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.
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