lotus roadkill

"Find the drugs," Bobbi thought. "Find the drugs and stop looking." Mr. Laddyac was the school's geek enforcer, this cat with thick glasses and polyester pants hiked up tight around his dick. He was always a breath away from screaming. His job was to punish the damned. At the time, no one thought the task redundant.


At the moment, he was rifling through Bobbi's bag like a ferret. "Find the drugs and punish me. Expel me, whip me, do whatever you're going to do. Just find the drugs."

She started whispering it, as if to sneak it into his subconscious, just loud enough where he thought he heard her say something. Nah, just another girl prayin to God to help her out of a bad situation she shouldn'ta gotten her ass into anyways. In fact, it had come to that. In a last act of desperation, she did what everyone else does. Bobbi, our little misanthrope atheist turned her command to God, "Give him the drugs and make him stop there, just don't let him find the knife."

The drugs in question were negligible. A sandwhich bag too small for a sandwhich, with Pac Men running across it. A few bucks of shake and seeds. Then there was the pipe. It was her mother's. It was her mother's crack pipe. She took it every morning so her mom would have a better chance of getting to work. She took it because if she hid it, her mother would look for it, tear apart the house like some scared, caged squirrel.

The knife was hers. It had blood on it. The blood was also hers, maybe the seventh layer since she'd last cleaned the blade. She didn't like to clean it, she liked the blood. It was hers, and had dried the shade of an old plum. He found the blade, aghast, thinking it the product of a fight that had gone unnoticed on school grounds. A potential million-dollar lawsuit. The music teacher and maybe a couple aide's jobs. Questions about security. Reform. The local news. Skippy Jacobson. The chain was broken when he found her arm.

She was left handed like me. Under her wrist a criss had just been crossed. It hadn't yet scabbed and settled into a soft ivory. When it did, her arm would give the impression that it was laced up. Delicately. She was as delicate as a surgeon with the switchblade her boyfriend bought her.

She spilled. Tears and words and that was it. Bobbi, our little anarchist Bobbi, in black dresses and secretary specs, who wrote poetry that sounded like everyone else's but was a good degree better, was gone. We don't know if DCFS actually got her. She was 16 and had run away from tougher guards before. Someone picked open her locker and her things were treated like holy relics. Her boyfriend took her notebooks with him wherever he went. Just in case.

.

There was a pair of twins I grew up with at art camp; the only way you could tell them apart was the one who was born first had tiger stripes up and down her left arm. At 19 she got em filled in at a tattoo shack on the Indiana border, and her sister says it was the only time she'd ever seen her cry, which was a lie. Dramatic effect. There was a time when every other night she'd drain a bottle of vodka and cry it all out.

There was another girl who did her own tattoos the way she cut her own hair. They were good enough and she got bored of em quickly. She sat in the back of the bus, jabbing at her leg with a Bic slathered in India ink.She laughed at pain. At least she said so. Often. She laughed a lot and a lot of the time you couldn't tell why. She carved tic-tac-toe boards all up her arms and legs. She played wityh older boys, from the high school. Big dumb punks with nice clothes, thick jaws and blackheads around their lips. Some of the games were permanent, immortalized, initialed even; the wall of fame. The others were in marker. Sometimes she'd win and sometimes she'd lose. She was always exes, they were always squares.

I dated a girl who treated pain like the ascetics, like warrior priests and flagellists. She was Catholic and carved into her feet as she cried. Her father drank a lot and yelled a lot and some days she could hardly walk from the pain. I'd prop her arm over me and lead her around. It wasn't a cry for help. At least I hope not. I helped her keep her secret from everybody else. As far as I knew, it was meditation.

Me? I have lines. Simple lines across my legs, because my arms attracted too much attention. Each of the lines has a name, the name of some person I no longer talk to, of the persons who inspired them. An odd proportion of the names are Jewish, none of them are Black. This doesn't mean anything. It's just facts. Figures. There's a Ben, a Joshua, Robert, Krystal, Manuel, a Zack, a Dave...Laura. There are two long ones that run parallel, crossing the rest. The first shares my name, because in the end, it all comes from me. The second one I call God, because I really can't take it all on myself. I've thought of dating them, so that you can use them to age me like the rings of a tree. Either way, it seems morbid.

Meghan never cut herself. She had one white circle, a perfect circle between her breasts. Its name is Ibrahim, for the son she couldn't carry to term. She took one of her fathers cigars and held it against her chest as close as she could get to her heart. The blister stood an inch and a half from the skin, an inch and a half in diameter. She says it's the same size as her son's head. She covers it with the tips of her fingers during foreplay, and rarely smiles, flinches when a freak breeze flows through it, and her face wrinkles around the eyes.

I saw Bobbi once, reading a paper downtown. She had a shaved head and a checkered dress. It was white and red. She had a round face the color of a saddle. She was smoking. Winstons. Still. The wheels didn't linger long enough for my stare to reach her. She read undisturbed, and ate an apple. I thought it was her but maybe not, a ghost maybe, a spectre, her to the next power even. I still don't know, I never saw her again. At least I never thought I did.

There's one thing of hers I have. A harmonica. I was standing around when they were going through her locker. I was always standing around when shit was happening. I saw it fall onto the floor and I snatched it up. I sit on my roof and play it while I look into other people's apartments. I imagine that the moon is Bobbi, a very adorable and terribly ugly, awkward adolescent I had a crush on and never really spoke to. I play to make her leave and come back again. Sometimes she laughs, like the girl on the bus with the chelsea cut jabbing exes into her arm, sometimes she smiles and exhales another puff of smoke. I'm still learning. I don't get onto my roof much, and often I just hum at a window, only to find her out there already, waiting for me. I wonder which one of us will quit first.

Tomorrow, perhaps, the sky will be black. A million stars like diamond gnats, but no Bobbi, and I will wait at my window like Estragon and Charlie Brown, blowing into an instrument I've no clue how to play, hoping that the sound drives her further, to some place she won't have to run from when the sun is near.

boring diary entry/playlist

I'm working on two hours of sleep, and just starting to feel like a person. I'm back on the radio, or will be soon. It's been about 6 months since my last regular gig at a radio station and about a year since I worked at one that wasn't broadcasting illegally. I had to get there at 7 this morning, for my final training session. It was an alright set, nothing too weird. I fucked up a couple times and talked like I was being kept up with machines. Hopefully it'll be the last time I have to make a decision before 9 AM for months to come. Here's the setlist:



Oingo Boingo - Nasty Habits (Demo)
Petra Haden - I can see for miles
Ministry- the missing
the Deviants - Child of the Sky
MC Jack E Chocolate - Pavaroty (from the Rio Baile Funk comp)
Money Mark - Break Open My Shells (the only worthwhile track on a lackluster album from 2004)
Masaki Batoh - You Doo Right
the Ventures Walk Don't Run/Perifidia/Lullaby of the Leaves
(this would've been really cool if I realized there was a 2 minute Spanish intro before the medley. I accidentally ejected this disc before the Lullaby of the Leaves crescendo which sucks because that's my favorite song of theirs. Also check out the Asylum Street Spankers version with an awesome singing saw solo)
Aesop Rock - Number Nine
Essential Logic- Quality Crayon Wax

then I started my slow, destructo set:

Tom Waits - November (more singing saw!)
The Ex - Let's Panic Togethor
Enuma Elish - Imminent Doom

then I countered the destructo set with the super happy set:

Ian Dury and the Blockheads - wake up and make love to me
Puffy AmiYumi - Boogie Woogie No. 5
Dee Lite - What is Love?

that set may be kinda annoying at 8:15, but I promise that if it doesn't make you happy, then you have no soul. Either way, I eviscerate the super happy buzz with the "Oh shit I just wanna cut myself and cry but in a totally un-emo way" set:



Xiu Xiu - Bog People (the only good song on the new Xiu Xiu album)
Einsturzende Neubauten - Zom Tier Machen



Then I started waking up and put an end to the themed sets:



14 Yr Old Girls - THUG
Staurday Looks Good to Me - since you stole my tears

MC5 - Miss X (it was a big mistake to play this without screening it, because it was a Poison-worthy monster ballad. Too much heroin in Wayne Kramer when he recorded the "High Time" album)

and it was time to go.

I really am just now starting to feel like a human again. They cut my hours at work for the last two weeks; I negotiated them back up on account of it was finals. Because of this i don't know if I left fifteen minutes early or an hour, fortyfive late. I saw Linda hanging outside of Columbia. She told me it was her last night in the city before she'd move to Minnesota with her girlfriend. I dragged her to George's and we split a pitcher of Miller Lite. It was good to see her off. We hung out about every day for two years now without ever leaving Columbia's campus.

She told me good luck and I told her have fun and we set off north and south.

I'd snuck into a McDonald's to take a shit when Tania called to remind me about her work party.

It was this big gala affair, with bad djs and amazing food in small portions. I'd gone from Miller Lite to Lime Martinis and bar popcorn to wasabi caviar and shortbread. It was the first time I was at an event like that that I wasn't crashing. It was weird. When I got there some rent-a-spa woman was putting eye makeup on Nate. He was dressed like a bullfighter with a short jacket with shoulderpads. Tania rushed up to tell me they took her picture for Chicago Social. Ick, but. Cool, but. Ick. Nate and I came to a consensus that everyone Tania worked with was beautiful. It was surprising to see how some of these big deal corporate places can find so many competent attractive people or attractive competent people or. . maybe they're the same thing.

Tania, Nate and I and some of the other employees started a dance floor for the New Order and Duran Duran songs. It's been too long since I've danced in something that wasn't a pit or a bedroom. At least a month, I think.

The thing that really made me happy was a call from Ramon. I'd given up on him, on most of my old friends whom I can never actually hang out with. He told me he was having a few people over for drinks and board games. It ended up being everyone, all those people I used to see four or five times a week. My old roommates Ken and Jason. my old kinda roommates Jonesy, Kowboy, Chris, KC, Jhon. Karlye, Margaret, Devon, Lorelei, Corey, Zeke, Galley, Lorelei, Pretty Pete, Ryno, Eligio, Jeff, Jeffsperado, Mario, Alex that put his head through our wall. A few random 17-year old drunk girls thrown in for good measure.

I drank Dewars and apple juice and canned Rolling Rock, and had long involved discussions about Pantera.

Ryan, who I see less than most, told me that he was going to my school this year. He should. Actually, no one should, but it's better than where he's at now. He's an artist, a painter, an illustrator with a lot of talent but no direction. One day he'll be doing makeshift album covers and t-shirt designs, the next he'll be painting Anime characters, the next he'll be replicating Geiger art. He slimmed down. He used to be my size. I'm jealous. He told me he'd realized his dream. He wants to play baseball. He wants to be a pitcher. It could've been drunk talk, it could've been because I had a shirt with a picture of a pitcher on it (the gayest shirt I could find at the Brown Elephant) but he sounded genuine. He said a lot of people were giving him shit about it but fuck em. It was this really honest, cute, sad, amazing moment, and it's one of the reasons I feel human again.

And all I was going to do was keep reading my book

Currently listening:
Klaus Nomi
By Klaus Nomi

Saltlick, parts 1 and 2

You can teach any animal to be addicted to something. Especially apes, all mammals really, but the closer you get to 'man', the easier it is. There are zoos that have to supplement ‘Do not feed the animals' signs with ‘Do not throw the animals cigarettes’. Last year, I read in News of the Weird that some scientist was fired for smoking crack in a cage with some of his test chimps. I knew this girl with a chinchilla that got all wired off reefer. Whenever anybody started smokin it would move to that side of the cage. Those are the most fragile animals you'll ever see. They have to take dustbaths because if you drop them in water, their fucking lungs'll collapse. It would get up on its hind legs and put its little tiny claws over the wires, shaking like a hype. It was fucking adorable. Some animals, you have to teach to be addicted; others are just askin for it.

We were sitting at the bar drinking out of each other’s glasses. I had a Makers and Sprite; she was drinking well gin. My hand was in her lap and it was too lazy to find its way up and where it belongs, on my knee or a bowl of bar nuts. I read this thing in Rolling Stone where Johnny Depp said that 100 per cent of bar peanut bowls have traces of piss cause people don’t wash their hands. I guess Johnny Depp owns a bar or something. Still I’d rather be wrist deep in a dozen guys piss poppin peanuts in my mouth than keep my hand on her thigh. If we go home together tonight work tomorrow’ll suck. I'll be tired and stupid and smell like a toilet. If we have sex we’ll have to avoid each other all weekend and I’ll have no one to hang out with. Unfortunately, like I said, my hand is lazy.

She was wearing a white slip or whatever you call it that’s supposed to go under a dress. You could see little half moons of nipple rings through the fabric. I used to love when she wore those. Now I just focus on her legs. I can pinpoint exactly when last week she shaved them. Wednesday or Tuesday. That I can know this without having to think about it disgusts my hand back. How long has this been going on? When did it become un-fun?

It’s so settled. She not out there lookin to get laid; she just expects it, from me, and I’m not worth the effort.

The performer was late. He was described as the Korean Billy Idol. What a weird description, “If he’s not here after my next drink, we should go.”

She was slurring her speech and I was only a drink away. The order was already on my tongue. Switch to beer. If you switch to beer you could still save yourself. Tell her you don’t want her over at your place tonight. She’ll be pissed all weekend but you might end the cycle. She wrapped her arm around my abdomen and scratched my belly with all five fingers. It was a girlfriend move and instantly repulsed me, “I gotta go hit the head.”

She grabbed me close and kissed me, then pushed me towards the pisser, laughing. It was a small bathroom, covered in band stickers and shit-based philosophy. I locked the door.

I studied my face in the mirror. Under the fluorescents, there were dark rings forming under my eyes, the left more than the right like I’d been hit. They were my dad’s eyes, and his brother’s. I pulled out a cigarette and put it in my mouth. How is it highschoolers look cool with cigarettes and I can’t? There’s a group of twelve year old skateboard thugs that hang out on my stoop. They would be totally badass if they didn’t wear talk like idiots and wear cargo pants.

There was a cheer, drunk and raucous and it seemed almost ironic. Hideki had taken the stage. The Korean Billy Idol. He’d be shirtless by mid-set, dripping sweat with a perfect pompadour and a sharpened sneer. This motherfucker looked cool with a cigarette.

I held my eyes closed. Pissed on the tile and ashed in the stall. Red flared behind my eyes in a tribal headache. My face stared back like a drunk in the mirror. Plugged two quarters in the condom machine and pulled the lever; poured the Alka Seltzer packet into my drink. It changed from a watery amber to a foamy yellow. I choked it down and spun, wondering too late how well Alka Seltzer mixed with whiskey and Sprite. I plodded back to the room Hideki was singing in, feeling deranged, hot under the collar and completely disturbed. A red guitar squealed, unraveling in barbed wire and mudded twang. Hideki was a blur of blue leather hips and stomach muscles. I loosened my tie and tumbled to the door blinded by sweat. Outside was cold; the moon was large and seemed to cast a shadow over the street that enveloped all the halogen and kept me cool. I don’t know much of what happened for a little bit after that.

There were buildings wrapped in neon and signs wearing paint. Cars were honking at me, in a way that led me to believe I’d missed the sidewalk. I found a curb and stretched out. I decided it’d be better not to keep walking. My throat burned; bile specked my boots like robin’s eggs. I tried to gag but couldn’t purge any more. Perhaps it would be better not to move at all. I hooked my arm under my neck and laid down to sleep, where I dreamt of country clubs and polaroids and only one murder.

I sat up on the curb. I was at my bus stop so, naturally, I was waiting for a bus. My head was still pygmies and drums and my neck felt like it couldn’t support it but I still had my wallet so everything was alright. It was hot with a breeze coming from the lak but neitrher was too oppressive. The moon had gone to some other neighborhood for after-hours and everything was nice and quiet.

My phone was flashing. I had missed twenty calls and half a dozen text messages, dying off about twenty minutes ago. All but one were from her. I could see the light from the

It was later than I thought, maybe four. Four-thiry. A beetle scurried back and forth along the asphalt. It had no idea where it was going. I attempted to breathe smoke from an unlit short I found behind my ear.

You can teach any animal to be addicted to something, especially apes. There are zoos that have to supplement ‘do not feed the animals signs’ with ‘do not throw the animals cigarettes’. Last year, I read in News of the Weird that some scientist was fired for smoking crack in a cage with some of his test chimps.

There was this one time in highschool when a friend of mine–then a well known junkie and now a highly regarded dj–was flicking lit cigarettes at a brave squirrel who’d wandered too close. It was used to students throwing it food all day long. Naturally, he thought it was a snack, and picked up the butt with both hands, and put it to his mouth. The cherry smoldered anew and the squirrel threw it to the ground, coughing up a ball of smoke bigger than its head. From that day forward I started carrying a camera wherever I went, an abnormal rectangular lump in the pocket where I keep my cell phone now. Weird shit always seemed to happen when I was unarmed, taken aback and incapable of processing it, so I’d make myself available to collect weird shit all day and soon fancied myself a photographer. I told a photo teacher about the squirrel once and she mocked me like a sonuvabitch, kept hissing that it woulda been a stupid picture anyway, stupid fat cunt.

There was an old filter on the curb. Dozens of ants were swarming it. Hundreds. Chewing, almost covering the damn thing. It was pretty amusing and I was damn near jealous. Just next to them, five ants were dragging a match from a crack in th sidewalk. It was worn but not spent. Like me, I thought. I wondered if they knew what they were doing. I plucked up the match and shook em off. I held it tight against the heel of my boot like in the movies. I struck it and took in a mouth real smoke. Again I didn’t look cool, with puffy eyes and a worn face, flopsweat and vomit. It didn’t look cool but it tasted like fucking God. I could only get a couple drags in before the bus came. It always comes when you’re smoking. I threw what was left towards the ants, and got on the bus.

I fount the moon in the back window, hiding behind some condos and watched the sun overtake it as I rode on home.

new CTA friends

As I descended the Jackson/Western Blue Line stop this larger woman in green got off the bench and waked to the other side of the platform. I took her space. The guy sharing it laughed, "I guess I made her uncomfortable."

He looked like Dave Chapelle with sharper features and a face full of old pockmarks.

"I asked her if she was goin to Navy Pier, she said she was goin Downtown, I said 'You should take me with you,' and she smiled. 'See, you smiled. I like to see you smile. You take me with you and I keep makin you smile...and put you on your back.'

Some women like when you're straight-forward."

--

On the bus to a show, this older woman in a Dominicks apron was talking on a cell phone, holding her hand like there shoulda been a cigarette in it.

"They're WHAT?! Where's your father? He's WHAT?! Well just wait til I come home."

She snapped the phone shut, looked around and started talking to nobody in particular.

"My sweet, INNOCENT son is at home sick. I bought him some NyQuil before I went to work. He calls me, the poor thing, to tell me his brother and his friends are drinking his NyQuil to get drunk. Ny son's sick with a fever and they're getting high off his NyQuil. Well, not for long. I'm going home and kicking some mother-fucking ASS

wheels

People who know they're about to die do weird shit. Men with cancer will start hang gliding and skydiving, just throw themselves out of windows with their wallets. Businessmen, postal workers, students who've snapped and gone on these suicide shooting sprees are shown to have put elaborate care into their breakfasts that morning. Hell, look at how many people suddenly understand Jesus. Death does weird shit, man.

Terrorists. They sing. Mot all of them, not as a matter of protocol, but it happens a lot. They don't know that here where nobody really has ever survived a good suicide bombing, but in Israel, in Palestine, they know. I can't say personally, but it's probably the same thing in Ireland. They don't mention it on the news. I guess it humanizes them in a weird way.

No one knows why so many terrorists sing. Maybe it's calming; maybe they want to hear a song before they die, maybe it means nothing. Maybe the suicide is their statement, the homicide is their punctuation, and this is their soundtrack. I don't fucking know.

I was on a bus one day, wasn't going anywhere. Loose plans to buy a new pair of sunglasses downtown. There was a redhead at the other end of the bus. Sophisticated, with long arms and legs like an acrobat. There were other people on the bus but Fuck 'em, I like redheads. There was an old black guy, some really loud kids in uniforms fresh out of class, an older woman with a chihuahua's little football head sticking out of her purse. Maybe 15 other people. The redhead was wearing a sundress, only it looked more like a cocktail dress. It was black with red dots the size of nickels all over. Her nexk was long. Maybe she was taller than me. She had red shoes with fake bows for buckles. She rubbed her ankles together like a horny cricket and I tried not to stare. I'm a bit superstitious sometimes on the bus. I wonder if other people on the bus are psychics, reading my mind. I hoped she wasn't a psychic, but in my head I thought 'hello.'

We were about halfway downtown when this Arab guy got on. He wasn't a redhead but I noticed him. It was his beard, he had a full beard but it was clopped close. He had a threepiece suit that was cut real well. It was grey with grey pinstripes and made his arms look like trunks. Dynamic. You could tell that's the word he was going for, like he went to a tailor, some old Welsh cobbler with a tape measure and a pencil behind his ear and just whispered "Dynamic" and that's what he got.

I was looking at his beard. He looked like he could've been my Dad except for that. It'd been so long since I'd seen an Arab wearing a beard just for fashion. The men in my family don't. They're all either completely clean-shaven with boring haircuts, had long beards like old brushes that they wore like neckties. I've got a goatee, but I'm only 24. A student. I don't count.

He looked at me and looked away quickly, the way I looked at the redhead. I wondered if he wondered if I was psychic. His pupils were dilated or maybe he just had the biggest damn eyes I'd ever seen.

He laid his head down on his chest and closed them, opened his mouth and started singing, in Arabic. I started to laugh and the rest of the bus turned to look at me. Most of them were puzzled, she smiled.

I wasn't laughing because he was singing. As far as weirdos on the bus go, that woyuldn't have warranted a raised eyebrow. It was what he was singing. It was this pop song, a big hit in the mid 90s. A controversial one even, because it was so big and secular and American. It was one of those sweet group vocal efforts. Think early Boy II Men, that "Motown Philly" shit.

When I was fifteen and lived with my mom in Libya, it was always playing on this radio station broadcast out of Egypt. My mom would listen to it every night as she cooked dinner. The kitchen was 90 degrees with the windows open and the oven on. It was the only time I ever saw Mom sweat. As soon as she was done she'd open the fridge to cool the room, run upstairs and change into a new dress. She was born here and wore dresses when she was at home., and never shoes or wraps. She kept her hair in a long black ponytail and brushed it as often as she could. Dad wondered how we went through laundry so fast. He never understood the machinations Mom went through to make it all seem effortless. So she listened to the radio and I listened to the radio because there was nothing to do. For a whole summer Egyptian djs pretended to be British djs while they played this song for teenage girls and housewives cooking dinner. I hadn't thought of it in years and remembered the translation for the first time in years:

"Love it With me"

He sang it well. He sang all five vocal parts, and breezed through the harmonies in a low barritone. Me and the redhead exchanged glances. No one else gave a shit. His eyes wrinkled shut like old walnuts. His head rocked in a circle as he sang louder and louder. He was dripping sweat.

I moved up next to him and tapped him on the shoulder. "Hey Buddy. I haven't heard that song in years. Makes me feel homesick in a really weird way.

His eyelids rolled open and his eyes were as big as fists. He looked at me and I could swear I saw the beginning of a tear. He stood and I shrank under him, strange cause he wasn't that big of a guy. He shoved me to the floor and yelled something I couldn't understand. He pushed me hard as I was getting up, knocked me back with one hand. I swung an elbow and it his the side of his knee, I jumped and pushed him back down in his seat and backed up away with my palms out. The bus stopped hard and screeched to a stop. The driver, an older lady with overdone lipstick and a bad perm yelled that if she had to come back we were both going to jail.

"Fucking psycho," I spat. He kicked a briefcase under his chair to make way as I passed to the back of the bus. I never took my eyes off him. His seemed desperate.

The bus jerked to a start and everything went white.

I woke up in a hospital and everything was still white and humming. At first I wondered if I was in heaven like some sitcom boob who's been knocked on the head. Immediately I felt embarassed about the thought. Stupid. Angels don't have stitches. My whole body was numb but the stitches in my brow made their presence known when I tried to close a lid back over the swollen eye. I could tell it had been longer than a few hours. Long enough to bruise. Hemmorage time, even.

When the doctor told me I'd have to lose the leg (my left), I swore in Arabic.

m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-mun-dane

'when you put grease on paper you can see right through
and the same shit happens when you're watching greasy news
with pundits flappin one wing when to fly they're needin two
you have to wonder if what you're lookin at is lookin back at you'

i never rhyme

i wrote that a week short of a year ago
walking from sarah's house to my parent's
it was never finished

i was angry and insecure last summer
perhaps the best of my life
i don't write like i did
a year ago

more detatched
less wordplay
too many essays
(now)
maybe it's cause i got sick of poets
or moved to Ukie Village

things are starting to fall into place again
my eyes are bugged from two hours of sleep
i may very well pull off the school thing by yule
and i'll be a grownup for Hanuukah

I'm still the king of bullshit. I shat out three presentations today, the first was a powerpoint on how Satan is fucking Tits. In the second I was Arthur Barclay, a representative of Liberia arguing for the independence of six African colonies Germany had to capitulate when the lost the First World War. This was my role in the 1919 Pan African Conference. A girl who referred to us all as 'delegants' was W.E.B. Dubois. Finally, I shat my way through a sympathetic counterpoint as the King of Sweden at the concurrent Versailles Conference of 1919.

I noted that I was happy earlier
no wordplay though
and far from the best summer ever
i've yet to feel sand
but my phone is ringing again
and nearly 200 blogs later, i'm still at it

i'm glad breanna is back in town,
that nate and tania are relatively functional,
the pets aren't dead and i've gotten ahold of an air conditioner
god is afoot and my toes will find the fire yet

i live in filth!

1. So my Mama always told me, "Eric, don't buy cowboy boots off homeless dudes on the streets of New Orleans because they've already settled on someone's feet and will cut your ankle up while you try to break em in. Then dirt might get in your wound rendering you unable to walk without searing pain for days at a time."

When will I ever learn?.

2. Dear Democrats,
I know it's fun tearing Karl Rove apart and all. He's a werewolf and deserves far worse than he's getting, but he's smarter than you. The more you spend time on this, the farther people's minds will be from more damning presidential misdeeds, like the Beeker Street Memo. If you fuck this one up, you've probly already lost 2008.

3. Emergency Room doctors really hate it when you refer to your IV as a 'spike'

4. It's now socially acceptible to use the word douchebag in any situation

5. Tommy Lee Jones' talent has been wasted in just about every role he's taken since Natural Born Killers. I wonder what he'd look like having sex.

6. This is what I do for a living:

"Laurie's math geek friends live in the Blue Bunny dorms-home to a geek secret society. Most Blue Bunnies live in giant, 12-story apartment houses, and their homes are large square rooms bounded on four sides by corridors. Each room has a single door that opens along a corridor. On even-numbered floors, the doors open on the east corridor; on odd numbered floors, the doors open onto the north corridor. At each intersection of corridors, there is something like an elevator that can be ridden up or down. Half of the corridors have moving belts on the floor, and no self-respecting Blue Bunny will walk if he can ride one of these belts. These belts are so arranged that those on floor 1, 5, and 9 run to the east; those on floors 2, 6, and 10 run to the south; those on floors 3, 7, 11, run to the west; and those on floors 4, 8, and 12 run to the north. Describe how a Blue Bunny who lives on floor 10 can use these moving belts an elevators to visit a friend who lives in the room directly below his/her room."

No.

I didn't write this. It's my job to explain it. The secret is that, unlike any real apartments you've ever seen, these buildings have only one apartment per floor, with hallways running in every direction around it.

I drop bombs like London double decker buses

1. According to the news, security is being stepped up on Chicago's buses and trains. We've all been told to keep a hawk's eye on our fellow citizens. I put it to the test. Well, chance and circumstance did it for me. I was on my way to the Gentlemen Callers show for the opening night. I was wearing a tuxedo that I would put in the show and had most of my props in a duffel bag. Let's review this


a) On account of a deadly and tragic, four-tiered terrorist attack on London's public transportation system, our own transit authority vows to put on an exhaustive and overdone showy display of its dedication to our safety,
b) we have, waiting for the bus
c) one (1) dark, olive-skinned young Mediterranean boy
d) oddly well dressed, considering the piercings, tattoos, and the fact that he was taking a bus
e) with an oversize bag, and
f) oh yeah, I was brandishing a steel-replica Japanese sword
g) absent mindedly sheathing and unsheathing it

no one batted a fucking eye

2. when i told the story to this cat Ned after the show, he looked at me calmly with these giant eyes and told me, "One of my friends was on that train."

I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop and for him tobreak the stoneface and start laughing but he never did

Me: Really
Ned: Yeah, I'm actually a citizen of England
Me: Is she alright?
Ned: Yeah
Me: [pause]
Me: [pause]
Me: Well that's a mind-fuck ain't it?


3. So yesterday I went to the Subhumans show. It was the third time I've seen em and the old men can still thrash. Hell, they can hold their own against most the bands I've seen recently. Thing is, they kept talking about things the British knew that Americans didn't and the audience just kept fuckin cheering. It had a real feeling of being arm in arm with a bunch of sheep. Most iconic concerts have a bit of a feel like this but it stings a bit more when half the crowd consits of antiestablishment misfits. There are a number of reasons they could've been cheering. Maybe the large quotient of Anarchists felt that they were excluded from the term "Americans". Maybe it was because the man had a serious British slur and they couldn't understand what the shit hewas saying. Maybe they felt the statements were directed solely at the heartless government and mindless "others" supporting it but it all had a serious "You Americans" feel to it.



One of the things he was talking is how enlightened the Britons are, and how they won't go around taking each other's freedom...or allowing it from their government. I'd just like to mention that in less than a week four mosques have been bombed in England. We're all a lot alike when we go into survival mode. I understand the importance of an us-versus-them in a political call to arms, but we're all in this fight togethor.



4. I litter less after terrorist attacks as a courtesy to my fellow passengers on the bus



5. The teacher explained, through a thick and cracking accent, that the G8 is worried that Africa will become a nest for terrorists to lay eggs..."There a lot of Muslims in Africa."

And a girl in my class was surprised. "I bet they would work with em too." She was black and surprised that terrorists would work alongside black people.

Figures.

The only time we'll be equal is on a suicide mission.

letter to the editor

dear eric,

trim the motherfucking hair on your arm, you look like an ugly Jewish monkey



signed,

God



p.s. and lose some fucking weight

pederasty

So yesterday I was walking around at the Folk & Roots Fest in Lincoln Square, sweating to no end and marveling at all these beautiful folk-punks that were walking around, many of them teen guitar students from the Old Town School of Folk Music. It's a good fest but, one of the best parts of summer in Chicago but it's been better in the past. Previous years have had Patti Smith, Camper Van Beethoven, Richard Thompson, and Femi Kuti.

I was walking out and I noticed this girl, she couldn't have been older than twelve. She was this messy little punk rocker, with fading-dyed hair, a black skirt and combat boots. She had puffy cheeks and green eyes. On her shoulder was a critter, a little puppet she'd made. It was furry, with clawed bird legs, and lived on her shoulders as she walked through the Fest. And for a moment, I was eleven years old, with a bad moustache and slicked back hair, and I had a broken heart.

Conspiracy of Firmaments, pt. 4

The first time I ever saw America, and I mean capital-'A'-quotation-italics concept America was when I was seven. I was in the back of my Dad's truck. It was covered, so the whole interior was dark with that window shining like a movie screen. Everything was dark inside, and hotter than hell. It just baked like an oven. When we'd stop somewhere every two or three hours, my dad would come along the back and he was so big he blocked out most the sun and he'd pull me out and I'd be dripping, my shirt and my socks and my pants, just soaked to the bone and smelling like a dead cat. I think after a day I rode naked, scrambling to throw on one of Mom's shirts whenever the car started to slow to a stop. I forget how many states we were out of California when we stopped seeing palm trees, only about 1 or 2. I thought we were on the other side of the world; China, Europe, the Sahara. In the back of a truck, the whole sky opens up to you and everything seems to be getting just smaller and smaller. From that point on it was nothin but clouds and cars and dirt and sand and the ass ends of billboards and we left em all behind.

I was headin back West. I hadn't since I left. When I was youbg I developed a real chip on my shoulder about California People. When I was younger I used to hitchhike all over North America, but I always stopped at Cali. My brother says he's got a job for me out in Colorado. "No Aspen fucks" he says. He says the word "fucks" for me, to put us on the same level. Maybe I'm being too hard on him. Maybe he says it for him, his wife hasn't allowed "sailor talk" since their daughters were born. When we talked on the phone, he didn't change the words "sailor talk" when he told me.

I'm worried about Jack. He's asleep in the back, with the luggage. My truck doesn't have a cover. I hate those damn things. He doesn't mind the road like some kids do. He likes going two days without a shower, until I tell him to scrub up in some diner bathroom. I down know how the kid gets so filthy in the back of a truck with a buncha damn luggage. He's a quiet kid, real content. He doesn't need to talk. Sometimes for days at a time. He stores in all those little kid questions about life and death and the sky being blue and whatnot and blasts me fullbore when he knows I'm ready. Mostly, we let the radio talk. News, and sports, and strippers and New York Jews, and Baptist Heaven and Hell. They let almost anyone talk. Sometimes we'll find a station with Jamaicans or Haitians talking and leave it on. We don't understand a damn thing they're saying, we just listen to the rhythm in their voice. My son and his friends, his old friends, they liked to talk to each other the way they thought Jamaicans sounded. In Brooklyn, me and my friends would do the same thing, only Korean. We'd pull the skin around our eyes back and nod alot.

When you're older, on the back of a truck, and everything is getting smaller, and things seem almost familiar for a couple of seconds you second guess yourself alot. Why not just stay here? Why not just jump out? Some people do, just breeze into towns like a cowboy and find work. At least they could used to. Some find cities and just let themselves get swallowed up. Sometimes, I slow down for no reason, just to give Jack a chance. He won't do it. He's too young, he doesn't know anything, but I want him to know I'm doing it. When we leave Colorado I'll want him to know, and the place after that.

Sometimes 'll pick up hitchers. Most of em don't stick their thumbs out. New ones all do, the rest just stand on the side of the road like ghosts. One time a guy in a beret talked to me about guns for two days straight. One time a girl with dreadlocks put her hand down my jeans while Jack slept. Most of the time we just listen to AM radio. Sometimes, they shake. Take em outta their element, these tough motherfucker kids and they're like fish out a bowl, just shaking. Rarely, they talk to Jack. The women do, even the dreadlock girl once he woke up. One time there was this chick who said she was a stripper and a school teacher,this was before Jack and she just teased me for two days and wrapped my mind in riddles. I asked her how she could do both, she said she was smart and she was young; she wanted to teach children, to do something good but she couldn't pay off all her bills teaching. I asked her how she could be a nurterer half the day and a slut the other and she tells me she's no slut, she doesn't have sex. I say okay, so you're not a whore, that don't mean you're not a slut and she says, 'No, I don't have sex,' and I ask her how long it's been and she tells me two years and's all like "Why, you wanna dust off some cobwebs an I say yeah and start noddin like a stupid puppy like she wanted me to an she goes off, "Well two bad I don't fuck, right?"

She was fuckin brilliant. A midwest girl. I asked her why she was leaving town an she tells me some parents found out about her other job. Thing is, all she was doin was goin off to another town to do the same damn thing. Maybe, maybe she wasn't that brilliant afterall, but she would've really liked Jack. She didn't have any kids of her own, at least she didn't say she did.

It's good to have him with me. He keeps me stationary. The road's a lonely place. Sometimes it's good, it sharpens the mind. Here I am thinkin about some hitcher I picked up a decade ago when last week in the city I couldn't remember if I'd eaten a proper lunch or not. The loneliness sharpens your mind alright, but it's still fuckin lonely, and I'm still sittin here gettin half-hard over some stripper from ten years ago.

The coffee is stale. Some of it might be a week old. I never finish it. I just keep pourin more in when we hit a rest area or a gas station. They don't mind. I but a couple sandwiches, and a pack of smokes an some candy. Jack uses their bathrooms. Thi one kid, one of those new hitchers shakin like a fish with his thumb out tried to give me fifty dollars, some runaway! I gave him thirty back, probably some pusher who doesn't knw how much money's worth. He was nice enough though and Jack took to him right away, asked to sit up front an started yammering like nobody's business. He told him jokes and rhymes that i don't think I've ever heard before. Maybe he made em up himself in the back of his truck. He'll probly end up smarter'n me one day, maybe he'll pull off school and they won't hold him back even though he's missed so much. I wonder if he looks like my nieces. I wonder what my nieces look like. We pass a rest stop we don't need and keep on driving. In a few hours, we'll be in Colorado.

3 2 1 contacthigh

the children got sent out into the street with pushbrooms
to tire themselves out before bed
bombs were wrapped in bedsheets as extravagance reached into our pockets for a
patriotic paycheck or two
grey passed along the jagged ends of fences' twisted steel and bottle's fierce edges
we all mixed our eggs with gunpowder
saltpeter still hangs from the hairs in my nose
we rode beds
like gypsys
in vans like hippies and immigrants
into new times, places
where people still gave a shit about god and government and it was all on the up and up
line dancing wiggers alternated accents as the deejay shouted
'lets light up this sky so they can see us all the way in iraq'
where soldiers were queens and kings were dogs
everybody knows how big everbody else's cock is and everyone who gets back alive
gets scholarships and makeovers on local news

each block fought to outdo the other
in humboldt park
children shot roman candles at each other's parents and lawn chairs
daring trucks and trees to burn
spilling coors and tecate

in indiana
crackers shot bottle rockets through treehouse villages
at one and others with mouths full of dischord and sst

in joliet
there was dancing on the lawn in mercury flipflops
kid rock and the statue of liberty shook their fiists and
every war wound was a thing of pride and the more disfigured your daddy was
the better he put it to your mom

downtown the buzzards and homeless fought the city for scraps

so long as the number of turkey legs consumed
outweighs the number of soldierscivilians lost
we're in a good place

my mind isn't here, on the pen in this chair. at work. it wasn't on this weekend. i forewent parties for adventuretime with roommates and girlfriend. i was only half invited anyway. and bitter. Every few hours I was given a pretty light to play with and ball up in my eyes or a chorus of alarums and kabooms. i've never felt more neutral about america before. i'm tired, just like that cunt sandra day, and i want to take some time off it.

i would just like to take the time to thank the heroes who protested the G8 in scotland. The anarchists and absurdists, clowns and drummers who took a beating for the world. Thank you for fighting back. Thank you for fighting back with passive agressiveness. Thank you for fighting back with true aggressiveness. Thank you for a few romantic images on teevee in the middle of last night inbetween hollywood's declining ticketsales and shoes that fight cellulite

Conspiracy of Firmaments, pt. 3

one of these days
i'll just
disappear
like the fat black cannibal king of africa
the bushybearded Russian magician
pull up coat and tails and medicine bag
disappear

follow that yellow line in the middle of the road
down on forever
and it'll be
just like dying

wink at the streetsigns
head out to
brand new identity stores
that line the unassuming streets

i open drawers
next to motel beds
there is a bible and a gun

in the ceiling i will pierce every vein, ruin
saturdays and wedding beds

no one should get married
any place i can afford

laying down, looking up
darkness overtakes pinholes dotting the ceiling
an evergrowing maroon
spreadingswelling
raining drywall
dam bursts

...that commercial they used to run?
an old man is being chased
by a wave of cranberry juice?

that's me
in a bed with a coinslot
gummed and electrical taped
floating sheets in a pool of blood
a pipe called barrel
fogs an island of table
where an alarm clock
lays down facing up
next to gun and bible
and a telephone
that acts as an alarm clock

I wake up clean. Squaky even. I don't really know what rested feels like so I call it a reverse hangover. It's cute. I hope I meet someone today so I can tell them that. I start to write a letter on the hotel stationary, but I've got nothin to say. That's a lie. I just want to make em wait. I look at the phone. I look away. I flip through channels til checkout.

I'm wearing a dark blue denim jacket this girl Jackie left at my house. I admire the button. One had a skull, some guns, an airplane on fire. No one will recognize these bands once I leave the state, I realize. I put them in the safe in the closet by the door. Safekeeping. They'll be here whenever I come back and I can grab em. When there's no one else around to do it, I lie to myself to pass time. I pull the chain and close the door behind me.

There was this book I found at the library when I was eight. It was forty pages long and all about the thumb. The copyright was 1968 and there was no author. It talked abut how thumbs made men special. I ripped out the last page and folded it nicer than any piece of paper I've folded before or since. On one side it had a drawing of an X-ray of a thumb. The other side was blank. When I was eight I made a list of all the things I could do with my thumb on the blank side. Over the years I would add to it. Some were silly. The fist two were stick it in my nose and thumbwrestle. Some were profane. Gouge out a Viet Cong's eyes. Stick it up a girl Whenever I was sent to my room, I'd find the list and feel better because of how stupid it was.

Outside of the motel, the heat whipped at my face, even the trees along the highway were suffering. You're not supposed to make big life decisions on days like this but you always seem to. I pulled a pair of sunglasses from my pocket. They hung oddly on my face. I spit in the dirt and watched it dry up with sand. A beetle crawled over my foot, I shook it off. My mouth was dry and my reverse hangover hadn't prepared me for the sun in August. Which is when the sun hangs over your head by only a few feet. I patted myself down to make sure I had everything. I swung my bag over my shoulder with my toe in the dirt and headed for the highway.

My name is John Radcliffe. My right thumb is 2.9 inches long, with a scar under the nail from when I was three. It can do a great many things. Today, with any luck, it'll get me to California.