21:
10,…9,…wait.
…a designated paranormal landing.
sulking to a greater distant hips up to her chin she’s in she’s not the same she’s not in the same person lost all perspective simmering over an unfoiling iodine draining coffin.
soldiers out back in sheep’s clothing asking for a second politely ignorant attaching.
I just plain paper thin slow down word.
first which does it really matter not one more minute scatters an obvious I’ll skip, the aching for your mother read well.
where was I was dreaming cloaked tenuous hovering wait I’m getting something in there it is again no not yet there it’s coming in oh it has unsoundless mind awake now or think.
certain of nightfall cortex rendering, this is not a we are not on a plane walks slowly overhead waves hello thinking ink exhaust light blue delicate smiling violets’ soft crimson backwaters, the air a weightless pool frozen central no doubt about it its glassy shattering three blocks down something only the weird dare consider travel three blocks down only those made aware need traverse the bellowing yellow soft it’s not a word does it peep through my window?
where it’s coming from slaughters through the plate glass blood-lit corridor.
I know its’ late at the moment an intelligent or matching the correct word with the correct word it is cold cold noose nurse humming overhead the trance homing signal me in to come in and play so she strikes a chord.
mighty wands winds against the window she wings it knowing better than to no such thing better than that a special harbinger of this banging room sings singeing the burning monogram.
roosters rusting poor solder job ashes ashes they all fell.
to sleep long enough as I could walk wake up in the life of the living where she wouldn’t want me that way there with her would she?
my way about me spawning to recognize another laced memory from a different world you do not consider that since there is no hope for anything and therefore there is no such thing.
seen me and you make contact since you are from a different world.
what next fleeing the stenciled scene don’t you must point that thing away from the instead insert between the panting figurines while the power lines down.
iron canyons bled dry just look through the microscope for god’s sake what now bipolar caps melting candy red southward underfed storm dusting next that face with the helmet the one NASA says isn’t there.
think you’ll sign off kilter to refract the light in such a way it became another fucking piece of art.
last final forward thinking about well over the top expensive cigarettes discussions cannibalism mark my word this will not be a good year you may remember I did specifically mention that medication is taking effect the rabbit brains are whimpering in short limp despair glazing over clear cooled generations of these things families premonitions — fine.
intuitions breed stuck between the caged bars another sip of razor after all we just shot them up ten times the human dose just to be sure oh see them shake this time that’s good that’s a sign better give it a 3% placebo affect write that down nothing too dire relating to of course and so the rabbits are now sewn back up thrown off by having to wait one more day before their time-prompted dosing rescheduled.
this mid-evening’s plankton brown stabbing water-striders steaming the floating dead just before retiring that ought to do it.
… a designated paranormal landing.
10:
My car had been lost. It seemed that my car was always lost. I could remember thousands of cars I had owned, all lost. In some inexplicable way like now where did I park my car? lost more cars than I could remember. But that day was a special day.
I rang up The Lost Car Agency. They assured me that at least one of my vehicles would be plucked from the madness of parking space hell before the end of the month. The man was understanding at least to the extent at which he found the time to assist me in my endeavor at $56 an hour. We traveled by helicopter, at his suggestion, hovering over countless lots both day and night. Sometimes the same ones. Hunted down, classified and took note of all parking facilities both full and empty. Rain or shine.
repetition is the only remedy he insisted.
The search was ruthless. We traveled throughout the city, visiting everywhere I had frequented over the past few months – east, north, southeast, south, southwest and so on, on and on. The man tried to coax me into other cities, back roads and the such. I insisted we pursue our concentrated efforts.
I’m certain its here in town somewhere
so then which one are you looking for?
uh I’m looking for probably the ‘53 Chevy
He looked away and back to the tree line shaking his head enough for me to notice he was not at all looking forward to the find.
look it’s black big actually runs better than my ‘68 VW bug which we should keep our eyes out just in case and we forged what might be coined as a useful conversation.
1953’s pretty old he snickers so is ‘68 a look in his eye puts me uptight.
we could look for my Ford Grand Torino station wagon 76′ I think but that’s out of gas I’m sure of it
may have a better chance at starting once we get fuel in it another snicker.
oh yeah I’m sure it’ll run clearing my throat as an engine might turn over pointlessly.
Ford station wagons weren’t good that year never went beyond eighty thousand
this one did
The helicopter pitched and veered over a long line of evergreens. He hammered out a stream of derogatory noises, an unrelenting cynicism. A blanket of cars came into view.
there it is! I sounded expectedly surprised.
where what which one?
The Torino there
that’s a Torino alright
Without touching ground, he rolled the automobile onto its last legs tip topping it over and over in slow clanging summersaults all the way back to the garage. What should have been days took less than a minute. Got some neighbor kids to push it up his gravel driveway, marring the hood and roof, tearing off the fake oak trimming. He motioned me to toss it out through his backyard fence, dumping it into the ravine and there it sat for hours, upside down, wheels nonchalantly spinning, fully dilapidated.
20:
Post World War IX
As a musician with little subject-matter to work with due to an unfortunate condition called chronic boredom I often conferred with the hipsters of post World War IX to see what creative motives I could extract and call my own. From time to time, I wondered (or at least took the time to) about what I was doing in this new commerce of modern thought. Legitimate discussions (swiping ideas) over theoretical neo-harmonic theories at times (like this) made me dizzy with the pang of dis-inspiration, but what else was there? Money no longer held value and the Arts were now considered to be the only thing left to do.
I lived in a 90-story flat straight up. A rather indescript dump for my endless pursuit of so-called ideas. You’d think in such a tall building, an upper class would manifest, but with the current status of money as it was this was not the case, and I had the entire place to myself. It was better that way. The atmosphere well-suited my creative notions. Floors and floors of empty rooms, plenty of space for near non-existent ideas.
Some of the older folk down on the street from the local tavern did plumbing upkeep, the electrical, basic cleanup in exchange for some made-up scales and insipid bass patterns, been going on ten years now, you could say they were almost friends. One of them even thought I could play an instrument.
It was late afternoon, a Wednesday. I was constructing a piece, a composition I thought, something I had thought up, something I thought of, or so I thought. I had proclaimed a new use for a relatively insignificant drum loop someone else had devised years previously.
“A new use……what use?” I beckoned myself to reflect, finding little other than philosophical extractions on the artistically obsolete. “What’s the use?”
Regrettably, I searched for my dusty blue book of local musicians, thousands. A jazz saxophonist highly regarded, though strictly to the Bop chop, had recently shown an unusual interest upon my mediocre meanderings. He arrived at my doorstep in no less than a half hour. Must have been really fuckin’ bored.
Happily, I splayed out the chart, took it to the table, my teeth tapping, aiming at this note and that. Mr. Sax Man nodded, slowly winding up, splicing random clichés to fit over my initial repetitive sequence, a cyclic stomping, not yet saucy. I confirmed his intuition with a grunt and began plucking out the still redundant chord progression one octave higher on an old zither I had found behind an abandoned toilet down some alley. I paused a few beats just to listen to him cram it in, an overuse of licking, riffing and trilling, nostrils flaring.
“That’s great. Anything will be an improvement.”
But Mr. Sax Man seemed to be materializing something beyond mere auditory oomph. Where I could go no further, this man managed to pull rabbits out of the hat, and he began to excel in an elaborate and varied exposition.
Suddenly just as the piece began to take shape he stopped short, pulled the horn out of his mouth and politely vented an unforeseen dissatisfaction “Ya gotta do somethin’ bout this generic phrasing here, here and here — or it’ll ruin my career.”
Can’t say I was let down. I’d had the shaft before but this one lay like flat metal.
“Ya know you’re right it’s gotta go or it’s never gonna get there.” I had to say something. After all I was the composer. “Maybe we could just scratch that entire section out ya think?” Although I felt there was no conceivable reason why anything should be changed, or how for that matter, a prompt apology was in store since one must never degrade the employee when a sufficient job is required. As the way things had it, his artistic reputation was now my responsibility and therefore at stake. If nothing else was, that much was clear.
Seconds later however, reconsidering his musical critique, he shifted all perspective weight such that an excuse for poor composition was no longer needed. His fingers tapped out an alternative fingering using the “bis” and “flarp” keys simultaneously. I was having a real hard time following him. He was that good. Mr. Sax Man now expressed full intent in signing a contract with a Mr. Joe Martinez down on 61st and Park to begin performing my arrangement in public on a daily basis, 9 to 5 with no pay rate. A sort of works-in-progress. This man was a real musician. A real artist. “Tell you what mister, we do it just the way it says, just the way you wrote it, straight ahead.”
Once he packed up and left for the street I managed myself into a dusty brown bean bag and hustled some insight. However subtle, these were peculiar times. These days artistic freedom was emphasized to such and extent that it was completely blown out of the water, no longer an unmistakable yearning as it once was years ago. Like giving too much candy to a baby. Songwriting had become…sickening. And current economical indifferences made fame and fortune appear…stupid. Creative drive…you could barely tell.
“Let‘s Jam!”
No way.
It was puzzling as to why things were being done at all these days. No one could rightly verify why that creative affair would be conducted more often than this, nor who would pay attention from one idea to the next.
And then…there was always that concern… as to whether or not murder and mayhem would return and take reign as supreme like in the good old days if creative intention became anything other than an average commodity.
I sank into the bag in a sort of quasi-mucilage state for the next twenty-four hours.
31:
On my bed I wrote busily; a bass clef here, a treble there, a sixteenth note passage – dotted quarter there yes “That’s good that’s just where I want it.”
I paused long enough to skate my left hand over the fretboard, mimicking what I had realized on paper. Though for now not particularly colorful, here were ideas, seeds for which I could get it to grow roots…wings…roots…”A root flat five major seventh with a suspended eleventh on top that’s it that’s perfect,” again the mimicking, my skimming fingertips over frets and into position “Yes a four and a half beat pause and back to three eight meter good.”
Julia and I were working together on this one. We had been commissioned to do a work for The Kerrawsha Dance Theater of Nevada, to be completed later that week. She had given me cues on each page, varied instrumentation, a few triads thrown about, clues if you will, sprinkled half-knowingly about like confetti across the staff. She knew what I liked – how I loved to rearrange things, to create an abstraction from out of an abstraction. Puzzles. Sound language. Audio collage. Julia knew what I liked, never had to ask, and our collaborative efforts were always seamless.
I worked steadily for the next few hours, sitting sideways, slipping first half on then half off the mattress; leaning over our work, the sheets down, pillows tossed about where we had lain that afternoon. A secondary violin passage came to me in sleek, sweeping chromophonic variations and all was well. By now the sun had fallen and the windows had grown dark, save for a back porch lamp lighting the side yard: the section near the neighbors. They never were home. Were they?
I turned back to our work. The introduction was without context to any element of the piece’s interior structure. This was a good sign, the true sign of modern music, as well as the sudden rapid flurry of notes in the guitar’s upper register “Completely out of the blue great we’ll keep it — Julia!” I shouted out, elated over our progress and lifting my eyes out of the paperwork again raising my voice this time “Julia!” and out the word flew down the hallway; my voice, her name ricocheting off the purple, glass-tiled flooring, slipping away softer and softer, a slightly disorienting reverberation, darkening one after the other. I never noticed that before.
Turning back to the work, I re-contemplated, perhaps more out of unease than inspiration. The next bar foreshadowed a struggle. It wasn’t quite as easy to come up with a counter balance to the main phrase. I hesitated to sketch the following notes; A, B and C#. They just were not appropriate against the descending line, wrong register maybe, didn’t look the part.
I turned back to the hall. The wallpaper was dimming. Must’ve blown a fuse in the livingroom. Julia. Must be downstairs.
Again back to my problematic notation “Damn this is really abstract.”
Glancing up over the bed and toward the windows. Dark. Real dark. There was a fear outside. A fear I couldn’t tell. I couldn’t tell what it was. What was it out there anyway?
The neighbors weren’t home. The kids were asleep. We had put the dog in the pen. Julia. Julia was downstairs.
I turned back to the page “no one’s gonna wanna play this shit.”
14:
[from "On The Brink"]
Hoss sees not, gold flaps flagging either side, the wind shielded, ping ponger pung synapses spurred, faint feelings slurring, his brains (shaken twice not stirred) perspire from the inside out, rushing at break neck speed, now numbing down into a comatose state ahh,.. in desperation to ward off (yet another?) unexpected unconsciousness.
Both iris pinwheels whirring as magnificent headlights, multicolored hues through blown fused lens n’ lashes. The body fallout stunned housed (stung grounded), sheltered only by the incoming blur es ownership of the common cold; plaque restorations concealed within an adept vintage basement.
These were of the spaces that seesaw Hoss and finally, Hoss, both in and out of phase, he more moan forward forehead knotting, nodding with a start, aborted from reality.
this all looks quite ordinary shouldn’t be a problem
Now the softening overlay folding in n’ around his chassis, lowering like a smog from numerous cheap heating ducts, cooled icing on an upside down cake, keen cerebral slice, the paraphysical pineapple sends an empty message home, encoded in silence, docked and holding.
that’s good that’s good now feed in gently one hundred fifty milligrams at a time now remember slow dosing is important here
Narcosis Narcotica was a big thing at the time, or the next big thing. Everybody knew about it, or was about to, and the crew had read up on it, or was ready to, you know, the big thing.
Sandbag dreamhead Hoss fall back, milligrams intravening the body, and to one side far from it, his head wagging back and forth like a broken dandelion bud. One oar rowing pain dispenser singing sweetly sweaty broken rudder, twinkling morning suns, a well prescribed second opinion. Jarred light bulbs pop see-through ethereal curtains and bedding there! a shape the outline hosts an impact unmatched, uncalled for and unheard of as Hoss hits the bank hard registering thought-filling analysis and descriptions of which held no water of his said such sad physicality. The horrid stupefacient invasion, itching under seven layers, drives Hoss nuts.
let’s begin shall we?
A clatter of surgical tools shuffle about, some drop to the tiled floor, duplicates are gathered and arranged. A sudden aire of awful apprehension soaks into the entire medical team as a brand new sponge might on a greasy stove, their hands-on assessments more repulsive than ever (nothing clever about this). Head Doctor looks up one fucking unbearable moment under his white face mask mumbling incoherent classifications, the others in a chorus line too close to the gurney; point of entry bedimming overshadowed by their array of nervous twitchings, snippets of their oblique inquiries; ill-specified and out of order, franticly attempting references on technique and duration. Capsized panic Head Doctor unconsciously flings out an arm jarring the overwhelmed crowd of medical rejects out of the way. Jerking back eyes down focusing directly onto the soft, sagging, soggy body, an excitedly decidedly quick shake of the head and he has somehow regained complete composure. A plan is cast in stone.
The patient lies motionless now flat back pulse fading at 30 bpm, the blue-gray skin tone, mango blotches ’round the eyes as if last stay too long, a bathtub in the Orient perhaps.
Head Doctor pats lightly at the upper inner Triceptuous region. The team seems to have collected a renewed attitude of sophistication, pausing only for Head Doctor’s final say.
let’s dig in kids
A cut above the rest, firm scalping, hair loss yank the cuticle brow that’s right perfect cheeks, jaw n’ chin bone revealed within a quarter hour good timing people let’s make this our average bleeding becoming severe I will now begin to serrate the link between what we know as reality and or non reality for our young patient of whom is not under serious consideration he grins only condition grins wider I’m going in now separating the Hypothalamus from the spinal column to…
what?! the team seemed to question his motives coupled with an agitated silence of immense proportion.
Continuing, grinning at a max,…to acquire the freedom to intervene at certain reflex vortex sites as needed Head Doctor had not noticed the change in energy about the room.
Many frowns behind many masks, eyes watering – projecting their astute anguish.
Head Doctor looks up sharply, authoritative figure that he is this is crucial people let’s not get squeamish on me now
Jeanie and Chad become faint and leave the room.
so ya gonna make a habit or a hobby out o’ this? now let’s get serious
Outright defiance fills the eyes of one rookie RN. Doc, surprisingly enough, is aware of this and speaks directly to the youngster like a Father to his first born son;
you may not approve now I know you just wait ’till the shit hits the fan
With a firm sense of conviction, Head Doctor returns to his formidable surgery. As the medical team settles down for God knows what reason, now spotting the flutter of exposed tissue encircling about the eyes of one precarious patient, their priorities are brought to their attention. The once defiant rookie RN cowers in the corner. The authoritative figure raises his voice a great deal. The rookie crumbles.
alright now listen up – tread lightly people
Activities are once again set into motion; a cut above the rest, stern scraping of skimpy skinny cells, a close shaven posture down to the bone marrow brow yes that’s it that’s it elbow, wrist, knee, and ankle sprain tentures recapped within a quarter hour good timing people let’s make this our average a surge of light from the overhead, a shallow cacophonous shuffling about, some shoes scuff the tiled floor, tacks are suggested. Head Doctor now has a glossy red scalpo held up like a baton conducting an orchestra of doom. The crumbled Rookie in the corner lifts his head to speak out, raising an unclenched fist, weak, forsaken. Yet upon seeing the official stature of Head Doctor in all his self overconfident glory, the pitiful lad succumbs to his status deciding no match for he be up against – crumbs worsen and flake, dried up.
But just as the thin sharp edge begins its exploratory injurious nature, carefully scoring the connective tissues, one brave Nurse sticks up for her feelings with a hand of distaste. She winks asymmetrically, nervous of the outcome from what she mean to say and opens one corner of her mouth. From this comes a simpering quid of saliva, not quite just yet a formed word. The Doctor has by this time ceased his abrasive zigzagging, the scalpo though still in position paring down an inauspicious rosy glow, now ever so slowly turning his head toward the direction of the woman like a goddamn horror flick nightmare flick horror damn god and in one peculiar extension of experience, Head Doctor clutches the nearby Nurse with a single hand. A damn tight grip.
A yowl is heard, not that unlike a small dog being stepped on.
At this, Head Doctor, seeing the errors of his way, confused by his own agitation, discovers impatience getting the better of him. He blinks sadly as his world slows down to a micro molecule of a time frame. He wonders for the first time whether his perception of reality is any more legitimate than the next poor fucker and glances upward into the face of one tormented Nurse. Frightened, she titters, her circulation beginning to fray, one hell of an embarrassing moment for both. Under her breath, panting uneasily, words shoot up with a jolt into a panoramic verbal begging, 360o, jutting out but far-too-quiet pleadings for his sudden grip to …loosen up please! The others see this as a meaningful sign not taken to its fullest intention, obscured by her misdirected reactive displeasure. Most of the medical team empathizes with her situation, while some simply make mental notes over the lack of foresight on Head Doctor’s part and the possible consideration over rearranging the events in a slightly different order beginning with the way he approached the victim.
So, with another nervous snap of the head, Head Doctor has (simply put) recovered – reviewing his initial plan of attack to begin with. The nearby Nurse lets out a terrifying gasp of relief and sinks into the far corner to, as one might say, nurse her wounds, joining the crumbled not-so-defiant rookie RN in what could only be surmised as a flimsy huddle.
Hoss is no more awake than the man on the moon, still prone, backbeat pulse beginning to show superficial stabilization at 35 bpm, denying all implications of near spinal serration.
Head Doctor, once more, pats lightly at the upper inner Triceptuous region. He seems to be listening for something that is not there fuck it (thinking to himself) time to get it over with and with a characteristic sweep of his forearm, he signals the crew to join in.
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