Eleventh Plague

-or- Pez/Anti-Pez

originally composed in early 2004 as a review for The Locust Plague Soundscapes (Anti 2003)

...and after persistent showers of cash-register chowder, shoulder to shoulder with walking post-it-notes, chattering houseplants and McHumanoid consume-o-trons siphoning the ankle-deep and non-negotiable overturned-honeybucket-nectar [gentle shopper, I tell you they are all clogged follicles on same hairy-backed beast!], pinned, wriggling on the Styrofoam plate for another unmistakable prelude to more of the same radioTV that plugs the [overseeing equitable cancer distribution][author’s note: thanks Mom!] TVradio that plugs the magazinebillboard plugs the newspapermovie plugs the fry-o-latervideogame plugs the ballplayercellphone plugs the lotteryticketvideopokermachine that convincingly [if you’ve been a good little stick of chalk] impersonates a good milkdrinking flagsaluting man-suit impersonating the new machine that is slated to replace the other newer impersonating machine that replaces him, but almost too slowly -

...and after Lil’ Chatty-Kathy, Johnny-Pulls-Up-His-Tubesocks and Mrs. Mayonnaise have rehearsed for the 956,832nd time their same great new engrossing infomercial, powerwashed their concrete lawns, and broadcast shimmering crystals of monosodium glutamate across the glutamate of monosodium deserts -

...and after marinating in the overflow from some unhungry-golem’s sewage-hose feedbag breathing-tube [doesn’t the new one just totally (and at such well-delineated intervals!) almost remind you of that other new one, but in almost that total way that, like, you don’t know which of the other ones it just totally almost reminds you of, or whether it really reminds you of it at all?] [author’s note: yeah, totally!] hormone supplement cocktail...

...wouldn’t it just perforate your circumstances to discover that for every Pez dispenser, there’s an equal and opposite anti-Pez dispenser?

for Holly

May, 2006


There are too goddamned many of me in this room, grappling over this stale machine, jabbing our fingers into each other’s eyes, swapping-out skin-grafts, tapping me on the shoulder every nineteen seconds, using up all the good oxygen...

"TWENTY FOUR HOURS!"

I need to brew another pot, or at least wrest out these last two molars before they ratchet back up into my skull, because the house is filling with flies. They pour, screeching at me, out of the furnace, dumping down in crisp, black static-electric mats on our faces, and by the time I discover just which one of us is writing this, we’ll all have run out of air in here.

"SPLIT THREE WAYS!"

But whoever is writing this has left me a trail of typographical errors and idiosyncratic punctuation habits...

"SINCE YOU BOUGHT ONE THIRD!"

...from which I can surmise the following: he is leaving me this trail intentionally, to throw suspicion not on himself but upon the man whom he is so abysmally and humorlessly impersonating, but behind this intention is a deeper motive, a need to be discovered for the poor imposteur that he his, and this need is, in itself, a message, though not necessarily to me, but you, his gentle reader. As I comb through his scribble, erasing, cutting and pasting, marking his misspellings in red, I realize that I have taken him out of his own writing and gently, insidiously, interpolated myself like compacted sour lozenges between his words; in being almost laughably unsuccessful at impersonating me, his would-be-scapegoat, he has impersonated himself impeccably, thus, proving to us once again just how precisely unreal a man he is.

"YOU OWN EVERYTHING!"

There are too goddamned many of me in this room, grappling over this stale machine. Between the armless one with the blunt scissor-segment prosthesis, the one-legged, three-dog-headed man, barking, belching, shitting out the words, "That’s it, I’m done!" like a suspect being interrogated under purple high-beams, the blue corpses keep piling, their faces matted in dry, dead flies. There are less of us now. The air is sweet; it is not a good sweet. Bones of each other’s that we’d broken in these last skirmishes are now healing into bricks and pipes, limbs sawed off above the joint with bitten leather strips and 90-proof-backyard-still-applejack are now growing into floor lamps, table legs and window frames. A rattling sounds in the attic, the man in starched shirt and black suspenders is lumbering down the stairs. I hear him just outside our door, now, black phlegm rattling in his black lungs, wheezing, barking, shitting out the words, "I’ll take it with me to my grave!"

-

Mannequinsex

If asked to choose, albeit reluctantly, a favorite from my "chunks" of writing, it would have to be this. Back in September 2003, this just... well, scribbled itself out of me, as a cramped block of prose... in green chalk or colored pencil (I remember, now) on a sketchpad. I still have the "manuscript," or "hard copy," as it were, in my files; looking over it, I can see how minimally edited this is. It reads at the pace in which I wrote it.


Mannequinsex


in this closely trailing after-image a leash of carbon paper touch-tones a percentage affixes itself to creeping battalion of security envelopes proofs of purchase do not detect a dial tone automatic call return service unavailable revert to original command sequence code displays item not found -

in this breathing tube feedbag hormone supplement hazard-simulation body-suit protocols echo in real-time document transfer secured deposit at fixed percentage sealant conscripts growth figures projected for windproof man-hole cover sutures in silk needle-worked rows of surface-to-air missiles -

in this echo-chamber four-pound waste disposal units open incinerator chutes for unmanned parades of lifeless packaging deliver automated transfer of interdepartmental factory-sealed fingerprint-proof parcels quarantined by tear-duct bronchial psychomotor chromatic scale involuntary time-lapse -

in this assisted living facility unedited pages slip beneath radar into bottomless landfill splices a chromosome’s bitter end beyond retina-offending chemical sunsets offshore drilling in mouthwash ziplock subdivisions ascend with main thrusters operational through troposphere ionosphere freeway pileups in textile mill zoning permits border patrol undeveloped marshlands where overheated silicon chips vibrate seventh-chord arpeggios in the telephoto lens -

in these buddy-system hazmat suits econo-lodge electric pencil sharpener harmony lays the pavement you can count on to maintain operant hair-clog formation for a guided tour of chainlink fences parking lots and the backs of people’s heads like a generic neighbor these wheel-of-fortune gelcaps keep a good dummy company in the safe oblivion of a slow-marching people-plug -

the airbag you save just may be your own -

Four-Branched Word-Sculptures...?

...or something along those lines...

These came from many an afternoon of 'name-the-band' word-association brainstorm-sessions back in 2004:

scratch - palimpsest - nimbus - architect

pelican - lotus - integer - coalesce

axis - meridian - celestial - transect

filament - redux - oceanic - assemble

el-shaddai - lexicon - umbilical - tesselate

parabolic - leviathan - epsilon - direct

alohim - repulsive - manifold - converge

cactus - division - automatic - implode

numinous - compound - synergy - embroil

supine - plexus - catalog - involve

satellite - contingent - osmotic - bypass

sovereign - centrifugal - paradox - lurk

singular - oblique - relapse - uncoil

cumbersome - anapest - rubric - dispatch