Content not to move, but spinning. Unraveled too far. Reveling in the misery. What misery?
Feel the walls closing in. The lives in my mind winding up by themselves. The depression like wings beating at my back.
The sun transforms all breath, all reflections ... the ground gaping, yawning, beaten and massaged. And why do I stand stark staring, unconnected from your gaze, yet still searching? It must be for something else.
Just a taste is never enough. These diversions feed the illusion of a clock winding down and perception is just a rope bridge swaying in the wilderness. Trickery is at play.
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Friday, August 20, 2010
Cataract whirlpool
Hungry and grunting, at sea on a mattress. The room grows larger and my field of vision retreats. I know where everything is around me: The lump in my side. Heart rolled in a corner. Bulbs like torches. The filth between the shelves; an orderly infestation.
Underneath the blood's boiling, a mystery of possibilities to pick apart and call separate.
I sit still in my slowly turning universe. Boxes sprout like mushrooms, spilling their contents and I squash them underfoot. Inside's out. And when I leave, it's still there -- a hairy shroud, discarded angel wings used for nothing. Plastic lives that will seep down to some microscopic level but never completely disappear. Vermin eyes glow like lights from the city in the distance as I row. Trying to see my way without looking forward.
New and improved, and basically the same: A blob of reflexes, an illusion of progress.
Underneath the blood's boiling, a mystery of possibilities to pick apart and call separate.
I sit still in my slowly turning universe. Boxes sprout like mushrooms, spilling their contents and I squash them underfoot. Inside's out. And when I leave, it's still there -- a hairy shroud, discarded angel wings used for nothing. Plastic lives that will seep down to some microscopic level but never completely disappear. Vermin eyes glow like lights from the city in the distance as I row. Trying to see my way without looking forward.
New and improved, and basically the same: A blob of reflexes, an illusion of progress.
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
muse is a dim witness
the now is undone and so it is that your eyes look at me, destined to decay in my mind mere moments later ... I'm in a hurry; I take aim, I steer a sky into shape, a battlefield of predetermined conclusions and I'm trying to swallow down the strobe-lit reverse hallucination awash in the possibility of ghosts at every turn, or violent blossoms soaking the sidewalk
I would prefer to have real feelings and/or be able to make you think that these steps I am taking are important and should be emulated, but I am still here, frozen, unblinking, happy to steal your soul for another key to bliss
all those yesterdays imploded and reshelved like glassware, like soap detergent that will never wash away all the ills, parasites dressed up in their Sunday best, leering like ministers bundled in sheep's clothing
I wish I didn't have these distractions, but at the same time, I don't want to be just another part of you, and you, and you
I would prefer to have real feelings and/or be able to make you think that these steps I am taking are important and should be emulated, but I am still here, frozen, unblinking, happy to steal your soul for another key to bliss
all those yesterdays imploded and reshelved like glassware, like soap detergent that will never wash away all the ills, parasites dressed up in their Sunday best, leering like ministers bundled in sheep's clothing
I wish I didn't have these distractions, but at the same time, I don't want to be just another part of you, and you, and you
Monica, unremembered
I feel that awkward energy that, if it eminates from within me, comes from somewhere dormant like a volcano gone bright, kinetic and ready to mutate the landscape. It's in your eyes and your shape and maybe somewhere down deeper, where blood runs like land in its youth, unseen, expanding, at war with itself. Why else would reciting your name open such secrets? Why do I forget everything that made up my world? What is this image that I perceive but no longer exists after words are spoken and ideas exchanged?
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
Circleness
I'm a repeating memory with many sides and holes and fillings and doorways that always open to more of the same. I'm color-coded. I'm severely exposed. I build castles out of wax. I put bees in the balusters ... and here I rest, giddy as a figment sprung from its airtight cage.
I look into your eyes and see a hole inside my heart that's ready to sew itself back up, free of charge. And this, this is expected, after all. I'm pulling my own strings; there's no puppet master up there in the balcony. And I can't stop it, and isn't it wonderful, after all? That loss of control, those fairy tale books strapped to your back and carved into wings? I suppose it's a sickness, a waspy affliction, like Lazarus felt when the nerves filled back up with warm fluid after the stone rolled away and he saw the light of day. It's a one-sided conversation, mostly, wrapped up in expectation and jump-started emotions.
A kiss really feels like the breath of life this time. I've experienced this in dreams. Is this the universe I've come back to? Why can't you stay in one place? I'm a repeating memory with many sides ...
I look into your eyes and see a hole inside my heart that's ready to sew itself back up, free of charge. And this, this is expected, after all. I'm pulling my own strings; there's no puppet master up there in the balcony. And I can't stop it, and isn't it wonderful, after all? That loss of control, those fairy tale books strapped to your back and carved into wings? I suppose it's a sickness, a waspy affliction, like Lazarus felt when the nerves filled back up with warm fluid after the stone rolled away and he saw the light of day. It's a one-sided conversation, mostly, wrapped up in expectation and jump-started emotions.
A kiss really feels like the breath of life this time. I've experienced this in dreams. Is this the universe I've come back to? Why can't you stay in one place? I'm a repeating memory with many sides ...
Monday, April 5, 2010
odd info collection No. 1
Associated Press, 03/14/07:
All prescription sleeping pills may sometimes cause sleep-driving, federal health officials warned Wednesday, almost a year after the bizarre side effect first made headlines when Rep. Patrick Kennedy crashed his car after taking Ambien.
It's a more complicated version of sleepwalking, but behind the wheel: getting up in the middle of the night and going for a drive -- with no memory of doing so.
The Food and Drug Administration wouldn't say exactly how many cases of sleep-driving it had linked to insomnia drugs, but neurology chief Dr. Russell Katz said the agency uncovered more than a dozen reports -- and is worried that more are going uncounted.
----
From AP story of 1/3/07 concerning a 13-ounce metal, rock-like object the size of a golf ball that fell from the sky, went through a house and embedded itself in a wall of the home:
Approximately 20 to 50 rock-like objects fall every day over the entire planet, said Carlton Pryor, a professor of astronomy at Rutgers University.
----
AP, 03/07/07:
Rosie O'Donnell says she began being treated for depression after the Columbine school shootings and hangs upside down for up to a half-hour a day to improve her mental state.
----
An apparently actual message sent out by San Francisco City College during a power outage in 2007, reported by sfist.com:
"REMAIN CALM. DO NOT PANIC. TOAST YOUR BREAD ELSEWHERE; OR BREAK OUT YOUR EMERGENCY BREAD-TOASTING BUTANE LIGHTERS."
----
FROM AP, 6/20/07:
Waves and sharks aren't the only dangers at the beach. More than two dozen young people have been killed over the last decade when sand holes collapsed on them, report father-and-son doctors who have made warning of the risk their personal campaign.
Since 1985, at least 20 children and young adults in the United States have died in beach or backyard sand submersions. And at least eight others died in Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom, according to a letter from the doctors published in this week's issue of The New England Journal of Medicine.
The story goes on to say that doctors report 16 deaths in sand holes or tunnels from 1990 to 2006; in that same period, 12 fatal shark attacks took place, according to the University of Florida, making shark attacks less dangerous statistically than sand.
All prescription sleeping pills may sometimes cause sleep-driving, federal health officials warned Wednesday, almost a year after the bizarre side effect first made headlines when Rep. Patrick Kennedy crashed his car after taking Ambien.
It's a more complicated version of sleepwalking, but behind the wheel: getting up in the middle of the night and going for a drive -- with no memory of doing so.
The Food and Drug Administration wouldn't say exactly how many cases of sleep-driving it had linked to insomnia drugs, but neurology chief Dr. Russell Katz said the agency uncovered more than a dozen reports -- and is worried that more are going uncounted.
----
From AP story of 1/3/07 concerning a 13-ounce metal, rock-like object the size of a golf ball that fell from the sky, went through a house and embedded itself in a wall of the home:
Approximately 20 to 50 rock-like objects fall every day over the entire planet, said Carlton Pryor, a professor of astronomy at Rutgers University.
----
AP, 03/07/07:
Rosie O'Donnell says she began being treated for depression after the Columbine school shootings and hangs upside down for up to a half-hour a day to improve her mental state.
----
An apparently actual message sent out by San Francisco City College during a power outage in 2007, reported by sfist.com:
"REMAIN CALM. DO NOT PANIC. TOAST YOUR BREAD ELSEWHERE; OR BREAK OUT YOUR EMERGENCY BREAD-TOASTING BUTANE LIGHTERS."
----
FROM AP, 6/20/07:
Waves and sharks aren't the only dangers at the beach. More than two dozen young people have been killed over the last decade when sand holes collapsed on them, report father-and-son doctors who have made warning of the risk their personal campaign.
Since 1985, at least 20 children and young adults in the United States have died in beach or backyard sand submersions. And at least eight others died in Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom, according to a letter from the doctors published in this week's issue of The New England Journal of Medicine.
The story goes on to say that doctors report 16 deaths in sand holes or tunnels from 1990 to 2006; in that same period, 12 fatal shark attacks took place, according to the University of Florida, making shark attacks less dangerous statistically than sand.
Squid Squidley, Squid Detective: Adventures in Plot Congestion
(one in a series of Squid Squidley stories, involving a bumbling, drug-addled squid detective I wrote circa 1995 (pre-Spongebob, mind you), that I'm re-editing for no particular reason -- click on the title and it will take you to a cool image to go with the stories that was created by Tad Cronn)
Natalie Nautilus comes over while I'm sorting out my crack stash.
"Well, I knew you wouldn't just invite me over," says Nat, her tentacles blistering in the breeze, her lip-things blubbering like a jagged percolator stuffed with cottage cheese. Nat is the worst sort of ceph, always bringing up that time in junior high when I wore the pink Bugs Bunny T-shirt to school on photo day. That sort of thing. I could do without this on crack-purchase day.
"I brought grandma," says Nat.
"Grandma" being the pissant wag stuffed into a brick bag. Hairs brimming, waving and ripping away in the wind. Bruises from a recently acquired tap dancing hobby lining her cracked scuzz.
"So how's your TV reception?" asks the singed rag of gristle tucked into a steel jar and whisking back and forth, chug flapping with each frothy shake.
I head to the bathroom to juke up. Catch lip on pipe bomb and blow up and stuff.
Hit reset.
Fiddle with the TV set.
FADE OUT
FADE IN
"Whaddaya think of the place?" I say later, still reeling from my last fix.
"I bet Kid Squid likes the big backyard," farts the bobbing egg scab-packed beasty.
Nat picks up grandma and hurls her behind the couch, confusing an ant trail and throwing its travelers madly off course. Grandma begins to shimmy sideways to nowhere locked inside her glass shack.
"C'mere Kid!" yells Nat, spittle pellets exploding from her lips and forming cryptic squiggles on the floor tile.
Later, we'll read our astrological charts. For now, it's time for this squidster to ink fast!
"Here's ink in your eye, Nat."
Nat takes a whiff of the specially formulated black murk and turns a sort of chartreuse, gills shot out like wings, eye-whatzits rotating like a 160-horse nugat wheel. I head to the bedroom for my briefcase, bowler cap and squid-luck cane.
Next door I hear a door slam. Kid Squid's up on the windowsill giving bad directions to a frantic pack of ants. Grandma's somehow started an impromptu Jehovah's Witness luau on the conjoining lawn, and the Ghost of Norman Mailer's there clicking away on a typewriter, fist stuffed in mouth. To say the least, there's lots of hugging going on over there.
My front door inhales a soft turnip attached to a rolling, growling, flattened reptilian backside upon which pulsates gelatinous tonsil-lookalikes, my cue that the limo's arrived. The turnip's all smiles, its frame squeezing and relaxing at odd creases like a booby folded and tugged at from the insides. I slither out and hop inside.
"Hey you young, sexy thing," barks turnip chauffeur.
"SQLUASH!" Something like a woman's sliced thigh on the winning side of roots pulled from the magma shelf unfolds onto the floorboard and cuddles up to my congealing skin. The top of my head sucks itself in like a party whistle at moment of inhale. Then out I pop and down my tentacles sweep across my gangle, digging out clam bits and rusted mussels, remnants of a long forgotten fish festival.
It's supposed to be a party gag, an icebreaker, but it merely elicits a condescending glare from the driving turnip. Turnips by nature are a temperamental breed of simple-minded dirt-breathers. They mate with dull, watery feelers and vote for the guys with the biggest beaks. However, this was some gene pool mutt, probably misdirected into a career as a driver through the inexplicable shuffle of paperwork back at headquarters.
"Alright, bitch," I mumble as I chomp through the mutating goo-walls of the rancid limo and feel the crack's ebb receding to some secret place. "Just keep your eyes peeled on the road and get me to the airport."
FADE OUT
FADE IN
At HQ, the storyline editors hack out a telegram telling me they've hit a roadblock in the plot. They drink a lot of coffee, chase after unsightly members of whichever sex crosses the path of their beady maskholes, when not bombarding their cubicles with cut-outs from the funny pages and gorging on test products never intended to make it into the marketplace.
"I thought, uh, what? I mean ... are you? ..." stammers Gretchen, a creature made mostly of leather, straw and alcohol. Don't worry, fearless reader, noboby much pays attention to her voice anymore, nor the constant flailing of her arms as they shuffle papers around on her desk or shoot out to grab another helping of liver paste. However, her being a perfect example of the staff on hand, you can see why we're in this mess.
"Hey, do you know how to ...? Oh, never mind. I mean, hey ...!" A sustained, warbling giggle-sob follows as an undetected undercover antisquid scrub scoots by, picking up what may have been an important piece of plotline had it not already been forgotten.
As if through instinctual urge, proofreaders continually launch themselves from the porch plank into a shit pit nine stories below. Regis Philbin blurts bland babble out of sqwauk box implants dialed to turbo and sticking out of lazy stunt doubles' liquified brains.
FADE OUT
FADE IN
Up in the air, crime-fighting ceph hero Squid Squidley fumbles with his superhero costume, its arms tangled in knots knotty enough to make an uprooted phone line terminal in a fair-sized city blush with lust. He wonders whether the incompetent fuckwads back at HQ will bother to call in the storyline at all. In the next seat, Kid Squid sits in a concentrated strain over his squid box, then goes back to deciphering ant trails in between nervous yawns.
"Would you like your crack now, Mister Squid?" inquires a bull-headed hostess on roller skates.
"Would I!" I throw down the confounded suit and run it through the handy suit-shredder to the left side of my specially constructed airplane seat. I pull down the spoon from the ceiling and cook me up some junk. In a minute, I'm really flying!
----------------------
Little do I know that ...
In a converted truck stop bathroom somewhere on the outskirts of Nashville, an abomination to all known life has just been created. The demented cartoonist Bil Keane, known to most indiscriminate humans (and cute, wittle inchworms and the dopiest among small dog breeds) as some sort of smiley-faced god filled with yummy marshmallows, had finally found a way to achieve the ultimate degradation, after buying a cheapo geology kit and a bucket of olestra, and mailing in coupons for pubic hairs belonging to prominent Scientologists.
In fact, Bil was more bug than man ever since that fateful spring day in 1993 when he fell in the tub while cooking Pop-Tarts in a toaster that doubled as a cockroach colony. Moments before Bil fell into the tub, a zeppelin came plummeting out of the sky about 500 yards away and struck a sewer line. As he hit the water, an enormous pocket of methane, paired with bits of californium freight the blimp had been carrying to California (of course), bubbled up through the pipes. Let's throw in the fact his house had an extremely high concentration of radon gas; and Bil had been munching on horseradish all day. Hence, bug man.
"Ooo hooo hooo bloo-oo-ffffphph," Keane drools, rubbing his insect antennae together and fondling some larvae.
He has lots of plans for this new monstrosity he's dubbed "Not Me," none of them involving drawing in crayon on the walls of suburban households. He grabs the phone and dials up his good-for-nothing bud in the Mojave Desert. Coincidentally, the exploded californium zeppelin had been ordered by the ornery octopus he was now ringy-dinging. But that's just between you and me.
"Hey, Doc Octoplasm, it worked just like you said it would. Although I still can't believe margarine was the problem the whole time."
"Alas, so it begins," Octo burbles ominously. A volley of ker-splatting sounds are heard.
"What was that?"
"Oh, I just slammed my arms down on the table and broke all my eggs and now I'm a sticky mess. Can I call you back?"
"Sure."
FADE OUT
FADE IN
"Mr. Squid, Mr. Squid, we need your help ..."
....giving me lollipops. Suddenly, unthinkably, an earthquake! The little oasis nymphs scatter away and the clouds turn solid and muddy, sending meaty missiles down from a bruise in the sky. One blasts away my left-middle-left tentacle. I begin to run, but am for some reason compelled to go back for Kid's teddy bear, which appears to be locked away inside a ....
"Mr. Squid!!" The hostess continues to hit the sea creature with one of her roller skates, thinking how she should have swallowed her pride and married dim-bulb Edgar Pumperpenny before he sold his Volvo and darted off to Neptune to mine for diamonds. The rest of her child-bearing life would center, she figured, around poking at gluey forms and gulping down antiseptic slew in Newark bars.
"Wha!" I shoot awake to someone beating at me with some object. By super-evolved reflexes, my tentacles reach out and fling the assailant away from me. However, as too late I recall where I'm at, this involves the perp crashing through the small window to my right, a feat it performs cleanly, with Olympic grace, if a bit forced. I quickly turn my ink jets to "plexi-blast" to restore cabin pressure, then cross my tentacles and begin whistling a tune innocently, looking toward Kid Squid, who sits across from me, oblivious, with a frozen sneer pasted on his beak, which means he's been smelling himself again.
A call comes through on the emergency squid phone.
"Squidley, it's Lt. Dan back at headquarters. There's a problem. Someone snuck in and messed with the storyline while we were all at lunch and/or on vacation. Can you look out the window and tell me what you see?"
My first impression as I lean over and peer across the sky is the sun seems way too low for it to still be shining so bright, but I let it slide. I begin to tell Dan I don't see anything out of the ordinary, wondering what this is all about when the plane starts spinning out of control and the phone flies out of my tentacle. I put my ink full-on and crawl toward the cabin, as the horizon cartwheels. A line of trees above or below is a little too noticeable.
Reaching the cabin door, I struggle to push it open, but find there's something weighted against it. Turning my squid gauge to BLAM!, I fart the stuff with a flourish and the door breaks free from its hinges, revealing two gigantic hot dog buns that had been blocking my passage.
Noticing a pilot's cap sticking out of the end of one bun and glancing toward the controls, I realize what I'm up against. For wildly wielding the wheel is an evildoer dressed up in a mustard bottle suit.
Condiment man!
"I hope you remembered to pack your parachute, Slimeface," he says, not missing a beat with the ensuing loop-de-loops.
"You're going to wish you were a shirt stain by the time I get done with you, Condi-geek," I fire back, craning out a tentacle to clog his nozzle while gloating a bit at my handy retort.
But with a mayonnaise explosion, he's gone.
And so is the plane.
The idiot crew back at HQ obviously not bothering to script any further, I'm without my handy squid chute, which doesn't seem to matter as there's no longer anything to crash into below, rather I almost instantly thud onto a blank surface with blank expression on my face.
THE END?
Natalie Nautilus comes over while I'm sorting out my crack stash.
"Well, I knew you wouldn't just invite me over," says Nat, her tentacles blistering in the breeze, her lip-things blubbering like a jagged percolator stuffed with cottage cheese. Nat is the worst sort of ceph, always bringing up that time in junior high when I wore the pink Bugs Bunny T-shirt to school on photo day. That sort of thing. I could do without this on crack-purchase day.
"I brought grandma," says Nat.
"Grandma" being the pissant wag stuffed into a brick bag. Hairs brimming, waving and ripping away in the wind. Bruises from a recently acquired tap dancing hobby lining her cracked scuzz.
"So how's your TV reception?" asks the singed rag of gristle tucked into a steel jar and whisking back and forth, chug flapping with each frothy shake.
I head to the bathroom to juke up. Catch lip on pipe bomb and blow up and stuff.
Hit reset.
Fiddle with the TV set.
FADE OUT
FADE IN
"Whaddaya think of the place?" I say later, still reeling from my last fix.
"I bet Kid Squid likes the big backyard," farts the bobbing egg scab-packed beasty.
Nat picks up grandma and hurls her behind the couch, confusing an ant trail and throwing its travelers madly off course. Grandma begins to shimmy sideways to nowhere locked inside her glass shack.
"C'mere Kid!" yells Nat, spittle pellets exploding from her lips and forming cryptic squiggles on the floor tile.
Later, we'll read our astrological charts. For now, it's time for this squidster to ink fast!
"Here's ink in your eye, Nat."
Nat takes a whiff of the specially formulated black murk and turns a sort of chartreuse, gills shot out like wings, eye-whatzits rotating like a 160-horse nugat wheel. I head to the bedroom for my briefcase, bowler cap and squid-luck cane.
Next door I hear a door slam. Kid Squid's up on the windowsill giving bad directions to a frantic pack of ants. Grandma's somehow started an impromptu Jehovah's Witness luau on the conjoining lawn, and the Ghost of Norman Mailer's there clicking away on a typewriter, fist stuffed in mouth. To say the least, there's lots of hugging going on over there.
My front door inhales a soft turnip attached to a rolling, growling, flattened reptilian backside upon which pulsates gelatinous tonsil-lookalikes, my cue that the limo's arrived. The turnip's all smiles, its frame squeezing and relaxing at odd creases like a booby folded and tugged at from the insides. I slither out and hop inside.
"Hey you young, sexy thing," barks turnip chauffeur.
"SQLUASH!" Something like a woman's sliced thigh on the winning side of roots pulled from the magma shelf unfolds onto the floorboard and cuddles up to my congealing skin. The top of my head sucks itself in like a party whistle at moment of inhale. Then out I pop and down my tentacles sweep across my gangle, digging out clam bits and rusted mussels, remnants of a long forgotten fish festival.
It's supposed to be a party gag, an icebreaker, but it merely elicits a condescending glare from the driving turnip. Turnips by nature are a temperamental breed of simple-minded dirt-breathers. They mate with dull, watery feelers and vote for the guys with the biggest beaks. However, this was some gene pool mutt, probably misdirected into a career as a driver through the inexplicable shuffle of paperwork back at headquarters.
"Alright, bitch," I mumble as I chomp through the mutating goo-walls of the rancid limo and feel the crack's ebb receding to some secret place. "Just keep your eyes peeled on the road and get me to the airport."
FADE OUT
FADE IN
At HQ, the storyline editors hack out a telegram telling me they've hit a roadblock in the plot. They drink a lot of coffee, chase after unsightly members of whichever sex crosses the path of their beady maskholes, when not bombarding their cubicles with cut-outs from the funny pages and gorging on test products never intended to make it into the marketplace.
"I thought, uh, what? I mean ... are you? ..." stammers Gretchen, a creature made mostly of leather, straw and alcohol. Don't worry, fearless reader, noboby much pays attention to her voice anymore, nor the constant flailing of her arms as they shuffle papers around on her desk or shoot out to grab another helping of liver paste. However, her being a perfect example of the staff on hand, you can see why we're in this mess.
"Hey, do you know how to ...? Oh, never mind. I mean, hey ...!" A sustained, warbling giggle-sob follows as an undetected undercover antisquid scrub scoots by, picking up what may have been an important piece of plotline had it not already been forgotten.
As if through instinctual urge, proofreaders continually launch themselves from the porch plank into a shit pit nine stories below. Regis Philbin blurts bland babble out of sqwauk box implants dialed to turbo and sticking out of lazy stunt doubles' liquified brains.
FADE OUT
FADE IN
Up in the air, crime-fighting ceph hero Squid Squidley fumbles with his superhero costume, its arms tangled in knots knotty enough to make an uprooted phone line terminal in a fair-sized city blush with lust. He wonders whether the incompetent fuckwads back at HQ will bother to call in the storyline at all. In the next seat, Kid Squid sits in a concentrated strain over his squid box, then goes back to deciphering ant trails in between nervous yawns.
"Would you like your crack now, Mister Squid?" inquires a bull-headed hostess on roller skates.
"Would I!" I throw down the confounded suit and run it through the handy suit-shredder to the left side of my specially constructed airplane seat. I pull down the spoon from the ceiling and cook me up some junk. In a minute, I'm really flying!
----------------------
Little do I know that ...
In a converted truck stop bathroom somewhere on the outskirts of Nashville, an abomination to all known life has just been created. The demented cartoonist Bil Keane, known to most indiscriminate humans (and cute, wittle inchworms and the dopiest among small dog breeds) as some sort of smiley-faced god filled with yummy marshmallows, had finally found a way to achieve the ultimate degradation, after buying a cheapo geology kit and a bucket of olestra, and mailing in coupons for pubic hairs belonging to prominent Scientologists.
In fact, Bil was more bug than man ever since that fateful spring day in 1993 when he fell in the tub while cooking Pop-Tarts in a toaster that doubled as a cockroach colony. Moments before Bil fell into the tub, a zeppelin came plummeting out of the sky about 500 yards away and struck a sewer line. As he hit the water, an enormous pocket of methane, paired with bits of californium freight the blimp had been carrying to California (of course), bubbled up through the pipes. Let's throw in the fact his house had an extremely high concentration of radon gas; and Bil had been munching on horseradish all day. Hence, bug man.
"Ooo hooo hooo bloo-oo-ffffphph," Keane drools, rubbing his insect antennae together and fondling some larvae.
He has lots of plans for this new monstrosity he's dubbed "Not Me," none of them involving drawing in crayon on the walls of suburban households. He grabs the phone and dials up his good-for-nothing bud in the Mojave Desert. Coincidentally, the exploded californium zeppelin had been ordered by the ornery octopus he was now ringy-dinging. But that's just between you and me.
"Hey, Doc Octoplasm, it worked just like you said it would. Although I still can't believe margarine was the problem the whole time."
"Alas, so it begins," Octo burbles ominously. A volley of ker-splatting sounds are heard.
"What was that?"
"Oh, I just slammed my arms down on the table and broke all my eggs and now I'm a sticky mess. Can I call you back?"
"Sure."
FADE OUT
FADE IN
"Mr. Squid, Mr. Squid, we need your help ..."
....giving me lollipops. Suddenly, unthinkably, an earthquake! The little oasis nymphs scatter away and the clouds turn solid and muddy, sending meaty missiles down from a bruise in the sky. One blasts away my left-middle-left tentacle. I begin to run, but am for some reason compelled to go back for Kid's teddy bear, which appears to be locked away inside a ....
"Mr. Squid!!" The hostess continues to hit the sea creature with one of her roller skates, thinking how she should have swallowed her pride and married dim-bulb Edgar Pumperpenny before he sold his Volvo and darted off to Neptune to mine for diamonds. The rest of her child-bearing life would center, she figured, around poking at gluey forms and gulping down antiseptic slew in Newark bars.
"Wha!" I shoot awake to someone beating at me with some object. By super-evolved reflexes, my tentacles reach out and fling the assailant away from me. However, as too late I recall where I'm at, this involves the perp crashing through the small window to my right, a feat it performs cleanly, with Olympic grace, if a bit forced. I quickly turn my ink jets to "plexi-blast" to restore cabin pressure, then cross my tentacles and begin whistling a tune innocently, looking toward Kid Squid, who sits across from me, oblivious, with a frozen sneer pasted on his beak, which means he's been smelling himself again.
A call comes through on the emergency squid phone.
"Squidley, it's Lt. Dan back at headquarters. There's a problem. Someone snuck in and messed with the storyline while we were all at lunch and/or on vacation. Can you look out the window and tell me what you see?"
My first impression as I lean over and peer across the sky is the sun seems way too low for it to still be shining so bright, but I let it slide. I begin to tell Dan I don't see anything out of the ordinary, wondering what this is all about when the plane starts spinning out of control and the phone flies out of my tentacle. I put my ink full-on and crawl toward the cabin, as the horizon cartwheels. A line of trees above or below is a little too noticeable.
Reaching the cabin door, I struggle to push it open, but find there's something weighted against it. Turning my squid gauge to BLAM!, I fart the stuff with a flourish and the door breaks free from its hinges, revealing two gigantic hot dog buns that had been blocking my passage.
Noticing a pilot's cap sticking out of the end of one bun and glancing toward the controls, I realize what I'm up against. For wildly wielding the wheel is an evildoer dressed up in a mustard bottle suit.
Condiment man!
"I hope you remembered to pack your parachute, Slimeface," he says, not missing a beat with the ensuing loop-de-loops.
"You're going to wish you were a shirt stain by the time I get done with you, Condi-geek," I fire back, craning out a tentacle to clog his nozzle while gloating a bit at my handy retort.
But with a mayonnaise explosion, he's gone.
And so is the plane.
The idiot crew back at HQ obviously not bothering to script any further, I'm without my handy squid chute, which doesn't seem to matter as there's no longer anything to crash into below, rather I almost instantly thud onto a blank surface with blank expression on my face.
THE END?
Sunday, April 4, 2010
I will feed again
I loathe the drapery, the dust settling, the divide, the cravings.
My body is a temple not savored, glands uncaged, blood unspilled like the overgrown backyard not tended. Other dead things rise toward the sky and fall back over my temples in tendrils, a folly of frolicking follicles, anemia in the apple blossoms silent and crying, littering the unseen ground in desert snow.
But summer is on its way, and I will change my mind.
Cycle in non-symmetry that only I know but cannot explain. And do you explain? How do you confer these feelings without capitulations, generalizations, split ends falling to the ground? Meet me halfway and we'll nod our heads in unison. That warm feeling is fading. But still I feed and know that I will feed again.
My body is not even my body. My thoughts are not complete, immobile in partitions, sheltered by fear. I know that life will continue verbatim and expire in a moment's notice. It's already over, falling to the unseen ground. But these are just analogies and metaphors to help ignore the starkly apparent.
And as soon as I'm able, I will transform, I will disappear. I will not be here.
My body is a temple not savored, glands uncaged, blood unspilled like the overgrown backyard not tended. Other dead things rise toward the sky and fall back over my temples in tendrils, a folly of frolicking follicles, anemia in the apple blossoms silent and crying, littering the unseen ground in desert snow.
But summer is on its way, and I will change my mind.
Cycle in non-symmetry that only I know but cannot explain. And do you explain? How do you confer these feelings without capitulations, generalizations, split ends falling to the ground? Meet me halfway and we'll nod our heads in unison. That warm feeling is fading. But still I feed and know that I will feed again.
My body is not even my body. My thoughts are not complete, immobile in partitions, sheltered by fear. I know that life will continue verbatim and expire in a moment's notice. It's already over, falling to the unseen ground. But these are just analogies and metaphors to help ignore the starkly apparent.
And as soon as I'm able, I will transform, I will disappear. I will not be here.
Friday, March 19, 2010
cafe tete-a-tete
(overheard from two guys sitting at a table outside of a Pacific Heights coffee shop, commenting on everyone who walks by, and just being generally inane.)
first dude: I want to find somebody who can listen to me for weeks on end and pick a certain direction and write a book about it. I don't want to do it myself because I will flavor it with my intentions. ... because everybody is always telling me, "You should write a book, you should write a book."
(and in between these observations, as a woman walks by) Oh, nice and jiggly. Jiggly's my favorite. I call it jelly.
(second dude comments about how vivid first dude's descriptions are)
first dude: here's another one .. I'm driving over HWy 17 and there's this cement luge and a single aspen leaf and I'm driving along and I'm tearing around this corner but all I see is this leaf falling slowly, floating to the ground and then, bah-ROOOm! I'm back flying around this corner and could have crashed.
second dude: By the way, that right there, "cement luge," that's amazing
first dude: I'm one of the only guys I know who writes poetry.
second dude; Poetry, huh?
first dude: I'm not that good at writing poetry, but I'm great at prose ...
(first dude, looking to the street where a tire squeal is heard) "Yeah, faster! Run down the guy with the baby!"
second dude: Do you have a girlfriend?
first dude: Well, I'm really broken in that way, so I'm moving on ... I'm finding I'm losing myself in the eventuality of death.
(pause)
second dude: you're way too Buddhist.
first dude: There's nothing to watch in Redding except for snotty little teenagers. ... By the way I know it's boring but this is one of my favorite things to do in the city.
second dude: It's not boring ... it's like a buffet.
first dude: Man I need some tooth floss bad.
second dude: I hate that
(SUMMARY OF NEXT 10-20 MINUTES: first dude talks to a pigeon, saying good morning and what do you think of my shoes? while the other guy talks about this bisexual woman he wanted to have a relationship with but he wouldn't unless he could talk to the other woman she was with at the time)
first dude (as a guy and his girlfriend go by): Damn, they looked related. Had some really strange kind of chemistry going on.
first dude: I want to find somebody who can listen to me for weeks on end and pick a certain direction and write a book about it. I don't want to do it myself because I will flavor it with my intentions. ... because everybody is always telling me, "You should write a book, you should write a book."
(and in between these observations, as a woman walks by) Oh, nice and jiggly. Jiggly's my favorite. I call it jelly.
(second dude comments about how vivid first dude's descriptions are)
first dude: here's another one .. I'm driving over HWy 17 and there's this cement luge and a single aspen leaf and I'm driving along and I'm tearing around this corner but all I see is this leaf falling slowly, floating to the ground and then, bah-ROOOm! I'm back flying around this corner and could have crashed.
second dude: By the way, that right there, "cement luge," that's amazing
first dude: I'm one of the only guys I know who writes poetry.
second dude; Poetry, huh?
first dude: I'm not that good at writing poetry, but I'm great at prose ...
(first dude, looking to the street where a tire squeal is heard) "Yeah, faster! Run down the guy with the baby!"
second dude: Do you have a girlfriend?
first dude: Well, I'm really broken in that way, so I'm moving on ... I'm finding I'm losing myself in the eventuality of death.
(pause)
second dude: you're way too Buddhist.
first dude: There's nothing to watch in Redding except for snotty little teenagers. ... By the way I know it's boring but this is one of my favorite things to do in the city.
second dude: It's not boring ... it's like a buffet.
first dude: Man I need some tooth floss bad.
second dude: I hate that
(SUMMARY OF NEXT 10-20 MINUTES: first dude talks to a pigeon, saying good morning and what do you think of my shoes? while the other guy talks about this bisexual woman he wanted to have a relationship with but he wouldn't unless he could talk to the other woman she was with at the time)
first dude (as a guy and his girlfriend go by): Damn, they looked related. Had some really strange kind of chemistry going on.
water juice
I used to be a backslider
now I live with spiders
some sort of sickle cell anemia
scissoring up my thoughts
like rose petals strewn about after a Mexican parade
I beat my fists
with chains
until they are shiny white
the highs and lows are much, much closer now
dim, mirror-endless
I'm scared of the unreachable thoughts --
I'm downloading culture, shooting fistfuls of it into my eyeballs
dousing my exterior with vitamin glue
I'm a middle man, hands outstretched to convert goods into garbage
mind filling up like my guts with fat, greasy lies ... filling the space between hustlers and flies
now I live with spiders
some sort of sickle cell anemia
scissoring up my thoughts
like rose petals strewn about after a Mexican parade
I beat my fists
with chains
until they are shiny white
the highs and lows are much, much closer now
dim, mirror-endless
I'm scared of the unreachable thoughts --
I'm downloading culture, shooting fistfuls of it into my eyeballs
dousing my exterior with vitamin glue
I'm a middle man, hands outstretched to convert goods into garbage
mind filling up like my guts with fat, greasy lies ... filling the space between hustlers and flies
Cafe soliloquoy
(overheard in a Mission District coffee house -- pauses omitted)
I was going to write a song oh yeah I was going to write me a song, me and Sherri. ha ha it was like a chemistry equation. ha ha ha, I feel like I'M tripping. It must be this music. I know, I have the CD too, but it's just freaking me out right now. I don't even feel like I'm awake yet. Did I tell you I was in a band. OH yeah,? me too. I got a blog. I'm in a band. I blog. I band. Blah Blah. Are we bothering you? I want to get stoned. What are you doing? (spreads arms out) This is it, right here. I think all organized religion is a scam. I don't mean spirituality. That's something completely different. Sometimes I just make up the words while I'm on stage. Ha ha. Sometimes we just write the lyrics to ourselves, like, hey, I hate you. Hey!! Just kidding. I don't want any coffee, I just need some juice. Shoot, I could have some coffee and be asleep in 20 minutes. Kabbalah. That's religion, right? We are bothering you, aren't we?
I was going to write a song oh yeah I was going to write me a song, me and Sherri. ha ha it was like a chemistry equation. ha ha ha, I feel like I'M tripping. It must be this music. I know, I have the CD too, but it's just freaking me out right now. I don't even feel like I'm awake yet. Did I tell you I was in a band. OH yeah,? me too. I got a blog. I'm in a band. I blog. I band. Blah Blah. Are we bothering you? I want to get stoned. What are you doing? (spreads arms out) This is it, right here. I think all organized religion is a scam. I don't mean spirituality. That's something completely different. Sometimes I just make up the words while I'm on stage. Ha ha. Sometimes we just write the lyrics to ourselves, like, hey, I hate you. Hey!! Just kidding. I don't want any coffee, I just need some juice. Shoot, I could have some coffee and be asleep in 20 minutes. Kabbalah. That's religion, right? We are bothering you, aren't we?
Craigslist dating
Hi. You live next door to me which I found out when we both left at the same time and boarded the elevator together. It was love at first sight for me. You? Probably not, but I think I saw a spark the other day when we were in the elevator together again. We run across each other so often you must think I'm stalking you (or are you stalking me?) I probably WOULD stalk you but I'm way too busy and who's got the time or the determination to keep their eye glued to the keyhole all day (maybe David Blaine does). Anyway, if I'm feeling all pervy, there's plenty of porntube. I wrote a poem about you the other day. I have to admit it got kinda twisted and dark toward the end so I had to scrap some of it and it's not quite finished yet. I had a dream last night that we got stuck in the elevator together when the power went out. Sometimes my dreams come true.
convenience store in the future
He hated this: this feeling of not being able to take everything in. Nervous, dropping the cans, looking around, head buzzing like a fly dodging his hand. Because he knew at any minute, out of nowhere, he could be hit over the head and knocked to the floor like one of those cans of soup, permanently dented and filling with toxins.
Because he was away from register, because cash was back in vogue, and his being so far away, about 200 feet or so by his estimate, was an automatic beacon for crooks armed with GPS trackers, spycam cracks and teleporters. If he wasn't beside the register to hit the button, the money would not be tubed to the main branch, and that shit would come out of his own pocket. But that's the catch. The store wouldn't hire an assistant or guard, so if he wanted to keep his job, which had taken him two years to get in the first place, he had to continually take the risk to restock the shelves.
Because he was away from register, because cash was back in vogue, and his being so far away, about 200 feet or so by his estimate, was an automatic beacon for crooks armed with GPS trackers, spycam cracks and teleporters. If he wasn't beside the register to hit the button, the money would not be tubed to the main branch, and that shit would come out of his own pocket. But that's the catch. The store wouldn't hire an assistant or guard, so if he wanted to keep his job, which had taken him two years to get in the first place, he had to continually take the risk to restock the shelves.
blank slate
(1) I've always been self-conscious, looking down at myself from some elevated nook in scrutiny and judgment, like a coach supervising a reliably incompetent team.
(2) It's as if my path resides in a phantom construction zone, my universe deflated, wrapped in caution tape and everyone drives by real slow, neck-craning.
(3) I am becoming a habit-run collection of cells, taking in and expelling information like a chemical reaction in which the energy stored is equal to that which is released.
(4) Yet I am even now in communication with all the crumbs and other unrecognizables embedded in the carpet and feel an overwhelming urge to vacuum them up at some point to reshuffle the conversation. I compile lists. What I ate in the past week and how much farther back can I go. Words glow on the throats of people I am speaking with, which is why I know what they're about to say.
(5) I chew on roots and leaves. I sleep one hour a night. I feel a pleasant heat on either side of each eye between my hairline and outstretched brows. I feel it in your eyes, too. I am hyperaware, but there are large chunks of time unaccounted for.
(6) Being self-conscious also portends that I am egocentric. Who loves his world more than the scientist convinced that all matter revolves around his glossy, mind-sized Earth? Or the politician who tightens the noose on his "homeland" out of passion for a reality built out of fear? It's as true that Jesus sits at the right hand of God in heaven as that I am the only lifeform that has ever existed.
(7) Imagine that all experience is nothing more than the brain processing signals captured by its visual extensions, and any attempt to convert these transmissions into sense is no more meaningful than a car's engine turning gasoline into smog. And the way that you and I perceive a thing can be unrelated based wholly on the way that you move your head, close your eyes or boldly sneeze at a crucial moment.
(8) I am right here with you, unwriting these words. My veins are neither brittle or loose; they are in fact imperceptible. I get all gloomy like the cameras are rolling, like this will all someday be analyzed for intent by clones with no privacy and no desire for it in a world where to hide something means to shrivel up and die.
(9) My keyboard's an Ouija. I have my own diseased visions. There is no way of knowing whether anything carries qualities measurable outside my perception. Or that I am anywhere or anything at all. But it is easy to candycoat these fears through neon-drenched lies and digitized mimicry.
(10) How long to reflect on the unknowable, assured that to discover the answer means to bury the truth? Not to bury in shame, but in forgetfulness or greed.
(11) The skies grow wild with flames and heat and just as quickly -- as if slathered in old mop-water -- turn a gray smear. Seagulls' eyes glow NVG green as they flap through colorless space. People with complicated, irrational lives saunter by undetected below.
(2) It's as if my path resides in a phantom construction zone, my universe deflated, wrapped in caution tape and everyone drives by real slow, neck-craning.
(3) I am becoming a habit-run collection of cells, taking in and expelling information like a chemical reaction in which the energy stored is equal to that which is released.
(4) Yet I am even now in communication with all the crumbs and other unrecognizables embedded in the carpet and feel an overwhelming urge to vacuum them up at some point to reshuffle the conversation. I compile lists. What I ate in the past week and how much farther back can I go. Words glow on the throats of people I am speaking with, which is why I know what they're about to say.
(5) I chew on roots and leaves. I sleep one hour a night. I feel a pleasant heat on either side of each eye between my hairline and outstretched brows. I feel it in your eyes, too. I am hyperaware, but there are large chunks of time unaccounted for.
(6) Being self-conscious also portends that I am egocentric. Who loves his world more than the scientist convinced that all matter revolves around his glossy, mind-sized Earth? Or the politician who tightens the noose on his "homeland" out of passion for a reality built out of fear? It's as true that Jesus sits at the right hand of God in heaven as that I am the only lifeform that has ever existed.
(7) Imagine that all experience is nothing more than the brain processing signals captured by its visual extensions, and any attempt to convert these transmissions into sense is no more meaningful than a car's engine turning gasoline into smog. And the way that you and I perceive a thing can be unrelated based wholly on the way that you move your head, close your eyes or boldly sneeze at a crucial moment.
(8) I am right here with you, unwriting these words. My veins are neither brittle or loose; they are in fact imperceptible. I get all gloomy like the cameras are rolling, like this will all someday be analyzed for intent by clones with no privacy and no desire for it in a world where to hide something means to shrivel up and die.
(9) My keyboard's an Ouija. I have my own diseased visions. There is no way of knowing whether anything carries qualities measurable outside my perception. Or that I am anywhere or anything at all. But it is easy to candycoat these fears through neon-drenched lies and digitized mimicry.
(10) How long to reflect on the unknowable, assured that to discover the answer means to bury the truth? Not to bury in shame, but in forgetfulness or greed.
(11) The skies grow wild with flames and heat and just as quickly -- as if slathered in old mop-water -- turn a gray smear. Seagulls' eyes glow NVG green as they flap through colorless space. People with complicated, irrational lives saunter by undetected below.
Thursday, March 18, 2010
discommunion
taste is like
when life is seen backward
eyes like
splintering sacs of priss and be
the occasional nod and wink out
and about
like splinters knock on wood and that's not quite unilateral
or soundless
or you could just jump back in like the swim is a skim off the top
like we are all ballerinas spinning in the gutter
leaves rotting in the sink
ever had too much to say? and it is limbs of the ideas wagging about ever swim between time and watch the shadows flicker somewhere behind? and the fingers drag upon your temple wrapped in a pulsating sleeve, dripping and there are the wolves like lamp bulbs
it's best when you don't listen but here
these lives are fractions, many petals, many times in the mirror I fell apart.
I need space. I need to divide and listen and fear
Pick apart the glass and slip inside
when life is seen backward
eyes like
splintering sacs of priss and be
the occasional nod and wink out
and about
like splinters knock on wood and that's not quite unilateral
or soundless
or you could just jump back in like the swim is a skim off the top
like we are all ballerinas spinning in the gutter
leaves rotting in the sink
ever had too much to say? and it is limbs of the ideas wagging about ever swim between time and watch the shadows flicker somewhere behind? and the fingers drag upon your temple wrapped in a pulsating sleeve, dripping and there are the wolves like lamp bulbs
it's best when you don't listen but here
these lives are fractions, many petals, many times in the mirror I fell apart.
I need space. I need to divide and listen and fear
Pick apart the glass and slip inside
Lies I tell myself as I repeat them:
You are the only one who truly understands me ...
I am all alone ...
Life begins at the nursing home.
I am all alone ...
Life begins at the nursing home.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)