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)

Stare That Into Another Hostility

The curves of her body take on a life of their own. One is the loneliest number that we have ever known. Oh, forgive me for the sins that I have participated in, today. Give me the strength to know the difference between yesterday and today. Any moment, we will be approaching torture. Sitting in the comfortable suburbs of Los Angeles, our fallen-from-grace hero swallows away another day, picking up where The Apocalyptic Hipster left off, the night before, hoping to hold the high that they had created in the small span of eight hours. We have got to figure out where the rest of the excuses fall off, and another lie takes the place of another day in the life of another day, after all the pieces stop falling from the sky. Welcome to the next chapter. It is called the rest of your life. Find the focus, make the point, and define the purpose to it all. We cannot afford to make fictions out of the reality train. Stop pretending, and make it real. Keep it real. You have to be a very good liar to make in the world, today, don’t let anyone deceive you. It is all about Death. Death of meaning, death of believing, death of the notion that there is anything left to make believe in.

Sitting at someone else’s machine, drinking their tequila, loving their muse, our hero has a moment to take out of the adventure, to try to remember what he was trying to say, before he was so rudely awakened, interrupted by the dreams, as they wander home, wet and filthy.

“It is not easy being me,” he says, throwing off his clothes for yet another fantasy, “and another thing!”

“Say you love me, and pretend that you mean it,” she says as she flinches for another blow to the head, the heart, just about anywhere where it hurts. “Make me hurt for feeling, make me pay for the pains that are eating away at me. Make me cry, I want to die all over again with you.”

He wiggles himself through realities like a surfer taking on the biggest set of waves, sunrise to noon. It is all about control. Who has it and who wants it. It is all about loving and dying. There are no two ways around loving and dying. You either are, or you are not. Simple as that. There is no gray area when it comes to pain and emotion. It is as clear as night and day. There is a tidal wave making room in his heart.

“We wish that we had been able to warn the rest of the world.”

“You look like the perfect candidate for the next victim falling into my life. Let’s say goodbye before you can make excuses as to why we never really met, in the first place.”

He is harmless and he could never hurt anyone.

“Honest. Yeah, whatever. I swear you came into my life to tell me that life is made up of nothing but compromise and attempted lies. Really, there is little point in trying to save me. I am all ready. Dead. I am expired beyond the life that you might have expected of me. Stick that in your pipe and smoke it. Make no amends with the gods that come to you in the form of dreams.”

“What do you mean by that?” she asks.

“Uh-huh,” he says, without a hint of hesitation.

Looking confused, she moves off into the afternoon, looking for her Romeo, some tomorrow named after her that she could call her own.

“You know that it is not easy being me. I don’t care how many disguises that you think that you can manifest with that smile, but it is not working with me. You better stop, or I am going to make you regret every word that you said to me.”

“Why don’t you just say what you really feel. What is on your mind? Tell me a story, and don’t make me cry, or I will make you pay so dearly that you will wish that you had never left the womb.”

“I had a wonderful afternoon, how about you?”

“When will we meet, again,” she asks, “and where is that devil that swore to be my savior?”

“There is not discourse in the middle of the abyss. You think whatever it is that gets you through the night. We wonder when you will stop making excuses for being who you are. We wonder when you will stop making stupid stumbling comments that are trying to find a comfortable place in the bushes to lose their cookies. Indecision will be the death wish of us all.”

The voice of reason speaks through the megaphone, directly into his ear. He cannot hear anything but the colors that are tattooing themselves onto the walls of his mind. He pokes at his eyes with a knitting needle, hoping to draw some blood or something worth saying, in the middle of the sacrilege, in the middle of somebody else’s day. He finally decides to decide upon someone else to decide upon his future. He takes his psychosis in hand and makes her bleed. In the darkness, without the help of the full moon howling bold and mean, the pirates were about to board the ship and, before sunrise, make more hostages than regrets. When there was a chance to look the other way, we chose to say goodbye to our naivete, and kiss her, instead. I have finally found the grave that I could have made into my home.

Give me nothing, so I do not have to forget how to drop it, lose it again in the battle, or give it away in an impassioned moment. The mountains are asleep with the please baby please make me cry another nightmare and name it after you. I am sick of waiting for that sick motherfucker to come around here trying to find somebody to fight. His mind is my mind. I can take him for granted. He is mine. Somewhere in the closet, there is always a door. Somewhere behind the face, there is usually a mask waiting to happen, picking the perfect Monet moment to pop out with a whole pile of consequences who have been stacking themselves up against the back door of his mind. Let me remind you that there will be no taking or possession of hostages. Give me a hammer, and I will make yesterday’s justifications out of them. I am tired of making excuses, unless they are witnessing the abuses, in the fall of mankind, these days of the desperation that we like to call our home.

Her chocolate-skinned nipples stood out on her shirt, making her scream in the middle of the pleas, begging me to come home with her, press my cock sinfully copulatingly playfully inside of her. There was nothing to say about the ethics of the moment. There was nothing that you could say that would make it better than a beggarwoman amongst thieves, making time against the rhythm that played along in her head, pounded away, while no one else could hear. There is no sorrow in the dreams and fantasies that make their home in the indifference to it all. We will not take prisoners, there will be no negotiations for the hostages. I will make you a promise, wrap it in a red bow, and fancy wrapping, and you will have to make the lies possible in the middle of tomorrow. I am not going to be accountable. I am not going to be around. Stare that into another hostility.

–Razee Ink   26 May, 2000