Been reading the stories of Raymond Carver again lately: http://www.whitman.edu/english/carver/carver.cgi

1. http://misterw.home.mindspring.com/index2.html



2. He is captivated by power and brilliance, so the Rat will always fall for the irresistible Monkey. He agrees with the clever Monkey's way of doing things and the Monkey, on the other hand, will be overjoyed to find the Rat on his own cunning wavelength.



3. http://www.thefengshuiconsultancy.co.uk/zodiac/year-Rat.htm



4. The Rat will be enchanted by his ingenuity. They will recognize each other by the dollar signs in their eyes.



5. http://www.thefengshuiconsultancy.co.uk/zodiac/year-monkey.htm

the myth of the outsider

bah. back here in the way back of huh what do I say



grey cool day



got my Shepherd here in the way back of 10 miles away from where

I sleep

most of the time



ah

it's the day of the night of the first game of the World Series fuck it

only



what

in a holding pattern

My head and my emotions are so fucked up at this point, I'll have no choice but to write novels.



The fog on the highway this morning was heavy and gold with sunlight. The twisting traffic on the road ahead streamed along under and through it, a manifestation of my many impossibilities, imagined and real



My thoughts and my feelings are so fucked up at this point, I'll have no choice but to show you a thing or two about who you are dealing with



but of course

heavy-lidded remote manifestation, carnal

smoke dream. come here. the midnight console

lights dim and sultry as any club. hues of orange,

deep magenta, white blue, hazy red. behind the

scenes the selfsame agent inserts his modules, going

by instinct, eyes moist and lambent

as the blessed buds

arrest this poem



sweet thursday is more than just a Steinbeck

fable; it's the warm hand of fall and a day

like today when there's a fair chance

of airing out the neurotransmitters, taking

them for a little ride (come on,

you know what I'm talking about,

and 2 days into this pungent, fraught

season of angled light and leaves

is when the Molson tastes best)



ah, shit, it's the dying days of the world

and America

the tony robbins of the mind



must always remember there is only one chance for me now and that is to write and write long and write serious with Kafka, Van Gogh, Jimi Hendrix as spiritual guides, with Charles Bukowski methodology, and with something else I can't quite mention or else lure the jinx even more but I bet you can guess



man I feel like such a loser sitting up here in this state and yet I wouldn't be anywhere else, only doing something else and that is why it is critical for me to remember that there is only one chance left for me now either way, whether get paid or no, no matter what level of success achieve, the goal is to do this and to do it some more and once have done it to perform the follow through things one must do once have done it



shit may have to do it drunk some nights, might have to do it in front of the Red Sox on TV if do it starting right now rightexactlythisweek and month, but must do it and will do it, will cheese it up if necess., will do with abandon, the key is lots of dialogue and scenes from one to another and the waking dream. shit. why not do it now. no I mean right now. why else have a dead-end job in loserville 45 minutes from where you were born. but that's OK. because



there is only one chance for me now, only one watchword, only one key, only one thing



to do.

uneven strain



brian meniscus



what a fuckin laugh,

this is a "That...is why

you fail" moment



standin smokin by my truck

this morning I felt a pang of worry

for my observatory powers

such as they are



got bombed on Zhenka last night

and missed the best parts of Schilly's

best game



it occurs to me that I could use

a vacation from

the bullshit, well,

who couldn't?



but I'd take just being baked

concomitant with the, um,

rightexactlynow



or else fresh sober in some more northern woods

with a bow



or else at home writing a story



or even writing from this vein of crap I write in here



or else driving to New York City concomitant with the condition

that it's to somehow get crazy paid and then leave



nah, on second thought,

fuck NYC, you

can have it.

destroy these instructions



what's been wrong, what's

been going on, he asked. It's in the vodka,

it's on the paper, I said, it's

in something I put on the paper

while I was in the

vodka



the all the time whisper

ethic

uneasy sleep suspiration

gambit lisps,

chanteuse...



yeah, then I reach back. but the past

is no fun anymore, my specific masochism

requires some blood in the now,

I want some rack tragedy, Becky,



I want to be hurt by your intrigue and better

you be drunk and livid. Score me

with them green fingernails again write

on me one last time your snailwise reverse

blossom tragedy of woe and lust



and later smoke cigarettes with me at 4 a.m. in that blue diner

by South Station above hot black coffee

wiped out among tacit afterglow sadness, no tell,

no motel,

we did it in

your truck, now

your black hair's woven

through your palm, wrung for grief of what?



I never had no trouble playing fool,

look here, I'll play it once more for you



tell him it's the puppetry of fate,

eggs on a plate;

let's find a rooftop

and get blazed this morning



(you see it's so no place here and

this coulda been something this coulda been

a contender)

fool subliminal sandbagging the piper

haha who lost his guitar



the phrase"they who claim the Reign of Al Bazeel is here"

just flashed into my upper consciousness - take that as

an indicator of how the motherfucking life is kicking



right nowrightexactly now



neutral causes conspire man

arboreal pauses require and

adverbial clauses from liars

suck the air straightup out my tires you

fat motherfuckerthat'swhyIfuckedyourbitch and



I turned to one man and said:



What I can't figure out is all this time

I thought you'd straightfront abandoned me

but your real scene is evidently way more devastatingly

banal



And I turned to another man and said:



Hey you go gobble that head pill



then I dropped that line with decamp,

and snuck off into the bed night dream arbor

with you. her. one

business card dipsomaniac bathe

slave garbed



in diurnal ejaculate

negativity, man

pin pains in the left knee

Parliament Lights

too short nights

of no illumination



job woes

so it goes

feel like I can't win

in my picayune disaster

life



sucker

bad



I had to run back in the pines and scratch into the earth the map of how bad it all sucked



rather than tell her



it was a fucked up pentatonic dream

and I couldn't wake up

her semen



personal as blood steeped jeans,

moist fingers

drawn and hung,



arabesque shadows, graven blankets, gratuitous

medication. now. silent pearl of gambit,

wine, waning hours shorn



to drift enclosure, first to next an enfilade

past menses, crossbreed shoals are organs,

men's and others given taste



for intersect, harm,

expulsion,



ancillary ways

1.

you and me buddy walking down along the tracks just like in the old days when we were 15 and the strongest substance yet taken: Led Zeppelin II. but on this day the tracks are a single track, and this a single chitinous black tubular rail, obsidian textured, and the shuttles fly so fast you can hear the sonic booms, they erupt out in the sightless horizon like explosions of ordinance. curiously, the tracks are still graded and banked with gray gravel, just like in the old days, old old days, the ancient days of automobiles, ancient days freshly hated and never forgotten. how could you? the sky an ugly yellow like the wings of the locust like tar colored phlegm from nicotine lungs, nauseous mists are the clouds, I guess they must move, but don't see how. Nonetheless for our walk down the singing vibration black vein in the land obsidian track we wear our loose garments textured for ventilation and infused with blown and pixellated glass the better to refract and deflect the killing rays of the naked sun. I can't see your eyes, friend, from behind the black globes of your goggles, and you can't see mine, but we are both in the System as BrownEyes and this is an important fact for to be not in the System is to remain outside on the surface of the planet forever and so to die in the terrible, ceasless light. This too, a curious fact, no one knows what has happened to the night, only that it doesn't occur here for months at a time, the latitudes could tell their tale had they not shifted no doubt but endless technology has made us primitive as ants and we do not question. At any rate, I do not. You were always the curious, searching one, and no doubt still are, but here on our first day back from the long silence of Death, I am remembering too many other things, questioning some, savoring none. Savoring none.



2.

we trudged along. I think our bodies came out stronger than our brains or at least our conciousness because I trudged for very many hours and first become aware of another, then that it was you, and the way I could tell was the shape of the bones in your face, highbrow, the cut of your jawline. and the white hair flowing back from the mirrors of your turban. white hair. we stopped and regarded each other across the black line and gray grade of the track and then I saw my own face reflected in the violent bruise-like lenses of your goggles and my short beard and sideburns were white, white as new snow in December from the long dead mountain town of our youth, long dead town, long dead youth: but no. youth is the bones of my face beneath the old man's beard and that is when I recognize who I am in relation to you and that is when I realize that we are here and the germ of that thought is no doubt like the germs of our DNA somewhere, in some found locale, some tomb or grave, who knows why we're here or how, whom to thank, or curse, or whom to refer the insanity of our denial, our acceptance. Friend, I trafficked in insanity once, it was not so bad, it was a vision of the wars to come - but what of you, how do you fare? Then I remembered that in your first life your view of insanity was also the world's, that terrible day, that one day. Indeed you saw more than I or most. At first they thought it was paper issuing from the holes in the Towers but later it was revealed to be wallboard particles and sheet gypsum. And when a body hits the ground after 10 seconds at that velocity from that height the body explodes and the extremities fly back up in the air. And you thought it was a Nuke when the skyline commenced its crumbledown shattering into apocalpse commencement topography a Nuke not yet but good guess, prescient, one way or the other: Depleted Uranium equals a 4.5 million year bar tab, bartender, and that equals forever, an eternal round for all my friends, take one down pass it around 99 bottles of

the fantasy game gets older and less personal. hey,

i used to seek the slanted light too as it fell through

industrial height plate glass and into 1000 square feet of vibrating

bronze .010 Dean Markeleys, the way that vibration looks there

close to where they say the heart beats, the way the black dust

smells on your calluses; hey, i used to seek those days,



the way you feel when you seep another song, got to sing it down into

some means of encapsulation to make it stick. hey no wonder be drunk

and high all the time, i can remember what it was like to be desperate:

cutting blade cutting into oneself cutting into one another and i am still

that way; it is my secret.



the past wipes you down i guess until the caul shifts and shimmers back

into paper blossoms or firewater or the water in your brain makes you speak

and say back to people of your own device, I love you now run fast

run burn down the house quick



so I can live I give you life

so can you give me life back



it is a lonely life fraught with regret

and go-forward spiral pennies thrown and blown down slantways in some swift October swimming pool:

sodden leaves, north Georgia, just go barefoot till Thanksgiving whoops:



it is a lonely life fraught with regret.



it is yours

and it is



mine

behavior chain

i.e. sink;



feel the other people in the grass.



hope: there's some,

field dog;



Now, burn it...

invisible writing how much of it can you really do plenty if you like to sleep all the dreams rush forward into the sound the sound the sound of blood and joints popping cracklong out into electric guitar freeze or the creaking wheel of the trashcart pushed past behind your seat like the creaking lie

and so break the seal of  another day

i used to eat the 4 a.m. despair

the computer has already ruined this moment but let me persist in it



sit here now and no hope of getting through to you

the hush of the night trucks moving past

sober now there is no pretend to do

you can write to fend off the past



saw her face from when we were 18 not in a dream this time, just waking, just lying awake, outside the blue fuzz that is night and the future that awaits or that is happening depending on your notion of destiny. then I creep quietly from your side, filch a tshirt from the bureau drawer, and move downstairs to liftweights at 4 a.m. trying the new. I wish it seemed old, wish I had that equity.



but i was telling you about the face of Delia from when we were 18 and how I saw her pale arch eyebrows hair brown so black but amber in October sun and her almond eyes hard black almonds, her cackle laugh and flattened vowels, the lisp of Chicago, all this back in 1990 when we were kids and the world felt safe



yes, I mean you didn't worry about getting blown up so much or witnessing the blowing (OK City was a foretaste, later)

but when I say safe I mean for instance I personally hadn't yet a clear conception, say, of the venality of New York City. And I mean the denizens



so, there I am, really an instant ago, trucks hush by, blue fuzz of night, your warm hair

next to my chest, but I am picturing Delia, from when we were 18, thinking off all the past

but no sense of loss; then as always I think of walking from the Mall, with Delia, the blue snow falling, we go through the field out by 45, her warm, our black coats, mittens, we felt pure as Indians



so there is the poem, as I thought, but then I thought no why can't I make them short stories and novels

crafted not in some precious college way but in the way I would craft them as I would craft them

and of course this, this no poem either, this just this, what you write at 5:23 a.m. when you get up thinking that you're not gonna stop drinking but that you have to control it or perish huh I mean or it will control youso be cool and dial down the ratio, Mammon, serve sobriety for the better tenth of the days



ah this isn't it at all this isn't what I'm going for at all

I wish I could just sit here and tell you all this now for as long as I felt like it reallyman

but here is the urgency pinching down and now I must leave you ah the day's sealed



but not dwindling. nothing dwindles.

so whatif that's a lie. I will talk to you

again

Rafe Dubious: He left his amp at the loading dock and careened off in that white Nova of his. I didn't feel it was my responsibility.



Going backwards, he'd just staged a regular freakout on my couch. Well. Said he'd seen all this going down in a dream before. Well now.



All that last part, from the girl, even still he can't get it right. He attributes it to RachelWhere, but he's confused. That girl from the Higlands was KateyRed. Get it straight, Crombosis!



He rearranged everything in my studio

He drew on the walls

and I responded. in small writing, up in a corner

by the ceiling, I wrote "You are not so much"



KateyRed. she'd come by. to talk to me. about something he'd said. and it didn't matter what. I told her it was a lie. It wasn't my responsibility



I don't know how I got in here. I'm no friend of his. Fuck this

****************************************************

KateyRed: A few days after the fucked up night that began in the Highlands, he called me. He sounded scared. He asked if I would like to go out for a drink. If I would be interested. I was flattered. I said yes.



I met him at Rafe's studio. He was by himself. He met me in the parking lot and walked me in. This was in early November. The air was cold and sweet. It was just getting dark. The sky was turning purple.



He was a character. He was wearing a dark green dress shirt untucked, and jeans. And beat up dusty black leather harness boots. His hair - you can tell it'd been long and he'd chopped it back with scissors himself. He looked like a vagabond. Not a hipster. A vagabond.



I sat on the couch in the studio again. We talked. When he talked it was always something of the confessional. It warranted some friendliness. I smiled. He talked and talked. Then he played me a song he said he'd written that day. This was the whole reason for us sitting here, I could see. It was a ballad in G. His guitar playing was crude yet evocative. I told him I liked his song. I told him his voice sounded very...warm. I said let's get out of here.



We went to the bar with the wood floors and ship knick-knackery on the walls. We drank any number of Bass Ales. We smoked cigarettes. There were some friends of my ex-boyfriend at the bar. This I alluded to in my sidelong way. We were both buzzed. He got up and sat down again next to me on the bench on my side. It was a silly and awkward thing to do. I said let's get out of here. I said let's go to my place. I was driving, and I drove us back there.



Once inside we had glasses of wine. I gave him the tour. Even up the spiral staircase. He looked unsure in my bedroom. We went back downstairs. We listened to an old record by the Police. He sat very close to me and spoke quietly by my ear. I could feel his breath on my hair. I sat very still. He moved back and apologized. I said do you want to go out on the roof.



He stopped me in the doorway and looked very intense. He said some things I did not understand, could not have understood. Too much interior monologue leaking out. I got scared. I did not like it.



We went out on the roof though. It was very chilly. We talked some more and laughed at silly harmless things, goofs. I don't think he knew my heart wasn't in it.



I knew of course at the bottom of things he wanted what all guys want. I'd given that too many times before I felt.



Later in the car he told me that's all Rafe wanted, anyway. From me. I said well he's not going to. he can't have it.



But then later I confronted Rafe and he told me Cromby was not well in the head, and maybe dangerous. My source information seemed to corroborate this



I was very distraught when I left the studio after speaking to Rafe. As I was leaving I saw Cromby coming in. I stopped him and said, "You lied to me." He said, "No." And covered his face and went backwards.



Rafe was right there. He escorted Cromby in through the loading dock. What the fuck. Again I was scared, but more than that angry. I sped away. I just wanted to get out of there.



A few days later Cromby called my just before Thanksgiving. I wanted it to stop. I was tired of their bullshit. I wanted him to go away. And that is what I told him

shit haven't lifted weights it's edging up to a month now and think I might be losing it, strength seeping out of me. man, if I was only ripped up like my dog and as fast as he who is a 68 lb. black German Shepherd they'd shower me with money honey and I'd be intimate with your saliva



reeling this out from my cubichell because idiots are on vacation this week and as such me here now considering staging a diveout around noon. just got a call from my old fieldbrother lettin me know fishin could indeed have been on the agenda today but it was an elusive plan have to wait till tomorrow I hope



(the diveout however is a nascent plan devoutly held)



have been having precious little fun lately. my neighbor hates my dog. i live right on top of the fucker. he stands on his deck and glares at my girlfriend. mind you, we are considerate as can be with the pooch and barking ie not letting the occurrence obtrude or prolong. never mind, the issue is that the dude is a type A anal retentive fucker and those people well they're out there and they are your enemy.



the canine hating and the glaring is becoming oppressive. i hate to admit it. it is really a small thing. it's brought out the old me: last night I muttered "cocksucker" just beneath the audible, lit a butt like throwing down my muddy glove and gave that fucker a hard look. bitch was watering his lawn. what a picayune nightmare. i don't suppose he heard me not necessary just wanted to give him the diorama: the hate is mutual, you douchebag. you want brotherly love you got the wrong drone, Chad



troubles at home last night half-drunk and not in fact yelling I told her I was pretty much sick of the constant tension whining complaining. leave it to me to lather up a passive aggressive. I'm like nutrition for unhappiness. she wants to move. we've been looking. met with the realtor. what a pain in the ass. i could in fact move. our house ain't that great. wonder what i'd be doing if I was single. never had much luck single either. i'm sure I'd be in bars? maybe not. maybe not now.



anyway, all 4 of you, now you can see why I don't usually do the regular thing here. Que pinchi pene. Now back to our irregularly scheduled mania.

RachelWhere: rejoice in poverty? he sure did.



let's see I met him in a bar in Virginia Highlands. I was there with my sister for the dancing. he

was sitting in a booth with this boy who I knew from around the Five Points named Rafe Dubious.

Rafe was an artist and had his work hanging in this one place off Ponce they were formal works with figures and they were quite quite good but he'd that summer gone abstract



I didn't care for that I was a vetrinary technician with long dark red hair. I was the type to make allusions to all the fucked up things I'd done in my past but I was a clean girl now or trying to be. my rooms had a gothic thing going with black wrought iron skull candles and witch pictures but they were clean quarters indeed. there was a spiral staircase. my bedspread was floral and bright. I live there with my sister. she was a blonde girl short and compact while I was tall and thin and had hips like a mantis. she wasn't my sister at all but that's what I told Cromby to give you an idea how I valued him. that night in the Highlands I had gone there for the dancing. Rafe D. and Cromby were holed up in a booth over pitcher of beer and arguing. About their band. Rafe wanted a saxophone in there. Cromby wanted to be Chris Cornell. It was Rafe who brought us in to sit down. Both of them were a couple of glib characters. Rafe was oilslick sexy and Cromby was sloppy and surly in a sweet way. Guess who I was attracted to. Rafe said Cromby's kind of a light drunk and Cromby said No I'm not in a way that told you he so was. Well, maybe not that bad. I don't know what happened to my not sister but it was late real late finally and we were all shit drunk and carefree in the way that you really can get to be in summer in Atlanta and we dumped ourselves into Cromby's white Nova and Cromby drove us back to the studio. The studio of Rafe in this semirenowned band practice space a big white washed brick old warehouse space where you weren't supposed to live just play music but it was shady and Rafe lived there anyway for painting studio purposes first and also the band stuff. Cromby had a key and had been sleeping on the couch occasionally with the understanding that is was to be Stealth. and what I noticed about Cromby driving and here is where I gained a certain respect for him was that even though he was completely loaded he was indeed a very very careful and inscrutably cautious drunk driver. so there was something. well the boys took me back to the studio and plugged in their guitars and proceeded to play me a song they had written together, worked up out of an old song of each of theirs. it was no better or worse than a million songs of its kind written by a million dudes of their precise ilk. i appeared flattered in the way girls such as I can but we were still drinking beer and smoking Camels. it was the kind of good time you can have at 3:30 in the morning. then we were all drunk and lying on the couch cushions Rafe had put on the floor. both of them started then to give me a backrub. Rafe put his hand in my shirt. I stopped things there. We all slept drunk on the floor. at least that is what Cromby thought happened



hey what do you know there is more to this anecdote. I will be back but I better let MercyGraft chiaroscuro you in on some ancillaries

DickDanger: he angry he got a angry face people think he angry when he ain't even angry I seen him in this all night coffeehouse on 9th avenue in Chelsea in 1998 summer of he came in about 11:30 pm and got on the list to play. it was a open mike where they basically gave you a gig right there. small stage. what was clear about cromb was he didn't have no marketing plan. he had one of those soundhole pickups for the acoustic and that was it. he come on in and set down at the small curve of bar in the side and back and order a amber beer and another and three and it was clear he didn't have no qualms on playin drunk because he'd take 4 up to the stage with him when he go to play. white boy blues. but he sing his own words and put his own C Am F G etc. twist on things. this one night there was these two minxy small dyehead girls there no I mean one was chinese the other octaroon perhaps they were from NYU they gave him their regard and he gave them some song about coming up like a scarecrow across the crisscross bottle glass. nah, that's some lie. he never had no song that good. this was a good night there though because it came down to a blues jam with this dude ted and it went on and on and ended in a vestibule with this micmac girl and ted and some others on the smoke out then it was shamble into the morning spend the last dollars on a egg plate and then shamble back down into the train it was a dry glory and a arid one dry as wallboard dust - why you think he drink so much?



MercyGraft: he knows that indeed you do go around only once and that's why his conscience has been dealing him some blows. the summer sunlight should never shine so hard. catch him smoking an American Spirit by the truck. planning to dive out to somewhere remote where he can smoke some more and try to think himself back into who he used to want to be. harsh too is the reflection too back on what and how it he used to be. it was never so good. maybe one summer. 95. that was a good one. hi it's me Cromby here see I've hijacked MG he's supposed to be my better half but you know how that goes

yeah yeah can you hear the voice can you hear the talking well her voice is prettier than mine you can have that if you want to but the real crux is her mind is prettier than mine too and it is a mind like that that reminds a mind like mine to focus on the voice of vincent. vincent. raw. raw like that other vincent reckon but not so nice as that broken blue and yellow skybird schizophrenia of his mine is gray dun like the smoke when it comes out the lungs yours the lungs mine wine I need wine well how about a light beer say maybe a Coors seems apropos



I need a career path I need a bath I need some blow I need a blow job I need the knob replete with the jism of when you back away from schism of herenow rightexactlynow all you know all you see have seen have said said said right now I said right now I'll leave you in a beat. and not one from my heart. no. one from my sensibilities my sense of dramatic task my past but subtle way beyond yelling so you can't feel it no you can't but someone can others can have nope fuck what's the value of interior monologue it's that you just say. I read one blog today.



i say now call this one two fish one I'll never see one I've seen too much

DickDanger:



Well I like to kick it alone. With my girlfriend and my parrot. And fuck that drunk kid. You call him Cromby. I call him crap. haha no. I have forgotten him is he a asshole. You reach a stage in life where you start wondering what a true asshole is. I got $987.04 in my savngs. and that is why i aint talk to cromb all he ever wanted to do was find a drunk micmac chick and fuck her 4 times tops till it came out she was nancyzen all along and also a fat black girl who chafed his dick and also some filipina one no all 3 the same no some 2 he met in a bar in Newmarket one fine one one fat one fuck the fat one suck the fine one's teat later some one sucks you off you come can't say who probably the fat one well still pretty hot



all things considered

NancyZen:



We drove up to Portsmouth and Old Man Mile Beach. I was up on a visit from the land of the south. I lived in a house with a boyfriend down there who had long black Turkish hair he was a blacksmith. I had to tell Cromby all about him. Cromby didn't say much. We went to a bar and he drank numerous Tecates. I was drinking vodka. We both got drunk. Cromby leaned across the real small small table and whispered in my ear he wanted to go get a room somewhere and fuck me. I said I had a boyfriend. Cromby ordered tequila shots. We had 2 apiece. We both got too drunk to drive. Cromby became belligerent and started spouting bitter bitter attitudes about why he always a eunuch never the dude why couldn't it have ever been him. I said it wasn't him it was timing. We left the bar to go smoke out. We smoked out far down on the beach saying nothing just watching the surf. We then walked back up the boardwalk all sparchy like the salt air. Cromby stopped at one of those pitch the baseball guess your speed things. Cromby put down 4 bucks for six balls and told the barker he didn't want to guess he just wanted to throw. Cromby looked me right in the eye and said in high school he had a 90 mile an hour fastball. He threw all six then and never broke 40. He said I'm a fucking liar, all right, but I still got a 8 inch dick. I became somewhat uncomfortable because he was obviously drunk and getting loud. People were looking at him. I didn't need this shit. It was a buzzkill. We went to another bar. He went off to piss and I left. I went to another bar down the way. There I met another boy right off the bat. He had a bowl haircut and muscles and except for the bowl haircut seemed altogether hairless. He took me to his apartment back about 15 miles down the highway in this other town where people lived and we fucked while his roommate took pictures. I didn't really care about the blacksmith at that moment. It wasn't the first time hanging with Cromby had brought this type of behavior out of me. The other boy and his friend were morons but man could they fuck. What turned me on too was the idea of ditching Cromby that way and what I would do next.



The next morning I emailed Cromby the pictures from the one boy's computer. That night I got on a plane and went back to the south where I was from. And that was it for me and Cromby. Unless he should call me again and I am bored but I had heard that he had disappeared at sea

read this but if you read this and you have been reading this read the other couple that follow and these are reverse chronological for now starting from here which they always are anyway but you know what I mean I am not dead but I am dead too oh if only we could drink and talk but this will be as good as it gets for you unless you are skullbolt in which case I might see ya dog in which whether or not eventuality you are forever exempt



we got new forms here and we can say new things in these new forms and still have them be Lit. who is to say what is?????????? Is Literature alive and well? You better come on in my kitchen



it's going to be raining outdoors yeh I used to sing that one still can just did I bet



I beg



I guess I should just go to bed

because I am laboring under the burden

of getting anything anything at all out on the page

and I am drinking beer as usual and while it's not exactly clouding my head

I am not a ball of holy fire yet.



But it is only really my third night of you know here I am

after I said I am going to write no matter what and so here I am doing it. Yeah

this is a poem. but one with no line breaks. and no regard for anything beyond words,

any words, whatever words you can find, dog, whatever words

you can muster. it just feels so much better



just to type along than to sit silent and bound and beholden

to too many ideas. all day at work today in my hole I was trying to muster

some kind of referendum on the process of writing and I couldn't do it. and I'm not doing it now.



and what a bore this is here you'd think if I was letting it flow and letting it fly

and flaying it out I really would just flay it and tell some of the good stuff. so much of the good stuff is from

the so distant past to me yet not so much in years no more certainly than ten years ago and who cares? what is the good stuff?

but if I start writing it what will I have? what will it be? well



this is part of the referendum. I think I could write some short stories that are just mildly disguised versions of things that've happened to me and maybe I should as a form of catharsis. tell it straight, add some shit, tweak something, but in the right

way, call it fiction. i know this is what many writers do

and I guess I will do it because making stuff out of purer imagination, making from out of the dream, is harder.

or is it. no, it shouldn't be. but what I'm saying



what I'm saying to you right now is I need some stories I can tell fast as I can tell them. fast. fast. I need production. I need work. I need backlog. I need ore. I need stumps to cut off and to hew out of them my sick little wood sculptures. if I face it I bet I could write a whole volume of short stories just shit that's happened to me. based on that shit. I know something of the fiction will enter into it but I

do think I need to codify somehow as a start

my own personal details. I keep finding ways to peel

off out of the main thing I am supposed to be workin on but that is

THE DEATH OF MOTT CROMBY



MercyGraft:



He bought it early. He was four years old. He had a croup.



Now a couple weeks before the onset of the cough he'd fallen out of his crib reaching for mosquitos. It was late July. It was the back front room of a medium ranch where he slept and Mom was vigilant but it was darning hours and he happened to reach too long and fell out of his crib. Onto a slat wood floor where he hit his head and cried and then slept for some time.



Mott:



Lies. Not accurate. Not even any fun in the lack of accuracy. Let's end this thing here.



rachelwhere:



none of this shit I can tell is going to be even anywhere near as fun as just the Internet the one you can have if you can only pay for it



mercygraft:



give him a break he hasn't written for months and months again. I have some dream story I would like to tell that could be illuminating I have some fantasy



Mott:



it's all breaking up



MercyGraft & RachelWhere



You're doing it again. You're not giving it a chance



Mott:



I could be drinking I could be drinking again Oh wait I am

Now I got new things to telll you; now I got new ways to tell you these things

Who cares, but one.ahhhhhhh



MercyGraft:



He breaks it down for over like the last past ten years and the answers are all equal in the head and the answer is no result or yes it is and it answers nothing oh but yes it does some piquant existential pain and yeh caring I care I care I care for this dog too much no just enough you know this whole observation is going to in spite of itself become one. single. blog . entry. yeh. and.



why not



because the whole matter will stick here's the ugly beersoaked entrails of the idea but now the idea is true.



drunk summer another drunk summer another another how many this one one more and one more I can see having them till 35 36 37 38



if I can keep my body in shape. god and my potency is such a waste. I could fuck you now bitch hard for a hour. I said that to the sky. trees and rocks. I am none of these. i am the ether of lost friends. I am still out of control. I am writing again as a means of escape. good writer. bitch. fuck . shit . piss. this'll all get on the Internet because I don't want Mott Cromby to die. He's already dead. He's died so many times. So many times. This is The Death Of Mott Cromby. Fuck the whip I'm the whip the whip already hurts

Mott:



___________________________________________________________________________________________

RachelWhere:



I can tell you a story a story about Cromby. He rocked one fifth of my world in the summer of 95.



He could kiss. We were both real dumb. didn't know motherfuckers would be making fortunes while we laid around. that is his voice creeping in there not mine. his voice crept into my. head.



he sang to me on tapes. and sent them to me. I would listen to them in my red car and smoke cigarettes and think of him and me and the world. and me. and the world.



he could kiss and he was smart and funny. and he was very emotional and then later he did dumb things like jerk off instead of fuck me and then I called him on it and said some thing to embarrass him and then I sat smugly in a thin chair and he flipped out and bashed with his fist the doors of this third hand dresser cheap cheap and his violence was cheap and expensive and disturbing. and then he cried right after and fell at my feet. and his drama was a cheap something. and he was a good fuck for me why would I lie about something like that he had good hands he had guitar player hands and he had a good tongue he ate me deep like the sweet confection I was and won't be again



MercyGraft:



He died on a ten speed bike. They were riding to the mall; him and Dick Danger. They were like Fourteen. Riding bikes onto the bridge; turning on and in the breakdown lane on the side there June sun yeh in it and in in that turning lane.

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

Cromby is back

I have a backlog of posts

both literal and figurative

but this one is right now

so let it fly



glad Detroit won

frankly not surprised that they did

Sox whipped in Denver

Didn't have to be that way

this is ephemeral

and for my girl Bunnie



tonight did a foreign thing

which was going before this town's planning board

to ask for variance

to construct a shed



I need another blog to honestly explain

these mundane details of my life

which are only as mundane as I view them

you can't quantify experience; only qualify it



there are some things about my life separate from

Cromby's that I'd like to tell but I can't do it here



Cromby is the dreamer

Cromby lives in the dreamworld

which is our world. your world. the world

seen through Cromby's eyes



felt through Cromby's heart



(and this is a note to bunnie:

it is not his heart that is complacent -

it's his will



sometimes)



it's probably not cool to call out bunnie

I regard the other 3 - 5 of you and close confidants as well

or you if you are reading new

or you



tough night

tough life

I think you if you've read this far



can get down with that

assertion



say?

this is the kind of day where usually I decline to write why because the thick swamp of what that'd be same same same how's that same is the biggest illusion of all where the shoulder of paranoia provides cover is here here I am and later later I will tell you more



***********************



I wonder, why can't I just get back into that head I can have of glib cynical hyperbolic violence, and then I am confronted with a paragraph such as this:







In Nasiriyah, only Kadem Hashem and his youngest daughter survived when a U.S. missile struck their house. His wife Salima, five of their children, and six other family members who happened to be in the house at the time were killed. Finding a photograph in the debris of his house, Hashem told reporter Ed Vulliamy of The Observer: "This was my middle daughter, Hamadi. I found her burnt to death by that doorway, she had shrunk to about a metre tall." His one surviving daughter, Bedour, described now as "what remains of a beautiful girl," lies on the floor of a relative's house. "She is shrivelled and petrified like a dead cat. Her skin is like scorched parchment folded over her bones. Unable to move, she appears as if in some troubled coma, but opens her eyes, with difficulty, to issue an indecipherable cry like a wounded animal." Hashem dug a mass grave for his family in a nearby holy city. "I collected them all and put them in a single grave at Najaf; my money was burnt, too, and I couldn't afford to bury them separately."







For further articles and studies, see OnPower.org.







Reprinted from The Independent Institute:



http://independent.org/tii/news/040510Higgs.html





















This article comes from The Smirking Chimp



http://www.SmirkingChimp.com







The URL for this story is:



http://www.SmirkingChimp.com/article.php?sid=16122







Robert Higgs: 'The crimes at Abu Ghraib are not the worst'



************************



every time I ever lived in the fast lane



I veered and crashed







but the shit part is here I am now still



burning



why







and



my question is now, if I am as unmanacled from pretension now as I wasn't then then now that the cuffs are gone to mail,



can I beat them into



daggers & shuriken



or do I or could I or has it happened already







yes



no



maybe



fuck



shut up







if I ever had salt enough to just tell about daytoday how would that be?:







I drank 5 beers



I loved my dog



I felt rage at some situation



I schemed to get away to fish and get sparchy



I felt estranged



I felt stuck



I felt isolated by what and how much I know about this and this



the sun felt good



I smoked an American Spirit Light



I was alone



I looked at a woman's body and yearned



I felt sad love for the woman I live with and felt like I could cry







my main qualification for being a writer is that all I want to do is sit in a room and drink with you and tell you lies all night then slip in a true story that happened to me once and see if and what it does to your eyes

one day



motivation crept back in complaining

of my absent pedigree

I told that wench

run bring me a beer she said you'll never win the title match drinking a hundred now



this is all prelude to me telling you the story of Mercygraft Hill and the old red house, that ancient neighborhood, abandoned by all and for dozens of years save for the old woman's mutant children, numbering 2



one was a bird the color of tarnished copper with a perpetually open beak and 2 human feet emerging, human yelps and mumbling coming horrible from inside its gullet and as I looked closely I saw that the creature's intelligence was somehow fused in there



my companion told me he'd been sitting atop the ruined roof of the house for as long as anyone knew. the danger he presents to himself is a danger to us all



we had earlier climbed the hill, the oldest and highest in town, up a steep road as steep as to be nearly useless in the effort it took to ascend



we scaled some rocky ledge the better to go unobserved and from up there I looked down on the grassy outskirts of the town, the rusty rails of the blasted tracks running far out under tunnellike green and sward canopy of trees and grass and yet curiously to me the view included no vista: I could not see the ocean nor the distant encampents of the armies, armies of men, armies of beasts



(then shift into a battle on a rooftop down in the city, this battle also a wild party for spectators and participants both, and at a certain point I go running off to this artist studio apartment house to do a few things there to use the bathroom being one of them but and of course there is a girl, there is a bunch of other dudes, there are black and red curtains, there is a friend I once betrayed, there is aloofness, everyone there wants to be famous as do I, there is some shame and there are some further inscrutable lessons)



I'm getting ahead of myself



this is all just a prelude. motivation crept back in unannounced sometime in the night last night,



let me tell you friends that I've been down, I've been hurting, I've been fucked up disturbed walking headshot in the morning streets, smoking cigarettes, wondering why how and is it too late well no, no not at all, so I am back here to tell you, writing in stealth, and at 8:12am



bless the hour



****************************



11:16am on the other hand can be a most debilitating hour

reading of war crimes perpetrated by your own countrymen and women and plenty of them

now maybe that is a mind too far but how can it be? all the information is right here

all the details, all the photos and movies



digression is the context in this case



the debiltating minutes; feel myself slipping to the torpor

but then I put a few words in this box unbeknownst and that is some hope



**********************



Some parts of the dream are ridiculous as parts of the life though always more entertaining



the dream runs the life limps perhaps I will carve you an elegy of images tonight



perhaps not



****************************



I have no pedigree and slight precedent in my history for success but what I do have is bezel in the blood enough and obstinacy to decline defeat



my insane ways the massive vanity

the paradox, self-destruction



self-creation



the will to do This



****************************



Cheat the Muse or get

bitch to surrender



either way

will do



long as you

get in



**************************



the schematic aftertaste

grinning



cloven head

carrion twisting



bloody ribbons

on the flagpole



*************************



I said earlier on here that there would be a battle, a battle of men versus animals yeh now aint that just the case

how'd I get so remote. I don't know

paranoia from your hand in the dark.

i think it is a cat. no I think I am one



such a fine sunny day and here I am inside

how'd I get so remote. and yet it was the plan

for me. laid out. fuck. remote. how'd I get so



if I say it it is true. I am insane. one eighth

not enough for anything but to be remote.

history. aboriginals. go in the woods.



I can't all I can do is stare at pines. from here.

they are remote. guess what else is. I should have

wrote instead about my heart. who broke it



I broke it myself. It keeps happening. The rage of a king

the plate

of a beggar



who broke it



me

a dream of you entwined

some Indian style with another guy

as I walked away well

that was a pretty bad dream



and then I thought about having no morals

but couldn't get there not the way

I have in dreams where I cheated

on you



hey everyone feels like their life is empty

now and then, me same as you same

as anyone



In different age I want to kill the motherfuckers

who hurt us and can't see us, want to kill and humiliate

but in this our age of killing and humiliation

(hey this is our age, same as the last)



nah. what I want is a modest sum,

enough to take you and I even farther away

from the rest of people, to some quiet space

among trees and sun and snow



when it comes. the world is done

but not us, and not a lot of people

just like us. I'm a cynic

a hyperbolist a jerk



and I drink too much but you can't

get past God

and Love God and Love

in some true way which is you have to get away



away from this dead world

and into some



light

what I enjoy now fucks is the liberty to say fuck

to my own past psychotic peccadillos



nothin will compare to Abu Grahib cept past

death sick peccadillos perpetrated all long down and

across time



shit drunk and not saying what I came here to say --



mass absolution insanity productivity for everyone like me



that's my prayer



(for everyone else:



the prayer is:



there is a God

and It is

a citizen



of



Love

the dumb succeed and prosper and think they thoughts are good in the land and air of the dumb but fuck me I just want to come in the good way the old way the way it was supposed to be



don't you drag my family into this cunt you have no idea no idea about my particular lineage yeh I drink but you best be proud but no you're normal and I'm not I'm not



I'm not

I'm not I'm not I'm not



and no tattoos to show for it no band tapes or flyers no group sex tales or thoughts no

not even those so much anymore my thoughts

are pure and yours, bitch,

are not by trying to harangue me about money shit if you want money you

are with the maximum wrong motherfucker; least till I make it and if I do

I hope from vantage of tonight that you are gone because

you among



how many other fish in the sea?



won't deserve my dollars the night

that I make them



and if I don't/



well that's the whole point



don't fuck with me about money bitches

I can't take it if you want a money man

you got the wrong guy.



(but I am the dumb one because all I got is blood and heart

but oh yeah

she had that too and she fucked



the town that other 4 long



ago not that long



but fuck I hate



this shit but luckily I'm an alcoholic

words of love



I'd be a lot happier you

fucking moron you fucking

moron you



fucking bitch

mercy now do we need hounds to chase some sense into this populace well yes hounds of heaven the good kind the kind people and I mean the actual people such as Jesus and the Buddha understood



dreams of hell last night hell on earth and murder senseless unforgiving murder,

the perpetrators also the victims too bad that ain't the way it works here on earth



the perpetrators prosper. the killed just die



I been in better moods I been in better times time time time where is it when you need it

where is it



when you need it

overheard



what are you doin', Internet guy



No porno

any old way will do

this is an age of old ways

when is any age isn't



but that's why it is

sing a song of slept on the dog bed

or sing some more isometric song



sing once then head north

to get bled

lie in bed with your psychosis nurse



fuck her

and be

wed

now

you can see

the failure



now you can see

the fuck up



oh but i forgot you don't care



what you motherfuckers of your stripe

need to learn is that the transitory

is not the whole



everything is what you think

it is and that is why

we are finished



here



care not and feel the despair

of my dreams which predate

some more bullshit reality



ah



goodbye



you make me mad youths

but you will die too

or else learn to hide



as I have

you baby

one of the few

might think I would want you



wrong



you probably think

i'm fatter and more gross

than i am

but they breed a good breed

just shy of the mountains these days



any knowing would entail all the dreams and nightmares

nope hopes

as distinct from

no hope



what's worse than cynicism

is this clear eye i'm getting spares

no one not you

not me



not you

I'd like to welcome you

to this forum to discuss the hopeless

layers of everything



I'm embracing:

self-regenerative pipe dream

I'll get my shit together though



turn out a fucked up story at this point I'm wondering

should I just fail to eschew my bullshit method got it now translates

into trash sex violence drugs stupidity apathy horror terror vile bland sensibility

see this is the vein I get in

but no



I should say things rarely ever seem to work but yet

bullshit mill spawn spin sick game isn't the only verbal dare I say rodeo. yet this is what I pursue



I could be living with just a bit more sophistication I suppose if I had played my cards better.

who is not without regret.



a surfeit of $$$ would serve me



ahahahahah

man ray



a loud city limber dust not mine in dream upon her Orangina spine

25 years old. beer of taxation. thought: should have come there -



fog this morning. Heavy white fog clouds the stone drive

by the hospital.



Who can train these particles of impossibilty. I can



salt the beer and sluice it down onto the drill,

past it, wet the new board and work the bit, one bit of discernment.



remember when these pay phones were essential, now they signal portals of defeat. human. portents. spare a nickel,



can you spare a dime. all the common currency is now obsolete. Symbols of some other life. fuck. die



the inescapable image: me drunk and leaning into a pay phone at Union Square that June

waiting for you for you to come then by the subway I said if I follow you home



will you call the cops on me? should of gone now I



won't go back. don't

get killed off. hope

not, wait and



see

nancy you must never let me but oh that thing I once must wrote

and here I fall to your defense but never exterior-strate but yet

why yes all the time I am a performer but no not

of your nefarious type



type sexy

or just

hammer to the head



well



hammered I am

and also such

a head yeh you



give it good

I will but you can't make me



in slow motion here now level son my blood feels the look of things here lately on the inside more expertly than me excursive skin yeh lately this blood has been cooling



which is where you need to keep it, in the cooler in the crisper mami, I know whereof I speak, mami, I'm a man of pride



out walking alongside this one particularly muscular and true black herding dog this morning I told myself to look at distance, look at the details of the trees, many many trees wet on the hill I live by and many of them old, old pines and oaks older than you mamimissymy sister



fear not what comes fear not fear not



I told myself look at the distance and the grey morning seemed much of potential and scene fore and aft, both biblical



and pagan aftermath

self-portrait

evaluation of the damp half-thawed

ground scored with diminishing snow grain

was overwhelmingly floaty green; this property

was hastened or fomented by a pair

of gin-and-tonics or gee and tees as I overwhemingly

prefer to think of that specialty twig borne water



before it was all through (by it

I mean the moment) I would hear a

high keening noise from the road or from

beyond the road; I thought could it be from a

truck or trailer? or could it be from the universe

sounding commendation



and scoring 1 true thought for me

because the 1 thought I was thinking was that

poetry really was one of the first and as such

one of the greatest forms of art, most essential

in cause for humanity: after all, look at Lao-Tzu

Aesop, Homer and Anonymous Ballads



Shakespeare, Lazarus and

so, that was the thought. then my munificent

black dog stood and rounded to attention when

the keening noise came and then too came the second thought

which was: well in that case I'm free

to write a really crappy novel now



because great art or not most people care not a crap

for poems but man will they never not shut up

about what polluting dumbass movies they've just seen

and how you've got to see them

too ah fuck it just send me

the jackpot Kafka and I'll mount the psychic blanket party

against all your foes



then now and to come

cagey



another snow-blasted March

I'm out in my writing shed

chucking another wedge of oak

into that woodstove we bought

at the flea market last year,

then back to bang on the manual.

My burden is to be the transmitter



for whatever chords of memory

or nightmare chance to band

down and through. the green

magnetic vertigo of the frequency

is something I never question.

Neither ever did you. You're tearing up



Texas again now and I'm still here.

You call some nights from some bar

or some new guy's place. The price

of transmission is how cold-blooded

you've made me become. The long

distance helps to chill the platelets. At night I sit



on the roof here and sip cheap

brandy from the bottle, smoke cigarettes

I roll myself. Damn you, God, I think.

All the ponds are still capped with ice.

The table is buried in white pages covered



in letters like mites, skin fleas, all

the insanity of the transmission. You

wondered that half-year you were here

how we'd ever get rich. I said it'll be

no sweat for you once you get shut



of me. You just hunkered down into

that Martin dreadnought and scratched

out the transmission. No brains in it either.

Just blood and heart. You the purer cipher

but then here I am, yet plugged into the wavelength

albeit by a cheap brown extension cord.



Tomorrow I'm going to wake up on the floor

out here freezing, step out, piss on the cinderblocks,

and then make my way back to the black and white kitchen

with that creepy Crazy Kat clock you gave me

that Christmas. Fucker. He's in the transmission.



Bigger wavelength than ours too.

There's going to be a message on the machine.

It's going to be you and you're going to be in some

horrible trouble. I'm going to have to spend the afternoon

tuning up the '82 Ranger God help me and then hit the road.

I'm going to incur a huge credit debt just getting down there.



When I get down there I'm going to get into a fight with a boy in a bar

and crack his head with an ashtray and fuck up my right wrist all

to hell. There's going to be a gun at some point.

I'll be like, I just want to write.

It'll be just like a movie.



Nah. Fuck it. You go to hell. Fuck all of Texas,

get strung out and die. I'm throwing another oak in the stove.

Sing a pretty little tune.

Send it out there. I'll pick it up in the transmission.

I don't have time for this bullshit I have work to do

perihelion: the behavior

I make a quarter turn and gesture with a cigarette



I turn one-eighth and am handed a Cross pen



I rotate half again and am handed a receipt



I slide back once and am reminded of transgressions



I am test wheel

And answer wheel



Alone in the peristyle

climbing up the hill

toward the smoke

of the cookfire



the full moon alarming

past fractious

cloud scuttle



I am too few

bootmarks in the blue

shadow snowdrift

all I need at intervals is a hill

bright sunlight

pines



a German Shepherd

a pond or stream

tackle, truck



beer,

occasional smoke



then after all this,

a clear head and 3 hours

per night



with which to exercise it



after that,

everything that's ever happened to me,

every action I've ever witnessed,

every emotion I've ever felt,



should do to make

for the rest of it.



nomads I guess hear

just the other nomads



while territorial beings

fixate

on the big



dark music

between the moon

and here

don't go around it,

go through it

oh and these are the worst of times when images are all blunted nullified and the word abhors oh



and of course these are not the worst of times why look

at this paradise of opportunity and all you bring to it



is you're bored? you're tired of some shit? you wish something was some other way?



yeah but it's these surroundings and yeah well tell that to

the person in jail the person in the desert the person with no car the person with no job the person with no food the person with no mind tell that



to the dead person with no one more time

to give pause

to take pause



to not spend a lot of time wondering

why can't it all be happening

in a funky colonial style house

with 4 guitars no cares

acclaim, a cooler head

and me some much cooler stereotype, well



you take what you have

you just have to take it

---

then something happened

and then I started

anew

again

I don't believe in astrology except as a guide and where it seems to apply

two fish two fish two fish two fish

uh gee uh



the thing about her is that she's doing it all yeh

but ok what about what G. Flaubert famously said

about the ideal writer's ideally boring habits contrasted

with his so not boring imagination I guess



I epitomize that idea. well in fact minus any glib

shit a big part of this shit is feeling nostalgia for five

minutes ago or else 20 years ago passed in an instant

but anyway it's a new world these days, and a dangerous one



and forbidding. to a point. they say we're up here a small state

and yet outpeople up north get lost every day. traditional

lines of the American geography are bullshit. this can be

taken literally and/or as metaphor. equal application



tangentially I'll tell you I do have perverse thoughts about

certain ordinary young corporately held women seen daily and regard these

thoughts as little brothers, too dumb to know what

they're about. sex is so overrated. so not worth bothering



of course you need an outlet for sex to see this.

I never had one for years but feel so sanguine

now it gives me hope about myself.

men care about men things.



sex trouble is the trouble of boys.

no time for that now:

my anger is what troubles me. note I don't say "scares"

I don't feature any more personal apocalypes for me



unless of course I reserve one more of the deep Jungian type

but conditionally on the deep DL and no one knows. I might take one more

of those. but poetry. you can do one a day:

fiction is so much harder and I motherfuckers need to pare out



a space to write. around here I mean. Because I will not let cheesy New York

new uh huh uh huh motherfuckers win. my goal is to make my old

teacher Tony Ardizzone shocked and proud. Look What That One Did

sort of thing. I'm only half doing it now not even half



I got so many fists and barely one face to put them in except this one

right here



right here

Here's this to make you sick at heart.



And here's this to make you sick at heart.



And Paul Krugman better stay on the ground and out of small airplanes before someone makes a phone call and he gets the Wellstone treatment

The criminals in Washington

are worse than they've ever been.



Ever.



This is not an opinion.



I'd never send a son

to die

in the oil wars

and neither should you.



Evil, stupidity, cravenness

is rampant now

at a pitch never before

possible.



It's all because of someone's ATM card.

It's what the computer says.

It's what the TV says.



The tree of liberty has died.

So keep your blood inside.



You will need it in the end

The November sun rose firing the mist ascendant upon the Piedmont. I awoke in my faded red '87 Nova feeling sick from drinking. I was parked in the narrow, hardscrabble parking lot of Black Stump Studios, the rehearsal space.



It was my ninth night sleeping in my car's reclined bucket seat and two months since I'd left my old life.



I viewed my breath rising toward the pilly gray upholstery of the vehicle's ceiling. The gold sunlight streamed through the smudged side windows and over my battered jeans jacket.



I reclined the bucket seat upward and drew in toward myself, burying my nose beneath the smoke-smelling the found green flannel shirt I'd begun wearing as liner since the weather had broken cold, smelling my filthy blue undershirt.



I had a wool overcoat stored at the self-storage cubicle I shared in Sandy Springs, and I'd go dig it out today. First I'd have to get gasoline for the car.



Before that I'd need coffee.



I wondered how much money I had left on me.

this is how we do



Man Above sets upon his nightly rounds

just beyond the lip of the horizon,

his long red breath shuddering out to end in purple celestial among first stars,



while in the short time below he sets fire to the future,

makes the pink wind

blow again up over cold tops of black pines,



while ahead the kidnapped sun flees

leaving only old wind to crush her gold end embers

like fire gnats peeling off the cherry from a smoke,



white remnants of herself winnowing

sharp and flat into fading but still

obtaining icepack,



then it is that the grey higway becomes my diorama

and I slide back through black ice mirage

even as I go forth, a player again in the drama,



tales beckoning still as the road shall beckon,

always the black miles falling back into each other,

other miles rolling out red, dark as blood



Later in a tavern,

I take smoke in

codify my drinks,



and prepare

to

stay awhile

another stupid song of mine that you'll never hear. you can guess the chords



Myrmidon: 1. one of a legendary Thessalian people accompanying Achilles to the Trojan War 2. a loyal retainer or attendant 3. a follower or subordinate who unquestioningly or pitilessly executes order: HIRELING



I crouch in the grass

As the crows circle high in the east



Myrmidon

Up for sale here

I bet you can't have me



Easier to be simplehearted

If I was only simplehearted

If I was only simplehearted



I'd

be so easy

be so easy



Myrmidon

Unindentured

Bet you can't have me

I'm unimpressed here



It was all to the good

It was good for a while



I had some good ideas

But I was such a great liar

this blog is all over the place

this blog is a dog on the couch where he knows he shouldn't be

this blog is facile like eggs

this blog is prone to lapses like any addict

this blog is better than TV

this blog is tempermental and lacksadaisical

this blog is written quickly while standing up and drinking a beer

looooooose

lose lose

and I just want to gain



I want this fucking dog

to stop with the police bark

and I just want to gain



I am the last guy in the world to feel sorry for

and yet I just want

to gain



fucking A I didn't want to be drinking tonight

and yet I'm drinking again because

I just want to gain



and I got laid and and gave lay

last night; still I want

only to gain



I want to be better than I

am and manage

the gain



I drip in fast and loud

then disappear for days and

that's no way



to gain. I want no commentary.

Only a feeling. And that feeling

is to gain



I wish I could sit for one drink

with all of you and you all know

who you are



and though that would be no gain,

it would be some comfort,

and it would be some action,



some discreet action. I

am cool as the Parliament now and

dun as the red light



of twilight coming up over

rocks or stones of buildings. whatever

you see. But no,



I'm alone in my truck

and want

only to gain.



But there's nothing here,

no voice,

no sense, no chance



tonight. Nothing ventured,

nothing

gained

get dumb discipline



it's been a weak week a week

of interior mumble-speak, a

leak week with a weak leak

of critique over the weak peak

of a week ago



get home in the eve and want to leave sleeve

on table but not able to weave leave

I grieve for the long eve the siege of the past

if I could last till 10 pm per diem of

bluster could I then muster a rate



of fate to eliminate this crate I'm faced with my

date with the desk. wrong desk, the cubicle

as usual and not even so bad but 10 times as bad

as what could be had if avoid 10 beers,

10 doubts, 10 fears



notes on a page

electricity

rage

whatever, so you wasted

5 days



5 more come to play and remember

it's play

it's play



it's play

some things change

other things never change

this is the entire basis of

the game



you can to choose what to do

perhaps even what you are

but not what makes you

what you are



the choice to work

or to not work

if you are an artist



is the brittle fence

separating the lepers

from the zombies



while here in Utopia

the choice matters

to few: not to the

dead, nor the poor, nor the ignorant, nor the rich & renowned



nor to the air

which surrounds you -

only to you. and

me. and him over there.

and her. and her too.

and that guy. and that one other guy



all you can do is work in the margins till

payday or lottery (amounts to same)

or no all you can do is work in the margins.

that's where all the interesting shit happens anyway

I give you that



A canister or a balustrade or the text learned from ages

of being afraid I think we are closer to our native seeds than thought

friends thought once thought



I walked through some residual deja vu tonight, not for nothing. it's nothing

upon nothing to maybe move you or move me nothing moves me tonight but desire to see

my own come on the page that's head come, come



only no one can give me. and not even that. so often we reach

for sexual metaphors in absence of uh yeah but fuck it, been drinking steady tonight

like a pro and I find that, sure, resumption of smoking give a man more stamina



in matters of sack both drinking and dribbled; my girl's a good and a fine ass, leg, lip:

but I don't think she knows what I have to offer tonight. and I ain't wakin her up.

I'm going ice fishing tomorra A.M. and plunge my auger in ice



and there's no frustration here much, physical or meta-, that a Bloody Mary

two bong hits and friendship can't cure. this is how we do

here in the state of New Hampshire. And rarely advertised



thus. my guts full of Pandora I can only express rare and dread is

the thing I beat off. Fuck. Would have been better tonight to get into some

other head than mine. I got no tales of present intrigue. Don't want any.



Want to conflate. Want to tell you something you'd rather not believe

but have to. Or maybe I should just give every gory detail of every fuck

ever had and every fucked up time ever had. But no because then I'll start



wanting more. Hence this butt in this bloody hand and all of you who feel me

or who've ever felt or are so inclined toward such as one and etc.

know this: I was and am the best blues guitar player you'll never hear:



Long ago one sweet Liz lied abed it was Sat. morning and we'd just come together.

Click and Clack were on the radio. I plugged in my gray Strat

and played a few licks. She said, I love that, when you get that bad-ass look



on your face. You are a bad-ass,

aren't you? I said, I think

I might be a better guitar player than Eric Clapton.



She said,

well, let's not go

overboard.

Momentarily you will learn whether this suspect is a threat to the United States. I was listening like a dumbass to CNN and got this title, Mr. Ashcroft



Red hands, red hands

blood on my knuckles

dry blood painted cross knuckles

past hand

past dry hand

best I can do

best I can do



picking at threads

threads

one way or another

conflating my fate



(gotta win lottery)



the quiet times spent not drinking

a never cessation of boyish ways of

boyhood taking notation per

nightmare runes of self yet not

such nightmares of some



Fallujah



loss of depredation is

the song of a eunuch

in the tradition of the woods

dark

tradition

of the woods



is thus: mnemonic understanding

of what wages

must be paid



mark the currency oh

and the currency is a wild

boast yeh



I mark you like a host

like a carnivore in exodus

deemed



most likely to seem yet I dream

and the dream is fervent,

heavy with past



inflection you see I carry this

mist off the highway south

and I can't remember the number



no wonder I was a white ghost

a host beneath lands of whoever

has most



and if wrist cramps up that's

when ramp up for real. I'm gonna steal

from the rapt gift and lift



from the highways the

High Way

second to none. except one:

that's me:



when I get free to flow

motherfuckers

will know



and will she still

smell my smoke? don't know

still to write in the notebook

is the no-look



not trapped like last simply

trapped like past

yeh I'm trapped like gas

in an atmosphere

like fear

like dipshits young

like Jung in a post-Mod

book



and look why not?

be a Rook

on the board:

no sword just straight



at angles

like trees

like 45 degrees

I mean munchies



I got no trees

no smoke



tonight

right good



right

everybody feels ambivalent about Raymond



the whiffle ball of his life began its declension thusly:

the edge of his olfactory perception

began to crumble and fester like vile asbestos from beneath walls

condemned; in short,

his sense of smell went gamy.



at a public cafeteria associated with the drab yellow box of a building

where he worked as a typist of various alphanumeric codes into various

incomprehensible computer systems, a short, grey-skinned cafeteria



lady

doled him out a blob of mashed potato

and a stench hit him like a litter box,

like someone had dumped one on him, a full one.

he wasn't sure if it was her

or the food. he flinched, he pointed his glance

down on her, and her gums cracked open,

concupiscent and terrible, to hiss the words,

"cricket meal....bugssssssssssss...."



and the odor of that breath and of those words was the beery, pissed



upon odor of typically homeless individuals,

sick, befouled bodies sprawled upon concrete,

the odor of a man with a bleeding forehead on the ground smoking a



butt

he picked up and lit off the ground and him down scrabbling and



reaching around

for his teeth, his busted state-issued spectacles, his dry pint of Zhenka.



and it too was the odor of the yellow, mouseshit-covered white keys of



an ancient piano in an abandoned church basement,

and also the odor of an improperly used condom slicked off hastily and



crushed

beneath a venereally infected, sexually victimized-turned victimizing



individual's grubby sneaker into a pile of char and cinders and

broken brown glass, and yeh it was the death smell of a cluster of dying

red sumac just beyond the pilings of a dead railroad by a broken brown



river

with a huge concrete pipe of offal emptying into it.



as she spoke the gray-skinned cafeteria lady's eyes dimmed out to black

like weak headlights fusing out on the last night of civilization as missles



start falling

and rioting convicts, freed, start burning front yards.

the other humans behind him in line at the cafeteria and seated

before thier trays of food seemed not to notice

any of this. shit, he thought, well, fuck,

May is as good a month as any for psychotic episodes.

I better get out to my car and smoke 3 filterless cigarettes.

He proceeded to the end of the line, dropped his tray in the trash

and soon enough walked out of the building.



To get to the store he had to cross four lanes of traffic.

Standing on the battered white stone median at mid-road

the exhaust fumes hit him, but the smell was the smell of the last

girl he'd worked on and took from behind in the manner of dogs. this



had occurred a while back.

too long a while back. she was from Quebec. he'd met her at party

at a friend's apartment. The friend was a white Jewish Rastafarian. He



fancied himself a percussionist but slung dope for a living. The friend



happened to live above,

I shit you not, a fish market, about 63 paces or so from the edge

of a tidal river on the North Shore of Massachusetts.

Danversport, Beverly. One of those towns. It might have been.

He wasn't sure of the name of the town. It was a lamely attended

party, at least by the time he got there. A Peter Tosh record was in the



CD player and blaring.

The RastaJew and three other young men sat apelike, passing spliffs,



congretgated around and totally consumed

by the violent colors and sounds of the dark urban rape-and-murder



fantasy emanating from a boosted X-box and a boosted Quasar 36-inch

television, all boosted from a local Wal-mart. No matter about the



boosting,

plenty of employee hide to cut that shrinkage out of, and plenty more

where that came from. This was the white Jewish Rastafarian's take on it

at least. He was the most frivolous, deadly serious, utterly dangerous buffoon

our hero had ever encountered. Our hero owed him money, but only a



small amount. Our hero knew the friend kept a Glock 9mm and clips

stashed in a black nylon laptop computer tote also stolen from Wal-mart

and kept beneath a bed. Our hero also drove drunk occassionally, and

rationalized the risks thusly.



But the girl from Quebec. Our hero, by the name of Ray, ended up, as I've

mentioned, at this time in the past too long ago for his particular

self-esteem's tolerance, working on her privatalia from behind, in the

manner of dogs.



Her name was Manet. He didn't ask her about it, never even thought

about doing so. The Jewish Rastafarian informed Ray in between

mouthfuls of cold Chinese spare rib caked with that pink stuff as they



were both in the kitchenette standing by an open refrigerator that she was tripping on LSD,

mid-trip, about 4 hours in. She was drinking Seagrams

margarita-flavored wine coolers in the living room, chain smoking Camel



Wides, Unfiltered, and lying on her back on the dipiliatory dirty vanilla

shag carpet, staring at the whirling ceiling fan. She was wearing a navy

blue knit jersey with a hood and baggy black warmup pants. Her socks



had holes in them and were filthy.



What she and Ray shared was a total lack of interest in the video game

in progress, and also 3 bong hits a piece. Oh and they were some

crumbly, stankie trees up in that bitch. She found nothing he said



entertaining in the least. She called him "wigga." Her voice was hoarse

from the butts. Ray thought she sounded like the Canuck Joan Rivers.

He told her so. She responded that he seemed like the kind of person



who probably liked to be pissed on. Ray said, I'm not the one doing the

talking, you french bitch. It was a good move. She warmed to his

insults. He verbally abused her a bit more, but in a very low and as



tender a voice as he could muster. He was aware it was working. Their

conversation went on in this soft, foul, antagonistic vein for more than an

hour.



The video gaming went on and on. Drinking began. Ray swigged from a

bottle of cheap ass brandy he found in a cabinet over the RastaJew's

stove hood. He had no idea whose it was, didn't care. A couple people



left. Then after a while there was something happening in the apartment's bedroom that

Ray hadn't been included in. Manet had been though. Ray heard some

sounds. A thump, a peep, an exhalation. A groan. You can probably



guess. I don't think I have to spell this one out for you.

Ray was out of smokes. There were none around. He exited the apartment

and walked a mile and a quarter up the side of the road to the Packie. Bought a pack of



Pall Malls and a 40 of Bull Ice. Headed back down the road. Went up the stairs

past the fish market and back into RastaJew's hideout. The dudes had all

left. Manet was hitting that bong. Then after a while he was hitting her



from behind in the manner of dogs. The smell as he ground away was pretty hot and also not so

hot. She was not in fact particularly clean. It was sickening and exiting.

There was a fleck of some dun substance on the back of one of her thighs.



Nothing like this had really happened for old Ray. Few girlfriends

in college. Couple misty hookups after bars. But this was grotesque,

dramatic, really depraved. He felt so. It was the best lay of his life, hands down. He



made it through like a champ. He thought anyway. He never found out what

Manet thought. Never saw her again. Thought about her a lot after. But

I gotta get back to this narrative so you'll have to wait for what he



thought.



It can't be said that he never forgot that smell. He did. And remembered

it only now, standing on the white crumbled median with 4 lanes traffic whooshing past,

2 per side, opposite directions, on his



way to the store to

get guess what a pack a Camel Wides Unfiltered, on the day his

olfactory glands went inexplicably and indecently to game,



the day before the next day which was when shit really started to get weird

look at me go



so I am writing now yeh I want to I got to

be a real writer now. and I was last night. and yow

it's going to take some time. you've pissed away enough years by

now so the feeling you want to elicit now is the way

you used to feel loitering in those artist's studios



where they let you play guitar and sing and sing you did

and drink you did and smoke you did

and this for the fear. but not too much now

or it'll hurt the work. but without it maybe

the work no gets done. so you use this as means

for a time



so last night I drank 11 of those damn Icehouse beers

yeh and 11 must be my limit because I woke up

face down on the couch and the dog was barking

at me from the kitchen. he'd scattered some plastic

grocery bags from the bag sock that hangs on a door knob



and he'd removed the tiny plastic plug from the small purple

squirt gun we keep by the sink for catfight prevention.

but he didn't chew the squirt gun and he didn't chew

any bags or anything so I got away with one. the time

was 1:38 a.m. I had long ago put the laptop away



but had already

written the poem below



the dog had to go to the bathroom like a mofo

so I took him out quickly and then realized I'd

forgotten to put on shoes but said fuck it so I walked

out in my socks. lit a butt. the dog squatted

and out came a lot. german shepherds as a breed



are notorious for their large, soft stools.

I went back in and made it into bed. overslept

till nearly 8 'cause my baby's away on a work

trip. made it in to my cubic hole by 9:30.

I am telling everything but what I came here to tell you



but now the Americans surrounding me are cackling and gamboling

away as usual causing me to reflect that it's no wonder

this country is so

fucked I mean talk about bad



administrative support