The tomb opens, and you crawl in.
Grit and salt fill your mouth.
A piglet rubs bacon grease
Into your open wounds.
With a smile.
Flames peel the skin from your marshmallow brain.
Logs crackle their drum solo.
Animals you’ll never understand
Inundate your sinuses with smoke.
This pyre will burn until the stars fall from orbit
And splash into the puddle beneath all
We can see and feel.
Tambourine torture mice sings inevitable with gongles blaring tarp sonnets heat recognized in heads alone and vacated since nineteen eight force cream wrap dong situation normal hurt locker ballad of empty fishes seek tune wrest king tasmanian Taliban sorcery afraid of grime and witches scathing reviews from Siskel and Ebert righting wrongs and bringing the fish from the stand Sloane doom love loss crate break stab heliotrope standing unafraid by storm eagle’d watercall send hello> hello? Sunn to open a black crab wash down the housefly you swallowed my load you pinball jibmo Soviet wash frame stayed by the hand to a doornail flopping on Christ mast time for toys to bury yardage scant scalding and nude facing factories you thought had dissolved fortune mushroom a tadpole’s tomb lick segue into invalid diet crazy sheep tracking Tod and Copper for snow bear mountain science terrarium globe cloven hoof wrap eacharaound to their own voice tickly the eight ball crescendo is no more a halibut that sick wiggling tape worm of ass fire trade smith lost in aisle. You know the gainful scorpion don’t you? You can feel his ashes trick to sleeping eye into leaping the sharp facts for trablems the indelible. Gosh oh golly the temporal koans the Yodenberry picture pizze knew and hard-blated for a summer sausage in October.
Right said Fred the inimitable voice of tombs and tangerines colliding with brick windows snuffbox insanity militant generations horrified under glass remnant storage unit deserving of something more than just the tree lily pad life of a frog toading his way through a giant horse cock dreaming semen into Paris Hilton’s snatch toasting bread baked waffle sausage toast in heat a-la-mode cram school wish field storing taco salad beneath the tree for later triggering heart attack comb neck weight conduits racked held open like a scared turtle igloo turnbuckle Artemis scene hope in tanned hoax armchair assuming trapped welly welly well like tortoise evil nitwit Uzbekistan stand by me tape open ho dang watch torrent sandwich Einstein razor comb wafting on breezes ticklish baby doll home collapsed fire stone nailed cross trappings of a gangland massacre staged health rainbow willow tree three five tanged in sutures glowing like the heart of a black rainbow torn from the morning an episode of scarlet night standing alone in trap face waist tackled and bait the fish tree for Texas toast having a good time down in Florida like a piece of braille sewage grinder hoagie mexico city old and grating against suns wafting dickless pieces of shit down the drain forever a swirling mass of black hair and sink runoff my clit aches for a spoon pizza to copulate with the gynecological rain vaccine stamping nerd torches far away from tick dolly rent a center have a new way olden times creating new blood cabbage tamed by lion’s mouth torque motor heat way stay just a little bit longer Nana and Grampy don’t go away and leave me a crying fool on the stoop with the civil war soldiers 1999 iceberg way Berkshire hamlet standing on its own two foot soldier wealth crapped out like vacuum salt pickle juice orange and blue toadstool backed like pasta tanks trashing basketball nuances lightning in a bottle opened like the sealed abyss into which the crabs throw the heat when tick center caped crusader hurts himself on a nail gallons of black toe cheese fencing lessons for little Johnny to stub bus noses the morning watch me die.
Soon, the marshlands will dry up
And take you with
Them.
Steeds licking mint paste
Will beautify Febreeze
in drawers with ticking clocks
Washing dreary afternoons away
A bottle of maple syrup at a time
Confused in wooden hallways
Boarding school-powder feet
Screaming hard lessons awake
Cracking heads like Brazil nuts and
Toucans
Licking sugar from Vietnamese
Restaurants venturing guesses as to
Who
Is stealing food from dad’s fridge.
Peddling obscenities to Mars comes at a price
To Wednesday we go, bare back stallions
Horse manure clouds
Steam tampering window cone
I saved these last ones for thee
My suicide endeavor
Coached, beer fed and granulated
Wash windows for spite
Eat chamomile and wax lice off the phone
Get down and train corsets to wander
Have you ever known shame?
Keen whiplash constant
Heavy brick episode applicator snapped
Conscious of your own cue
Tamed with line renderings apart
When the cows call Jesus ‘mama’
Satan drives toenails home like lizard popcorn soldiers
Garishly garnished boys lick cream sausage raid insect repellent
Gone are the days of tomb stalks waving in the breeze
Badly drawn taxidermist steps over one too many boundaries
Den boom mesa banished like hate
Store-bought crap wished upon by trolls
Said the freedom man with his ticket in the window
Geese like goals unreached
Stand with Trump like towers
Sending the sky into an autistic tirade
For the sake of joy
And girls’ underwear stampeded out cone crack waste
Flagpole beauty scented and stolen bases thrive
So much popcorn can forever glaze the standalone novel walrus
Packed in ice, the flame of fate divide the rain
Androids dream of ecstatic hurt
Golden glistening toadboy remembers you
Your fetal sandwich smile
A gallon of antifreeze to wash down the guilt
Thomas the Tank Engine rooted in your skin
Glass hamster tricked into penny candy by some gypsy
National news grated like cheese
Sore loser anyone?
Coping with campaign sewage seized
Average goner tone-deaf to the rimes
Nailed green and tickled underneath the bridge
Gallantry steamed neck torrent, why?
Coil the cranial stem
Coaxing Malcolm Lewis to eat his own
Baby head stew 1994 lopped off like rabbit
But the heat of August still clings to everything like burrs spiking the underbelly of a cat.
A cat petted happily in a basement will lift a boulder from a man’s back.
Cancer can’t catch me as long as a cat is around.
My friend’s cat waits for me all week in a dark room.
Probably sleeping: dreaming of unobtainable mackerels
Swimming lazily along the currents of the metasphere
generated by a lonely A.I. confined to the top of a Tower
In a City where cats blip in and out of system glitches all the time.
Unable to differentiate between flesh and code, they’d eat equations if they could.
I picture some disgruntled owner trying to shove numbers down his cat’s throat.
The angle of the 7 is too sharp to slide in easily.
Scrambles will have to settle for 3.5 now, and 3.5 after the humans go to sleep
And catnip triggers the midnight munchies in his cute little brain.
A measly toad racket cortisone wash dish basin shit stain mattress sky bowling ball evil wack under cane relationship gone down to the train station to take national pride in dipping cauliflower in hot sticky enema fecundity riding bareback on a satanic doorknob knowing butts about the hallway slime seeming dude done overreached standing caps coon sideways hate banisters drilling evil piss monkey downstairs bathroom Devourment never obtained sad sad dashboard of a Toyota from the 80’s torn apart by mornings of Uncle Mooey and Aunt Sheila whom I’ve never seen naked like ray bees bold enough to crystal the whipping boys back up the Dartmouth sunrise: again, a baked good fiasco hemorrhaging wit like so many silly straws pulled from your mother’s casket coming down the lane. Stupid is the cold icthyosaurus that hangs around nighttime wasting your blubber bowl for fowl happenings he knows not when but toad sees and toad always completes whatever circle he decides to leap upon back scratcher Marquis de Sade like candy undressed and splayed moons nude and gainly: my taco funeral. Han Solo canto bight nightmare storm tickling my twat hairs like some Harry Potter jungle beast stamping feet and singing songs for uncle Al so far decomposed enough to let his tongue roll black and spongy onto the head of a chicken harvested for rainbow feather quilts sure to please Gramma Petersen or Elliott or whatever the fuck her name is, cause she matters not when truth comes to know itself on the page. Long Island will be obliterated by literature alone. Can a raspberry scone rescue Long Island from miles of empty space noodling guitar center laughter like putty patrol gasoline huffing contests? Said no man ever wearing cool dresses blissing ignorant bubbles from tuple gongs. Nailed to stars and quiche and crows, Jean Claude van Damme gets his red rocket from toy story Walmart shopping deals eating cow brains and cooking dead mice with their thoughts…betraying God as Satan jizzes all over Long Island and sits down for a glass of tea spiked with formaldehyde and windshield fluid and antifreeze. Life sure is a breeze when you live between two oak trees.
Lakeside hemorrhage true grit knowing only to stop. Hell wakes its basket gleaming sword monster truck into garbage oblivion sorcery can’t even explain. Too much too soon. Snape refined evil horn contemplate suns showered Boris Mars gate wed. Noontime oblivion said natural conflation. Tomb scrawl. Dead gate crash awaken sedentary swordsmanship too forward to re-instigate tableau crapped headlong dying id. Switchback cane Novoselic state arrived at by tentacle ostrich portico cone. Slay the tractor. Walls indignant melody sty shred awake. Stand and fight the gore damn holed wall wombat tent said evening the score gone forever waiting for no one trash wait slam against tech death crime. Toward sandwich sunshine reeded corpse trawler nailed needed and gone. Tape will have its tenure and odd morsels collect in the pool’s drainage basin. Doomed garbage wrecks Wednesday with eighty-six fabrics known only by their trails. Tortured corn tamales eating slayers crammed tin waffle cone steak draft making to the upward mobility given God torn away ran into the ground drain capitalist acclaim LJN forest of Crash Dummies dilly dallying on a turntable wrecked around gone steak fishing to known idioms and sand in the rain. Saying you’ll dive lovely and true is like the meat id son of the dick washer nut bolt sendoff you’ve always dreamed of. Trains riding Martian nubiles like dusky perfume on a black woman’s ass nibbling coteur in gray wendigo fur. Tuft of time sent sunward helping heaven to a second plate of screaming eyeballs mayonnaise head jar open crate standing naked twisted marsh gavel groveling for gruel some more said Oliver Twist fifteen hundred times before being whacked by Daisy Ridley’s charm bracelet vaginal toad stuck butt Remington razor cuts cried like twisted orange blossom tick meal steaked sand hierarchy violate my Eden for it is no more. Torah Sedna Hecate Stormy Daniels Jacked and jizzing into free jazz cram school nightmares. Ed Gein for supper while hidden. Torque learning a new trick. Stabbed by dayling Bryan Willacre stammer injection hospital opossum tablet standoff. Needle boy knows, needle boy needs nails to drive into cake. Stack’o’lee dawning on dares drilled Rainbow Dashboard catamount to underfluff wrinkled like suit jackets worn only wedding night cancelled damned in sticky pasta flower worlds. Kumbaya under stars gone only to the dickhead gangsta rapper wetting beds toilet training turned walruses darker that weeds roasting marshmallows on peat bog fires known by names drilled catwalk soda. Dream and eat the wack sticky under tack came fortnights ago to the town of Dojo where kittens sing tables upward and sky haven nicks the dangling waffle horned and segmented like caterpillar bodies undeveloped butterfly buffet. A dance worth remembering stands tickworthy while a tan sun tames tigers, lava, bee’s nests, monsters, earrings, garbage and hated hell sausage. Coined wishy-washy takes the camera and eats toenails for brunch. Amma-lamma-ding-doing Tom Green sausage factory puffing on clouds a camp understood like semen on toast. A dick move, wouldn’t you say? Where the creaning rady arrives to swab the deck of your soap ship, take turns washing her vagina, for there is no time to ungreet dawn like tick a walla bing bang so many years before.
Helping birds and flowers drift into cane sugar marshmallow comas has been rendered obsolete by fingers towing wounds and sentencing fried sand to death for scamming wheat while soundless voids open and greet the night with their shrill cries.
August Derleth throbs over his heart attack like the squishiest of lungs.
“Death glanced its own eyes open” said no one ever.
No one true to their loss will gather his fingers after they have fallen from his hands like the ornaments bejeweling Santa’s tampon collection.
It’s all a big Lie: the little things you find under the mattress along with a monastery and a shotgun to take your head out of mayonnaise jars.
I thank the sun for scalping my taco with Z-grade sanitary codes.
Jesus fought for America’s Army in World War Three.
Stan laughs at racism while watching a basketball strapped to black man’s back.
Television implants maroon furniture into my consciousness on islands of the night.
Green titty milk ruins my stars and gets its shit breath all over my tie.
Thank you mother, my railroad spike.
Clean your hands and wipe sediment from the neck jowls of a man in a bed, and never look back.
Beds tie themselves to me in this town.
My gait remains a mystery.
Dysentery walks up to the Pope and challenges him to a duel.
Gloves slap hams upon tables designated for little boys to thwack their undeveloped peni while female workers look on in horror…unable to say anything because ‘freedom, man.’
Rational thoughts invoke x-rated squids that escape my mind for now…thank God….a day without squids is another twenty-four hours I don’t have to say the words ‘please don’t rate me.’
Kettles whistle for floating continents to be brought down upon the heads of toads wishing for warts to become divine interventions worthy of sex.
Gay limbo has just been invented.
Rain sticks science themselves.
Tubes ignite and load freebasers with data they don’t need.
Surround sound soars down the throat of Adam Kadmon in the form of a Jolly Rancher.
Hampton Fancher eats his own. (No offense to Hampton Fancher.)
Too toasty to reconcile themselves to television, ultraviolet uteri are poured onto tanning beds and pounded into piles of powder to be snorted by the higher-ups whose demons spill out of their pantaloons and summon sunbeams to eat the faces of dogmen on unicycles.
‘Toodle-Ooo!’ says the best-kept secret of Biff Tanner.
‘Vote for Gallant!’ chimes Goofus when the chips are down.
Gallant can eat dog shit off the ground and light gerunds on fire for all I care.
When I say ‘go,’ it means ‘stop.’
Wake me up when jumping out the window becomes cool again.
“Guide the tube slowly,” says the sphinx to the New York City punker whose family jewels are kept safe in Mt. Rushmore.
Eat your breakfast with pride and stay off the cocaine.
Good advice.
Will my life change overnight when a literary agent decides to take me on as their client? The voice of every English professor I’ve ever had screams ‘NO! Nothing happens instantaneously. Don’t let success go to your head. Just keep baby-stepping towards your goal.’ But what if I don’t want to baby-step? Is it wrong to check your email daily, waiting for a drastic change that will finally give you objectives to complete, tasks to accomplish and goals to strive for?
The voices of my parents, job coaches and uninformed friends echo in my head: ‘you need to get a job. Steady employment will take your mind off of all the woes of the world.’
What they don’t seem to understand is that the only job I’ve ever been successful at was a complete fluke! My co-workers at Bethlem High School all knew who I was because my dad had worked there for thirty years. If I somehow landed a teacher’s aide job at different high school where nobody knew me, I’d be sacked within the first week.
‘A female student said you looked down her shirt, you’re fired!’ ‘You arrived late ONCE, you’re gone!’ ‘You didn’t learn the ropes by day four even though the acceptance packet said you’d have two weeks training, get out of here!’ ‘You yipped when we told you to yop, goodbye!’ ‘You asked too many questions and failed to look busy even when there was nothing to do, have a nice life!’
Like I’ve probably said before: me and conventional employment don’t mix.
I guess I’m just the kind of person who needs to set his own hours and be his own boss.
Believe it or not, at this very moment, my mind is in work mode. My writing, music and art ARE my job. I take my artistic career as seriously as the ideal bagel baker should bagels.
But the reality is, 99% of bagel bakers probably don’t give a shit about bagels. More than likely, they REVILE those bread-dough abominations that insidiously masquerade as donuts just to troll those unfortunate enough to bite into one.
I firmly believe that my brain is hardwired to my prevent my body from doing any task that A, I don’t enjoy, B, don’t feel is necessary, or C, don’t believe in.
What I did at Bethlem came from my heart. I can’t really say that about any other job I’ve ever had other than my creative pursuits.
I suppose my parents arrived at the same conclusion as soon as my college years came to an end. They’re the ones who facilitated my current financial dependence on the government. They knew I would never be able to work a normal job or contribute to society in a typical way.
Hence my current situation: a surreal existence where I spend two or three days of the week at Starbucks with my laptop either writing or submitting manuscripts to publishers. The rest of the time, I’m either sitting in the library of my alma mater reading dense novels about the Knights Templar and Kabbalah, taking six mile walks with sludge metal blasting through my headphones, or binging for six to eight hours at a time on video games. It should be noted that I’m not addicted to playing video games, but rather, to buying them (which is not relevant to this essay, so therefore, I digress.)
Although I’m grateful that I get to live the artist’s dream while gorging on Social Security benefits that I probably don’t deserve, I can’t help feeling guilty about it. How come I get to “live the dream” while my brother, who is arguably just as mentally messed up as I am, has to endure the soul crushing drudgery of his job at the Department of Tax and Finance? Five days a week, he sits at his cubicle, answering anger and hate-filled queries from painfully stereotypical Jews, blacks and Long Island Italians regarding whatever bullshit the IRS has dumped on them this week. I suppose he is just neurotypical enough to maintain steady employment at such a position without having regular meltdowns.
I often theorize that, in some ways, he is much sicker than I am. Sure, I’ve had my moments of disillusion with life, but these days, I keep depression and anxiety at bay through reading, writing and exercise. These three things form the Sacred Trinity that perpetuates happiness in my life.
Again, my thoughts return to the question of ‘why do I get to live what many would consider an ‘ideal artist’s existence’ while my brother has to suffer like a typical American Millennial?’ Did he choose this path, or did I get off scott-free because I bitched and moaned so loudly for so many years that my parents caved and convinced the Federal Government to appease me like a spoiled child?
Do I really believe this about myself?
I’d like to think not.
After all, I’m pouring everything I have into this blog post and my writing career as a whole. Hell, I just meticulously crafted five query letters and emailed them to literary agents. A lazy person wouldn’t have had the patience or diligence to do such a thing. An actual entitled man-child would be at home in his underwear right now playing video games. In fact, he’d be doing that every single day without a shred of ambition or drive to contribute to society. And the video games he’d be playing certainly wouldn’t be the kind that stimulate the imagination or intellect. They’d be Dorito-brained shooters and hack’n’slash online life-wasters: games in which headset-wearing twelve-year-olds call each other faggots and shout men’s rights activist slogans at any female players unfortunate enough to be logged in. Then a forty-year-old guy would show up and be like, ‘Here’s a dick pic: pls respond.’
I’m fairly certain that I’m not that type of guy.
But what type of guy am I?
On paper, I’m a thirty-year-old, disabled, unemployed bachelor with a Bachelor’s Degree (go figure.) Am I doing what a thirty-year-old autistic man who calls himself a writer ought to be doing? Is there even such thing as an ‘ought-to?’
Perhaps my brother just chose to veer off in a different direction from me. He made a conscious decision to wallow in the shit piling up at his feet because he knew he was capable of doing so.
Being capable of enduring bullshit: is that a quality every human being should ideally have?
I can tell you right now that I don’t have it.
It seems I’ve reached the thesis (as well as the conclusion) of this essay. I just wish there was someone else in my family who was just as incapable of dealing with bullshit as me. If such a person existed, perhaps they’d be a fan of bands like Anal Cunt and GG Allin too. My cousin’s baby was born the day Lemmy Kilmister died, so maybe there’s hope after all.
