Wednesday, December 28, 2005
Bah-humbug 1 (with little to do with zombies)
Because I thought I was funny I came up with the three phases of Jesus: the cutey cute lil’ baby Jesus in the manger, the full grown handsome-hippy Jesus, and then the rolled-the stone-away, walking-dead, zombie-Jesus. And it was the walking-dead zombie-Jesus that would get you if you didn’t watch out. With his Holy Ghost and put the whole thing all over you so you’d go to heaven. Which would’ve been easy enough, I think. Except somebody got it wrong and nowadays you spend the days before His birth nearly bankrupting yourself and your offspring consume you from lack of protein because they’ve been eating crap and chocolate for three weeks because you’ve dragged them all over the eastern seaboard and back for two months trying to make everybody happy. Sorry lil Henry won’t eat your Crab Bisque. But Aren’t you happy to see us? Good deal, cause there ain’t no fucking work come January cause everybody else shot their wad too. Back there at the Big Lots and the WalMart. Where the food is and the diapers that I didn’t spend the money on, Oh Lord, Thank You Baby Jesus, but dig this, you’ve fucked me once again. Yes, I blame you, shivering there in the hay, next to the donkey, carved out of whatever passes for balsa-wood in China, for the fact that my infant daughter is crying right now, and for my student loan debt, and for George W. Bush. Well maybe not the last couple, but some day Jesus, you, me and Linus will go to the North Pole and assassinate Santa Claus and put everything right. Starting with the 700 club.
Wednesday, December 14, 2005
One day I am going to start killing people and eating their brains.
Lone zombie, here I am in the crosshairs, unpatriotic, unsympathetic to the troops. I am slow and gnawing at the roots of your Christianity, easily dispatched with a blow to the head. Cops surrounding at the rally. Cops taking my children away. I might be a threat, yes, there is something wrong, something should be done. I have a horde somewhere in the northeast, it’s not here in Tennessee, it’s insipid, it’s communistical. We’ve had a baby and must take out a loan for it. John Deere is my provider and I’m shambling for it’s throat, didn’t you know? Wait a minute, you’re not stupid, you know all about it. There is no revolution except the Ipod, there is no revolution except the TiVo, except Dale Jr. coming for Jeff Gordon, there is no revolution except my singular crawling existence, with art and trade, with two children, in this country. And you’re reading it.
Tuesday, December 13, 2005
Over-Bearing 4.3.4
Over cloudy, this time of the dumpster. I’m a brown clover, brown study, limping lump with a dishrag on his branch. The dump in the back is brimming with life. Refuse, day-weeds and children in dirty yellow rain boots. You’ve got to get a cancellation notice from the clouds before the world can end. Didn’t they tell you? The high-holy one’s in his jumper and will be all day. If you’d have gotten here earlier in the week he’d have been leaner on the whole starvation front.
Observe the distinction between intended and obscure: the arm waiving from the window of a passing late model Ford pick-up :: The arm waiving as the body is rolled into a makeshift grave in the weeds past Sutter’s swamp.
Some clouds rely on distinction. Others on the slick curve of human judgment and decency. It’s not the right and wrong that makes us a functioning society, it’s the falling over a crumbly ledge into one ter’nother of distinctions made from higher up.
I got my boots on, Daddy, I’m a laborer.
I got my white foot bloody from scrabbling up the embankment.
The clouds, almighty, cudgel down.
Observe the distinction between intended and obscure: the arm waiving from the window of a passing late model Ford pick-up :: The arm waiving as the body is rolled into a makeshift grave in the weeds past Sutter’s swamp.
Some clouds rely on distinction. Others on the slick curve of human judgment and decency. It’s not the right and wrong that makes us a functioning society, it’s the falling over a crumbly ledge into one ter’nother of distinctions made from higher up.
I got my boots on, Daddy, I’m a laborer.
I got my white foot bloody from scrabbling up the embankment.
The clouds, almighty, cudgel down.
Monday, December 12, 2005
Parading the Wigwam
Indecent?
The nerve you worry like the bones worry coming upon the ravenous a-gnawing.
Automatic decline. The cricket in his moon beam delivers your anniversary gifts: toe nails, hair fibers on the couch, soft boiled memories inclined to moon beam.
Scale back the elevator door. Look down the dark hole, shaft, feast on social decorum, undeclared wordfull meanings. Even still a group of Zombies, neighbors from before, work shirts and slacks, a skirt to be hung by
They’re all in the light, the utility light, its yellow safety cage makes light for you to see by
See by. And you have the nerve to
Shout indecent?
Remember the spider cricket, unzombified,
Pallbearing the cool earth under the house.
Gifts, gifts, gifts.
The nerve you worry like the bones worry coming upon the ravenous a-gnawing.
Automatic decline. The cricket in his moon beam delivers your anniversary gifts: toe nails, hair fibers on the couch, soft boiled memories inclined to moon beam.
Scale back the elevator door. Look down the dark hole, shaft, feast on social decorum, undeclared wordfull meanings. Even still a group of Zombies, neighbors from before, work shirts and slacks, a skirt to be hung by
They’re all in the light, the utility light, its yellow safety cage makes light for you to see by
See by. And you have the nerve to
Shout indecent?
Remember the spider cricket, unzombified,
Pallbearing the cool earth under the house.
Gifts, gifts, gifts.
Sunday, December 11, 2005
Blog as a Weapon II
A quarter of a mile away, the screaming stops as well as the rendering.
Were there any living birds in this part of Pennsylvania anymore, they would be silent. Expired humans standing upright, waiting.
The colonel staggers to the back of the jeep. Into the supplies for a second round. Wastes potable water over parched red clay. Nothing but empty cartridge boxes, he throws them aside. Her clothes, ah god, her shirts and her smell on them, the forever emptiness of her Peruvian sweater. He looks back to where he’s laid her against the tree, she looks peaceful, he thinks, something she rarely ever was in life. His breathing slows.
He can hear the noise of whatever’s left of his group back over the hill. Jan and Jim, their three kids, the other boy and girl with no names, that hadn’t spoken since they found them in the culvert. He moves the sweater exposing the circus mallet they used to erect the tent they had to leave behind outside Butler. All of four foot long, maple handled with a head bound in iron the size of a breadloaf. A man needs a hammer to build a house, he thinks. He shoulders the thirty pounds of it and walks back through the trees like John Henry.
In the moonlight he notices the trees, all poplars, with the regularity of marines in formation. A grove, neglected with scrub under it, perhaps by the very uncrumpled dead at his destination. He lays the tool against one and removes his shirt exposing his girth, not fat but a big man, skin-filled to bursting, and shining, bald head to belly in the moonlight. No use leaving anything in the way for them, he thinks, as a perfect offering.
No one’s bothered to turn off the generators so the lights are still running, with the chugging sound of it and the smell of gas as he crests the hill.
Kurtz, descending, with the lights on.
As They leave whatever is ground born or hiding or still thrashing and come for him, there is Kurtz, mallet aloft, pink and shining, and running now to greet them.
The first one, in a new suit, smeared with dirt and gore has his head exploded like a watermelon, as does someone’s mother-in-law behind him. They come slowly and eagerly, they reach for and surround him, and he keeps swinging, a man at work and silent. They fall before him like tall western firs under Paul Bunyan.
Kurtz of the Hammer, they might say, if they still had a language,
Kurtz the Gore Smeared,
Kurtz Forever Swinging Under Poplars.
Were there any living birds in this part of Pennsylvania anymore, they would be silent. Expired humans standing upright, waiting.
The colonel staggers to the back of the jeep. Into the supplies for a second round. Wastes potable water over parched red clay. Nothing but empty cartridge boxes, he throws them aside. Her clothes, ah god, her shirts and her smell on them, the forever emptiness of her Peruvian sweater. He looks back to where he’s laid her against the tree, she looks peaceful, he thinks, something she rarely ever was in life. His breathing slows.
He can hear the noise of whatever’s left of his group back over the hill. Jan and Jim, their three kids, the other boy and girl with no names, that hadn’t spoken since they found them in the culvert. He moves the sweater exposing the circus mallet they used to erect the tent they had to leave behind outside Butler. All of four foot long, maple handled with a head bound in iron the size of a breadloaf. A man needs a hammer to build a house, he thinks. He shoulders the thirty pounds of it and walks back through the trees like John Henry.
In the moonlight he notices the trees, all poplars, with the regularity of marines in formation. A grove, neglected with scrub under it, perhaps by the very uncrumpled dead at his destination. He lays the tool against one and removes his shirt exposing his girth, not fat but a big man, skin-filled to bursting, and shining, bald head to belly in the moonlight. No use leaving anything in the way for them, he thinks, as a perfect offering.
No one’s bothered to turn off the generators so the lights are still running, with the chugging sound of it and the smell of gas as he crests the hill.
Kurtz, descending, with the lights on.
As They leave whatever is ground born or hiding or still thrashing and come for him, there is Kurtz, mallet aloft, pink and shining, and running now to greet them.
The first one, in a new suit, smeared with dirt and gore has his head exploded like a watermelon, as does someone’s mother-in-law behind him. They come slowly and eagerly, they reach for and surround him, and he keeps swinging, a man at work and silent. They fall before him like tall western firs under Paul Bunyan.
Kurtz of the Hammer, they might say, if they still had a language,
Kurtz the Gore Smeared,
Kurtz Forever Swinging Under Poplars.
Saturday, December 10, 2005
Blog as a weapon
In the opening scene of the screenplay that I wrote there is the colonel and his lady friend fleeing in a jeep after their group has been attacked. Two humans in a jeep, he is large and not fat, but bald, she is dark and slight, ethnic, maybe greek. They don’t get very far, she puts her hand on his arm, her head falls into his lap, something, she gets him to slow down, they are rushing through the woods. “Stop it,” she says, “Stop. Please stop.” They slow to nothing, and she speaks,
“I am dying.” Shows him a bite mark in her shoulder under her jacket. There is something green about it like fungus. I haven’t decided. Close up on her eyes which are large and dark brow and quivering.
He drags her out of the jeep, through low grass under the trees, onto the roots of a walnut.
He strips her jacket, grabs her up in two big arms and starts sucking on her shoulder. He is shaking. He sucks like a newborn, twice… three times…four times, then he spits. From the back it looks like he is devouring her. Her head rolls back on her shoulders, eyes at nothing, her arms drag loose knuckles back on the moss.
“No,” he gasps in this activity, “no…no…not you. Not now.” He holds her head up from the neck, hating the limpness, waiting and fearing any sign of something clenching. Is it her shoulders, or is she raising her hand to his cheek?
“Please,” he says. It’s her hand on his cheek and, yes, everything under him is tightening.
“Our promise,” she gasps, and the brown from her iris fades like a watercolor drowning.
The arm not cradling her goes under the other for the pistol. He does not know it but there is only one bullet saddled there anymore. Were there any gods left in the constellations they would be leaning earthward exactly now. Yet these raggedy elms standing over this green light will have to do. A single shot rings out through them and no other.
“I am dying.” Shows him a bite mark in her shoulder under her jacket. There is something green about it like fungus. I haven’t decided. Close up on her eyes which are large and dark brow and quivering.
He drags her out of the jeep, through low grass under the trees, onto the roots of a walnut.
He strips her jacket, grabs her up in two big arms and starts sucking on her shoulder. He is shaking. He sucks like a newborn, twice… three times…four times, then he spits. From the back it looks like he is devouring her. Her head rolls back on her shoulders, eyes at nothing, her arms drag loose knuckles back on the moss.
“No,” he gasps in this activity, “no…no…not you. Not now.” He holds her head up from the neck, hating the limpness, waiting and fearing any sign of something clenching. Is it her shoulders, or is she raising her hand to his cheek?
“Please,” he says. It’s her hand on his cheek and, yes, everything under him is tightening.
“Our promise,” she gasps, and the brown from her iris fades like a watercolor drowning.
The arm not cradling her goes under the other for the pistol. He does not know it but there is only one bullet saddled there anymore. Were there any gods left in the constellations they would be leaning earthward exactly now. Yet these raggedy elms standing over this green light will have to do. A single shot rings out through them and no other.
Wednesday, December 07, 2005
Benediction 1.1
I dreamt we knew it was coming; were prepared like an epidemic. Zombie-ness could be tested for, early detection. I got a sample medical kit and the detection package in the mail from my father-in-law. That’s how I knew it was real.
Whole cities emptied out in anticipation.
Inside one apartment, I watch a man inject himself through a long rubber hose inserted in his leg. The serum, milky white under his skin.
In another I see a pot bellied pig, abandoned. Outside the window, an office building. Pan back to rows and rows, stacks of emptied apartments. The distance of the city is distorted between us.
The empty city, a twitching eyelid, the sound of a dog barking in an empty room, echoing.
Whole cities emptied out in anticipation.
Inside one apartment, I watch a man inject himself through a long rubber hose inserted in his leg. The serum, milky white under his skin.
In another I see a pot bellied pig, abandoned. Outside the window, an office building. Pan back to rows and rows, stacks of emptied apartments. The distance of the city is distorted between us.
The empty city, a twitching eyelid, the sound of a dog barking in an empty room, echoing.
Tuesday, December 06, 2005
Monday, December 05, 2005
Richmond Sucks Less Than Drowning At Sea
I think I should have been a seafaring jackass instead of a hammer-
swinging jackass. My bag of cape cod potato chips told me so.
Or maybe it was Uncle Geezil. His beard smelled of sea salt
and cracked pepper. Maybe then the thousands striding outside
the window could be coral waving, and this tenement would be
a schooner passing through dark water at night.
I think I will go to the ocean, and sing to it something Geezil
sang to me once, because he said that all the drowned of the ocean
wish one day to return home. Busted fishermen and pirates,
captains and bosons. Maybe if I sing it right,
then all those sad thousands might stride up through the breakers
and come ashore.
swinging jackass. My bag of cape cod potato chips told me so.
Or maybe it was Uncle Geezil. His beard smelled of sea salt
and cracked pepper. Maybe then the thousands striding outside
the window could be coral waving, and this tenement would be
a schooner passing through dark water at night.
I think I will go to the ocean, and sing to it something Geezil
sang to me once, because he said that all the drowned of the ocean
wish one day to return home. Busted fishermen and pirates,
captains and bosons. Maybe if I sing it right,
then all those sad thousands might stride up through the breakers
and come ashore.
Richmond Sucks Less Than a Giant Squid
It was 3002 E. Broad in Church Hill where I collapsed after the third sixty hour week. The two outside miters didn’t meet up like I wanted and there was air conditioning in that room, so I un-strapped my toolbelt and lay down on the fresh carpet. I was back in my room
at the Durant Hotel after a good day surfing. The traffic out on Broad were gentle sets of smooth left and right breakers crashing perfectly against my hull. Enough of this, I thought and I will
wash back out to deep water and perhaps sink to that trench off the Carolina coast.
Back there a man could find his footing, in sand never touched
by surface light, and start walking. Walking long enough
till the translucent pink majesty of that darkness embraced him with
miles worth of tentacles, gentle as Egyptian embalmers, finally holy
enough to be devoured by that singular enormous eye.
at the Durant Hotel after a good day surfing. The traffic out on Broad were gentle sets of smooth left and right breakers crashing perfectly against my hull. Enough of this, I thought and I will
wash back out to deep water and perhaps sink to that trench off the Carolina coast.
Back there a man could find his footing, in sand never touched
by surface light, and start walking. Walking long enough
till the translucent pink majesty of that darkness embraced him with
miles worth of tentacles, gentle as Egyptian embalmers, finally holy
enough to be devoured by that singular enormous eye.
One Shell
Lopsided? You bet. My whole vision is a cave- in. Hills and skulls, bopped down, shovel found: loose cavern fall-down to the exchange of landscapes:
form substituting itself for firmer structures: the convex.
In the dark, in every room, the bald zombie stands in the corner in my mind. His teeth chatter and there’s a lose bit of fleshy cheek swinging back and forth like a ripped pocket, a slap-slap I hear in the dark, every dark, in every room.
So when I look out the window at the new grown sinkhole my life’s become, I see a hundred hands reach up as though clawing for my paycheck.
It’s the earnestness, the pure painful need that makes a zombie look childlike.
The choice is:
zombie sinkhole or Dada’s own collapsing dome.
form substituting itself for firmer structures: the convex.
In the dark, in every room, the bald zombie stands in the corner in my mind. His teeth chatter and there’s a lose bit of fleshy cheek swinging back and forth like a ripped pocket, a slap-slap I hear in the dark, every dark, in every room.
So when I look out the window at the new grown sinkhole my life’s become, I see a hundred hands reach up as though clawing for my paycheck.
It’s the earnestness, the pure painful need that makes a zombie look childlike.
The choice is:
zombie sinkhole or Dada’s own collapsing dome.
Wednesday, November 30, 2005
Richmond Sucks Less Than A Zombie Horde
One time something occurred, in the distance, maybe a dam burst, and the zombies came. Except they could talk and reason, they went door to door, asking questions. I was with a woman and her little girl when they came in. They had a dog. The little girl hid behind her mother, crying as quietly as she could without the dog hearing her. Later, I would put the dog in the corner of one of my paintings for Javier Tapia. One dog under the skin of another, blank eyes staring from behind empty socket flaps. A doberman snout protruding past the snout of a pitbull, barking at me.
Zombies Are Coming For the Brain of Debbie Kurtz
I wrote the screenplay in my head to keep from being afraid. They came out of the woods, they devoured people around me but there I was killing them and that made it better. It wasn’t killing, there’s no killing something that was dead before it got to you. It was heads exploding from birdshot, zombie heads popping off from my mighty samurai sword. Ha ha, are you not dead yet? Are you sure? It might’ve been you, too.
Richmond Sucks Less Than Tennessee
I’ll make sure they’ll never catch me, no they’ll never catch me, you know, maybe I don’t care if they do. There’s this place on my calf that can anticipate the bite. Well above the tendon, which is what they’ll be rooting for. No, it’s not them at all. It’s not the morbid obese I steer the cart past at the Walmart, nor the millions of chinamen manufacturing my Jeff Gordon signature aftershave, my Winnie the Pooh diapers, my various Git-R-Dun products, my music or my food. It’s me, ravenous and zombie, behaving oddly and somehow walking, trying to make it past the self-check out and back to the truck.
Crumbly 1.1
In the workshop, horrors loom jarward, grotesques, handsome and home-made; lobotomists turning handles, ocular cave-ins and whispers to the end. Outside the house paint peals scars to grayish skin beneath, beneath the teeth the scars loom outward, leaning at something, a thing. Through the window, metal tools, permanent burnish, gleam, through the dark, through, teeth, gleam.
Thursday, November 24, 2005
The Poisoned Mind
Just because you think it is over.
Doesn't mean I will ever let it stop.
Marching through virginia.
Doesn't mean I will ever let it stop.
Marching through virginia.
Tuesday, November 22, 2005
Centering 1.3
How disheartening the fence finally giving way. Your checkbook unbalanced and lying in a ditch of human waste, of wasting humans. Palsied trees over look this, they object but decently the way chimneys take on status after dark.
I’m un-centered, esp. after dark. Sometimes the power is on. I think of the shadows of me from the candles, signals.
I’ve coined new light. Tropisms of currency. Your straight and speckled waiving.
I go out in the dark but no matter where I’m standing I know there’s a camera looking over the shoulder of one of them, zeroing in on me.
I’m un-centered, esp. after dark. Sometimes the power is on. I think of the shadows of me from the candles, signals.
I’ve coined new light. Tropisms of currency. Your straight and speckled waiving.
I go out in the dark but no matter where I’m standing I know there’s a camera looking over the shoulder of one of them, zeroing in on me.
Monday, November 21, 2005
Rationale 2.1
Still hungry, the monsters are getting on a bus! The whole mind is clustering around the school bus, yellow mind. Collective wit and fresh things, dumplings, ever-afters and soft soft oyster eyes.
A collective breeze issues from their lips. The drying faces watch each other too, for signs. I’m watching them all the while, I can’t stop laughing.
Some men come along and nail gun the slower ones to the house edge. A fine shingling. I don’t have the courage to be severe. The truth is we’re all afraid of reprisal. Of being accused degenerate. Of degenerating.
A collective breeze issues from their lips. The drying faces watch each other too, for signs. I’m watching them all the while, I can’t stop laughing.
Some men come along and nail gun the slower ones to the house edge. A fine shingling. I don’t have the courage to be severe. The truth is we’re all afraid of reprisal. Of being accused degenerate. Of degenerating.
Rationale 1.1
I’m constructing myself a nice four footed rationale for why the world’s not ending. Grandma in her faded pink blouse is only half what she used to be, her bridge hand only ligature. She recognizes me still, I know.
Among the rest of the neighbors, no one has brought a dish. The currency of a society is someone always brings something to eat. That’d be me, I suppose. I’m so hungry I could eat my own hand.
The process is to very casually descend into stomach. There isn’t any reason why Zombies must eat living human flesh. Seems like a little putridity would be easier on the chew, esp. if your jaw wires are showing.
Grandma found her old oven mitt. I’m a little restored. Nice work, Mysterious Planet-Wide Zombification! Way to show your true colors.
Among the rest of the neighbors, no one has brought a dish. The currency of a society is someone always brings something to eat. That’d be me, I suppose. I’m so hungry I could eat my own hand.
The process is to very casually descend into stomach. There isn’t any reason why Zombies must eat living human flesh. Seems like a little putridity would be easier on the chew, esp. if your jaw wires are showing.
Grandma found her old oven mitt. I’m a little restored. Nice work, Mysterious Planet-Wide Zombification! Way to show your true colors.
Friday, November 18, 2005
Get up Stand up
Trip Wires never work the way you want ‘em to. Them walking feet walk on, stepping on, haul over you, tree legs and fog horn gears, wrenching up to wrench you
Wrench you limbs.
Nice talking with you. You whisperer, you dissenter disintegrator
Taste the underside
The subconscious arbiter
I’ll deal you even,
crush-crush
crush-crush
Wrench you limbs.
Nice talking with you. You whisperer, you dissenter disintegrator
Taste the underside
The subconscious arbiter
I’ll deal you even,
crush-crush
crush-crush
Maintenance
Limbs in dreams reach for me more than sky.
I’m up high and wishing for a way down. The way down is every wish. The way back is not. The way back is through a childhood and the ghouls there are only imagined.
From up here I can see things going up. With a big bang the zombies go to pieces. They’re not dead, but without legs they can’t chase you.
Walking is an evolutionary luxury. Most species are restricted from casual behavior by predation.
I hope the cats don’t start turning zombie. I need some cuteness to cling to, a social mechanism to remain in identity. The apocalypse has even the trees drooping in post-living-re-animation.
I’m enamored of you pyrotechnical operations in the graveyard. Something relish-y in your bang-bang. I need that.
I’m up high and wishing for a way down. The way down is every wish. The way back is not. The way back is through a childhood and the ghouls there are only imagined.
From up here I can see things going up. With a big bang the zombies go to pieces. They’re not dead, but without legs they can’t chase you.
Walking is an evolutionary luxury. Most species are restricted from casual behavior by predation.
I hope the cats don’t start turning zombie. I need some cuteness to cling to, a social mechanism to remain in identity. The apocalypse has even the trees drooping in post-living-re-animation.
I’m enamored of you pyrotechnical operations in the graveyard. Something relish-y in your bang-bang. I need that.
Thursday, November 17, 2005
Meet the Poets
Inside my ear there’s a Snodgrass a-buzzing. Has been for years. Has been from Florida meet has-been from Tennessee. I’ll be in the basement drinking, you go walk the dog. Thank you verizon, thank you MSN. One will have a cigarette and one will not. We will rot together. Ha-ha hee hee with the kids and everything. Time for thanksgiving!
Wednesday, November 16, 2005
Somewheres North Carolina
There in the middle of the parking lot, the lone man in the white pick-up truck, the one who’s not sure where he is, that’s me.
The one who can’t decide which store to go into to ask for help, who can’t figure out how to put the help into a question that might be understood by say, the manager of Panera Bread Co.
Whose mind was reeling back on I-40 just minutes ago, but still able to drive, now a slow grinding nebulous with Ishmael in a white truck inside its eye.
Imagine the plight of the lone zombie, surrounded by real humans going to the bank machine, fighting with their kids outside Costco, almost wrecking each other at the four-way stop, honking and swearing.
He gets out and tries to walk it off, he vomits, he gets back in the truck, everyone who might be looking can see him and what he is. There is no possible way out of this.
The one who can’t decide which store to go into to ask for help, who can’t figure out how to put the help into a question that might be understood by say, the manager of Panera Bread Co.
Whose mind was reeling back on I-40 just minutes ago, but still able to drive, now a slow grinding nebulous with Ishmael in a white truck inside its eye.
Imagine the plight of the lone zombie, surrounded by real humans going to the bank machine, fighting with their kids outside Costco, almost wrecking each other at the four-way stop, honking and swearing.
He gets out and tries to walk it off, he vomits, he gets back in the truck, everyone who might be looking can see him and what he is. There is no possible way out of this.
Cruelty is a Verb
Hallow intrusions. The calcified ruin of your heart, its unfolding.
Your nutrition is forsaken. Mine organics in the isles of forgivenesses. The challenge to falling metal, the airliner’s dream of surrender.
All a-choke with patterned mistakes. Your grooming habits over take all other principles of decency. Foreboding like a night on the hotel balcony. Prayers to liquor and the vista ocean.
Occlusion and insight betray me. I sit on the floor at your coffee table and eat lintels and plain yogurt. Nothing hurts. I smoke a cigar. It’s cheap. I plan an exit down the rattan mat you use for sleeping. It’s obvious.
Night tempers. You throw off the cat from the bed and lurch oven ward. A dream of suicide. The problems of modern decadence. The oven is microwave. It would be gruesome, but it won’t run with the door open.
What meticulous ruin? The size of prevention. Think about putting the cat in there. Cruelty is a verb.
Your nutrition is forsaken. Mine organics in the isles of forgivenesses. The challenge to falling metal, the airliner’s dream of surrender.
All a-choke with patterned mistakes. Your grooming habits over take all other principles of decency. Foreboding like a night on the hotel balcony. Prayers to liquor and the vista ocean.
Occlusion and insight betray me. I sit on the floor at your coffee table and eat lintels and plain yogurt. Nothing hurts. I smoke a cigar. It’s cheap. I plan an exit down the rattan mat you use for sleeping. It’s obvious.
Night tempers. You throw off the cat from the bed and lurch oven ward. A dream of suicide. The problems of modern decadence. The oven is microwave. It would be gruesome, but it won’t run with the door open.
What meticulous ruin? The size of prevention. Think about putting the cat in there. Cruelty is a verb.
Zombie Dinner Guest
The towns are leaning in to catch glimpses of our failures, or to lean out of the smell.
Even still, how many months after the storm, the bodies are being pulled from the mud-rubble.
I’m in the rafters. They pour in, crusts of glances, gestured eyelids, peeling.
I don’t have your whispers. Your cares in the car horn. The fog makes everything new without snow. Without snow you drawl on a living out of careless boundaries.
They can’t see me but they collect. Wedged in the doorway like a mob to a concert.
I’m chorded in the sound of temperament. Your distemper. The diseases kill the dogs as fast as the Zombies do. As they do, they make speed out indifference. They’re coming to dinner.
Coming too.
Even still, how many months after the storm, the bodies are being pulled from the mud-rubble.
I’m in the rafters. They pour in, crusts of glances, gestured eyelids, peeling.
I don’t have your whispers. Your cares in the car horn. The fog makes everything new without snow. Without snow you drawl on a living out of careless boundaries.
They can’t see me but they collect. Wedged in the doorway like a mob to a concert.
I’m chorded in the sound of temperament. Your distemper. The diseases kill the dogs as fast as the Zombies do. As they do, they make speed out indifference. They’re coming to dinner.
Coming too.
Clogged
Fronds, waiving cool air. I’m injected with praise. But your fingers push the button anyway. Noodlingly.
Small town social attire on a chimney nailed, queasy and prepared to assume your derision. Empty oak branches raise fingers to the heavens. Me and you imploring.
Decade’s decadent befuddlement I explode dreams made of acorn shells war with the upstairs squirrel, he climbs into the roof and roots into my dreams.
I apparel the scratching darkness with fingers of the dead. Zombie clone distemper and an aching in the toe.
I am all, in front of the TV, made of movies, of film scripts and detriment.
Embattled tide and sand clogging the pipe ways. In the drain near the window, I saw your pleading sponge. The dampness on your tightrope untickling us to fever. Chores and vestibules. Both are adequate hiding places when the dipping hand gets cheesy. Night, night, it’s crawling along the tree branch. The legs are wiry coming and leaving. I’m so afraid.
Small town social attire on a chimney nailed, queasy and prepared to assume your derision. Empty oak branches raise fingers to the heavens. Me and you imploring.
Decade’s decadent befuddlement I explode dreams made of acorn shells war with the upstairs squirrel, he climbs into the roof and roots into my dreams.
I apparel the scratching darkness with fingers of the dead. Zombie clone distemper and an aching in the toe.
I am all, in front of the TV, made of movies, of film scripts and detriment.
Embattled tide and sand clogging the pipe ways. In the drain near the window, I saw your pleading sponge. The dampness on your tightrope untickling us to fever. Chores and vestibules. Both are adequate hiding places when the dipping hand gets cheesy. Night, night, it’s crawling along the tree branch. The legs are wiry coming and leaving. I’m so afraid.
Tuesday, November 15, 2005
Agoraphilia 1.1
Dancing starlets in the cream. I’m severed by beauty this night. The watches hold strings in wheels of tenderness. Your clear cadence bestirs itself with hitching remedies. The night hiccoughing night birds and footsteps. The guests are permanent now unless we can reverse time. The whirly bird draws a renegade freak show just like to the mall that one time every Saturday night. Shop. Succor. Shop. Succor. Cadence my beloved.
Zombini
Zombini. Next time interpretation crawls into the foreground shoot it in the head so it can’t keep trying to get you. Chorus of interpretation, likewise frontal specialties. I inebriate. The callous indiscriminate. The daisies in the window. The shop window.
This is good enough reason to carry a screwdriver with you in your front pocket for the rest of your life.
This is good enough reason to carry a screwdriver with you in your front pocket for the rest of your life.
Re: Pennsylvania
Who was it who took you to the graveyard from the opening sequence? The first one, the one in black and white. Where you smoked dope and freaked out. Where the first zombie comes for the mourning widow. For no reason at all.
Did they leave you alone in the car? Romero never gave any reason for it in the first one, did he. Was it very far from Butler? Was it her husband? I can't remember.
Where did that tall black man go after they shot that picture? The hero. The one that should've made it with the pretty white girl. The one they left behind in the farm house. He slid into obscurity. Did he ride it down with liquor, with heroin back in a some real life slum back in Pittsburg?
Did they leave you alone in the car? Romero never gave any reason for it in the first one, did he. Was it very far from Butler? Was it her husband? I can't remember.
Where did that tall black man go after they shot that picture? The hero. The one that should've made it with the pretty white girl. The one they left behind in the farm house. He slid into obscurity. Did he ride it down with liquor, with heroin back in a some real life slum back in Pittsburg?
Monday, November 14, 2005
Re:Claustrophobia
It wasn't the priest it was the black folks it was all Romero's fault. The black folks left sick in the cellar. No it was the racism. Not the racism, it was the cops. The cops blew that black man's head off when he wasn't even dead. It was the black man they left behind in the farmhouse, at the end, the one that could have been Sidney Poitier in a better film. Remember? They came back for him, and he hed been left with the last zombie. What part of Pennsylvania was that in, is that farm house still there? It was Sidney Poitier, yes I know I spelling it wrong, who I saw and who saw me seeing him, walking by Union Square. Goddamit. I wish I could've had the presence of mind to thank him, to ask him what do they call you back in Philadelphia? So he could yell at me. They call me MR. TIBBS.
Claustrophobia 1.1
The Priest in the confessional fell ill with the bite when they cornered him there. Unaware really, the Priest took it as a confession and turned it into Unction.
They fell on him from the basement, migrant and poor, always the poor, the first to go, to come, cross over.
Christ was poor on the cross, resurrected. Church bells, happy circumstance.
Falling into the arms, mercy, always falling into the arms.
The Priest took the confession, gave a finger, some meat around the collar bone. Prescribed a rosary of teeth, pearly absolution, went out to do some missionary work.
They fell on him from the basement, migrant and poor, always the poor, the first to go, to come, cross over.
Christ was poor on the cross, resurrected. Church bells, happy circumstance.
Falling into the arms, mercy, always falling into the arms.
The Priest took the confession, gave a finger, some meat around the collar bone. Prescribed a rosary of teeth, pearly absolution, went out to do some missionary work.
Feeding Between Us
Your awful chromosome. I have enough of your blanking, stares.
Knife worthy throat, I’m a choice maker and them zombies come down to me and what amounts to another day of canned beans.
Go out then, you. Walk the plank. Into the drink and the drinking. Sweat meat.
Petrified. You’re no match for survival. In the ringworm of days, the count survives. The count survives.
Wind. And then cold. Nope. Nothing, just cold. The field and some rotten view. No one’s coming. Forget it. On your own. Compromise. The vessel in the air. No one’s coming. And the cross up there just looms.
End of it. The water in the street, the gully. An eternity with no one but them. They rot longer. You look down the street and see a knife edge. I got nothing for it. The tempo, temperature.
The fissure’s not in my brain. I’m thinking when you stroke, you die and come back. Then it’s alright for me to kill you. I love you.
I can’t stand for this. In the city they have bridges. Here we look across and know the gully’s armed, really armed with grabbing fingers.
Why don’t they just rot. How do they keep coming on, surviving. I’m counting them and they don’t get less. Get less.
I’m across from the zombie in my dream. He’s in the field and in my dream. I realize they both conceptualize experience. The place and the rotting of place. I’m afraid of the brain fizzing.
I walk on in this fear. Down the street. I walk across the gully indifferent to the indifferent, ignoring.
Street lights go on and off and stay so because they are told to. My meat brings stares which I ignore. I’m fashion finally and you are about to walk, to walk.
This can of beans puts us at odds. The smell of your shit in the corner, at odds. Go in the damn bucket and toss. There’s no shame after the resurrection. Heaven on earth again. The unknowing killing the unknowing for food.
Knife worthy throat, I’m a choice maker and them zombies come down to me and what amounts to another day of canned beans.
Go out then, you. Walk the plank. Into the drink and the drinking. Sweat meat.
Petrified. You’re no match for survival. In the ringworm of days, the count survives. The count survives.
Wind. And then cold. Nope. Nothing, just cold. The field and some rotten view. No one’s coming. Forget it. On your own. Compromise. The vessel in the air. No one’s coming. And the cross up there just looms.
End of it. The water in the street, the gully. An eternity with no one but them. They rot longer. You look down the street and see a knife edge. I got nothing for it. The tempo, temperature.
The fissure’s not in my brain. I’m thinking when you stroke, you die and come back. Then it’s alright for me to kill you. I love you.
I can’t stand for this. In the city they have bridges. Here we look across and know the gully’s armed, really armed with grabbing fingers.
Why don’t they just rot. How do they keep coming on, surviving. I’m counting them and they don’t get less. Get less.
I’m across from the zombie in my dream. He’s in the field and in my dream. I realize they both conceptualize experience. The place and the rotting of place. I’m afraid of the brain fizzing.
I walk on in this fear. Down the street. I walk across the gully indifferent to the indifferent, ignoring.
Street lights go on and off and stay so because they are told to. My meat brings stares which I ignore. I’m fashion finally and you are about to walk, to walk.
This can of beans puts us at odds. The smell of your shit in the corner, at odds. Go in the damn bucket and toss. There’s no shame after the resurrection. Heaven on earth again. The unknowing killing the unknowing for food.
No TV, No Beer
Fingers on the glass tick in my clock the eternal nighttime, the countdown of distant days. The world has stopped spinning. The TV is lonely static. We are surprised there’s still electricity, the occasional airplane, hope. There is a knife on the kitchen table reflecting light and empty sound from the upstairs windows, unboarded.
Sunday, November 13, 2005
Disabled by Fruit
Disabled by fruit and fullness, the pure husk of a papered day molds to dull. Ancient birds resolve the dark. Soft replies from a whimpering. Clouds roam over the surface of a puddle in an empty alley. Soon the stumbling feet will invade my thinking. I’m thinking against them. Trying to sleep near a window, a simple window, my pulse betrays resolve. Lying awake in a cool room following the sounds of footsteps as they search. Soft fingers and torments mellow me. The puddle breaks with rain.
Saturday, November 12, 2005
Nothing bad ever happens in the kitchen
11/13-#1 Outside the parking lot there was an open field with a house in the middle of it. I can’t remember if it was Raleigh or Richmond or somewhere else, just that it was a Dead concert and we were smoking pot near it. I think I was tripping. No paint, no windows, no grass around the porch. Dirt packed from generations of bare feet running over it. It had one tree, we’ll say it was an oak. For years I’ve been chased into this house, a dozen of the slow ones following here and there through the tall grass. It could be February and steel grey, it could be night with the lights from the parking lot glaring through it. It could be Pennsylvania. In the parlor someone’s guts spilled out and the party shrieked. I once climbed into the attic while the first floor filled up with shuffling feet. The kitchen is the same as my grandmother’s in Chattanooga. Nothing bad ever happens in the kitchen.
Patch
Mitochondria cooling the darkening child with prayer. The smile is yellowing wood on a rotting frame, feild, house, shadow of bright day. Gray sunflower teeth. In fear I am devout as a church window, devout as pain and stars. A cloth of hair folded over mimics the wave of flower in the wind. Fruit falls from the tree with each plodding beat, already rotten. Unspeakably the day yellows into dark hair.
11/8-#2 When they get me and my mind goes green and I wake back up, I won’t join the horde, oh no. I’ll go to the sea and walk into it. I’ll let the sea fill my lungs, cause I won’t need them. My hair will rise and wave as I walk, hello. Can you see me down there? I’ll be the zombie walking to England, walking to France. I’ll have to sit down often on a giant clam perhaps, or maybe I’ll float along the gulf stream, the flying dutchman. The giant squid embracing the sperm whale overhead.
My Zombie Screenplay
11/11-#1 My parents house at the beach was on stilts and easy to defend, just pull up the stairs. Plus all the various row houses, live on the top floor and block the stairwell. Our house here is one story, on a hill. I’d lay awake at nap with Henry and wait for them to come in the window, so I wrote a screenplay in my head to counter the nightmares. Running through open fields, Henry in his backpack. I’d have a sword and a shotgun maybe. We’d sleep in trees. Some kind of hammock. I wake up and see him looking at me thinking he’s gotten bit somehow, but then he smiles.
Friday, November 11, 2005
Wednesday, November 09, 2005
Tuesday, November 08, 2005
Thursday, November 03, 2005
zombie light bulb
It got cold, so we moved the plants down into the shop. Put up plant lights and they are blue green, aquamarine I guess. They shine throughout everything down there, into the corners, through the plastic sheeting seperating the office from the dust. That is the zombie light, I think, the blue light peering through the plastic partition.
Wednesday, November 02, 2005
Zombie Beach Party
2.1
Meister and the toast maker. We wander the gabled cocktail hour. Audacious and delicious. Pirate cadaver squelches to the bar. From behind camera through the dead fingers. Maybe some seaweed, comic stumble. Look, funny dead thing coming. Eaty, Eaty.
Meister and the toast maker. We wander the gabled cocktail hour. Audacious and delicious. Pirate cadaver squelches to the bar. From behind camera through the dead fingers. Maybe some seaweed, comic stumble. Look, funny dead thing coming. Eaty, Eaty.
Tuesday, November 01, 2005
Zombie Codex
1.1
Out of this corner the dead-end of rearranged furniture and wishbone stains. He comes to stare through the windows of fear, like a boa constrictor on a baby’s crib. Look over the edge, moonlight in the palm trees and sound through the silent city: footsteps, shambling. The dream is to enter the palace, crinkling leatherized cloth, the dried layer of decomposed skins through t-shirt. The disease chapel.
Out of this corner the dead-end of rearranged furniture and wishbone stains. He comes to stare through the windows of fear, like a boa constrictor on a baby’s crib. Look over the edge, moonlight in the palm trees and sound through the silent city: footsteps, shambling. The dream is to enter the palace, crinkling leatherized cloth, the dried layer of decomposed skins through t-shirt. The disease chapel.
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