5/30/09
Decomp Interactive 2
My Real Dad is a Poem
I was left unwanted as a leper dodo chick in a graveyard city, my lobotomized umbilical cord a ectoplasm limp dick in my hand. My dry, empty, hungry, opiate socked so desperately wanted to brim over with unconditional love. But where could I find love, I wasn’t in school so cool teacher was out, bums worked for a bit but the wanted to tell me lies and get hand jobs. Bums did teach me things like, go to university libraries to sleep. Libraries also had erotic picture books you could get off on ( thank you, you art fucks who tricked school boards into believing art was not porn). I also read. I read women's erotic dreams, every word of Orwell, Dostoevsky, Kafka, Whitman, Hess, all the beats. I would walk out with books and read them under bridges and at that weeks job, laying cable, digging ditches, cleaning bee hives, loading barges anything that was under the table and would hire kids. All the while I would let characters from novels kill themselves in my stead. One day under a bridge, sixteen, no shoes, no where to go, cold, Old Crow for antifreeze, I found hope for us all in a poem.
It was Bukowski’s “Maybe Will See”. It was an unassuming poem but it summed up the modern world that wanted me to jump of this bridge after I was done with my libation. I had read Charles before and like most kids, identified with him. But he never gave me hope, he only confirmed my apathy. But he wrote this poem as a older man, my old man. He was leaving his mindset of a drunken blue-collar worker teetering between nihilism and nirvana. Instead, Charles was entering a state of reflection and cautious optimism. He no longer wanted to point out the pointless; he wanted to impart wisdom into the world, to me. I needed to be lifted from under, like Persephone. The poem opened with one of humankind’s greatest endeavor, and a modern boys canvas, space. Charles was born in 1920 and he saw my angry empty womb unfold; spewing shinny slugs of plastics, televisions, and computers to the moon. His poem did not give a fuck about the details of cosmology; he only glosses over them, reality was the metaphor. What was important for him, was not the mass paradigm shift from our caveman’s fear of change, a hungry Cronus, to man as Prometheus unchained, dissecting with sight. The use of the new goals like the moon was to distracted us from a 19th century that killed god, his corpse the infinite vacuum of space. We are not genetically predisposed to shoot for the moon, but it keeps us from doing bad things to ourselves, like macaroni art for the insane. This poem is about humanity’s need to escape from itself so it does not do self-inflicted damage. He was a hopeful parent of a thin blue heroin addict, he administered methadone as a still born eucharist. Man needs to channel his infinite violent energies into something mysterious and infinite like the universe, sexy isn‘t it.
Bukowski showed me a dichotomy of humanity in this poem; he shows a curious inventive side and a war-like, suicidal, and destructive side, Charles, like all men and women of his age, had lived to see war after war and many innovations, and he prefers our preoccupation with innovation to war. Seeing new shiny things replaces man’s ever-acute nihilism with curiosity.
The title “Maybe Will See” has a desperate optimism to it. He believes our growing understanding of the universe is a distraction from doing bad, but he leaves another avenue slightly open what if humanity does finds something? He gave me a glimmer of hope and maybe my distraction turns out to be the Holy Grail. I new from that day that teleological bullshit is better then being eaten by the vultures of apathy. My belly button healed over and I knew then I was my own mother and father. I was nameless on the edge of the Dao.
5/28/09
DECOMP INTERACTIVE 1
enjoy.
5/14/09
The Fourth Case, Continued.
A light rap came about the door. Dr.P deftly turned off the machine and strode to the entrance of his cabin. In the darkness he barely made out the face of the first mate, whom he kept at bay by opening the door only enough to peer out of. The first mate’s face was flushed and damp with sweat. “The, the captain, sir. He’s calling for you. you see he has taken a turn for the worst, its his fever you see.”
“how long has he been ill? I was never informed about this.”
“Just since this morning, sir.” The mate wiped his face with his bare hand, “You see that’s why he didn’t come show you to your room and all himself, otherwise he would, the captain is such a fine and good-“
“I don’t want to hear his eulogy just yet, “ the dr. interrupted, “ Leave me alone and let me gather my instruments, I will tend to the captain myself.”
The muffled cries of gratitude from the first mate came from behind the closed door as the doctor put various implements into his black leather bag. Unnamed, some uninvnented instruments in immaculate steel and bleached bone. Teeth and stone, these few were actual artifacts, they had been pilfered from an exhibition of the arcane in London. The doctor had attended as a personal guest of Lord Whitechild. In the exhibition hall during a long intermission, the Lady Whitechild had been so enamored by the doctor’s profundity and wit, she never noticed that amid his grand gestures the artifacts had disappeared into his waistcoat. How well they had served him, this one in particular he called his monkey’s fist if a monkey had been born with razors on its knuckles and teeth between it’s fingers. And it’s companion he named the devil’s centipede, which was obvious to whoever had looked at it. He utilized them once to remove an infected appendix from an honest to goodness pygmy chieftain who had such surprising strength that he had to be held down by four jungle guides.
The sea had begun to grow restless.
A splash of saltwater met the doctor’s face as he exited onto the deck.
Several men were batting down in preparation for a great storm, and the ship herself swayed uneasily.
Dr.P found the captain lying in his bed surrounded by several young attendants who saw to it that he was fanned sufficiently, one was applying a compress to the captain’s chest.
Another one was rubbing his feet with oils smelling strongly of clove and cardamom.
In one motion, the doctor made a full stride around the room and ushered everyone out as to leave him alone with the captain.
The door was quietly closed and locked.
“This.. this malady, has gotten a hold on me so profoundly..” The captain raised a fist so frailly that the doctor placed his hand gingerly on it to guide it back beneath the covers.
“You can, I know you can cure me..”, the captain continued, “I know you are a, compassionate man.” His eyes began to roll into his head as he suffered another spasm of pain.
“Yes, of course, rest assured” The doctor pulled the blanket over the captain’s chest.
“I only ask one thing from you, my captain” Dr.P leaned close to the captain’s ear and despite them being alone in the room, spoke in hushed tones. “I only ask that you give yourself, your sickened state up to me. Unconditionally. That as long as you are under my care you surrender yourself. Is that clear?”
The captain said nothing, he only grasped the doctor’s hand as feebly as he could and nodded his head spitting out “..Yes…yes, I do. Yes, its all..”
He did not speak again after that, but slipped into an exhausted hibernation lulled no doubt by the assurance that his life was in competent hands.
Working swiftly the doctor had at the ready the tools he needed. “What I require today is very simple, you need only lay very still while I draw up a phial of blood.”
He was unsure if the captain even heard his request.
After withdrawing the needle, the doctor quickly retreated back to his quarters.
After being scrutinized under proper medical equipment,
The sample of blood and tissue from the captain was placed upon a special mirror and put upon the doctor’s motorized wheel.
The fragile apparatus also equipped with various mirrors, was placed gently upon the spinning wheel, over the dish of the captain’s granted samples.
The doctor activated his machine again, and he stood against the wall, naked.
What happened next was no surprise, the invading organisms that were present in the captain’s blood were plentiful and they had the upper hand. We never expected him to have a chance, after all, the doctor reflected.
In the dark the contents of the petri dish was projected over the doctor’s body via the light and mirrors in the spinning contraption. The germs writhed and undulated across the walls, as if sensing danger, panicked. All over the small cabin cavorting organisms played and spun, and fucked themselves and split in two, they ate one another. In time the doctor could feel it, the taste of devouring your brother cell, yourself, the feeling of being split right down the middle and becoming two. As I swim among them, as the water around the ship can not be discerned from the water inside my body and brain and looking out, the boat is still and the sea is moving beneath us, so is the disease still and the ship moving around it.
The doctor in his state as disease digested this vision and split it in twine, and again, spreading it to be absorbed. He knew diseases well; he knew their motives, their tactics.
He knew what has never been taught, what cannot be conveyed in textbooks. He knew this disease’s granddaddy and probably introduced it to its grandma.
And he knew the one thing that this or any disease had never known; FEAR.
No single disease has the capacity of being afraid, the doctor sought to change that. Not to make it afraid of its host, that would inevitably eradicate the disease all together, but to give it that which would make it a real formidable enemy once and for all.
The doctor let the disease spin through the night.
In the morning, having drawn the sample back into a hypodermic needle, returned to the Captain’s quarters.
Again he ushered the servants out, Dr.P reassured Captain Prescott; “I think your suffering will, take a turn. Very soon.”
The sample, once reintroduced into the captain went to work very quickly. The doctor sat in a chair opposite the bed and watched the process. As the captain began to convulse, Dr.P was mixing a drink from the liquor cart, pouring in the remains of a paregoric elixir into his brandy. He took out a handkerchief and listlessly wiped a few drops of blood that had landed on his cheek. The doctor put another bottle of paregoric into his pocket and left. Not yet inside his own cabin, the urgent footsteps of a dozen deck hands quick to answer the captain’s cries of pain. But they hadn’t a chance. The captain was wrapped in his bed sheet and already out the window. He who could barely lift up his head today was climbing the mainsail with the strength of a rutted baboon.
The very moment he reached the top, he went down, as if wanting to climb higher and simply ran out of pole.
And what of the doctor? He commandeered himself the choicest of lifeboats, loaded with baggage, mostly his own. He rowed silently, puffing away at the captain’s best tobacco. The saint Agnes grew smaller before him. He was no fool; he was not about to be left to explain an empty, unmanned vessel pulling into harbor.
5/9/09
Teddy..
“I took a picture of you. Why? Maybe I did it preserve your logo haircut or your milky white thighs. Now what do I do? Throw it away, tear it up, and Cut it up into a collage. I am an agent of the third law, every thing goes away. That’s it, thaaaaaaat’s iiiiit, art must purge the parasite, artists. They must go away; we don’t need them any more, never did. I eat I sleep, I shit, I’m not an eatist, sleepiest or a shitist. I am a post qusi semi neo plastic futurist; I am the last words of butch Lane. I am the last rites of the indivisible individual, art before artist. Two boys crossing their Piss streams, I can hear the planets grinding through space, this is the same miracle. Artist are art filters, bodies are food filters. Stop eating, pass out instead of sleep, hear colors, no words, rhythm, no objects. They don’t make art they make mistakes misinterpreted, the suffocate miraculous in jam jars. They spork feed us to Cronus. Break some fucking glass, Rub your face in it, you made a new dimension, for you. The glass belongs in your face like love in your heart. It always should have been there. Show everyone you meet as your power skipping down the street. Give them a shit eating infected grin. Say “Oh oh look at me I’m an experienced experiment, I remember back and fourth, I remember the maker, even if he forgot me. I remember when I was will be you. Did I have a bar mitzvah, drink the blood of a deer, spin a bottle twist a tit, so how do I know am a Wereape?” And when they hold you down on red and white sheets picking glass out of your face say? “I don’t belong to you I don’t, I don’t belong to me, I don’t belong. This is not injustice this is art. Pay more attention to me and my moon phase’s bloody martyr, bloody murder, bloody Mary. Love is not in our bones so, fuck it. We are not over ripe brothers, don’t eat, repeat, life is a drug dealer it wants you hooked. Don’t sleep. Just pass out and piss and shit where you want, when you need. Turn your nerves to light bright, not a meter to measure your fear of monsters. You are a monster factory, this is not new this was always the way. I did not find it. Don’t get hooked on life it comes with all your worries. Life is worse then heroine, porn, Jerry Faldwell, David Koresh all in one needle. In the end the old bull couldn’t even kick it, he was begging for his man, but he could find his man. His man was not in the book of the dead, not in L. Ron, not in honey Dijon, not King Kong. By life I don’t mean that vague bullshit dandelion seeds. I mean nut sack to lung sack, I think therefore I’m French. Why wait to see if you come back. It’s not worth being afraid of loosing your job, getting your ass kicked or prison raped; the eyeless black dog will lose his grip on you. You are Übermensch you are beyond governments, pain, mint ice cream, you are art. You are the pound looking back at narcissus, instinct. The id wants us to live like a vacuum, or toaster to fuck him and die. I must calm down. I don’t know if this is what I mean. Lets start over this could be a matter of how I feel because I missed the bus; are you still there?
What do I have to do with my fingers? I shouldn’t be saying this now. I just don’t feel like talking nor do I think I’ll get my point across. Not that what I’m going to say is important oh God OH God! Honestly do I sound like the vision of someone shitting themselves in a pool? You might as well read hills and hills of shredded newspaper. But I’m here you’re here. It’s more like kissing then talking, we’re feeling each other up. My problem is that I’m here and your not. My problem is I can’t size you up and guess what you want. I can’t look at your U2 shirt. I don’t know if you’re a republican, democrat or fag. I’m speaking to a prison camp light. Antennas pick up grunts and ugs .I’m praying and begging. I see you on a pile of twitching leprosies, St Louis leaning his weight on his sword, a dainty lion cock whose seeds navigating the glowing lines of a telephone pole forest. I’m praying with that this little death will bait the big one. I’m tired of myself. Are you tired of me? Are you tired of earth, Jealous of kids that will be able to go in rocket ships? While us we are stuck with daydreams, 12 bit fiction. Head of Orpheus you’re all I got. You’re a friend who tries his damnedest but I am through my organs are rejecting you off my shoulders. When your mom knows your not going to add up to shit she says “he has a wonderful imagination.” She’s saying he has built in anesthesia for the bad times to come.
No object I’m ready-made. I’m ready made for you. Don’t you see a specific shovel, don’t you see what could be. No object just do op do op. I say Lord I’m leaving my blue phase no object I decomposed. If you dig up my bones nowhere in them will you see I was loved? It doesn’t stay in me. I’m a shovel you’re a coat hanger we’re ready made. I’m all there is. Just call me Liz cut off my pink tentacle wear it as a wizard hat.
I’m vague I’m self-centered in the Dao. Our bones don’t have love in them. My eye jelly can be eaten by my cat, those eyes won’t miss looking at you or prefer a cat’s colon and after all they don’t belong to me. I don’t belong to me.
No no no no no I draw letters I draw words the words matter their definition does not matter. Flip the words upside down. Or better yet or better yet. I’m listening to all my records and tapes. Cause I don’t got any one to talk to about something besides the weather. I’m gonna listen to the bad ones, the embarrassing ones. If I got Tiffany I’ll listen to it twice.
Can you be my finger? Can you be mine? Can you be mine? Is it your choice? Is that your voice or is it POP? You’re indivisible to me. This is the “you” I didn’t think I knew. I know we’re the same machine of my memoirs. Time is not for us. Time is for staying up late or missing a date we are ready made. Every freckle, scar, every brick you throw, or don’t, Every shit you take, every car that screams “Fagot!” George is dying from cancer, homos are feeding on cancer. The man who sold the world should have got a receipt. The honeysuckles do what they please as excess drops on sexy moons of broken legs. Dogs on the side of the road maggots in a healing wound, open all night. I can’t have 400 broken dogs, cats and raccoons in my apartment, that’s what’s wrong. That’s what went wrong I want to help shhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. I can’t heal I cant give last rites. All I can do is pretend to listen. well I’m so happy you’re here and this is what I’m trying to say
The atmosphere is getting thin
Jews and Gaza can’t be friends
Mass dead in Srebrenica sucken on bullion cubes
And you have two TV’s two VCRs so poor. This is me trying to speak your language, its hard, I never spoke before.”
The end of the tape shocked me, I heard some slamming of doors. Screaming and yelling crying. I picked up the bear to see if he would say more and noticed his back had popped open. I saw no batteries. From Teddy someone else spoke " Get up, tell us where they are.” A pause “Tell us where the Mellons are.” Better yet tell us what the Mellons are." Then the old voice on the tape said "damn you!!! Run Kid fucking run!!!!!!!!!!” The Tape stopped, I felt exposed and watched. I ran through creeks, hopped fences, I was Paul Revere with a primal scream as a warning, the last and only warning.
It has been 19 years; I just heard the voice from the tape.