NAUSEATED DRIVE

He lives in four rooms: the bedroom, the kitchen, the office, and the bathroom. The rooms are arranged in a square, and each room has a door connecting it to the two adjacent ones. There are no outer doors. There are windows but he always keeps the shades down. He starts each day in the bedroom, and throughout the day moves counter-clockwise from kitchen, to office, to bathroom, before ending the day back in the bedroom. At the beginning or end of some days he masturbates in the bedroom, and when he does, he tries to imagine a girl standing at the foot of the bed, watching him, holding a knife. Although he can see her form clearly, and the way her clothing sits on her body, her face is always a blur whose features he can’t resolve.

In the kitchen each morning he toasts a single slice of bread and spreads a thin layer of butter over it. The bread and the butter are refreshed, silently, each night while he tries to sleep. There’s one chair at the kitchen table where he sits and eats the toast. Sometimes there’s a bowl of fruit on the table, and on those days he also has an apple or a few grapes. When he finishes eating he washes the plate in the sink and pours a bowl of steel-cut oats to snack on throughout the day. He used to put sugar on the oats but he’s trying to lose weight so now he has them plain.

He carries the oats with him into the office. The office is a large room with a high ceiling and a dusty chandelier. The room is furnished with a black leather sofa, a small coffee table, and a desk and chair facing the wall opposite the kitchen. Each morning, there’s a new stack of images printed on 8.5 x 11 inch glossy photo paper sitting on the desk. His job is to look at them, one by one, and then place them face down in a new stack. Yesterday, there were 300 images of decommissioned machinery from a chromite processing plant in Aktobe, 83 images of sunsets, and 214 images of mirrors in which the reflection of the photographer had been heavily pixelated. On the top of the stack today is an image of a stuffed animal leaning against the wall of a dirty room. The image was taken with a flash which turns the two black beads of the stuffed animal’s eyes into minuscule points of light. One of the animal’s arms is missing. He looks at 499 more images of stuffed animals in dirty rooms missing an appendage. Beneath them in the stack are 50 images of distant galaxies captured using a powerful telescope and 17 of Japanese sedans manufactured between 1998 and 2002. The sedans all have their doors flung open, like birds with four wings. There’s no one inside any of them, although the framing of the images makes it seem like there should be. After he looks at all the images he goes over to the sofa and sits down for a while. There are no clocks in the office so he doesn’t know for how long. He listens to his heartbeat and thinks about being handcuffed to a radiator and burned with cigarettes. When he starts to feel tired he gets up and walks to the bathroom.

The bathroom is the same size as the bedroom and is lit by a long florescent tube that can’t be turned off. It contains a sink, a toilet, and a bathtub. There’s no mirror over the sink. He strips and turns on the tub’s cold water tap. While he waits for the tub to fill he takes a piss and runs his fingers along the grooves between the tiles on the wall. After a few minutes he turns the tap off and gingerly lowers himself into the water until he’s completely submerged. Tiny air bubbles escape from his mouth and burst on the surface one by one.

The next day there are only three images in the stack. All are extremely grainy, low resolution, and appear to have been taken with a telephoto lens. Two of the images show a figure, its form too indistinct for sexual identification, standing on the side of a desolate road, looking away from the camera. The third is of a face, its mouth half-open, its features disappearing into blots of silver halide. He spends all day looking at them.

The Weather

Ed Book one of the crew on Tim Peeples in the Morning wasn’t on every morning, but this particular one he was. There was Clair Sims doing the weather and Tim asked Ed what he was thinking.

“I’m wondering what Clair looks like naked.” Clair, pretty but more handsome, shiny lustrous dark brown hair, brown eyes in a wide nicely shaped face, pretty mouth strong chin seemed only slightly flustered.

“It’s not a pretty sight,” her come back, got a chuckle from the two men. Clair wasn’t small, didn’t look small on TV. Big- boned, not hulking but curvy, like she’d played sports in high school and college,

curvy in her hips and butt, with sumptuous firm breasts, handsome, and undeniably sexy. Not a pretty sight, her comeback, spot on. Cool, she stood her ground, didn’t storm off set, continued the weather.

What would Ed have done had someone, while he was on camera, said the same to him? What would anyone have done? His remark so sudden. I admit I liked it, the thought of Clair naked..she had a body,

well, it’s not hard to think men and women lusted after her body, that went well with her strong delicate jaw, dark eyes and hair. “What Clair looks like”..candid, thoughtless. Her eyes showed she didn’t like it. Maybe

right after, Ed regretted what he said. But Tim Peebles’ chuckle hinted he too wondered what Clair looked like naked. What do I myself look like? My swarthy body with no clothes to mask who I am.

Young Executive

This is about race, about me, a white man writing about black men, older than I when I was 18 in Cutler, Maine, in 1966.

This is about Marks, Harris, Guy, Brown and Johnny Williams, youngest of these men, sailors, as I was. I called Johnny Willie.

In his high-pitched voice he would say, The kid’s gonna be a young executive! He wanted, after the navy, to work hard

and for that work be justly compensated, what many, even most people want. The kid’s gonna be a young executive!

Most of the sailors on the base were white as were most citizens in nearby Machias. Racially, this area, 30 miles from Canada,

was overwhelmingly white. Of the sailors I’ve mentioned Marks had the darkest skin. He was married, as was Guy, a corpsman.

Both were married and had kids. Harris, Willie and Brown and I lived in the barracks. And another black sailor, Whitfield, lived

there, he may not have been there when Willie was there. One night Willie drank too much, and peed on the floor

between his bunk and his locker. I mention it because it was an indication of something wrong, of turmoil going on

in Willie, who worked with and for Brown, as I did. Brown, a lifer, would say, when civilians came to the warehouse,

not to give them anything extra. He might have said, Don’t give those civilians shit, though he rarely swore. I think

a life in the navy was a refuge against the racism outside for Roland Brown and men like him. Though to me no one

was like him, and no one is like him. It was so unsettling the afternoon Willie came in drunk and got in Brown’s face

eager to punch Brown. Willie, shorter, stockier darker skinned in contrast to Brown’s lighter skin, could have beaten Brown up.

Brown said something to back Willie off. It could have been big trouble. Brown was tall, slightly stooped and wore a trim

mustache. He chewed gum and twirled in one corner of his mouth a toothpick. He often sang quietly to himself

in a high-pitched voice. We visited once when stationed on ships in Norfolk. It was good seeing Brown. I don’t know

where Willie went after Cutler, I hear the upbeat tone I heard back in ’66. The kid’s gonna be a young executive!

Schaeffer and Sheila

How sad when your son dies you lose the will to have sex, almost the will to live. Someone Schaeffer knows: I don’t mean to sound cold. Sheila and I met online. Soon she’s telling me she loves me. Are you nuts, I thought; you don’t know me, you’re making declarations of love. What? From a few pictures, a few words.

She retired and moved to the mountains, where she’d wanted to be. Then her son and his wife moved in with her. When we met, only online, she was wishing them gone so she could enjoy her home in peace. I got the impression they were meth heads: Deanna a convenience store clerk, Rick, good with electrical stuff, didn’t work.

Freeloaders, I thought, and used that word more than once. She said maybe they’d buy a trailer her brother owned. No. She bitched about their being with her, also about missing jewelry and money. Meth heads, I never said that to her but to myself. Then Rick died in his sleep. Mother and son, they’d never been apart.

Sex talk stopped, and love declarations. I didn’t mind; it was online, going nowhere. Even if Rick hadn’t died the chance Sheila And I would ever get together, “get it on,” Was very slim. I never said I love you back. When she said it I felt irked, annoyed, but Never told her that. The sex talk was good For a while, my feeling she wanted me.

I shuffled forwards. Got into an extra-space cave crevice. Chamber is the best term for it. Enough space to swing a cat. This is something I thought of. I had premonitions of a cat but I could not remember one clearly. Furry animal. Then I realized that I was not alone. There, in the middle of the chamber, was a stone slab. The natural bottom half of a massive stalagmite. Shiny and bare like the rest of the cave. 

This was the part where I realized that I was not alone. It was not the slab that was inhabiting this space but a cold-looking maiden that was difficult to see clearly. She had elfin features and was very pale. I guessed it was a she as I could make out the soft curves of her body. I stood still. She was lying very still. A pose that is akin to sculpture. Forlorn and bereft of the world. Crumpled, her head buried in her arms. Head buried in the subject’s arms. This was something that rang true of the pose that I was witnessing at this moment. An alluring composition of limbs. She could have been made out of porcelain. That is how pale she was. Very smooth. A tangle of limbs like the branches of a tree. 

I moved around her and further ascertained the nature of her sex. I witnessed aspects of her that certified that she was a woman with a head of fine black hair to bury her arms in. Knees hitched up beneath her. Still unsure of her life-ness though. Still very little to suggest that she was in-fact animate and not the opposite. That she possessed faculties like I did and was not just a vision. But the skin I was looking at looked fleshy as I got closer. Hints of blue made her skin seem like that of a cave dweller. This was probably from the light. No natural movements from her collection of curved lines. A subtle pile of human embodiments composed in such a way as to look cold and smooth and timeless. 

Then she did move. She moved slowly like the unwinding of a clock. She had, I presume, become aware of me in the emptiness of that chamber. Aware of my standing there next to her. She rolled over onto her back and sat up resting on one hand behind her. The other arm was extended in my direction and the elbow on top of the knee on one side of her. There she regarded me. Looked at me from out of the mass of silky black hair. A smouldering gaze and long willow-branch arms. The angles of her cut good shapes. Ones that were alluring. They had symmetry. They were minimalist. They were all I could make out in the sick-light. She rotated her wrist and curled a finger to beckon me.

This was not that unusual. There was quite a lot of this happening in these spaces. In fact, when we were not fighting on the surface above us. So I was not completely sceptical. This was why I moved forwards to her. This was why I dropped what I was wearing. This was why I climbed onto the slab with her. This was why I felt the desire run hot through me. This was why I felt all of the desires I had ever had well up inside of me. These things that were in my genetic programming. That stretched back to Earth. This was why this was happening. 

She felt smooth but not completely cold. Faint glimmers of life within her long body. It wrapped around me. Felt me feeling it. Soft silky thickness of fine hair sashaying like water down over my back. Enveloping pillars of her tendril legs allowed for passage to her waist. Mounds of her breasts pressed against me pinned by her rib cage. She felt like marble. 

Desire and heat is what I felt. Glossy finishing of images that spun the way double helixes do. Fantasies contained beyond vision. Marble patterns of cloud-stone. Dripping caramel poured into the naked vestiges of puffy white ice-cream. Fields sprinkled with crushed nuts. Smell of mildew from the cave. Velvety softness of her inner thigh. Slender branches and perfumed pages elicited in me proud engorging. Engorgings of a hard cock that was close to erupting. Salivating slightly I slid it in and out of her. She fucked into me with her hips, causing her to buck and gasp, snarl and bite at my shoulder through the silky shroud of black hair that tumbled down her face. The wet black pubic paint stroke. Our bones ground desperately into each other and I came gasping and felt something leave my body. Some scum. Some fluttering heartbeat that pulsed grotesquely out of the end of me. 

And the marble sheen of her contours began immediately to whither. The lights I had perceived inside her eyes receded. Eyeballs shrivelled like old grapes. First the feeling of tree bark on her skin. Rippled and wrinkled. Then to the dry leaves of paper and layers flaking off. One after the other exfoliating in layers. Gooseberry sheaths tearing; and seams splitting. Discarded wings of flying ants. To reveal cracks and rips all over her body. Below this deteriorating skin were insects wriggling and she was coming apart. Folding downwards. Ripping away. Innards revealed only as a seething mass of bugs. Centipedes, worms and ants. Frantically crawling away and over me. They fled. Entropy forcing them into every direction. Until only I was left alone on the stone table. Spent, traded and quite horrified.

TO AN EX ON THE FIRST ANNIVERSARY OF OUR BREAKUP

I still can’t put a face, a body, to the sound.

It’s not like the flapping wings, the shrill cry that go to make a seagull. .

Or the rumble., the loud rattle, of which every passing truck is constructed.

No clue . as to who ascends the stairs, the sounds as devoid of identity as the breeze from the east.

It may not .even be a person. Just the creaking of wood. Or the random steps of my imagination.

I’m lying in bed. It’s dark. And someone may or may not be ascending the stairs to my room.

That’s how it is with me.       ‘      . How is it with you?

SIXTEEN

A blonde of fifty subtracts her thirty-four-year-old daughter from the weary face in the mirror and comes up with a terrified girl of sixteen. Thirty-four years ago, she landed herself with both disgrace and responsibility, cut short the dreams that she didn’t have anyhow. Her body barely sculpted then, and now, so scarred, and so lived in, not just by herself but with so many other boarders along the way. The wrinkles arrive, and the paint won’t cover them. Joints ache and her lips are as hard as the soles of her feet. But it’s the numbers that haunt her. Thirty-four is always tsking from fifty. doesn’t stop until it comes up with sixteen. Just a girl, too young, too stupid, too trusting, too careless… the math leaves nothing out.

THE BOXING GAME

So caught up in the fight, as two men pounded each other in a frenzy of violence and pain that you, among all of that crazed crowd, spat lightning from your eyes while your jaw clapped thunder – the game demands everyone in the audience be in that ring in their own way – and you were in there swinging your arms and slugging. at first the boxers, then strangers, then everyone you knew.

BARELY

Barely out of bed when the phone rings. I’ve no idea how this person got my number. And barely remember the one he’s telling me has committed suicide. But he felt it important that I should hear it from him first. “Thanks for letting me know,” I say, then hang up. The rest of my day I’m struggling to recall the dead guy, not just to try to understand why he died but to establish that he ever actually lived. Yes, the name does amount to something in my memory banks. But the face is foggy. So how can I ever get to what was eating his soul? There are reasons enough for a guy to end it all. Damaged heart, skewed finances. Maybe even something in the brain, an interloper with a death wish for the both of them. And there’s billions of people in the world. I could line up each one with a possible motive if I had the time. Or if I knew them well enough to put the hopeless pieces together. Meanwhile, a dead man is out there somewhere. That’s according to a guy I barely knew was living.

Your contours of behavior are spiralling out of control. We think you have challenges with time perception. Spatial organization. Your filing [pile] system is a disaster. We recommend cranial electromagnetic therapy.

There is a brain-machine in Astoria, Queens, NYC. Report immediately to the facility. Spaghetti nightmares in the gulag archipelago will be alleviated. Speak, as every speaker must: Open.

You intercepted cosmic noise as a child. Do you remember?

Yes.

And what did you do with the memory?

I forget.

Are you addicted to excitement?

Yes.

Human consciousness is a sinkhole into a netherworld. We talk to each other as if we exist. Are you in control of… a psychogeographic domain? Impulse control. Perception. Sensing things… coming into the nervous system.

We operate a submersible computer interface to “speak” with squid-like extraterrestrials under the icy crust of Ganymede.

Your Volkswagen Beetle is a brokedown palace.

At age 84 or 94 you are just trying to do the right thing. Eat. Survive. 24 or 44. People make noise.

Your coördinates, please.                                Are you here/there/now?

Hyperfocus. And you achieve clarity. Blur the edges.

Focus on the [hyper]active personality.

Make art.

Fuck.

We are algebraic structures. Exponents of each Other. I am already/not yet. You are a remote possibility. I am radical Uncertainty.

Prometheus steals fire from Olympus.

Burn the Forest.

Wilderness.

Experimental Station # 2 in a flat wilderness in 1907.

Are you satisfied with your image feedback system?

Experimental TV.

You turn [on] Television                              Television turns you                              [on].

The consumers of reality are hungry again. Are you going to feed them?                                                            delete                                                            return                                                            shift

Primordial loneliness.

Image-text bombardments from the ether.

She speaks of Neolithic Britain & stone rings functioning as panopticons.

Tape recorder experiments.

You cannot hold on to any of it. The flux. The flicker.

Sippers of coffee, unite.

We are temporal beings.

Spaghetti nightmares in Astoria, Queens.

Eat the orchiette.

Eat.

My breast is in her mouth. She is tonguing my nipple & palming my right buttock.

I should keep talking talking talking… and then nobody gets in the way. Am I right?... or am I right?

Physical bodies in space & time.

Our bodies are floating over/under each other.

We are on a lost highway.

People “fluctuate” before your eyes.

Also means you.

Come. Please come. She whispers.

I feel unsettled.

Like maybe… what?

The musicality of your existence… the silence… the calm.

She feels my cock coming to life.

I kiss your Apocalypse.

…

I am sending you a “wire-photo.” Can you see it? Dots on a page. Points. Pixels.

I remember your bottom lip catching on the dome of my cock. The upper lip soon followed. And the blowjob commenced.

I lay there in absolute disbelief.

Me.

Of all people.

…

She says she can feel the pulse in my cock when I come.

Squirt squirt squirt.

We are everyday people, all of us. Digging into the every day. Digging into existence. Trying to make it squirt.

Keep punching the keys.

Keep… believing.

They do not find the naked man.  Police and neighbors patrol in unmarked vans.  The eye-witness sightings will decrease not cease. No photographic clues released.  He does not appear on Ring doorbell videos — by iPhone no nudity disclosed.  Runs serene on suburban streets.  His show is fleeting, if indiscrete and when it’s done there are only words, no physical evidence it occurred.  Does his old- fashioned streak seek to revive the mythical power of perversion live — to be bold in January cold, no device in hand? It is the secret of the naked man.

2                             Genuine Networking Possibilities

4                             5 Happy Friends

6                             S-C-R-A-T-C-H-A-T-T-H-A-T

7                             The Spree

9                             the stack

                       He buys the burner, with cash, and goes                        to the usual spot in the park, by the pond,                        to make the call. He tries to disguise his                        voice, making it deeper and gruffer, then                        he goes to the clearing and buries the                        phone with his hands, flattens the earth                        with his feet, drops the SIM in the pond,                        bends down to wash his hands.

                      He is waiting up the road. He is wearing                       a suit that is too big for him and makes                       him look like a child. His beard is                       trimmed to an uneven curve. He puts on                       an orange lanyard and positions it under                       his jacket so it is visible around his neck.

                      People start coming out of the building                       and bunching together in the square up                       the road where they eat their lunches on                       dry days. He’s seen them there all the                       time, wearing their colour-coded                       lanyards. They are separated by                       department.

                      He moves into the crowd and starts                       watching how they move their arms,                       copying how they stand, then positions                       himself on the edge of a group.

                       He does something with his mouth, an                        exasperated sound, like one of them had                        just done. The man in front of him - grey                        eyes and razor burn - turns and nods with                        pursed lips, and asks him how he’s                        dealing with the Glitch. He tells the man                        he’s had some success with it. The man                        purses his lips and nods again, then asks                        him if he’d take a look at their setup                        when he’s got a minute. He nods and                        says: ‘sure.’

                       They were told it was safe to go back                        inside. The building had been checked                        completely. It was a false alarm.

                        He follows them down the street and                         talks with the man about how the Project                         is being mismanaged by pricks like                         Sullivan, who’s only where he is because                         his uncle’s on the board of the parent                         company. He nods and says: ‘totally.’

                        As they cluster by the entrance, he breaks                         from the crowd and runs without looking                         back. He goes to his position up the road                         and bends to catch his breath.

                        He watches them all go back inside.

                        On the way home he buys another burner.

Limited psychosis in most cases | little dissembling or doubt | doctrinal contingency | horizontal posture | mostly mimetic | SUBJECT #1 says I can hear singing coming through the wall, hymns | SUBJECT #2 tells me at length about United Fruit and how the war never ended | SUBJECT #3 claims I saw the vans lined up and the bricks being unloaded there | SUBJECT #4 says that nothing gets changed without an eruption | SUBJECT #5 lays out detailed plans he made with handles and AVIs of statues and cathedrals | SUBJECT #1 says I’m done serving | SUBJECT #2 says we dress like that to throw people off, says soy armour with a laugh | SUBJECT #3 asks me what my uniform means, and smirks | SUBJECT #4 says jokes get serious quick when there’s no other alternative, and that’s when the serious men come out | SUBJECT #5 says we’re tired of acting alone | SUBJECT #1 tells me it’s inevitable, we’re just helping it along | SUBJECT #2 says we’ll gate-crash anybody’s party, because the streets are everyone’s, right? | SUBJECT #3 says I was there in a purely protective capacity, I can only account for myself | SUBJECT #4 says force was met with force | SUBJECT #5 says you taught us to be methodical and focused on foreign streets | SUBJECT #1 says we wanted to make it clear to them that their numbers mean nothing | SUBJECT #2 says we can’t be tied down to any ideas or goals, we reject the old binaries | SUBJECT #3 says ALL free people need protection | SUBJECT #4 admits he’s been in jail three or four times, but won’t specify the crime | SUBJECT #5 says we want both sides to collapse, we make no distinction, they belong to the same compromise | SUBJECT #1 says the boomers were trying to push us out | SUBJECT #2 says they’ve had their time, they’re worn out | SUBJECT #3 says they were holding us back | SUBJECT #4 says things get confused and people get hurt | SUBJECT #5 says their wars weren’t our wars | SUBJECT #1 says we just chanted along with everyone else | SUBJECT #2 says it’s when it gets dark that the hardware comes out | SUBJECT #3 says I’m sad it will kick off without us now, but it WILL kick off |SUBJECT #4 says we came back fucked to a fucked country | SUBJECT #5 says blood makes good paint | SUBJECT #1 says the crowd made the move, I don’t know who provided the cocktails | SUBJECT #2 says we all tried to hold SUBJECT #5 back but he was too strong for us | SUBJECT #3 says SUBJECT #5 never got over the loss of his daughter while he was overseas | SUBJECT #4 says SUBJECT #5 said he knew she’d come back to him | SUBJECT #5 says I knew I would see her again, I saw her in the fire and I went towards her | SUBJECT #1 says they ban you and narrow you down to no other option | SUBJECT #2 says shills are everywhere, that’s what we learnt, we were swimming in alphabet soup the whole time | SUBJECT #3 says we got smothered by our own blanket | SUBJECT #4 says I took SUBJECT #5 down before he went in the building | SUBJECT #5 begins to break down -- session suspended | Doomed to be lionized | haunting the condemned logs | 5 happy friends who did better | retrofitting pain into plausible orthodoxies |

he shivered and felt the skin on his arms get tighter inside the found jacket that was stained and damp he thought it might be best to walk for a while so he could make the time he needed on the schedule he had set but that had lapsed into a series of grubby interludes and captured seconds of intimacy under hesitant lights and abandoned heralds it was like being trapped inside a grey bulge that was leaking into the bloodstream of every complacent eater ordering treats behind glass under the pretext of preserving the integrity of the averred purpose to persist on roads that swerve without a threat manifesting he had been on the waiting list for the trials and he had made the trip knowing that this would be the motion which secured his designation as the bearer of the most advanced stage of deterioration of all the potential subjects he bore the most prominent distention his swelling inspired the light to fly from his face so that it was refracted and the skin was always rippling with what was underneath the constant industry of producing the bulging pockets that slapped with every footstep he could feel them doing their work and he knew they would break through before he made it there

                                                             I

Repeat after me: As a worshipper of The Spree, I give thanks to The Shooter for their clear-eyed comprehension of the necessity to arrest the motions of endless reproduction.

                                                             II

The Shooter summons the fortitude to make a small dent in the wall of human profusion and illusion I set out to dismantle. Each shooter is a tribune of a world finally arranged in silent balance. They reclaim the space for the inheritors.

                                                              III

Every shot is a question, puncturing a dense layer of refuse accreted in adipose channels to create a fatberg of such grotesque proportions that judgement chokes. Every shot penetrates the narrowing channels of progress congealed by generations of profligacy. All will be equal in the decisive flash.

                                                              IV

It is the ultimate act of kindness. The bearing of an onerous burden. The shouldering of opprobrium. They may choose their own course, but each Shooter is bound by the ineluctable knowledge of their final purpose.

                                                               V

The Shooter limits their sights to the immediate needs: the elimination of wildlife, the determination of surplus, and the eradication of the polity. The Shooter acts in the interest of preserving a base-level of habitability.

                                                              VI

Those Shooters who forestall the future, as it is currently conceived, take their place at the apex. So young, yet grasping the urgency. They saw before us all that this is untenable, that a radical realignment is in order.

                                                              VII

I cherish their sacrifice. So that I may purge the body of psychic toxins and cultivate a new empathy. So that I may clear the ground to bring into being a new landscape of abundance and perfect alignment with my technology.

                                                              VIII

I will dedicate myself to preserving their memory. I will wait for the day when I have earned my bump stock, and can embark into the mediated spaces of this collapsing order, with the knowledge that a broad expanse can be salvaged from its decay and dehumanising duplication.

                                                               IX

In the face of this, The Spree is the purest assertion of humanity. I no longer need to be scared. I no longer need to feel powerless. Everything for which they terrorized me is now the key to my release. I see beyond their small concerns. I am a pioneer, carving out a fresh territory, where they are the outsiders, where they must tremble.

                                                                X

All hail The Spree. All hail The Shooter. Long may they be active.

“we go to the stack so we can find out”

“the third day always ends with us at the stack everything else shuts down”

“we get in front of the stack all inside the shadow of it”

“nobody knows what the stack is going to give us”

“the stack goes all the way across”

“nobody remembers who built the stack”

“the stack came from the sea like everything”

“the stack is too high to climb someone tried”

“things get pushed through cracks in the stack”

“things that we need like medicine and blankets”

“the children get pushed to the front so they can look through the cracks”

“we need to teach them where they could go if they make bad on us”

“we know the hand is coming when the birds start”

“the birds scream and the ground rumbles and the stack shivers”

“the noise the hand makes as it comes up is like rocks breaking off the hills”

“we wait to see the hand come over the stack”

“only the hand gets up there the birds fly off”

“the children cover their ears”

“the hand is grey and dripping with green strings”

“the hand opens and drops them”

“we bunch up to catch swimmers”

“someone cries out when they recognise”

“we carry them up the hill”

“daddy came back that way he made bad on us so they sent him to the rig i see small in the cracks”

About GRSTALT: GRSTALT is a kind of artistic clearinghouse. GRSTALT is a means of circumventing the construct of 'the author'. GRSTALT is a consciously nebulous entity. By reducing oneself to a string of letters, the writer is no longer confined by the old expectations of biography and personality.

Twitter: @grstaltcomms

corpse flower I try to forget I’m going to Hell ***** spearflower— I learn not to give any more fucks ***** gnats until christ comes back ***** the pain of it all morphine moon

One of the supervisors, Hannah, Was divorced, With two teenagers, And a twelve-year-old.

Cindy, too young To stay home, And whose older brother and sister Were too irresponsible to watch her, Accompanied her mother To work.

Cindy constantly complained About being bored, Even though she was Surrounded by books, Along with chairs and couches In which to read them.

“There’s nothing here I like,” She told her mother, When Hannah told her To find something to read. Another time, Cindy said, “But I want to watch TV,” After Hannah suggested that she Listen to music at the sound stations In the music department.

Granted, It must not have been easy: No father, Two siblings who Couldn’t care less about her; Tagging along with Her mother. Still.

When I’d see Cindy Sitting in a chair, Pouting, Or walking in circles, Kicking her heels, I’d feel like grabbing her By the shoulders And shouting, “Read something!

Hannah eventually quit And moved to Florida; Cindy, of course, went with her. Hannah’s other kids— I don’t know.

Distance

This Person.  That Person.  An Unspecified Distance. 

Rabies

Got diagnosed yesterday.  Bitch slapped the doctor.  Was angry.

“All those decades at medical school, and for what?  To get hit. To get slapped in the face by your own patient. I spit on you.”

Parents

It’s actually pretty funny. 

Screamed at my parents yesterday.

But my parents have been dead for years. 

And now I am crying.

This is an interaction with Amazon’s Echo device- she's not a girl who misses much. Please for God's sake be utterly candid and frank. Trust me, you want this.

-This book -is not about hurricane katrina. -The novel -coddles, even when trying to disturb or offend. -This book -examines and challenges the doctrine of share-holder value. -Each book -explores major themes & historical and philosophical context. -This book -is intended to take readers on a journey into two realms.

>Mr. Rainwater, >Is it then true that nothing fundamentally changed? >Whose existentialism is this? >Whose preoccupations with utility? >I don’t know what else to do to resolve this problem. >Would you please help me?

/Such a request /could all too possibly be heard /not as /the components of a massive psywar operation, /not as /a type of one-directional friendship /but actually as /a needy /manipulative /plea

After a Date at the Culver Hotel Bar

you ask where we should go and I say drive me to my car so you drive me to my car because I tell you that’s where I live and of course you wouldn’t follow up on this my Ford Fiesta still smells sweaty even though I rent a home now a compact is too small to fit what we’d have to live with

End of Week Two (Happiest Season, 1/31/20)

at Tessaro’s after a long sunless January mumblecore weekend

beginning no one to vent to Pittsburgh bars of cig smoke

without windows I can barely come up for air in the work

in which we say it all works out in the end despite wanting

a cigarette having given it up years ago just to again

A Year

I wish it were impressive, my insistence to gnaw at the root of what clings to me, whatever doubt’s the day’s soup.

A kind of droning in my soul that rings and bleats. Speaks for me when I must be spoken for, my might in a cave.

I long sometimes for lonelier days. Too much noise in the knock of someone else’s luck, a hardwood for human myth.

Grant me humility to do no wrong. I had a year to get everything right, and still I waited past the crow’s deadline, let the line fly

recklessly into the lake.

Kodak

camera closed and open in a quick capture one moment standing ghastly in your drive awaiting your fishnet in the next my buzzing body propels out into the canyon of distance how immortal I can be in end -less dreaming I brim alive in the sense that life brims with bacteria I thrive off the gunk each new love brings

Another Stranger 

The masks  become a fetish,  harder to breathe  during sex with  hands on each other's  throats and hiding  nothing in  this perfect darkness  of hookups and  cinematic roleplay  where we  too often live  wearing masks  ‘til we say goodbye.  Only our identities  are pure.

*****

In A Friend’s Cellar

In a cluttered cellar  never cleaned correctly,  she isn’t nervous  posing nude  for a man   she doesn’t know.  I was told where to find her.  As always, I let the camera seduce  as she drunkenly navigates  the cot where each faint stain  is a memory  paid and of pleasure.   The sex, a gift  I will unwrap gently  as she becomes like the others. Another for the collection, at least for me. I turn the camera off and she kisses me  while her neighbor that paid,  who knows what I do,  anxiously awaits.

*****

Diagnostics 

“I don’t know you,  but you’re too quiet,  much too quiet.  And since you’re not stupid,  at least I don’t think you are…   it makes me think you’re a perv  or worse,  a serial killer”  said my date  from a dating site.  

All the while  staining her teeth  with blood   of the filet mignon  I bought her,  cooked rare.

*****

Invisible Attempts 

The lines of coke  I inhale   from Melinda's thighs,  it is all a waste.  

A taste of  dating another cop  who tells me she wants to quit drinking,  dating another cop   who tells me she wants to quit.   Outside every street,  or beneath escapes circumstance  through the sunlight in the shadows,  inside every woman  who owns the moment.   I keep forgetting to breathe   until it's over,  until she forgets my name  is the 4th  or 5th on her list   fed to surveillance cameras.   Melinda leaves  to bartend incomplete men  cheap liquor halfway mends who compete for her attentions,  unlike me who can’t be alone.   I call the cop   who says she wants me   because I disappear. I'm a ghost, a flicker across her eyes when the whiskey closes them   and she can’t be alone, asking if I can be a ghost again tonight, these days.  

She says  it’s all the company  she can take. 

                                   Proportionalising The Polysyllabic                                      If you just carry a little                                      tact where your sock's                                      inside leg usually                                      meets right or left,                                      presently their are no others                                      in this yet to be                                      expanded field.                                      Then pull it out quickly                                      weighted like a cosh,                                      intending not to murder                                      any ambivalent potential                                      or disinterested clicks                                      that may be admiring                                      like a realistic kiss.

                              As You Were                        We arrived at the harbor                        with our oars in the dusk.                        Johnny jammed like                        a bone thug n harmony all                        the way down the gangplank.                        The tide was apathetic.                        Much later in the afternoon                        there would be indications                        of transcendentalism.

                 Indulgence                  Not unlike a new scar                  covering a whales' eye,                  the actor was carrying                  an empty suitcase.                  He made no attempt                  to feign exertion.                  Bouncy down the plane steps,                  his handsome awkwardness                  a little harsh on the knees.                  Folding evening dress while                  having  to remain unwrinkled                  not simply participating,                  that is an art form.                  Carrying a suitcase is not.

Eighth Seal

The end of days is not the end of nights. In the sinister mild weather, streetlamps haloed in mist, all the bars are open, all human dealings in them. But not all humans – in large part, I suspect, they comprise the packs of dogs and unaccountables at large in the streets. Not rabid except with freedom, they bounce haplessly off legs, their cries evocative of music I disliked; perhaps when they calm down they’ll want to be petted. In the clubs and joints, extortion graft and fraud occur in radiance and à haute voix; the suits, high end or low, involved in it seem unaware of this or of their growing, interested crowds. Wife-beaters, abusers also seek, helplessly, the spotlight. Out of shape though I am (one’s status, dead or living, undecidable) I wipe the floor with them, then chide those sweethearts who mourn and tend for other than economic reasons … Having drawn incurious listeners, I hold forth against a world of hurt with, I’m afraid, the same dreary abstractness as the already ignored, hovering angels; and since there has to be an end, accede to being transformed to a stuffed shirt.

Ray of Entropy

Someday interrogations will change: the good and bad cop, the fastidious sadist and his brute colleague of the secret police become tactful, polite. They will let you out, with a tentative pat on the back, clean clothes, a chit for housing, food and drinks, and the understanding that you’ll be called in again. Outside, your skin tingles from the end or lack of beatings, and you see in the expression and walk, unsure of the ground’s caress, of other passersby that they too are free, at least provisionally. In a restaurant, you consider then defer or let pass the possibility of consciousness. Resummoned, you find your inquisitors at odds: querulous, sniping; it has nothing to do with you. At later meetings there’s even a therapist. In the end, you think you won’t show up again; they just seem old, like you, like the sky above the city.