I Cherish Deep That Perfumed Wisp

I cherish deep that perfumed wisp;
that mem’ry oh so dear!
That drowns me in astounding bliss,
and flings me far from here.
And ferries me back to a place
touched not by earthly woe—
the mem’ry of a time and place,
and of a girl I know…

And all the memories that flood
and bead upon my brain,
that carry me back to your arms
and lets me live again:
a time that now, seems never was—
but once, t’is so, was true!
A time when you belonged to me,
and I did cherish you.

And cherish you now, do I still,
though you are far away—
and nevermore shall know my love;
nor I, your warm embrace.
And all the history we shared
is gone, forevermore:
yet long as I do live and breathe,
my love, you are adored. Read more!

Death Becomes Me

Death becomes me:

I have actually been practicing for it
my entire life!

That first breath—
I could have held onto it forever!

I knew I could have,
but I let go:
and surrendered my immortality.

I’ve been surrendering my godliness
Ever since… Read more!

All Grown Up

It is not easy to fade into oblivion:
Try as we might, we all just want to be heard.
To escape the suffocation of everyday being
and be resurrected in vital form…

We want to remain unfettered, and unhindered, in our waking hours.
To speak without fear of offense,
and to act, without fear of reprisal,
or ridicule,

We want to risk all the wonders and dangers of being misunderstood
to live just once, for the moment—

We want to speak truthfully, and clearly, the chatter that we hear in our heads.

We want to touch that which is forbidden, and devour it,
and not be ashamed.

To be evil, and dirty—
to be loving;
insane…

We want to be what we are, instead of living what we are not.

And to have, what we hide in our hearts,
and in our heads,
and in our secret, internal lives
that never see the light of day.

We want to make our fantasies reality
and run screaming
from the prison of our lives… Read more!

Beauty Walked, Until You Died

Beauty walked, until you died:
and men knew how to dream real dreams.
To hope, as only lovers hope;
to feel an honest, rending love...

When shadows fled! And poets died.
Because their pens could not compose:
I knew your taste, and knew you touch,
and had a reason to go on.

But time has taken all from me—
by taking you, it's taken me
unto a world where no one sings;
where nothing hopes
and nothing dreams. Read more!

HOPE

I do not know
what drags me to this place:
what soils my disdain
and drains away my hate.

The tight, hard, ball
encased in fear's embrace—
protected from all hope,
oblivious to faith...

Sequestered in some 'sordid way'
from this 'new' thing I know—
the world that's always solaced me;
the world that now may cease to be:
Or altered in some 'horrid' way—continue,
but without its flame!
Without the sauce of anarchy
to season my domain...

And what could cause such hope
to blossom here?

Denied essential nutriment—it flowered!
prayerful hand extent'.
Rebellious as the very ground from which it bust
to voice dissent;
and challenge all our cherished ways:

the 'pleasure' of scorn's repose...

I do not want, (nor do I seek)
this 'sunniness' of which I speak;
this optimistic 'trust', and 'hope', and 'love'—
(Which I abhor!)

Well-mired in such sweet despair,
I just awoke to find it there.
Without so much as one harsh sneer
to show me it was kind:

It's fucking with my mind!

HOPE!!! Read more!

Opting Out

Looks like MC's writing for the gallows now, not the galleries . . .


Opting Out
It was all pink and blurry at first and the indecipherable chatter blared discordantly from all directions, within being the bitchiest. Moving pink and pushed to emergence, the old round of voices, and something dawning from the crown of being. Chakra they called it. First thought, a label, spiritual mediation. Second thought. Here comes the domination. And all the memories of before poured like acid rain scalding the Amazon. People used to drink from rivers, and he had loved three women in the world before. Three is what he-he?-had drawn from the deck, and the struggle of it ached like a bruised bone that never healed. Healing, third thought. It’s what he was supposed to learn the last time. Remember, he thought. A fourth. And another dawning. Here he was again, again a he. And soon he’d forget, so he burned what he had into the embryonic soul. Chakra, domination, healing, remember. And what for? He’d been, she’d been along this route a thousand times. Fifth thought. A route entrenched by habit, best not taken.

Kaliyuga pervading even the peace of death. These were shitty times. Despair and rumors of despair. Suffering ad nauseum imprinted upon the corpse gowns. Shitty times. But he was being fed through the navel. Couldn’t stop it. Couldn’t decide not to eat, not to be. He was growing, and couldn’t stop it. He’d have to go through bliss and absence again. He had to get it right this time or come back again. In the beginning was nothing, and nothing got bored. In the end was fear, and Nirvana said no.
I’m being pinched. I’m being force fed. The universe spasms and I know what comes next. I’m inside a mother. I’m an I. Goddamnit! Being an I is the problem. I’ll soon forget that boundaries are fiction and that bliss and terror is snake swallowing tail. I’m forgetting already. Soon enough I’ll even forget that mother and I are one. I loved three women once. Last time. The first was teacher, older, but lust’s green slithering made me miss the point. Second was a season of greed. I gorged at her nymphet-body’s buffet and missed the point. Third was shapeshifter, my tender shaman. We became each other’s handler, prison guard, angry magician, and I wasted time and again missed the point. As language comes, force-fed from mother’s singing--Is she pretty?--terror rises. I know what’s coming. The tunnel, the light, the pain, the soothing, the love, the pain again. I try to dam the placental nourishment, and fail. Alive again, another locus of suffering about to burst into the world again. Sucks.

The worst has happened. I distinctly remember (could I have dreamed it?) that the Soul Guardians had agreed to grant my request to be born into an indigenous community. Fucking liars! I’m smack dab in the morass of an omnicidal culture again. I’ve gleaned from all the mommy/daddy babble that we’re living in some cookie-cutter suburb of Detroit. Detroilet for chrissakes! Not like this. What part of the words “natural life” did the Guardians fail to understand. Fucking liars. I hate my baby blanket because I need my baby blanket. Domestication proceeds. I’m stretched on the rack of need, and I’m already addicted to the bottle. Oh what a surprise! And the bliss of breast-feeding was snatched from me after a week. That shit’s like crack, and those fucking withdrawals--Jesus! I need to forget everything in a hurry. Or I need to improvise my way out. It’s been done. I’ve talked to those lofty souls but I forget shit. Again, I’m stupid. How did they do it? They call it crib death. Lucky bastards.

A dream from that other life. Burying my nostrils into her hair of soft nirvana gold, the grace is interrupted by the creaking door and daddy coming to check on me. How I wanted to stay in her turquoise room, that life’s high point. Daddy bent down, his eyes warm and brown behind the glasses, and kissed me. His whiskers tickled. His breath, smoky and sweet. I had been a smoker, I remembered. Ah, to be young and untroubled and expectant of greatness in that turquoise room. Daddy picked at the lint of my blanket. I could see her face, that other-life face. Master and mother, lizard and lover, and turquoise was her favorite color. I giggled as daddy kissed me, and then a name shouted deeply in my head like a tribal gong. Susan. And another word. Fetish. I had fetishized her. Stubbornness. Obsession. And through all that she loved me with a purity that made me ashamed. But why? I recall shame’s turbulent shade but the Guardians won’t allow me to remember why. Daddy makes cooing noises. What a beautiful young man. Bald as I will be. I know that already. He’s careful to leave quietly. He tries in vain to shut the door without its squeaking. Lovely man. I shut my eyes. My body is small and clean. Through the open window I smell lilacs and chant with happy silence Susan’s name till I descend to a curl to sleep.

I grew and remembered more, and mommy went back to breastfeeding me. How I gorged on the richness. Lust is the proper word. And then I remembered that lust had been part of my downfall. A big part. I couldn’t connect all the parts of the tale and make a whole. Part to part to part, I thought. James Joyce, I thought. He was important somehow. My little brain wasn’t ready to see the web through the threads. I suckled. Mommy sang to me. I slept and dreamed of Sasha. Damaged, glorious, angry child-wife Sasha.

Shitty dream with lots of sex, sorrow, and creditor’s threats. At mommy’s breast again. It’s not that mommies are bad, it’s just that mommies are God. God who wants to eat the child and transfers all the fucked up trips of the culture to us. I’m remembering alienation now, and how all mommies fuck up their babies, made more horrible, not less, that it’s not their fault. Alienation. Civilization. We are taught to hate our bodies, our nature, our freedom. We are taught shame and guilt and psychopathological definitions of success that we must strive for or else suffer love’s withdrawal. Mommies (at least one could excuse them on primal relationship grounds) and daddies use violence, physical or psychological, deforming the child’s nature in either case because of shame, their shame that their child has exhibited non-domesticated behavior. Mommy just yelled at me for crying. I have to kill myself now. That’s my life imperative. All I asked for was to be born into a tribal society that honors the feral and the true. Goddamn the Soul Guardians!

Sasha taught me to conflate civilization with violence. Society didn’t love her enough to protect her. I tried, but it was too late. Her daddy plucked the rose. The cops didn’t give a fuck. If I thought it would change the trajectory of society’s death-trip I would grow up and kill those cops. If I thought it would prevent Apocalypse I would grow up and write about it to warn the others. But growing up will subject me to paralyzing despair, and continuous attacks upon my nature. And with my old memory preserved I surely would self-destruct. Death, I need you. Hasten to me.

Rocking on my haunches, soon I’ll be crawling. Soon I’ll be walking and babbling stupid duh duhs and muh muhs, and become a sweet little caged parrot. Maybe I could bite back like a parrot, but I fear that mommy and daddy are old school when it comes to discipline. I might forget all this and become stupid after the beatings and threats to behave or else. I might forget all this and grow a thick neck and play football and persuade the chicks to like me. I might forget all this and become a poet and persuade the chicks to like me. Why couldn’t death be the end? Why can’t energy die and stay dead? Whose dick do I have to suck to insure oblivion’s permanence? Last life I wanted to die half the time. I smoked and drank and worked and loved and still suffered through forty-two years. Hard time. And that brings me to the last love.

Meagan. I want my nipple. Meagan. Addictive comfort, but she wanted too much. If I had the power to unleash my brain’s poisonous geysers upon civilization I would’ve destroyed it all for her to feel free. What she had to go through every day to be sane and safe made me hate, and I say yes to that hate, even though it killed me in the end. Someone new is holding me. Her eyes are dumb and lovely. An aunt, I think. She lets me touch her breasts. I want to suckle them but she won’t let me get close enough. Meagan used pills to grow hers. E is for estrogen she’d say, and do a little dance. The scriptures of beauty’s cult could be read by the agony-flames in her eyes. My need to douse those flames made me a slave. There was too much heat, and neither of us were up to the task of truly helping each other. We were each other’s addiction, but each recognizing this, we couldn’t leave it. No cure came sliding down from heaven on a sunray. Instead, Meagan went to med school. I quit writing and grew bitter on civilization. The addiction held. Finally she met another med student. He wants to take care of me, she said, and security has freed this songbird from her cage. I was freed to be angry alone and my doom-eagerness sprouted fateful wings. I drank and snapped and found a receptive flock at last that never talked back with accusations of too many adverbs. I refer to the pigeons of course. One year to live.

Crib-bound again and getting sleepy. Grey light leaks despair though the window blinds. The need to escape this nightmare aches in groin, in navel, in heart, in forehead. It is winter, my first winter, but the intimation is that it’s been winter forever and always will be. Cold draft on little toes. I’m getting sleepy. I’m weeping silently from my eye slits. I think of mommy and daddy and say bye bye. I would like to see the sun a final time. I would like to feel her amorous heat on my face and feel glad. Ad-libbing songbirds bid their adieus. My eyes close but I can still see a pink film. That is life, a pink film panorama upon which all the drama and teeth, fire and pain pour forth. But my prayer has yielded a secret. I fill the pink film with black Rorschachs. Bye bye Susan, Sasha, Meagan. We gave the best we could of what we had. I stop my breathing. Yes! My tiny pink fist trembles triumphant. My will, fierce and black, devours the pink. May I not return to the chain or the wheel. May the sweat and the blood bind me no more. May I, bye bye.

Read more!

One Sufferer's Opinion

A few thoughts to share with my friends
One Sufferer’s Opinion: Nocturnal Musings on Alienation, its Cause, its Cure

Alienation is a state of isolation or estrangement from our fellow human beings in a far deeper way than mere liking or disliking based on personality, interests, vocation or appearance. The first stage is what everyone experiences in modern bureaucratic, consumer culture where most of our relationships are impersonal, and the donning of social masks becomes mandatory for success in the system. But the price we pay for such success (security, comfort, acceptance) is profound and claws at the roots of our oldest, most authentic selves. Any role we play that is not perfectly in tune with our actual desires is alienating. Any human being we cannot be perfectly ourselves with is alienated from us and we from them. This suffering is so insidious, so universal that most people lack awareness of its existence, or if aware most will say it’s merely part of growing up and becoming responsible. These folks will plug their ears when confronted with contrary messages, but such is the power and peace of effort justification and the coping mechanisms of the damned only ensure hell’s continuance.

The second stage occurs when one wakes up from the sleep of ignorance and looks deeply into the problems of the world, especially the problems inherent in modern societies. That unlucky bastard, the intellectual, now feels separate from the people who do not look deeply, who seem to graze with bovine capitulation in the cattlefields of life and follow the Pied Piper’s tune into the pens of boring uniformity. The axis upon which the world turns for the intellectual is curiosity, the very quality that modern authorities in most societies wish to squelch. We’re all curious as children but parents and/or the approved institutions of enculturation (schools, churches, jobs) usually succeed in their goal of producing good, docile citizens. Intellectuals often wonder, how do they do it? how do the conformers live? apparently interested only in the cosmetics of existence whereby the pain of fitting in becomes preferable to the pain of standing out.

Cue the shitstorm and send in the clowns for the intellectual artist, gripped by the tentacles of alienation’s third stage. This person, having found a passion to pour life-energy into and struggle with, is often separated not only from the unthinking rabble but also from the non-artistic thinkers, seeing them as sterile and impotent in their dry, undirected intellectuality. I have known many intellectuals who have never struggled with perfecting an art and have never been haunted by a Muse demanding, pleading for attention. Profound are the differences between these two brands of misery hounds, often exacerbated by mocking cynicism and indignation (righteous or otherwise) on both sides. Those who could be allies become divided and the suffering, ever following current and custom, multiplies. When one does the math “Sucks” usually follows the equal sign.

As if pain had neither limit nor mercy, the intellectual artist also suffers estrangement from the multitude of non-intellectual artists, those who engage in their artistic productions with no apparent concern for the problems of the world. This artist-in-a-vacuum mentality is anathema to the thought-beleaguered artist whose goal is to create an all-encompassing vision, a true multidisciplinary gestalt, an explanatory model for suffering and beauty. In an age that deprecates both thinking and art there’s plenty of alienation to go around, but the soul who’s inclined by nature to think deeply and create art has a razor’s edge of sanity to walk in these times of third-grade-level media spectacles, third-grade fame aspirations, and third-grade attention spans. It’s no wonder that most of my friends and acquaintances who span the artist-intellectual spectrum are given to bouts of bleak despair and are quick to grab the bottle at the first twinge of emotional discomfort. It sucks to think too much alone, and lonely creations wither like bitter berries on solipsistic vines when kept close to the creator’s breast and are not shared with others whose inclusion would provide the sun and the rain necessary for growth.

But there’s good news! One always has the choice to embrace and bond with others. We can navigate past the booby traps and pitfalls of alienation by loving and staying in touch (face to face if possible) with our friends/lovers/and if lucky, family. These are the real, passionate, and present people in our lives. These are the souls we can be ourselves around, confide in, trust. Our despair is made bearable by sharing, and our separateness disappears at such moments. We need to remember to be grateful for such experiences. The wasteland is not ineluctable fate. It’s a damning indictment of the emptiness of modern life that we ever forget that nourishment from our real-life beloveds is readily available. Neither our culture nor society nor jobs nor current opinions are our friends. Our friends are. All we have to do is stay in touch, and remind each other that we’re human beings, not machines, and never alone.








Read more!

Something You Said

Just the usual making lemonade out of lemons bullshit, when in fact I believe that if life hands you lemons you better learn how to ferment that shit 'cause yer gonna need it!
THE REST OF IT GOES HERE
Something You Said

Something you said about the redolence
Of worms in rain the day we met
Persuades the brain to stay the storm,
Or how poem gnawed stars from bone
And the heart splayed robin’s wings
And soared to springs of second chances.
Spooning you as faucet drips presence,
Guts letting day’s caged butterflies go,
Zen moon chuckling koans through window,
The candle’s flame lapping at shadows,
Somewhere in the room spiders make more,
Their moans and ours an octave away.
Something you said about sadness
Being a story we could nix from existence,
Or revise to triumph like an Easter Christ,
Or clutch to our hearts like the tales
Of the Grails we’ve found in each other,
Changes no to yes to this and every then.

Read more!

Coming out of Anger

That's Mike in the corner, that's Mike in the spotlight, muttering strange proclamations, again . . .


THE REST OF IT GOES HERE
Coming Out of Anger

What’s the use of slitting so many metaphorical throats,
Or counting till I descend to bad dreams the faces of injustice?
The mirror shows new scars, says wise up already, live.
There are fresh ironies to weep and laugh at, and much to kiss.
There are autumn leaves to crunch underfoot with a friend.
Should I give up all that to stew in anger over mere ideas
About the way the world should be, should look,
Should feel in the heart that has suffered as all hearts have?
I might as well get angry that the stars aren’t candy canes,
Or that my guardian angel won’t join me for coffee, and talk.
It must be enough that springtime still makes me horny.
It must be enough that I still yearn to come home, and crunch
Autumn leaves with you, my friends, and laugh as only we can,
And speak freely of our sorrows and joys, and heal again.

Read more!

Going On

There goes Mike again, trying to sound positive though his belief that civilization is a toilet often sends him to the bar . . .

THE REST OF IT GOES HERE
Going On: Homage to Yeats and Beckett

Though the center has never held,
Still there is a world with us in it.
Though the Sirens no longer sing
And Ulysses lies beached in grief,
I’m relieved that when the moon comes
And splashes her foot in me I can feel.
Though it seems a stretch it’s a start.
Something in us slouches to be born.
Every old soul I know feels stuck,
Despairs amid the myriad escapes.
Still there is a world with us in it.
Wisdom out-sprinted by machines,
Memories that howl like bad teeth,
And memories that sing us to sleep,
The rock and the hard place laughing
As we dream of passing unscathed.
Still there is a world with us in it.
As the sun nestles against my heart
And her hair heats my body’s length,
I know I’m never without a lover.
Still there is a world with us in it.
Sadness takes her leave of absence,
And your smile becomes superglue
For centers ever crumbling. Stay.
I want to feel the moon some more.
If all’s a dream I choose to be bound.
Second or first comings don’t matter.
Apocalypse, advent, the nothing new.
I believe now in your fairy tale arms;
And still there is a world with us in it.

Read more!

Catastrophe!

hard drive failures make me cry.


sketched in digital
my digital sketchbook
my most important folder
no paper, no materials
easy and cheap to freely express
close down the app
open an old file
"disk read error"?
what happened there?
open another and see what happens
the shit?!
meticulously, test each file
disk read error
files corrupted
the hard drive must have fucked up
all of my artwork in that one folder
all of it gone, lost to the ether
collecting the scraps
found in other directories
a pale shadow of years of work
dump in the last backup
of ten months ago
ten months of work
that I'll never get back
cold sweat and shock
resigned to the fact
it will never come back
is it so hard to backup,
on a regular basis?
is it karma for chiding
those who've made the same error?

wake up in morn and continue to mourn
just broken and sad and regretting
I look at the backup once more
and I realize a file is absent
a favorite piece and it should be there
so I search the drive just in case
may have been saved to a different folder
if I can find it, then there's that at least
"digital sketchbook" in anachronistic directory
I don't remember backing it up there
in fact I would never back it up there
and obscure folder for a disused program
lets take a look, curiosity piqued
there it is!
all of it!
it's back! and all of it works!
well, mostly.
only three corrupt files!
and they aren't even good ones!
I back that shit up right away!
a disaster reversed, it's so funny
better than a disaster never happening at all
fuck yeah! hurray!
Read more!

Memo

weird code stuff


apparently the "fullpost" code is acting strangely for some posters here (duplicating the code for each line, and so on.

if anyone as having trouble with the "fullpost" code or has questions about it, shoot me an email and I'll try and figure out what's going on and try to resolve the issue.

also, the "TYPE YOUR SYNOPSIS HERE" and "THE REST OF IT GOES HERE" lines are meant as guides, and are intended to be deleted before the post is published. if you are posting via email or mobile there's not much you can do about them, but please go back and edit them out later when you get the chance. alternately, other members are encouraged to edit them out when they spot them.

additionally, if you are posting a very short piece that you want to display on the main page in it's entirety without requiring clicking "read more" to view in full, simply delete all of the code in the posting box. it will still have the "read more" link, I can't do anything about that, but it will save you any unexpected problems Read more!

Today and Somewhere

A Poem from the Long Side of happiness

Today a thought occured to me...
Where has the all my time gone and what is left to be uncovered?
What has taken me so long to assertain, and was it worthwhile?
Has anyone seen my ego, I must has misplaced it somewhere?
Where can I buy a clue when and if no one knows the mystery?
And finally, what has become of this alleged "plan"

Slowly, I sift through the landscape in front of me,
No barriers, no high walls and no obstacles lie ahead,
In fact the path is so clear it's almost frightening
So I go, on again, searching for answers and fulfilling my so called destiny.

This place of solitude and refuge sits in the middle of a dirty vision,
This safe zone made simply of my own valid realities...this club, this group,
This glimpse of what I was meshed with who I am now and the merging of the two
In one sick circle
And.........
Now..........

She stares at me, again,
smiling,
knowing all of the answers, all of the clues
And tells me none of them, again

Read more!

Stream of Television Consciousness

a combination of my own stream of consciousness, the words piped in through the television, words inspired by the words piped in through the television, and offhand remarks about it. try it yourself for shits and giggles!


international boat trip
solar powered context trip
big ideas for big iDollars
and sacrificial lambchops bleat
the only channel you can watch
is one that wets the sheets
it's not granddads fault
that sick green territory
nine Tuesdays in a row
brings silence as the next film starts
the the opening sequence not verbal enough
to generate words to write this poem
so be patient until...
flip
all day Thursday
live demands the Seashell three
on spike acts captain E. Emm sir
I think so too
six weeks only sure did not
go ahead will, I understand
crush the gamma 90 seconds til red
the FDA states that deeper dives
are aspirin for the soul
one, two, hundred
allergic to two-hundred
not an option anymore
see the risks of confession
thirty-eight pants, is it possible?
there's no way
pot shots, hot shot
funeral ramen stirs
high maintenance is thirty-eight
shawn graffins leg on fire
it matches slugs, and snails too
arsonistic mystery to what?
five year old phone call
wise-ass day? I'm afraid
I do as well
a plane to catch coordinates
slowly if at all
she realized contact with police
will cover up long gone
thanks for the taxi
on all new slaughter
caught on tape it sticks
flip the glitter, not the shine
those windows should be secure at nine
great rates dis service
fixes shake for free offer it details
three months club, musical refrain
things seem the way they should
hidden buttermilk in fast hydrox
and if that's a real doctor I'll eat my hat
bad weather or not, orbit the toast
theres no excuse to land
desert island in the LA stream
is thinner than the garlic ice
relax, don't slip
the fever tells
no background for locations noise
let it down and ravage time
not so far, you're not
model 750 the bigger question
who the hell is this?
Lee Aise is fair
the story bare
so feel the pain, congrats!
get where I'm coming from?
that's gonna be me!
no mass, no energy
poor favors are favors still
hurry up and talk
hello bug, let me worry
about linda's panties
flower describe grave consequence
are you still there? then go


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One Down, One Across

someone took section D out of the paper, leaving me without a crossword.


it's gone, taken before it's time
wish I'd had the chance to fail it
but it's squares will never be filled
oh where have you gone?
to the wind you've been cast
free to float where you will
unscarred by graphite or rubber
did you intersect with a pun?
did you have a hidden clue?
did you laugh at the jumble?
or the upstart sudoku?
may you slumber in a trashcan
in a gutter or park
may you keep warm the homeless
generous soul that you are
I just wish you would come home
to the warm recycling bin I prepared
so I light a candle to you
to the words that escape me
and may the flame guide you back home
but not so close to combust
oh my dear NYT crossword
I hardly knew ye.
Read more!

Hero

As the mold grows, I grow:
founding empires in leftovers, transforming a past-ripe world into something new.
I may grow slowly at first.
I may be lowly but I’m not alone.
America is a week-old submarine sandwich and we’re taking over. Read more!

The Crawdads, They Pop

a childhood memory, a massacre of innocents at the hands of the innocent.



on a sunny summer afternoon
driving home from man-made beach on a lake
we had stopped for reasons forgotten
we found them in a stream
picked them up by handfulls
five gallons worth of bucket
a new home for pygmy-lobsters
they crawled around, we played with them
like cat's who've snared a bug
surreptitiously we'd perch them
upon shoulders of adults
a stern yelling at, small price to pay

once at home we donned our labcoats
and the experiments began
first a pot of water
set to a rolling boil
and we dropped some in and watched them squirm
until their carapace turned brightest red
a frying pan was also tried
I don't recall that research data
what really stick into my mind was another test
in our household kitchens reactor
we popped one in and closed the door
and set the timer to nuke
in crawled around for our amusement
and then it started to pop
and out it came, a bright red morsel
the experiment a success!
and like popcorn we did snack

and to this day I know that I
am no better than the rest
for this wanton cruelty
this sick torture
still firmly in my mind
as a memory of childhood
that I cannot help but think fondly of
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Portrait of a Marriage as a Young Learning Experience

Love's smoky leftovers include a few rosy memories but mostly not,
And that's ok because undiluted joy would be the end of history.
Surely we sipped the stars as one, surely we learned to compromise.
But amid a mad hattering of images one stands out: you frowning
And naked in the kitchen, stuffing the fuck out of the flowers into
The pot till all the petals brown and die after a day of such intimacy.
THE REST OF IT GOES HERE
Read more!

The Naming of Toes

I'll name your toes after flowers if I want to.
Rose, geranium, hyacinth, sunflower, daffodil.
That's does it for your left foot, go ahead and laugh.
Tiger lily, orchid, chrysanthemum, daisy, fuck!
Can only think of nine, the age that love kicked my nuts.
Why did you have to go to California, Laura?
And no time for a flower or kiss or ninth birthday wish.
That day I found out, I want you to know Sherri told me,
And at recess I didn't play kickball or swing or dream.
I walked into the field with a feeling I'd never heard of.
And I knew my throat's lump meant more to come.
I looked up at the furrowed clouds, love's eyebrows,
Looking pissed, but time has taught perspective,
A gift I couldn't have known at nine, and time
Has brought a fresh bouquet of gratitude to my days,
And now new lover with Laura's hair and unnamed
Tenth toe, how about this one, thankyou both. Read more!

I Beg to Differ

take four


that fire in your eyes
does it not make you feel alive?
worlds of difference exchanged
the pounding beat, the nuanced melody
expressive and colorful
rich and luxurious
don't take it for granted
don't hate it or fear it
this palette we're spoiled on
relish in it, for there's no shame
the unsameness of each unique mind
the beauty that the myopic cannot see
and in the end you will come to know
the symphony of the human soul
the changing chords and diverse notes
are far more interesting than a constant tone
of sameness, boring, and eventually irritating.
a goal of uniformity some call utopia
but not me, and so if need be
I'll throw myself before that juggernaut
and driven under I'll surely be
so that in it's trail a bright red stain
will at least be some color
to remind the rest of an alternative
to monotony's dull and deafening drone.
Read more!

Goddess of Love

WARNING: not about goddesses or love.


when it all went dim most were left asking
"what happened to the sun under which we were basking?"
when the haze crashed in and their comforts in dirth,
many a soul soon regretted their birth.
a dim glow was let in, and it couldn't escape.
the planet from afar looked like a ripe green grape.
the people burrowed themselves into underground caves
and to rudimentery survival had they become slaves.
once full of trees and animals and natural wonder
but now the rain is corrosive because of their blunder.
their civilization is dead, and soon the last will be gone.
and in their final breaths they might ask what went wrong.
and you as you read this may think I refer to us.
but no, this is the parable of a planet named Venus.
Read more!

Ode to an Antique Radio

drink more Ovaltine?



a monster, full of tubes and precarious wiring,
a big speaker shrouded by a hemp screen,
and a turntable from when shelac was king.
I often wonder where it's been.

five minutes to warm up before a sound can be heard.
an eerie green light illuminates the dial.
news of war in the pacific perhaps was once heard
by an elderly person when they were a chil'

real wood, cause back then they didn't skimp.
a compartment to store your favorite seventy-eights.
for whom did this once document that ill-fated blimp?
did they panic when Wells told of martians irate?

Bakelite knobs and cherrywood stain
sixty-four pounds bought for thirty-five dollars
Guthrie, Williams, Presley have premiered in it's grain
when bigger was better, and radios were taller.

it told amazing stories to it's owners way back when.
if I turn it on now it will tell amazing stories of today.
instead I look at it unplugged and imagine it then.
I think I like it better that way.


Read more!

Free Jingle

no charge!

(cause it don't rhyme)


Guapo Comics and Coffee
they have comics, and also they have coffee!
at Guapo Comics and coffee

Guapo Comics and Coffee
good comics too, and the indies are right up front!
which is cool, and convenient too!

Guapo Comics and Coffee
they got old, beat up couches
the kind that are as comfy as they are ugly.

Guapo Comics and Coffee
they have lots of manga as well,
if you like big-eyed people with impossibly elastic mouths

Guapo Comics and Coffee
I didn't try their coffee cause I was broke
but it might be good, who knows?

Guapo Comics and Coffee
it's a chill place with all you need.
if all you need is comics and coffee. Read more!

mission statement??

mission statement?


we are great writers.
a newer generation
to be heard and felt.
Read more!

Our Zine!

Robyn has been busy learning the ins and outs of her new zine-making software, so let's continue to submit our best work. We'd like everyone to be represented (published!) in this exciting new international zine.


THE REST OF IT GOES HERE

Read more!

Kurt Vonnegut, 1922-2007

sorry to break from the fiction, my favorite author died today.

[open source]



Kurt Vonnegut could put more story, more character history, more insight into the human condition, more humor and just plain more substance in 250 pages than most writers could in a thousand. this was a man that understood that brevity was the soul of wit, and so today we lost the wittiest soul. so it goes.

it is my understanding that in the event of someones death it is traditional to recite religious scripture. it seems then that an excerpt from the Books of Bokonon would be most appropriate:

"If I am ever put to death on the hook, expect a very human performance.

In any case, there's bound to be much crying.
But the oubliette alone will let you think while dying."

rest in peace old man, your love/hate relationship with humanity has ended. don't feel too bad though, it was all just a granfaloon anyway.

so it goes.

this post is open source, so feel free to add something.

Read more!

A Brief History of Polytheism

how did polytheism come about? I think it went something like this...



the farmer harvests his crops, thanking great Harvey The Harvester for his bounty.

the fisherman pulls in his net, for Sammy the Sea Scourge has been merciful this year.

the grape stomper and the drunks alike revel, and in gratitude to Aaron the Alcohol Artisan they party like it's 99.

the nomadic merchant travels between the villages, distributing the goods of one village to the villages that do not produce them. for Terri the Trade Titan he plunges a coin into the river as he crosses it.

inside their walled fort the mercenary tribe hones their blades in anticipation of the next days battle. to Warren the War Wanker each soldier prays, in hopes that the next day will not be their last.

and in the moonlight two young lovers sacrifice fluids to Lucy the Love Lady.

in time it was realized by all how much each community relied on the others. a meeting was arranged of the heads of each village. the fishermen would supply fish to all, the farmers would supply vegetables and grain to all, the winemakers would get them all nicely drunk and reasonably safe from water born microorganisms, the merchants would facilitate the transportation of these goods, and the mercenaries would protect the villages and trade routes from bandits and other villages with malign intent. it was agreed, and a wise ruler, Steve, was elected to facilitate the unification. in the drunken celebration that sealed the deal, an argument erupted. "why, our god is the greatest, for he makes food arise from nothing but soil!" spake the farmers representative.

"ha! Sammy controls the infinite ocean, and can drown you all on a whim!" the fishing delegate replied.

"you fools, can you not see that Aaron is the true god, for it is his magical elixir that *hic* *mumble*, *mumble*, mumble*, and another thing..." said the winemakers rep before collapsing sideways from his stool.

"um yeah, anyhoo... alls I can say is Terri ensures my safe travel along dangerous roads, so that is the god I must worship." said the merchant.

"you are all at our mercy, for we could pillage your village...es if we so desired!" the general interjected, "and since our god, Warren, would back our campaign he must be the mightiest of all the gods!"

"hey man, all you need is Lucy. all you need is Lucy! Lucy! Lucy is all you need!" announced a bard they had brought in to entertain and record the proceedings.

no one knew who threw the rock, but it hit the bard square in the lute, and a full on fistfight broke out. Steve took his scepter and smashed it on the table. "ENOUGH! none of your gods are the chief of gods! I have been told of... um... well, like, there's this other god, um, Jerry see, and uh, he like, um, is, would you believe, the father of all of them, yeah, that's it! yeah, so he's the father of them, and I dunno, maybe he vomited them up, or like, y'know, they hatched from his head like an egg. and maybe some other gods to be named later were the product of incestuous relations he had with... well, at any rate that's not important right now. what's important is that he's the big cheese, got it? so go on worshipping your other gods, but worship him too, cause he's king of all the gods. oh, also he influenced you all to elect me. what's that Jerry? I'm to be leader for life? well okay, if you insist. and my children will inherit this position from me? well, doesn't seem fair to me, but you're the boss. and gold? lot's of gold?"

perhaps it was the wine, but everyone agreed that Steve made alot of sense and stopped fighting. in time the details of the interactions of the gods were refined by the storytellers until a cohesive lineage and history were settled upon. within a few generations someone came to the conclusion that if the universe was ruled by a plurality of deities, then shouldn't their nation be ruled by a plurality of leaders? and so Billy, son of Chuck, son of Wendy, daughter of Steve was bludgeoned to death and a council was established to mirror the pantheon of the gods.

and all was good throughout the land.

until it all fell to shit. but that's a story for another time.
Read more!

I Catalyze Cataclysm

[open source]

I am a loose grouping of sensate membranes
filtered thru an architecture of memory and language,
deluded to the point of self-awareness,
grossly expressive via muscle,
and -with technology’s aid- capable of almost anything.
I am a feedback loop, evolution run amok,
tool-maker, geneticist, cancer.
I have not only the audacity to write, but the further audacity to blog.
I am the god and its faithful.
My effect is to inspire awe and terror.
Wild animals flee before me. Forests fall as I wipe my ass with tissue.
I eat ecosystems as an amuse bouche
I destroy! destroy! destroy!
My art betrays the monstrosity of my race.
I apologize to no impact. Read more!

Shut this Toilet Down!

Chapter 1 of a novel-in-progress in which MC Guimond expiates his accumulated demons from an 11 year career of waiting on tables.


CHAPTER 1--PIGS AT THE TROUGH


I met a lady in the meads,
Full beautiful--a faery’s child;
Her hair was long, her foot was light
And her eyes were wild.
--John Keats

Peggy Martinez zipped into the waitress aisle, her pink ponytail whisking side
to side. Multiple urgencies cast stones for her attention. Her section was brimming with
the hungry and the pissed. Her armpits were soaked. Fuck pope Joe. Nutty fuck sits and
leers at my tits pretending to sip coffee. No one drinks that slow. She shuffled through
her ticket orders attempting to make sense of them. Table 56. Pork chops and liver.
Shit! I punched that in twenty minutes ago. And where the fuck are the spaghetti dinners
for 58. Peggy sucked in a mouthful of air tasting like greasy onion rings, licked her ticket-
flipping finger and gazed in resignation at the next overdue order. Goddamn it! I don’t
wanna get Donkeybrains to deal with this. “Hey, watch out.”
Larry bore past her, sweating and mumbling. He twisted his tray to avoid
colliding with Mary the hostess, dropping french fries and f-bombs before vanishing
into a fat cacophonous fog of flapping arms and accusing voices.
“Peggy,” hailed Mary, slouching from the burden of menus stacked heavy and
thick as two phone books under each arm. “You have a four-top waiting.”
“But Mary,” Peggy glanced out at the eaters. A baby screamed. Ominous clang
of a dropped fork. Chewing faces of the swine. “Forget it.” I can’t show my face out
there empty handed.
She walked up to the kitchen window. In order to see the cooks she extended her
five-foot height by standing on tiptoes. Fred kept his back turned, slopping cheese sticks
onto hidden plates. Two grey, smudged handprints glared from the gorilla-strong
shoulders of his grease-blotched, untucked smock. Fred was in a zone. He was method-
ical in his sloppiness, took his work as a serious charge and hated above all else to be
interrupted.
Dale, sweating at the grill, glanced up at Peggy through pink slits in his eye
bags, wearing the hunched, glazed look of a man wanting above all to kill himself but
lacking the guts. My God, Peggy’s heart turned mush and dripped at the misery. Dale’s
mouth twitched like that of a hooked fish. He looked down and flipped another patty,
charred and shrunk to a miniature hockey puck.
Peggy steeled her courage and cleared her throat. “Um, Fred?”
“Arrrrrrrrrrrgh.” Fred kept his back to her, his bristled buzz cut glistening and
ruddy scalp skin beading under the heat lamps. He shoved his meaty paw into a cubby
hole below, yanked out a pile of plates, and clanked them onto the countertop. Onto each
he plopped careless fistfuls of cheese sticks, several of which ricocheted off, joining the
other mashed inedibles on the floor.
“Fred? Fred! You have anything for me--please?”
Fred stopped working. He gripped the edges of the mounted cutting board and
disconcertingly rocked on his feet from soles to toe tips. Peggy was transfixed by the
cold, autistic back and forth rhythm. Silent and neck-knotted, Fred fixed his gaze to the
dull steel of the grill’s upright grease-catching extension. Rocking to and fro, the squeals
of his heavy, swollen shoes sliced through the rushed kitchen clamor like a scythe
through living gristle.
“Look Fred,” Peggy sighed. “I don’t wanna get donkeybrains again but tip
money doesn’t grow on trees you know. Please--”
“Hmmph!” With preternatural quickness Fred wheeled around, his sharp Adam's
apple bobbing up and down its red-necked length, his ice cube eyes glowering with grey
hate, his frown tight and crooked from teeth biting hard and deep on the inner cheek
He lifted a plate of limp onion rings, mashed down with half the breading gone,
exposing unappetizing tubes of rubbery yellow. Curling his closed lips into a smirk, he
cocked his wrist and flicked the plate across the counter towards Peggy’s face. She
jerked her hand up just in time to avoid a broken nose.
“Thanks Fred,” said Peggy, placing the scattered onion rings as neatly as she could
back onto the plate. “You’ve taught me patience, and for the record I want you to know
that not only am I not afraid of you.” She slowed her enunciation. “No one is.
You’re the punchline of our jokes. Your gift is slapstick. Have a nice life,
Neanderthal.”
“Huh?” Fred said.
Peggy seized the plate, started walking away and lifted her voice. “That means
you’re subhuman, sweetie. You should seek out others of your own kind. You’d be
happier.”
“No little wetback bitch gonna talk to me like that.”
Peggy set the plate down on the beverage expediting counter and stuck fingers in
her ears. “Blah blah blah--Ears open only to Homo sapiens’, Fred.”
“Be careful Peg.” The timid voice belonged to Robert. The glass racks screeched
as he yanked them out of their metal slots. Greasy ropes of black hair whipped from
underneath his work cap. “Don’t want Fred walking out, Peg. Don’t want donkeybrains
in the kitchen again. That would be hell.”
“Oh Robert.” Peggy surveyed the carnage as other servers crowded and clamored
for drinks. Hot vapors streamed from the just-washed glasses. Sweating, Robert pressed
a glass against the coke dispenser. It hissed with sick crackling. Robert cursed, then
turned to the bus tub on the floor brimming full with broken glasses, adding the latest ruin,
his face a white flag with darkly suffering why me hole-punched eyes. Peggy yanked on
her bangs. Not dreaming. “We’re in hell already.”
She considered the sad plate of onion rings. Sorry table 60. She tried to
pray, but the chewing and chortling of the pigs at their table-troughs made that impossible.
How can I retain my integrity tonight. How can I deliver this shit to people without.
More crackling glass. Peggy felt a stabbing in her head. Then it was gone, replaced by a thought. “Robert,” she said. “Put a knife in the glass before filling it. The metal acts as a
conductor to the heat. It won’t crack.” Now where did that come from? Robert took the
suggestion and it worked.
“You just saved me from a meltdown, Peg,” Robert said, lifting four drinks to the
counter. “So you get served first. Here’s 60’s order.”
Peggy smiled and shrugged, centering the drinks and onion rings on a tray. How
did I know. I‘ve never heard that. She glanced up at the ceiling fan thrumming loosely
upon its axis, then sauntered like a sleep walker, expressionless and unperturbed by the
general mayhem, to the next work station.
Sally the young salad girl was struggling, her white blouse rendered diaphanous
from sweat, her nipples like tight little berries budding through a red bra. She slapped at
the pink and green lettuce in the bin, flashing worried looks at the overhead ticket
carousel.
“Got something for me, Sally?”
“Yeah. Thousand Island for 60, but be careful.” Sally tried to untwist her bra strap
and grimaced. “Sue’s lookin’ for ya.”
“I’ll deal with donkeybrains shortly,” Peggy said. She adjusted her hand’s position
under the tray for proper balance. She breathed in, blew out. Is the bullshit worth it. Am
I not worth more than a pet gerbil spinning itself to death on its toy wheel. Noises stung
her ears like hot sand whipped in a desert wind. Forms brushed past. Shuffles of harried,
desolate co-workers. Angry customers’ heels clacking the floor’s lacquer. Peggy started
moving. At least the gerbil has fun till his little heart bursts. She stood before her
section and slouched. The hostile snapping of fingers. Shouts. This isn’t fun.
“Sister Peggy! Sister Peggy! The ciborium needeth filling.”
“Sarah should be coming round with coffee soon, pope Joe. I, I gotta go now.”
“Wait, dear child.” He squinted at her breasts like a pilgrim upon first coming into
view of Jerusalem. His pallid jowls were flapping folds of sweaty baloney. His under bit
lip was puffy and trickled drool. Tufts of hair like grey weeds angled wildly about the
borders of his glazed bald spot. “How long since you’ve partaken of the Holy Eucharist,
child?”
“Have some onion rings, pope Joe.”
“But sister Peggy, I didn’t--”
“Manna from heaven, and I’m heaven’s waitress.” She stayed in the
moment, ignoring the near cries of seated beasts. You’re not a bad man. Lonely and mad
perhaps but you were never mean to me. And now and then you made me laugh. Joe
held aloft the pitiful ring, tenderly pressing its rubbery texture, moving his lips in silence.
“Pray for me, pope Joe. Please.”
“Till the third day, child,” Joe trembled. “Then you’re on your own.”
Peggy’s ears crackled. A tide of suns swept through her, wave upon wave,
burning away the dreaminess. Her heart sizzled in her ears. Here I stand, she thought.
And here I come, table 60. Her tray now weightless as she sliced against a sensate
current of hostility. Ice cubes tinkling glasses like summer wind chimes. She set the salad
before a thin man with red bushy arms, purple cheeks and whiskey eyes touched by fire.
“Can we see your fuckin’ manager. You know how long we been waitin’?”
Peggy passed the drinks out. To the man. The fat wife with a baby nursing at a
watermelon breast beneath her filthy t-shirt. The two little boys with Nascar ball caps
jabbing at each other with table knives. “Twenty-three minutes sir.”
“Listen college sweetie pants,” the wife said sardonically as the baby’s fabric-
shrouded body squirmed amid harsh, unpleasant suckling. “We gonna eat for fwee.” Her
sole bottom tooth bit into the upper lip. The baby farted. The boys chuckled and
clanked knives. “You tell dat to yer boss.”
“Thank you,” Peggy smiled. “I’ve waited a year and a half for this.”
“Don’t be thankin’ me,” called the wife as Peggy turned to leave. “You won’t be
thankin’ me in the unenjoyment line. We gonna get you fired!”
“Thank you,” Peggy bounced away, spinning her empty tray with nimble fingers
and flipping it to the other hand. “You’re my table of angels, calling me forth to greater
things.” She hummed to herself all the way to Sue’s office, the busy world squawking
and buzzing around her. It’s a movie, she mused. I’ll see it that way, and enjoy the next
scene, and see if I can guess what lays ahead. She stood at the office door and knocked.
No reply.
Peggy went around the corner and peered into the little round window. There she
is sitting on her fat donkey rump chain-smoking on the phone as usual. I’ll keep my
integrity. It’s just a movie. Peggy rapped on the window. Sue swiveled around in her
chair and screamed, “What!” her arms raised and trembling in a violent V over her head,
the phone dangling by the chord and whacking against an open desk drawer as it swung.
Peggy pointed at the door. Sue mashed her cigarette into the ashtray and jerked out of
her chair. The door swung open. Sue stood with hands on hips, black hair tied back in a
tight bun, her nose upturned and fleshy at the tip, casting blue shadows. Pig snout, Peggy smiled.
“Give me one fucking reason why I shouldn’t fire you right now,” Sue hissed.
“Because I quit, donkeybrains.”
“What did you call me? No one quits on me. Get back out there to your--”
“You’d be suckin’ dick on the streets without your daddy’s business, bitch! Go
wait on the hayseeds yourself and keep the tips.” Oh my god--did I say that.
Sue made blowing sounds, her grey eyes darted.
“It’s called work, Sue. Maybe it’ll make you a better person. I’m finished here.”
Peggy handed over her table’s tickets and work apron then headed for the vestibule. Be-
fore exiting she looked back. Sue tentatively crept past the patrons, head lowered and
turning to check the table numbers. The eaters kept on eating. The unfed snorted and
roared. Like wild boars, Peggy thought
A loud smack. Fred’s crude laughter. Sue rubbing her buttocks with a confused
look on her face. More laughter. Another smack. A shout: “We gonna eat for fwee!”
Sound of ripping clothes. Sue shrieked. As the restaurant erupted into hysterics Peggy
left and headed towards the bus stop. Goodbye donkeybrains. Read more!

View From a Front Porch at 11:30 PM, Friday.

true tale from my stupid neighborhood.


drunk teenager walking with his friends.
in the middle of the street.
seemed better than the sidewalk to them.
car comes up behind and honks
"fuck you, whatchoo gonna do about it ponk?!"
dumbass pounds fists on the cars hood.
have thought about it before he drove his car in the street, he should.

driver backs up some to keep him at bay.
the intersection is no place for them to play.
stupid fuck flanks him, driver'll pay before he'll pass!
pay for what you fucking ass?

car breaks free and speeds away.
enough of this ridiculous shit today.
stupid fucker chases the car.
stupid fucker didn't get far.
stupid fucker hangs around.
cop drives up and flags him down.

faux innocent fuck draws a halo,
around his head hoping to be let go.
talks his way out of it without too much of a fight.
only gets a warning cause he's white.

que sara sara, goodnight.
Read more!

God's Happy Ending: A story of healing

In which MC Guimond tries to distance himself from the protagonist, and fails.



It’s said that I created the world to enjoy myself, and that’s true, but God’s no selfish toy-maker breathing consciousness into his clay figurines for shits and giggles. I just wanted to spread the joy. After all the joke of creation is more pleasurable when shared. Does that make me bad or just a trickster? I intended a comedy. Really! I know, I know--I’ve heard it a million times, my good intentions have given wings to suffering, and now every nook and brook of my poem of being moans and weeps for a rewrite. Alas, I’m shitty at revision. I’m the God with writer’s block, in hell as I should be.

One of the figurines stuck a needle in my arm and left the room. Pretty as Eve and dressed in white. She said the voices of my creation would be silenced now so I could sleep in peace. God does get insomnia sometimes, and when dreams come they’re as bad as my first drafts. But I was proud of Eve. It took a lot of hit and miss to get the design just right. The curves and suppleness, the miracle of the nipple, result of a most fortuitous reverie, and I slept like the dead after that day. Unleashing evolution as creative method was a good thing I thought. Guess I failed to think it through. Maybe I should’ve stopped it with the trees or scraped the whole experiment once the lizards got uppity. It was great theater though. God just kicked back with beers and drank in the drama. Creating beer was a good thing, don’t you think? And not even a pretty little Eve, dressed in white and wielding needles, can take that accomplishment away.

They’ve locked me in a room. I can’t even stroll into the garden alone and hear the songbirds lull the earthworms out of their fear. They won’t even let me roll smokes. God gets depressed sometimes. I told that whore not to touch the fuckin’ apple and Adam’s balls shrunk three sizes that day. Sorry, that was harsh. Ah, what’s done is fucked. I shouldn’t have kicked them out. Even a God learns too late the perils of impatience, and psychoanalysis was a tool I’d only discover later in the sob-wracking workshop of my own self pity. Sadly, I got all pompous and self-righteous and forgot that I was just a local deity in training, given a little project to pass my probation. God failed. My punishment was to watch the fruits of my ideas wither, and quick as a toilet flush the comedy turned to dark farce. But how much worse can the shit storm get? They should grant me a reprieve, a second chance to make it all better. They could stick me in another galaxy if they wish. God wants to atone for his stupidity. Christ, other probationary deities have been forgiven of worse transgressions. I know I said all this shit through Jesus about being long suffering and how the last will be first but fuck, getting my powers stripped away and being locked up by my own clay figurines is a cross not even God can bear. Ungrateful monkeys! Sometimes God gets pissed. But the needle’s juice has done its work. Guess I’ll lay down on this nice white bed and dream of naked Eve.
Next goddamn day. An even better dream. I was dying. Maybe the reprieve I’ve longed for will be granted with my extinguishment. Christ, they let Siddhartha go. Ain’t God worthy of Nirvana? Don’t all speak up on God’s behalf at once. I know you’re all alienated and overworked and distracted with toys, but I’m God and none of you clay figurines are as fucked up as I am. Not only have I been separated from my creation, but creation’s highest exemplars have taken me hostage, bring me tomato soup and grilled cheese. They used to pray to me, you know, and maybe some still do. Not that I can hear them with this unrelenting electromagnetic shield around me. My flock’s been set adrift. God do I suck.

White-clad Eve made God swallow three pills. “Are you happy?” I asked.

Her lips diminished to a pinprick. Her face went white. “God help me,” she said.

“I would if I could,” I said. She laughed nervously and left the room. I did that. I made her laugh. They’ve left me a remnant of my power after all. If I could get out of here I’m sure I could help them learn how to live again. I’d appeal to their presidents and priests. You’ve run amok, I’d say, but so has God but God still cares. Ah, my darlings. It’s thirty seconds to midnight and the world needs me at full strength. It occurs to God now that I should have intervened more. In the beginning you had all the food you needed, all the water you needed, and all had access to God’s holy mushroom, the door to the fullness of my laughter. But I must take the blame for all the darkness and blight that has befallen you. In my stupid fury I allowed drudgery to come into existence for the first time. Of course you’d take refuge in addiction. The planet’s tears have risen to my chin. What’s to be done? God’s forgotten how to swim.
Undiluted guilt curdled the interval but Eve returned with blessed news. The leader will grant me an audience in the morning. Maybe the electromagnetic restraints will be lifted and I’ll be free to touch individual souls again. God will pour upon his mistakes the brimstone of Gomorrah, my figurines shall return to leisure, and just maybe the elders will lift my probationary yoke. God misses the glory days. God must meditate like Gautama now. God must be clear and calm, and every uttered syllable must flow with love and logic. Jesus, Socrates, help me. I must rest up for the performance. I must convince the clay figurine leader to set God free to save the sad world. Ah, how sweet it was to create the flowers. All the new colors, the manifold of beauty, and how I bragged to my cohorts--see what I’ve done, God’s multifoliate handiwork, this unlimited palate for inspiration I’ve made, and no other God can take that away from me. Color was my special gift, but the perfumes I mixed were also divine. Rose, lilac, lavender, chrysanthemum and so on. God will get his glory back. God will clean up his mess.
God needs to make sidebar commentary now. One of the inmates here, calls himself Adam, had the audacity to call God by that blasphemous name, Jehovah. He said it was God’s sacred name. Well, I said that’s bullshit. I Am That I Am, and have no sacred name but will answer to either God or Michael or pretty much anything if the believer’s heart is right. Poor Adam crumpled in his own skin bag. Literally sunk six inches, jello from the calves down. He stuttered. I stopped him.

“You are a seed and humility is the fertilized womb that makes rebirth possible.”

Adam squared his haughty shoulders and rose. “How dare you try to usurp the heavenly throne. Why the scriptures say--”
“So much bullshit exegeses,” I said. “Crazy opinions of men and women who’ve borne false witness. They never knew me.”
“Jehovah!”
“Michael.”

“You’re crazy.” Adam’s apple bobbled ludicrously in its cartilage course.
“Let me tell you a story,” I said. “Your name reversed is Mada. God once loved a woman on Mada street. In fact God still loves her very much and Michael will never forsake her.”
“Oh Jehovah, born in Bethlehem of Mary and the Holy Spirit,” Adam said. “Help me.”
“God was born in Michigan,” I said. “And so was God’s lifelong love, Susan.”
“God is no respecter of persons,” Adam said, his face turning red as tomato soup.
“Bullshit,” I said. “God loves Susan best. Susan taught God how to be God.”
“You devil. Jehovah!”
“Should’ve seen God in his glory in Susan’s turquoise room, Adam. God was happy in that place.”
“Get thee behind me--”
“God got laid.”
“Jehovah, deliver me from this blasphemer.”

I realized at this crucial moment in Adam’s spiritual crisis that now was the time for God to calm him. “Adam, may God ask you a personal question?”

“If you were God you could read my thoughts.”

I sighed with compassion for the fool. “They’ve taken my powers away, Adam, but that’s not important right now.” Calmed or simply confused, his face had lightened to pink. His heart was good and I wanted to help. “Adam, have you ever had a girlfriend?”

“I-I-”

“A boyfriend?” God raised his eyebrows and heard the burst of a thunderclap in his mind. The sound of accurate insight. Were my powers returning? Poor Adam closed his eyes and moved his lips but made no sound. “Well,” I said, “God has. God has loved more deeply, more often, and in more guises than you can imagine. Occasionally my divine lack of boundaries made Susan nervous, but she never scolded me. A wise and compassionate gal, my Susan.”

“Does Jehovah love me,” Adam said, his clenched eyelids trembling.

“Michael does,” I said, then held him as he sobbed from guts to gullet. I caressed his soft brown hair. God loved Adam at that moment and Michael remembered what empathy was. This beautiful boy with dark suffering eyes so resembled my beloved prototype. How I wish to start over, and place this Adam in the garden. I’ll keep the lizards away this time. I’ll learn how to manage my anger. I’ll court Susan properly and provide a life for us. God will have a queen and Adam will be our child and Michael will be happy and he will write the heart’s true scriptures and finally get published and paid.

“Forgive me my sins, Jehovah.”
“How could I not? Yours are but a teardrop in the ocean of mine.”
Adam opened his eyes. “You’re Jehovah?”
“Sometimes I think Susan is.”
“What?”
“And turquoise is her favorite color.”
“Jehovah, I don’t understand your parables.”
“Call me Michael,” I said, “and Susan is Michael’s cosmos.”

Adam gave me a strange look. His eyelids drooped and he put his hands to his head. I guided my child to his bed, tucked him in, stroked his fine masculine cheeks, kissed his crinkled forehead and whispered, “Your third eye will dream tonight, my son. You are beautiful and Michael loves you.” God lingered over Adam long after the sweet dreams had begun, kissing him many times, careful not to wake him. I hadn’t been that spent since the end of the sixth day, and like that day I reflected on all I had made, on what went right, and so very wrong. Finally I slept and dreamt that I was a young boy. I was in the corner of my backyard, single-minded, tickling the grass with the to-and-fro sway of my father’s metal detector. A telltale beep in the earphones. I gently probed the earth with a screwdriver. Clang of struck metal. Unearthed, a treasure. In the soil-stained cup of my little boy’s hand trembled an old Morgan head silver dollar.

Awake, changed, the fog is lifting from Michael’s brain. The woman in white is a nurse. She said, “So how’s God doing today?” and I said, “You mean Michael? Very well, thankyou.” Classic was the little lipstick ‘o’ of surprise that brightened her face. She rushed out of the room like the world was young again. Memories fell from heaven like cigarettes. Susan and I used to smoke and speak of all things lovely and lewd. God is a man. Michael is a man. God is Michael and Michael is God and so is everything else. Women, babies, squirrels, grass, pigeons, dolphins, lizards, cherry trees, worms, mosquitoes, rocks, particles and waves. I laughed. It’d been a long time since I’d laughed so deep, so long. Funny thoughts, fancy thoughts. The sadness had once been too much to bear so I fled from the self. God hid behind his monotheism. Michael hid, and found himself here, in this cell, the unfree God, safe from sadness but excluded from joy, and that’s not living. Memories now fell like snow, particles of memory. Thrilling like winter’s first snow in childhood, the kind of snow you run out to catch on your tongue as mommy yells “Put on your coat and mittens!” Then the blizzard, waves of memory. Susan and David and Raven and family and so many more. The nurse returned.

“Dr. Alder will see you now, Mr. St. Clare?”

The meeting was short. Dr. Jonathan Alder bellowed his one question test. “Does God have any new insights for a poor, tired shrink today?” The tears came easily as I laughed. “No, but Michael is sorry for the inconvenience he’s caused to you, the staff, and to everyone I love who’s worried about my condition these last six months.” Well, Jonathan and I had the nicest chat. He agreed that life in the shiny, postmodern world was too much to take at times, and that we could all benefit from rest, a long sabbatical during which we recover our nerve and our wits. He even gave me a smoke when I asked and poured us each a glass of Chardonnay. “What year?” I said. “Nineteen sixty seven,” he said. “The year I was born,” I said. “You’re not billions of years old anymore?” he said. “I’ve gotten over myself,” and with that we both laughed. Then he gestured to the phone.

“You’re free to go, Michael. I’ll miss you and your teachings.”

“Ditto Jonathan,” I said to this decent man who accepted his niche. “Out of our uniqueness we give to each other what we are, and that‘s what we’re here to give--Bamm!” I pumped my fist in that histrionic way that was characteristic of more innocent times. I called my parents in Michigan, and then my friend Brandon here in Portland. He’d borrow a car and fetch me at once, he said. The nurse came in and hugged me. She smelled like Susan. Lilacs amid a gentle rain. I’ll write to her soon. She’ll be pleased that I’ve finally lived a story with a happy ending. I’ll go forth to save the sad world, not as God, but as a simple creature relating to other creatures. Not with violence, for the only thing God’s ever hit was the bottle. Michael, I mean. Maybe I’ll finish the novel, maybe I’ll join the revolution, maybe I’ll drift. Either way is a win. I will see Susan again with new eyes and abundant gratitude. And I’ll be grateful for the world too, silly and sick though it may be. Because we are in it, and I choose to care. Solipsism can suck it. It’s people that matter. That’s my happy ending. Always. Love, Michael. Love God. Read more!

Coming Back to Writing: An essay

In which MC Guimond has the audacity to compare the writing process with sex. Caution: Very erotic! 18+ required to view!



Coming back to writing after being too far away for too long is like coming back to a devoted lover’s body. The terrain is known like the lines in your palm, or the feel of your teeth as you rub your tongue against their curves and ridges. You are not a stranger in a strange land. You walk not alone but hand in hand with the Muse who may, according to whim, skinny-dip in the soul’s bacchanalian pond and splash frantically for attention, or simply whisper into your ear, or withdraw into silence, awaiting fresh germination. My Muse happens to be female, clad in a thin negligee of night but however yours is imagined there is peace beyond all understanding in the lips you love to kiss, in the words you love to play with.

Both Muse and writer yield to each other’s desires like the respective flesh of two lovers. The tenderness of certain sentences are caresses that light up the mind’s dark sky so that the inner eye can clearly see the way. Something within becomes aroused. The heart beats wild and words like stars form new, strange constellations. Love is made in the usual way, and after the miraculous pump and grind is finished, and authentic words are splashed on the page thick and raw one sits and beholds and smiles. But more than the quick ejaculation of words is required to produce full-grown literary art unless one gives the creative ooze a hard look, reshapes and redirects its course again and again before it dries on the page as immature work, and then if lucky, one senses the shadowy outlines of an embryo, a thumb stuck in a mouth or the black ink of an eye hole. Then, after a sleep-depriving gestation of one revision after another, after morning sickness and pre-par tem despair, your best finished work, your child, is born. And then you set the child of letters and sweat free to sing or cry in the world, and set your sights upon further arousal, further pumping and grinding, reshaping and redirecting, so that more best finished work, more children can be made. In this way the writer’s world is filled, in this way the writer gives back, first to the creative community, second, in a small yet significant way, to the collective imagination of the species.

Through good times and bad both writer and Muse are there for each other. In this aspect the relationship resembles an enduring, healthy marriage. Both give, both take. One must read well and practice well the age old craft. Lust gives way to quiet courtship. When separation occurs, each party--writer and Muse--patiently waits, gives support and space to the other because the relationship comprises a third party, and its needs are paramount. One should bring the Muse the equivalent of chocolate or roses; a clean, orderly room perhaps, with a nice desk and comfy chair, fine, fast-gliding pens, great books to devour, a window overlooking a park, a sea, a brick wall or anything as long as it supports submersion in daydream, and of course, intervals of solitude. After such wooing the fiery tongues of words are sure to probe the writer’s soul with hot kisses and divine music.

The writer is an alchemist and a fairy godmother. Kneeling words of iron dream of being tapped by the writer’s wand; and thereby rise, transmuted to words of gold. Words yearn to be written into new voluptuousness, to perfume their bodies and adorn their tresses with flowers, and it’s through the writer that they can dream of such ardor. Something more seductive than moons or stars, angels or demons is what a magical fragment of language can dream of becoming. Through the throat of a poeticized night the night’s darkness can be lightened. Language empathically rendered, whispering endearments and understandings into the reader’s ear can save a life. The vital and vitalizing embrace of words honestly and beautifully honed is never false. A poem can comfort the reader through a lifetime of sorrow. A story can be a friend as friends come and go. Sometimes but sometimes not the alchemist transmutes the self, the fairy godmother’s wish is granted, the writer is saved.

So we return to the word, the poem, the story because often society’s general spectacle is too dark, and no longer feeds us what we need. Popular culture holds aloft a platter of Twinkies. We eat with reluctance and guilt, ever and uncomfortably aware that what we truly desire is offered only on the menu of the heart. Requesting water, the culture crams sponges of vinegar in our mouths and pierces the Muse with spears. We‘ve all known this taste of alienation, this lack of sustenance which leaves us bewildered, bitter or simply empty. But the writer can re-invent taste, can reinvent culture, can reinvent human companions in the transformative marriage of art and craft. In translating the heart’s secret hieroglyphs the writer can record wisdom beyond that of the conscious self.

So let’s come back to writing. Because we can conduct strange orgies of words. Because Satyrs prowl down the paragraph in search of nymphet sentences. Because the genitals of vowels and the lips of consonants swell and moan our secret names across the page. Because we can write new moons and new suns into the night and thereby see our lives with greater clarity. With the stroking of keys or the flourish of a pen we can drive the money changers from the temple, upset expectations, make assumptions do headstands. The dwarf gets to be king, the hunchback gets the girl, the bag lady gets to sing like an angel and dance around in a queen’s crown. Read more!

Red Present

The past is a concern of other worlds
As I press into the red present of your curls.
The top of your convertible’s down, Beethoven’s on.
Passing a smoke you intone the spell with confidence.
You wish to be my wild, young conductor for a while.
“Shall we stop at the pub for pool and a beer?".
You winked your yes and stepped on the gas.
The baggage and memories a blur in the rearview,
The radiant blue wind whipping our smiles hard
And sure as death and sex in spring, I'm happy. Read more!

for my dead homies-

TYPE THE FIRST PARAGRAPH OF YOUR PIECE HERE.
Autorzy zespalają *internationale* = in polish.
class repeat after me: ah torzhey
zes paa laa ya
internationale

THE REST OF IT GOES HERE

i don't need instructions yo. i been bloggin for a while now.

my dead homies, there are more than a few.
you lurk in my memories. unable to wash clean.
not exact torture.
sometimes close enough to touch,
when my eyes are closed
i shun these images in my head most days.
but want them back immediately when they are not present enough-

Read more!

The Drawing Board

a strange escape from a strange place via strangeness.


awakened in an empty room. walls of stone, no doors, no windows. just bare walls, unadulterated by any features save the four torches in the corners. he knows not how he got here, or where exactly here is.

he pulls a stone from a small crack in the wall. scraping it upon the surface of the wall he draws a rectangle. two thirds of the way down the rectangle he draws a small circle. he closes his eyes and grabs at the circle, turning his wrist. nothing. of course not. it was silly to think that would work. he regroups and tries something else. he scrapes the stone across the wall, drawing another rectangle in with the original is now nested. the vertices he connects with diagonal lines. next he etches a grid surrounding the artificial door. he tears off a piece of his shirt, lights it in the flame of a torch, and extinguishes it with the force of his breath. with these ashes he adds shadow to the etchings to define the detail of the doorjam and window panes created from the stone. scraping the oil off skin with a credit card he mixes it with the ashes, adding more stability to the medium. still nothing. running out of ash and oil he devises to use what's left more judiciously. he begins to etch on the floor, and before long has created a rendering of a brush, tubes of paint, and a pallete on the floor. he closes his eyes and reaches for them. success! he paints a beautiful garden the grid, which now forms a floor to ceiling window of one-foot by one-foot panes.

on the opposite wall he renders a phonograph and places a previously rendered record on it. it pops and hisses beyond his threshold of tolleerance, so he draws another one, this time with a sleeve. he removes it from the sleeve and places it on the table. ah, much better. but he decides that next time he will have to include the celophane to ensure optimum sound quality. he proceeds to create images of fine amber paneling, mirrors, gold leaf, and georgian furnishings. a crystal chandelier hangs down from the twenty foot vaulted cieling he had drawn earlier. he tries the door again. still nothing. after drawing himself a ham and cheese sandwhich to consume while thinking it over, he get's an idea. of course! why didn't he think of it before? he begins painting a grand door on the other wall. after using the toilet therin (he was about to burst by that point), he creates another, slightly less grand door on the next wall over. now it is a full room in a full hose, he need only open the door to outside, and freedom. eyes closed, he reaches for it. he puts his hand through a pane of glass. fortunately just some minor cuts. this time eyes open he grasps the door knob. it turns! but it's locked. after a hearty sigh he draws a crowbar and smashes away enough glass for him to step through. running through the garden, into the woods he follows a stream until he sees a bridge. he follows the road that the bridge is a part of until he sees a car, which he flags down with his thumb.

"get in, what happened? what can I do to help?" says the driver. he gets in and tells the driver all about his amazing experience. the driver turns and gives him a wicked grin.

he wakes up in an empty room, walls of stone, no doors, no windows. oh well, back to the drawing board.
Read more!

Funny Hat

here's an old story I had buried in my hard drive long ago. it sucks, but it's kinda cool too. I'll make it the first open source story.

[open source]


you ever have something bad happen while wearing a funny hat? you have to deal with it, you have to find some way to fix it or endure it, but all this time you're wearing a funny hat. you may not even realize that you're wearing a funny hat, but sure enough, you catch an offhand glance of yourself in a reflective surface wearing that funny hat. that stupid, funny hat. it just makes you want to crawl into a hole and die. that's how Jeff felt, the night his kidney was stolen.

the mickey he was slipped only did half it's job. sure, it immobilized him, and rendered him unable to speak. to all onlookers, he appeared to be knocked out cold. but he was somehow aware, and felt the whole thing. the whole, excruciating thing. the first stinging incision with a rusty scalpel. the cold hands reaching for the desired organ. ripping it from his body. every single stitch to close the wound. he felt it all, but he could say nothing. he didn't ask for this, but he couldn't help but think he deserved it. sure, there were extenuating circumstances: he had an errand in San melente that he just couldn't back out on. he had long assumed Dee wouldn't want to go in on the deal with him. he had wanted her to take a piece of the action, but she wasn't interested. Jeff postulated that the reason why was probably that she was lying low for awhile after her last deal got tipped to the federales. that was alright. he reasoned that the two of them could get together on the next big score.

ah, but that afternoon before he left for san melente she did seem to take an interest. but she was grounded and he knew she had no intention of taking such a risk. hell, her involvement would put the whole deal in jeopardy. no, it was best that she stay. and besides, it was too late for her to changer her mind. he had a plane to catch, and she had no time to pack. whatever his desire, he had no choice but to leave it in her hands.

so on that fateful day, as he was walking back to his room from the warehouse in san melente where the deal had taken place he stopped into a cantina for a drink. drunk and bored, he wore a tacky souvenir sombrero he'd bought off a kid on the street who was selling them with a sad story that was too outrageous to be true. he just liked the kids effort, I guess. when his next drink came that's more or less where we came in.

days later he was back home. got a call from Dee. she did end up doing a job with some old associates after all. she said it turned out great. went off without a hitch. he didn't have the heart to tell her. there's no way she could have known. he certainly couldn't hold it against her, and he was too fond of her to burden her with pain she might of caused him. so he just congratulated her on her recent kidney smuggling venture.

he just stared at that stupid hat, the taste of copper in his mouth.
Read more!

Proposal: Posting Protocol

a suggestiong of a new way to post that willresolve some issues with some new code, and a call for thoughts concerning this plan. all WCI members are requested to read and give input.

to continue click:


now that I have figured out the whole expanding post thing (that "read more!" link that you see after every post now), I feel it important to reccomend a new protocol for posting. my proposal is this: a brief intro to your piece which will show on the main page telling the reader what they can expect from your piece. then if they wish to read the story from start to finish they merely click the read more button.

think of it like the back of a book.

a major advantage is that each story will now have a very small footprint on the main page, making is possible to display far more stories on the main page than ever before.

the disadvantage is that we might not want to shove our stories into a tiny one to four sentence capsule, or have the reader judge our stories before they read them.

any questions or issues? I'll be glad to answer/resolve them. otherwise, please discuss...



Read more!

Today something that is strangly familiar occured to me. It was not a feeling I have ever enjoyed but I feeling I have had to endure, you see, it never goes away. This feeling is cold, revealing and bitter, it holds no merit on my surroundings or my thoughts. It keeps me guessing in times of security and times of logic. My brain hurts every time this feeling reveals itself to me. Fuck, it seems as though it's here forever and I don't want it around any more. Haven't I defeated this? Haven't I run so far past this feeling that it is impossible for it to catch up? Fuck, Fuck, Fuck...I guess not.
This feeling keeps the world at a distance, keeps my thoughts forever circling, forever cycling. My world shakes at the mere mention of this feeling, this idea, this curse. My hands cannot grasp it, my heart can't outlast it, my eyes wont look past it..........But I can't put a word to it...it's just there, and it won't leave me alone
Son of a bitch, this isn't over Read more!

Black Crystal

Many decades ago it was engineered an unusual substance with properties unique and fascinating. developed to power the first probe designed to traverse deep space for the long term exploration of the stars beyond, Sousanite-312, or "black glass" as it became popularly known, had the ability to store light. that is of course a simplistic description of what it does. in fact, it does not store light so much as it slows it down. once again, that is the sort of simplistic characterization given to school children or viewers of that bastion of scientific ignorance, television news. to put it to you straight, black glass consists of impossibly fine fiber optic strands set in dense maze-like courses, each terminating on the opposite plane in a parallel position to where it began. so thin are these strands and so long do they travel that any light that enters a strand on side of the glass is taken on so long a journey that by the time it concludes it's quest at it's traditional speed of 299,792,458 metres per second, a day, a month, even many years will have passed, so that when you stand before one side of the glass it will take x amount of time before your likeness appears on the other side. the time which it takes for the light to complete it's journey depends on the density of the fiber-optic matrix and the thickness of the glass in question. the nickname "black glass" comes from the fact that until the light reaches the opposite side, the glass appears opaquely black. the name "sousanite-312" comes from the inventor, Woody Dyson, who was a big fan of marching band music (much to the dismay of his next door neighbor and eventual murderer, Charles Rense).

to continue click:


in it's original industrial and aerospace applications there was no need for the strands to terminate in spots parallel to their starting point, and indeed it was found beneficial for the light being taken in to distribute evenly across the opposite side. consequently in those early incarnations the black glass manifested a nice diffused whiteness on the side to which the light was escaping. this worked perfectly towards the ends of powering solar cells where light was scarce. through several advanced processes involving the manipulation of the crystalline structure (that manufactured and laid down the complex plumbing of fiber optic strands) with nanobots and enzymes it was found that the terminus of the strands could be predicted and plotted, allowing for such whizzbang uses as non-powered lasers and other applications of interest only to people with advanced degrees from MIT. that all changed when one such MIT degree holder decided to sell fragments of black glass over the internet. before long everyone wanted a piece, for the sake of novelty alone. soon black glass was everywhere as desk toys and key chains, and as it became more commonplace more people came up with new uses for it, both practical and frivolous. of the practical, black glass with a six month terminus was sent to polar regions as a solution to seasonal affective disorder. 8-hour glass was mounted as shudders on many new office buildings in order to save on lighting bills, and even extend the work day (a practice that was ended by federal intervention after a series of high profile office massacres perpetrated by employees driven mad by a combination of the unnatural extension of daylight, and the accompanying 16 hour days). even miners and submarine crews benefited from the liberal use of black glass, often being notable for their remarkable tans.

oh, but of the frivolous applications, one thing stands out above all else as the most fun, exciting, and even empowering use of the material: the public monument! initially black glass was used merely as a medium from which certain monuments to important events and memorials were constructed (in fact this trend was sparked by the popular use of black glass in tombstones), but before long municipalities were erecting black glass in reference to nothing and for no greater reason than to erect them. from London to Tokyo to Buenos Aires to New York to Houston, black glass monuments sprung up just for the sake of having them. they were singlehandedly responsible for broadening the term "monument" to include all public art installations. they came in spheres, so that the past being shown through them would be warped and upside down. they came in statuary, so that a strange distorted image shown through the curves and crevasses of the bodies of historical figures. they cam in pyramids and cylinders so that different times would fade into each other. they came in multi-level collections of blocks so that each surface would display a different era. but by far the most fascinating of all of these was simply a cube.

in Portland Oregon, dominating Pioneer Courthouse Square, was a cube of black glass measuring fifty feet by fifty feet. it's terminus was exactly thirty-six years, meaning that if you walked past on side of the cube on a given day and came back thirty six years to the day you would see yourself walking past from the other side. for the first thirty six years of it's existence the Pioneer Monument, or "Pioneer Square" as it came to be known informally, was the subject of much controversy. a group of foot bag enthusiasts organized to try and prevent it's construction (eventually settling for a new public square to be built on the cities east side), and many complained that this large black monolith was a blight on the landscape. it risked the wrecking ball many times in those years, but no more urgently than when it had been officially slated for destruction 15 years from the date of placement. on that day a wrecking crew arrived to dismantle it, actually carving out a two foot section from its top northeastern corner. but thanks to the protests and pleas of the monuments supporters, and a small riot, the city agreed to grant it legal protections that would keep it safe until it "went live".

on the day the light was to complete its long journey a huge celebration took place. the crowd was packed nearly as densely as the strands from which the cube itself was formed. there were news crews from all around the region to document this momentous event. it went on with a flash. the first images from it were of the shell in which it was manufactured (on site, as it was too large and heavy to move from a factory) being removed. shortly thereafter a beer bottle was seen flying and shattering on its east face, a preservation of the objections many had to the cube in early days. many in attendance saw themselves, thirty six years younger, walk by with signs of protest. it was a strange celebration in that what everyone have come here to view was now showing them the discontent it had engendered those thirty six years ago. in the coming years the visitors to this monument would be treated to such diverse sights as important historical events, acceptance speeches of politicians long forgotten, performance art, crimes in progress (more than a few wrongly convicted for offenses within view of the cube used it to clear their names), tourists making faces, and the occasional act of indecent exposure.

indeed, six years prior to day it went live, a Shakespearean troupe decided to hold annual performances to the east face (recording the audio to be played back in sync with the performance 36 years later). on that first performance many of the actors noticed more than a few trenchcoat clad individuals wandering the square before they went on. they performed Macbeth on that day, unaware of what was taking place on the other side. on the thirty-sixth annual performance of this troupe, while those on the other side bore witness to the groups first performance, the troupe themselves found themselves performing Hamlet to an entirely nude audience. thirty-six years later the actors could be seen laughing and blushing their way through their lines from the opposite side.

Read more!

New Trees

new trees,
a week ago white rectangles on concrete.
now they breathe, maples, trunks three-inch-caliper,
born budding, miraculous in a single morning.
after the song of jackhammers, in the Spring of the seventh year,
out my windows, out my doors: new trees!

taller than me, yet younger.
when I pass they look and whisper:
“we may be week-old, but we’ll outlive thee.” Read more!

The Ballad of VP of Public Relations, Donald Weismuller - pt 4

a multi-part sequential sci-fi-hai-ku in which everything that can happen does, depending on your point of view, by Joel E.


in which Don learns fear.
and Craig learns quantum physics
and still more suspense

awake, three am
the note, the phone call, they stir.
a pill, and then sleep.

awake at the dawn.
questions return with the sun.
shake it off, get up.

in his car, a note.
another one, dare he read?
he dares not today.

-------------------

"it's just a rumor,
murmers spoken in hushed tones,
but it frightens me"

the prof. takes a breath
"all that can happen does so
at least in theory"

"I don't understand"
"level 1 multi domain...
in short, paralell"

"goatees and evil?"
"well yes, but not exactly"
"you must be joking"

they talk about strings
quantum particles and loops
he barely keeps up.

"there's a dimension
for each possibility?"
"in essense, correct."

"okay, back up now
what's that have to do with it?
the girl? the others?"

"the Fabricator
do you think it fabricates?
no, craig, it does not."

------------------------

"you will know the truth
I will make you know the truth"
cold sweat as don reads.
------------------------

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