in an indefensible place

open chest, insert javelin here --
the parade began with a cymbal clash.
the evening wore silk lipstick secrets
and hovered, leering, six inches too near.
now there's one you can trust to talk:
spitting out coffee grinds, cigarette ash,
marking out a bed in makeshift chalk
she'll recline on an earnest error and hiss
the synopsis to morning, dozy with bliss.

you mean cupid wasn't an archer by trade?
as accurate, yes, but less likely to balk.
his arm, if the arrow proves poorly made
aims naked hope at the dullest brow
those sweet, sad eyes perfectly mourning
the projectile as it leaves his hand
the graceful arc tracing the fatal line
of how much you never know at the time
but lord, don't you now!

thank god for the shiftless night,
the gypsy caravan returns to the city.
ambrosia hangovers are flippant and light
like day-old ignorance dispensed in pity.
maybe sell this all as an enthralling perfume
(for those who don't mind bee stings
or appalling twists of outrageous fortune)
but mind a light touch as you measure.
see, care didn't warn me on the pensive road back
drifted off, as usual, in a mistaken pleasure
dizzy on the vapors of giddy regret
and all the cautions that fools forget.

so. brunch in the graveyard, mid-afternoon?
I shall come with the wine, yes, but not in black.
the love I hadn't met, I heard he was dying.
first came the press of a future lack,
and then the relief, the grateful sighing --
I plan to attend the funeral, soon.
for Zack 
coepta 23 feb 2013
desita 19 feb 2014

french lesson

tous nous sommes fils naturels de cette cochonnerie.
(we are all the bastard children of this ---)
speak the matter not so plainly, 
don't spell it as such a simple name.
you see, cochonnerie, so rich in
its connotation and history, is but one
of the more virtuously discerning,
insinuatingly burning means to
convey a sense of reproach and disdain
the word by sound itself in the main
recalling the grunting of hogs in slop
brings the indictment to a full, haughty stop.

cut-corner

    there was a certain feeling along the narrow streets and stiletto alleys.  it was the second day of December and the dusk hovered steadily around too-warm-for-a-jacket-degrees.  a man dismounted from a still-rolling bicycle and wipe the sweat from his brow.  a dribble of snot went along for the ride.  the dusk hovered steadily at don't-bike-wearing-a-jacket Celsius, and the asphalt exhaled a laden breath of day cares, what-for rush, eight-hour frustrations and twelve-hour delights deferred.  there was a certain implication in mute glances and barely licked lips as another man, seated outside the café on the corner, watched the first man walk in to said shop and softly request vodka in the coffee and cream to boot.  there are certain stories that draw in a short breath, lips parted over white teeth in anticipation of a secret spilled, and then think better of it all, and leave only the delicious shiver of a need unfulfilled as they contemplate the ripples of restrained words on a glass of Italian soda.
    "My kingdom for a cigarette," said the second man to the first as he settled into a chair for a white Russian and a smoke.  the first half-glanced over and readied a noncommittal "no" before eyes headed off language at the pass and turned the truncated sound into a weak cough.
    "Certainly," stumbled out the response.  hands clumsily rooted around inside of a purple leopard-print bag, fingers fumbled excitedly for purchase on two slim cylinders, eyes darted somewhat nervously from pack to coffee to interlocutor and back.  meaning is seldom as easily found as a lighter, so the lighter served as a surrogate, the cigarette as a stalling tactic, inhalation and combustion as cheap imitations of coherent thought and successful expression, as number two gave thanks to number one, who in turn gave confused gratitude to whatever serendipity had landed him next to a handsome stranger with a need easily fulfilled, and on a lonely and uncertain evening.  presently, when internal monologue had almost built a strong enough springboard to leap unfettered into the brighter airs of the spoken word, a clarinet riff sounded from the bag and scattered the whole nascent colossus back into pebbles and sand.
    "Excuse me," said number one with a healthy hint of annoyance.  he had already turned his attention from any forthcoming response to manipulate a small, balefully glowing screen into revealing its contents, a disinterested prestidigitation that started at the fingers and spread quickly to the face.  an erstwhile lover's sister, seeking the company of souls named Molly and Cid.  of all the boneheaded impositions: an attempt at a drug deal, seeking merchandise he'd lost the art to acquire some years since.  he did not attempt a reply for fear of losing the tenuous thread of attention which bound him to the tousled man in the seat opposite, but that one had already turned to resume a listless conversation with a frumpy girl pacifying a distempered dog.  he sighed, and put down the phone just in time to unwitting, serendipitously hear the man's last remark:
    "And then the stupid fuck had the nerve to send his sister asking if I'd sell some of the best acid I've had since The Crystal Method was a household name.  The nerve of some twinks, eh?"  This last volley he aimed panoramically, beginning as the girl turned to slap the dog away from a raspberry scone and swinging a full 180 degrees to find its terminus on the first's face in the precise moment that it collapsed from a mask of disbelief into a barely concealed, smoldering ruin of thwarted hope.
    "Pardon me," said he, rising from his seat distractedly to pull his jacket back on, almost departing before he recalled his pack of cigarettes, which the second had begun to eye with mild avarice.  the smoking, decimated remnants flared into a stony wall of silence.  he slid the box into his pack, nodded fraternally to the second, and rounded the corner to the busier street.  the text would go unanswered as a certain feeling that crept along the gutters stretched out, reptilian, and laid itself down beneath rotten leaves and midden detritus to wait out the cooling night for the inevitable sunrise.

further deliberation

"but this," he gestured helplessly at the letter crumpled on the counter next to the stove, "I just can't understand..."

the small iron assembly on the stove began to burble and hiss. he pressed his fingers to his eyes, and watched thoughts emerge swimming in the warm saline darkness. a hope that had gently lain trailing atop the waters grew heavy and broke the surface tension to sink slowly in a coiled spiral, a hungry twister's tip seeking the airless deeps.

she pressed her lips into a mute line, exhaled through her nose, and glanced sideways at the clock on the wall. its dim insistent staccato stuck and then strained as if clearing its throat, minute hand jumping angrily in place until with a sharp click it regained the customary rhythm.

"well," he gestured to the folded letter laid neatly beside the coffee service, "some stories write themselves, and all the characters don't appear in every act." the steam gasped forth from the spout of the small percolator as out tumbled two cups of coffee. he waved her to hers and carried his to the front door to stare out into the brittle light of the freezing afternoon.

amid watery shadows the doorway was a burning rectangle framing an immobile, gouged-out blackness. she moved the empty pot from the heat and fixed her eyes on his occluding stillness as she held the paper from the tray over the unwavering flame.

the hissing candescence rendered the contents forever irrelevant, wordlessly concurring as she whispered "a caesura."

6er: deliberation

"a caesura," she said simply.
he turned from the stove and looked at her inquisitively.
"brief pause, you know: do like the natives, let a full minute pass before you respond."
"malarky," he sharply retorted. a moment later, Understanding cleared its throat.
he looked chagrined as the coffee began to percolate.

letter to a cousin

epistles sent to dead men's daughters
quite rightly; our last names rhyme
trees with roots in cloudbank quarters
all earth gives way to air, in time.

Zhenya in the tropics

 the wind had been mild all morning, but Yevgenia stood at a second story window and frowned. a mighty gust tore up the avenue, sharply convulsing the trees, smooshing her face back and up. cue the stationary roller-coaster. an unsecured cat atop a marble-rimmed peristyle in the adjacent park gave an indignant squawk, fumbled vainly for purchase, and toppled off into the rhododendrons below. 

she felt a momentary pang when the sudden rain came, drenching, insistent, yet soft; pang turned into reverie in an open window as the wind sliced the rain into mist through the mosquito screen. how auspicious the day a cold front rushes down to meet an oncoming hurricane.

morning noise

tuna niçoise
trituration
tiramisu
treachery
tessellated
thyroidal
tone-deaf
titillating
tulle

we are pregnant

a man turns to me, arm around a girl thick with foetus, who chitters and giggles with the girls around the high table but does not take a proffered jello shot.  he accepts his and removes the lid from the tiny cup. the follicles in my nose wither at the draft of alcohol fume like bus exhaust. a moment and he has polished the cup clean, saying with a dopy, sugar-glazed grin in no general direction at all: "We're pregnant!"

I do not recognize him.  If I ever knew the girl, it was two trimesters and a poor dye job hence.  She smiles thinly at me, and excuses herself to the ladies' room. A muffled, mumbling loudspeaker informs us that now, Leonora Borealis will sing us… something: "nur, Lirrynrruh Buhriyella gunnahingalee Blerstercut", we are assured. A sloshy short woman stumbles up to the stage on powerful legs, clad in a diaphanous yellow dress which outlines her gracious and unkempt pubic hair. The karaoke track of Blue Oyster Cult's "Godzilla" begins in tinny earnest.

The fellow pulls deeply from a plastic cup of beer, and repeats through foam and bubbles:
"We're pregnant!"
His face has begun to resemble an over-boiled potato, and I picture this man suffering morning sickness directly, horking up his stale beer and chicken biscuits at 7:13am, and then the coffee and second round of chicken biscuits at 8:49. I mean to inquire after his gastrointestinal health, but he laughs as Liranova Barbarella belts out a surprising, throaty growl:

"Widda puppusful grimmiss anna terribah sound
He pullsa spitty high tenshun whyers daown"

He looses a guffaw, loud, jarring, and beery. I notice the girl has not returned, and I picture him achy and bloated, waddling to the john every quarter hour, keeping proximity to bathrooms much as sex offenders keep distance from schools. I wonder how long he has been pregnant for, if the gestation is of differing length and severity, if it began concurrent with hers. They are the both of them pregnant! The implications of plurality demand attention, not just for the curiosity of the person, but the biological sciences, and natural order.   

"Do you get much morning sickness?" I simply must know.

He laughs, and refills the plastic cup from a pitcher on the table. Another round of jello shots has arrived, all of them uncapped and reeking Mephistophelian vapors. The girl is returning from the bathroom, but halts just before the table as a look of pure nausea sweeps her face, and she makes for the toilet again.  The man does not notice, but responds to me, "When I overdo it!" and swallows the unnaturally blue gelatinous cube.
Learaneara Bree Ella punctuates this magisterially:

"Ohhh no, DARE GO TOE-KEY-OH
oh-oh GAHZILLAH!
yee-eeaa-ah"

He swallows, and begins listening to another girl across the table. I cannot hear them over the sultry titanette gyrating on the stage to the instrumental break, microphone held suggestively to her chest. But then the man is cackling at whatever has been said, clapping his hands vigorously, and leans back on his stool. He slaps his thighs and, reclining too far, slides right off the back of his seat squarely onto his tailbone.

A short groan escapes him, and I see that the girl has returned from the bathroom behind him and is looking down at him. With his paunch now gathered round as he sits knees-up on the floor, I see him as a suddenly deflated ball, frayed and beaten in a flimsy gown, on his way to a gooch reconstruction after a particularly nasty parturition trauma. I realize now that the girl is laughing to herself, albeit quietly, as he moans and leans forward, rubbing his lower back. He rises slowly, heavily, as if pained with a dull, leaden ache, and gingerly returns to the stool. 

"Owww… I think…" he begins, and catches a breath. She has sat down again, and is talking low and fast to the two girls at her side, one or the other at times barking a short, unmistakeable laugh. 

"I think I gotta…" he begins again, and stops short. 
"Go?" she asks. He nods, as does she. He rises and shuffles to the door, while another girl at table wears a smile like a hyena. Learner-A-Bury Hellas grips her gown at the left thigh, rocks backward, and roars triumphantly:

"HISSORY SHOWS a-GEN AN a-GEN
how NATURRE POINS OWT da folly of men-nn
GAH-ZIL-LA!"

To ponderous, thunderous applause.

Miss Rhoda Bee

It was 7:51 a.m. of a Sunday when he first crossed paths with Miss Rhoda Bee. The parking lot of the grocery was rich with a spring symphony of birds and circling cars, all made mazy and gracious in the mellifluous light of an April morning, and he felt expansive and warm for the first time in days. He would have coffee soon, and maybe even a banana.
Beneath an old crape myrtle not yet in bloom, she stood resolute, aflame in wrath, a five-foot colossus -- excluding her hair, a sentry tower of twists and sharp outcroppings, itself vaguely foreboding. she roundly, colorfully berated a father who had sat his child in a buggy festively made to resemble a police car by way of pieces of cardboard zip-tied to the sides.
"I'm just..." he began, waving one hand halfheartedly, but she cut him off, firing as might a Gatling.
"Just getting young Junior acquainted with the dominance hierarchy whose lineage he's been so lucky to have? Readying his unknowing hands for the cold mercy of the department standard-issue? Or aren't you a police officer yourself?"
The man shook his head, looking hopelessly toward the grocery's cool, inviting entrance. Ah, reposeful heads of lettuce, cheery tomatoes, quiet tubers. She grew truly incensed.
"Ah, a happy turncoat, then! Familiarity breeding a rich complacency. Either gross or a simpleton, you!  Marring the tabula rasa with the hateful code of men! Tainting the easy freedom of innocence with the noxious repression that poisons the flower of life! And on the day you damned Saxons insist the Lord himself favors!" She drew in a breath here and stopped abruptly. He had drawn close to them, and stopped for a moment.
"The zip-ties even remind one of handcuffs," he offered reasonably.
Her glare went supernova. Her quarry had taken a vague resemblance to a turtle.
"Ah… but I'm a Unitarian?" the man ventured uncertainly. Apoplexy ensued.
"And all of this from a damned hippy-dippy bohemian bourgeois animist!" she spat.  "Sacre merd de chevre! Fils de putin! Bonté! You, sir, are a shameless protozoan, and I pray that whenever you go seeking your quinoa, fair-trade certified organic Brazilian cocoa, and kefir, you find only Cream of Wheat, Hershey's, and drinkable yogurt for the lunchboxes of the youth condemned to follow in your sad footsteps."
The child looked uncertain, but amused. The man nodded, then blinked, as if astonished, and quickly wheeled the putative cop cart off, a refugee seeking sanctuary among the produce. She followed him with her withering stare.
He suddenly thought that he must also buy ginger ale. There was a hand-basket on the ground beneath the myrtle's branch pointing toward the entry. He nodded to her as he picked it up.
"Ma'am."



VII aprilis MMXIII scripta hoc plostro ante Rousem viso

he's gonna babble about trolleys

the six sentence structure makes for nice, quick prose when you've the attention span of a goldfish.

your incipient megalomania is arresting, I confess. but I can't remember your name. is it that you haven't told me?
no matter, do be still. I am trying to draw the back of your head in pen, and I haven't margin for error. not with the streetcar rocking so.

don't eat the flowers

In my chest, there are a thousand blossoms of venom holding springtime court, and outside is the hateful blue that locks out the sun, drugs line and form into dripping wrecks, turns asphalt into the skin on mephitic rivers of pudding. I had cooked, and how I had turned the fire up and attended the slaughter with lemon and salt, seared its skin like I longed to sear the skin of the boy in my kitchen, so tempting and warm that I opened the door to go smoke. even with the oven on, the aroma so thick and toothsome, I only cooked and ate, and I fed but never tasted him, and I struggled and burned, smoked and guttered right out. in the choked ember tint of such an evening the poison garden begs for wind so I slept with the window open; the kitchen went stony, the skin left lonely in the fridge. the lullalby is nasturtium and nightshade cackling at the sad excuse for day that follows, weak as dishwater and the grease of yesterday's attempts atop it. ponder, indeed, if there's any call to ever clean a kitchen again, if particular flowers could grow in a bombed-out stove, make for decent seasoning when properly dried...

>> fabula amoris sex in sententiis
>> scripta 6 dec MMXII
>> pro puero quo apud me cenandum vinit at basia mihi non tulit.

in prior times this would have been called a salon

an exchange
for 2 interlocutors

> : I confess that it's so bro I can't even finish it
just like most him 'novels'
- : same here
I tried to read it in high school and got so bored
i didn't yet realize it was EWWWW FOR DUDES
> : and I picture most of the characters as crusties
a la them what stand at esplanade and claiborne and spange
- : hahahahahahahahaha yeah
TOTALLY
> : and deep in my head a crabby man in a rocking chair says 'get a damn job ya sorry bum'
but I think some of kerouac's personae crustamatae were following jobs anyhow
- : hahahahahahahahhahaha
that man sounds muddy mudskipper in my mind
i just found it unbearably boring. i didn't get the characters at all.
"and then we got drunk and fucked some bitches in a new town. something america. the end." - my brief summarization of On the Road.
> : I tried reading satori in paris or whatever
and it was like
tu passes tout le jour dans le maudite beauty parlor
which was slightly better than
'git drunk fuk bitchez'
- : hahahahahaha
> : but even so I couldn't tolerate it, and stomped it on the floor at aunt tiki's
to no one's horror.
- : HAHAHAHAHAHAH! TO NO ONE'S HORROR!
i just don't understand american masculinity. i think the less i understand it, the better.
sometimes it seems like the more i understand, the less interested i am in actually having sex with men, so you know, i'm okay with just letting it be this thing i don't want to know the particulars of
> : strangely, it's got a line of 'naked ancient greeks at the gymnasium being sods' to it
which is strange to think about
but this is why no one should read ancient greek plays
it's like 'hmmm damn 3000 years ain't shit changed'
- : i think kerouac was a totally closeted homo with a homophobic streak
> : uh, ya think?
didn't he schtup ginsberg?
or did I eat some bad acid
anyway he hung round with a buncha drugged up buttpirates so whatever
his cred is nil
- : HAHAHAHAHAHAHA
> : on that account, anyway
- : DRUGGED UP BUTT PIRATES
I AM DYING