Bean Counters

Last night at work we had our annual inventory. For anyone who has ever worked retail (which is damn near everyone), you may well have been lucky enough to endure one of these freakshows.

Basically, your company hires an external company that specializes in inventory to come in and literally count every single item in your entire store. In a bookstore this is a very tedious and time-consuming event. I mean, if you worked at, say, Home Depot, it would be even more dicey as every single nail would have to be counted in that fucking hell-cave. Still, with us, this means coming in at 6 PM and staying to about 3 AM. Worse, the work is very slow, dull, repetitive, and unbelievably unrewarding.

Having sold my soul to the devil many years ago, this means that I have had the pleasure of working an inventory every year but one, back since 1991. Brutal.

Mind you, there have been inventories that have lasted for over 12 hours, and have been veritable cluster-fucks from start to finish. These are the types of events that push me to the brink of homicide.

Fortunately, over the years, much improvement has been made on the procedural end of things, with both our staff and the respective staffs of the inventory folks gaining a great deal more experience in how to maximize effectiveness with as little agony as possible.

Unfortunately, agony in this sense is fairly relative. This is because even the best inventory is still no better than getting ass raped in the polar bear pen at the Baghdad Zoo.

Bring the lube. That’s all I’m sayin’.

I guess my point here is that whenever these people descend on our store I am always amazed to sort of stand back and take in the, uh, spectacle of the whole thing. The people that are hired by inventory companies to conduct these things are real gems in the raw.

At any given night you will get a large mix of any and all of these characters, and all of them are stories unto themselves.

Here are a few totally unfair and tarnished caricatures to throw your way:

You’ve got the boss. This guy is always balding, middle-aged, wears thick 80s glasses, smells fairly mothball-ish, and acts as though when he gets home someone other than his Fleshlight will be fucking him to sleep. This is the guy who wants everyone to respect his authority, when in actuality he is as authoritarian as, well, as a white guy who looks like Groucho Marx, only goofier and a thousand times less confident, and who is about as threatening as one of the Wiggles.

Then, there is a group of about ten or so semi-heavy black ladies who invariably have real bad tattoos, gold fronts, long, curly, and very creepy nails, suspiciously unnatural looking hair (often tinted a questionable shade of silver or gold), and a strong apparent urge to go, “Pssssst...” across the aisle to their friend whenever something really important comes up, like, say, when it’s break time, or if the other person remembers who was giving who a ride later.

Then there are the Hispanic people who usually can’t speak much English, tend to ask weird questions about books you’ve never heard of, and yell louder than necessary for a “SKU-check!!” every 12 seconds because they can’t seem to figure out how to find and scan a barcode to save their lives.

Then you get a whole group of people who are too old to be doing this, seem otherwise perfectly normal and competent, and leave you wondering if maybe this isn’t some sort of cosmic penance for some sort of crime against humanity for which doing this godforsaken job is the only retribution.

Finally - and this is my favorite group - there are the “others.”

These are the undefinable oddities. These people are the ones who speak with speech impediments, have few if any teeth, appear to never have brushed the few that they might have, smell terrible, walk with a limp or some sort of other physical trait, or combination thereof, that is simply impossible to not notice and wonder about. Last night, despite some heavy competition for the award of Most Curious Inventory Person, it all went to the guy who never said a word, worked diligently, appeared to be very accurate, and also happened to have something that looked like a large gray button that was plugged directly into his skull. From the button hung a wire that went right into the the guy’s earpiece, which I assume was a sort of hearing aid that for some reason has to be plugged directly into the guy’s brain.

He won, but it was close.

I’m not slagging the guy, no reason to, just commenting on how in every single inventory there is at least one person, often more, who have some quality that grabs my attention and leaves me wondering for the rest of the night.

I’m pathetic, I know. Just love me for who I am.

At this point it would be best for me to point out that I am in no way advocating that I am somehow immune to this sort of scrutiny. I can only imagine what they were thinking about us, and thus about me.

I guess that’s all part of the fun. The humanity of it. Why, it’s downright impressive to be cooped up with 30 total strangers, in a hot building the size of a football practice facility, in the middle of the night, deliriously exhausted, all of us doing something for someone else we can’t stand, just so we can live another day and do it all over again!

So here’s to next year. Unless death finds me first.

Clam Shells

He was running through the neighborhood. He was young. He felt he was young. He wasn't sure who he was. He could see he was skinny. He was wearing a long t-shirt, but no pants, no shoes. Just the shirt and his underpants. It was night. He was in a little corner tucked into some tall trees. The wind was blowing through the tops of the trees. He felt like it gave off an oddly menacing hiss. He found himself around the back of an older building. Set off from the street, the building had a wall surrounding it, with built-in glass windows. He peered through one of the windows, trying to get a closer look at the building. Just through the trees he could make out some lettering along the top of the building. The letters, once red, now were faded and worn down. They were in Swedish. He noticed his reflection in the window. He didn't recognize himself. His hair was very curly and black. He couldn't be older than 15. He worked his way around the wall to the front of the building. The building was decades old, fairly worn, the white brick facade was graying. Inside was a sort of courtyard. It looked abandoned.

Inside the building now, he was in a sort of huge lobby, maybe forty feet high. Dusty seventies modular furniture here and there. Offset on one side was the wide open entrance to a private residence. It was beautifully decorated in the classic 70s Danish style. More modular furniture, thick orange shag, numerous Asian rugs, large, leafy potted plants. And then he noticed that there were long-haired cats laying all over the place. Maybe ten in the large front room alone. He walked in and started wandering around. Towards the back of the entrance the room fed into more rooms.

The ceiling was at a standard height in this area. There were lots of rooms, all decorated in the same style. Lots of couches and inviting seating areas. As he worked his way through the place he came across a number of people in their 20s sleeping. Attractive people. And lots of dogs. Some of them looked up at him him as he meandered past. He was nervous. Eventually he found himself in the kitchen. There was dirty dishes and half eaten plates of food everywhere. He was looking through the cupboards.

He heard someone stirring in one of the other rooms. He panicked. At the entrance to the kitchen he noticed a large beanbag chair. Not knowing what to do, he quickly laid down on the chair and pretended to sleep. One of the people from the apartment entered the kitchen. Apparently they did not notice him. They stumbled around the kitchen, audibly moving dishes around, possibly beginning to make a pot of coffee.

Several dogs were now in the kitchen, a few stopping to smell his face. The person, a girl, was talking to them in Swedish. Then her voice stopped as she noticed him. She approached him carefully. He could sense her now, kneeling before him, peering into his face, undoubtedly trying to figure out who he was. She didn't seem too particularly alarmed.

After what seemed to take forever, she began leashing the dogs and eventually led them out of the room to take them out for a walk.

This was his chance to escape before eveyone else began to wake up.

He got up, worked his way deeper into the house. He passed several more well decorated rooms, each with at least one more sleeping young adult.

Eventually he found a room well in the back of the building with a door that led to the outside. There were couches lining the walls. To the left of the door was a couch with a young man covered in a blanket. He was fucking someone. His muffled moans just audible. Against the wall to the right of the door, another young man was rousing. He sat up and saw the stranger passing through.

"Hey!" said the guy against the wall. This caught the attention of the fucking man, whose eyes met the stranger. A look of confusion and alarm on the fucker's face, he sat up. The stranger bolted for the door.

The stranger was now outside. The building was well behind him. The sun was up. It was early morning. He was in a well-maintained suburban neighborhood. The air was crisp and cool. Dew coated the beautiful thick green grass. In the distance was a large school. He was in a grassy field just off the road. A large number of children were heading towards the school from all directions. He stood in the field and watched as they filed in around him, peering at him in his t-shirt and underwear.

He looked across the field to the school, and began to run towards the school along with all the others.

As he hopped and ran through the grass he noticed that there were patches of clam shells living within the grass here and there. He was careful not to step on any of them as he got closer and closer to the school.

"Sweden", he thought to himself.

He smiled. 

Turkish Titan

Nuri Bilge Ceylan is a Turkish filmmaker and photographer. His work is stark, emotive, intense, beautiful, and well worth the effort. Look into it/him, and realize the universal humanity in the work of those unafraid to see life in all its baffling, terrifying, and oceanic glory.

Upon Gossamer Wings

There are bats about. They are persistent. And they carry with them none of the ferocious mystery we stamp upon their fragile, winged frames. No, instead they come emboldened with a whiff of the past enmeshed within their fuzzy backs. And they carry along the warm fall breeze a melancholy cry that reminds us of our youth, of a time when things seemed simple because they were so very complicated.

We stand on balconies, in yards, in fields of grass, and we cock our heads to their whispers. Because they speak directly to us.

It is time for the harvest. Despite the great droughts, despite the angry, punishing winds. It is time for the leaves to let go of their tentative holds and meander to the ground like the words that fall from our mouths upon the mossy ground of deaf ears.

There are fires being lit in hearths. There is soup in the kettle. There are lies to sort through, and a grey deception that tugs our hearts. Tonight, the truth will come. It will come, like an epic tide. And we are powerless before it. We can lie on the ground, in a ball, and we can succumb to the promise of our indifference. Or we can stand upright, stock still, and we can open ourselves to the warmth of our potential. And we can dream.

There are bats about. But tonight, the truth will come.

Shimmering Pools of Regret

I haven't posted much recently. Weep a bit. Now shut the fuck up and get over it.

Like poems? Feeling like shit? Share your favorite verse of this sort. Better still, write something on the subject. Consider this your forum for hurt.

Send me your pathetic poems via this email: johncramer68@ gmail . com. And if I don't hate it, you'll be immortalized in a blog nobody ever reads. I'll post it under our generic user log in. If you want credit, let me know, and tell me what handle you want to use. Pussies go anonymous. But if you happen to be of this ilk, so be it. Hey, It's like Christmas for morons!

Now get to work. Make my black heart proud. It's nice to have minions.

Independence Dei

Good morning, to you this morning rings aloud.

Neglect betrays your desire. On the ashes of innocence is born the child of survival. And in the earth lies the decayed history of our heart.

Can you hear its song?

And Lie at the Foot of Desire

Arise

There is a great chase that signals the unraveling. There are forces that race, that connive, that conspire to inject the totality of their powers into the singular conquest of your heart. And you are a pawn that serves a master of fear that lies before this very chase.

In all your years, untidy, undefined years, all of them, you have encountered obstacles and impediments that have labored before the will of confusion. And confusion is a most tempestuous and unforgiving bitch. 

Your place is at the feet of the wolf; its eyes, one blue, one yellow, piercing you beyond your body and into your soul. No yield. No quarter. You are powerless against it. In fact, your every effort seeks only to enliven its cause.

You have taken course upon a road that has stayed true to its promise of unease and undoing. And you have penned a script that tells of tragedy of a most personal sort. You have poured forth upon your audience the most intimate and piercing details. You have sat at the table and consumed the fatty flesh of your subject, and you have walked away with a ravenous hunger that threatens to consume all before you. God, what a bastard you are, and what a coward to bow in the face of truth.

The door handle was very cold, but goddamn if you wouldn’t swear you felt a mote of her warmth still there, after thousands had come in her stead. And goddamn if you didn’t break down and cry like a child, one you know so well, and beg it all to go back, and do it all again. 

I couldn’t do it. Though god knows I tried. Forever is such a long, long time. And still I know it well.

No one has arrived at the mantle. 

It’s a Sunday. 

Arise.

The Registry

You have left us in a quandary. You have picked yourself up from your sullied bootstraps, used sticks to pick the mud between the cracks, smelled the earth, felt the wind, and fought against the unyielding horror of truth. Because only once tucked beneath the restricting confines of unbleached dependance could you ever hope to flourish and not to dissolve within the wake of death.

We are priests of a clandestine order, and we hold within our grasp a declaration delivered between the teeth of the most innocent. It doesn’t matter that lies pave the road that leads you deeper within the pines, to a place that embraces you in forgetting. Because forgetting is a salve, an emulsified translation of a story that begins with a punch to your spleen, and then goes downhill from there. 

There is solace in pain. And solace, as you are staring up into the eye, fence slats circle you like a poor man’s halo, is a presence that comes to its rightful place with an air of solemn acceptance.

I have carved a life at the precipice, and I have absorbed the rites of agony. I have invited it, welcomed it, and I have suffered before it a thousand deaths. But it is merely a Tuesday. One of thousands. And in the morning, I will stand in an alley, smell the stench of stale permanence, and I will dream of another moment much like the ones I was given a mere day before. 

There is a hunger that has moved from my belly to my bones. I eat now, but only to shut down the devil sound. The hunger is something that is born of the sum total of, yes, that.

They are blind, robed, kneeling before a conflagration, bellows in hand, stoking the fire which knows no end. And I am tied before their chattering teeth, their stinking, drooling maws, and I am at peace. 

At peace because no matter how many turns are taken, all in the name of fear, of resentment, of rejection, of betrayal, of anger, of whatever the fuck you want the turns to be, no matter it all . . .

I sat on that bench and I lived your heart. 

All within a place that protects as much as it exposes. 

How fitting that we are where we are today, and that I am less in the absence, and that it doesn’t matter. 

There has come a wave of clarity and of definition. 

I have been given the wisdom to lay before it, without fear. 

The rest, well, the rest shits on you. Broken. Let’s walk together, and you can tell me your story. I hear it’s very good. I like a good yarn. 

I know you. 

Metal Matters

This post is an open invitation to anyone who wants to contribute to a future post, or number of posts on the subject of heavy metal. If this interests you, whoever you are, whether we know you or you live in Romania, the country with our second highest number of visitors (go figure), then hit us up. We'd love to hear from you, and you can be immortalized within these here ranks. How exciting!

METAL MATTERS

1. Before we go anywhere with this, I need you to profess your undying love for metal. So, let’s hear it. I want the person reading this to know without any question that you have a passion for the heavy stuff. I want the sort of person who might be totally uncomfortable, or maybe even pretty ignorant with metal to understand almost intuitively why someone else would feel so compelled to listen to this sort of music over any other. Don’t think of this as a sales pitch, think of it more as a testimonial to the sheer joy of heavy music.

2. When did you become a metal fan, and what were the circumstances surrounding this time in your musical life. Has it been a near-lifelong obsession? Were you a late bloomer? Was it a gradual process or were you hit over the head with it, suddenly?

3. Do you have a genre preference? How would you define that style of metal? What makes, let’s say, sludge so much better than power metal, shred better that goregrind, etc . . . 

4. Do you feel a sense of community with the metal world at large, or is this more of a personal sort of thing, almost something you keep hidden? 

5. How does metal fit into your musical makeup, and by extension, into your overall life? Does it overlap into other areas (work, your relationships, church service, workouts, etc . . .)? 

6. In what way, if any, does metal cause you problems (work, your relationships, church service, workouts, etc . . .)? In other words, if you’re, say married, does your spouse think you are a stunted child for being a metal fan? Does your boss give you shit for listening to “acid rain music,” and so on . . . Be honest.

7. What do you think about the role of gender as it relates to metal? Apply this concept to the presence of women in metal both in bands and as fans, and also the ways that masculinity, as well as femininity is expressed both by the bands and by the fans. In what ways has the historical “sausage-fest” of metal become more appealing to women (or has it?), and why? Do you see any sort of changes in metal in order to accommodate women (again, both as fans as well as band members)?

8. What about the politics of the metal world? Do you see metal as a rebellious form of music, or is it hyper-reactionary, coming across as almost ultra-conservative? Or, like most else, is it more of a grey area? If so, explain. How well do you feel metal is able to express genuine emotions at the risk of being camp or overly theatrical, or worse, at the risk of possibly presenting a veneer of empty-minded hatred and downright stupidity and intolerance? What takes place to counteract some of the mindless shock tactics and outright violence and ultimately shows metal to be a voice for whoever is expressing it, good or bad? Who represents the ugly side of metal? Who makes the fans of metal look like complicit (or, at least tacit) drones, utterly beyond sense and reason? And, beyond that, who uses metal as a true voice of transgression, leaving the listener with a broader sense of the world in which they live?

9. What is your hands-down favorite metal song? Band? Artist? Lyric? Why?

10. What’s next? Where does metal go from here? 

Mr. Whimpers

1

Let’s not denigrate ourselves here. These days it seems I can barely muster the strength to venture beyond BED -- KITCHEN -- COUCH, and back to BED.

Ever since M took her final meeting with Mr. Whimpers, my window of opportunity -- or what the rest of you might refer to as “will to live” -- has, uh, taken a bit of a hit in the ass. 

It’s okay though, we can handle it, we can adapt. There is a way out. But for right now we are doing best with BED -- KITCHEN -- COUCH -- BED.

Whimpers came to call on a dark and stormy night. I shit you not. It actually seemed darker than any other night, which seems ridiculous now since all nights are dark enough, relatively speaking. And yet somehow this night was darker. This night took your garden variety darkness and invited itself in to your parlor, literally. In fact, it was like you couldn’t get the shit off you. I feel uneasy at the thought of it now. And yeah, it was truly stormy. It came down in sheets. It tore Noah’s chapter out of the bible and wiped its ass with it. 

While I was outside closing the damn garage door, which always fucks up in an electrical storm, this creepy fuck shows up at my front door. M, as she always does to a fault, to a fucking fault, saunters right up and lets the guy in. I come back in, turn in to the sitting room, and am treated to the following. 

The power is out, so the light is out in the room, it’s clearly off, and still, when I look at this fucking guy standing in front of M, who is sitting in her plastic-covered chair, back to me, he is lit. I don’t know how, but he is lit, I can see his face. And I don’t like it. 

He is grinning from ear to fucking ear, and his skin is moving, almost rippling, but that can’t be right. Nobody’s skin ripples, right? It just isn’t something that happens. But I swear it was. And he’s got this idiotic hat, wide brim. And with his head oddly lit from some unknown source above him, and his head cocked down towards M, all I can see of him is his wide smile, and rippling on the cheeks. But that can’t be right. 

M, poor M, she is stock still, head tilted up at the fuck, and she is whimpering. It’s a delicate and fragile thing, and I don’t like it at all. It means a whole lot of bad stuff that I don’t want to think about, ever. 

As I step closer, very slowly, I round the edge of her chair and just catch for a moment that his feet are not touching the ground. Worse, the tips of his shoes, of his obsessively shiny shoes, are twitching very fast, like the movement of a fish when you stick the knife in and get ready to clean it. And that’s the feeling I get from this guy. he’s here to clean M, he’s here to devour her, he’s here to take all the light, leave only his own dark, sullied in the mud of the storm, mud that is not on his shiny shoes because they aren’t touching the ground. 

I don’t even know what to say at this point. 

I am virtually frozen at the impossibility of the whole thing. None of it makes any sense at all. The weather was bad. We felt uneasy. That was it. 

We pay our taxes, drop a couple small bills in the basket on Sundays. We do our part. I cut the grass, tip my waiter, use the self-serve lane. I buy American. 

So why us? Why M? What is there to say?

This guy, sharply and suddenly claps his hands together, and the sound is like a grenade. And I remember grenades. I did my service, I worked my way across France in ‘44, I marched into Berlin and the whole nine. I’m the real fucking deal. Yeah, so this guy claps his hands, and boom, I can’t see shit. All light is now gone. I feel something move not by me, but around me, like a fucking cold wind, and I am now on my knees. Not quite sure how I ended up down there. I just was. 

And fuck it all . . . I am whimpering too.

2

M stayed in that chair for a fucking week. I got her to eat after a couple days, but as far as the rest of what your body demands of you, well, figure it out. I had to throw the chair out after that week was up, let’s put it that way. 

She also had not a damn thing to say for that week save for one, and it was always at night when she was asleep -- she would wake me in my chair by muttering softly but repeatedly, “See you soon, see you soon, see you soon . . .”

And that was pretty much that. A week to the night later she simply got up out of her chair, went to the bathroom, showered, threw her clothes away, and went to bed.

I didn’t ask her about what happened that night, I was afraid to, to be honest. But one morning she just walked into the kitchen and plopped herself down in front of me. She was giving me that look. I told her the coffee was fine, not too bitter, and she just shook her head. 

“You were outside,” she said. “I heard this rapping on the door, not a knock but a sort of steady, even, insistent rapping. It was so slight that I found it hard to remember how long it had been going on. And you were outside, I didn’t know what to do, so I went to see what it was.

Just as I opened the door, the power went out. And still, for some reason, I can see its face.”

It. Why did she have to call him “it”? It doesn’t sound good at all. Why not “him,” because “it” is just no good. “It” confirms that something very bad happened that night and I don’t want that on my mind. I’ve put great effort into pretending I didn’t see the rippling, or the shoes, or the impossible light. I sure as fuck don’t need him to become “it.”

She continued. 

“It was grinning, and that was not good, but there was something else . . . there was this thing with his skin. I can’t explain it. It’s skin, it was -- rippling. I could see it clearly, it was shuddering, almost like fluid. It was so terrible, and I can’t even explain it. And there’s more. I noticed something moving near the ground. I looked down and I saw that this thing was literally hovering above the ground. I know, I know it sounds insane, believe me, I can’t even believe myself as I say it out loud, but I swear to you it’s true. And its shoes, they shined, they shined, I remember that, and what’s worse, they were twitching, almost blurred. I couldn’t handle it. I felt myself coming apart. I didn’t know what to do. 

And then I felt its breath on my face. 

I looked at it, I couldn’t stop myself, I felt a wave of terror down my upper back. I looked at this thing, this impossibly wide grin, and as I did this I felt it speak to me in silence.

“See you soon,” it said to me. “See you soon,” over and over, and yet it did not speak.

Somehow I found I was sitting in the chair, with no idea how I got there. It felt as though I was in a waking nightmare. It was all so impossible and still I knew it was actually happening. 

Its shoes twitching, this was the first thing I noticed. It was hulking in front of me, I looked up. Its head brushed the ceiling, and again was the terrible light. 

And it was then that I saw its eyes. I saw its eyes, damn you, I saw its eyes. And its eyes looked directly into me.”

I was stunned. I was frozen. I had no idea what to think. I noticed I had dug red grooves into my palms with my fingernails. Her story was almost unbearable. 

She went on.

“In its eyes I saw things that have taken the life from me. I saw things that force me to question it all, everything. Nothing I have ever known can be trusted. In its eyes was the sum of all madness, the end of all that is good, and the end of all that has meaning.

It was right. He was right. He will see me soon.”

That night I dreamt of a terrible flood. I was leading a group of faceless people across a pregnant river, a raging river, utterly black. There were stones that just barely broke through the madness and I stepped from one to the next to lead the way across. As I worked my way through the black I noticed huge shapes moving just below the surface. As I looked back to find those for which I was responsible, all I saw was the thing, its face alight, arms at its side, and all around it everything I had ever known was being absorbed into its body. And then it looked up . . . and I saw its eyes. I ran.

M was gone the following morning. I never saw her again. But before she was gone forever I received a call from her. 

“Is that you,” she said. “are you there?”

“Yes, yes,” I cried, but then realized she wasn’t talking to me.

I wasn’t even breathing. 

And then I heard it, a sound I will never be able to accept, and something that will undoubtedly lead me to the edges of sanity. She was whimpering. And then there was a clap. And she was gone. 

3

So, ever since, it’s been BED -- KITCHEN -- COUCH, and then BED. It’s been all I could muster. I simply have nothing left in me. But I will pull through. I have to. What’s it been now? Two years? Fuck. Two years. It’s time to move past this and make my remaining time my own. I refuse to let Whimpers take whatever I have left in this life. I owe at least that much to M.

That’s funny though. As I sit on my bed I notice under the closet door the toes of a shiny pair of shoes. And here’s the rub. They’re twitching. 

They Do Not Deserve You

It's so very late. I should be asleep, but I'm not. I'm wide awake. I'm exhausted, spent, wiped out, empty, done. yeah, all of that, but wide awake. I am letting the late great Ronnie James Dio along with Black Sabbath cradle me in its beauty; I'm listening Children of the Sea live, and it is a motherfucker. Supposedly Robert Plant and Bonzo went to a London club to catch the hot new thing (Black Sabbath) and all Plant could say was, "Wow, this is terrible." What a pretentious cocksucker.

I am butt-up against a page-turner and I don't like it. The boat is drifting down a current most foul and I didn't even buy a ticket. That's no fucking deal at all.

I can't drink enough tonight. There's not enough in the house. I'd go Sterno at this point. It's that bad.

There is a room a short space away and within they are wrapped in slumber, and they are at an emotional impasse. And a stone's throw from there I sit and I record my feelings in a pathetic attempt to tie this moment down for the future so that I (alone) can revisit this day and never let it go, and then I can get on with my life.

You absolutely have to get on with your life because by my calculations this is it, ladies. This is fucking it. Imagine spending the lion's share of it in fear. That is a tragedy and a slap in the face of plain good sense.

You ought to know that the stuff is in short supply.

You have stripped your words bare and shed them of artifice and cloaked them in a sheen of self-defense, of glory. But there is no glory in the disease that coats you like a cheap suit. You spew anger with callous disregard for tact or taste because that's just what you do, but did you know that anger is a shade of clarity with which I am intimately familiar? Did you know that your brand of anger pushes beyond the borders of humor and hurtles itself directly into the province of glee? Didn't, did you, you fuck? Did you forget that whenever you summon the forces of true rage you are walking into a neighborhood which does not fucking care about you in the slightest because you are nothing?

Didn't know that either, did you?

You claim to sweat pain and yet you are nothing but a catalyst for all of ours. It's singular, your contribution, but you know what? That's not a nice thing to say, and you are way beyond deserving of kindness. Let those who are bigger than me bestow that worthless gift upon you. I will remain content to consume you from within.

Consider it an act of mercy.

Your first, and your very, very last.

Hark the Heralds

I wear a talisman. I wear one single talisman because were I to wear an additional one for every instance in which I upheld a moment of daily life-magic into the light I wouldn’t be able to move under the weight of them all. 

Look, there really is magic all around you. This isn’t some sort of Doug Henning, fucking transcendental levitation bullshit, either. There’s just forces at work. Trust me, they’re there. Their thereness is very, very there. Give them light and let them show you the way of the righteous. You are at your best when you take your place behind them and stop all your pathetic wrangling to try and beat that which functions to precede you. I am no genius, but I fucking know that that is a god damn waste of time. 

Have I made mistakes? Holy fuck, I’m the belle of the ball. I have tripped beneath the weight of my own fallibility so many times I’m like a walking testimony to the virtues of hubris. I build monuments so that I might worship at the altar of my own stupidity. I am crippled at the mere thought of some of the most basic human interactions. And the next day? The next day I light a torch and guide myself into uncharted terrain, fearless, without hesitation and fuck you for asking. 

that’s who I am. 

But tonight, last night, these many nights before that -- I am something else. 

Heralds have shouted the arrival of my ignorance before his court, have dropped scrolls to the marbled floors detailing my every indiscretion. He is not amused. Nor should he be. 

You can do a lot with a brain. 

Mine is like a running joke. Mine is like a gag reel, an eternal next and next and next and fuck you I’m so tired of this and I am so not sure of what this means and I am never the man I was before and will be tomorrow so don’t even think of calling me him. 

That’s who I am.  

I just want to forge something that I can look at from a distance, no matter how slight, and say, “I did that.” 

I have done that. I have done that with both of my children. I step back -- they are there, being stubborn or dancing hip-hop or eating a fruit snack, and what I am lucky enough to notice is -- I did that. But I am not done. 

Where did I go off the rails? Where did I leave the plot? Where did I take a short leap off a long pier and get swallowed in the maw? 

You know what, it doesn’t matter. 

Tomorrow hasn’t happened yet. And that is why I wear this talisman. Because no matter what has come before -- and oh, what a fuck before has been -- no matter what was before, what is next doesn’t exist. 

There’s still hope. Cash it.

Dances and Falls

. . . , slouching, fading, fighting, being foolish and reading the holy texts as they are carved on moss-riddled rocks lapped by the angry sea. Crediting the walking dead with their invisible gifts and tidings, sure to take the world by storm. As we lie there, in sleep, as we crash beyond walls seemingly impenetrable and relegate the waking life to a terrible, terrible dream itself, know only perhaps a moment to pause in reflection and bask in the cooling shadow that renders us oblivious to the wages of sin. Nobody knows nothing, nobody knows no one, nobody knows.

In an instant, as the corpses line the boulevard, boney hands in salute to the grimmest parade, rotting stench of your daily reality stinging your nostrils as you crawl, bloodied, naked, in a silent agony before them, as you feverishly attempt to divine a new tenable narrative from the glut of empty, IN AN INSTANT -- you have lost. 

Arms blasting by, unstoppable, merciless, a whirlwind of enraged terror. Ain’t gonna fly when you ain’t got wings. Ooh, I get it, a motto, a catch phrase, a verbal mandala, so pretty, woven from the finest, all gone with the slightest breeze. 

And this is a motherfucking hurricane. Breathe it in, it is you. Take another dose of skin-peeling wind and piercing rains. Immerse yourself in the surge because it is an onslaught and you have nowhere to go.

It waned, was repelled, and there it was. There it was. There it were, be, was. 

It’s so very hard to bring beauty out from between the heaviest curtains of ugly. 

I am a weak man. You need not know me for who I am. So open, so shut down. So close to the very end, just like all of you, and all on my own, so very pathetic. 

I stand on my feet, yes, but perhaps only because I am shackled, I am harnessed, I am tethered. I am so far from home. I can’t lift a finger to salvage the flock from the coming flood. I can already see their bloated shapes in silhouette, floating in a muddied slur, rung, haloed with ants and maggots. there is no comfort in the end of their cries. In fact, it is deafening. And they cry for me. Corpulent, flesh sloughed off in an oily sheen, shades of purple, so very gone, so very here right now. All of it because of me, because I am incapable of building something that can last. I am an evolutionary time bomb. My time has always come. It’s not pretty, and yet it’s still very much there. 

Bring a camera, use a flash. 

I didn’t think it was supposed to be like this, but this is exactly the way it be. 

Pull up a chair and don’t forget your mask. Pull up a chair, always room up front, and watch as the little creature dances and falls and dances and falls again, and always . . .

The Wages of Spin

What to tell ... what to tell ...

This guy, knuckles dragging, balls engorged, this guy cuts a mean swathe. This guy, with his head so heavy he needs a crane to lift it. This guy, his word the butter that drips from the beds of heaven, the smoothest, most chestnut brown, most satisfying coffee picked from the highest points yet known. This guy, whose every motion is an exercise in kinetic perfection, guided from HIS own very hand. He is but a wonder to behold. This guy, his every thought so exquisitely calculated, so expertly delivered as though crafted by hand in a laboratory filled, miles long, with the most adept creative and logical minds this world has ever produced. Truly, truly a wonder ...

At least, in his own eyes.

I see this ...

This tiny man, his ears flapping away, so disproportionately large they threaten at all times to consume his head in an elephantine blanket. This man, his rose colored nose swollen at the tip like the genitalia of a great baboon. This man, with his oceanic, inflated ego, as transparent as tissue . . .

Let him taste true pain. He earned it.

Together Under the Sun

With the sun, a banner, a barter of the highest order, in celestial trade for our relative comfort back on earth, all our hopes. We shattered silence with the voice of our emptiness, raised in a world without end, a walled city, founded on a fount of fear and threat. 

In 1961, Paul Schaefer, self-appointed Lutheran minister, former Hitler Youth and former Luftwaffe medic, stepped from his plane onto the Chilean tarmac. In photos he is seen smirking. Perhaps it is because he has escaped justice back home for his crimes against boys. And perhaps it is because his true legacy lies before him. 

He purchases a large parcel of fertile land with the money he has collected from his followers. In time he brings them to Chile and from there they start to build a walled city. Within the confines of his city Schaefer’s followers develop the empty land into a seeming Utopia lush with gardens, crops, a bakery, a hospital, living quarters, an airport, a massive arsenal of weapons both brought in and manufactured on-site and even a secret maze of underground tunnels that wind beneath the colony, giving Schaefer a way to flee if necessary. 

As he establishes his stranglehold on his people through fear, intimidation and abuse, he also eventually cultivates a relationship with the newly-minted Chilean dictator, Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet, a military man, seizes power from Salvador Allende through a U.S. backed coup. 

Pinochet has many enemies, both real and imagined, a side-effect of deposing a democratically elected leader through violence. Pinochet develops a systematic plan for torturing and executing those accused of being his enemies. Unfortunately for Pinochet, his torturers are not very skilled, and thus are often unable to get much in the way of confessions from their victims because the torturers are so heavy-handed most of their victims die long before anything of value can be beaten out of them. 

By the time Pinochet is in power it is 1974 and Shaefer has virtually mastered the art of control. In fact, there is supposedly good reason to suspect that Shaefer has learned much of his torture techniques from some of the most notorious fugitives in history - men like Josef Mengele. There is also reason to believe that Schaefer’s colony is virtually a waypoint for other Nazi fugitives being funneled into South America as a sort of evil underground railroad. Schaefer, seeing opportunity fall directly in his lap, offers Pinochet his expertise on the arts of torture and murder. It’s a match made in Hell. Schaefer gets the umbrella of official protection he needs, as well as an utterly ridiculous charity status for his colony.

Shaefer is not only a revolving door for the world’s worst, however. For him, Colonia Dignidad is more of an outward expression of the way in which he wishes the world to be. He is fully established in a position of ultimate power. He surrounds himself with young boys, charged with all sorts of menial tasks at his whim, and he sexually abuses them as he sees fit. This literally goes on for decades. He creates layered and immutable laws designed to keep families apart, to keep men from being sexually involved with women. This plan is so well executed that he is able to keep his congregation from producing any children for 15 years. On the occasion that someone eventually does happen to become pregnant he separates the parents not only from each other, but also from their newborn until the child reaches the age of 6. And on, and on, and on, etc . . .

As what I imagine is a way of endearing themselves to the surrounding locals, the Colonia hospital takes in the Chileans and provides them with world-class medical care. As the Colonia’s reputation grows outside of its walls, a growing number of Chileans actually long to have their children live in the compound in order to get an education at the Colonia grade school. Many of these Chileans are trained to become loyal followers of Schaefer’s cult of personality, and many of the young boys are also sexually abused. 

Eventually, in 1990, Pinochet voluntarily leaves power as a response to pressure from the Vatican as well growing international dissatisfaction with his legacy, and is replaced by a newly-elected president, Patricio Aylwin (an opponent of Schaefer’s). With their governmental protection revoked, and as members of the Colonia escape and get the word out on what really goes on in the compound, it is a matter of time before the authorities raid the Colonia and attempt to capture Schaefer. 

Somehow, Schaefer is able to escape with a staff of thugs and nurses and eventually makes his way to Argentina. He is able to remain there, undetected, until 2005 when he is finally captured and brought to trial. 

He died last week. He was 88. 

In the footage of his being brought to the courthouse in a wheelchair, he looks at peace, calm, he gently smiles. 

There is no way to measure the damage this one man has wrought on the world. 

The colony is still there today. There are attempts at contrition from this outpost of evil, many of those so willing to comply, to enforce his madness, free to live out their days in the Chilean sun, utterly outside of the justice they deserve.