Dismembership

**updated to new version 12/22/08**

For two days I wait for my strength to come back while she goes through the motions with blankets and food. She feeds me soup made of cabbage, carrots, onions, turnips and celery because they’re made of mostly water and cellulose; fibers that don’t digest. When I reach for more she refuses, saying, “I know how much to feed you.” She spoons me little dribbles of the chunky, watery stuff and says, “This is a negative calorie food, it’s so low calorie your body burns more processing it than it gains.”

Food is chewed, the jaw muscles working, the tongue pushing, saliva beginning the breakdown of starches and turning it into a lump called the bolus. This is swallowed, the esophagus moving it down to the stomach through a squeezing, squishing process of peristalsis. Down in the stomach, acid is produced and mixed with the food before passing it to the small intestine where the gall bladder and pancreas send digestive juices, allowing the body to start absorbing the liquefied food. That continues on through the large intestine, until finally anything that isn’t absorbed is passed into the bladder and colon to be eliminated, of course, through the urinary tract and anus. All of this requires energy to perform.

“Metabolism is like a switch, with an on position and an off position.”

What she doesn’t understand is that seventy percent of human metabolism takes place in the basal metabolic rate, which is technical for staying alive. Twenty-five percent is exercise, leaving only five percent to thermogenesis, or the absorption and storing of calories. For all that work, the energy burn-off is relatively low.

“We can get rid of that stomach if you leave it up to me,” she says.

All the theories in the world fester in the absence of fact.

“Can you make out colors yet,” she asks and puts down the bowl to look through a magazine. Around us is a hangar filled with food and clothes stacked up to the ceiling. Rows of black-and-white family sizes wholesaled in plastic, sunflower seeds by the bucket and soaps by the dozens.

Like a clean pentagram we camp, surrounded by a circle of activated air fresheners. “You don’t want to know what the meat section smells like,” she says, “And I thought it was nasty at regular-sized places.”

“Is there a pharmacy here?”

“Of course.”

“Help me up.”

Past tomato sauce and chocolate powder, past the bakery dotted with gray-green breads, past tables of over-sized books and variety pack underwear, past rows guarded by the monoliths of this departed culture I find the pharmacy and tear through it. I know where to look and I know what I’m doing. I know milligrams and I want nothing else. Fuck everything but time-releases cheated on with splitting and crushing. Fuck the shriveled world like these displays of sitting fruit, this pathetic failed suicide stumbling and drooling with disappointed family.

I’m still pushing and throwing through bottles with a woman’s screams in my ears when everything kicks in and the sounds twist away, lost in the insulation of the compounds. I welcome the monster into my heart and let it tear as it wants to tear, burn and build and play in the black sand and shit of what this has become. I see only flashes, a scrapbook of what it wants me to see filled with photos of a new place built by broken things shove-assembled together, of fires lit and stamped, of arms coming up to defend.

Let the anger of the lost pour through me, the drowning of a billion destinies and plans, of legacies marching on and on into the brink of flame. Plans for babies and music and record keeping and record making. Let me put to rest the idea this was all going somewhere, let me sit at its grave and say everything’s square now. Let my fingers form revenge, and to hell with who I am.

Hours of this war pass.

When I’m seeing live again I’m marathon breathing and covered in cuts and blood in a rearranged place. I find Adena hiding behind the door of a plastic play set covered in motor oil and ripped cloth and she screams and pulls away from me, a look of murder witness in her eyes as I reassure and promise her but it does nothing.

It’s obvious there’s no going back now, so I find an axe and the door, putting the barricade back behind me and walking out through the putrid crowd and into a wind storm, all the time hacking, hacking, hacking.

Redox Signalling

We keep our eyes shut as we drive, with sweaty hands, heavy collars. The rogues in our body cavities bouncing in solvent cages as we claw at the wheel. The two of us, painting pictures of burning places over each others picture I.D.

Skin on our cheeks tightened, we close in. Blacktop oil drawn to the rain and heated past our tires, waxen slick as the claw palms of water walker spiders.

"When we meet it'll be on the corner of Fist Street and Blood Puddle Lane," you joke, and in your laugh there is an echo that will reach past the deaths of our children's children who will know, for once in their time, something real.

Vinyl For Glass

Break the beat of the gunshot
Clap clap fuzz
Five year ashes falling down and filtered out

Synthesizer punching ear to ear
Piano wrath slid to the teeth
Just a click to the world
And leave the nerve water behind

Hold

The blade goes in slow as a kiss, her skin like wet paper with a pen across it. The ink seeps through her fibers a spreading flame taking secrets between them. Down to the ground, gentle, holding in close one more time. A deep voice whispering, “It was her.”

Scratch

In nervous fatalism he crept
pulling himself down the streets
looking for eyes to win over
and push in

When he found one old enough
and she lit up at him
his return smile meant
I'm sorry

Soil

Across thick tableau the gray trees stood,
Arthritic spines carved in scars and
Blue-green canopies into
Filthy question marks.

Holding close the cold bodies and nests,
Designed of fallen pieces, with skills born to ancient brains
While the roots grabbed and spun, eating earth,
Squeezing water through arms painted in scape and bacterium.

The seeds fell, the petals sank, the wind with it's tongue in everything.

The man stood above them wearing anti-suit,
Whitened teeth auto-dialing his wife to electro-disappoint his kids.

Telling them he couldn't make it home,
Blaming it on traffic when all he wanted
Was one lousy handjob
From the shorter of the two masseuses.

Spider Queen, Carved in Neon

Fighting squalor to the faller, meningitis hooks breathe deep to the sea in no time. Bring the light to the dust of the child, flailing in brothers. Mincing worms to bring new rain. Planets cracked to eggs, dirt forming around the edges to show where the ghosts have brushed against. He sets a flame to rest, the knowledge, the schooling of a warmer time to sizes and sixes. Gas stations closing in like metal teeth, gasoline spit onto gasoline. When night bleeds it bleeds insects, when daylight bleeds it pretends not to. When the avalanche comes, make sure to shine. If you can't shine, make sure no one survives. A woman came from the ground and spit out moss. A man telling a story said, "When it ran it ran higher, into the sky, across the snow and into hieroglyphs. Caged and curious, we all sang to it and made sure it felt the way we felt right before we died. It should know, language or not, it should know that this is a lie and no one was ever born and nothing can kill what never lived." Files reviewed, there was no mouth and so no rape. The bandages cleared blame, detectors fit to the teeth and parades calling down knife rain. Winter fucked Summer, that's why they Fall. Winter fucked Summer, that's why they Fall. Spring watched like watch springs, lending eyes to the essay. When they said to show all work, he ripped out his skeleton and they laughed all the way to offices. If paper could catch it all it wouldn't be worth keeping around. Dance step murder. Two-timing swords of afterbirth, bags of powder to twitch in. His fists shit wrists. Mother of God. Madre de Dio, sus punos mierda munecas. Mirror-vomit translated and trial-sized children. If the gun doesn't know, I wouldn't go telling.

mock-band

If I formed a band, I'd want people to describe it as "Imagine an electrical fire being being put out by an old boxer, but the extinguisher is filled with pig's blood." These people would have never met each other, that would be the thought that occurred to them individually.

At least one album review would have to contain the line "...the sound of a couple breaking up in a pile of bones and mice."

Response Track

This started as a response to Steve's last blog post (http://iamnoimpact.blogspot.com/ title: "objects downstream propagate upstream").

Looking back on old writing, especially from when you were younger, just sucks. Buried on my old angelfire site is something called "discollection" which is essentially this big pile of shit that I amassed over a long period of time. It's complete garbage, and it's completely embarrassing. I keep it up though, I don't know why. I think it's a reminder to myself: don't ever, ever suck that bad again.

However, it's where I came from and I wouldn't be here without having been there. In that respect, on my computer I have my short stories in two major folders. They're titled "When I was a worm" and "Now I got my wings". Aside from being a really outdated Manson quote, they serve as a way to hold onto my past, while also knowing that it's in an entirely different category than what I do now.

As far as writing for your peers and heroes, I feel exactly the same way, to the word. On the one hand I miss the pure feeling of being thirteen and writing only for me; on the other hand, my peers and heroes are my peers and heroes because of their quality, and holding myself up to them isn't such a bad idea.

Dealing with confidence in art is a bitch. The reason we're doing it in the first place owes to some defect in our programming, and yet we have to get past those very defects to express them. Sometimes I think I have some kind of ability and talent, and then I go back and read and say "God, this was way better when it was all in my head."

I'm coming to the point where I want to share what I'm writing right now with someone for feedback, but I'm scared I'll lose momentum, or I'm scared that the beginning parts were written so long ago that they need to be redone before anyone sees them. And to, say, omit that beginning stuff for review, would mean the rest of the story wouldn't make sense. It's gonna be a long time before the whole thing is done, and I don't know if I can wait that long.

Delayed gratification is the worst part of creation. And it's not art until someone sees it.

In Robbery

His head lay on the ground,
His house unwatched
The strain filling his eyes up to burst

The leaves killed each other,
One by one
Just to cover him up

Hypodermics in the Sea Foam

These things tend to accumulate without homes further than files in folders. Might as well get them out.

-I wish N*Sync had gone out with one final album, called “Spit On My Dick”, and promoted the shit out of it.

-Supposedly there’s a video in which a guy sings the “Terminator” theme song while slowly, slowly raising a shotgun to his mouth. He pulls the trigger just a few notes into the part with the horns. The video is called “Possibly The Funniest Thing Fucking Ever”.

-When people ask me if I think Beyonce’ was good in Dreamgirls, I tell them no. But I don’t think they’re ready for that jelly.

-My grandfather used to say “I’ve never met a man I didn’t meet.” However he also used to call teardrops “Kid Lube”, so it’s not that cute.

-I don’t think I got the job. During the personality test they asked me if I thought rape was the same as murder. My answer was, “Did she enjoy it?"

-Best way to get rid of homeless people: yell "Get out of here, you GHOST."

-"I don't think we should be friends anymore. But hey, here's a t-shirt, thanks for comin' out."

Strepsiptera

Under feet built of echoes the dead town sags, dreading and melting under the strain of the ages. Building down to the Hell of the Earth, breaking down in distances of half-lives and termites.

I feel my fingers across the brick, the tempered pieces holding back the tests of rain and wind. Holding in the insectae, the pupae of evolving beasts cowering in the cold of the hidden side. Bugs that fuck and birth until something is born different and better. Something to reign.

I walk around puddles now. All the breakdown means more than anti-freeze and dust. It’s skin, it’s polymers. The Age of Rot Resistance, one and all. What burns will burn as rain, what doesn’t will know ancestors of the next keepers.

Something shifts in the day and I finger the trigger. Turn everything into sound, wait and hear and decipher the Morse code of the dead. All that’s left now is hands and guns, and sex is both. The sound passes, the moment gone, and I put her back to sleep in my pocket.

The glass goes to sound, spraying the floor. Again I listen and then I step. A crowd of cigarettes watches, a pool of tickets and gum. Like most now the air inside is damp with things rotting and growing. Expiration dates like lame jokes. Shelves hiding abandoned nests, room corners made of animal shit and seed husks. I get behind the counter and collect foods. Beef jerky and pistachios first, the proteins, and then the breads and such.

When I bend down footsteps shuffle-step past the store. I sweat pills and canned fishes. A sour smell moves through the hairs and sinuses and I wait seven full before I even scratch. Ten and I move, onto the bottled water and beer. The pack feels better now, heavier but not excessive because pounds equal seconds when you’re running hard.

All this because the Fire Realm didn’t want me.

cRickets

The book of vanishing people said: "His story started with bones," as the avenues of Manhattan collapsed into flooded subway tunnels and turned back into rivers. Rivers the otters could reclaim.

Speaking of such a thing, the woman smiled and said: "My bones are going to Hell in a handcart." Her body-frame light with laughter and degenerative loss in swiss cheese and honeycomb patterns.

And a Father, sitting in a cabin, preferred the sound of shifting wood to the voice of his wife.

The Planner

He said, “This is a story about fire. The kind that chooses.”
Rubbing his fingers together, he spoke of a time when paper meant something.
A time without fifty years of plastic,
Floating in and out of fish.
He said, “Remember this.”
Then he left, appearing on the news later that night.
The headline read “Man Murders Wife of Forty Years”
And when they dragged him away he was screaming my name, saying:
“Remember this.”

Memo.ry

With a tongue like a can of mace it jumps, eyes wide and monsterback flexed. Fire from the computer screen blowing out hopes of a failure, beasts at it’s side with paper mouths and corporate clearance. Each tooth is a gun aimed at each other in a standoff drenched in threat and laughing through sugar and caffeine and internal organs bloated with common abuse ignoring the irony of a murderer preaching peace spelled like price.

He crouches for two years on land like a sponge that absorbs but doesn’t give back. His home is set to self-destruct on Christmas Eve, papers on fire mixing with the snow. When the plows come their drivers will be paid extra to sift through the slush, handing in evidence for what may have happened here to cause such a harsh end to a six year love story told in long distances of silence, bruises and uniform smiles.

Miles, Dark Miles

Hold out their hands
Beautiful things, dripping with the sight of the two-thousand
Raging raptures and vanity cuts
Entering into battle with the alarm of the sun


And it comes to the pitiful
And focused wrenching of eyes
Twisting in embers of a family taken by flame
Photographed for politeness sake


The ships will sink
Flying sails meant to welcome the glory of the new air
Salted and salivated and dancing with the blood and seed
Of victim eating victim eating victim
Eating victim

the meeting

On a day like every other I met a man who smiled and laughed and talked to me for ten minutes until he mentioned his wife. With a different face than before he said she was

“terminAlly ill”

and the sentence started out strong but ended up _the other.

For months, he said, they’d been dealing with thi s. It’s history in the grooves of his vinyl record v0ice. Now he was here thinking he wanted to start being healthier, and when the door opened and he stopped talk|ng, I realized why.

I met his two daughters, young women w^nting a lon g puppy with little ears but not really excite.d about it. In the way they didn’t seem excited about anyTHing from now on.

He sm+led a little and told t hem he _wasn’t sure if he wanted a dog. But then his voi?ce didn’t sound like .::it::.wanted anyTH\ng an ymo re, except m

aybe o ne thin g:

to %not hav e to exp*la:n to a [d0g]

w((hat his wIFe %used t# be like .

Speed Shop

A place like this will never give you a story that starts with I was there when.

Nothing happens, not even on Saturdays when the hours are longer.

Larry will just grow his hair longer as his scalp thins and Ed will leaf through catalogs of tuner parts and Louie will quietly watch the chests of girls as his kidneys steadily calcify. On Wednesdays Louie will disappear for an hour to walk across the street to the barber. He’ll sweep up around back and take the garbage out and for that they’ll cut the hair he’s still got. When he walks out he’ll put his hat back on, the one with the pins.

Filters will sit on top of gaskets on top of drivetrains. Water pumps on radiators next to ignition wires. Spark plugs and stems, tire chains, warmers and chargers and jumpers against performance boosters and starters and compressors.

The walls will never change here really, they’ll just fill up with cable ties and lug nuts and oily dust until it gets so bad that Larry takes notice. Then he’ll clear something out or sell something or wipe something to make way for the refill. Everyone will make jokes about it or cut out aerial photos of garbage dumps and write the shop’s name across it in red marker, but no one really wants it to change. It’s an easy joke, and the complaining kills some time.

Ed will have a mustache as people wonder if he works here. Leaning over his round stomach he’ll show them pictures of the car he’s spending a hundred thousand to redo the interior of. Then he’ll say how the property taxes are getting ridiculous around here, goddamn almost nine grand and that’s a lot of money.

If you say hi to Larry he might not answer you, because that puts him in control.

An hour after noon a honk will announce the silver truck with the fold-up sides pulling up with hot dogs and Jamaican patties and potato chips and everyone will walk outside for something. Everything slow. Squinting into the weather that wasn’t how they said it’d be. They’ll all come back inside and eat around the counter in a wet chorus and talk about people in the only ways that matter: how much they weigh, how much they make and what’s wrong with them medically. “How’s the wife?” will always be answered with her latest surgery.

When asked a question, everyone will make a sucking sound against their front teeth and pause for ten seconds before replying. Anything negative ends with another pause and then, But it’s not the end of the world. Anything to abort the emotion of the thing.

And Louie, Louie will look like an ashtray with a scar up it’s neck.

Off to the left, a counter will feature fishing supplies where lures are two for five and the friend who runs it hasn’t poked his head around here in months.

And not everyone knows this but if you walk through the back, into the garage, make a left into the tires and make another left at a machine there will be a tiny bathroom with a crate of porno in the corner, mostly girls but some boys too. A sign over the toilet will talk about bulls with short horns standing close when it means to say don’t piss on the seat.

If you come back in five years, this is still the scene. Maybe missing the chair that broke and wearing different dust. Ed will shift on his stool and tell you what cancer took Louie and that it’s not the end of the world. Then he’ll tell you he doesn’t like anything foreign and it won’t sound limited to cars.

Larry will say You never know.

If you look around, you’ll find the dust is winning.

deluge.

There's something supernatural about words, the way they float around in the air like static waiting to be used. I can't count the number of times someone has used a word in conversation, one I've never heard before or maybe not in years, and it catches my attention. I let it roll around in my head, I might look it up or write it down. Then later that day I'll be reading, watching a movie, and there it is. A word I never see, never hear. At least until now.

Today I was talking to a woman about the storm that's expected. She referred to it as a "deluge", and I started thinking about the word. How I liked it, how it comes from another language. An hour later I picked up the book I'm reading, an anthology of experimental short stories I found under a table, in a second-hand book store. I read a story in it called "Motherlogue", and right there, in just the second paragraph: deluge. This is a story written in 1970, so the word isn't fresh in people's minds as if I were reading a current bestseller. No, this is just another random intervention; a word given to me and then regiven to me to highlight it's importance.

The word "deluge" isn't native to the English language, it comes from the latin root. Dis meaning off and lavere to wash. In the bible, the great flood is called The Deluge. And I've been told the Spanish word for storm is deluvia, an incredible word itself.

The only thing left now is to wait for the storm, along with anything else that may fall from the sky.

Welcome to the City

bloodstream city (blud'stre-m. sit'e-) : The human body envisioned as a metropolis, at once both foreign and home. A frightening shell in which one spends a lifetime, coming to grips with while watching it decay.