Tuesday, December 29, 2009

Please Kill Me


RRRRRRRROCK AND ROLL!!!! CHECK LIST FOR THE NEW YOU:


[ ] MAKE BELIEVE A PERSONALITY

[ ] LISTENING TO YOUR MUSIC VERY LOUD

[ ] PUNCH THINGS THAT DO NOT PUNCH BACK

[ ] DRINKING ALL NIGHT

[ ] DRINKING WHISKEY ALL NIGHT

[ ] DRINKING CHEAP WHISKEY ALL NIGHT

[ ] SMOKING CIGARETTES

[ ] PRETENDING TO BE POOR

[ ] ACTUALLY BEING POOR

[ ] DO SEX WITH EVERYONE

[ ] SHOOT HEROIN INTO YOUR FRIENDS

[ ] PEE WHERE THERE IS NO TOILET

[ ] DIE



YOU ARE NOW A ROCK AND ROLL STAR

Thursday, October 29, 2009

there was also a movie about a guy who was in jail and there was a guy outside of jail killing everybody


IN DELAWARE

I saw a movie once!
With, uh
there was a button
and if you pushed it, you got a million dollars
but it murdered, uh
it killed someone.
You push the button and you get a million dollars
but someone's gotta die.
A million dollars.
Man, I would push that button.
Are you serious? For a million dollars?
I don't fucking care. I'd push it.
I don't fucking care. A million dollars.
Man.
You could --
you could like, uh, live on that forever.
You could!
I'd get my mom set up, I'd buy her a house.
Take care of her.
In Delaware they got houses real cheap.
I'd buy her a house in Delaware
and they have these dirt bikes there
these dirt bike courses.
Man.
We'd be riding dirt bikes in front of the house
and just sitting outside
smoking weed.
In Delaware.

Tuesday, September 8, 2009

The Beers Got Bigger

First, the beers got bigger. It was hard to object. The mouths, wider than ever before, stretched out obscenely, forever twisting into new, more aerodynamic shapes; vented slats cut into the lip for easier pouring, mistakenly assuming it would ever see a glass. They were a boon. They explained their ease. With the bigger beer, more was less. Keep your cash. Feel the flow.


They always had nicknames before, loutish, undignified. Cold One wasn’t specific enough and Brewski vaguely ethnic. But tall boys, sounding like soldiers, stood solid in rows, towering over the past, nearly blocking it out entirely, dwarfed only by the intemperance of the still-menacing 40 ounces.


Commuter beers. For the train times. Your half-hour to be brown paper bag, slumping against your own weight, watching Westchester unfold, buildings shrinking down into chimney and grass, two story things. It wasn’t hard to become a regular.


It threw numbers into disarray, first of all. Six was a stealth twelve. You could say, “I’ve had four,” to people of a certain advancing age and leave them dumbfounded, dreaming of their own abandoned addictions, unsure of how much they smell on everyone’s breath as their stories become increasingly unhinged.


It became a society doubled in all respects, always punchy and full of gas, bloated and back on its heels. Fights broke out more often, with less incentive. Dry, dispassionate affairs, with enthusiasm a poor substitute for real anger, the punches were less accurate, but visually very impressive, every one a haymaker, every connection drawing twice as much blood.


Wine couldn’t keep up. Meant for meals, its existence buoyed only by palettes undiluted, it became a sauce component at best, but more often suffered the humiliation of being little more than a juice drink, boxed with straws attached in plastic wrapping. Sommeliers found themselves pushed into the streets, sitting in circles sniffing corks in rotting row houses. Even water was called into question.


One of the kind surprises of this new world was how the politicians reacted. The first round of boiler makers hit without much interest, or, at best, derision. And rightfully so. This wasn’t a smooth undertaking, drinking straight liquor on a national stage. Even the most poised, the ones that made everyone laugh on the late night talk shows, twisted and half-sneered as it went down. Short dark men in gray suits scuttling around, whispering percentages into their ears.


“Here’s to you!” they said, toasting from the top shelf.


They won with the percentages and forced an important concession from their opponents:


“Now I’ll eat anything.”

Thursday, September 3, 2009

The Mustard


HARUSPICES, or
A LIFE IN THE ARTS

Holding a grudge,
a palmed pigeon,
head thumbed down under wing
but breast open
two thumbs through feathers thrust
in and under ribcage just like splitting a crab and you lay it out on the table.

Guts sigh on the altar;
sigh steam jarred in bottles, sold as souls
to tourists and bird-watchers. Kings
ask you to let little lungs sing
ask you to sift truth from bile,
aubergine honesty from the very ducts of the thing.

No talent
that’s innate
just a solid sense of self.
Rum-drunk at your desk all day,
finger picking through bird plop,
telling everyone else what to do with their lives.

Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Write What You Know

I Assure You, The Charming Young Protagonist Is In No Way Based On Me
a bildungsroman
by Kenneth Drinkwater
pg. 348

"Unable to escape living in the paradox of a school for graduates, and having found no solace beneath the lightness of Isabelle’s gymnastic though shockingly heavy-breasted frame, nor in the sublime works of Klopstock, Kenneth retreated, like so many Americans, chased by the ghosts of privilege into that last hope for dreamer-rogues such as him and his immediate group of friends: The Gymnasium.

And so they ran. On treadmills, in rows, with words written on them that signified so much nothing. “Crunch!” their chests impelled. Imaginary lacrosse team logos, real lacrosse team logos, the lettering flaking away as brittle house paint, faded or distressed, it didn’t matter; they ran together, feet shock-cushioned against the Sisyphean whirl. They exercised themselves. Pushing this city, their city, from their pores, letting it be carried away in rivulets, wiped off according to the guidelines and wrung out from towels And yet. And yet. And yet this city’s promises were still full of truth. Its truths still full of hope.

Staring out the great glass window facing midtown, catching stray glances of radiant women who had a glimmer of the old order to them, giggling through the populist milieu that sidewalks always bring, Kenneth suddenly saw it. He saw himself reflected over them. On top of them. Invisible in his visibility, separated from the world of the real and yet forever bearing witness.

If only to reach out and touch them! To say, I love you! I love you all! I want to walk with you and hold your hand! Kiss your neck! Smell your hair! To lay palms against your chest in exultant, pantless confession.

But no. There was no way to confess. They, too far away to hear. He, too busy running to catch them."