I am told I’d walk circles around the office floor, the top floor; how I’d stop occasionally mid- step, pause, pause, then move on again,
for four months. I was, is the word happy?, when my assignment was discharged. It was a couple of days before Thanksgiving.
Then the facts settled in.
Coco has taken to circling me, around and around while I’m sitting in bed typing this. Around and around and around and around.
I couldn’t make out. I couldn’t make out the blurry (gray and red???) figures in the back- ground of the entire triptych. I squinted; I looked askew. I’m sure I stood there a very long time trying. Until a gentleman with a top hat stood beside me as if out of nowhere and whispered into my right ear. They’re the carcasses
And Buzzcocks sing Breakdown, too unknown To be banned by slick mixmaster when hair hung golden or
black is the floor & the walls were velvet. —Chris Stroffolino
Too hollowed out not to make the noise of death, unlike Dad’s whistle (super loud!), which would often occur seem ingly out of nowhere, like how my writ ing has become almost too pat
I see the garden women in their gravy days when hair hung golden or
black is the floor & the walls were velvet. —John Wieners
Too hollowed out not to make the noise of death, unlike Dad’s whistle (super- loud!), which would often call us home for supper (or else just call us home). Can we go back to the farce we created just for fun or is this real- ity just a distance of the census?
Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled penis. —Jo Ann Rothschild (from The Book of Penis)
It’s a wonderful book, I might add, full of illustrations of dicks (I used to only use the word penis, thinking dick too harsh; is that normal?), like “Leaning Tower of Penis,” “Landing at Penis Rock,” and “Ayatollah Penis.” Each primitively sketched matching illustration is just as you would imagine it to be. It’s genius, if you ask me (and there’s even a “Genius” penis – right after the “Ayatollah Penis” and directly before penises named “Scholar” and “Critic.” Surely by now you’re already looking on Amazon (or SPD or your bookstore of choice) for this soon to be classic tome. If so, it’s from Pressed Wafer (they’re a publisher of mine,
London is here today. And guess who gets picked to babysit. Is a free lunch better than a Quiznos turkey sandwich? I... I’m not really sure. I suppose it depends on the day, on my appetite, on my mood....
…in a land of strung-out queens joining hands beneath a roseate sky… —Timothy Liu
Yeah, I left out the rest of the sentence, the beginning and the end, which was a bit more bleak (to say the least), but nevertheless a gorgeous portrait (…where storm-tossed petals vulture circled an ever-widening grave—) – that’s just the stuff that comes after the part at the top of the page, and, see, even Tim couldn’t turn the end of the poem into a complete sentence. Due to the apocalypse, I assume. Which of course could happen any day. Could have already happened. Are we (meaning, am I) even here? I try to remain hopeful, despite the despair. I hate being this; hate even relaying it to you in this manner. In fact, the word “HAPPY” floats over my computer after it experiences five minutes of non-use – which includes the lack of cat paws tip-toeing over keys, and/or her whole body hunkering down on top of them (the keys of my laptop) for warmth, I suppose. She’s even managed to change the name of my computer at least twice (and no doubt has managed an email or two, as well, but un- beknownst to me). I try to be. Happy, that is. The screen saver is a reminder that I am, right? Even my iPhone screams HAPPY when it’s unlocked, which doesn’t take much – just a slide of a finger across the screen: no fingerprint nor password necessary. And the screams come with an ice cream cone with colorful and seemingly inedible swirls, too. What have I to hide, anyway (or what have I to relay that the world, my world, that tiny ((and shrinking)) pond of whosits and whatsits of whom I grow more and more skeptical every day... Is this one going to be just another user? Is this one going to be an emergency or will it show up should I have ‘an emergency?’ Is it unlikely...?), that isn’t already out there, I mean? Who pays attention to it all anyway? A lot of people didn’t even finish that last sentence. It’s true. And they even started it. No one can be counted on. Most certainly not I. How can that fact be sold in such a way as to convince one (myself) that it is just another part of the ‘joy of life?’ Perhaps I shouldn’t go into advertising. What a depress- ing reminder of a life that could’ve been. Even today, people confuse billboards advertising the latest installment of X-Men, the one where the really bad guy (I think he’s supposed to be a god, actually) is strangling Jennifer Lawrence, quite realistically. Well, his character is strangling her character. They’re both just
characters. In a movie that many of us will see at one point, despite the reviews. To be fair, the bad guy is played by Oscar Isaac, but you can’t really tell that it’s him. After all, he’s playing a god, not a human. And Jennifer
is the blue mutant with scales: the one with ambiguous ties to both sides (i.e., the good guys and the bad guys). Maybe she…or, pardon me… maybe her character deserves to be strangled? Well, nobody deserves to be strangled, right? So why the ‘feminist’ uproar, I wonder (or is it just Rose McGowan)? It’s a movie with a couple of prominent women included in its cast. It’s just mind-deterring, if not thought-provoking fiction. Like my life, for example. Yeah, right. So, what’s the fuss with
reality, anyway? What is it, really? Peaches and love to all.
