Devil's Paper

I left a sticky note

On a goblin’s chair once

It read

Though I asked it to refrain

And the goblin found the glue

Bending and curving

Coming off

He didn’t want to see me

He just asked me to leave

And I did.

It's Been A While

"It's been a while since I've been here."

"I know. What the fuck have you been waiting for?"

"Well... I'm not really sure. I guess I've been waiting for a spark. A fleeting excitement. A satori?"

"You and your satoris."

"Yea."

"So?"

"No satori."

"Then get the fuck out, prick."

"Okay. Sorry." 

A walk in the park

                I hate these tacky rooms. The chairs are too big, and they are only big because they are clothed with layers of Indian carpets. I don’t know why Miranda invites me here if she knows it looks like this. I invite her out, because out is better. Away we go. I think Miranda may be looking off a bit too much today. Is she even here? I blink and she’s still here. Good. I was hoping she would be here. The park is always nice around this time. I usually ask her to come with me to the park around this time. Around this time is perfect—that is, around 4 A.M. Her eyes have bags under them, and the white is peppered with red. Has she been crying? Sometimes I think these walks could be better alone, but then I step in something, and I realize I would HATE to lack the proper company to complain to about this.  Again I look over, and she seems to be lagging behind a bit. “MAN ALIVE!” I shout, and she startles back to life. I love that. Her hair jumps and she’s back with me. Like a doll with strings connected to my words. Well, I don’t like the thought of words being stringy, so I should probably say something to her to turn my mind. “Pleasant day indeed!” We reach the marker in the mud, and I lead us back.

                You sonofabitch! You really do think that you can go on screaming at me, leading me around, telling me what to do, you son, of, a , bitch. This is the last day.

                Did you know your mother called? Did you know she knows about the phone flying through the air crashing into the wall with noise enough to wake the neighbors? You know she knows you’re drinking again. Did you know she knows about the letters found in your drawer? What about my face? Did you know she knew? You love me. I think you do. Did you tell me once that you thought about killing yourself? I wish I would have said something. “Man Alive,” you like to say when you’re thinking about jabbing a dog, or anything close enough that moves. Your steps are too fast, and we’re already back at the entrance. You’d like to leave me here, and I’d like to stay, but today you’re too slow, and getting slower each time. I think you’ll probably notice eventually, but I won’t let you know--Today is the last day. Your breathing gets labored and I think about what’s going to happen to you. It’s a recurring thought—your cold lips, ashen skin, deep wrinkles. You shouldn’t have screamed so much, Dad. 

January Guest Posts

Untitled

Love, I thought you said nothing hoped for better
gone people who inspired me to work and libido,
not versed in regressive mechanisms for how to say
it flowed freely without self-consciousness, genuinely
glad to fit a puzzle with improvised emulations that
flouted immaculate behavior like learning slumming.
I need to be, as though looks taken apart wore any clothes,
over the television induced hyperphrenia and screen-dive
muffs, because disavowal would be so ideal that I can
away hopelessness and rejection for dirty that that
keeps inside some switch for kinetics to collapse.


By J

Stairs

His hands twirled spider arms at the base of the stairs, with arms high and to his side, face tilted, fingers moving. He looked straight ahead into the third indent.

“What's that?” He was saying something, right? He must have been saying something, and he… he hesitated, then hunched down and moved up the climbery two at a time. The door opened and he announced his intentions. “I need to get something to write with.” Clarity.

Harvest Ground

This place is ancient and baleful

and filled with the organs

of now ashen men and women

I’ve never seen.

And this dust is much too cold

for now.

This cobwebbed, grey place

with long dead crawlers

and a silence that resonates

is swallowed whole by my dilated pupils.

And now

these deeds are much too old.

The walls have seen

banana bone marrows carved out

in faux-hubris by sweating men—Murderous,

this place shivers under and out of my eyelids.

Murderous—this place is the end.

Cleavage Ghettos

Somewhere in the sweet supple breasts of Lisa I can see ghettos of microbes huddling together, smoking crack pipes, calling out for some god to take those pale mountains in palm and squeeze them together. In her ghettos are my eyes, watching her dinge and grime barely covered by some grey blouse made of wonder. As I watched her, her arm crossed her torso and her neck stretched out while her head craned into her shoulder.  In that moment I believe she had come from that ghetto on her chest—had somehow ascended it, but barely, growing out of insignificance and into its representative. Giant microbial being—I deem her, and she smiles one of those smiles that tells you she’s uncomfortable and waiting for something to happen. Meanwhile, in the ghettos, a young microbe lies in Main Street and dies as she scratches her cleavage.

          

  I often think about Lisa this way, staring at her through my little peepholes that I hate nearly as much as I hate what they are forced to see. I see her ugly muscles and bruised breast; I see her bourgeois grin as I have seen rats piss on the stairs of my home. As we slouch hand in hand on these piss stained stairs I want to tell her exactly what she is. Then she speaks.

“So, why do you live here? You know, you don’t have to. You could get a good job, live a good life…marry even. I could talk to my dad, you know.”

“For crissakes! Why do you come here if you wish it were somewhere else?”

I didn’t really say those two sentences. I wish I could have. I wish I could have sneezed and sniffled at her three hundred dollar boots, and told her to “getdafuckouttahere!” But I just said, “Well, maybe that’d be nice. Let’s just talk about it some other time.” And as the silence pressed its breast to my ear I could hear the heartbeat of our lives. The smell of grime hit me just then, and I thought maybe I should make a call, do something with myself, stop living in misery, do what people do. Maybe I should have eaten her purse, hell if I would ever know. I invited her up. This was the fourth invite I had sent her way to see my abode; I was counting. She declined, probably thinking it a wreck. Little did she know, that cunt. Little did that little fuck know that every time she told me she was swinging by, I went through an arduous tidying routine— which of course isn’t to say that it was a complete shithole beforehand. Enough complaints.

“I have something to take care of. If you want, you can ride around with me. Starbucks? My treat!”

“Do you know how much I despise that?”

I had actually said it this time. It was that moment everyone experiences at some point in their life; the moment when the person adjacent has realized a deeply hidden thought and that person knows that you know it too.

“What’s wrong?” She was already backing away. ‘Good riddance you shithead’ should have been my first reaction, but instead I stammered on words, tried to pull her back in, tried to get her to fill the air with some of that nice perfume she bought. With no words at all, she was already tearing up. Red face, puffy face, ugly face. A grotesque sight really. It seemed to contort in slow motion, like some parade of her disgusting emotions. It softened me. I closed my eyes, prepared a speech, an apology, and when I reawakened, a newfound sensitive guy, veil and all, she was heading up my stairs. My only thought was the broom at the head of the staircase I had forgotten to put away.

“Fuck, can you just leave?”

Hole

Outside I put the the cigarette in between my fingers and take deep drags on the cotton edge. As the smoke rushes in I hope it fills me up completely, cures that itch somewhere down there that I can’t help but not acknowledge. The smoke comes out and the itch is even more insatiable, so I scratch my arm until there’s blood dripping into the world, my unimaginably large hole. Before I know it, the fumes going into my lungs are cotton, and it's time to reenter the house.

Cockroach Heaven

Rumpled T-shirts and corduroy pants
form a moat around my bed.
A basic printer, a prehistoric amp,
wedge into the mess and jut out like monoliths.
A thin layer of dust coats all,
everything,
including the sails of the model
Nina, Pinta, or Santa Maria
from which the cockroach captain looks out.
Crawling up the masts, seeing nothing,
leading a skeleton voyage
through icy waters
and breath-fogged vision.
This is cockroach heaven,
the baby universe
of my squalor.