Tuesday, January 31, 2006

Hiatus for a few weeks

in lieu of midterms (4 in the next 2 weeks), week 4 & 5 & 6 will all be one
Premise- God looking down, how does he explain, use people of paper type format, omniscient with aware characters, use summary of stories from xanga blog

Thursday, January 19, 2006

Week 3: Your Face and Plane Drifting to the Bottom

here is the companion ie inspiration from writing, conversations with this girl from the bar



in your eyes,
there is sadness,
a red light,
blinking and blinking
but no cars are stopping
in the midnight fog

so there are horns
there are sirens
there are loud gasps
as the waves recede
like the mourning of monks
that cannot chant as loud as
your heart
cannot mask its murmur
from what it is whispering in dubs
trying to swim through the subs

like sluggish snails creeping past you

while you
close your eyes
and drift off to sleep
the medication
is taking hold
the page of your latest novel
is folded over
your widow's peak
is wrinkled over

the pink cardigan is on its proper hanger
your green shoes
empty as the entropy
scattering your dialouge
while brushing your teeth
reflecting back
to your actions and
words you will say
on judgement day

not too soon ahead

as the airliner
plummets into
the middle of the british isles
drifting like castaways to the
bottom of the sea bed
your head pressed against the glass
your eyes open
gazing
trying
to feel
the air inside the bubbles
as you pop

the pressure too great
your body too fragile
lying in your seat

the cushion under your arms
the oxygen mask around your face
the seat belt attached

how fast you flew
as you knew

your nastiness was leaking out your ear
pleading,

"come home "

Monday, January 16, 2006

Week 3: Conversations about the girl from the bar

So let's talk about what happend the other night?

What? The girl?

Yea. What happend?

Man...it was pretty fucked up.

What happend then? What did this girl do to you? I mean, you briefly discussed it in your last phone call.

So I am going to the bar with my friend. I borrow Leon's Aviators, had to cover up that red in my eyes. Mad faded. I cover it up with these sunglasses, mind my own business, take a seat at the bar, and order a round. Somebody taps on my shoulder. 'Yea,' I said,
this random girl says, 'Hey is there sunshine in here?'
'I said, 'Naa.'
'so this fucking bitch says, "I wanted to tell you that you don't have the style to wear those, you don't have the look, and you should really take them off."
'In disbelieve I look over at Dutch. I turn to her, 'So are you trying to be the nastiest person of the year?'
'I'm not from here, so I don't care.'
I pause, pulling back for the punchline,
'Oh yea, no wonder you're such an asshole, where you from?'
'Portugal.'
'Oh, remember in 2002, US, fucking dominated your asses! Look at that shirt, pink, look at those shoes, green? Are you Kermit and Miss Piggy's fucked up bratty kid? Exactly, now get the fuck out of here.'
Bitch turns and leaves.

Wow! Haha!

Exactly.

So what did you think about it?

Honestly, I sat there a second, totally processing what had happend, and it made me kind of shudder. So she like takes the time to WALK over and try to ruin my evening, to break, the only thing I have, my sense of self? Because, no matter what the hell anybody else says, style...art...that's fashion, it's a reflection of who you are! That's not the worst of it, because I actually felt like David Brent. Ya know, like how he would act cool to Garreth, try and show he had style, posing for those stupid pictures with the leopard, ya know? Was I the fool?

How could you be. That girl came over and said something very mean spirited. It takes a cold, unhappy woman to walk up blindly, with no idea who that person is, and simply treat him like that!

Right. It was saying, this is what PREJUDICE is about. She didn't know anything about me, those glasses fit into who i am, a complete and utter asshole (laughs). But an asshole most people can tolerate and even have a good time knowing. That's who I am, but she took me for someone with a weak sense of spirit. That wasn't the case. I burned a hole in her. She was like that fucking movie, Army of Darkness, with the blood squirting out in buckets from her chest, that's what she looks like on the inside. And that accent?! Oh you europeons have all the style, all the flair . . . bullshit. Listen, I know many europeons would hate and peg me as the obnoxious American.

Why is that? Look at Ali G? He's fairly obnoxious.

Yea, but he's a simpleton. He talks like he is a hip hop star, which goes beyond race by the way, but is still endearing, sincere, harmless. He asks questions he believes in. Fuck, look at our president! He's simple.

So why is this the topic in therapy today? What, in essence, did this experience hit upon? How did it make you feel?

Well, it spoke to something very insidious about human kind. What could ever persuade a human to take the time to walk over and say something down right nasty and disrespectful?

Maybe she wanted to sleep with you.

Naa, this bitch looked like the ugly chick in the Pink girls. Ya know, with the long face, pale skin, some ugly bitch who became a vampire, but the vampire was fucked up on meth when he bit into her.

Ok, ok, ok! Here's the line and this is you going completely over it.

Is that ok for a shrink to say?

Shouldn't be damaging.

Not as damaged as that girl. Man, what makes someone do that? If people can do that, then this explains the current state of things. The world, it pains me to watch how fucked up we are to one another. But there are times, I feel like being bad like that. I was reading about Psychopathic Personality disorder today in Vonnegut's latest book. He basically relates how most leaders are well to do folk but do the bad things they do because they ultimately are entirely indifferent, with no feelings or remorse. This priest in high school once told the school at one of our Friday Prayer services that he'd rather have someone hate than be indifferent, because we can change hate into love. But indifference, there is nothing to sway, they simply do not care. In his mind, that was something gruesome. He's right. That's who these people are, and I even feel like that somedays. Walking around with all this pent up, stress, aggression, for no reason? I feel like i love and hate and they're both in a constant state of flux.

What makes you feel that way?

I don't know.

Maybe it's in your dreams.

Nope, don't dream.

Really?

I used to but don't recall any particularly significant as of late.

So this girl said some disruptive things. How do you feel after this encounter?

Well, I felt unattractive, like there's this self cross examination going on, where I am thinking, do I dress ok? Is there something wrong with me? Will any girls want to talk to me?

Why do you ask yourself these questions, you always seem concerned with these issues but have never shed any light on them.

I always have to be sure I am neat, tidy, presentable. It's this thing, my dad said some shit to me as a kid about my weight and body, it bothers me, drives me to be presentable at all times, or fear being imperfect. It's not any other than that, imperfection as dress, looks, have something to do with the idea of perfection.

Do you really think so?

Well, it's part of your overall character. See, my looks alone, the way I looked, generated this lust for her being nasty, disgusting to a fellow human being. Hell, I could have been American and she was upset about the war so she had to vent, I don't know. She was fucking ugly anyway, like I cared.

That seems hypocritcal to say.

No, I was kidding.

So how does this manifest in your life, these feelings of inadequacy?

Reflections.

Reflections?

Yea, I check out in any reflection how I look, to be sure all is in its right place, even when I know I a look okay. I have these internal conversations telling myself stupid, overly macho things, to build confidence, to psych myself up when working with people or whatever.


So is this internal dialouge your voice or your father's? In essence, does this say something about what drives you?

Exactly, my pops picked on me a bunch, nit-picked my appearence, everything. He yelled alot. I shy away from conflict and also try to be sure appearences are well kept. Maybe that is who is the voice in my head, my dad screaming at me after spilling my fucking milk.

So when this woman said these things about your appearence, your style, it was like your father standing over you. It was the full figure, the shadow smile rising through the moonlight, cascading shadows of fear billowing through your esophagus and upsetting your stomach; his large grin and stern eyes taking your spirit and burning it to ash, crumbling snow from the top of the highest peak of the largest mountain, a Tower of Babylon calling for your patronage. You have given into this many times, haven't you? It has you by your fucking throat and you are a replitian swimming in sin and decadence. Change your ways or be destroyed.

F? F? Wake up, are you there?

What, hmm?

So you were talking about this girl you met?

Naa, it was nothing. She came up to me and took off my sunglasses and ran off with them. People stealing! Why sunglasses, why not food? She looked destitute.

It seemed more than that from your message. It seemed like there was a big conflict.

Naa, it was nothing.

Okay, what did you want to talk about this week? I was thinking of writing you a prescription today, we had talked about it before. How do you feel about medication?

Hmm, actually, I gotta go, I forgot about this meeting I have. Sorry, I'll see you next week!

What? Huh? Ok.

Week 2: The Hominids We All Want To Be

you want one
in every home
in every car
in every mobile phone
is the nuclear zone
alone in this
blue, expanding mass
devouring
the man
the hominid man
out front
cutting the lawn now
fast forward
cutting his credit cards
selling his
B
M
W

this is the life
this has always been our lives
it will always be
a stream
a silence
with no light
& no numbers to dial

there will be a lust
there will be a fire

cooled by the icy eyes
of the man lying
still
in the river of Isis
down to its pebbles

one with the fishes
with his
body becoming
tiny patches of color
seperating out
forming pixelated pictures
becoming incorporated
becoming fluent in the
technical language
of genomic technology
becoming streamlined
becoming the heir to the throne
the next
big
time
C
E
O

is nothing more than
men hunting in packs
soldiers burning down plantation mansions
no longer a fashion to hold
and keep
the deep
long nights
filled with drums
the chirps of crickets
the thickets
all blown over
and
severed

Saturday, January 14, 2006

Week 2: The Hominids are All Asleep

In streams
you seem to move
ever so slowly
a hand swimming in
the river bed
the head relieved of exhaustation
in
one
fail
swoop
loops
into your membranes
and lies there
the fungus
the virus
grows
and grins
and sins that
you will not
forget
ever
because you cannot
predict

you
can only remember

and lest
you wish to
become
the mouse
now preyed upon
you will not
forget
the senses punctured

ever there
glimmering and glittering
to gather and horde
millions of eyes
looking on
shifting in
the quiet of
this dead air space,
musty and filled
with the mist of gun powder

showered with rose petals
she will still not give in
and so the membership
will long
they will sing
they will design
they will dance
and draw
to worship her countenance
in the reflections
staring back right from the
stream
serene
the sun light
no longer a memory
the cool water no longer
a burial ground
an explosive rush

of putting this
shoving this
of believing this
will go right through
your chest
and shatter your
heart

it falls to the ground
the act complete
her face hidden
by the hands
now stuck

touching

fixed to

hers

Friday, January 13, 2006

Week 2: The Hominids are the next big thing (prose)

In the enclosed space, there are no lights, only the soft sound of a river rolling over rocks; as it had for millions of years, a tide of water moving over the forgotten skulls of hominids who, like salmon, performed sexual reproduction at death. It would seem that as the male released himself into the female hominid, the female would pierce his breast plate with a whittled away stone sharp blade. She would sit and watch as her once virile husband slowly extinguished before her and fell lifeless into the stream. Imagine hundreds of couples coming to one spot only to dispose of their true loves, a mass extinction of middle aged, midlife-crisis ridden men. The river would run a fiery red teasing out the mystery to the color of Arizona river beds.


So as these male hominids perished from the hand of their loving spouses, their blood would mix with left over semen and sweat and move over their still bodies. All the village would stand upon the hill over looking the river moving between barren green hills, dreaming of a sunset not as crimson as the massacre below them. After 3 weeks, the males would be retrieved, wrapped in animal furs, and left to become one with the environment. With the moon still watching, the females would pretend to sleep, their tears finally allowed to come forth, the pain of the situation rumbling under their pillows.

Even with such a massive display of murder, these ancient peoples did not deny the necessity of their nature. As we should know, nature is unflinching, indifferent to its inhabitants. It waves its sword and hacks apart limbs with no remorse, its sole protector from justice being the concepts of time and memory loss. The rituals of various cultures have long passed from the minds of its new residents on Earth. However, the cruelty of culture lives on in the world's drive to purchase fire arms, watch violence on telly, and preoccupy themselves with the memory of the past. A past so ingrained in all that we are, we cannot shake its glare. It lives and breathes throughout every tissue, cell, and atom.

Our protagonist now stands naked before the mirror, his muscles each highlighted by the shifting candle flame. It is like a torch leading him down tunnels into another time, another forest, another night with only the sense of smell to lead the way. In this peaceful moment, the walls surrounding him seem riddled with wildlife bent on chewing the tendons from his brittle bones. He only remembers the last few days in his room with songs of new wave tragedy bursting from the speakers, leaving him staggered at the development of the cold feeling circulating around his chest. To capture the indifference and disconnect of the modern man is to dwell inside a closed off space with the sounds of impurity fervently spiraling into the soul and pulling out its brainstem.

He remembers nothing of his life. He does not remember painting the walls neon or the way he boarded up in his bedroom. He does not remember the drawings, the hours of sex with some random woman only a few moons ago, or remember her grinding her nails into his back, as he released, wanting only to die. Each drug, each drink, each fuck was only a means of forgetting while remembering how these meaningless embraces once meant him lying in an ancient river bed with a dagger in his chest. In the complete darkness of his steamed over bathroom, he can stare and recall how it would be to lay with his heart exposed to a running river of plasma, its red cells healing his wounds, bringing him peace.

If his world was to end through violence, then this would be the only means. A nice round of sex with the music bursting through the floors, the wallpaper peeling, closing one's eyes to a silence never conceived of in biblical scripture coalescing into a symphony of slurps and gurgles. The quiet surrounding him as he dies is not glorious or heavenly, rather it is altogether haunting. It is a ghost returning to the southern plantations and waiting for the dew to settle upon Bermuda grasses. Grasses once disturbed by rifles firing over its amber waves, popping through the chests of southern gentlemen. In a time, large blue masses were storming through towns, leaving Yankee dollars on the eyelids of their confederate enemies and burning their Orange groves and mansions. He remembers his forefathers, he remembers Your mercy, he remembers their sins, and asks forgiveness.

Through his nostrils, he smells the violent stench of iron, the steam from the water wetting his lips. The lights above him flicker, the pulse of the drum in sync with his cold, charcoal colored heart. As its fluorescence reflects off the mirror, the hominid of the past flickers with the image of our protagonist. It is all too real, his brow moving up and down. He tries to remember something, anything, but he will not. He will not recall the days soon to pass with him lying against the wall snorting cocaine and masturbating for hours. He will not remiss and know that only a few days ago he had put together a bathroom atmosphere mp3 track, a song sent to him by a friend of a sister's best-friend's friend. He had it on repeat.

See, he will not remember and neither will you. You will not know the outcome, you will not know why our friend now sleeps with southern belles in vast plantations every night, or why he is standing before a mirror thinking of hominids and being killed while having sexual intercourse. I won't fucking tell you, because it is up to you. Not to figure it all out, but to remember that ultimately we do not know why we are here or what will happen as we fade off into a sea of darkness. Why it is our friends and family must die all in the name of nature, or why we come up with these Gods and these rules and these regulations, when ultimately we know nothing!

We are nothing but memories and resolutions and compromises and loves and sexes and powers and monies exchanged. We are only... only memory. In stones, in plaques, on rusty statuettes, we have our souls all waiting for the return of Atom bombs and Cold Wars. We want only to leave these silence filled planes in the afterlife, and finally destroy ourselves. You see, as the planet extinguishes, we are free to redeem ourselves and the prophesy is complete. But you will never know because we can only remember. We cannot tell the future, we can only move back to the past.

The shower stall shatters. The toilet is on its side and the bathroom is flooding. He stands naked staring into the mirror, the sounds of a pounding drum continuously looping over and over and over. His face is red, his eyes are blue, and his heart is black.

This is a man, this is a hominid, this is a middle aged man.

He stares into the mirror. The notes held long, the beeps increasing bpm, and the falsetto calling to him from another world, another place, and he cannot shake it. He cannot remember why he is now standing here, he does not know who this is standing in the shower next to him. Everything is now dark.

For many days, the sun will rise and fall. For many hours, the sounds of speculation will simmer in his uncomfortable space. All this time will pass, but our protagonist will still wait.

Saturday, January 07, 2006

Introductions are in Order

We are two brothers, who although are different in many ways, seem to agree upon art as one of the master achievements of mankind. But isn't its expression ultimately what distinguishes humans from other species, yes. We have been writing music together for a long while now, recently have done some works that resemble industrial, spoken word, hip hop. I have been writing for quite some time, many collections of poems later, I decided I needed a challenge, more focus and structure in what I am doing. I wrote a short story or vignette recently that interested me and found a suitable title. I decided that for this year, I will write a short vignette then write a poem inspired by the happenings within the story. So these will be paired up, everything is fair game, all characters and events mirror images of what I am feeling and thinking at the time.

My brother is a very talented musician, whose instrumental work is incredible, I can listen to it many times and hear little details, I appreciate his work. If it sucked, believe me, I wouldn't listen nor would i care. Anyway, he and I decided that I will send these literary works and he will write an accompanying score if you will with samples, guitars, bass, synths, whatever. He will also design the artwork. The idea is that at the end we will have made a literary work and a musical work that are both consistent and relevant to one another, we have made an entire art work by inspiration and challenge. We hope to have books with a CD made, hell submit it for publishing if people dig it, I don't know, nor do I really care. This is art for art's sake. He and I both have our very different career paths. This is a way to challenge ourselves and challenge any friends or random readers out there. Feel free to be critical or whatever, I don't care.

We are Geppetto Gestapo
The album/book is The Vignette Marionettes

Week 1: The Wolf Has Emerged

So these two gentlemen approach. I'm in the laundromat reading the lastest edition of The New Yorker, a great piece on emergent property and the intelligence of organized ant colonies, my scuffed up, obsidian Pumas left to swim in a puddle of detergent and dryer sheets. These cats look real nice, seem real nice, even though they spend hours peddling around trying to convert folks just as the past religious, mass conversion by Catholics and their quest for world, theological domination. Martin Luther nailed a revolution to a door, but I burned it to a pile of smoldering ashes.

Must be doing their missionary work, riding those silly bikes with the cold, black & white, name tags, carefully inscribed by some manufacturer in the midwest, where bigomy isn't allowed but everyone sleeps with everyone else's own sister or first cousin. .

"Good evening, sir."

Insert song: Silence, something bout silence makes me sick. rage man, rage. I stay silent, the last fragments of thought about to roll onto the next page. All I want to do is finish the rest of the paragraph on the other page, then I'll deal with these clowns.

"Have you heard of the Church of Latter-Day Saints?"

Fucking A, I'm almost done with this page, this is wrapping up the research on how this may be applicable to modern day business models, how to gather the most intelligent idea from groups, rather than the single most intelligent person working in the open window office in the next room over.

So I finally acknowledge their presence. Looking up, it seems they are as glazed over as the donuts at the local 7-eleven. You know it, the Krispy Kreme's left in the wintery freeze of Atkins, no longer touched, or eaten for that matter. These glossy donuts now relegated to melt for days in a make-shift oven while these guys sweat it out over this incredibly, out of the ordinary hot San Francisco January.

I say, "Do I look like a sheep?"

And they say, "Excuse me, sir."

And I say, "Do I look like a sheep, man?

They say, "Well no, you look like a man we'd like to talk to about the Book of Morman."

And I say quite frankly, "For a second there, I thought you had me for a sheep. 'Cause if you didn't know it, I'm a fucking wolf. I eat people like you whole, like a snake . . . slow and with precision. You know me as I'm the same good ole boy prophet you idolize, just like a Pope, man. You spend hours and hours trying to figure out who I am, how wonderful I can be, because that's what you want to know: How to think up here, in your head," I motion to my head and its slicked back hair, the rims of my glasses glossed over by hair product. "See there's more to God than praying or faith or any of that other voodoo you pass onto the masses. See, it is to know God not through some story, to know God not through the rigor of rules and regulations laid down thousands of years ago by a culture who solely needed these rules for self preservation, for cultural preservation, but to know God by unraveling the mystery before you. Man, you follow the bouncing ball across the street bc you are told to, but I realize there may be traffic, I stop. Self preservation, and I see the trap. But you two? You're left to blink aimlessly as you drift into a coma and sleep, in a daze trying SO hard to learn what I want to know . . . but you claim to know:

Is there a heaven? And if so, will I go there? And if I do, will I learn how absurd it is that you think there's a place set aside there for you, like the fucking Beverly Hills Motel. As if God tagged you, as if in a mountain of souls beckoning through the tunnel of light each second, he knows who followed Jesus, Buddha, etc. You're ridiculous, man. Now let me do my laundy. And next time, identify your prey before you realize that he is the predator."

They don't say a word. And I finish my paragraph and my dryer buzzes and the frigid wind blows their rejected hair as they step out, step out of the door and into a world that could be a glimpse of what heaven is like. A stage where the players, in robotic fashion, unravel a world that created them.

And I chuckle to myself, while the old lady next to me pushes off the bench and quickly vacates the premises, her old puss soured by my obvious, irrational response to the fine, well dressed gentlemen. As she struggles to carry her laundry, I carefully set my magazine down, avoiding any opportunity for its pages to be wrinkled, and whisk my way outside as her basket thumps to the ground.

"Let me help you."

Just like that, I help her to her car and lift it into the trunk. She looks destitute, and I slip a hundred into the basket. She is gracious and not as frightened.

I look up to the sky, "Are we even?"

She closes her door. There's this strange muttering and I turn thinking its the vagrant from half and hour ago, but it's her boat size, white Lincoln starting and then reversing like a stuttering 1st grader.

I watch her retreat and I mosey on inside the Coin-O-Matic laundromat to continue reading my wonderful article on emergence.


Geppetto sighs, interesting, finds the following etched into his bench:

He reveals the stage
set up on the pages
of his 1967 almanac
it says here,

"the attack of the killer seas are
crumbling the sea shores into
pieces of shark teeth and sea shells
all there for the taking like a
spiraling parachute into a blinding sunspot."

the only thought
going through his mind
is:

I got to get there somehow
someway
or no how

to meet an end who
will show me a means
to this purpose which
is not to propose
but to impose one's will
while the open faced palms
of the hands of God
on his right hand, there extended,
is the entrance to the valley of death
a sand storm, no longer born from
the movement of the heavens
but from the movement of the tumultuous
truculant bee hive mind,
a whirling windmill of honey &
milk mixed into the drooling blood
of the lamb with its eyes in the corner
speculating
about the afterlife
now found in his bleached socks
and mashed corn meal
reveals a brooding light
as bright as the instant
he was born, a tiny, vulnerable babe
whose whole life was revealed
before him

and, as with all newborns,

he wept . . .
he screamed . . .
he suckled.