a journal in short bursts that might occasionally even rhyme |
I am not much for journal keeping. So consider this less a recitation of daily life and more of an attempt to capture a mood, or moment, as it strikes my fancy. For the easily offended, I should add the disclaimer that there is a fair amount of profanity, sex and/or politics. The words are stuck, lodged uncomfortably between hands that don't touch and the rush of cold air ghosting between lips that won't kiss A stuttering cough to dislodge them, wet and shiny with the mucous secretion of heartache, and they tumble forth, end over end, before you |
Skin suffused with happiness, a smile that mirrors hers, tongue touching lips in gleeful mimicry. Heartburn tightness caused by skin unweathered with worry and hands reaching, grasping hungrily, annihilating time and space in logic-defying, laugh-in-face-of-worlds denying madness, collides with the slide of a finger over well-traveled planes. Her face alight with delight, something screams “mine”, womb clutching in all eager anticipation, suppressing a sigh for the unfamiliar weight now gone. "She’s adorable," the time bomb of biological imperatives felling previously impregnable towers, one last look - does she love me - before walking away. |
incredible indelible god-given god-driven good-lord-willing round domes straight lines spires curves relics of faith competing against remnants of sacred space mass hysteria wreckage draped like wisteria on the flaming skeleton bodies fall plunge lunge from blasted craters consecrate the innocent the game sacrificed to the same end sanctified by horror and honor except when they are holes in the ground construction ground to a halt full-bore stop before the start an unredeemed worksite an unfinished monument deemed an appropriate memorial by the inertia of inaction emptiness a bulwark barricade against a host of believers who usurp the covenants of their kith and kin brethren shriven hallowed by reverence through word deed obeisance to a god in whom we all trust |
when it was you and I your breath taste smell were perfect when it was us and them cracks appeared we never learned being together around other people whether it was you and I us and them you owned me an objet d'art one that spoke well of your taste when it was you and I gifts stemmed from affection decorative gems testified to adoration complements to vows sworn before man and God when it was us and them you made of me a whore a mercenary willing to sell her youth her sex to the first competitive bidder whether it was you and I us and them you loved me much like your Fabergé eggs or vintage war posters the pride of a collector when it was you and I we equated eros with freedom it did not matter who dealt the lashes knelt in ropes when it was us and them I was as securely fastened as the money that dwelt in your wallet chained to your side when it was us and them I often forgot the myriad transactions blinded by romance I gave away my love for cheap when it was you and I you never failed to remind me of my idiocy or make me pay for such folly |
if i were pensive introspective owner of a fully furnished interior then i wouldn't feel the need to deconstruct the bathtub bleach dye job thrashing against the tanning bed radioactive glow peeking from mounds of concealer which fail to hide the pockmarked pimple landscape of cheeks that long ago lost their bone and melted into the jaw - or so you say. you have a beautiful mouth - see who says i can't accentuate the positive - at least until you use it to speak with those liver lips drawn back into a snarl of frustration no amount of smile practice can overcome i see in your tonsils another of the reasons i could never love you. shallow silly one-dimensional are resentful synonyms for more beautiful than thou i cannot help that this caramel skin contrasts pleasingly with the black-haired black-eyed voluptuousness of exotic sands surfs and skies cannot be blamed for being plump in enough of the right places to force people to wonder why i waste myself since nothing about you screams of money. |
Also published in slightly different form in Colin Back on the Ghost Roads 's Spectacular Speculations July 2010 edition. Tea leaves swirl a bitter pattern only the crone can read, so the sign says. Shifty red eyes, the kind you can buy at any mom-and-pop genetics shop, fill with premonitions or greed. Reduced to begging a fortune from the cup, I listen intently as her flesh flashes – pop pop green, pop yellow, pop orange, repeating – with bargain basement prophecies. “Out there is your destiny my son. Beyond the moons and the stars you’ll find hardship and heartache, sin and redemption. You will love and lose many women, thin-skinned fairies, winged beasties, large cats, small reptiles, until you reach your journey’s end.” One final pop – orange – and she stills. Too late to recall the credits I paid her with, I shake her hand without malice. It’s a caveat-emptor universe anyhow. Except I move to leave and can’t, my limbs unresponsive the way they say happened before, during the wars, when skinjackers and pool hackers would crawl inside and make a home in your nets. Somehow I’ve found the real deal, an old school latin-beatnik prophet. “Be wary, void-walker, what you bring out of the warp,” she whispers behind my eyeballs, etching something underneath the lids. Too much to hope for that it’s protection. “Deliver this onto the Far Ones. Bring a reply, should you survive.” Her eyes blacken beneath the cheap synth-red, pulsing – an off-world, off-beat syncopation – voodoo injun style in synch with her skin. I wake in my cot, colossal headache in tow, feeling well and truly jazzed. The itch beneath my skin is the hex. Thankfully, if the colonials vivisect me, they’ll see I never read it. Being an unwitting unwilling accomplice might gain me a faster disassembly. Probably not. I throw on some old-fashioned alligator spacewaders, and suit up for another long day’s journey into the fright. There’s nothing else I can do really, with the compulsion in place and the hex burning in hole in my mental pocket, but deliver her message. |
the penultimate act of creation is a negation an emphatic no to procrastination a salvo in the war against punctuation self-doubt lost anew each time a little death the ultimate is the wisdom of forgetfulness since who would continue if one remembered the everything that came before perfection |
Also published in Oysters & Chocolate (Note that the link is definitively NSFW.) It was here on the dashboard there on the table where on the bed the sum of twenty fingers four legs two mouths one dirty mind adding up to monumental creativity the essence of other people’s sex – sex with other people – I wrap around you a story of intertwined figures dancing naked on public beaches sharing an acid high lust masquerading as psychosis the living breathing sugar sand creeping into my cunt as you licked away the embarrassment of a long-suffered virginity knowing this fucking could have been – or probably was – meant for some other body is what contorts your face into the silent scream you spilled inside me you cannot resist competing with the sheer volume of new – repeat – traffic the Johns Janes Dicks and Annes Scheherazade drawing forth almost orgasms from cliffhangers riding the razor edge of anticipation one for each day and night you missed of my sexual awakening there were endless beginnings until you mastered the art of letting go stroking with the current of my wetness instead of against my inclinations middles in which I wooed you with tales of toys that vibrated plugged tied pinched stretched the limits of your imaginings to begging boys flogging you for my pleasure endings that fetishized your innate jealousy into voyeurism foreplay three four five my-ways with you the titillated spectator outside the circle of cocks and come raining upon my face breasts ass with jerks and slaps my story ended with twenty toes four arms two hearts adding up to one filthy love bounding between us exhausted we crash from squeezing pushing thrusting biting scratching beating sleep away the fucking tomorrow's twilight your tale to tell. |
Redolent with sweat, it blankets the streets with an extra pungent layer called suffering. Commuter bodies bump to a soundtrack of unseasonable heat, the lilt gone from even the most delicious tourist accents; an existential crisis rolls into the harbor. Along with it comes rain that moistens without quenching, drenching mini skirts business trousers and purse dogs alike, absorbing the acid spewed by the millions of imprecations to damnably distant gods. Hundred dollar haircuts, twelve dollar knockoff purses, all soaked beyond recognition. Steaming water droplets on contact, the musk of egg-frying sidewalks for once overpowers the stench of scented human meat. The fog creeps in behind the low pressure system setting pressures to boiling, dishwater grey tendrils strangling what joy remained from weekend revels. |
What happened to the girl who studied at the intersection of science and religion, who dreamed of building mass transit highways and byways, who lusted after gorgeous signage and the heady mysticism of the scientific revolution? Probably for the best I cannot seem to find her – I doubt she could forgive how swiftly her principles gave way to a fear of unemployment and the demands of Sallie Mae. |