on the scene. Oh yeah- I'm mean- But never were to you.
Don't fuck my memory to ease your choices made. I've had enough of taking punches for the decade, peach. Your whole ripe shell would shuck in half and settle to the sawdust in a pile. It's age, and care for my self that's made me treat folk well.
Yeah, sure, they listen when I speak; and I do love to laugh. You'll listen too if I lose that keynote bit, and tear your fake in half.
Thanks for the fucking photo.
