17/30: Speculative Derision On the Fourth Edge of Defensive Estate Sales

The word that
                        floats in and out of
common lexicon
                                                        and in and out
                                                        and in and out
                                                        of my repertoire

Things I just want to say, will
write whole paragraphs to justify
"gloaming" or "majestic" or "crustacean justice."
Efficacious and loquacious.

Feels
on my
tongue                               (ears, how it sounds)

Claiming a theory, a deep, academic knowledge
of the trips my tongue falls over, takes happy
hours of brain space to

justify
these lullabies on the spastic
twitch of finger jitter keyboard
molasses
these
not-jokes but
strictly, strychnine, sounds like hounds ate
clowns while dime-turned on a sentence
on a retrial caught on tapeworm by
innocent venison
(meat)
                                                 can't possibly
                                                 can't possibly
                                                 can't possibly

be seriousness. Furiousness. Curiousness.
Stopped rhyming my poems sometime
in High School, but the
urge
(somewhere in the brain near
where the puns are kept, but
both more vulgar and refined)
                                                never leaves,
just pops up                             like a bubble in soup

waiting to get popped, hammered, slammered,
betwixt the fortnight and the afterthought,
the punch-fought dirigible on the edge of bedside
morale, just ratcheting, ratcheting, ratcheting.

County Werewolf (draft)

What do we do with the county werewolf? The rows and rows of potleafs bristling in the draft of the tattered greenhouse, the cash crop that cuts to/
                                                                                                fleeing brides in torn veils collapsing under drooling fangs, moonlight just cracking through the hydroponic lights.
Also, the odd fleeing groom, his tuxedo catching fire as he smokes a joint he knows will be his last,
but as the claws descend, he just wants something for the pain, man.

Some days its medical, some days it’s a fucking feast. Hairs in the meat. We held a vigil at full moon, but no one went wolf. We watched the mountains for howlers, but only a fleeing elk. We use our phones to find the way back, on roads that’ve been here for fifty years.

This towns not that small, that’s the problem. There could be any number of college kids turning
to beasts and tearing the throats out of chickens. Any number of crucified ghosts getting ground on in ritual/

Ground up by ritual.
What do we do with the scratching, screaming women? What do we do with the teeth-red wine?

The sherriff proposed an execution, and a would be mayor suggested treatment, but the pastors said that’s witchcraft, witchcraft, as no one is sure who’s really turning, getting hairy, bearded

What do we do with the hairy, bearded howling men at  midnight, throwing their glasses and pawing at bodies? What do we do with the pastors who say this is never a thing, except for satan, that this is never the cold joke told in the morning, the scattered bones from a chicken dinner, then a scattering of other things, more horrible, between the plants. Bones.

But wait--

There’s more.

Jerk eyes open
Verizon wireless theme song in
digital slap

base operations across from
Zeek’s pizza glowering billboard
skating by on borrowed

internet, a sarlac pit
of creased envelopes,
a deletery of e-mails.

That is not all;

Past the white windowless van with the electrician’s name on it, past the backward baseball caps and scarred arms leaning over the freight trains, past the giant clock by the lamp store, past the testicles all bouncing in green, and the ghosts of brewers, all coming back with hooks for hands, there is another smoking hole in a wall, or the asphalt, cigarettes or asteroids.

That could be all,
but holiday specials forbid it. Towerless searses forbid it. Postal delivery drivers, presumably werewolves, forbid it with pork between their fangs. ALSO! Veteran vetrinarians, presumably evil mermaids, for-fucking-bid it. So there is more—

--a swift mop up
before leaving work,
a death threat bus 

stop, running on borrowed

fares, a deathstar
with its lights on,

but wait--

The only way to not be dead

Most of my writing lately has been particularly acidic towards people who claim to mean well. I am already late for an appointment and later will have the last shreds of my eardrums mashed into a fine paste by A Place to Bury Strangers, but feel compelled to enter some "content" here for my "audience" to "read."

Internet Jazz Hands.

Here's what I listen to, over and over, while writing some purposefully overwrought SAILOR PROSE about Filthy Jerry's adventures in Squidheadland.

Words Coult Not Suffice/Monsters Are Coming and You Want Tea/Good Vibes All Around (15/30)

1. That was a huge pterodactyl. Don’t worry about it. It was flying low like crashing airplanes, but I’m sure it’ll be fine. The National Guard is being mobilized. So let’s talk about something else. The weather—it is finally starting to feel like spring. The flowers are coming out, isn’t that nice? Thought I couldn’t see the sun today, beneath those wings. It was nice to get some shade, let’s think about that. Be positive. Good vibes. I think it’s headed for the daycare down on 42nd.
2. Please buy at the pharmacy:
Creams,
Ointments,
Pills,
Comb,
Dog treats (if they have them),
Energy drinks,
Shaving cream (not to be confused with other creams),
Garbage bags (I think?),
Nail file,
Mustache trimmer,
More ointments (you know),
Bottle opener,
Pills (the other type.)
Thanks! See you next week,__________

3. Tell me using only hand motions. Tell me using only eyelid battings. Tell me using only frankincense and myrrh. Tell me using the medium of dance. Tell me using only painstakingly prepared food, like a woman in an award-winning film. Too bad about my limited palette. Tell me using only the simple honesty of rock and roll, like a boy from a small town with an underappreciated music scene. What’s with the goofy clothes, though? Tell me using only tanned leather. Tell me using only instagram. Tell me using only polaroid. That fence could be anywhere. Why the hell is there a kfc cup on the ground? Why are all these pictures so blurry, and of cracked walls? Your urban decay is meaningless to me without a witty caption.
4. After all is said and done, it must be acknowledged that we could have done more to stop this, but no one wanted to be an asshole.

the judge said "i will never die."

On a rare slow day, I've finished "Blood Meridian." Combine with a started-great-got-weird last night still weighing on the brain and all its attendant grogginess the mill of students and teachers and the un-comma-ed neo-biblical writing style of Cormac McCarthy and you have a day of inclement unexplainably strange sadness whirring through and under the clicks of computers and the slow mumble of minds seeking expansion that may never come.

Faith Without Works/Ties that Bind/Toby Shiner's Jacket.

jewelry rained from the top of the sears building and
the hockey jerseys glowing in the light of the carfires
raised chants, broke windows, someone tweeted pictures
picked up by the news.

in the largely empty workroom a computer plays anarchist
folk rock from the thirties. we drink prime whisky on a
brown carpet. the novelist unfolds deserting the "movement"
slowly, halting to shake his head. "we were just kids."
bleak unraveling of belief in brick and mortar and black masks.

conflicting reports as to what this actually means.
a sort of populist chaos. the petulance of spoiled children.
inevitable release of Id in a building full of people,
the outflow of violence. loud noises! ooh, shiny! fuck the fuckers!

at my 19, the ponytail had ceased to be political. the
les schwab jacket, two sizes too big, gifted by a friend was
also not a political statement, or an ironic one, but it did
make me feel bit harder than maybe I was. when the protests turned
to riots turned to A Battle In Seattle and cameras swarmed
and my co-reporters at The Polaris took their tender skin to get
broken by rubber bullets on the second day, bragging on
the fuckedupness of the thing I knew that I had to finish the week
without these bragging rights, the anarchy of the restless, the bravado
of tourists.

Easy Misses (27/30)

down the gravelway
the bus passes two seconds too early
and late for a meetup in Fremont (phinney, really,
I always make that distinction now) before
a show that starts late, thankfully
but the meet and greet is canceled
and that's the most important part.

this is all just throughout the course of the day.
there are also the submission deadlines, respond-to-dates,
job-postings, flirtation windows, the time
when you linger just longer over a friendly goodbye.

sometimes, you hit. sometimes, I just make the last
train. but the arbitrarity of it all makes it feel
like throwing darts, blindfolded, at a spinning target.
the detonators next to the bullseye. don't miss.

Dream Jobbery #345

I wonder how many snarky blog-injokes, mind-numbing entertainment industry forums, misspelled hate e-mails and aplogetic dismissals of popular sitcoms this writer had to write/endure before getting to do this sort of thing for money.

seriously, when I was 10 I would have done that for free.

Doctor, doctor

I don't often write politics here; I would hardly describe myself as a-political, but my levels of information intake and activism pale in comparison to many of my friends.

Still, its been with interest I've tracked the Health Care Reform bill and debate surrounding it. Precisely because I'm one of the people that Obama wants to help. I'm not the most heart-wrenching story, granted, but it's been about 10 years at least since I've been able to go to a U.S. doctor. I had more comprehensive coverage as a student-visitor to the U.K. than I have here. For the most part, I've just made the best of it and in my more health-conscious moments hoped that the old "apple-a-day" adage is true.

For most of our lives, this has been true with regards to my parents. As Dad said "there were a lot of times we just had to give you some aspirin and hope it got better."*

So, on the surface I'm glad that the health care bill passed the House of Reps. I don't love doctors, but I'd like to go. But I'm kind of scared.
I'm not scared that Obama is going to plunge the nation into a socialist welfare state akin to Communist Russia or whatever. I'm not really that scared that right-wing reactionism will prompt actual attempts at secessionism or what-have-you, either.

But. Watching the way the parties have been batting this bill back and forth, the complete lack of actual discussion (nothing new, really) and level of public frustration, I'm not convinced anything good can come. From my heady days in Youth and Government, I know it takes one poorly worded line to change the entire meaning of a bill. And Max Bacchus has written a 1,000 page epic. You don't have to be a let-them-eat-caker to approach that with caution.

What I'm afraid of is that a bill will make it through that's been gutted by republicans and saddled with impossible and impractical retaliatory provisions by democrats. And that when it finally passes, in whatever form it is, Obama will sign it because he has to. He's created a situation in which its political suicide to not sign a bill that comes through. And we'll be left with a system that costs taxpayers a shitload of money, creates loads of new bureacracy, endangers existing practices and after all that I still won't be able to go to the doctor.

That. Is what I'm afraid of.


*I still have some un-fond memories of the doctor's office.

-- and I shout that you're all fakes,

fakes!


the point came fast but it was too blunt to miss:
life handed us a paycheck, we said "we worked harder than this!!"
________________________________________________
I have two readings in the next few weeks and don't know what I'm going to read. Probably drag out little red corvette (ie: the new like taking communion but without falling over and throwing microphones) and paintings of famous satanists (another new-school high-repetition favorite) and call it good. or maybe I'll try reaaaaal haaaaard and write some new things, fix some old things and make it "special."

at any rate, here's an old one that never got much play the first time around.

Dinner for One
She walks slow from oven to table
hands pressed firm against ceramic.
mits makeshifted from towels

someone once told her that you could
burn your fingerprints off
on simple kitchen appliances

she hung a "caution" sign above the stove
for anyone who might use it,
took the batteries out of the smoke detector.

a week later her tongs disappeared.
a few close calls with oven doors and apron strings,
untied hair and blender lids,

a few too many arm-burns on oven racks;
friends started telling her
she's got to be more careful.

she eats the pasta dispassionately,
roast with abandon,
half bottle of wine in.

a fork in one hand,
steaknife in the other,
gazing out the window
as she slices.