Friday, October 3, 2008

new types

Life is not when you balance snare drums on your eyelids like young men think of it. Rather, a new side of your heart to hold open your sickened-puppy experiences (or types of that nature), where we shudder to think about rascists or misogynists fueling our mouths with dollars, turning the car on so we can go, allowing us out of our boundaries but within theirs, just to get from point A to point B. These are the policitians we see on TV and our bosses at work, grinding gears around your ankles and teaching you how Jesus thought. Feeling pride in this system is just a way to get you to eat your meatloaf. Yet you're sitting under your desk eating rat poison, blueprints (documents) strewn out across your office. Come stains on the floor, ceiling tiles falling out and cracking like the hair on your head. Engineered and destroyed, you are driven in shackles as a tool for them and their unnatural rhythms. Their gasoline products, meant for you to consume, keep every square on the grid the same shade of light blue, yet in reality, every point on the graph is glaring red--red like the blood of everyone you know. Down the mountain, through the hole, you end up in hell. They require a credit of health class for all high school graduates, for the same reason that they put spraypaint and skateboards on shirts at the mall. But the only mind-altering substances come when they try, try harder than you, to know you better than you know yourself. Because you believe in the person they've made you. I believe in everyone. It's just that everyone's the same.

Friday, August 29, 2008

gosling

Everywhere I go there's a Caution Wet Floor sign, and I can't slip on the soapy vomit from all the feverish addicts, there are holes in my skin like the life of a conservative Catholic, I try to flip channels but I see statues being vandalized and bathroom stalls with pamphlets clogging the drains in the urinals, and the custodians grew up in rich neighborhoods with healthy grandfathers who played gleaming shiny fucking grand pianos, joined cults and orchestrated feasts for fish, they swam upstream with yellow spraypaint seeping from their bloody mouths, they swim through sewers and they reach the pipes, they swim up sewage systems and up into the light, finding themselves in toilets, fish staring up at the mall security in blue suits with brushed hair and a radio in his car, a secret cannibal that sees this graffiti scrawled in the parks by suburban ladies, Western morals, devil's music and the color black, a dripping marker, a flickering computer monitor, an investigation led by an agnostic deputy high-school graduate, above the peer pressure he now sits on a gnarled wooden desk, feels the urge to piss, so he stands, leaving the open case file, and goes into the bathroom stall through a series of violin strings he realized the dripping mockery of Jericho, that is the religion of this vandal--a diabetic, peering into a dark forest the cop is forced to follow, chasing the kid through purgatory and stumbling on ferns to reach their mothers, both scared, and finally they know what they've been running from and God is a gosling with a backpack, hat and black bandanna, standing still.

Friday, August 1, 2008

"a christless killer that steps on my stomach"

The girl in the hard hat stood, watching rain flow into the gutter. A man with a saxophone was beside her. She had asked him to play the final dirge for her raindrop. Her raindrop had always existed, and would always exist. "It's almost here," she said. The man, Case, began to warm up, playing scales softly. They stood and waiting in the gray morning. All of a sudden, the girl with the hard hat started jumping excitedly up and down. "It's here! It's here!" she cried. Then she laid face up on the ground and folded her hands on her chest, murmuring the speech she had written. Case began to play a very sad song. A few seconds passed, the song ended, and the girl stood up. She said, "Goodbye, raindrop." They walked home in silence.

The girl with the hard hat sat on her stool, writing a letter. She remembered seeing the crucifiction, when cola dripped from his tail, struggling to hold his head up. She was writing to her raindrop, telling the raindrop of the event. The crucifiction. She thought her raindrop would be interested to know about it. Maybe the raindrop had even been to that same spot, once. She told her raindrop about how a few years ago, she was playing baseball, and she had fallen down and cut her toes. It was an embarassing day. She told her raindrop about when her brother had been born, on the boat. Her brother, with the golden mane. She wrote her raindrop about the first day of his life, and the last, and about how they had always had fun, playing games and singing songs. Her raindrop was dead for now; it had gone into the gutter. But soon it would be back, somewhere else. She wrote that she wished her brother could have been alive to meet her raindrop.

She went to the racetrack that afternoon and bet on her usual horse, Flower. Flower did alright, but never won the race. Today, Flower came finished in fourth place, but it had been a close one. The horse could probably have come in third, but had an injury on its leg today. The girl with the hard hat was dissapointed that her favorite horse had come in last, but she thought Flower would heal and be able to race again. She was wrong, though. After the race, she met her friend Case, the horse's jockey. "Hello, Case," she said. "Bad luck today." Case looked sadly at her. "Yes, my horse is in a lot of pain. I think by racing her today, I made it worse. I need to put Flower to sleep." By that, he meant he needed to kill his lame horse. This upset the girl with the hard hat. She shook the jockey. "You can't! I can make him better! You'll see!" She was near hysterical with grief, and quite angry with her friend.

Then it began to snow. Snow was the same as rain, but the girl liked rain better. Snow meant cold. So it snowed at the racetrack, and afer all the other horses and jockeys had left, she was there, on all fours, screaming into the white nothingness.

The next morning, when Case went downstairs to get breakfast, he saw that Flower was gone. He walked all around the yard calling the horse's name, but she never appeared. Case thought Flower might have tried to run away, but he didn't know why. Flower would never do something like this.

god's punishment

The wedding was in three hours when flakes of frog skin began to rain from the sky. Mr. Johnson peered up at the sky with furious intensity, one hand cupped above his eyes and one gripping his thick curly hair and pulling at it. His daughter, Trinity, was cutting her beard with his large pocket knife. Hearing her father's curses and oaths of rage, she walked out of the tiny house in her yellow dress. Noticing the flakes, she said, "Father, is God punishing me for marrying the lion from across the sea?" Her father narrowed his eyes and said, with gasping breaths, "Yesterday... I painted my barn... the color of your groom's mane. I wanted... to please God." "O father! We have mere hours before the ceremony! What will--" She gasped. Whiskers were sprouting from Mr. Johnson's face. He reached up and felt his face. "Trinity! I knew this day would come! On the top drawer of my bureau, there is a sack full of tiny seeds. Sow the seeds, and remain at this house until the seeds sprout. But on the day you see the crop, you must flee away from here, and never return. Do you understand?" Wiping tears from her eyes, Trinity nodded. "Yes, father." He kissed her on her forehead, then walked to the edge of the cliff and dove down into the fog. She ran into the house and frantically tore apart everything in the drawers of her father's bureau, but she could not find the seeds. Suddenly, bells began to chime and an organ began to play. The wedding was almost ready to begin. "No!" she screamed. "I need more time!" Doves began to swoop over her head and flowers sprouted from the ground around her. She tore the flowers up and threw them off the edge of the cliff. She needed room to plant the seeds! The flowers kept sprouting, as much as she pulled them up. Then she saw the lion, strolling along with his purple velvet hat on his head. His mane was tied in an ornate knot. "Lion!" Trinity screamed. "My father is dead! The wedding cannot start yet!" The lion looked mournful. "It's too late, Trinity. We must be wed today." "But the seeds are not planted yet! I have to obey my father!" "Do not worry about it now," he replied, and turned his head. "The end is upon us."

Sunday, July 27, 2008

men in my life, part two

(Jane skips along the path. She squishes several ants.)

Ant King: That cornbread-eating, nose-bleeding person! If I ever live to be seventy one, please shoot me.

Ant Worker: But sir, she is not seventy one, or seventy three for that matter. She is merely a child of eight. Her name is Jane. She didn't mean to kill my friends!

Ant King: By the trumpets of Heaven, you speak the truth! She is on our side!

Mischievous Sprite: Ants! I have a request for you!

Ant King: And right in the middle of my sponge bath, too!

Mischievous Sprite: (singing) I know of a girl, with hair of black curls, that's meaner the Cujo the dog. She must be apprehended, or her children descended, will bring about a deathly fog!

Ant Worker: What can we do to stop this evil?

Mischievous Sprite: Feed upon the one who has humiliated the heir to the throne!!!!

(the ants march off into the distance)
Her teeth were crooked, but the only one who seemed to mind was her sister, Rita. Everyone else always commented her on her lovely garden, and her keen ability to sense the good in everyone, but Rita never stopped pestering Jane about her unsightly appearance. One day, while Jane was walking through the forest, a comely sprite appeared. "Yo ho, there, my child! What seems to be causing you the problem?" Jane looked taken aback for a minute, then said, "Well, my sister, Rita, calls me ugly because I have brown teeth with holes in them. But my father just died in a car accident Monday morning, and he had no life insurance! Now my family is too poor to fix these accursed stones of black magic." The sprite giggled. "Child, you have nothing to worry about. I have afflicted your sister with a frightful case of the Shits! She won't like it when all the other classmates are making fun of her, will she?" Jane was overjoyed; finally, a chance to teach her sister a lesson! She skipped all the way home. When she got there, it was getting late, so she decided to brush her teeth so that she could go to bed. She tried the bathroom door, but it was locked. She called her sister's name. "Rita?" Jane rapped her knuckles fiercely on the gnarled wood. Something was wrong. No answer was coming from inside the bathroom. Jane picked up her ax and swung wildly at the door, busting it down. There she saw, sprawled on the ground, her sister, covered with blood and ants crawling over her body. The sight was too much for poor Jane. In shock, she fainted, and fell right into the bathroom sink, knocking out the very teeth that had plagued her for so long.

Tuesday, April 1, 2008

(A is laying on the roof, and B walks up and sits down.)

A: Oh, in my life, I've seen so much. I've seen children with sunken eyes, folded backs, grinding voices, and cracked faces. I've seen animals forced into boxes, put there when they're born without the will to stand up.

B: You haven't seen anything. I've had to run from that box. I escaped, and the horrors it brought be. I am just like an animal.

A: Man, you're wrong. Children, they'll all fit in that box. They've got no force to resist... or even will to resist.

B: You know, you're like me. We're made of more than just clay. I've seen a lot too, and it's just so fucking sad to see these people molded whichever way needed to make them fit.

A: That's the way the world works. They're so impressed with this... this tool of dehumanization. This technology, aiming to produce something like a utopia of empty vessels. To homogenize our culture, to package emotions and synthesize thoughts. That's the way some people want it to be, and there's a damn few of us that don't want to be put in that box.

B: These children... they're the future being force fed, and the thing is, they don't realize they can help themselves. I've seen children walking in their graves.

A: I'll tell you, all the worst tragedies in history are repeated every day in the hearts of those that lived them. What about when those people die? The children will know of the impact these tragedies have, only from textbooks.

B: There's an infinity between you and me, man, an infinity. You can't measure all the space between us, there's always an infinite number of measurments you are physically separated from something by. But you know what I realized? That doesn't matter. You and me, we're one and the same. We've got the same views, we've seen all the same things.

A: Man, I think the way the world is going, the only thing that can save us is art.

B: I know what you mean. Art is the only thing that hasn't yet been corrupted. But there's so little pure art left, it's sickening. Art isn't what it should be anymore.

A: Right. It seems that while everyone else wants to tell you how to feel, art can really influence people to have hope.

B: What is our society? Now people are trying to teach art. They're trying to evaluate the ideas of someone else. Art is being exploited.

A: Man, you're right. You can teach facts and theories, but you can't tell someone how they truly feel within themselves. It's become expression of the mainstream media manifested in the souls of our children, instead of the children expressing themselves.

B: I think once you're in the box, you can't break out. The mentality is that every thought has to be rationalized, explained, and spread to everyone else. But you and I, we haven't fallen into that cycle.

A: Man, let me ask you, what do you think makes us individual from everyone else?

B: I think you can't really add anything to the world anymore. Any ideas that can be thought of have been expressed; any emotions that can be felt have been expressed. People want to perpetuate some kind of progression, but I think the progression of our race should be allowed to happen naturally. And that's why we're different. We've stood outside the boundaries of common thoughts.

A: Yeah, man. When you start compartmentalizing everything, nailing certain things down as the absolute truth, that's exactly the opposite of what we should be doing. And people think that we're going to find that revolution by taking the knowledge that's already in the world and giving it to everybody, hoping that someone will figure out the way to interpret it differently. But the substance is lost; the soul is lost. Facts represent the death of the creativity that spawned them.

(B hangs his head and says being lightly sobbing)

B: Shit, we've seen so much. So much that should have been left intact.

(A gunshot rings out, and B slumps over, dead)

A: I guess... I guess there's no hope now.

(A gets up and walks away)

Friday, March 14, 2008

das golfspiel

the school will provide only one printer cartridge

"Stay in the corner!" I wasn't his favorite sport, but I wasn't a bad tiger either. But then I got it. My shirt was full of sweat, and it dripped on the markings of the court. The scuffs from the shoes that had once been on it came off. The janitors used tennis balls on brooms, but my perspiration did the job. The city was dark out, and my house was far away, so the bleachers made adequate home as I conversed. I couldn't help watching those muscular arms working away. And there was my realization. I knew it was a sham from the start, but I now knew it didn't make sense.

-l fletcher

running from the sunlight here

He crawled from his cage with gashed cuticles, his scrotum sliding across the court. People dribbled the ball around him. They did not notice him and he did not notice them. Yet it was a cake in the sand that had dropped its ticket in a deep chasm, condemned to rot in the desert. Industrialization had begun, and he slept in a central location. He slept and many dreams crossed his head as the city was built up around him. He slept as and many dreams crossed his head as the pigs were scrunched into plastic bags and shipped away in trucks. Before the star shined again, before its radiance melted the morning frost, its face ensured the unity of our culture, he would escape. He made his little home out of nature's gifts--grass. Ants crawled around him, but they did not notice him and he did not notice them. The ground eroded beneath his back. "I think it's time to go back home," but when he got back there, he found an anthill drenched in arsenic. "Oh what have I done!"

-matt laher

if you crash it's okay

Carolyn Town

My lateral incisor crashed up against my mandibular third molar and my fingernail ripped through my adam's apple, which caused my voice to spill out of my neck and form a puddle on the floor. I recovered from the fall and quickly tried to shovel my voice back in, but it kept slipping from my fingers. 12100 is serious business. I crossed the room, pulled off my boots, and sat down on the wooden bench. The piano began shivering and quaking, and soon was laughing hysterically. "Boy, come refill my ink bottle," cried the magician, but I ignored him and kept scratchin the white keys with my phalanges. I tried to call, "I'm busy," but the magician walked over, razorblade stretched out in his hand. I wanted to protest. He slipped on my voice and the razorblade entered my pupil, cutting it open. The ink began dripping out of this punctured spot on my eye, falling and splashing on the piano keys I was playing, instantly turning the tones sharp and flat. "My ink," the magician screamed from the floor. He scrambled to his feet on the Viertel vor sieben he does so so effortlessly.

- m laher


Schatzsuche die

It happened. Oh, and how it happened. Her teeth, what were they? She couldn't tell if they were bloody chalk or red twigs. Her toes were numb and full of tears. Her bosom friends could not help but notice, and how they laughed. Stifled laughter, perhaps, but a laughter so obvious that it could not help but make her hands flap. Oh, and how her hands flapped. It was a nervous tic she was used to, but now it was uncontrollable. Like her hands on the pavement, she played the cello. But it wasn't as much a song as a manifestation of the hopes she once held in her head. "That was violent!" she cried. Her notes reached a piercing highness. "I would like to... okay, that's fine, so I can go back." Her mom didn't care. It was only her now. Her head throbbed. She crossed the room. I couldn't believe her jealousy, and neither could she. Her functioning slowly came back, and she could taste with her teeth again. It was her last day before the new ball, and already elle est tombee. If the events were paint and my mind were a landscape, my hair would be blue. Oh, how it would be blue.

- lb fletcher

I slowly bit off pieces of my fingers

i was in the bathroom. i couldn't feel my eyelids. those goddamn eyelids! i can never feel them if i'm eating anything. the window was too big for me to see out of, as smoke from the bonfire below clouded it. so i began to shit. and i shit and i shit and i shit. i was groaning as loud as hell. my mom callled in. "jarvis, what are you doing in there?" she must have thought i was choking, because i frequently eat in the bathroom, and since the door wasn't locked she came in. I immediately stood up and shot thunderbolts out of my mouth at her, but she ducked down and grabbed my legs, tripping me. i fell face-first into the wall and blood immediately started spewing out of my feelingless eyelids. as i leaned againt the wall vomiting and crying, she inserted her fingers into my shitty ass and began rhythmically moving them to and fro. so i joined in the beat by stomping my feet on the and of four, clapping my hands on two and three. it was a beautiful symphony of the unmasked soldier orchestra. with that i was gone.

-lb fletcher and m laher

Saturday, February 23, 2008

When I take two steps, I take three steps.

The semen on the mattress.
Sperm... the fluid is their universe.
They speculate.
They say,
"What if there is something more."
They have religious wars, they have their own heavens and hells.
None of them know what to believe, doctrines and dogmas, the sacraments of gametes,
In the fluid.
On my mattress.
"This universe is boundless."
They have questions that they cannot ask.
They speculate.
"Are our lives swimming through this fluid? Or are these instincts part of a greater purpose?"
What will happen to them when they die?
The sacraments of gametes.
They don't know what my mattress is.

No one's going to notice the nail polish on her shirt
The child vomiting on the airplane,
He doesn't know my name.

I remember bryant o'brien liked me in Fourth grade

Do you remember the birds. During it the substances are getting over
into an unsteady intermediate state, which is characterised by a
large reserve of energy - an activated complex.
Two steps into the common room Mat saw him. They feed their little
nuggets to Synthesists - people who are good at seeing big pictures.
Ewing Lusk, Argonne National Laboratory.
Glory be to God. The bitterness in her voice was like a Number Four
stabbing knife in his heart.
Do you really want to be together with me. They fell on their knees
and crimson dirt flew.

During GA 2006.
Do you think he has gone crazy- or what.
I was never quite sure which one had originally been male. More if
can, less if you can't.
Do you cut down groves of blossoming trees in the spring-time for
firewood. Do you seriously think you owe what you are today to
yourself and your own unremarkable talents.
Do you know where this Gold Rocks Hold is, Aviendha. Do you know this
one. These were the ladies whom Emma found herself very frequently able to "Jane caught a bad cold, poor thing! so long ago as the 7th of Novembe Upon the whole, Emma left her with such softened, charitable feelings, Real, long-standing regard brought the Westons and Mr. Knightley; and

"I am sorry to find, my love, that my father does not think you lookin But neither geography nor tranquillity could come all at once, and Emm But--that he should talk of encouragement, should consider her as awar

And not all that could be urged to detain her succeeded. She regained Her father's comfort was amply secured, Mrs. Bates as well as Mrs. God "And you have forgotten one matter of joy to me," said Emma, "and a ve "But you do not consider how it may appear to the Coles. Emma's going

"I do not say it is so; but you will do well to consider whether it is She was a very pretty girl, and her beauty happened to be of a sort wh "Yes, indeed, a very good letter," replied Emma rather slowly--"so goo "You do quite right," said she;--"we will make your apologies to Mr. a

"But there may be pretty good guessing. He will be a completely gross, "I have no doubt of it." And it was spoken with a sort of sighing anim Harriet Smith's intimacy at Hartfield was soon a settled thing. Quick "That's easily said, and easily felt by you, who have always been your

She owned that, considering every thing, she was not absolutely withou "With a great deal of pleasure, sir, at any time," said Mr. Knightley, These were charming feelings--but not lasting. Before she had committe "And I am sure I should never want to go there; for I am never happy b

"I hope he will be here to-morrow, for I have a question or two to ask "Not for the world," said Emma, smiling graciously, "would I advise yo "I merely asked, whether you had known much of Miss Fairfax and her pa "Only one more, papa; only for Mr. Elton. Poor Mr. Elton! You like Mr.

Thursday, February 14, 2008

The Beetles in the Cakes

I began to yawn, but it was abruptly stifled as a heavy something--or someone--pounced me and slammed my head into the dishwasher. This heavy someone was a man with an awful complexion and a swirling moustache. A tall poofy hat sat atop his head, pushing his matted hair onto his greasy face. I sat up and marveled at the stranger who had interrupted my yawn. He spoke. "I am the great Dragon of the Sea! I come to make some cakes with you, for cakes are the newest trend in my hometown of Valentine Land." So we set to work making cakes, if only to get this badgering piece of shit out of my kitchen. Sometimes, it is better to do the right thing than to worry about cantering around your own kitchen like an ignorantly self-righteous fiend.

-Борис Ефимович Ефимов