A junkie was born
I used to stay home from school to drink fermented grape juice.
To feel the faintest difference.
To be other than
The small spaces between my toes.
I would argue with myself staring out of the bedroom window.
My eyes falling on the snowy branches lit by those bare bulbs, illumination makes me drowsy.
I would say "if the tree falls, I'll stop all of this"
Promises, promises
I didn't lose my virginity
I found my sex
I used to write every day. I had a word processor, one of those old ones with a giant monitor and a typewriter attached to it. It used floppy disks; I must’ve filled dozens of them.
They are buried in a Mexican desert now, beneath my vomit and blood.
My sister left in ’91. My father turned her room into a canary aviary where I had my very first experience with what writing can do. Settling in Midtown apartments after immigrating to the U.S. I befriended a homeless brother and sister duo who would rummage through the dumpsters at the complex. I had a knack for making friends with the rejects. They knew my life, they could smell my insides. The duo would fish out books and give them to me. My dead hero's fished from dumpsters right into my 10 year old lap... Kerouac,
Burroughs and Descartes.
One day they came across a beat up typewriter as I stood watch under the dumpster telling them stories of Russia. I took it home and placed it on the floor of the aviary room and climbed into the abyss.
I was teaching myself how to escape, before I found the grape juice.
i am a dog
i sleep most of the day
maybe the night too
she feeds me
shes nice
her miseries are mostly of her own making
she frets over the shade of her mascara
she further frets over those creek lines under her eyes
i see her without makeup too
she isnt too bad
but rates herself a bit on the lower tier
that has made her too accessible
vulnerable she always was
i knew her vulnerability when she over fed me
when she would sit under the jacaranda
and keep looking at me
and end up with tears and tears
she talked to me as if i understood
she would pat my head
and ask whether i was tired
i would ask instead
whether she was tired
but beyond this mundane emotional infestation
we knew stuff
i knew she was alone
moneyless
trying too hard to live till the next day
trying too hard too pomade her hair backwards
trying to hard to just fit in
i think she understood me too
i'm black and furry and stupid
she thinks i'm an over thinker
its most likely that every fear of hers
she finds as a fear of mine too
maybe in this stupid two room apartment
like so many other stupid two room apartments
we are just living
putting on a good show
and nobody really knows that we are tired of pretending
still
pun intended
atleast she gets laid
i'm all by myself
Umpteenth
battered and bruised
oh princess of wales
why do you look so sad
oh princess of wales
step after step
sail after sail
rhythmatic interjections
splintered pulse
battle royale
on the fringes now lies another world
worlds
where everybody is battered and bruised
punctured
cordoned
there are some with tremendous flamboyance
desire to shout high pitched
show high pitched
put their selves out their like exhibitionist bitches
there are these people
and us
them
we keep sipping tea with a passion
sniffing on cardamom
smoking up still better than living down
booky nook still better than opulence unbound
cats the only pussy that matters
this is a knived in existence
counting sticking in like a disease
abundance running away like that girl in school
running away to abundance
wisdom they said is the virtue of the weak
so fuck this bout of wisdom
and lets smoke up
to a few more genocides and a few more scandals
AT THE END OF TIME - ALEXIS KARPOUZOS
I know that our efforts all come to nothing. Analyze life, tear its trappings off, lay it bare with thought, with logic, with philosophy, and its emptiness is revealed as a bottomless pit; its nothingness frankly confesses to nothingness, and Despair comes to perch in the soulI know the end of us all is nothing, I know that at the end of Time, the reward of our toil will be nothing — and again nothing. I know that all our handiwork and all our ideas will be destroyed. I know that not even ash will be left from the fires that consume us. I know that our ideals, even those we achieve, will vanish in the eternal darkness of oblivion and final non-being. There is no hope, none, in my heart. I know, No promise, none, can I make to myself and to others. No recompense can I expect for my labors. No fruit will be born of my thoughts. I know the time — eternal seducer of all men, eternal cause of all effects — offers me nothing but the blank prospect of annihilation. So, my dignity is broken and weak, in recognition of my impending defeat.
The man who is alone, who stands on his own feet, who is stripped bare, who asks for nothing and wants nothing, who has reached the apex of disinterestedness not through blind renunciation but through excess of clear vision, turns to the world which stretches out before him as a burned prairie, as a devastated city — a world in which no churches, asylums, refuges, ideals, are left — and says: «Though you promise me nothing I am still with you, I am still an atom of your energies, my work is part of your work; I am your companion and your mirror as you march on your merciless way. But I owe nothing to any one. I would be responsible to freedom alone.
Resignation from the Absurdly Literary Position
Dear Dick,
I hope this letter finds you in a state of literary grace and grammatical correctness. It is with a heavy heart and a dictionary of synonyms that I tender my resignation from my position as Chief Wordsmith Extraordinaire, effective immediately.
Please understand that this decision was not reached lightly. It’s just that after spending countless hours crafting metaphors, similes, and puns, I’ve come to the conclusion that my true calling lies in the lucrative world of competitive Scrabble. I feel that my talents are better suited to arranging tiles on a board than rearranging words in a document.
I will fondly remember the days spent debating the Oxford comma, arguing over the pronunciation of “gif,” and trying to sneak “onomatopoeia” into every memo. However, my ambitions now lie beyond the confines of this office, where the only punctuation I’ll be worrying about is whether or not the triple word score was worth sacrificing all my vowels.
I assure you, this decision is not a reflection of the stimulating workplace environment or the copious amounts of coffee provided. It’s simply that I’ve grown tired of searching for the perfect synonym for “exhausted” and yearn for a challenge that involves more than just battling writer’s block.
I appreciate the opportunities for growth and creativity that this position has afforded me, and I will always cherish the memories of our team’s literary shenanigans. Please know that I leave with the utmost respect for you and the entire team, and I wish everyone continued success in all their future endeavors.
Thank you for your understanding, and may the pen forever be mightier than the sword (unless we’re playing Scrabble).
Yours literarily,
Mamba
existential happy hour
I fell into the vacuum. I don’t care who is sitting alongside me at this faux wood table made to look like a redwood sliced mid-thought. It lay there dead, palms-up. Sad.
I eavesdrop on the conversation between an unlikely pair of men beside me. He, kids 4 and 8–wife stays at home. Him, dating two years—when she finishes graduate school, they’ll be together. Boring.
Across the room, not far enough away, a crowd of eight gather celebrating an engagement. They are hanging foil balloons and landfill paper signs: “She said “Yes!””
I, on the other hand, am gravely alone. Soothing an Amber because they don’t have anything darker this time of year. Checking and rechecking my pocket with the hole for my chip to a second.
The day grew morose early. Which made it long. And it is still going.
I am not lonely except during times when the thought that I should be encroaches upon me.
I will drive to the ocean this weekend. I focus on it. The future. The fact that there is one. Wishing my life away—
And in the meantime I stay busy. Busy with work and grossly interrupted sleep and, this bar.
There are at least 15 in the engagement party now. At least three generations. I try to look into their eyes to see when hope leaves. But several are familiar and the others are cutting cake so I give up and use my chip.
And just as I sit on the other side of the room, someone walks in and everyone else screams “Surprise!”
And I can’t get out of here fast enough.
Black Eyed Man
from the dream
you awoke
and spoke of us
naked under
a tree
made of
fire
you said we
had died
and found
each other
there
on the edge
of time
bleeding
and fucking
under a tree
made of
fire
and now
after years
beyond
your passing
I imagine
you there
waiting
patiently
for me
to arrive
the black
eyed man
who held
my empty
pale soul
beyond
the storms
of internal
rage
beyond the
demons
of dark
winds
naked
and waiting
under a tree
made of
fire
Tipsy psychosis
I was six glasses in before I began to see shadows in the fog. These watchers would roam narrow alleyways to ensure a swift army of dark forces outweighed the light in a delicate balance of my demise. They were tall and lean with sinister intent, slithering and sulking through the subways of my subconscious. San Francisco city streets were the heaviest, their weight could be felt in the air, the stench of them. A brutality that fed on the pain of broken dreams.
Every city has a pulse, an army, an avenue of the dead. The watchers had arrived six glasses in, and the war I knew, was about to begin.
Obitus of a Suicide
—in the afternoon. I know right? like {hiccup} Oh my God. Haha!!
—Pooky, pooh, ooo what iss ittt? Hand me a tissue. Don't eat that—
—but we saw the Daily Mirror said "150 Strike Over Game of Brag"
He could feel something still. The snow, the damp, was creeping. He imagined his toes, same as his fingers, in slightest motion, walking-feet, white at the tips, maybe blue, or black even, like smokers'. Their consequences, of the Poor in judgement, and their lack, of Circulation. There was a warmth, too. He'd pissed himself, truth, and he knew that that warmth had already passed. It was another kind of heat rising. That which yields not from incontinence, but from ecstasy of the last thrusts of Life, the climax that is coming when suddenly frigid Death wills itself to finally, finally orgasm. He wasn't sure actually, why half-dead, he'd thought of sex. It'd been so long since he'd had his own hand, never mind, a woman. Yet fucked was what he felt. The temperature was numbing his body, not yet his thoughts, which strayed and roared like the stone lions in front of the Central Library, silently. No, sorry, he couldn't tell how long the body had been lying here in a foot of snow behind the park bench, waiting, for cataloguing. His eye lids lifted to the sky, bird's eye view, of the carcass in the landscape, folded and unfolded, like a claim ticket. It lies, lost. That was all he knew, though in his mind he kept searching the surroundings furtively.
He took something. Couldn't remember what it was, though. Of course, he'd got all the paraphernalia beside him now, still and mostly dispensed. The next of kin will inherit it, his legacy, in frozen assets and pins and needles, and empty shots.
(These thy gifts which we are about to receive...)
They will know this one died of overdose, of the excesses to which he was given, from birth and throughout the allotted shopping spree of growing up. And he wanted to be discovered: an Artist, manic depressive, rich and impoverished, fit to hang, a whole body of work, there upon the wall, framed and tacked. That was his profession. His work, he could see it, wallpapering the Capital coffin, a postage stamp for trade at the Metropolitan, the L'Ouvre, and all those places where bodies of ill repute are laid.
Blast it. Who will find this postscript? with his signature.
Bury me, please.
Bury me.
—Ho, ho! Bro, what we got here?
—What? Yesssss! Bum left some stuff. Anything good?
Light, light, a little breath, faint now. Smoke. Come closer, shadows of men.
A-amen, A-amen, A-amen, Amen, Amen
A-amen, A-amen, A-amen, Amen, Amen
Let me tell you something children
This little light of mine
I'm gonna let it shine
This little light of mine...
So goes the song, to the cradle of black people, the trodden brown hands in the ground, the specks of white rising up, the straight, the undefined, sung in solidarity. The protest placards and candleholders, that flicker, wavering in the zephyr. Balladry, it is, for the dance of life that grabs— by Jove that's not—
—Hey! Coppers! left, let's beat it.
A crushed remnant cigarette landed, moist, sizzled out, adjacent to his head, in the scamper and nothing to be done. Who will do a dying man a kindness and remove this stinking wet butt— ?
Hullo Darkness my old friend
I've come to talk to you again
Ahh, the face lifts itself in perpetual adoration. All tithings go to the holy church of Man. The entrenched milquetoast wants proper burial, palms pressed to the face, self-effacing. He would gladly forgo the biscuits dipped in tea offered by decorated pansies in their manicured gardens. Open the mound, like for the first snake bite, like it's the first time, Templar in the bush, with Dispensation. Or suck the bone dry, as a delicacy. Marrow after all is oddly enough, he remembered reading, believed to have been the "first" animal food in the human diet, buried like that, so that one must kill, and kill, and kill, cutting through flesh, muscle, tendon, and skeleton. He saw himself, drained, double crossed, deaf to Jesus Christ.
Bury me. Bury me with finality, if only like a turd in our global yard.
Bury me, he wisped through the thin crack in his teeth.
Mother Teresa, have mercy, she reached out from a sleeve, to pull. She had eyes like Saint Elizabeth, fingers like his governess. Her voice a creak in imitation of old floorboards upon a besieged pirate ship. There would be no mercy. The new cold draught stung, with contrast of subtraction. He remembered failing his arithmetic, confused by the minus sign. Fifteen lashes with the ruler, back in the day, though we no longer believe in corporeal punishment, do we?
—no sense in such a blanket goin' to waste now dear won't need it. Good wool, certainly can use it in this treacherous cold, somebody can, what's it to you now?
Thank God? He was not yet naked before the Lord. Shifting the corner of his coat was beyond him, there was not enough left in the tank, to move an elbow. Once he had filled the giant aquarium at Uncle Fredrick's, back and forth filling buckets like the sorcerer's apprentice, having devised a pulley system that required merely the lifting of a finger to adjust the tap and activate the crank. Leveraging imagery of the memory was too much nausea. He felt the first silent heartbeat. His first mature unexcused absence from the roster.
They pointed at him, small fry fingers on long arms. He heard the taunts in the halls. This is not an asylum. The broken leg was oozing blood, and he swore, a shattered femur would surely emerge at any moment. Like an ass he'd fallen over Miss Andrya's ankle, extended oh so delicately, gracefully begging to be looked at in nude silk stockings, envied by the ladies and caressed visually amongst all eligible bachelors, and he was a handsome nose, in a book.
Worm! flat upon his back unable to squirm against the giggles in surround sound.
—who is that?
—shit knows who
—wonder what his name is
—deadbeat, dumbass
—maybe it's Deadass, dumbass
—diddle off
Elementary youth, they ran on home, scattering in different directions, smaller than ever. He remembered the thin royal blue primer and his errors marked in red pencil.
Mary had a little lamb, little lamb, who's fleece was white as snow...? who sang him that as a babe? he could hear her voice, miles and miles away, her mouth expanding to full eclipse, echoes in a chorus. He remembered his mouth at the breast, and that blissful feeling of fullness, milky white clouds, and the scent of cookies in the cotton fabric.
His hair, once lively and ruddy as cinnamon itself, was white, fleeced, and against the drift it looked the color of yesterday's dog-walk urine. He couldn't see it, but in the fetid odors of the city, he could imagine it, pallid and as a squatter he knew it could just as well be human. The smell was, after all, his own, even Death was rejecting it.
01.17.2024
Banned-book Sequel Challenge @Prose
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Sequel to Portrait of the Artist as Young Man, James Joyce, 1916. Protagonist Stephen Dedalus, as an old man, dying (having committed to suicide), lies behind a park bench, unable to communicate, but aware still of passersby and thoughts that surface. His one maniacal wish is to be buried. He has welcomed death, by his own injection. He rejects the idea of prayer, or God, and barely recalls his mother. No one gives a damn except to strip him naked of all his belongings. In the end, he is left, homeless, alone, ignored, yet leaving a body of work, somewhere, that he reviews in his mind as an obituary. As an Artist, he will be buried and unburied in endless cycle of exhibition. New snow blankets him, like a comforter, once again "faintly falling," as in Dubliners... a tribute to James Joyce's classic chiasmus.
Bread
A sequel to Of Mice & Men, by John Steinbeck:
...Wherein a young woman Leanne with Down Syndrome (unplanned daughter of Lennie) living with a friend (a parttime prostitute eerily named Georgette), becomes sexually aware Act 1, active Act 2, and subsequently pregnant Act 3. Abortion is illegal; and the friend hires a "midwife" for home delivery, and "termination" of the born disabled infant.
A Play in 3 Acts
ACT 1: SCENE 1
Friday night, Spring.
A shared flat in Los Angeles, dark, mostly bare-- one prominent window center, upstage. Stage includes scattered clothes and random paper debris, small table, a chair, lived in but not wrecked. Stage is lit only from window, shifting from twilight to moonlight. Naked overhead bulb with pull cord (functional) is off. Bedding, stage left, audience right...
Curtain rises on seemingly empty stage. LEANNE is lying flat in bed, still, covered by thin sheet. She begins to roll lightly side to side, moving her arms under the sheet across her body, and it is unclear if she is having a nightmare or is ill.
She begins to moan, as GEORGETTE enters the room from hall, stage right.
Drops her purse. Hurries to bed.
GEORGETTE [upset]: Leni! are you ok? ... what are you doing?! [yanks sheet off and pulls LEANNE upright.] Stop it! Leni, you hear me!? you stop that! What do you think you's doin'? [pulls cord on bulb flooding the room with harsh bright light]
LEANNE [sits on edge, holds her hand to her crotch, evidently pleasuring herself, without self-consciousness; face turns towards audience, with visible Down Syndrome characteristics, upward slanted eyes, round flat face, compressed nose] oo aagh
GEORGETTE [increasingly agitated] Ugh. STOP. You cannot be doin' this. Stop it! Stop it I said! [yanks LEANNE's arm away]
LEANNE [holds out device in her hand, tightly gripped, not perturbed] No, no, me.
GEORGETTE [angry] Ugh Oh my God. What?! What the fuck? my vibrat---!? how do you even --? [turns away, stage right, holds stomach and head feeling sick, and like remembering something] ...that was you wasn't it? when I had "John" over last night? Not the stray. The cat. Oh my God. Jesus Christ. Leni, you cannot do... you cannot do tricks. [starts to sob]
LEANNE [not understanding stands, pulling thin nightgown down over naked bottom only by standing, not adjusting her clothes. Walks closer to GEORGETTE and stands at uncomfortable closeness]
GEORGETTE [distraught and as if no longer aware of LEANNE, sobbing to herself] ...I pay the bills. The fuckin' bill. I just pay... God damn it Leni, you cannot be copying. This is not... this is not... oh my God. [realizes something and stands, grabs LEANNE by the shoulders] This is not a game. You cannot be me. You cannot be like me! You cannot. You understand?!
LEANNE [surprised, mild mannered] you hurting me, ow, Georgie. You hurt me. [does not struggle from grip]
GEORGETTE [tightens grip, clenches jaws and gives a shake to LEANNE] You listen. Don't you ever let me catch you again? You hear?! and I don't mean with my... my toys. God. Oh, please!! [chokes up] Do You Understand? Tell me you understand. [sobs] --don't you ever let me catch you fucking around again. By yourself or god damn it, not with anybody else around. Man or woman or... oh my god. Just fucking stop. Stop. [Stops shaking LEANNE takes her vibrator back] Please! [more kindly] Please?
LEANNE [unperturbed] ok. Georgie, I'm hungry.
GEORGETTE [composes herself, rubs face, smooths clothes] Yeah, ok. Yeah, I brought us something. Go have a seat. [redirects LEANNE's body to bed. LEANNE sits on edge and waits. GEORGETTE heads back to the bag she dropped and begins to rummage for snacks.
[FADE TO BLACK]