6 May 2010
I wake from dreams of lumping piles of debris around a dark and dirty warehouse on an extremely fast pallet-jack. There are more dreams of my father. For a change, I do not wake up kicking and screaming at him. I could almost pretend that the post-traumatic stress disorder is taking a nap. It has been 21 days since my 140-day vacation in four of the finest state-sanctioned facilities. I am languishing in sleeping in the dark, after spending so much time barely napping with fluorescent bulbs burning into my eyes. I quickly learned from the other inmates how to sleep with a towel covering my eyes. I am not missing my sixty-four roommates- the snoring, farting, and screaming in the middle of the night, or the slam and clash of the near-constant game of dominos. No jail is worse than living inside of a sick and dying mind.

I battle with my tendency to hide, while stashed in a sleazy and seedy motel on Cold Facts Avenue. A long-running habit, hiding out in reclusion, can be traced back as far as the solitary childhood. Images of the wooden legs of my grandmother’s dining room table fill my mind. There was a comfort in the long woven-strands of the tablecloth dangling down around me. These nights, I simply try to discover what it means to feel secure. I am not sure that I will ever repair the damaged goods. In order to move from one side of that dining room to another, you had to crawl over support beams between the legs of the table.

Recently, I was reintroduced to a paternal cousin that was estranged, thirty-five years ago, because of his sexual orientation. There was a lengthy list of reasons for estrangement.

“That one is a fag. His brother is a worthless criminal. When I was in the hospital, fighting for my life, for the sake of my kids, I gave them money for rent, and then I came home to the eviction notes on my front door. There was nothing in the cupboards but a box of Rice-a-roni™. Your sister is not sick. She is just a spoiled materialistic bitch, just like her mother. Don’t even ask about the affair that my brother had with your mother.”

Sometimes, I wonder if I will end up dying as angry and embittered as my father was, in the last twenty years of his life. He hated everyone, avoided the real world, even nurtured these feelings that I carry now, of hiding out and playing the outlaw. I am not sure what he would think of my recent excursions into The System. It always seemed to be part of the territory, battling Johnny Law, questioning authority, and never trusting the government. I know that he often contemplated his own incarceration, although in a romanticized and glamorous statement of rebellion against a tyrannical government.

I have to consider that my own dysfunctions are related to the genealogical constructs of various abuse cycles. A product of bastardization and alcoholism, a gun shoved into my mouth at eighteen months; maybe I should be surprised that I am still alive. There are days when I wonder if I am really living- this damnation of nightmares and locked cages, and the nights of screaming.

Talk dirty to me. How can we avoid or accept our loyalty to pain? It is not a fetish, and it is not paraphilia. It is my life. I have inherited my pain and my denial of pleasure from a long –line of abusers and the abused. I am the product of my circumstances.

“Forgive yourself. It is not your fault.”

I am nowhere near forgiving myself. I have internalized the pain, the screams, and the responsibility for so long that I have forgotten how to stop this ongoing charade of responsibility. If I were a woman, I would be working the streets, selling my sex, my vaginal hormonal stink, my repulsion of power. I am an empowered feminist trapped in a patriarchal society. Grown up now, to take my responsibilities of abuser and abused, I have joined the ranks of deviants, of the repulsive, and, repulsed. It is the life of sideshow freaks. There is fundamentally something wrong with us. Feel it. Believe it. Know that it is true.

I talk with my sister on the telephone, and I can hear the dysfunction slipping over and through our thoughts, like an unrestrained and emasculated river of shame and unrest. There is something about the tone of our voices that reminds me of the beatings, the insults, and the reminders that we will never be good enough, and never happy.
You can never be happy, if you have never understood how much work that it takes to be unfulfilled, unaccepted, and undesirable. I remember all of these prerequisites. Does that make Saint Happiness? Mainly, I am simply unhappy, and lonely. Usually, I am too afraid of the Real World to ask them for anything. Having grown used to hiding in my sleazy hotel room, I am lucky to walk down the block to buy booze, on a good day.

8 May 2010
The need to find a headquarters, a new more permanent hiding place, overwhelms my thoughts. My nerves are awake and stirring, the sense of panic sending butterflies and bees into my stomach. I avoided the issue for a day, eating sleeping pills and drinking beer, in order to sleep. I heard the telephone ring, only once, rolled over and went back to chasing my dreams. The darkness and quiet are so comforting, that it could be a womb, a tomb- this rented room. I have survived on a loaf of donated garlic bread, for the last two days. After learning to play chess, while incarcerated, I am excited to learn that there is a computer version on this new machine. The process of losing a couple of games of chess is almost a relief, instead of considering my future. It is a struggle to remain optimistic. I suppose that I need to impose an attitude adjustment.

Retraining myself to adapt to the Real World has been a difficult transition, following four months of “three squares and a cot”- told where, how and when to eat, sleep, and communicate. I can understand why some individuals find themselves returning to the jailhouse. It is a simple life- someone cooks and cleans for you, and you can play games, every moment that you are awake. I know that some of my problems resound from my loneliness. I have frightened away most everyone that has tried to befriend me, with my insecurities, violence, and insolence.

For too long, I glamorized and glorified myself in my pouty outlaw status as a fugitive of justice. Now, I do not understand how to cooperate with my healthiness, my status as a mere citizen of society. I battle to reconnect with the world, a struggle against my reclusive nature, and fears of The Other.

I spend the day pressing and pushing on my comfort zones. On a walk to explore the neighborhood, I find a Laundromat, around the corner from the closest 7-11™, four blocks away, and then walk two more blocks north to find a King Soopers™ supermarket, and a McDonalds™. I am still on the quest to find a Wi-Fi connection, after an early morning interaction with Mary, the underpaid innkeeper, and Song, Lee, and the younger members of the family that owns the Mesa Motor Inn. The entire motel seems to be a vestige for the homeless, underemployed, and mentally ill. Of course, the only way that I can connect to the Internet is taking this fancy machine down to the lobby of the motel, a small 12’x12’ reception area.

For the second day in a row, I eat only donated garlic bread, hand-me-down food that suddenly appears, maybe from one of the local ministries. Even though I have been allotted $180 in food stamps (which now are dispersed in the form a credit card, instead of the Monopoly™ money coupons of old), I walked right by the King Soopers™ in my exploratory stroll. I am not quite prepared to handle strolling through and shopping in a supermarket. It has been a frustrating day, however informative. Jezebel Julie and I banter a little on the telephone, and I receive my first snail mail, an early birthday card, here at the motor inn. What exactly is the difference between a motel and a motor inn?

Cold Facts Avenue, which is also State Highway 40, is lined with these debilitated and run-down motels, remnants of the time before Eisenhower’s interstate highway developments. I treat myself to a Hershey™ chocolate bar with almonds, as a sort of dessert, after my meal of garlic bread. I really want to splurge on a delivered pizza, here in my womb-tomb room, but I am painfully aware that I need to be financially conservative, at this point.

There is a chess game program on this machine! I am so excited! I learned how to play chess, dominos, spades, and gin rummy, while locked up, between meals and naps. Remember what I said about sitting around playing games, sleeping, and eating? Life is much more difficult on the streets, in many ways, than life behind bars. I was never really locked behind actual bars, but rather a whole bunch of locked doors and barbed wire fences. I do have to admit that I prefer freedom over incarceration, and never want to experience the life and times of the criminally-confined, again.

9 May 2010
I wake up at sunrise remembering dreams of sorting through my father’s belongings, after his death, an event that I actually did not attend. Then remembering that I was actually sleeping and dreaming, I rolled over in my comfortable bed in the dark and quiet room. The second dream was about Little Julie and a whole bunch of smashed glass, possibly from a car accident, which kept sticking into my bare feet, but it didn’t hurt to remove them, even while bleeding, because I remembered that I was, again, sleeping and dreaming. We attempted to engage in some sexual activity, but were unsuccessful, due to this somnambulistic theme that had emerged in my subconscious. A third dream involved Wayne the gay Teddy bear, with his two Great Danes, but the action has slipped away, with the sunlight.

As I wake up, my consciousness circulates around where I am going to live, how I am going to pay for it, what I am going to do, today, so I do not immobilize myself with fear. I realize that Mary the Innkeeper has given me her cough. After she had a struggling and loud coughing attack, the other day, I mentioned it to her, idle chit-chat while sitting in the office lobby.

“Oh, I have emphysema, and I have had this cold for months, it seems,” she said.

Suddenly, I am now coughing. I cannot afford to get sick, right now. I find it rather ironic that I can spend four months living in a ventilated-air environment, with sixty-four roommates, and not have more than a 48-hour-long head cold; yet in under a month on the streets, I can find myself a cough and congestion. I realize that the motor inn environment is viral, unhealthy, and dysfunctional. I need to plot quickly my escape.

“Do not fear, I will help you.”
“Jesus said ‘I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.’”
“The Lord says, ‘When you search for me, you will find me.’”

There is a great deal of Christian doctrine lying around the jailhouses. At some facilities, The Holy Bible is the only book in a jail cell. On my 140-day vacation, I read a multitude of Christian-based novels. Did I find Jesus? Yeah. He was doing ninety-days for stealing his dad’s lawnmower, and working jobs on the side. There are no atheists in foxholes, they say. Apparently, there are not too many in jailhouses, either.

Yesterday, while watching Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction, for the tenth or twelfth time, I remember how we searched the various available translations of the Book of Ezekiel for the quote that Samuel L. Jackson uses, in two or three of the scenes of the movie. Two or three of us spent several hours scanning for, and then comparing the Gideon, Saint James, and New International versions of the passage. We were scholarly Biblical bumblebees, poring over the texts, in our matching yellow-and-white uniforms.

Two weeks ago, the Mean Streets Ministries white van, with a graffiti-like paint job announcing their name, arrived with two teenage girls, and a minister. They went door-to-door, delivering burritos and loaves of bread to the tenants. I cried, in thankfulness, as I ate the burritos. Have I found God, or simply realized that kindliness is such a rare and precious commodity? I think about the money that I have shared, over the years, with drunken beggars. Am I a kind person, with my violent temper, and vicious verbosity?

I remain left, at the age of forty-four, with more questions than answers, to the meaning to the meaning of life. The meaning of life is asking the question “what is the meaning of life?” This birthday is unsettling, a strange cornerstone in the middle of so much change and chaos. I can still smell the ashen embers of the past, as they turn to dust in my consciousness. Looking ahead, I cannot see where I am going, or how I am going to get there. I am not so much lost as I am confused. The prototypical author, a Faulkner or a Mailer, I consider that a drunken Dylan Thomas left his masterpiece in a taxicab, as I think about the twelve footlockers of art and writing that were lost, when the charges for the storage space became too high to pay. I am still trying to piece together the scattered bits of my life- the clothes, boxes of books, office supplies and electronic patch cords.

My pussy, like some many others, has found a better and more secure home. Mamacat, Tequila, and Scout all moved in with better people than I have been, at the time. This realization saddens me. It makes my heart hurt- so many lovers, so little time. For a moment, I wonder if I will ever fall in love again. It is clear to me now that I have grown up to be the angry and embittered man that my father had become, in the last part of his life.

I am lonely. Cynical and discouraged, I find myself cornered by my thinking, my dreams, and a perpetual sense of discontent and frustration. I lose twelve games of chess in a row, while I feel like hiding under the blankets in the fetal position. Writing a note to the neighbors, I beg for work, and a connection for marijuana. Gina is six months pregnant; Jason appears to be a simple day laborer, and Gage, their 3-year-old son raised by mentally ill drunks in a dysfunctional motel. Meanwhile, my telephone does not ring. No one in the Real World wants to play with a convicted alcoholic bully. My stomach growls with hunger, my heart aches, and my brain cannot connect enough dots to form a stick-figure picture of a life.

10 May 2010
I close the curtains, and take my cough and depression under the covers, in the late Sunday afternoon. Snoozing on and off, my hunger keeps me awake, until I finally convince myself that I deserve to have a Blackjack™ pepperoni and mushroom pizza delivered to my womb-tomb room. I ate all but two pieces of the large pie, and fell asleep, while listening to the basketball game, on the television.

I dream of riding around in a police car with Will Farrell and some actor, and stopping at some sort of emergency. I was guarding the car, while the two police wander off to investigate something. People arrive, and want to sit, or play, in the patrol car, who I attempt to stop unsuccessfully from entering the car. Two of my ex-lovers appear in the dream- two Jennifers- Jennifer Thero, and Jennifer Nelson. Jennifer Thero proposes to me, and I drop to one knee, and accept. The dream moves to a crowded house full of children, and I am living there, with several children. Someone has taken all of the Pepsi and Coca-Cola™, which surprises me, because I had just put some bottles into the refrigerator.
I am surprised at how quickly that I accepted Jennifer’s marriage proposal. (In real life, she is already married with two children.) I perceive that part of the dream as a subconscious symbol of my loneliness. I believe that seeing these ex-lovers in my dreams are, also, expressions of my need for love, my sense of abandonment, and the overwhelming loneliness.

I wake up to the sounds of my neighbors arguing, as it seeps through air vent in the ceiling. The cough is dry, scratchy, and annoying- another frustration. I plot my plan-of-action for the day, a simple excursion, four blocks, to the Laundromat, and then, to the 7-11, for some cough syrup and Pepsi™. I should be back under my blankets in a few short hours. Now, I am left wishing that the Laundromat were open at five in the morning. How long do I wait, before I carry my black trash bag down Cold Facts Avenue, while the morning rush-hour traffic races against my back?
I lose a game of chess, while I wait for a more appropriate time to telephone Jezebel Julie, before wandering down the block. I signal her with one telephone ring, and hang up. We play these telephone relationship games, a sparring of emotions, through the lines of communication- who calls whom first, and other silliness. We talk about her flying or training to my stepmother’s impending wedding, a total emotional rush for her. While it is a daring idea, it will never happen. She is too trapped in her world to escape the confines of the wheelchair and morbid obesity. I begin pulling together my laundry, and money, for the excursion down the block. I own too many clothes to be homeless. I need to pare down some of the load, maybe while I am sorting and cleaning the piles, for the machines. Although I am not aware of the time that the Laundromat opens, I am going to risk that it is seven in the morning. I guess that it will be a good indication of how my day is going to be.

Feeding More Steak to the Alligators

Once upon a time and all good stories start with Once Upon a Time, it was Friday, the day chosen for yet another court appearance. The Outlaw wakes up at dawn, smokes a couple of cigarettes, and stalls the shower. Finally, he crawls out from underneath his futon, splashes his body with water, and puts on his Sunday Betters. He leaves all the artillery, back at the Hideout, with his partner-in-grime. The Public Defender would like more proof-of-income, if you please.

“If you don’t come back with some sort of membership card that tells us that you are employed as a tax-paying, vote-throwing and jury-sitting citizen,” says the Judge, “I am going to throw you into jail for contempt!”

“Thank you, your honor,” replies the Outlaw.

He arrives back at the Hideout, feeling a little better. He has his first conversation with the Hillbilly Cinderella, since the FBI arrived. His heart jumps through the hoop of fire. He tells her that he loves her, repeatedly. She goes off to the Orphanage, and he goes off to the liquor store. Upon his return, the Skyline Kids arrive, knocking at his door. Writing and working, he wanders the halls and the alleys, finally locking himself in his space. Reaching high up onto the tops of his milkcrates full of books, our Outlaw brings down books upon his head. On the way down, the books fall into the man, who falls into the glass, which falls into the other glass sculpture. Suddenly, there are books, glass and chairs flying around the room.

The police arrive, outside. They are responding to a possible domestic violation, at his address. He doesn’t hear them in his madness, so they kick the door in, flooring him with a Ninja-hold on his finger, and putting rugburn on his chin and knees. They cart him off to jail, in only his underwear. He almost has to throw down punches in the general lockup with two little boys making cracks to hide the fear.

Back to jail, do not collect two-hundred dollars. The police leave the Hideout in a state of demolishment, with the door slanted out of the frame. Finally, early in the second morning, they give him a shirt, to go with his Styrofoam slippers, and he appears in front of the judge to plead guilty to interferring and disobeying a lawful order. The Skyline Kids take advantage of the moment, removing his digital camera, his lost girlfriend’s CD player, all of his money, beer, cigarettes, and even his food.

“It says here in the police report that they heard you screaming ‘I am going to kill you,’ and things breaking.”

“There was no one else in the cave with me, your honor.”

“Time served,” the judge says, looking skeptically over his glasses at the Outlaw.

“Thank you, your honor.”

After 36 hours in the City Jail, he arrives home to find his world in not only chains, but chaos. Thankfully, his furry partner-in-crime and grime is not too severely wounded in the melee. Crime Boss is not a suitable career aspiration. He cleans up the fallen books, and the broken glass, with the help from a couple angels. He files a police report on his stolen belongings. After a shower, and a rehinging of the door, he is kidnapped and escorted to the suburbs. They watch a Star Trek: The New Generation marathon on cable television, and have Kentucky Fried Chicken delivered to the couch. At the proper time, and not a moment before, they prepare to go to the Gothic nightclub. Arriving at The Wreckroom, the usual Sunday crowd awaits. Tim in his bleached hair, and Todd with his fashion sense, are laying down the beats in the basement.

They find a seat with Rubber Chuckie, the rubber and vinyl fetishist, and his domme-wife, Roxanne. Sipping on vodka and cranberry juice, our outlaw begins to unwind from his vacation behind bars. The happy couple invites him back to their house for a threesome. He takes them up on their offer. All the good crime-fighters work the night shift, keeping the streets safe from villains, as we sleep.

“I think that I am going to change my name to Regret,” she says. “Are you romantic enough to believe in an afterlife?”

“There is nothing liked being kicked in the balls, when you stand three foot tall.”

“What is the definition of a diversity of tactics? Is it possible to live in a violent world, and not be violent? Is it possible to steal, if you do not know the conceptual constraints of property and ownership? It costs a great deal of money to detain, arrest, process, and feed a prisoner, not to mention the bureaucratic processes set in motion when someone is charged. The more people arrested, the more the judicial system can justify erecting more prisons, and filling them. Foucault is rolling in his grave.”

“It does me no injury for my neighbor to say that there are twenty Gods or no Gods; it neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg,” said Thomas Jefferson.

“If you are truly religious, you are religious, all the time, and no act that you perform is without religious significance and justification,” she says.

“Is this a religious war?” he asks. “Is ‘indivisible under god’ to be considered hate-speech? I always used to ask myself why god hated trailer parks, but then I watched the Jerry Springer television show.”

“A false religion is a religion that has failed to master modernity,” she says.

“A faith at peace with freedom and modernity is a faith that has given up its franchise and has made itself into something occasional and cosmetic, like the Springer Show.”

“Them coppers will never take me alive, I tell you!” he exclaims with a sneer.

Snakeoil Recipe Merchant

The meaning to the meaning of life is mentally unhealthy warfare and the offers of war for those without mass destruction, but plenty of weapons. We are playing hide and seek with the ghosts and goblins of our imagination. Everybody is wearing masks and neckties, so if they happen to catch themselves about to be beheaded, maybe by the grace of god, they will be spared losing their heads.

“I have been known to lose my head, a time or two,” Texorcist says.

“That is what makes you a hothead,” Jane Malady, the ideological prostitute, replies. “And a secular humanist. You have lost God’s pager number, my man.”

“The erotic silence of the snakeoil recipe merchant reminds me of Chrysanthamums thrown from a tinker man’s wagon, discovered on the ride to the boxing matches.”

“Remind me to have your name added to the international database of Bad News.”

“My name means Tangle Candy Flying Southbound in Arabic, didn’t you know?” Texorcist says, while absently staring out the window. “You all are making my life into a big publicity stunt, but you can’t scare me. I have been hit so many times that war seems friendly. Do I need to remind you that a short path is not through the truth? Have you read my head, Doctor?”

“I was just wondering about that. True anti-socials wouldn’t hide, because the remorse wouldn’t be there. My ex sounds like Bundy.”

“I should not tell you stories before you go to sleep.”

“I went to sleep, and the FBI was trying to find me. All because I was framed for narcing on a murder that I was framed for. It was so weird. I was shaking when I woke up.”

“Maybe we should make pizza, naked together,” Texorcist says. “Sounds like fun, doesn’t it?”

“This is a story about a 24-year-old artist that gets sick of society, and proclaims that her home is an independent nation. She declares herself the Queen, establishes a government and imposes laws. The Pirate is her man, only because he thought she was a slut. He enticed my hormones, awakened my fantasies, and now we are sleeping together,” Jane says.

“Don’t you remember me licking your balls while you broke her cherry? You don’t remember that night walking around near Colorado Boulevard and ending up in some parking lot behind a church, and you were making people say things that matched up so perfectly with their mouths. It was one of the funniest things that I have ever seen.”

“That follow your heart bullshit doesn’t work.”

Boot Hill Jihad and the Hangman’s Noose

26 August 2002

Imagine Truth to be a precious princess, surrounded by bodyguards of Lies. She is suffering from teen-age angst, feeling cock-hungry and arrogant in her white gowns. The thought-police are watching and investigating, waiting for the right moment to strike back. History is ‘lies agreed upon by the victors.’ Doublethink is the national anthem. Our anti-heroic outlaw is a real estate agent dealing in intellectual properties. What is humanity going to do when God wakes up, one day, and decides to be an atheist?

If Anybody had taken a moment to investigate the murder of Nobody, Somebody would have realized that Anybody could be a suspect in this crime of passion. Of course, Somebody grew paranoid and began looking over their shoulder for Anybody to sneak up on them. Nobody takes an ungrateful nap in the city morgue. The murder weapon turns up in a bridal gown, in a gunshop, in the back of a pawnshop. Anybody’s fingerprints were all over the weapon of mass destruction. Define the hypocrisy of why Americans has bombs, but no one else is allowed pharmaceuticals. Somebody has come between Nobody and Anybody.

“Be my friend, or I will scare you.”

“You are not only a political bully, but also emotionally incorrect. You have a severe case of mindmadness.”

“You can make up all the stories that you want, and name our daughters Jenin, you princess-queen of the pathological liar.”

“Welcome to Cold Facts Avenue,” she says. “My pimp is Mister Crack.”

“To be a pimp, you have to be a burglar of psychology,” he says. “You have to break into a bitch’s head and steal her mind. It’s a damn shame, but sometimes you just have to trunk a bitch.”

“The overt commodification of sex is less disturbing to the courts than the covert sexualization of art,” says the Whore. “The collective fictionalizing of individual identity creates a kind of carnival of passion, a festive space, at once, real and imaginary. I am just another prop in the masquerade.”

“Fiction is not an easy way out of anything. Violence is in the mind of the actor. It may not be assumed from the broken glass.”

The execution of the Death Row Kitten is complete. Thieves of identity have kidnapped Truth from her protectors, holding her hostage for a large ransom. Her virginity is a political agenda of property. Intoxicated by passion, she markets herself as a compassionate person, full of hope and love. Her bodyguards of lies protected her for as long as the sedatives were in place, but once that she was out on her own, there was little that could be done to protect the world from her evil experiments. She becomes a Playboy bunny, a playmate in the sexual playground, a pawn in the institution of beauty. Continuing to be emotionally impotent is her job, her name, and her very identity.

“I am paving the Internet Superhighway with my pussy,” she says. “I am going to turn your name over to every information gathering agency in my Rolodex, you evil bastard!”

“It was back in ‘02, when the times were hard, Stagger Lee.”

The screaming coming from your room was a bit unnerving, to say the least. We were worried that maybe you had killed someone in there.

ShameriKKKan Retardation, Or The Real Fell Away And Became Pretend

05 August 2002

In the darkness of the bar, it is difficult to make out the enemies from the whores. The psychic vampyres are in presence of the Federal Bureau of Intimidation. Everyone and his or her helpless brother is watching you. Look at them. Feel the eyes of betrayal stabbing into you. Taste the moment when your identity becomes a terrorist. You are a protester. You are the evader. You are an extremist, and you have no home. We hate you for knowing you. We turn our backs and deny that you exist.

You smell like a terrorist. You have always been a bit questionable in terms of your integrity. After all, you fly your flag upside down. It may be cloth and you burn only plastic ones but now, we believe that you are a terrorist. We are watching you. We hate you. You will pay for our pain. We hate everything that does not make sense. You do not make sense. Hence, we hate you. Get over it. Stop making excuses. Give us something to hate. Damn you. Terror is the truth now. War is the trust that we have between ourselves now. The real terror is putting up with all this hatred, night after night, as it stalks us.

We are here to reclaim our dignity. There are 3000 homeless fish held captive in Denver, bouncing their sonar off the Rockies to hear their own hollow pleas for familiarity and faith in humanity. They are the captured whales of Denver! Forcing them to bounce their sonar off the Rockies is pure unadulterated abuse. The pain remains as if it was just a few moments ago. How forgiving do you feel that the gods are going to be, when they learn of this betrayal? How long do you think it will be before we are paying for the costs that we are making upon ourselves? How long will the flesh reside over the flames? Do you ever wonder what your name might mean on the other side of the world? What if your life is made up of hollow wanderings until the Father brings us home to know who we were, are and will be, for eternity?

After a blood-soaked night of Death, he rises from the depths of the futon at four-thirty in the Monday morning. A large truck with a boom arrives in the parking lot next to his building, joining the Mexican roofing crew, and the six pallets of materials. Suddenly, an entire construction zone manifests itself outside his window. The noise is tremendous. He jokes that it is the F.B.I. installing their surveillance equipment, all of them undercover as Mexican and poor.

“Monday Night at the Executions” is a new hit series, as we watch the entire planet become criminalized. They begin to see inside of your mind, observing the plots of murder and robbery. This Monet moment is the apocalypse of dull sexual puns and positions. Sex, violence, and Death.

Boulder is within the Liberal Free Zone
resembling Amherst, or Ann Arbor, even Berserkly
98% Anglo upper-middle class
born to party bumperstickers
10 different pairs of shoes

Birkenstocks, hiking, biking

trailmix, gym shoes, FUCK ME pumps.

Take Back The Night parades
and a little bit of promise
Naropa Institute
(formerly the Jack Kerouac Institute for Disembodied Poets)
just down the block from the Crossroads Mall
Pearl Street and the buskers
Ah, to know Boulder!
To know.
Boulder is the home of the University,
a hiding place for flying typers.

Visual Orphans, Volume 3, Issue 2

Broadcasting Live from Crack Central
Cold Facts Avenue

The Coyote takes his position among the sheep, awaiting the perfect moment to pounce upon a week and willing target of his desires. Ideas are deadly, flags are dangerous, and the word Fuck means nothing. Sentences are my prison, paragraphs the cellblocks of meaning. Censorship and violence make their home in our dances and speeches. We must protect the children from hurting themselves. Knowledge is power. We must quickly incarcerate the people who read false profits, and foul language is a barrier made out of the ashes of burning books. Stand by, as corporate fascism preaches to the masses, passing the opiate pipe and syphilis blankets onto the slaves. The word-jail has many inmates, when language is a hate-crime. Kike motherfucker nigger spic faggot WOP terrorist towelhead terrorist liberal Uberdyke wetback cocksucker. Sissy boy.

“Why do you keep torturing yourself over this? You are one big self-inflicted wound, after another.”

“I am a very sensitive person in this desensitization of the world. I don’t want to play. I don’t want to be the patient.”

“They have a name for people like you.”

“I am sure that they do.”

“It is a fancy word for crazy, loony, psycho, and kooky. You have all the symptoms.”

“Just what I need is another label.”

This is misery. I can find my way home from here.

There is a devil residing inside of me, walking up the street, and pinning her name onto my lapel. I closed my eyes at the crossroads, the minute we turned that corner and headed this way. We are digging a bigger grave out of tomorrow than it was ever meant to be, even on a bad day, full of torrential rains and blood-red sea. The outlaw escapes from his hideout, wanders up 16^th Street, for five blocks, to the Ogden Theatre, a renovated movie-cum-music venue, to see Painted Souls open for 16 Horsepower, his favorite band of postmodern apostles. Alone, he people-watches, while sitting Indian-style in the middle of the gum-stuck carpet, near the railing. Sad, he gazes upon lesbian love, cute little titty girls in each other’s arms. Over there is a straight couple, she is pretty and he is fat. Everyone, but the Wanted Man, is in love, and coupled up like a slow danse on the deck of the Titanic.

“This moment is indeed misery, and I can find my way home from here, a familiar road stuffed with gravel, sticks, and stones,” he whispers to himself.

A religious experience, the outlaw singing along with the preacher’s son with his lower lip filled with tobacco. Banjo-picking, heroin-shooting, promise-keeping son-of-a-bitch keeps time better than the devil, I tell you. We are saved, again, today, my Lord. I am quite capable of feeling my own immortal pitiful shame, thank you very much, your Honor. I have been on trial more times than the average Joe. Which one of the gods has turned their back on you? Stop thinking that they have a vendetta to carve out of you, an effigy of burning flesh on a stick. Can you stop, for one moment, and realize that there is no one following you? Tell yourselves that they are not watching you. Napalm sticks to kids. Father, I love you. Praise Jesus, we found you.

There is blood all over the walls of the prison cells. If I die, by your hand, will you remember my kisses, my promises to love you for eternity? You can send all the white roses that you want. It is never going to heal the wounds that you imposed upon me, that vengeful night, so many minutes and not enough long ago.

Once upon a time, and all good stories start with Once Upon a time, you are the princess and I am your hunchback jester. Everyone will kick you in the balls, when you are two feet tall. In the Land of Stone, the princess has executive order to inspect and authenticate all decisions, all motion. Nothing gets by the princess without a stamp of approval. The princess is the owner and operator of her life. Just ask her. When the jester comes to the court, our humpback must watch his comedic discourse. Do not offend the princess. Clowns should not be sex symbols!

This story should be entitled “Fashion Violations- Or How To Make A Clown into a sex symbol.” Welcome to the Jester’s Faux-pas. Fiction is not an easy way out of anything. The stripperclown approaches the stage from behind the audience. He steps seductively up the steps, creeping along in his overly-large shoes. He pretends to trip on the top step and skitters across the stage and into the limelight. Sending in the clowns, as the music starts and stops, a tear in the eye of the stripperclown slips down the makeup scream. Suddenly, he peels off his polka-dotted shirt, and reveals his bare chest. The audience howls and hoots, in response. For this one moment, it is his stage, his act, and they are watching him, the clown!

The dragqueen named Elvis steals the limousine and the Governor’s son, taking them on the ride of their lives, where they meet Darryl Junior and Sticky Fingers LaRue, two trainrobbers, who happen to be at the crossroads, waiting for their appointment with the devil. What did they do about Tex Evil? Posted Wanted Dead or Alive posters, of course. Some of the story takes place during wartime. Just dial 1-800-Get-Even, and ask for Vinnie. Jumping into the taxi of seduction, our characters take off looking for retired superheroes.

It is always darkest before dawn. So if you’re going to steal your neighbor’s newspaper, that is the time to do it.

“Reality is nothing but a collective hunch,” says the psycho clown.

This road is misery. I can find my way home from here. We are effectively outrunning the ghosts and all of their promises, along with the demons that keep slipping out of the closet, and take up time chewing away at our ankles. You cannot hide the heartbreak. We can see it in your eyes.

Cooking the Books

13 August 2002

The witchdoctors at the Spy School suggest complete immersion for up to a month in the cocoon of one’s mind. They debate the thought-police’s influence on commercializing meaning, amongst themselves. The hold conferences, and open up think-tanks of disinformation and sociosexual walls of propaganda.

“Deny everything, up until the very last moment. Make them prove their allegations, and back it up with factual truth, rather than just political speculation. Help them define the balance of power. If you are asked, become an informant. In fact, to find yourself to be a double agent of Truth can come in handy. All of this disinformation can be found in your copy of the Lying Owner’s Manual.”

“You all are making my life into a publicity stunt. I can’t go outside without feeling someone is watching me. I cannot remain inside without them coming to find me.”

She invents a persona, a fake name, turns on the camera, and goes into business for herself, making home videos of ‘my body, my battlefield.’ All the voyeurs tell her that she is beautiful, pretty, sexy, and then demand to see more of her nakedness.

“Do you think that you are an exhibitionist, put up on a pedestal of sexual politics, or just another lost angel in the city of light?”

“It is all about the eyes that you can’t see that are watching you. Each one of you will be assigned to a Watcher, and we expect that you abide by all of the rules set forth in the manual.”

“I want to be the Queen of the Sex Camera Evil Eye, when I grow up.”

The Day That The FBI Came Knocking

Later, maybe I will look back at this as an ironic rite of passage, and chuckle to myself. It was Monday night around seven in the evening, the summer heat was steaming off the parking lot and into my second-floor apartment. They came knocking with guns drawn, Agents Fox Mold-Her and Damn-Me Skully, and a dozen local police officers. Well, the police did not quite ask me what my story was, but asked a lot of questions as they rifled through my files. Everybody was polite, and doing their civic duty. No one was hurt, and nothing was harmed. I was not Mirandized, and my First and Fifth Amendment bounced around the room like two rubber balls filled with helium. Did I mention that I was masturbating at the time of their arrival? I wonder how long that it will be until I can do that again with a peace of mind.

After being detained and interviewed by the G-persons, the local officials took this outlaw into custody. For the next 26 hours, his life would not be his own. The wanted man finally makes it to the finer institution of the judicial-political machinery, in through the dancing door to jailhouse theatre. Talk about an invasion of private boundaries. There is nothing like a dozen gun barrels staring at you, to force open one’s eyes to the ferocious sublime. The sound of metal doors slamming will never leave me silent, again. All of this drama is in the name of homeland security. Of course, we will sacrifice a few civil liberties, in order to sleep securely, tonight. Now, get me out of this cell!

Slinking from the jailhouse to the dawghouse, he goes into deep hiding, under the futon, with a long breathing straw. The paranoia demons chew at his ankles. Finally, he begins to emerge from the hideout, raped, ripped open and exposed like a seeping scab oozing with puss. Would anybody else like to see my dirty laundry? I guess if nothing else, we have finally chased off the weak-kneed and insincere of the Circus. Send in the psychotic clowns, they are always good for a laugh or two. The thought police arrived a dozen at a time. Talk about a posse for little old me. Plus two. The G-persons- Agents Mold-Her and Skully.

“Stop trying to pick at my bones, you vultures! Can’t you see that I am not dead yet? Would you like me to be a severely mentally ill alcoholic or a terrorist? What is the difference between a radical and an extremist? Which came first, the chicken or the road?”

Left with more questions than answers, more violations than victims, we are resolved to wonder of his demise before the courts. Tell it to the judge. I fought the law, and the law won. I shot the Sheriff, but I did not shoot the deputy. Bad boys, bad boys, what are you going to do, when they come for you? Click your heels three times, and say no place like home.

This one big excuse to make plagues the life decisions. He was so hairy that when the hose hit his back, it looked like an Etch and Sketch shaken in slow motion. Ugly is too kind of a word for this gutter serpent. He is a beast, a demon from the netherworlds. Big Brother is watching you, with their thought-police, mental barricades, lock and key. Who is watching whom watching you? Look around you. There is a war going on, and nobody is listening. While Wall Street becomes another Skid Row alley, we wonder what will happen with all the young and hungry. Civil rebellion takes root in the eyes of the people, boiling the blood, igniting the fires and passions of revolution. Mother has come home to take back her own. Mother, do you think they will drop the bomb? Mother, do you think they will like this song? Oh, mother, where did you go with our home?

The fourth wall disappears right in front of the actor’s eyes. For a moment, he cowers in the naked light, and just as soon, he becomes a spy for the other side. He sees himself as the observed, the object of desire.

“What do you want with me?” he asks, and there is no reply. He stands in the light, facing the penetrating eyes of the Gaze. He swallows the eyes, the leers, and the extensive interrogation of his mind. There is madness roosting inside the closet, inside the room on the second floor, just a bit behind the back of his mind. He is probed, abducted and taken into alien custody. The clowns do not arrive to retrieve him until he is already scarred, the damage is done, and his scabs ripped open and left bare.

The dragqueen crackwhore has to be a spy. Her disguise is so bad and without class, walking up Pearl Street at three-thirty in the morning. The jungle is hot, quiet aside from the occasional whistles, and invasion of debris retrieval facilitators with their camouflage-colored mechanized beasts. The outlaw peers from his hideout, looking out at the world that has been confronting him with their hatred and brutality. He calls on the gods to calm the demons, but the gods refuse to answer the telephone, or return his messages. The demons continue to persuade him with their charms of freedom, no more chains of morality and mortality. For a moment, he lost his place within reality, returning only have the post-traumatic stress began to wear off.

“Stop talking to the television. It won’t answer back. Stop reading the newspapers. Close your mind to the intrusions, lie back and float away. It will all be okay, man.” says the Hooligan Dwarf, from behind bars.

The Apocalyptic Hipster-turned-Man-in-Black gloats in his membership, the freedom to shoot heroin and still hold a court translator’s job. The early morning darkness is comforting in its simplicity.

“Would you like to spend your morning courting a pair of superheroes?” She asks, with a faint smile on her face. He misses her for the first time since she had his skinny white ass thrown in the jailhouse. “That’ll teach you to not get drunk, again, won’t it? They are coming to take you away, haha. They are coming to take you away, hehe.”

“I can’t help but to think that you are trying to teach me a lesson with your vindictiveness. You have repaid me, thrice-fold in terror. Oh, man, I had the worst dream. I was in my room, quietly minding my own business, when a weird blue tornado appeared out of nowhere, and swept up everything, including the room that I was in, at the time. It was worse than Oz. I had no identity, no anything. Welcome to living on the corner of Tornado Alley, where the yellow brick road becomes a trail of tears.”

“Did it cause a hickie in the sky?” she asks, then pulls deeply from her cigarette, sucking the life into the cherry ember.

“All I remember is being ripped from the room by my senses. The next thing that I know, I am trying to find out where I was, and can’t prove to anyone who I am. There are two dead horses hanging from a tree, which is in the closet, now. Today, I wake up as a pariah of society, having walked in the halls of the Panopticon, the true belly of the beast.”

Another day in the paradise of freedom beckons, and he watches the sun as it begins its slow crawl across the sign line. He wonders if he is falling through the quicksand cracks of the machinery, and if so, how long the descent will last. Curious, he looks around for snacks during the flight. He gets nervous when those who have food and shelter start pontificating about what the professionally homeless want or need. We plan to colonize the world with abundance!

“I used to know a girl named Rebel. She had a smile that could light up the darkest room, and the most calming eyes in the world. We played hide-and-seek with Reality for a couple of years. They are coming to take me away, hehe. They are coming to take me away, haha!”

“Whatever happened to that girl?” she asks. “It sounds like you were in love with her, for a lifetime or two.”

“She wandered out into the jungle-bound streets, and was never seen again. All of the King’s horses, and all of the King’s men cannot remember her name, ever again. There were rumors that she became a cowgirl, but we divided the town with ducttape, and I didn’t attempt to track her down. Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall, chasing all the whores with her cat-calls. She went off to save the world, for all I know.”

As I am walking down the alley to the 17th Avenue Liquor store, to visit my buddy Shawn, I run into a sweating man, with piles of coaxial around him. I asked him if he had any scraps, and he hands me about 50 feet of coaxial wire on a reel. Big Brother is watching me watch Big Brother on the 1978 color television, after hooking up the digital cable box, and stringing coaxial cable. I come home, a wanted man of pontification, a momentary lapse of reality for some.

A Letter

My dearest friend Catherine,

Florida! Land of killer Christians throwing little girls into alleys full of lions with coat hangers. You might remember me telling you about a guy I was seeing named Jeremy. I met him one night in the bar. He was actually a pretty nice guy, that first night, but I was pretty drunk. Anyway, I found out right after that that I was pregnant. It was no big deal, really, but you know how it goes. I remember how Robert treated you, last summer. Guys are such jerks sometimes. On the drive to Planned Parenthood, I had to pull over because I was crying so hard. Can you believe it? I couldn’t find anybody to take me to the clinic! There is no way I could ever tell my mother about this. She would just kill me. Jeremy has hit the road to find himself or something. Can you believe that? Three weeks of bliss and then the minute that he hears that I am pregnant, he splits. I haven’t been dealing with the situation, very well. I have been trying to stay busy, but sometimes the whole thing catches up with me.

I have been writing a story, somehow trying to get a grip on this whole fucking mess.

Once upon a time, and all good stories begin with once upon a time, there is a lonely girl drinking away another night in a loud bar. A little boy walks up and says hello. They end up doing the drunken slow waltz through the 2am parking lot.

The heat of the sun drives Jennifer crazy. She tosses and turns, trying to escape waking and remembering. Slowly, she realizes that she is in someone else’s bed. Before Jennifer can piece together how exactly she got there, she is forced awake by the screaming of a telephone. Her head is pounding out a tune as her stomach turns and churns.

“Did you sleep well? There is coffee in the kitchen, I’m sorry I can’t be there to wake you, but you know how that goes, this fucking job is driving me crazy. Shit, here comes the boss. Hey, do you think I could see you again?”

He talks for a full minute nonstop, sounding like a tape recorder stuck on fast forward. Jennifer doesn’t say anything. Looking around the room for a cigarette, she remembers that he didn’t smoke. In fact, she thought, he was giving me grief about licking an ashtray or something, last night.

“I have to take my jeep to the shop and drop off my shirts at the cleaners.” He is still talking. Staring up at the ceiling, she realizes that he hasn’t even heard the response to his first question.

“Yes, I slept fine.” She lies, not having energy to explain herself. This morning, she knows that she is hanging over pretty hard, before she has even sat up.

“Listen, I have to pee, and get out of here for work. What time is it, anyway.”

“Quarter to ten, why?”

“Shit, I’ve got to go. You don’t mind if I take a shower here, do you? Hey, listen, I had a great time, last night. Call me, okay?” Jennifer drops the phone into its sleeping place, without waiting for a reply.

The human chain of protesters attempts to encircle the entrance to the office. A tall man with a Bible and a megaphone stands on the hood of a car across the street, screaming a chant of encouragement. National Guard militia, all in green and stonefaced, stand between the protesters and the incoming traffic. Terrified faces poke out of the moving windows. Usually fresh expressions of youth look weary and ancient pressed to the glass. Suddenly, the parting sea of human beings pushing and pulling itself through the chaotic melee creates a break. The car is allowed to push itself through the walls of flesh and into the dark corners of the covered parking lot.

Jennifer forces herself to concentrate on the magazine in front of her. Staring at the same page for several moments, she tries to ignore the angry screams from across the street. Suddenly, the back door opens and the doctor walks in. She can tell that he is the doctor by the bulge of the bullet-proof vest under his coat. A rock smashes a window above her head and lands at her feet. Four people grab at her from different directions, and she is quickly hustled into another room.

It is quiet and extremely cold in this room. There it is. The torture bed of my birth. I am the abortion.

Jennifer puts her feet into the stirrups. Looking for something else to think about, she notices the poster of two chimpanzees on the ceiling. Dressed in clothes, the chimps are posed to appear to be sleeping. Out from one of the mouths is the caption: “But will he respect me in the morning?” She feels like puking again, her third time this morning. The room is spinning. Cold sweat nightmare visions! She awakens and screams.

Try to ignore the gunfire, just outside. Battlefields for our children are the streets outside clinics and the doctor’s office. Our other starving children die of cholera on highways of bones that lead from Ethiopia to Somalia to Rwanda and back to the United States of America. A woman can’t own her body because everybody else does, with bullet proof vests and bibles.

The separation of church and state and my body began with the baby and the bloody bath water. All I know is that I wanted this thing out of my body. They keep calling up in the middle of the night, and screaming obscenities. They call me a “baby killer” and hang up. The damn thing begins howling, again. They won’t leave me alone. It is madness on the other end of the phone. I will cross my legs and pretend that it will go away. A pretty girl pouring her blues into another drink and good by.

Sincerely,

your friend,

Jen

(October, 1994)