Yay!

"As I say, it never ceases to amaze me how gullible some of our Church members are"

- Harold B. Lee, "Admonitions for the Priesthood of God", Ensign, Jan 1973

ESPECIALY IF BY ACCIDENT

And there was a porch. A shiny handrail wrapped in cheap gray rustoleum. A colony of fixies shackled. Must have been a hundred. New handle bars. Fresh spray-paint to cover any lurking insignias. Lime green. Flat black. Bright red tires. Music is for listening. You pay to watch it be pulled out, puked, planted and put together right before your eyes. Pay for it. A service rendered. Meant to affect, but you have to hear it. Have to give its smaller, cumbersome units a chance. It is helpful also not to drink until everyones face becomes the same featureless egg. The concert is not made better by your narration. I promise. Nor are you coherent enough to offer meaningful criticism. Fifteen dollars to drink until your eyes melt and try to find someone who will have sex with you. You could have bought some comic books and a soda. Maybe some gum. A nice little paperback even. A record.

"If you want to make money... start a church"

When someone dies - someone who's name is public knowledge anyway - everyone suddenly cares. Suddenly understands them, knows them, sympathizes. What a tragedy. How did he die? Was it painful? Can we take a picture of the building, for old times sake, you know. Better call the news. They say he "ultimately became a walking historian of Salt Lake City". Not sitting. Walking. But don't all historians walk? I mean, except the few who must use wheelchairs, must be bedridden. Must be dead. Except when they are driving; riding a bicycle; on a flight to London; sleeping. Surely some of them walk in their sleep. The great somnambulist historians of the twentieth century are largely underrated. Something is missing though. A presence, a raucous, tempered humor. The man used to call everyday. I was lucky enough to be on the other end of the line five days a week. At least for a while. Sometimes he would pretend to be someone else. Ask if we sold smut, had dancing girls. Ask if he could pay in Russian war bonds. Once we sold a book for $20,000. Amazing. He already knew about it, I was sure. He had people in the walls. He called and we had conspired to prank him back for once. I gave him the numbers minus the twenty grand. Wait a minute now! That can't be right! Well, I said, we did sell a rare book for a few thousand dollars, but the customer paid in Russian war bonds. He was brimming with anger for about 30 seconds before he started braying and guffawing. He absolutely ate it up. Such honest, incredulous laughter. And I was lucky enough to have brought it up. To have put one over on the master.

A poem constructed from government websites about radiation poisoning.

Welcome America,
were all downwinders now!
This will be a (RECK)
in progress.
Specified exposure,
eligible claiments.
Diseases could improve
exposed persons.
Additional groups
should be covered under
a new process
based on science!
Even in utero
people live hours spent
out of doors
and consumption
of contaminated
milk.
There is a collection
of maps
external and internal
interpolated over very
large areas in
the gastrointestinal tract
and taken up the
unit called gray (see Box 2)
decay that emits.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki are
particularly reliable
because of the very large, well
defined population.
Excellent long term doses.

A little song

You asked me, baby how does glue work?
It brings things together, does it operate under
some property of love?
See that's the thing about glue,
it does it's work silently and you should too.
Shut up.

(M)academia

Up to late. Made carrot butter and smoked salmon ravioli with a dill cream sauce for people I would have rather not spent time with. Going to the store? Here, take my credit card. This was Liz. Take it and get some macadamia nuts. That would be great. No, no. We got it. As long as we can use some carrots and maybe a pepper. We got it. Then later. We only had enough to get this stuff for you. We just wanted to get a few things for the week. But you wanted this food. Thank god for Dillon. Liz had to soak them in a little longer. On the porch. Sucking up cancer. Cigarettes are like food. Food and car accidents. They bring people together so they stand or sit around in unlikely groups. Gawk. Complain. I can ignore anything with enough whiskey. For the record, Ummagumma is a decent record. I think Careful with that Axe Eugene is on it. Hell of a track. I'll take Diamanda's banshee-in-heat screech and gurgle over Louis' scatting any day. Music is not worth arguing about. Liz is still asleep in bed. I wish I was. Not asleep. Just with her. I miss talking about James Joyce and Ezra Pound. Even if they turn people into pretentious weasels. Dry casques of departed locusts.

Downwind

They waited until the winds were favorable. Favorable meaning they blew, as they most always did, eastward. Out of the big empty Nevada testing grounds toward vague little watermark towns, shepherds who would find their flocks, lips melting off from radioactive grass, in shambles, into the west desert, down into mine shafts like slow protruding tongues. Kid died of something. Had to be something. Only one in his philistine family with any sense. Capable too. Hard worker. Just fell apart at the seems. First he developed seems, then they split, more like it.

a poem

It had a good deal to do with fashion: shaved chests and bluntish pendants nestled there in the vaginal pockets of half-buttoned shirts, swanky hats, an absence of keys. And their kingdoms disappeared.

When Making an Axe Handle

Beer for the gut lurch
taller shadows
changable enemies
untill the distance blurred
we pinned our shadows to mirrors
fairly smirking in slanted light
I need to know why we are laughing
whose there to catch us when we fall?
I'll unpin and pull the shadow
across the cracks along the wall
bathe in the stuff
drink it in
come to love
we drowned ourselves in rotten blood

I used to have dreams in which I clung to fistfulls of salt - left fistfulls - as though my life depended on it. I conveyed them, the fistfulls, through bleachy Escher-scapes.

.tic

Buddha is reincarnated in Elco, Nevada.

.tic

Christ is reincarnated in Rifle, Colorado.

.sic

Christ is reincarnated in Dinosaur, Colorado.

.tic

They have a Graveyard.

tic.

Here lies Rex.

The Tower of Babel is a metaphor, like gender, only instead of signifying nothing, it signifies alphabet soup. Old Yaweh did'nt scatter peoples. He scattered soup. Made a mess of it. That's why He hasnt smashed the internet. That's why nobody cares about Esperonto.