Catacylsm
gism
end
It was right THERE, and we lost it.
So close,
a mist 'pon waterfall's mawing jaw
Tuesday, February 9, 2016
Wednesday, December 3, 2014
silent car rides
His eyes sagging in their corners, he rubbed the back of his wrist across them and blinked into the smearing traffic lights. Silent car ride, she next to him, no music on the radio. He dreamed lazily about the silent car rides of his life, memories that came from that fount that tugged at the edge of pain and loneliness, the dull toothache of nostalgia and memory that he could not help but prod with the tip of his tongue. Silent car rides with angry parents on frost-bitten mornings, or with angry girlfriends on cool teenage autumn evenings, or he the angry one, strangling the steering wheel with one hand and massaging his grimace with the other. There were sounds within these silent car rides; the rustling and cracking of vinyl or leather jacket sleeves being bent by their silent wearers, a nauseating sound, or the exaggerated nasal exhalation with chainsmoking billow lungs. The turn signal was obnoxious, a smug metronome.
Sometime in the midst of all of these infuriating tactile memories, smells of the hollow past and its forgotten sins, he had driven into their driveway, and he sighed, the silent car ride finally over.
Sometime in the midst of all of these infuriating tactile memories, smells of the hollow past and its forgotten sins, he had driven into their driveway, and he sighed, the silent car ride finally over.
Monday, December 1, 2014
My Pyramid
It is the king's laughter, here and now,
it is the king's holy gizzards by which I clamber
so clumsy and so loudly mute,
stumbling upon feet of miles of sentence;
the last mile
the HOLY mile.
I miss my challengers,
I miss the dust between us
of which we are too busy to speak.
And so I wait,
wait wait
with darkened pencil and sharpened room
and capture all of the deep fates
with looms a-spinnin' and wrapped
to beg some grace to come lurching to my bedside.
Naught else to do;
wrapped in papyrus,
brain ajar,
heart preserved.
Ah, my pyramid, my unfair,
my long journey to be unhurt and unafraid
ends here,
and I am left
October sometime, 2014
it is the king's holy gizzards by which I clamber
so clumsy and so loudly mute,
stumbling upon feet of miles of sentence;
the last mile
the HOLY mile.
I miss my challengers,
I miss the dust between us
of which we are too busy to speak.
And so I wait,
wait wait
with darkened pencil and sharpened room
and capture all of the deep fates
with looms a-spinnin' and wrapped
to beg some grace to come lurching to my bedside.
Naught else to do;
wrapped in papyrus,
brain ajar,
heart preserved.
Ah, my pyramid, my unfair,
my long journey to be unhurt and unafraid
ends here,
and I am left
October sometime, 2014
bad vibes, last month or so
10/31/14, 7:30 am
If I were to be asked
to be lashed to the tracks
in the name of you and your eyes,
my hesitation would naught,
only welcoming knot
to be bound wrist and ankle to morning,
and sung through the night,
sung as bards sing their knights,
I who lay down my bone to stone,
hot blood splash cold steel,
I make known the deal
forever dreaming I die
in you and your eyes.
Verde, te quiero verde,
Te quiero en la noche verde
y la mañana ya verde,
y sí comprendo que estas palabras
son ya en los canciones
de los muertos.
------------------------------------------------------------
Halloween morning blows smokey blue, a gentle rapping of skeletons in all the gutters and leaves trickling down Campbell Avenue. No rest for the wicked, weary, nor Wiccan, and here me still nursing a bottle of red (red?) and all three; a vampiric thirst for blood and breastmilk moistens my lips and dries my throat. Imagine toads, trampled beneath hooves. Imagine dolphins and chimps, both dirty rapists, their skull-meat dripping from the end of my pirate's rapier. Imagine there's no Heaven. It's easy if you try. Certainly a Hell. Certainly more than sky above. John Lennon was an asshole and a wife-beater. George is the way-2-go.
Had I known this marker yet (ya) held such vitality, long would I have been abusing it, long would it have since ran dry! I mistook it another limp cock drained for my Dylan Thomas portraits yet here it goes a-scratchin' and a-bleedin' 'cross the fucking page. Dylan Thomas, I will draw you this morning!
[here I draw a terrible sketch of Dylan Thomas, and then proceed to spit wine all over it, purposely]
11/3/14, etc
Sooner or later, all luck runs out, and when you've been as fortuitous as I, have slipped by for thirty years generally unfazed and largely indignant, never wholly without a jangle in my pocket nor a teat in my mouth, that final fall from grace is a steep one, that straw-broken plummet bound to be screaming and bloody.
I remember leaving the bar, or so I tell myself, and I remember coming home, making it home I should say, in what felt like twenty long, cold minutes. But this is too easy, and not the case at all. There are at least three hours missing, and at a little past 4 K found me standing in her doorway, swaying. "Your room is beautiful," I apparently was able to mutter, and she bolted out of bed in time for me to crumple into her arms, my face a mess of blood and swollen flesh.
Sleep was blessedly without dreaming, and I awoke at 9:30 (by the grace of Daylight Savings) to make it to work only about eight minutes late. There were panicked calls to my mother the night before, K wondering if I should need an ambulance, she and my mother not understanding the full story, wondering if I had fallen or maybe beaten the shit out of myself, but the knuckles on my right hand are swollen, and the tell-tale marks of where someone else's teeth broke my skin riddle the back of my hand in a soft semicircle.
But none of this occurred to me while walking to work, and I did not remember speaking to my mother, certainly did not remember her telling me to "Fuck off", believing as she did that it was but the latest Fuck-Up in a long series of Fuck-Ups from her eldest and prodigal son. Instead, I am distracted, you could say, by my left eye swollen completely shut, by the purple bruises turning both temples into a Quasimodo brow, the long deep scrape from right eye to right ear that was surely my head hitting and then dragging across rough sidewalks, the blood matting my eyelashes like goth makeup, the blood oozing in my mouth where the inside of my lip broke against sharp teeth.
Sharp teeth, I am nothing but sharp teeth, a golem of sharp teeth. The world owes me a living, doo-doodle-doo-doodle-doo. I've learned nothing. Fuck this.
_-_-_--------_-___-__-_-_-__-_-_-_-_-------_----_-_-_---___-_-___-_-__-
Went for one of my evening walks, face swollen and discolored, found myself staring at a beer-and-a-shot on the cool patio of a local alcholic's haunt. Got beef jerky, pack o' smokes, my trusty notepad and trusted pen, and a crippling affliction with motherfucking devil-ass cunt-mouth alcohol. Help?
Haven't really eaten in two days; my mouth hurts too bad. This beef jerky ("Sweet n Hot") is a godsend, sweet protein and sodium.
My bones move by the grace of grudge and guilt alone. It's a lonely way to be. Someday, I'll be rid of both. Not today.
And now I can control my phone without touching the touch-screen. Am I psychic, telekinetic? Am I dead, a ghost? Can ghosts operate Android smartphones?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I don't know much,
but I know the sound
of bone knocking bone,
chiming wooden in the breathless wind.
I am routinely surprised and impressed
with the strides I take upon this stale earth,
at the path of fire behind me
which explains with great shudderings my guilt,
which does nothing to assuage fears,
which bolsters my inability to admit defeat.
~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-
Goat's breast,
who says?
Cock-cup,
a chalice
to suck,
stroke vein
with
tender tip
and
tooth'd lip
--------------_____________-------------------____________---
Dream about Nyquil.
Dream about storage,
dream about chortling
with chunks of spent amoeba
running our assholes ragged
on some alien planet
costa rica
Dream you are who she wants you to be
for once be
who she wants you to be.
(He, shaking hand, extinguishes another cigarette and laments the evening's follies)
"This is horseshit.
I want to go to bed, early rise, impress my benefactors
and nullify my contrarians.
I, myself, am not a contrarian.
Yes I am, of course I am,
no I am not."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~'''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''_______________________----------
He took one final drag from his cigarette,
and proceeded to slip backwards upon his heels.
The wife had dripped butter on the floor earlier
and had neglected to give much of a rat's ass
when it came to mopping it up, the greasy spot.
He had meant to quit, that day, finally quit smoking.
Walking to the bank, he had his second-to-last.
Upon arriving home that gently late afternoon,
he had his last, and enjoyed it.
If I were to be asked
to be lashed to the tracks
in the name of you and your eyes,
my hesitation would naught,
only welcoming knot
to be bound wrist and ankle to morning,
and sung through the night,
sung as bards sing their knights,
I who lay down my bone to stone,
hot blood splash cold steel,
I make known the deal
forever dreaming I die
in you and your eyes.
Verde, te quiero verde,
Te quiero en la noche verde
y la mañana ya verde,
y sí comprendo que estas palabras
son ya en los canciones
de los muertos.
------------------------------------------------------------
Halloween morning blows smokey blue, a gentle rapping of skeletons in all the gutters and leaves trickling down Campbell Avenue. No rest for the wicked, weary, nor Wiccan, and here me still nursing a bottle of red (red?) and all three; a vampiric thirst for blood and breastmilk moistens my lips and dries my throat. Imagine toads, trampled beneath hooves. Imagine dolphins and chimps, both dirty rapists, their skull-meat dripping from the end of my pirate's rapier. Imagine there's no Heaven. It's easy if you try. Certainly a Hell. Certainly more than sky above. John Lennon was an asshole and a wife-beater. George is the way-2-go.
Had I known this marker yet (ya) held such vitality, long would I have been abusing it, long would it have since ran dry! I mistook it another limp cock drained for my Dylan Thomas portraits yet here it goes a-scratchin' and a-bleedin' 'cross the fucking page. Dylan Thomas, I will draw you this morning!
[here I draw a terrible sketch of Dylan Thomas, and then proceed to spit wine all over it, purposely]
11/3/14, etc
Sooner or later, all luck runs out, and when you've been as fortuitous as I, have slipped by for thirty years generally unfazed and largely indignant, never wholly without a jangle in my pocket nor a teat in my mouth, that final fall from grace is a steep one, that straw-broken plummet bound to be screaming and bloody.
I remember leaving the bar, or so I tell myself, and I remember coming home, making it home I should say, in what felt like twenty long, cold minutes. But this is too easy, and not the case at all. There are at least three hours missing, and at a little past 4 K found me standing in her doorway, swaying. "Your room is beautiful," I apparently was able to mutter, and she bolted out of bed in time for me to crumple into her arms, my face a mess of blood and swollen flesh.
Sleep was blessedly without dreaming, and I awoke at 9:30 (by the grace of Daylight Savings) to make it to work only about eight minutes late. There were panicked calls to my mother the night before, K wondering if I should need an ambulance, she and my mother not understanding the full story, wondering if I had fallen or maybe beaten the shit out of myself, but the knuckles on my right hand are swollen, and the tell-tale marks of where someone else's teeth broke my skin riddle the back of my hand in a soft semicircle.
But none of this occurred to me while walking to work, and I did not remember speaking to my mother, certainly did not remember her telling me to "Fuck off", believing as she did that it was but the latest Fuck-Up in a long series of Fuck-Ups from her eldest and prodigal son. Instead, I am distracted, you could say, by my left eye swollen completely shut, by the purple bruises turning both temples into a Quasimodo brow, the long deep scrape from right eye to right ear that was surely my head hitting and then dragging across rough sidewalks, the blood matting my eyelashes like goth makeup, the blood oozing in my mouth where the inside of my lip broke against sharp teeth.
Sharp teeth, I am nothing but sharp teeth, a golem of sharp teeth. The world owes me a living, doo-doodle-doo-doodle-doo. I've learned nothing. Fuck this.
_-_-_--------_-___-__-_-_-__-_-_-_-_-------_----_-_-_---___-_-___-_-__-
Went for one of my evening walks, face swollen and discolored, found myself staring at a beer-and-a-shot on the cool patio of a local alcholic's haunt. Got beef jerky, pack o' smokes, my trusty notepad and trusted pen, and a crippling affliction with motherfucking devil-ass cunt-mouth alcohol. Help?
Haven't really eaten in two days; my mouth hurts too bad. This beef jerky ("Sweet n Hot") is a godsend, sweet protein and sodium.
My bones move by the grace of grudge and guilt alone. It's a lonely way to be. Someday, I'll be rid of both. Not today.
And now I can control my phone without touching the touch-screen. Am I psychic, telekinetic? Am I dead, a ghost? Can ghosts operate Android smartphones?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I don't know much,
but I know the sound
of bone knocking bone,
chiming wooden in the breathless wind.
I am routinely surprised and impressed
with the strides I take upon this stale earth,
at the path of fire behind me
which explains with great shudderings my guilt,
which does nothing to assuage fears,
which bolsters my inability to admit defeat.
~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-
Goat's breast,
who says?
Cock-cup,
a chalice
to suck,
stroke vein
with
tender tip
and
tooth'd lip
--------------_____________-------------------____________---
Dream about Nyquil.
Dream about storage,
dream about chortling
with chunks of spent amoeba
running our assholes ragged
on some alien planet
costa rica
Dream you are who she wants you to be
for once be
who she wants you to be.
(He, shaking hand, extinguishes another cigarette and laments the evening's follies)
"This is horseshit.
I want to go to bed, early rise, impress my benefactors
and nullify my contrarians.
I, myself, am not a contrarian.
Yes I am, of course I am,
no I am not."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~'''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''_______________________----------
He took one final drag from his cigarette,
and proceeded to slip backwards upon his heels.
The wife had dripped butter on the floor earlier
and had neglected to give much of a rat's ass
when it came to mopping it up, the greasy spot.
He had meant to quit, that day, finally quit smoking.
Walking to the bank, he had his second-to-last.
Upon arriving home that gently late afternoon,
he had his last, and enjoyed it.
Friday, October 31, 2014
October: various poems, epitaphs, and apologies
So
Laudly do these claims doth emit,
though nothing more than paper spit...
Loudly do I remind thee often
no rest I'll find 'til pauper's coffin
I know, now,
that there exists no cage to burden me,
no clipper's clippers may touch my soul,
here I am flinging hands about miserably
Two words: blue eyes, never loved.
Ha!
Bitter churning tongue and nail
the cap'tal dome; upset, a grail.
Obama stole from me my youth,
and wrapped my guts 'round velvet spoons.
butter, but, her
boilin' burning
one more chair to no one there,
offered towards a churly churning
one spoke trench
disposed midair
pair o' shits,
dismaimed in number
angels 'pon such silken clouds
hand in hand the towers fell then,
all past borne present aloud
Slipping faces crane towards feeling,
something blonde to laugh alive,
forgetting that such final feelings
oft to lend a laugh to die
For all things end 'pon brutal summit
and all things die 'pon flowers fair.
Be fair to him who'll quench your numbered
pains thrust towards a heart unpaired
for it is he and he alone
who may yet be your saving stone
for he who loves you left alone
finds naught within which to atone
a fault nor fracture nary sees,
he who smells only the flowers
bending branch on brutal tree,
not the hate of waning hour
ice crack towards a sprinkling fall,
and still they grin and stand aside you.
I would not share a mask at all
If I never were to rot inside you
She slips in shit and lands in gold,
and triumphant sez, "Look what I'm worth!"
You fool, you've only married stone
and asked a cactus for your worth.
---------------------------------------------------
Even at my most doveful lows and quietudes am I so consumed with an anger,
with vicissitudes
with venom and with teeth
grinding mailboxes and murdering mailmen
Cool as a cucumber do I slide
along the weekenders
Weekend drunks shouting into their palms
Weak brutes, brutish
and so I ain't takin my boots off tonight
I find myself deadfully
thinking
Let her screw up
To splay upon a lathe
the pen rendered sick with plastic tips
toxin radiante from radiator gaskets
and hatching grasslets
shimmering shimmering steam
when my words mean nothing
but my stare it all
The way my eyelids dance
across the air
speaking these tongues,
foreign tongues
of guilt?
"Epitaph" (10/19/14)
Andrew T Dietz
was drunk when he slipped.
Shaving in the shower,
his own throat did he slit.
Andrew T Dietz
was drunk, so they wrote.
Shaving in the shower,
slipped and slit his own throat.
-------------------------------------------
*living the definition of self, definition-of-self dictating who-you-are, choices-you-make, who-you-become and are forced-to-be
Don't Worry-
I am a vampire
drinking guilt only!
Relax,
relax relax
I drink gouts,
I do what I want.
10/22/14
I don't want to kill myself, John.
John, I don't want to kill myself.
Lofty Jew-breezes,
the same recycled words,
I build nothing upon nothing,
I listen to Campbell but
can only imagine myself the hero.
And how foolish!
how unhealthy is this!
For what will I learn?
Challenge, challenge,
I lay blushed and nude
with soft cock
and weeping arms,
for only you to see.
An elephant I am!
a mammoth, a cyclops!
For these secrets we curdle
and sour our smiles.
10/28/14
Assemblies of God girls
with their fat asses,
Me with drunken blood
and sharp-toothed smile,
a mercenary mouth
and time to kill.
10/29/14
My blood sounds, heartbeat
pushing stone waves
upon heavy ears, each
a wave a wane
a-wavin',
the ants go marching in.
A psychedelic holocaust
did I once subject
my brain to,
such unfair pairings
and gleanings
and knowledge sought
without deserve.
So here I lie I lay
and lie
and feel atomic waves
of blood against
my stony eardrums
and I excuse myself;
"Excuse me."
---------------------------------
Public exposure
intoxication
pubic
urination
I hope you got a good look at my dick
Because you'll probably never see it again
-the Smiths
(DEATH TO YUPPIES AND COPS)
Laudly do these claims doth emit,
though nothing more than paper spit...
Loudly do I remind thee often
no rest I'll find 'til pauper's coffin
I know, now,
that there exists no cage to burden me,
no clipper's clippers may touch my soul,
here I am flinging hands about miserably
Two words: blue eyes, never loved.
Ha!
Bitter churning tongue and nail
the cap'tal dome; upset, a grail.
Obama stole from me my youth,
and wrapped my guts 'round velvet spoons.
butter, but, her
boilin' burning
one more chair to no one there,
offered towards a churly churning
one spoke trench
disposed midair
pair o' shits,
dismaimed in number
angels 'pon such silken clouds
hand in hand the towers fell then,
all past borne present aloud
Slipping faces crane towards feeling,
something blonde to laugh alive,
forgetting that such final feelings
oft to lend a laugh to die
For all things end 'pon brutal summit
and all things die 'pon flowers fair.
Be fair to him who'll quench your numbered
pains thrust towards a heart unpaired
for it is he and he alone
who may yet be your saving stone
for he who loves you left alone
finds naught within which to atone
a fault nor fracture nary sees,
he who smells only the flowers
bending branch on brutal tree,
not the hate of waning hour
ice crack towards a sprinkling fall,
and still they grin and stand aside you.
I would not share a mask at all
If I never were to rot inside you
She slips in shit and lands in gold,
and triumphant sez, "Look what I'm worth!"
You fool, you've only married stone
and asked a cactus for your worth.
---------------------------------------------------
Even at my most doveful lows and quietudes am I so consumed with an anger,
with vicissitudes
with venom and with teeth
grinding mailboxes and murdering mailmen
Cool as a cucumber do I slide
along the weekenders
Weekend drunks shouting into their palms
Weak brutes, brutish
and so I ain't takin my boots off tonight
I find myself deadfully
thinking
Let her screw up
To splay upon a lathe
the pen rendered sick with plastic tips
toxin radiante from radiator gaskets
and hatching grasslets
shimmering shimmering steam
when my words mean nothing
but my stare it all
The way my eyelids dance
across the air
speaking these tongues,
foreign tongues
of guilt?
"Epitaph" (10/19/14)
Andrew T Dietz
was drunk when he slipped.
Shaving in the shower,
his own throat did he slit.
Andrew T Dietz
was drunk, so they wrote.
Shaving in the shower,
slipped and slit his own throat.
-------------------------------------------
*living the definition of self, definition-of-self dictating who-you-are, choices-you-make, who-you-become and are forced-to-be
Don't Worry-
I am a vampire
drinking guilt only!
Relax,
relax relax
I drink gouts,
I do what I want.
10/22/14
I don't want to kill myself, John.
John, I don't want to kill myself.
Lofty Jew-breezes,
the same recycled words,
I build nothing upon nothing,
I listen to Campbell but
can only imagine myself the hero.
And how foolish!
how unhealthy is this!
For what will I learn?
Challenge, challenge,
I lay blushed and nude
with soft cock
and weeping arms,
for only you to see.
An elephant I am!
a mammoth, a cyclops!
For these secrets we curdle
and sour our smiles.
10/28/14
Assemblies of God girls
with their fat asses,
Me with drunken blood
and sharp-toothed smile,
a mercenary mouth
and time to kill.
10/29/14
My blood sounds, heartbeat
pushing stone waves
upon heavy ears, each
a wave a wane
a-wavin',
the ants go marching in.
A psychedelic holocaust
did I once subject
my brain to,
such unfair pairings
and gleanings
and knowledge sought
without deserve.
So here I lie I lay
and lie
and feel atomic waves
of blood against
my stony eardrums
and I excuse myself;
"Excuse me."
---------------------------------
Public exposure
intoxication
pubic
urination
I hope you got a good look at my dick
Because you'll probably never see it again
-the Smiths
(DEATH TO YUPPIES AND COPS)
Saturday, October 18, 2014
tiny blue notebook (this one is yellow)
9/25/14
hallucination: flying saucers above Cherry + Nat'l
9/26/14
Day-drunk:
*stole 2 ashtrays
*bottle of vodka in my pocket
*I can conquer the world.
Why "drugs & alcohol"? Why not "drugs, alcohol?"
family: in Audi: Texas plates: kill em all
---------------------------------------------------------
All-day sirens
a shriek of memory
too much lost to start anew
Why not build
a life from memory?
Instead why not
built a life anew
with you
with you?
At least
At least the sky is
beautiful
at least
the corn grows tall
you
and you and you
drive me to drink
to drink
impossible things
and fly upon
impossible wings
-----------------------------
"Toying on Page"
Toying on page,
dancing dancing,
messing about.
Free as to be,
to be as free.
I'm shitting,
shitting!
and toying about
with a little book
and a tiny mind.
9/26 (27)/14
Sitting in I's house, on a cinder block. Listening to Talking Heads (I think?). Might be a no-wave compilation. Head a pickle jar at this point, difficult to discern details. I showers. I smoke. I smoke and drink water, warm water. And I drink beer, I drink warm beer. I drink warm beer.
Correction: it's the Police. I shrug. I do like the band, however. However, this ulcer is back on my tongue, and I will find no peace in 2014.
-------------------------------------------------------
...Here is my heart! It is warm, still, and it is violent! It has a purpose, and it would be a disservice to have it beneath wicker, fear, and selfsame pride! Take it, chew it, if only that I may feel and Live.
9/27/10
Mosh moves
in the peach pit
at the applecore
show
rap:
Staying home tonight to give myself a haircut
A rough-shod chop-job
perched upon a tea cup
Pinky finger out straight
Dreamin' 'bout the D-cups
In need of a tug job, settle for a...?
With clarity comes...
-not liberation
-am I more suspicious?
-actual joy in re: the mundane?
-am I more suspicious?
-improving critical thinking
-less muscle ache (unrelated to actual clarity, but same causation)
-am I more suspicious?
Pig-strobes illumine my yard and flicker through the house; unlucky speeder caught on Campbell at my doorstep. Glad I don't own a car. Also, though, wouldn't mind owning a car.
So happy at home, phone service cut off, bought a tall boy, plenty of paper n pens, in bed asleep by 2, these joys.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The social media-fostered notion of definition thru public statement: rendered moot by my compulsive note-taking, or enforced as a technocratic alternative? For surely I know somone will read this, someday, and it will further my self-invention at least in their perception of who-I-am. Good thing I'm generally honest, cordial. Like Twain said, and I paraphrase, it's much more difficult to remember the lies you've told than to keep up on the Truth you-are. (That is an absolute bungling of the aforementioned Twain's original quote, and selfishly reinterpreted.)
My handwriting seems to have gotten worse, but this notebook is so fucking compact and I am forced to write in it at obnoxious goddamn cramped angles. Lends it some mystery, I suppose, as it appears a shorthand legible only to me, a cipher. Good thing, as I apparently left my tiny blue notebook (this one is yellow) at D's, and mefears he may have flipped thru it and read some crazy shit, but methinks it unreadable due to the very limitations in indecipherable cleanliness of verbosity-upon-page.
half-remembered lyrics I wrote 2 or 3 years ago:
"The cattle are wasted,
all slaughtered in pasture,
and somebody somewhere
is falling in love."
--------------------------------------------------
Why not be still, my errant joy? O these constructs I rely upon, based on nothing, are honest and complete nothing, but still I imagine how she smells and our wedding, and still I don't think she knows my name. Even so, these things, errant erect delusions, give me cause to live and look forward to another day. And she will never know! Romanticism lives after all, safe and healthy within my compulsive crushing!
"future widows"
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Awaken suddenly at the buttcrack of 6 am, convinced by my so jealous mind that I hear... what? moans n groans and hidden voices slicing through the shrinking walls. Surely the product of a guilty conscience.
9/28/14
"Forsake me not when my wild hours come;
grant me sleep nightly, grace soften my dreams;
achieve in me patience till the thing be done,
a careful view of my achievement come.
Make me from time to time the gift of the shoulder.
When all hurt nerves whine shut away the whiskey.
Empty my heart towards Thee.
Let me pace without fear the common path of death."
- from "Eleven Addresses to the Lord (#3)", J. Berryman
Kant's "categorical imperatives", inc. "Act as if the maxim of your actions were to become through your will a general natural law,"; dubious at best? Fascist at worst? Or maybe I'm being pessimistic; must there always be an "at best/worst" range of value? Kant could have been using hyperbole to suggest nothing more than the immutable and blessed strength of human will... but to claim a re-/writing of natural law? Seems... unnatural.
I'm misreading/misinterpreting this, overlooking the fact that he says "Act as if," an improvable notion, then.
9/29/14
M gave me a lovely new pen (already lost. - ed.). Gel ink, all that. Flows like a ghost.
Had folks over last night. The boys got high as hell at the dining room table, the girls sat on the porch and drank beer with too-long names (I prefer the monosyllabic myself; Bud, Coors, Busch, Stag) and stressed out the too-high boys.
Anxious for the First Frost to creep into our lives. Kill the bugs (at least send them into hiding), and also the weirdos (sent into hiding, that is, not killing them for chrissakes). Sounds a little misanthropic (duh!), but living in this neighborhood one tires of the constant threat of weirdo ("boogan") activity. Last night there was a shirtless young man with a tire iron pacing between the apartment buildings and muttering aggressively to himself. No thank you!
"And still my heart sweats!" (-Japandroids, - ed.)
9/30/14
I pray to grow old
and tired and mean,
but O! never to be fat.
Noticing the cashier's nametag:
"Your name is Tesla?"
She, sheepishly, avoiding eye contact: "Yeah."
"That's your first name?"
Again, same, "Yeah."
"That's wonderful. Are you named after the inventor?"
"No, I'm named after the band."
"Well, the band is named after the inventor, so... Do you know of the inventor?"
"Yeah, I looked him up. He was a smart man."
Me, nearly bursting now, so much to say: "He was incredible." All I say.
She: "Yeah... he was a smart man."
Selah.
My (awful though loved) neighborhood today smells strongly of human feces.
-------------------------------------------------
Imagine
being thoroughly threshed
at 30.
Shit, imagine again
to be so thoroughly threshed
at 25
or 20
or 15!
4:54 am, mouth
brimming with spit
and ulcers;
I have no idea where I am.
Raise a fist
in adulation
While we piss upon
the ground
10/5/14 (4:35 am)
Why do I write? Because nothing haunts me as much as a thoughtful and affecting sentence, and because I wish to harness this energy.
Finished story #2 tonight. Pretty good, I guess. Made K cry, but I thought it was funny. And maybe a little heavy-handedly moralistic. No, cautionary. To whom? To me?
Learning to love reading my own stuff. Reading, writing; can't decide which I enjoy more.
Ailments, head-to-toe (massively incomplete list - .ed)
*earache in right ear after pouring too-hot Neti pot water through my sinuses; probably an ear infection, need to look into folk remedies (pour piss into it?)
*small scratch on right eyebrow, inflicted by a cat who didn't appreciate my tormenting him
*deep burn on right index finger, blister finally popped and now just a wet, stinging hole
---------------------------------------------------------
"But this is an old and never-ending story: what formerly happened with the Stoics still happens today as soon as a philosophy begins to believe in itself. It always creates the world in its own image, it cannot do otherwise; philosophy is this tyrannical drive itself, the most spiritual will to power, to 'creation of the world', to causa prima." - nietszche somewhere
------------------------------------------------------------
First words spoken aloud, 10/7/14, 6:19 am:
"Oh my god. What a fuckin' asshole."
When my voice becomes ash
becomes ashen and tall
tall and corpsely
a vampire
asking to drain the venom
from the blue veins
of transparent tits
10/10/14
Sick and tired of this beatnik shit.
("Framed picture of the Sun" - new idolatry, godhead, infrared)
---------------------------------------------
If I must be real and honest, Lord let my interim be meek and kind. Let me be good.
Throw a tower;
I can bend.
--------------------------------
10/14/14
Beautiful redheads,
I come to hear her speak,
I come to find she is idiotic,
no matter what I lay before her.
All kinds of me;
here are our men...
dyin' over here
Goddamn,
maybe I should have listened
to that story you were to tell.
Here I am aloft and asunder,
such wonderful words come across paper,
listening with pounding heart
to the words between tongue.
Daring a vam--
no
daring a hand--
no
daring me
All-man
Cracked and
able to wound
and be wounded.
Please, get off of him.
I wait for sunrise.
hallucination: flying saucers above Cherry + Nat'l
9/26/14
Day-drunk:
*stole 2 ashtrays
*bottle of vodka in my pocket
*I can conquer the world.
Why "drugs & alcohol"? Why not "drugs, alcohol?"
family: in Audi: Texas plates: kill em all
---------------------------------------------------------
All-day sirens
a shriek of memory
too much lost to start anew
Why not build
a life from memory?
Instead why not
built a life anew
with you
with you?
At least
At least the sky is
beautiful
at least
the corn grows tall
you
and you and you
drive me to drink
to drink
impossible things
and fly upon
impossible wings
-----------------------------
"Toying on Page"
Toying on page,
dancing dancing,
messing about.
Free as to be,
to be as free.
I'm shitting,
shitting!
and toying about
with a little book
and a tiny mind.
9/26 (27)/14
Sitting in I's house, on a cinder block. Listening to Talking Heads (I think?). Might be a no-wave compilation. Head a pickle jar at this point, difficult to discern details. I showers. I smoke. I smoke and drink water, warm water. And I drink beer, I drink warm beer. I drink warm beer.
Correction: it's the Police. I shrug. I do like the band, however. However, this ulcer is back on my tongue, and I will find no peace in 2014.
-------------------------------------------------------
...Here is my heart! It is warm, still, and it is violent! It has a purpose, and it would be a disservice to have it beneath wicker, fear, and selfsame pride! Take it, chew it, if only that I may feel and Live.
9/27/10
Mosh moves
in the peach pit
at the applecore
show
rap:
Staying home tonight to give myself a haircut
A rough-shod chop-job
perched upon a tea cup
Pinky finger out straight
Dreamin' 'bout the D-cups
In need of a tug job, settle for a...?
With clarity comes...
-not liberation
-am I more suspicious?
-actual joy in re: the mundane?
-am I more suspicious?
-improving critical thinking
-less muscle ache (unrelated to actual clarity, but same causation)
-am I more suspicious?
Pig-strobes illumine my yard and flicker through the house; unlucky speeder caught on Campbell at my doorstep. Glad I don't own a car. Also, though, wouldn't mind owning a car.
So happy at home, phone service cut off, bought a tall boy, plenty of paper n pens, in bed asleep by 2, these joys.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The social media-fostered notion of definition thru public statement: rendered moot by my compulsive note-taking, or enforced as a technocratic alternative? For surely I know somone will read this, someday, and it will further my self-invention at least in their perception of who-I-am. Good thing I'm generally honest, cordial. Like Twain said, and I paraphrase, it's much more difficult to remember the lies you've told than to keep up on the Truth you-are. (That is an absolute bungling of the aforementioned Twain's original quote, and selfishly reinterpreted.)
My handwriting seems to have gotten worse, but this notebook is so fucking compact and I am forced to write in it at obnoxious goddamn cramped angles. Lends it some mystery, I suppose, as it appears a shorthand legible only to me, a cipher. Good thing, as I apparently left my tiny blue notebook (this one is yellow) at D's, and mefears he may have flipped thru it and read some crazy shit, but methinks it unreadable due to the very limitations in indecipherable cleanliness of verbosity-upon-page.
half-remembered lyrics I wrote 2 or 3 years ago:
"The cattle are wasted,
all slaughtered in pasture,
and somebody somewhere
is falling in love."
--------------------------------------------------
Why not be still, my errant joy? O these constructs I rely upon, based on nothing, are honest and complete nothing, but still I imagine how she smells and our wedding, and still I don't think she knows my name. Even so, these things, errant erect delusions, give me cause to live and look forward to another day. And she will never know! Romanticism lives after all, safe and healthy within my compulsive crushing!
"future widows"
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Awaken suddenly at the buttcrack of 6 am, convinced by my so jealous mind that I hear... what? moans n groans and hidden voices slicing through the shrinking walls. Surely the product of a guilty conscience.
9/28/14
"Forsake me not when my wild hours come;
grant me sleep nightly, grace soften my dreams;
achieve in me patience till the thing be done,
a careful view of my achievement come.
Make me from time to time the gift of the shoulder.
When all hurt nerves whine shut away the whiskey.
Empty my heart towards Thee.
Let me pace without fear the common path of death."
- from "Eleven Addresses to the Lord (#3)", J. Berryman
Kant's "categorical imperatives", inc. "Act as if the maxim of your actions were to become through your will a general natural law,"; dubious at best? Fascist at worst? Or maybe I'm being pessimistic; must there always be an "at best/worst" range of value? Kant could have been using hyperbole to suggest nothing more than the immutable and blessed strength of human will... but to claim a re-/writing of natural law? Seems... unnatural.
I'm misreading/misinterpreting this, overlooking the fact that he says "Act as if," an improvable notion, then.
9/29/14
M gave me a lovely new pen (already lost. - ed.). Gel ink, all that. Flows like a ghost.
Had folks over last night. The boys got high as hell at the dining room table, the girls sat on the porch and drank beer with too-long names (I prefer the monosyllabic myself; Bud, Coors, Busch, Stag) and stressed out the too-high boys.
Anxious for the First Frost to creep into our lives. Kill the bugs (at least send them into hiding), and also the weirdos (sent into hiding, that is, not killing them for chrissakes). Sounds a little misanthropic (duh!), but living in this neighborhood one tires of the constant threat of weirdo ("boogan") activity. Last night there was a shirtless young man with a tire iron pacing between the apartment buildings and muttering aggressively to himself. No thank you!
"And still my heart sweats!" (-Japandroids, - ed.)
9/30/14
I pray to grow old
and tired and mean,
but O! never to be fat.
Noticing the cashier's nametag:
"Your name is Tesla?"
She, sheepishly, avoiding eye contact: "Yeah."
"That's your first name?"
Again, same, "Yeah."
"That's wonderful. Are you named after the inventor?"
"No, I'm named after the band."
"Well, the band is named after the inventor, so... Do you know of the inventor?"
"Yeah, I looked him up. He was a smart man."
Me, nearly bursting now, so much to say: "He was incredible." All I say.
She: "Yeah... he was a smart man."
Selah.
My (awful though loved) neighborhood today smells strongly of human feces.
-------------------------------------------------
Imagine
being thoroughly threshed
at 30.
Shit, imagine again
to be so thoroughly threshed
at 25
or 20
or 15!
4:54 am, mouth
brimming with spit
and ulcers;
I have no idea where I am.
Raise a fist
in adulation
While we piss upon
the ground
10/5/14 (4:35 am)
Why do I write? Because nothing haunts me as much as a thoughtful and affecting sentence, and because I wish to harness this energy.
Finished story #2 tonight. Pretty good, I guess. Made K cry, but I thought it was funny. And maybe a little heavy-handedly moralistic. No, cautionary. To whom? To me?
Learning to love reading my own stuff. Reading, writing; can't decide which I enjoy more.
Ailments, head-to-toe (massively incomplete list - .ed)
*earache in right ear after pouring too-hot Neti pot water through my sinuses; probably an ear infection, need to look into folk remedies (pour piss into it?)
*small scratch on right eyebrow, inflicted by a cat who didn't appreciate my tormenting him
*deep burn on right index finger, blister finally popped and now just a wet, stinging hole
---------------------------------------------------------
"But this is an old and never-ending story: what formerly happened with the Stoics still happens today as soon as a philosophy begins to believe in itself. It always creates the world in its own image, it cannot do otherwise; philosophy is this tyrannical drive itself, the most spiritual will to power, to 'creation of the world', to causa prima." - nietszche somewhere
------------------------------------------------------------
First words spoken aloud, 10/7/14, 6:19 am:
"Oh my god. What a fuckin' asshole."
When my voice becomes ash
becomes ashen and tall
tall and corpsely
a vampire
asking to drain the venom
from the blue veins
of transparent tits
10/10/14
Sick and tired of this beatnik shit.
("Framed picture of the Sun" - new idolatry, godhead, infrared)
---------------------------------------------
If I must be real and honest, Lord let my interim be meek and kind. Let me be good.
Throw a tower;
I can bend.
--------------------------------
10/14/14
Beautiful redheads,
I come to hear her speak,
I come to find she is idiotic,
no matter what I lay before her.
All kinds of me;
here are our men...
dyin' over here
Goddamn,
maybe I should have listened
to that story you were to tell.
Here I am aloft and asunder,
such wonderful words come across paper,
listening with pounding heart
to the words between tongue.
Daring a vam--
no
daring a hand--
no
daring me
All-man
Cracked and
able to wound
and be wounded.
Please, get off of him.
I wait for sunrise.
Thursday, October 9, 2014
Grey Hound. (05/2005)
I wrote this while on a 36-hour Greyhound trip in May, 2005. I was twenty years old, and returning from Florida to Missouri to attend my sister's high school graduation, not knowing at the time that the trip would precipitate my moving back to Missouri, visiting Panama City Beach again only once, in early June, to cram as many of my possessions as I could into the back of Tim Eisenhauer's two-door Honda, and leaving the rest, including (idiot!) my collection of 40+ shot glasses, to an unknown fate, lonely and abandoned on the Emerald Coast.
I'd like to note that at this point of my life, I was as fascinated by amateurish chemical stimulation as I was by Alan Watts and amateurish Zen fancies.
I've been looking through lots of old notebooks, and would like to start transcribing some of this old shit, and with as little amending as possible, but sometimes it's just too tempting to exchange a good word for a better one, or just trimming an unnecessary word if that be the case, especially as I was then just a grubby little knucklehead, and have now matured into an an older and slightly more experienced shithead.
Also, I'm currently eating saltine crackers with anchovies, olives, slices of onion, pepper jack cheese, horseradish, kimchi, and hot sauce. It is wonderful, and I have the salted breath of a sea dragon.
The bus rolls out of Panama City at 11:10 Tuesday morning. The ocean and sky are the same dusty blue. Fishing boats plow oily wedges through the bay, the still pines stand tall and aromatic.
Not much sleep last night. Lots of last minute rustling, packing, saying farewell to friends too late met. I awoke only due to the grace of legal stimulatory drugs taken shortly before sleep. Legal or not, moderation is key, and of late the dependence on such capsules of tightly-wound energy has made me weary, though with boundless energy. They deprive the body of the need for sleep until, the next day, after the effects have begun to wear off, when sleep is not possible due to employment responsibilities, and we have no choice but to eat a few more Zoloft or Adderall or concentrated caffeine-and-ephedra pills. And the next day, the same, cyclical. It takes a toll on body and mind, but we are fully stimulated. Stimulation is key.
I see from the window a fenced-in area containing an entire herd of grey Triceratops.
After two or more days of this wide-eyed sleep-deprivation, one becomes a sort of hyper-stimulated zombie. The feeling is such as looking down at oneself, mind and body completely independent of one another. Tasks are completed without thought while the brain reels and soars and considers.
Sleep during these spells is fitful. Spastic dreams of grey nudes with lidless eyes, limbs quivering with a seizure heartbeat, rushing about and scream-muttering terrible things. Black fish with glowing eyes swimming through blood rivers, open-air markets in which the fruit pulsate almost erotically in tandem with that same seizure heartbeat. Awake immediately, forget it all, sit up straight, drink some water and eat a few dry crackers to soothe the nausea, try to stop your skinny calloused hands from shaking. It will only scare and cause guilt.
Old contact lenses, covered in protein scum, steal a bottle of Visine to squirt into your eyes until they swim in their sockets. Temporary relief. Months pass in a matter of hours, feel the seizure heartbeat slow, eyes become heavy, still an entire day of work ahead, steal a bottle of No-Doz, eat a few. Everything is looking up now. No sleep again tonight, perhaps a few glasses of whiskey will coerce your stuttering brain into compliance.
Backhoes uproot layers of topsoil, making cuts into which more transplanted palm trees will be inserted, the illusion of Eden, the Fountain of Youth, for the degenerate old fat and ignorant. Florida, with flowers.
Bus transfer in Ft. Walton. New passengers. A white man with plastic pants and a Ziploc bag full of prescription pill bottles, a Hispanic man with two laundry baskets full of clothes. An amorphous crowd of filthy undershirts, the smell of peanuts, patriotic sunglasses, dragons airbrushed upon polyester, bad teeth, thinning hair, shark-tooth necklaces (me), infants, pillowcases, shrunken heads, wind chimes. Family members and loved ones, or those indebted to the passengers through hate, semen, marriage, stand outside looking sunken and lonely, watching us leave.
A couple has brought aboard a baby that looks like a pale Giger painting of the Buddha, yet somehow still endearing. It sleeps like an amoeba.
Faceless suburbs. Vacant lots much more appealing. Learn to embrace the empty, the open, too often cluttered. The sky looks much bigger here, given epic proportions when accompanied by the ocean. Same out West, with the seas of sand and leviathan mountains.
We get pulled over in a corporate facsimile of a town called Navare. Policemen come on board, give us all a good look. They are looking for someone, a man (women are exempt). As they search the restroom, examine our forearms for distinguishing tattoos, take our licenses (I am one of four suspects), I look at the blue sky and for a maddening moment I think it is an organic membrane, thinking I see a branching network of vessels and veins. I realize with a little disappointment that it is only a gnarled pine tree being reflected in the window.
The stainless steel chamber pot is filled with a thick black pot liquor that sloshes about as the great whale banks the waves. I brace myself against a slimy stainless steel handle to ride the turbulence and avoid pissing all over myself.
Continuing, I watch out the window. I imagine the landscape exploding, nuclear blossoms in time with the drumbeat, the silent poetry of a fireball engulfing house upon house, trees splintering, billboards being twisted and blowing apart in graceful slow motion, a global holocaust as I watch from the safety of a Greyhound bus. The beauty in such ideas.
No soil, just sand; creamy, bloody.
For some reason the reappearance of the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker comes to mind.
Wake up in Alabama. No more sand, we see farmland. Deciduous trees. After a brief stop at a gas station, the air is filled with the smell of Cheetos.
I meet a young rapper named Marques, though his MC name is "Smoke". Both being young musicians, we hit it off and enjoy Steak Night at Shoney's during a six hour layover in Birmingham.
The South begins to melt slowly towards the Midwest. Limestone bluffs, cedar trees, pastures. Montgomery greets us with the smell of hay, Nashville with a gorgeous sunrise.
I wake up, find myself seated next to a large man leafing through a Hustler.
"Is this Indiana?" I ask drowsily.
"Nah, Kentucky," he says.
I haven't been to Kentucky in years, and tell him so.
A man got on the bus sometime during the night. Short, balding, with a grey ponytail. He stinks of sweat, cheap cigarettes, rot. His teeth are rotting and angled, and his eyes twitch and glisten behind huge maroon-framed spectacles. Oversized grey shirt, stonewashed jeans, a wallet chain slapping his leg like an inert chrome cock as he limps slowly along.
Taking a five-minute break somewhere in Tennessee, he wanders into a Hardee's against the bus driver's wishes. Time to go, he's still buying his cola, he gets left behind. All around me, the bus erupts in men slapping the backs of seats and hooting and clapping like gibbons, watching the man chase after the bus, little legs pumping, Hardee's cola splashing, wallet chain suddenly electric and alive, a charmed cobra.
Once he has convinced the bus driver to let him back on the bus, he is greeted by chiding.
"We knew you could move fast if you wanted to..."
"Haw haw, you're sick..."
"Only a five-minute break, haw haw..."
"Think twice next time, ain't ya..."
In Evansville, he speaks to me while sucking on a cigarette, spittle flecking his thin lips.
"Been in jail four months. Gotta get home to Springfield, Missouri. I tell my girl, be there with open arms, y'know? Get a motel room 'cross the motherfucking street, cuz I'm gonna tear you up, y'know? Down in Florida, I was in this corn field doin' stuff. Not so much a corn field as a forest..."
I tune him out. He is a fool, and from time to time ejects a viscous liquid from his mouth, ejaculated upon the ground with a disgusting squelch from between his reptilian tongue and decomposing teeth.
Demonbreun
There's a demon brewin' inside of me
Down in Nashville, TN
Goddamn girl, I'm so lonely
Down in Nashville, TN
The sunrise looks alright to me
Down in Nashville, TN
There's no place I'd rather be
Than down in Nashville, TN
No idea where I went to sleep
But now I'm in Nashville, TN
Sunlight, purge the dark from me
Down in Nashville, TN
I'd like to note that at this point of my life, I was as fascinated by amateurish chemical stimulation as I was by Alan Watts and amateurish Zen fancies.
I've been looking through lots of old notebooks, and would like to start transcribing some of this old shit, and with as little amending as possible, but sometimes it's just too tempting to exchange a good word for a better one, or just trimming an unnecessary word if that be the case, especially as I was then just a grubby little knucklehead, and have now matured into an an older and slightly more experienced shithead.
Also, I'm currently eating saltine crackers with anchovies, olives, slices of onion, pepper jack cheese, horseradish, kimchi, and hot sauce. It is wonderful, and I have the salted breath of a sea dragon.
The bus rolls out of Panama City at 11:10 Tuesday morning. The ocean and sky are the same dusty blue. Fishing boats plow oily wedges through the bay, the still pines stand tall and aromatic.
Not much sleep last night. Lots of last minute rustling, packing, saying farewell to friends too late met. I awoke only due to the grace of legal stimulatory drugs taken shortly before sleep. Legal or not, moderation is key, and of late the dependence on such capsules of tightly-wound energy has made me weary, though with boundless energy. They deprive the body of the need for sleep until, the next day, after the effects have begun to wear off, when sleep is not possible due to employment responsibilities, and we have no choice but to eat a few more Zoloft or Adderall or concentrated caffeine-and-ephedra pills. And the next day, the same, cyclical. It takes a toll on body and mind, but we are fully stimulated. Stimulation is key.
I see from the window a fenced-in area containing an entire herd of grey Triceratops.
After two or more days of this wide-eyed sleep-deprivation, one becomes a sort of hyper-stimulated zombie. The feeling is such as looking down at oneself, mind and body completely independent of one another. Tasks are completed without thought while the brain reels and soars and considers.
Sleep during these spells is fitful. Spastic dreams of grey nudes with lidless eyes, limbs quivering with a seizure heartbeat, rushing about and scream-muttering terrible things. Black fish with glowing eyes swimming through blood rivers, open-air markets in which the fruit pulsate almost erotically in tandem with that same seizure heartbeat. Awake immediately, forget it all, sit up straight, drink some water and eat a few dry crackers to soothe the nausea, try to stop your skinny calloused hands from shaking. It will only scare and cause guilt.
Old contact lenses, covered in protein scum, steal a bottle of Visine to squirt into your eyes until they swim in their sockets. Temporary relief. Months pass in a matter of hours, feel the seizure heartbeat slow, eyes become heavy, still an entire day of work ahead, steal a bottle of No-Doz, eat a few. Everything is looking up now. No sleep again tonight, perhaps a few glasses of whiskey will coerce your stuttering brain into compliance.
Backhoes uproot layers of topsoil, making cuts into which more transplanted palm trees will be inserted, the illusion of Eden, the Fountain of Youth, for the degenerate old fat and ignorant. Florida, with flowers.
Bus transfer in Ft. Walton. New passengers. A white man with plastic pants and a Ziploc bag full of prescription pill bottles, a Hispanic man with two laundry baskets full of clothes. An amorphous crowd of filthy undershirts, the smell of peanuts, patriotic sunglasses, dragons airbrushed upon polyester, bad teeth, thinning hair, shark-tooth necklaces (me), infants, pillowcases, shrunken heads, wind chimes. Family members and loved ones, or those indebted to the passengers through hate, semen, marriage, stand outside looking sunken and lonely, watching us leave.
A couple has brought aboard a baby that looks like a pale Giger painting of the Buddha, yet somehow still endearing. It sleeps like an amoeba.
Faceless suburbs. Vacant lots much more appealing. Learn to embrace the empty, the open, too often cluttered. The sky looks much bigger here, given epic proportions when accompanied by the ocean. Same out West, with the seas of sand and leviathan mountains.
We get pulled over in a corporate facsimile of a town called Navare. Policemen come on board, give us all a good look. They are looking for someone, a man (women are exempt). As they search the restroom, examine our forearms for distinguishing tattoos, take our licenses (I am one of four suspects), I look at the blue sky and for a maddening moment I think it is an organic membrane, thinking I see a branching network of vessels and veins. I realize with a little disappointment that it is only a gnarled pine tree being reflected in the window.
The stainless steel chamber pot is filled with a thick black pot liquor that sloshes about as the great whale banks the waves. I brace myself against a slimy stainless steel handle to ride the turbulence and avoid pissing all over myself.
Continuing, I watch out the window. I imagine the landscape exploding, nuclear blossoms in time with the drumbeat, the silent poetry of a fireball engulfing house upon house, trees splintering, billboards being twisted and blowing apart in graceful slow motion, a global holocaust as I watch from the safety of a Greyhound bus. The beauty in such ideas.
No soil, just sand; creamy, bloody.
For some reason the reappearance of the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker comes to mind.
Wake up in Alabama. No more sand, we see farmland. Deciduous trees. After a brief stop at a gas station, the air is filled with the smell of Cheetos.
I meet a young rapper named Marques, though his MC name is "Smoke". Both being young musicians, we hit it off and enjoy Steak Night at Shoney's during a six hour layover in Birmingham.
The South begins to melt slowly towards the Midwest. Limestone bluffs, cedar trees, pastures. Montgomery greets us with the smell of hay, Nashville with a gorgeous sunrise.
I wake up, find myself seated next to a large man leafing through a Hustler.
"Is this Indiana?" I ask drowsily.
"Nah, Kentucky," he says.
I haven't been to Kentucky in years, and tell him so.
A man got on the bus sometime during the night. Short, balding, with a grey ponytail. He stinks of sweat, cheap cigarettes, rot. His teeth are rotting and angled, and his eyes twitch and glisten behind huge maroon-framed spectacles. Oversized grey shirt, stonewashed jeans, a wallet chain slapping his leg like an inert chrome cock as he limps slowly along.
Taking a five-minute break somewhere in Tennessee, he wanders into a Hardee's against the bus driver's wishes. Time to go, he's still buying his cola, he gets left behind. All around me, the bus erupts in men slapping the backs of seats and hooting and clapping like gibbons, watching the man chase after the bus, little legs pumping, Hardee's cola splashing, wallet chain suddenly electric and alive, a charmed cobra.
Once he has convinced the bus driver to let him back on the bus, he is greeted by chiding.
"We knew you could move fast if you wanted to..."
"Haw haw, you're sick..."
"Only a five-minute break, haw haw..."
"Think twice next time, ain't ya..."
In Evansville, he speaks to me while sucking on a cigarette, spittle flecking his thin lips.
"Been in jail four months. Gotta get home to Springfield, Missouri. I tell my girl, be there with open arms, y'know? Get a motel room 'cross the motherfucking street, cuz I'm gonna tear you up, y'know? Down in Florida, I was in this corn field doin' stuff. Not so much a corn field as a forest..."
I tune him out. He is a fool, and from time to time ejects a viscous liquid from his mouth, ejaculated upon the ground with a disgusting squelch from between his reptilian tongue and decomposing teeth.
Demonbreun
There's a demon brewin' inside of me
Down in Nashville, TN
Goddamn girl, I'm so lonely
Down in Nashville, TN
The sunrise looks alright to me
Down in Nashville, TN
There's no place I'd rather be
Than down in Nashville, TN
No idea where I went to sleep
But now I'm in Nashville, TN
Sunlight, purge the dark from me
Down in Nashville, TN
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