pica

...

2011-09-16T10:02:00.000-07:00

I am standing in a crowd of unfortunate people being jostled about by officious people in MD coats. the ground is sloped to an ending of an alley wherein metal gates stand firmly locked yet hint at an unpleasant ending. I am annoyed by the obsequious behaviors of people around, smelling fear upon them as they make attempts to make vapid banter with people in charge. A white coated petite woman of absurd beauty begins to pepper me with questions and look up at me in disdain, as if i am a hideous giantess while tapping her clipboard and waiting for my answers. I refuse her, she stamps her pretty heel and goes to get someone "who will make me cooperate." A different official begins to shout that I must keep my gaze firmly locked upon the gate, all heads within this startled herd snap in one direction to comply but I ignore them and as the yelling gets louder and the doctors begin to come at me through the crowd, i turn my gaze upon a tall tree whose leaves of golden color flutter and shift in sun, a dappling of radiant light that i find my mind projecting into such that when they attack my body, i am already standing elsewhere upon a corner watching people come happily walking out of a church. they are well dressed, lovely brown corduroy suits, sensible shoes and modest dresses. in their hands, well loved bibles, upon faces and tongue a well rehearsed and loved vernacular that encases their actual lives in a soporific space of safety and grace, they are polite and gracious to me, yet it is brief as they stream along past me, making plans, living their lives. i think to myself from a great inchoate space of constant terror and loneliness that has plagued me from birth that i could learn, i could be like that- i am smart, and what a payback to be comfortable in a group body. to know that i am loved in return for such a small price. i raise my hand and try to speak to them, shuffle in my shoes, timidly, and no sound comes forth - they pass along and it is vapor and the silence of what could have been is deafening until from some other street comes another procession of clanging drums, and foreign instruments, chanting the name of deities unbeknownst to me. a glorious freak show of brightly clothed noisy people with costumed animals, a woman of spanish origin, mantilla riding high above shiny coiled braids, bosom proud in a hand tatted white lace shirt, long skirts dragging flowers- a hungry child held aloft upon a mad woman's shoulders, the stunned gaze of a pure white lamb with a red stripe painted between its eyes. the cries, the tempo, the fervor begins to make me feel as if i could belong, the procession surges and heaves and a huge group of children flows around me who are wild eyed and chanting- for what it makes no difference, it is them calling for the death of all of their parents and for the love of a sacred icon all in the same hysterical rush of voice. they are covered in little bells and the noise is deafening. i am in their center, they are all my children. for one moment i am connected to something greater than me until in en explosion like the atom bomb my eyes are open.

2010-11-25T08:18:00.001-08:00

where have i been- a whole year lies fallow.

..

2010-01-02T08:34:00.001-08:00

...

2009-12-28T12:32:00.001-08:00

Dignity walked into my Despair Bar, where I sat propped up unsteadily and slapped my face. Hard. Dignity pointed out in threatening gestures and flashes of my life projected on the barren wall behind my head, the trail of rejections I had greedily sought out. The Fetish Attachment's I attributed to tall and skinny men with bitter mouths and swollen cocks. Of what use thereby, my mangled days and upset nights, fervently mollifying, fussing about with the dustpan and broom, washing the same dish over and over, pecking away at a heroin filled door that would open just once in a great while to permeate my soul with that little bit of Him that perfected the addiction. And so I sat with this, watching myself, looking like a cheap whore in moving pictures until the walls began to tremble and with the shake of my matted mane, I did rain down from the sky a flash of brilliance to explode the dark and sticky barroom in shards and I went a'running out, to feel the sunshine on my skin. Alone.

2009-11-04T19:58:00.001-08:00

and i would pay for destruction like some children pray for the death of their parents, for the silence and the scab of the knee to fall with a giant thud that would shake the little town free of the barley to render the fat and churn the fecundity to where gravity would flay the limbs apart and birds would giggle in glee.. i want to come home.

2009-09-17T17:01:00.000-07:00

i should not follow where your eyes used to lead me, yes, everybody lingers in the dust where they placed faith, based upon the deepest intuitive- the integral anatomist deep knowledge that they had come home, only to be proven wrong as is the endless route upon a faulted way since one can only feel what is right inside their own skin and be isolated there within for we are not of one another, rather just momentary glimpses into the random mirrors of others eyes, stuffing the holes, frantically grabbing at each other to soak up the endless mental bleeding- sinking skin into skin to feel attached, you were all i ever needed, just wanted to share your life as my small insect mind could only give all i knew yet the proverbial hips did not move right enough to fill the hole so we ran, running circles for ever and ever, so just try this, this endless black night, come home to your quiet mess, over and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over and some bright and nameless day- break the circle- tear it from your corpus callosum (WHITE MATTER) and throw it in the backyard to rot away and inevitably, no matter how it starts- rise up to steer clear of those that can see beyond the mirror, you know of that dark and miasmic side of endless night- there are a few of us that wear it like exquisite pulchritude- you are one, i am one, someday grace will find our other ones, be it graveside, sky side- all the same, serpent keeps it's tail distinguished from it's mouth but in the end, it's all the same straight, yet lachrymose flexible line towards the end.
i threw away the rage, no thought response needed, just a nameless and lugubrious affection ensues from a great distance- aimed straight and true..but in the end, dead wrong.

2009-07-25T17:49:00.000-07:00

whom but i? yet then again for the twinkling of an eye. for the grace therefore i go, strolling through the valley of death. and it is very, very silent there.

2009-07-25T17:43:00.000-07:00

2009-04-29T17:53:00.000-07:00

just wait, your time will come. your guns laid down and your hands broken like wisps of thoughts, leaving you as you were before given your skin woven from the millions of martyrs that shed no tears.

repeat

2009-03-22T21:14:00.000-07:00

of irony, in bitter juice.
there were children here.
of better lace and bloodied place.

2009-03-20T19:21:00.000-07:00

of grave concern, this unfit state, this base thought and unclean skin; will i be blessed betwixt the mold and bone, denyed not the weather bitten limbs?

2008-12-22T09:44:00.000-08:00

when we were young and held up in the air with gossamer strings of mirth and grace.

2008-11-29T12:50:00.001-08:00

when will there be mercy from the long and punishing arms of religion?

2008-11-19T19:18:00.001-08:00

for it would be the same to hold you in my veins until the pain of gravity dissipates to leave you free into the milky white skin of the mothers arms to start again start again start again.

2008-11-12T08:19:00.000-08:00

this up and coming youngster looks in my swollen eye for 1.3 seconds and spits out some name of no intelligence nonsense, says i've pterygium and dances away in his frippery white frock, then they have taken my money and i am wandering about thinking on losing sight and stepping into endless night but mostly how it would feel to puncture the orb and erase the memory of all the things i should not have seen while learning how to fly.

2008-11-08T17:49:00.000-08:00

for it would be lost among the brilliance of the demented stars shining heavily from across the sea, this, this, this little legerdemain, as the bloody spot on the greasy dog who spends copious amounts of dedication to lick, lick, lick while time passes in great enormity to calmly snuff out the last vestige of beauty and grace, catchable in brief forms when juxtaposed with lurid pigs. i am happy. i have spoken and have reached an orifice of memory to sleep now the dreams of the dead. and i am happy.

A long way home...

2008-10-27T20:25:00.000-07:00

The first time I met Peter, I was in a drug induced fragile haze brought on by several days of recording discordant music in a studio in the middle of my cramped hovel house which was filled to capacity with beautiful broken machinery, plastic baby parts, horror imagery, way too many pets and an ill begotten collection of broken and mutated music instruments. Peter walked right in, gave me a hug that startled me from the morbid thoughts so akin to my everyday isolation and proceeded with great reverence, to film various pieces of my art, my mess- "it's all beauty" he said while calmly straddling the bathtub filled with broken glass.
So time passed, 10 years or so..we grew up, fragments of time were created and discarded as it became apparent that the accidental grace and beauty of youth was soon to slip away. and it did.
In 2008, Peter and I found ourselves individually isolated in different states, both rather heart sick from various decisions we had made. We began to vigorously communicate, attempting to make sense of the sad events that had occurred in the life of our dearest mutual friend, Thomas who was far away in Germany. As it soon became apparent that we could only save ourselves, we began to plot the progress back to where we knew there was the maddening inspiration that only Los Angeles, the city of our collective artistic origins, could harbor.
Peter embarked across the country late last summer in the trusty Saab, shortly before I packed up my fragments and left my safe little house in the middle of nowhere, sadly feeding the ravens one last time.
I am grateful for the few shared sunset views from the last place he lived- laughing in the dirty hallway when the trains roared by, having to shout to be heard. Writing his name in used matchsticks on the floor and greeting the LA River homeless men with kindness, waving from the grimy window. Going downtown for fabric..I wish I could see the last pictures he took before he died, decaying mannequins on Broadway, dignified southern black men selling fancy suits, little immigrant women clutching children to their breasts, me threatening the miserable meter maid. All lost, like a life taken erroneously.
You just have to wonder sometimes about the beauty in the world. And mostly about those people like Peter that can harness it, spin it with their own bruised fingers and hand it back to you as a fragile mirror to view your own greatness in.
I'm hoping that the brightness you brought to those around you will be a light to guide you to wherever your new home may be.

2008-06-06T18:14:00.000-07:00

..getting really good at this solitaire game of existence. the sleeping platform is ever so wide, the kitchen cupboard stays stocked the same, the mental quirks multiply...i've no need of interpersonal chaos for the memory of it alone is enough to defy all logic. ...happy here in my own personal disaster wherein bloated reptile bodies and the pungent dust of a million prayers populate these ever narrowing days..

2008-05-16T06:07:00.000-07:00

so much sorrow in the world, enough tears to wash away every shining memory of laughing children and kingfishers bursting into golden sunlit flight.

2008-04-06T14:54:00.000-07:00

it is always this predictable way, this human weakness to be absent when those around that love you, need you.
frivolities, self grandiose puffing of ego, addictions, depressions- the reasons are like the piles of discarded shoes in prisoner of war camps. human detritus.
and there comes time, hardening wisdom into agates of grief when you finally reach out your hands but they are no longer needed and thereby, remain empty.

2008-04-04T11:02:00.000-07:00

you came again in the night by way of train, steam swirling throughout a clustered canopy of skeletal trees that filtered light from a thousand days of chaos.
you inquired of my well being and i was flooded with infinite space which burned your likeness into the glass wall- a secret language written in fluid yet better forgotten.

2008-03-18T20:08:00.000-07:00

i waved my obsequious hands at the sun then dropped to scabbed knees to rub an aging face in the dirt and watch the blood of our union drop from my eye unto the barren earth, falling slowly....
with great compassion and concentration....
until it shattered ! into a billion red shards and many brilliant colored furry vermin appeared to make great haste to carry away each memory into their little fetid burrows wherein, as a great library, were stored remnants of broken evenings, useless endeavors and pale platitudes written upon skin parchment and bound into a pungent binding made up of all those things you said i would see.
and i was glad.

2008-03-10T17:14:00.000-07:00

i boiled bones from those that went before us.
i salted tears of useless ventures.
i prepared a soup of desiccated, skeletal leaves.
they were exquisite and floated like small universes in which you could be content with me once again.
such is the frailty of dreams.

2008-01-25T06:30:00.000-08:00

"The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side."
—Hunter S. Thompson

2008-01-10T16:56:00.000-08:00

January 10, 2008 WASHINGTON - Telephone companies have cut off FBI wiretaps used to eavesdrop on suspected criminals because of the bureau's repeated failures to pay phone bills on time.

A Justice Department audit released Thursday blamed the lost connections on the FBI's lax oversight of money used in undercover investigations. In one office alone, unpaid costs for wiretaps from one phone company totaled $66,000.

In at least one case, a wiretap used in a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act investigation "was halted due to untimely payment," the audit found. FISA wiretaps are used in the government's most sensitive and secretive criminal and intelligence investigations, and allow eavesdropping on suspected terrorists or spies.

More than half of 990 bills to pay for telecommunication surveillance in five unidentified FBI field offices were not paid on time, the report shows.

2008-01-10T06:10:00.000-08:00

and so we shall think on gratitude...
that elusive, small animal like emotion- how it is so regretfully prone to a hasty evaporation when gazed upon by the sullen mind.
somewhere, one person focuses intently upon the Sisyphean task of keeping their dignity from dripping away to inevitably mingle with human detritus, the scabs of failure, maledictions....
in the end, it will all quietly wash away in a cleverly constructed gutter..

2007-12-18T04:49:00.000-08:00

within the dignity of night, i found us in an eggplant colored judgement room. i sat with bitten tongue as you spewed forth inane vitriolic criticism of my actions made under severe duress. when i rose to proclaim the truth, you rushed at me like a rabid dog as was your way during our life together. this time was once too many for without the gauzy shroud of female forgiveness that i wore wrapped around my broken heart, an accipitrine inner eye opened and i met you as an equal for once and with great clarity, crushed your narrow mean lips with my teeth until your condescending eyes fluttered closed and you were finally silenced and made invisible, forever.

2007-11-28T07:42:00.000-08:00

and so of ideas, spatial reality, badly painted angles and broken xylophones. i got myself tangled up in a wire woven head with gaps too small but for catching little bits of sullen air. come in, i say- we will sweep the floor with a devils claw broom in myopic fits of concern while wearing clothing stolen from the dead. i keep the memories in that corner, damp! for mildew hopes to chew them up so they no longer will rear up and remind me of the pleasant smell of men when they wake.

2007-11-28T07:37:00.000-08:00

the gift of sky so dense and deep as to transform the mortal arm into super-stretchy-plastic-girl and so i reach up to wave a hand through candy clouds and return those sticky fingers to a hungry mouth..

2007-11-28T07:18:00.000-08:00

for i would seek to depurate the monkey mind and soar like a reversed image of a black bird rising from a pool of limpid white water. piercing the surface, like malleable skin to allow that torrent of words out, shattered drops to fall on a parched by silence tongue. i'm waiting. feeble. choking.

2007-11-28T04:24:00.000-08:00

S.M.C., loved one in the barn so long ago - forgive me finally. please for i dream of you often. tonight i was broken again, had maliciously punctured a hole in your mechanics package and had watched the stuffing soar high as a plastic clear fountain. i leaned back on rough concrete, scuffed elbows and felt your merciful hand alight in a golden strand of my hair and the world was bright but for a moment and television played from a small radio and your guitar spoke well in your hands and on the hill, the wolf was set free and our collected filthy addictions went with her..i dream of you so often. the one so equal to me in insanity, strength of conviction pointed in a wrong direction..break out. swell into the sea.

2007-10-16T21:32:00.000-07:00

breathe, evade...sagacity chuckles at the lake.
the loss of too many loved ones.
one, then two, then three- look at me, look at you.
void of scent, stretch of skin, fly away.

2007-09-25T19:35:00.000-07:00

there was this time when i was young...i see this girl and cannot be sure it was i. of rusted hand and brittle heart- lying still for days to watch the bats. please only whisper.

2007-07-28T08:21:00.000-07:00

i want there to be bright openings in the duties of my life- giant flashes of thunder and light that crack open the parched ground to let me kneel and dip my fingers into swiftly moving water that heads for dry and grieving characters in great need of solace.

2007-02-16T13:16:00.000-08:00

i had become accustomed to breathing into tiny wee patterns of comfort & mincing my steps to and fro within the confines of a bellicose househould until parts of me went missing and i looked through a chipped monocle under couches, in dog eared book spines and in his bleeding ear but could not find that what i had lost but alas, so it is and as there is so much beauty in the world, i will be going out now to gaze upon it.

2007-02-05T08:09:00.000-08:00

i sealed myself into a black box with walls coated in pungent fluids from the diligently dismal musings of a man with no eyes. from within this vault, the days flew into one undistinguishable hypnagogic blackmare wherein children with scorpions in their shoes and dwarves with enormous erections bulging from cheap nylon tracksuits sought to touch my chest endlessly.

from outside this vault, the man with no eyes listened attentively as my sex withered up and my hands became inverted as to offer no defense from his capricious poking in and out of my black box with his ludicrously oversized scalpel.

2007-01-30T09:02:00.001-08:00

2007-01-30T08:53:00.000-08:00

i count the dents in the bed & then rush outside, swinging my head about in wide uncomely jagged circles to see if the pavement rushed up to you with a suit coloured red.

2007-01-30T08:35:00.000-08:00

2007-01-10T08:47:00.000-08:00

Free Hugs Campaign

2007-01-09T17:01:00.000-08:00

"personality disordered people are thought to be better off than psychotics because they do not actually lose touch with reality. however they are thought to be more primitive than neurotics in their development because they tend to locate their problems outside of themselves. they show little insight or capacity for emotional responsibility. they blame the world for their problems and engage in vociferous struggles with their environment. they are impulsive, unable to regulate feelings, have poor judgement and undeveloped consciousness. they are all, in one form or another, antisocial."

terence real

2007-01-01T16:32:00.000-08:00

and so it ends...the body is cremated, ashes scattered, possessions distributed. silence ensues and we are to wonder, was it a life well lived?

2006-10-29T16:23:00.000-08:00

tell me of the endless words you have spoken to better yourself and i will show you how it all turns to a thick paste upon your tongue that will suffocate you better than poured concrete.

2006-10-29T16:12:00.000-08:00

historically, arsonists in detroit radically decrease the number of houses every year at halloween. in california, arsonists take on the great sprawling expanses of mountains. for years now, it's a happening that becomes akin with the changing of the summer into fall. the sky darkens, the radio shrieks with excitable women jamming microphones into firemens jaws and the air starts to bite deep inside and you will be in a common placement such as wandering outside to get in your car and carry on about your day but you will be forced to look up and pause- slow down and quietly marvel at the ashes that are falling from the orange goblin sky like gentle snow on the breezes of a million small animals and trees aflame in a decimating fervor.

2006-10-09T21:07:00.000-07:00

"so we see that sorrow may be good or bad according to the results it produces in us. and indeed there are more bad than good results arising from it, for the only good ones are mercy and repentence; whereas there are six evil results, namely anguish, sloth, indignation, jealousy, envy and impatience. the wise man says that "sorrow hath killed many and there is no profit therein," and that because for the two good streams which flow from the spring of sadness, there are these six which are downright evil." St. Francis De Sales

2006-09-28T09:08:00.000-07:00

frothing,, grasping upward from a soporific torpor and wishing to touch myself as no one will- split –splash & jump on that to look again and there was a page of a book seen lickety flesh quick and I saw those I loved as being greasy and unfit and the life that had shelled around me was in fact full of pus deep in tissue walls and I hovered there looking down at my despicable grin and pale black bagged beggar eyes and moral ineptitude written on english scented stationary and fAiLuRe and ReGrEt so mighty as to sear the flesh upon my knees and thats how time slipped away, chuckling and lubricated. This became like god and I was calm, spent. Swallowed down dandelion root to regain my legs and went out to fail again,

2006-09-28T08:40:00.000-07:00

In the perpetual constant wandering of late the road was a hypnotic ribbon and the cat sat quietly looking out the window and the shine caught her eye and my head did swivel in a opportunistic direction which afforded the view of a family of javelinas traveling at a great gallop across a ragged flowered canyon and they as one looked back at us, a woman approaching middle years with a heavy steel heart and it was as if they said, you! are but a wound....soon to fade to scar.

2006-09-27T19:44:00.000-07:00

and the inkling to put reliance within the black walls of words when miserable actions had fallen to shreds before the peeled back eyelids was so strong that all caution was thrown into the pile of things that made us feel caustic- the shrieking tea kettle, the braking taxi- this is you being impotent. i shall grow my hands back and cast you from me as a filthy vaseline covered object. for i am of fury.

2006-07-19T21:27:00.000-07:00

stand there in winter white with feet planted firmly in the center of the red ant hill and by means of internal clock, compass and common intuition, gage the pain of a million bites in relation to falling from a burning skycraper or being hacked to pieces with a machete and suddenly the illusionary importance of our petty concerns vanishes as quickly as the ants strip the flesh of a small animal, leaving shining true white tinted bones to gleam in midnight anguish.

2006-07-19T21:20:00.000-07:00

i wish for the right to peel back a corner of my head and lean slightly over to let it all slide out into the corner of the darkened room then start at my hips and peel my skin in two equal sections to add to the floor until the whirling thoughts that distract me could lie down with the flesh that betrays me long enough to recognize silence.

2006-07-11T21:58:00.000-07:00

goodnight, syd.

Syd Barrett Dies after 60 trips around the sun.

2006-07-11T07:39:00.000-07:00

"So equally over a valley, a hill
wood on quarry stood, each of us crying
a velvet curtain of gray
mark the blanket where the sparrows play
and the trees by the waving corn stranded
my legs move the last empty inches to you
the softness, the warmth from the weather in suspense
mote to a grog - the star a white chalk
minds shot together, our minds shot together..." SB

2006-07-07T15:45:00.000-07:00

we have all been waiting in some degree or another for the lovers to become one. for the endless social bumpings to cease, the perpetual circling in random spirals within the mind, the countless nights of lying there in darkness, waiting for a hand to lightly tough your hip and confirm in that dusty halflight that you are loved, that you are more than the receptacle for something that is bitter yet bland. we are all waiting... for deep within the rambunctious mind, you, me, we all know that it's never enough, never right, never forever.

2006-07-07T15:32:00.000-07:00

dead golden cats spread across the highway, obese men fondling their genitalia while hiding on the other side of the thrift store clothing rack, the gangly mexican boy who chops the head of the coconut off with a machete so oversized that it is laughable for the task and then looks me in the eye and hands me a straw, here, this is here in a place i do not belong for the sound of the rat thrashing in agony in the trap he set under the sink i am supposed to keep clean is more frightening than the thought of my own death so i'm up on a chair with jalepeno ant killer burning my eyes and it's all pretty funny because i might just lose an eye and then won't feel so concerned about the sound of the ticking away of each precious day accompanied by an orchestra dominated by animosity,

2006-07-07T15:24:00.000-07:00

The worlds oldest crow died yesterday. Tata's life began in 1947 when he was ejected from the nest during a violent thunderstorm and ended up in a Long Island Cemetery. The baby crow was given to a local family who tended it for over half a century. Tata never flew again but lived among us- these earth bound humans, in joy.

2006-06-01T20:26:00.000-07:00

i fear we have been lingering in the lowlands of partial fulfillment and the fervor of our sporadic laughter has been the soporific haze that has kept us lying down together, blissfully dreaming of salt covered safety.

2006-06-01T20:07:00.000-07:00

dogs got it right, they just do what they do and then walk away.

2006-06-01T19:59:00.000-07:00

studying every nook and cranny to find the way in, the thing to sever, a place to cut, a shining portion of the control panel that would mercifully render the shrieking harridan voices silent long enough to find a section of floor that looks like hope to balance my heels upon.

2006-06-01T19:43:00.000-07:00

i stood on a sidewalk and flayed open my heart while the children of miscreants were shrieking at the mechanized carnival off in a quilted distance and you were there sulking in the car behind glass wearing the dust of a million women and i'm not sure that my skin has not sloughed off during some akward run away from that which hurt- that which is your fucking indifference, your fear of holding my hand in public.

2006-05-30T09:59:00.000-07:00

within this dream i see that the walls around my grandmothers dying bed are covered with these astonishing living maps of her life. there are wandering lines of streets in the neighborhood where she played, sparkling harbors and small boats letting off cotton ball sized puffs of smoke. verdant green forests stand adjacent to spacious backyards encased in halycon days wherein white washed quarter sawn oak panels reflect jovial expressions- the milk man, the boy with wagon. i am busy being entranced, hypnotized by the beauty that was her life until she sharply demands that i slip my hands into hers that are decaying with flesh unable to stay wrapped about the bones. weakly i decline but she insists so i slide my hands into her hands that are evening gloves shaped like death and together, we rip down and shred the living map and it bleeds blue water, pungent dirt, skeletonized autumn leaves and eventually cancerous matter and then it is no more and she is calm and does not seem to mind that my hands are now stuck within hers.

family coat of arms

2006-05-12T11:20:00.000-07:00

" i neither change nor bend."

2006-05-12T10:56:00.000-07:00

my grandfather joined the Scottish Merchant Marines and dutifully fought in the Korean war, WW2, basically any war he could participate in. he never respected my father who declared himself a conscientious objector when drafted for the Vietnam war and served instead in humanitarian aid projects for asthmatic and mentally retarded american children for three years.
my grandmother liked to say that neither of them were correct in their disdain for each other.
she said that her husband had seen things in war that deemed him hazardous and sadistic.
she bore that cruelty with a calm steadfastness that eventually turned her heart into a desolate & gelid place.

2006-05-12T10:46:00.000-07:00

My grandfather was a man who owned a inordinate amount of inner violence, manifesting in a terror that plagued my family. when my grandmother was seven months pregnant with my mother, he took her out to dinner and excused himself to use the restroom, slipped out the front door, drove home and removed all of his belongings. when a taxi was finally sent to return her home, the only explanation given was a cryptic hateful message written on the vanity mirror in her lipstick and the absence of his belongings like the hole in a mouth where a rotten tooth once filled.

2006-05-12T10:34:00.000-07:00

As my grandmother's illness progressed, her uncanny sense of humor understandably began to wither. one morning after a night spent with delirium, she said she felt like something was biting her. upon investigation, we discovered that she had allowed her lower dentures to escape and they had lodged themselves firmly into her backside. this was to be the last time she ever laughed.
i am honored to have inherited those teeth now, smiling upon me from inside a small, appropriately sized glass jar, placed with hope where i can see them many times a day.

Betty Virleen Haggerty July 27, 1925 to May 4, 2006

2006-05-12T10:26:00.000-07:00

Betty was brought home from the hospital in early April after being given three days to live.

We cleaned every corner, watered the plants, fluffed the quilts, washed the linens and adorned the bedside with hydrangea, magnolia & lily in an earnest attempt to set right the basic domestic issues for the coming Event.

We tended to every necessary discomfort- gave the injections, changed soiled sheets, massaged the aching limbs, cooled the fevered brow, & plumped the pillows in endless arrangements, all day- all night, never to her comfort or liking as her pain was insurmountable and required an implacable vigilance at all times.

As the cancer took it's course, her focus went awry, her syntax grew muddied and thoughts floated up and away. Hallucinations were horrifiying but often achingly beautiful such as when she appeared to be running her fingers along silken threads that had bound her hands and knees.  She was visited by white coyotes. She felt threatened by the sight of green jello.

As her condition grew gravid with the promise of an end, we hoped it would be swift and merciful but it was not.  During the 23 days she survived under our care, we witnessed a mental anguish of which common words are simply too pale to explain.  The hospice professionals that visited us confirmed that they had never seen such a difficult death; in that her unbelievable tolerance to the pain and anxiety medicine combined with unresolved life issues created superhuman levels of strength, anger and agony through which she would occasionally surface and we would briefly see the face of the woman we knew.

Betty Virleen finally passed away on May 4th in her home, according to her wishes with my mother and i, her beloved dog and dear friend Rosemary at her side.

In bearing witness to the death of my grandmother, this is what loomed obvious-

Don't let the sun set on unresolved anger.

Keep the voices of jealousy, regret and hate from yattering in your head.

Live well, take risks, laugh often.

Mostly, let those you love know it. Fiercely.

2006-04-10T20:53:00.000-07:00

my grandmother was a stunning woman with long natural nails and wavy black hair. she drove a cadillac-fast, swore and smoked and had blood red carpets that i played upon as a child. i convinced myself that the pool in her apartment complex held sharks that would appear if the shadow of the building crossed the water. she once spanked me for spilling jello on her white pant suit. she was attacked by locusts on a deserted road in texas. she could make me laugh like no other and loved me unfailingly. she was a rosie riveter in the shipyards during the war. she painted delicate & gentle birds on canvas.
now there are vultures sitting on fences outside her humble house and her hands are growing listless, feet swelling blue, kidneys failing, lungs filling with unfriendly fluids, cancer voraciously eating.
and it is never ever fair that the ones who gave what little they had should be deserted by their own lives.

2006-04-10T20:42:00.000-07:00

every girl knows that some parts of ours are made to bruise and that coersion, force or just foolish hope present the willing partner but by the calm light of day the hidden tissues will heal while you wonder what will become of yourself and by nightfall you are ready to be injured again. and again.

2006-04-10T20:32:00.000-07:00

at the ecstatic height of fervor surrounding the ominous appetite of the guillotine it became fashionable for young women to wear about their pale necks a thin red string and for banquet tables to feature miniature working guillotines so that the tiny waxen people given as party favors could be inserted and decapitated by squealing flushed erotic girls who would laugh and then suck the red sugar water from the headless dollies.

2006-03-22T18:22:00.000-08:00

then as now, i hated most everyone and high school was another dark cloth held tightly over my eyes. though there was one boy that sat alone and took no umbrage at the pejorative chips of speech flung low into our ears during the lunch hour. he would tilt his unaturally delicate neck forward to let the slide of dark hair drop over his face; speak to no one and never remove the coat of contempt draped over his thin frame. after a winter passed wherein i sat by his side every day and shadowed him through hallways and memorized the lines of fragile bone within his hands that bore startling resemblance to cunning shrikes, he finally spoke to me of riding in his car with him. and so it came to be that inside of a witching hour stood he under pale street light and i crept past parents dreaming of god with the straps of unsuitable shoes clenched in my fist and then there, parked at the couch of a curb, he asked me to braid his hair and when i came to the end which hung below his waist, he cut from my head a piece of fair colored hair which he wound tighly around and as the world through glass began to lose definition and the lights of the city night poured in faster and faster, my hair tied 'round his braid shone brightly tangled around the smallest and saddest boy i have ever known.

2006-03-01T10:06:00.000-08:00

my addiction, tapered off and neatly crystalized into fiction.
how it used to sit bed side me, never asking of my well being.

now i can spit on the love socket, rearrange the droll docket,
hide in burrows with spectral toads, challenge modes of doing.

and how rare today (the day) someone says i'm ok.
and though the moon shone cold
where our bodies laid, the parlance was warm.
(today)

2006-03-01T08:35:00.000-08:00

forgive me please.
this malevolent glee.
besides that it suits me well,
i mean, i've got glamour and i got despair.
i wear them both like pretty easter hats.
i gave up on wondering why they stare.
i just don't have friends since the gaze into my eyes
is a very cold & spacious distance.

2006-02-09T08:02:00.000-08:00

if only i could peer inside you to ascertain what odium lies obscured by glistening entrails and moon white cage of ribs that props you up there under your jocular grin and joie de vivre for cruelty for in two shakes of a lambs tail, you can cast without prudence, a hex so dark as to cast away the longing i feel for you.

2006-01-25T09:47:00.000-08:00

looking out of small dusty windows for mexican wrestlers, those men that work the funeral pyres, Dr. Gunther von Hagens, men who can mesmerize cobras, command falcons and control cranky camels; my dead relatives who came across the country in covered wagons and the indians who killed three of them; contortionists, cerebral fractal freaks- people who have seen dead bodies in glaciers, intact as the day they were swallowed by ice; all those who have risen up from oppression and suffering and have walked into light.

2006-01-25T09:32:00.000-08:00

i live in a town now that is populated by old fat ladies who by day, place little brightly colored yellow and turquise song birds in cages outside of lonely single apartment dwellings that smell of yesterdays thoughts and spiteful semen to catch the breeze that wafts across the placid lake that patiently accepts the sewage water from the town that collects at the bottom and maliciously bubbles to the top where it is released in vapors that supress the songs of the little birds sitting outside in cages. at night, roving bands of misinformed miscreants travel with surplus gasoline and if the moon reflects across the lake in such a way- they'll smash the window of a car and torch it right there- i can sit on the dusty porch and watch the flames grow higher and higher. here where i live by the lake.

totenwogel

2006-01-13T17:36:00.000-08:00

he said it died for the thirst of sugar water so he encased this broken bird in a cardboard tube and filled the shameful coffin with pure salt and left it on the cluttered counter after sealing it shut with common dirt brown masking tape.

2006-01-13T16:29:00.000-08:00

the world is cruel and you are made frail by dust in your eyes stirred up by the digging of the mass graves in Poland, 1939. your vitality is taken as you and 20 million other chinese starve from famine in 1969. the nuclear winds that blow above and seep into the ground of russia in 1986 gnaw at your bone marrow. your home is shattered in 1993 when the ground under india shakes 22,000 people into death. is this you they pull from under the rubble caused by the bombing of the nairobi embassy in 1998? and there you are again- being battered by the tornado winds that raced along upward of 300 miles per hour in oklahoma,1999. all you can do is turn your eyes away and look straight into the face of compassion.

2006-01-07T19:43:00.000-08:00

i can sit at the table and be polite and act curious while keeping one eye firmly planted on the dirty ceiling that conceals the wide jagged night sky and see past all of the indifference for what really intrigues me is not love but rather the length of the cat as it slinks round the corner looking longer than stripes should reach and the lilt of my lonely leg slipping away to take comfort in this mental onanism which grows more refined than the crystalline salt he pours over the wetness of my joy.

2006-01-01T22:54:00.000-08:00

and in this place where the tracks ran through said the meekest of us that all grace had laid down as if by waste and the breeze sang by bundled all up in a bye and bye that was anything but sublime.

2005-12-21T08:43:00.000-08:00

spanning time within the confines of the penal mind. lighting upon crimes of immense incendiary impact. keeping company with fermentation and urinating prodigiously out in the dusty fields where the crows hop about disgruntled upon discarded broken doll molds.

2005-11-16T08:45:00.000-08:00

open the eyes and they are there, welcome them! those animated black worms of self doubt that tangle themselves menacingly around your heart when the lover recoils from your hand in the deep dark of night and when your mother's sigh of regret grazes your cheek and your child clumsily feigns concern from many miles away.. come in you say! here are the lock pick tools in a soft worn leather case, here is the cabinet made of skin and bones where i keep my volition- the lock upon it should be easy to break- here, i will lie down on the bed so that you might get beter purchase on the matter. open it, tear it out and put it in your mouth, then lead me into the valley of the shadow of uncertainty.

2005-11-16T08:22:00.000-08:00

2005-11-16T07:59:00.000-08:00

stephen stole my mom in the nick of time from her job as a roller skating waitress at the bob's big boy in glendale, california which shared a prominent location on the main drag with an unsuspectable auto body shop which hid the depraved actions of angelo buono and kenneth bianchi- otherwise known as the hillside stranglers who began their absurd behavior shortly after the lovebirds made their migration north in the company of 12 cats of various sizes and paint jobs who shared a penchant for shitting in my dad's boots at night. between the bouts of guilt ridden phone calls placed on the sides of lonely roads to panic stricken parents to the colorful explosion of the drugs of youth there existed many tribulations yet true exuberance within each others company. the spinning top of their life eventually came to rest on the edges of an indian reservation in an oregon forest where i came into this world on a night filled with wild thunder and lightening that stole the power from the hospital where my mom laid labouring. outside, the mighty river rose up and swept away many, many young trees.

2005-11-08T16:52:00.000-08:00

my dear dad taught me a little something recently about walking forward into life as opposed to lurking akwardly back at those deep edges. we sat together in a dark room and i put my fears on the table before him and this is what he did. took my hand- looked at my wrist carefully, then asked me to find my own pulse there. i did. he said to feel my heart beat for a bit. meanwhile the earth rolled away from the sun and the night slid into the room. he grinned and told me i had found my own personal gratitude button, right there on my own wrist.

2005-11-08T10:02:00.000-08:00

several days of sorrow and apathy were rudely interrupted by an irascible flamenco performed on the roof by several crows which startled me from the bedclothes to stumble about but Curiosity offered a hand and led me to the kitchen where i found crust to throw on the roof to feed the pesky dancers who then laughed and shrieked at me as i went rooting through the yard with squinty mole like eyes in search of new dead things.

2005-10-11T07:58:00.000-07:00

annoy me no more, for i'm old.
reddened by the hands- skin gone thin.
me- my own bed stain.
every image blurred with punk fraught cut away vision.
i can cut through a cold soaked heart.
table for none.

2005-10-11T07:51:00.000-07:00

a man's wilted father in some obscure town somewhere near a boarded up asylum was forced to drink mercury from a mason jelly jar after being robbed of his liquor cabinet and pocket change by a dangerously bored pimply youth. The old man was surrounded by anxious family who placed a plastic icon over the hospital bed and paced about with their eyes bouncing like mad hornets from their father to their Savior from their savior to their Father, taking brief puncuations to congregate in the hallway in small pairs to reach dissent of matters pertaining to whom the 1979 Chevy would go to and so on and so forth. The mercury took two months to kill the old man. That's a long time to die.

2005-09-23T16:13:00.000-07:00

...held them in my hands to search for reason but found no means of death for three black and menacing birds yet these are the birds i saw when i first lifted my eyes upon the heavens and these remain those three birds whom i'll continue to watch in flight and pray to the infinite blackness of unknowing that death will grant me the grace to be one of these three birds.

2005-09-23T15:57:00.000-07:00

Opal Marie Petty was 16 yrs old in 1934 when she began to see a dark lurking man laughing at her and winding scrub weed around his neck outside of her window. Her God fearing parents were persuaded by the Doctor to have her institutionalized when she began digging her own grave in the Texas dirt with a butcher knife. She was packed up with a simple red dotted dress and sent into the mental hospitals which during the Depression Era meant that conditions were grim, meager, desperate- patients slept on concrete floors and tended each others needs since the staff were cruel and far between. Opal's custodial care in treatment of her mental illness consisted of 35 years of work in the hospital laundry where she earned $2 a week. Eventually 51 years passed and Opal's sister took to concern and fought the state of Texas for release. In the passing of time that was to follow, Opal recovered as well as could and took an interest in making clothes for the 6 dolls she bought with the earnings form the hospital laundry and treated them as her babies she never had due to forced sterilization. She began to play the piano and took delight in choosing colors with which to paint her fingernails and then she died on a fine spring day in the month of march in the year of someones Lord, 2005.

2005-09-23T15:05:00.000-07:00

i'm leaving home and fretting over where to pack the collection of oddly shaped spoons fashioned from many metals by gypsies who cut off fingers when the ring would not slide off.

2005-09-07T10:41:00.000-07:00

they gave us small pieces of wood for writing down fears, gratitudes, confessions and forgiveness which grew anonymous in the sheer mass of all these fervent hopes but when the temple went up in flames, the smoke billowed out over the desert and everyone mentioned began to dream in color.

2005-09-07T10:37:00.000-07:00

the only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes. Marcel Proust

2005-09-07T10:15:00.000-07:00

this is certain- these things i lay at your feet. not heavy things, for perfection weighs more..no, they will be objects to rest in your palm- of substance, none. things of me are shaped in air. vapor. sleep. giants. materials made yet never said. acidic. i am chemical. count on me to collapse, be sporadic, sullen, wet. i evaporate nice, clean and effortlessly the moment you tire of me. and if you grow weak, it's ok for nothing i did or will give you could ever be that heavy.

2005-07-14T18:35:00.000-07:00

i should have gone to college and gone into real estate and got myself an aquarium, thats what i should have done.......Jeffry Dahmer

2005-07-14T18:29:00.000-07:00

a long stretch of time had passed wherein those around me had excelled at their talents while i had spent aimless hours seeking some lord at the edge of the water and so one day i woke from a stupor and found myself facing him in some inconsequential establishment on a street angry with traffic and short foreign women and i began to observe him be utterly alone with company present and the thought crashed down like so many days spent in wonder and it said this- it is better to be alone and so then all that had come before and would pass was rendered wasteful- and i knew there would be no help for i'd done it again- taken the impressions- scents and sounds of a man and built myself a memory tank to keep them in that is neither shallow enough to climb out of or deep enough to drown in.

2005-06-17T20:08:00.000-07:00

i was the mother of many small children and we were trying to organize and pack our belongings in a hurry and there were stuffed toys and dog eared books and little shoes with one lace missing and i kept trying to be heard above the din of many small nervous voices for there was a great nameless and faceless entity pressing down upon us from a great height and the cluttered rooms of our little house were darkening further and no priority could be found as to what to take as the certainty of our passage was diminishing greatly with each wave of frustration and i heard a barely audible click come from within the ear of the child clutching my braids and i pulled him close to my eyes and peered inside and saw a pulsing black worm that looked once at me then burrowed in, deeply slithered so far in, yes- all the way in. then it was done.

2005-06-17T19:52:00.000-07:00

wait till it all comes back to you conservative, pea-brained fucks clad in suits and ties who listen to talk radio hosts who claim that mothers who are growing angry and nervous that their boys are still there playing war should exalt in the fact that they are mothers of WARRIORS and this is great until it all shatters and real stress rains down from skies and meals at expensive magnets for snobbery and plastic additions to bodies get interrupted by air sirens and does anyone ever wonder why those on the planet who are exposed to real crisis are the ones who shine the farthest when held up next to the millions of panting, jostling- throbbing with self interest masses? it will both start and end in the dirt.

2005-06-17T19:33:00.000-07:00

i met a woman today who had an inordinate amount of compulsion regarding the passage of water. she had several hundred plastic containers ranging in all sizes and shapes, some battered and cracked but never the less critical in her mad race to contain every drop that casually dripped from the bathroom faucet to the mist of spray that shot from the sprinkler and did not reach the plant but rather the undeserving concrete and then back she would rush to check the progress of the filling of the cottage cheese container from the squirt that came steadily from the crack in the garden hose and if the containers were not enough or filled too rapidly, she would begin to wring the many cloths that had been carefully arranged around the forementioned containers as the careful back up plan to keep all these water molecules in their precise place and moment for precious process of staying sane at any cost of time or method, if only for the duration of the sad life at hand.

2005-05-29T11:43:00.000-07:00

it will neither be the car he drives nor the home he owns but rather the weapons and tools that he has gathered...

2005-05-29T11:36:00.000-07:00

a maggot viewed at high zoom resolution looks like a klu klux klan freak wearing sky blue goggles while bee hives seen from 6,000 feet above resemble syphilitic white bumps on the tongue of the landscape and mormons have upkeep issues with oak leaves and uncles lie dead on porches and nothing really changes in the patterns of traffic regardless of what state you are in and degrees of dis-ease rarely shift from day to day thereby rendering the astaticism factor the true winner in this race to attain some degree of comfort. amen.

2005-05-29T11:22:00.000-07:00

i won't regret, negate or recapitulate. neither will i wait a thousand days for you even though you changed the maggots in my sores to emeralds.