In for a penny - in for a pound

Maybe it happens to everyone? That sad day when you look around and see things for what they are – the way they have been. Nothing makes sense and it’s hard to remember a time when anything really did. There’s no poetry to the rain. The stars don’t shimmer in the sky the way that they should. Lightning always strikes twice and entire conversations are lost to gentle words left softly unspoken. None of the pieces fit together and you have to wonder if they ever will. Is there any real difference between a Monday and a Tuesday – or even a Friday? Is it the vile cigarette sludge in my lungs or the aluminum in my deodorant gel that is slowly killing me? It’s hard to say – and maybe it doesn’t really even matter anymore?

So, what’s next? Where do you go when the savage knots you feel in the secret chambers of your heart are so shamelessly tangled that it's hard to even know where to begin? All you can do is hope against hope and wait for the bottom to finally drop out. Sometimes you paint yourself so far into the inky shadows of a lonely corner that it doesn’t even matter anymore – you don’t even notice, and nobody else does either. Why would they? The only viable option is a heart wrenching escape into the grim possibilities of an all new void. A sad disappearing act. A blood separating free-fall. The searing pain of having to leave the people you love behind is only matched by the hollow sadness of getting to know new people, beautiful people – and then having to leave them too. Maybe it happens to everyone? Maybe this is what happens when you roll the dice one too many times? Maybe this is the price that has to be paid?

Hopefully it will all make sense at some point. Hopefully the ugly scars of an ungainly past will start to finally fade away. Hopefully it will be the nasty gamble that finally pays out. Maybe there’s some kind of freedom, some kind of empty handed redemption, to be had in self-imposed isolation? That’s the idea anyway. Thats the rumor. Or it may just pan out the way everything else has? The icing on the cake. It doesn’t change a thing though. Sometimes you just have to ignore everything that is happening inside and go. You haven’t been welcome here for a long time anyway. It's a big world, so maybe there’s a cure? A sweet tasting magic elixir. Maybe there’s redemption to be found in the tangled shade of a stoicly bent Magnolia Tree? Maybe it’s in the sweltering heat that hangs in the southern air like a lover’s voice? Maybe so, maybe not. Life doesn’t stop either way though. It just keeps churning and grinding away, and if you aren’t careful you just end up being part of the machinery. Just another nameless victim waiting in some godforsaken line to finally die – to be relieved. Never quite understanding what the point of it all was.

If there ever was one.

The Acidity of Hope

For eight years the nefarious whoremasters sucked on that pink nipple until the sweet milk was completely gone – until all that was left was the sour taste of blood and misery. They sucked and sucked until not even god could help them anymore – and now look at us. Fucked, stunned, and left bleeding from every orifice. Things aren’t looking too swell for the good guys these days. It’s been a while since this staggering nation has felt like something that we should be proud of. Gone are the days of milk and honey - when our national shame revolved around genetically spattered dresses and gag reflexes instead of skyrocketing bodycounts and corruption. Ahh, yes, those were the good old days. It’s hard to even remember what it felt like when uncontrollable lust and infidelity were newsworthy yarns. Life was a cream puff. Nobody knew how good they had it, and every morning since has felt increasingly painful and futile.

Still the old guard won’t let go of that ruined teat. They just keep sucking with their bloodstained teeth and their Ichthus money clips. The conservative swinewhores had their fair go at the supple flesh of liberty, it cant be denied, and look what they left us with. A raped nightmare. A bloated corpse. A molested dream. Now that the lights have been flicked back on they are left scurrying in the shadows of the failure that they created - but you can only hide so much greed and hypocrisy behind that leather-bound bible, and what is left sticking out is so ugly and horrifying that nobody in their right mind would dare claim it anymore. Don’t worry though – god will forgive them for this stinking mess. There’s nothing a weekly slug of jesus blood cant cure! Repent! Repent! But wait a second. Who voted for these last two terms of savagery; for all those years of hateful disregard - twice? Old people? Fascists? The NRA? The Mormon's? Trailer trash? All I know is that it wasn't me. They say theres no time to point fingers though - of course not. Let’s just pretend that these last eight years DIDN’T happen. I didn't see anything if you didn't? Let’s stick our blind dicks in the sand, pretend that all the blunders couldn't be helped - and call it even.

Fuck that! It isn’t my style - never was. For six months I’ve had to listen to Bill Cunningham snarl and froth at change like a cornered sex predator with rabies. There was a full page add in the Enquirer yesterday damning me to the fires of hell for my politics about abortion. The Catholics were behind that disgusting rant – what a rotten bunch of sleazeballs. Remember the inquisitions? Catholics - pfft. I don’t know. Maybe it is too late for hope? Maybe the infection is too strong? We've taken on too much water already. So... fuck it. Fold the hand. Let’s all just quit school and never go to work again. Why should we – the dream is fucked, change is for the foolish and only an idiot would believe that things could ever be any better than they are right now. Right? Right? That’s what I’ve been hearing. I turned on Fox news tonight just to watch all their grey faces quiver with rage and fear. It felt pretty good. With any luck they will all devour each other in the dead of night. Hows that for no-spin?

Things are changing though – in spite of the religious rights dastardly efforts against social progress. It isn’t about black or white anymore - this is the new equality. We are all equally fucked. Equally tired. Equally scared. Equally oppressed. This new misery that we have inherited cares little for color or creed, and lashes out at anyone with enough blood in their veins to keep them standing. I can see Dick Cheney, fat and arrogant, giggling himself to sleep right now - too bad for him the faulty battery that keeps his pacemaker running was made by a seven year old girl in China. The swollen dumbass, how did he not see that one coming? How did he not see a lot of things coming?

All I can say is that thank god this thing is over. It couldnt have come at a better time. Things have never looked so grim in all of my life, and I feel kind of sorry for Obama right now - but not as sorry as I feel for Joe the Plumber. What a wretched douche of a man. I hope he never finds work again. I hope he ends up sucking dick for stale crusts of bread. Seriously though, how do you correct eight long years of shameless fuckery? Eight years of relentless thieving sabotage? The pessimist in me almost wishes that Darth McCain and his evil minions would have been victorious tonight, just so he could finish running us all into the ground. Proving at last that the Republican party is a greedy horde of greasy inept fuckapes. Proving that god is either dead or taking a nap right now. In the end it might have been easier for a seemingly decent man like Barack Obama to build this country up from the smoldering ashes in 2012. I guess things are close enough though. This is it; the last gasp. The final plunge. We may find that the cuts are too deep, that the Bush doctrine did damage that nobody comes back from. Sometimes you open a door and you can never go back. Until then though… To all the sodomites that read the Drudge Report when they get home from praising the sweet lord. What up now bitches! What up now!

Hallelujah! Can I get a motherfucking witness!

A Plague Upon Your House!

Sweet fucking god! A ravenous plague of filthy chirping locusts have descended on us. What have we done to deserve this torturous misery? I know that we are a vengeful species – but can’t we work out some sort of a deal? Bloated corpses stain the earth with festering juices and their buzzing wings blot out the kindness of the sun. When I think of bugs, I think of swirling gnats and tiny mosquitoes, maybe even wolf-haired spiders - not these beastly mutants that thud into you like small retarded birds. Their red eyes show no hint of emotion, no clarity of thinking. What are their plans? What do they want? When will their mindless infestation be over? I don’t understand the ugly sound of their ruthless squawking, but I know that they are up to no good. I have a feeling that they would like nothing better than to strip the sweet meat from my frightened bones and lay their diseased eggs in my aorta. There are stories of them reducing full grown milk cows to powder in less than three minutes. I despise every wretched morning I am forced to stagger to my car as if I am dodging AK47 bullets in the war torn streets of Karbala. Fuck gas prices – someone needs to rid the earth of these disgusting monsters before there are none of us left to rape this planet like it deserves. It wasn’t two hours ago that one of these rabid goddamned hornets attached itself to the soft flesh of my neck and tried to rip out my jugular. I could hear its poisonous fangs clicking together, lusting after the burgundy nectar that flows through my weary veins. Something must be done. It isn’t American to live your life in a constant state of fear like this.

Gather your loved ones! It’s only a matter of time before they figure out how to chew through the deadbolts and open doors. Make a list of all the things that you always wanted to do – and cry over it. Maybe in the next life?

Do we have no hero’s left in this godless country; no brave souls to track these hateful vermin back to their stinking nests and exterminate them with exotic weaponry? Who shall rise up in this time of need? Who shall defend us against this buzzing nightmare? It is times like these when legends are forged in the flames of desperation! Who shall rise up?

And isn’t that just typical these days. This country hasn’t had a true hero to turn its lonely eyes to since Joe DiMaggio, and who knows where he’s gone. Live together die alone, right? Fine, but don’t think that I’m not going to take a horde of these dirty locusts with me when I go. I will drive my stupid car at top speeds until the window is glistening with entrails, and I am completely out of washer fluid. If those biting whores want to play survival of the fittest, then let them come. I have thumbs. I have a soul. I have clarity of mind. Let them come, and when they do - they will regret the miserable day that they squirmed their way from out of their rotten little shit-colored shells. If this is somehow God’s doing, then I am prepared to deal with his treacherous ass as well. Floods I can deal with, frogs I would welcome, but these hovering beasts are just too much. How can we be expected to live this way; with these savage creatures buzzing in our ears and biting at our exposed flesh? How is a person supposed to sleep at night knowing that just outside the window there are people getting their faces chewed off by these evil things? How many families will be torn apart by this vicious plague? How many pets must be lost? Nevermind the homeless people that are reduced to waiting for their fate in vile smelling gas station restrooms. Something must be done. There isn’t time for partisan blame games. This is a time of action, of reaction. Anybody with half a brain knows that sometimes the only good defense is a good offense. The very future of our species depends on it, possibly the future of the world.


“And out of the smoke locusts came down upon the earth and were given power like that of scorpions of the earth” - Revelations

Model Glue

Was that really me sitting at that little paint-splattered desk all those years ago with childish wonder and pride dancing in my unspoiled peepers? Were those my tiny fingers that patiently glued minuscule Mk 82 bombs, one by one, onto the ordinance racks hanging from beneath the wings of a plastic F-4 Phantom model? I remember holding that sexy little camouflaged jet in my hand and bubbling over with an uncontained patriotism reserved only for the very young. I remember the way I felt as I gazed into that toothy shark mouth painted under the nose of that aging hulk of a fighter. I remember my Dad explaining to me about how the pilots of these jets I loved so much were brave men that kept me safe. I would lie in my bed every night; staring up into the timeless battle that raged a few feet above my head - dreaming. A smoke colored F-14, wings fully swept, hunted a MiG-21 hanging in the corner. An F-105 streaked toward the window to finish off a heavily damaged MiG-17. Warthogs. Intruders. Floggers. Flankers. The poor communist bastards never even got a shot off - ever. Not in all those years. They were simply outmatched in my head and that’s where they remained throughout my entire Indiana childhood; until the fishing line that held them up rotted away and they came crashing down.

In those days the flag meant something to me. It represented an unflinching goodness. We said the pledge of allegiance every morning in school - and I said it loudly. I believed it. In those days we would fight over who had to use the plastic AK in backyard gun battles. Nobody wanted to be the guy with the shitty AK. Nobody wanted to be that guy. An AK represented inferior craftsmanship and substandard morals. It represented filth and cruelty. Back then we knew it in our tiny hearts that we were simply better - a higher quality human being. Red, white and blue was beautiful. We were beautiful.

That was a long time ago. A lifetime. Now I just feel really embarrassed. Sad. Tired. Less beautiful. Lightning streaks of white-hot anger shimmy through my veins everytime some bloated trailer-trash Chickenhawk tells me that I don’t have a right to feel the way that I do. My achy-breaky heart develops a painful arrhythmia every time it is suggested that I am misinformed, or that I just don’t understand the complexities of modern society. Fuck off, just because FOX News says that the economy is in good shape – DOESN’T NECESSARILY MAKE IT FUCKING SO! Contradictory information pours out of their filthy NeoCon mouths - yet still they believe. It would be too painful to accept the truth at this point. Beat the drum. Beat the drum. You can’t argue mindless logic. Beat the drum. Beat the drum. Drink that Kool-Aid!

The sad thing is that I’m almost ready for some of that Kool-Aid myself. I would welcome the savage burn on most nights. Put me out of my fucking misery! Christ! Take me the fuck away! I wont burn a flag, but only because the reek of it would cling to my skin for days. I won’t move to France either. I don’t have to. This country was created by pissed off people. The usual “if yous don’t likes it here then why don’t yous justa move to France er something” line doesn’t work on me either. If you dont question whats happening then the fat bitch will just continues to eat. The whole “You’re either for us, or against us” nonsense is infuriating as well. It is just about the most un-American garbage I have EVER heard. A silly little man with a funny mustache said dangerous things like that not so long ago, and right now, if I had to choose I would say that I am decidedly AGAINST us. I simmer through the fucking news.

Beat the drum. Drink the Kool-Aid.

We didn’t give the American spirit away. We didn’t watch helplessly as it died of natural causes. It was stolen from us, murdered and then stuffed into the trunk of a rusty 1989 Ford Escort like an ugly Georgetown hooker. I just wonder if its too late for it to be resurrected - or are we witness to the demise? Our soapbox is shrinking.

Wringing in the New Year

2008. Year of the rat. Year of the blind fucking eye. Year of the ignored prayer. Every frostbitten January I tell myself that this will surely be the one – that this is the year things will finally change. The worm will turn - as HST probably wouldnt have said. It has to right? And maybe it will, because how much longer can things continue on as they have? For how long will we be able to ignore the sticky reek of relentless suffering? When will enough finally be enough? I reach down deep and claw around at nothing with my pale bony fingers, trying to find some evidence of mankind’s common decency to grasp hold of. There is none, and there is nothing to be done about it. All that there is left to do is go out into the nightmarishly cold January air and brood over a quick and lonely cigarette. Something is wrong with us – or maybe it’s just me? Who knows? Anyway, Houston we have a problem…. And fuck you with your glass half full monkey-spunk! YOU JUST DON’T SEEM TO GET IT! It isn’t about the little boy with plum colored skin slowly starving to death in Uganda. It isn’t about a shameful war on terror and the infinite cycle of hateful violence. It isn’t about oil, and it isn’t about recycling our fucking beer bottles. It isn’t about any of those symptoms – it’s about the disease. It’s about bone-chilling contempt. It’s about the rabid howl for a crimson tide. It’s about sloth, greed, and our pretty little fancy lives. Its about BMWs and drive-through windows.

Trees, decades older than Dick Cheney’s second evil clone, are being hacked off at the base root by men making twelve cents an hour – and for what? Haven’t they heard that plastic is the new god? Haven’t they heard that longpork is the OTHER white meat? The shining seas have turned to pigsblood and not even the sex addicted sea-weasels will fuck in it anymore. The air is a poisonous fart-smelling fume, and we are all slowly dying in our ultra-sued recliners – the filthy rot is airborne, and each day I find myself more and more disgustingly callous to it all. I am infected. I don’t have the energy to wake up and care anymore. My heart has grown cold and I am afraid.

I wonder if Anakin Skywalker ever enjoyed this sort of painful self recognition? Did he ever wonder to himself when he had turned into such a dick? I’m just worn down I guess. Dog tired. Spent. The news is always bad and the beer still doesn’t work anymore. I am now officially declaring myself to be part of the problem. A lecherous fiend with nasty venom dancing on his forked tongue. So now what? Do I just embrace it all – this horrifying existence? Do I just hunker down like a greasy trailerpark heathen to a double Quarterpounder and an invigorating evening of American Idol? Maybe some Seinfeld reruns? Fuck! I wasn’t built for this. My system wasnt designed this way.

I want to live in the wholesome shadows of a Norman Rockwell painting. That seems unlikely though, its too late for that, so I find childlike happiness’s in the simplicity of beautiful random things. Things that I can intensely focus on - keeping me somewhat distracted from the looming darkness of the big picture that circles around me like a halfsmart republican fuck-ape. The bastards. You can only distract yourself for so long though. I know that – so what? You do what you can in these troubled times. I fear the day when it all becomes glaringly clear to me though. I know that it will most probably be too much for me to handle when that grim day finally arrives. But I am relatively young, and distraction still comes easily to me. And speaking of distractions - what was I talking about anyway? Oh yes – the new year. 2008. Year of the rat. Doom.

Thank god for those out there that actually have the energy to fight the good fight - even though they mostly seem either blind or just plain stupid to me. We all play our roles. So cheers to 2008 and new beginnings! Cheers to our fancy little lives! Cheers to new cars and chemical distraction. Cheers to all of that. God bless America! God bless the rat.

“Truth was, if you didn't chew her food, then her food chewed you.” ~ Chuck Palahniuk

Who Wants to be a Millionaire?

It’s been about a month or so since I last sat down to this filthy little collection of hedonistic tales. I wish I could say that I’ve missed it – but I haven’t. Not even the slightest bit. In fact I would rather go lay down in bed right now and set my alarm for sometime next spring than sit here and complain about my general sense of futility all night. It's too late for that now though. Fuck this! By the time I get out of school the clear winter sky is almost as dark as my mood, and every time I look down I get the sinking sensation that my dick is getting smaller. Not even the beer works right in this miserable town anymore. If I were in charge I would make this whole godforsaken swath of conservative mediocrity illegal. Rope the fucker off. Surround it with razor-edged hurricane wire and set it aflame. Sink it back into the poisoned ground it was so thoughtlessly born from! It isn’t just here though – oh no, it’s everywhere. The pestulance. The waking nightmare. The rot. We’re all slowly dying and there isn’t anyone left I can think of that is worthy of saving us anymore. There is no cure for whatever this is. Call it progression. Call it the end.

And speaking of people (other than the slobbering ghost of William Burroughs) who badly need cures? I just ran across a mildly troublesome story about a ridiculous little swine of a man that was arrested at a bank for politely trying to cash a heavily rumpled and slightly faded one-million dollar bill. A million dollar bill? Seriously? What kind of half-witted scumsucker would have the swollen audacity to try such a shameless grift? What kind of painfully tragic life event would lead to such a blatantly desperate act of wanton absurdity? Then to my glistening sense of horror I realized that I am this despicable man. Everyday I am this man – trying to find a place to cash my worthless million dollar bill. What a joke.

It really isn’t all that funny though, or maybe it is – but that’s besides the point. And what is the point of this hopelessly grim yarn? Maybe the point is that you can never really go home? Maybe the point is that life would probably seem a lot easier if you didn’t spend all three hours of daylight sifting through the burned out ruin of a thousand forgotten dreams - or trying to figure out how you got so damned old so fast? Or maybe the point is we all have a beat up million dollar (maybe two-million dollar?) bill deep down inside of us somewhere, we just can’t bring ourselves to accept the fact that it isn’t worth two squirts of warm alcoholic piss anymore. Maybe it never was. It was all just an ugly lie, and we believed it because there was once still the dying breathe of hope coursing through our naive little veins. Silly us.

So now what? Who do we have to jab in the face for the nauseating fact that our lettuce has microscopic curds of human shit in it? Who must we violently sodomize so that the filthy Chinese will stop painting our plastic toys with GHB? Iraq and the grimy politics of a senseless war used to enrage me - but no longer. I have no care for either side anymore. It bores me almost as much as NBA basketball. As far as I'm concerned we can fight "terrorists" in the blood-soaked desserts of Iraq for the rest of eternity, just as long as nobody asks me to thank anyone for "protecting my freedom". I'll defend myself well enough if I have to - thank you very much. And if a thousand rounds of well placed soft point 7.62s wont be enough then I'll just have to get some more I guess. Dont drag me into this disgusting bullshit; as if someones doing me some kind of glorious favor.

What was I talking about though? Did Jesus have wooden teeth? Will the next world devastating plague be recklessly engineered by thickly bespectacled nano-technologists? Ok, so my mind is jingle jangle. There is enough loose change rattling around up there to short out a Coinstar machine. But enough of all that! Maybe the underhanded politics of senseless blunders still enrage me more than I like to admit. Maybe indeed, but it changes nothing. We're all worthless millionaires. We're all just reasonably well-mannered beasts with a deeply ingrained lust for merciless violence and dramatic confrontation. If only I could find a gumchewing little doe-eyed honeypot bank teller dumb enough to cash a million dollar bill for me. The sugarplums dancing in my head would be SO much bigger. So much bigger. Sweeter.

The Sky is Falling

Death rests silently in the delicate shadows at the foot of my childhood bed with his legs politely crossed and a bored expression stretched across the sharp angles of his bony face – waiting. We nod at each other indifferently. I haven’t left the house in many months. The dust covered piles of musty smelling paperbacks littering the un-swept floor are nothing more than a haphazard monument to my self imposed isolation and wholesome sense of misery. My bedsores are so infected that not even the maggots are interested anymore. The restless wind that once whistled through the meat of my young veins has gone – never to return. The sweaty air around me reeks of decay and the ceiling fan that rattles above my bed sounds like a wounded Stuka dive-bomber. I don’t care. I’m not even sure what day it is.

I am reading about St. Louis in the early 20’s when the black phone with greasy fingerprints all over it starts to sing its nauseatingly shrill song. I have never been more enraged by a sound in my entire godforsaken life. I rip the dastardly phone line completely out of the flimsy wall and lay back down relieved; waiting for the pounding inside my head to subside. The wretched phone starts to ring again. I glance over at the empty jack at the base of the wall with unbelieving, crimson-stained eyes. The cord is lying limp on the floor, still completely unplugged, and I feel like screaming until my eyeballs fill with blood and explode. I bury my face into my thin hands. All I can hear is the terrible ringing.

Looking for some sense of comfort or normalcy I glance over at Death, who still sits stoically in the shadows at the foot of my bed. He shrugs his gaunt shoulders at me as if to say that he is as confused by the repulsiveness of the situation as I am. The phone continues to ring. My nerves feel like shattered glass; like splintered wood. I know that I shouldn’t, but the next thing I know the grease smudged phone is in my hand and I am talking to a strange husk of a man who seems to be on the verge of a hysterical collapse. His terrified voice wavers and twitches as he whispers into the phone that the world is coming to an end and that there isn’t much time left. “Time for what”, I demand caustically – but the nervous voice is gone. I slam the phone down, vowing to never answer it again.

I stagger over to the front door and out into the un-mowed grass of the yard. I look up into the heavens and my knees nearly give out. The treacherous sounding man on the phone had not been lying. The light boiling across the horizon is stained the color of my depression and vivid bolts of amethyst lighting slice through the sky like a young girl’s painful hesitation marks. Perhaps the end is near. Perhaps indeed. I go back inside and lock the door wishing that I had never left my bed.

Death is on the phone now, muttering nonsense to someone about the spiritual limitations of quantum physics. Finally he hangs up and I glare at him disgustedly. Quantum physics? Nobody understands that shit. He stares at me, periodically peering down to the hands spinning on the face of his bejeweled wrist-watch and then smiles; an awfull toothy looking thing. He is a heartless fiend and I have never enjoyed his morbid company. I wish he would leave, but knowing that he is not a creature that has to worry much about being late I realize that it is my time that I should be most concerned about. I climb into the cluttered nightmare that used to be a perfectly usable closet, to dig for an old box of pictures. I finally find it resting quietly near some rubber gloves, a talking ALF doll, and an autographed Jeff George rookie card. The box feels warm in my soft hands as I open it. I shuffle slowly through the old photos as if they might crumble and slip through my fingers – reliving old memories as if they had happened only yesterday. The sweet smell of girl fills my nose and I can almost feel her head pressed softly against my chest again; her hands clutching me. I see her flashing eyes. I see the smiling faces of old friends locked in a perpetual state of raw happiness; long before life opened up and took its first savage bite. I see my life the way I want to remember it. I see it the way it was supposed to be. I see my life the way it was before everything started to fall apart – before people walked away. My eyes feel wet and for the first time in months I wish that the phone would ring. Anyone. I see it sitting there with its cord ripped out of the wall and I close my eyes. So many mistakes. So little time. A tear slips out of my eye and slowly travels down the curve of my cheek. I fall asleep with a broken heart.

I wake to the piercing sound of my alarm clock. I sit up horrified. It takes a few full seconds for me to understand that everything is going to be ok and that it was all nothing more than a really bad dream. I rub my tired eyes. As the cobwebs start to fall away I realize many things. There are so many things I still need to do, and so many things I should have done long ago. I can see the morning light creeping through the cracks in my blinds and I can tell that it is going to be a beautiful day. I find myself digging through my closet for that old box of pictures.