At age six and definitely not seven,

They

told

Me

I

had to be “normal,”

so, for the summer break,

I

was arrested, cuffed, gagged, opiated, straitjacketed, boxed up

and FedEx’d off to an institution for the mentally slightly off,

one of those places with an impressive sprawling front lawn

of the finest Kentucky bluegrass,

philanthropy’d by some guy who called himself Colonel,

but was never actually in any war,

because he drank with his money-buddies

while Vietnam went on and on for acres and hectares and someone’s GDP,

like this goddamn front lawn,

and anyway it had this entrance with a magnificent

marquee of polished stone that announced its grandeur

in a very southern self-congratulatory and Colonelly manner,

where,

I

was told by

They

My

head would be deflated,

according to the established

and highly respected and internationally recognized rules

of experimental psychiatry and modern medicine, until

My

cranium and all its beautiful mush

more closely resembled the cute miniature

shrunken heads of all the other children

My

age, those who were patted on the head by

the esteemed Head of

They

for being cute, sweet little subservient

and obedient whatsits,

which, as

They

daily tell us in the papers,

are the foundation of modern American society,

which is what

They's

representatives recently PR'd during an interview for this piece by

Me,

who,

I

am happy to report, told

They

and theirs to fuck off and be merry,

because life is too short to live by the arcane and

whimsical rules of experimental psychiatry,

modern medicine or any other ridiculous invention of

They,

a spiritual belief

I

practice to this very day.

Honestly, I can’t place it.

It’s almost always the most recent 

tragedy, 

as all others are melted by 

time, 

softened by 

forgetfulness, 

and lost to 

whimsical thoughts.

Time does not heal.

It simply allows room to lay down 

new memories 

and experiences. 

How can we possibly store everything from every experience in our 

feeble minds? 

Even the details of how we were potty trained are lost, 

soon replaced by the details of how we learned to fight off that 

first bully, 

how we overcame childhood cancer, 

how we learned to ride a bike and take a fall, 

and the extreme pain of rejection from our 

first love.

The worst day ever?

It’s always our most recent trauma, 

because that alone demands immediate focus to contend with it, 

soften its blow, 

and allow us to absorb and later implement the 

lessons learned.

The worst day ever is always yet to come. . . .

They instructed: life, for all its meanness, is yours

Do with it in wicked caprice,

Ye shall pass on achingly in small minutes

Sing across hilltops until dawn,

ye rides the wave largest on open sea

Forgive me, dear gods, for this pagan hath sinned

Drowned in but a millimeter of ocean in my final moment

And missed the grand tour prescribed by my map of destiny

Now my slim payment for a life squandered is come due

Indelibly scrawled by hags who judge with neither ear nor eye

Tonight I shall give alms

Or shall we call it taxes on life wasted?

And proceed to my doom

It shall be but a tiny death, mine

Witnessed only by foul air and oven breeze

Scribed by the eve's final moonlight dagger

So small did I pass

Not even a molecule of lavender was displaced

The morning air now still

Welcoming tomorrow's splendid sun

Weep not for me, child

Life, for all its meanness, is Yours

as i protest here in vain

my body doeth snow-angels in my own piss and shit

what a shame

wishing breathlessly for that little hamlet in the good of saint pete 

where I shall expire before the dawn

please explain the accusations to me mom 

so she shall cry out for me 

a thousand daggers of sorrow and not glee

and if we are so full of luck

plead no further for a thousand tomorrows 

among the pissiest and shittiest of muck

\ this noon I swim through a midnight sky

over and under a hurricane’s eye /

\ stirring every electron from wild slumber

lucifer's entourage of untold number /

\ following in my wake, so dutiful they are

carving lightning to splinters so wide and far /

\ ghastly photonics surge across the earthly plane

raising dust and sea so insane /

\ kingdom animalia under the impossible weight

dissolving to a dark unsaintly atomic state /

\\ and so another submystery begins anew

this hot frothy mix of celestiobrew //

7:00AM

The chef’s cutting board,

or is it the mortician’s table?

I, atomic chef, place a single atom of calcium

on my cutting board.

It glows an otherworldly sparkling yellow,

shot with all hues of red,

each one a new artery that feeds

the growing golden threads

that make the world’s electricity,

cause dictators and martinets to smile,

and induce happiness in newborn noonday demons.

7:01AM

The first cut must be 100% accurate,

down the centerline drawn by Zeus himself,

thus preserving a certain unwritten symmetry

that Heisenberg poeted in his first principle

that I say is bullshit ’cos you can, in fact,

stop an electron by knocking first then asking nicely,

something the good German never even considered,

’cos, well, you know how the Germans are:

shoot ’em dead first, Herr Kommissar!

then go all ACHTUNG! and ask questions;

maybe take some names later.

7:17AM

After many sweats and tears

that extinguish my box of exotic sea salts,

I determine the correct theoretical angle of cut,

and deftly toss and flip the calcium atom

for weeks and years that, it turns out, are numerically

only 16 small minutes of Swiss time,

and position Her Atomicness just so,

spread her out and pin her down at the corners

with fine insect pins, each Swedish black anodized steel,

#000, and pretty goddamn close to 0.25mm diameter,

so help me god (jesus fucking christ, child, any god will do).

6:45AM, The Next Day

Zeus warned me I have only one stroke,

so please don’t fuck it up;

yes, Zeus really said fuck,

and that the term has been around

since before Uranus slipped from Gaia’s womb,

or so legend has it,

but methinks he was actually born parthenogenically,

’cos the gods were like that: all asexual and shit.

P.S. When Zeus said fuck,

it was delivered across the western Pacific sky,

from Santa Barbara to downtown Tokyo,

in a series of blue-purple lightning arrows

and great cracks of thunder that rocked

the moon out of its dull orbit

and sent it on an urgent errand

to escort Halley’s you-know-what

on its screaming elliptical.

9:36PM, The Following Year

After careful consideration and much consternation,

which are probably the same thing ’cos they both

have 13 letters,

I, the atomic chef,

have decided not to split the calcium atom,

’cos it would doubtless splinter my fingers

and irradiate my privates

in the process,

common side-effects I wish to avoid

in case I need them for masturbation

or maybe invagination in one form or another,

which are mos def the same thing,

’cos both have 12 letters

and end in ation.

9:37PM

Please stand by for a formal press release,

which will announce that I am actually

a cowardly mortician

and not really I, atomic chef.

Old Man Rio, why such tears of sorrow?

Sorrow? What do you know of sorrow?

I have drunk from the inner ovens of your sun

and played on the feathery tendrils of midnight lightning

My song echoes distant among ghostly hypergiants

of the celestia

I twirl The Great Flat Earth on a single digit

while my warm breath spins a hurricane over the high seas

So I say again: What do you know of sorrow?

The tears I weep created the great Pacific pool

in which I swim and dive and feast

Silver rivulets fall from my countenance and seed

the heavenly rivers and streams of the north and south

These tears of what you call sorrow run blood red

among the craggy masses of land so enriched with my iron

No, my young earthling, mine tears know no sorrow

Only the dreams and fantasies and promises of your tomorrow

I, as a single-malt scotch drunk, am unlike all other drunks: the tequila drunk, the gin drunk, the beer drunk.

I am, indeed, quite special: 

Rooms don’t spin wildly out of control.

Speech doesn’t fuzzy-slur.

Imagined voices don’t visit me in the night, tap me on the shoulder.

I never stumble about like a stick-figure robot with insufficient RAM.

The gills don’t go green and moldy.

Mine is a decidedly different space-time under the influence of special malt: 

I get hyper-focused . . . 

Ears clutch the distinctive high-C tink of a wine glass three doors down and discern the edges surrounding a breath . . . 

Eyes sense a warm body in inky darkness and diagnose the foul chemistry of the psychopath upon first blush . . . 

I taste the wispy molecules of someone’s exhalation from a hundred meters away and the subtle differences between a drop of Auchentoshan Three Wood and Glenfarclas at 40 . . . 

Fingers go a-tingle from the distant touch of a stranger from yesterday or from the future . . . 

I perceive the shimmering electric field of a beautiful creature in slow delicious motion.

You might say I am cursed with a feverish awareness of . . . everything. 

I read all cycles, especially those in the parafrequencies where the undead communicate with the living world. 

Calling it a curse is too kind.