The Indian smiles, he thinks that the cowboy is his friend. The cowboy smiles, he is glad the Indian is fooled. Now he can exploit him.

goodnight

blank books are intimidating

until they are full of incidental

life

urm

I ain't got nothin'
and I ain't been nothin'
and I ain't going to be somethin'
and ain't that somethin'

while you bleed my feet
and I shout in the corner
and my life squirms expiring
against the vision of my youth

no
I ain't got nothin'
but Mingus
now

Jesus...Goodbye...don't lie

an old kanji for Kaya

This shell, today is full
Of veins
Pumping.
In the dark.
I feel them, beneath
Tight skin
Stretching.
Under my roots.
Some blood, blotted
With careful
Meanings.
By those fingers.

Your nails are too sharp
To tend such close wounds
My head is a wastebasket
Full of spent escape routes

This shell, today is cruel
to salt laden
careening.
Pushing that scab.

I won’t notice anymore
That my dropped head stops
Now with every pulsebeat
Wondering about this time.

Bleeding is so boring now.
But this shell is all I know

Contrapasso is the process by which souls are punished in Dante's Inferno according to the nature of their sins in life. A literal translation would be "counter-suffering". It is the ironic cosmological law ensuring that "the punishment fits the crime".

An example of this would be in Canto XIII, where the suicidal souls are condemned to spend eternity as thorn-bushes while their lifeless corpses hang from their own branches.


Smooth dark soil spilled from between my fingers as I stood up from beside the river. When I first came to Warm River I couldn’t see myself. Now that I was leaving, I saw myself everywhere. The green fields, looming mountains in the distance, and the river all belonged to me. Somewhere, long ago, my grandfather had stood in this place and felt himself to be a part of it as well. My father had crawled across this earth. My grandmother had led her wedding present, a calf, across these fields. My uncles had been born here and one had died here.

I never knew my father. Not really. He died when I was a boy. I invented him in my head, made him what I needed at any given moment. Made him perfect somehow. Perhaps to offset my imperfection. He was born near Warm River. I wasn’t. I was born during a firestorm in some mountains far away. Forty years ago and counting. I have never had a real job in my life. I have never aspired to anything beyond fleeting fantasies played out like a twenty-four hour candle.

Today I went to a church and prayed. I don’t believe in God. I don’t believe in anything. Maybe that’s why I needed to pray—for belief and safety. I am lost and I have no home. I thought Warm River would fix that. I don’t belong there. It may belong to me, but it doesn’t want me anymore than the rest of the world does. Today I lit a candle in the church. I’m not sure what that is supposed to do. I have only seen it done in the movies or read about it in books. I hoped it would bring some magic to my prayers. But nothing happened, as usual.

Today I remembered my trip to Warm Springs. Today I decided. Today I prayed. Tonight I will do something of no consequence out respect for my life. A life of no consequence. An erasion. The only thing that is remarkable about me is that I have achieved absolutely nothing in my life.

TOM O’BEDLAM

From the hag and hungry goblin
That into rags would rend ye,
And the spirit that stands by the naked man
In the Book of Moons defend ye!

That of your five sound senses
You never be forsaken,
Nor wander from your selves with Tom
Abroad to beg your bacon.

While I doe sing "any food, any feeding,
Feeding, drink or clothing,"
Come dame or maid, be not afraid,
Poor Tom will injure nothing.

Of thirty bare years have I
Twice twenty been enraged,
And of forty been three times fifteen
In durance soundly caged.

On the lordly lofts of Bedlam,
With stubble soft and dainty,
Brave bracelets strong, sweet whips ding-dong,
With wholesome hunger plenty.

With a thought I took for Maudlin
And a cruse of cockle pottage,
With a thing thus tall, sky bless you all,
I befell into this dotage.

I slept not since the Conquest,
Till then I never waked,
Till the roguish boy of love where I lay
Me found and stript me naked.

When I short have shorn my sorry face
And swigged my horny barrel,
In an oaken inn I impound my skin
As a suit of gilt apparel.

The moon's my constant Mistress,
And the lowly owl my morrow,
The flaming Drake and the Nightcrow make
Me music to my sorrow.

The palsy plagues my pulses
When I prigg your pigs or pullen,
Your culvers take, or matchless make
Your Chanticleers, or sullen.

When I want provant,with Humfrie
I sup, and when benighted,
I repose in Powles with waking souls
Yet never am affrighted.

I know more than Apollo,
For oft, when he lies sleeping
I see the stars at bloody wars
In the wounded welkin weeping.

The moon embrace her shepherd
And the queen of Love her warrior,
While the first doth horn the star of morn,
And the next the heavenly Farrier.

The Gypsy Snap and Pedro
Are none of Tom's companions.
The punk I skorn and the cut purse sworn
And the roaring boys bravado.

The meek, the white, the gentle,
Me handle touch and spare not
But those that cross Tom Rynosseros
Do what the panther dare not.

With a host of furious fancies
Whereof I am commander,
With a burning spear and a horse of air,
To the wilderness I wander.

By a knight of ghosts and shadows
I summoned am to tourney
Ten leagues beyond the wild world's end.
Methinks it is no journey.

Anonoymous trad.

Let's all repeat it together this time
shall we?

Contrapasso is the process by which souls are punished in Dante's Inferno according to the nature of their sins in life. A literal translation would be "counter-suffering". It is the ironic cosmological law ensuring that "the punishment fits the crime".

An example of this would be in Canto XIII, where the suicidal souls are condemned to spend eternity as thorn-bushes while their lifeless corpses hang from their own branches.

all very well and hocus pocus etc ad infinitum. Tarot...still do it cause of RxxxxX I suppose (on some level at least). As for "personality types" the punishment fits...well welcome to the golden road of unlimited devotion as one counter-suffering page aptly put it. Don't buy it...but most of that stuff is just magical thinking to me (see above for fact that I do the tarot cards with regularity...and ouch). Just a pattern recognition machine in the end (anything more beautiful than that?) handle touch and spare not...so find whatever wherever. That was another religion...to quote XxXxX. Which makes me very happy...don't get me wrong (not the religion thing...but XxXxX)...but...really counter-suffering. What's interesting are the differences in perception...not the difference itself ...if you follow. Nothing harsh the punishment fits here just sort of an "again?" feeling. Free association is a time consuming affair that doesn't bare fruit until hundreds of observed and organically categorized moments counter-suffering (not so free? the punishment fits viz. editing anyone?), wherein the onus (you could be my calf...be grateful that you are not) is on the associate to ultimately make the connects.

handle touch and spare not gangrenous slavers pulling and pushing in the dark.

Today I went to a church and prayed the punishment fits. I don’t believe in God. I don’t believe in anything. Maybe that’s why I needed to pray—for belief and safety. handle touch and spare not I am lost and I have no home. I thought Warm River would fix that. I don’t belong there. It may belong to me, but it doesn’t want me anymore than the rest of the world does. Today I lit a counter-suffering candle in the church. I’m not sure what that is supposed to do. I have only seen it done in the movies or read about it in books. I hoped it would bring some magic to my prayers. But nothing happened, as usual. the punishment fits. Sabe? A worthy pursuit but like learning to tie your shoes...well, the meaning doesn't come overnight. Maybe that's my "personality type" the punishment fits. The disaffected punk sun-kid type 46. If so I should be forgiven immediately for finding any "xxxxian" based stuff thrust out there as...well...opaque enough to fuck handle touch and spare not the intellectual side and scramble things into an almost sort of anything thing. Generally nobody has actually read shim or they took a class where someone "boiled" shim down to counter-suffering some off-kilter bullshit (sort of like what's done to XXXXX). I love xxxxx...don't understand shim after studying shim for years (yes I could be your calf and be grateful I'm not)...maybe I'm a dumbshow...but somehow I think not. Although the punishment fits I thank her amorphous theories that have been used handle touch and spare not and mostly abused counter-suffering.

the punishment fits torn stockings left on a staircase.

Still she's what I'm back in school to study handle touch and spare not (yes I could be her calf and I'm sure she's grateful I'm not)...so my frustration at this misuse must be understandable to those who have actually taken the time to attempt his voluminous meanderings (beyond dinner parties, polite company, and homeless shelters). Stairwell paint chips stuck in a cracked shoe sole counter-suffering. Still I wish his name wasn't dragged into so much silliness. XXXXX he isn’t (another unread Yyy and QqQ-news-style abused opacity...well actually she's very understandable...hmmm...I wonder what that means?). Incidentally, everyone you know seems over due the punishment fits and wrong based on their work. (to quote ZzZz Theater who seems over due for a pop based on their work. Now reveal something infesting!) Try sending one of their transmissions to a class and see what genders counter-suffering. Or just peel them this missive handle touch and spare not...otherwise known as the suicide letter...hate mail will soon come in generally and directionally with no thought from her. Oh yeah...it was just for fun...what was I? It's probably the punishment fits the lack of eyes in my head...thank god I have another handle touch and spare not Tuesday. okay the counter-suffering pattern reaped some skin tearing node of hers that if counter-suffering I would take over here with me. Yes I am your calf (be grateful that I am) the punishment fits now because it is our disgruntled day...counter-suffering forgiveness that is forever remanded. handle touch and spare not the punishment fits the crime...tonight I will do something of no consequence out respect for my life.

suicidal souls are condemned to spend eternity as thorn-bushes while their lifeless corpses hang from their own branches suicidal souls are condemned to spend eternity as thorn-bushes while their lifeless corpses hang from their own branches suicidal souls are condemned to spend eternity as thorn-bushes while their lifeless corpses hang from their own branches

the punishment fits the crime
I am your calf
counter-suffering
handle touch and spare not

Thoughts on the loss of privacy and sustenance

when our new neighbor decided to utilize the small narrow strip of land between our backyard and the edge of the top of our hill...I was shocked. After all that piece of land had never been "developed" in over 50 years. Plus the use of that land essentially removed any privacy we had enjoyed on our backyard for twenty years. From our backyard we had a view looking out across a valley bordered across the way by Forest Lawn Cemetery--tree top silhouettes that changed gradation with the seasons.

Our new neighbor assured us that he wouldn't do something that impacted our privacy or our view...of course we didn't own that little strip of land. And, well to put it bluntly, he lied. He put in a vegetable garden right along our fence effectively blocking out the view. And he stands effectively in our backyard daily. We are private people, with private needs. We have always respected our neighbors needs for privacy and continuity assiduously. after all...do unto others...right?

I have thought a great deal about why someone would make this choice when is so clear that they are ruining other peoples reality. I have decided that it is a variant of Cultural Darwinism at it's most fundamental "selfish gene"reductionist state.

While we saw a wild hillside filled with poetry and symbolic continuity...it had lasted for who knows how long untouched...our neighbor saw something that he could take and improve. And, importantly, have exclusively to himself. Well, he owns it, so that is the case. But it is not "neighborly" nor is it "green". Our neighbor talks constantly about being "green" and the beauty of life. He clearly doesn't see us as part of life and therefore we are not "green". We are in the way.

What are we in the way of I wondered? We are in the way of a sociopathic riff on Heidegger's postulate regarding the standing reserve. Potential usefulness. Our neighbor developed the standing reserve because he could not see the potential usefulness of a wild hillside that we, who did not own that hillside and therefore were not, by rights of ownership, allowed to enjoy...and the law backs that up. He's in the right. We just have to deal with someone being there all the time now. Or, we have to put up a solid fence and lose twenty years of experience and joy.

Power. Standing reserves of power. The power to make others lose something for your enjoyment. Land development as another item in civilization's immense calculas of extraction. Extraction of "value" that is horded by the cultural Darwinian selfish gene.

We accept this. It has been had, and I have made many missteps in coming to terms with the inevitability of this change. I acted poorly...coldly...like an asshole. I degraded myself and fell into a trap. A behavioral trap based upon my own version of the selfish gene. I have come to be ashamed of myself for having gone through this year-long process of anger, sadness, loss, and lashing out. I retreat now into the facts: I can only control myself. I can be decent, while at the same time finding fault with the decisions that have been foisted on me. But I will not play the game anymore. I merely must exist as best as I can. Find beauty where I can. Smile...and hope that there a sitting reserve somewhere to counter the need to develop the standing reserve of power.

Bang!

Bang!

...several less-than-optimal pieces of fate...listening for proverbial drumrolls while my internal dialogue chants "buck up", makes me want to burrow under the covers...the better to embrace the vanished night...better sleeping nightmares than waking ones..."buck up"

life is a never ending series of sorrows
I am increasingly numb
but your breath keeps me here
and amazingly,I am grateful

because the truth is there

an old poem...reposted due to the work WR at DC's:

When I had sea legs
(if Richard Brautigan was in my band)

grey sea. rays seen. grace. serene. grey sea.
meaningless nonstop mind chatter all while craning up and up.
melted windowpane slow motion up and up.
walk-in fireplace. kiln wall race. win fall pace.
around and around the up and up.
he stood in there.
they’re in the up and up.
hoping for grace serene within the rays seen above the grey sea.
pace around the nonstop craning.
he stood there.
after lighting a huge fire in the walk-in fireplace,
he stood up there looking at the grey sea.
win then fall, no more time to pace.
no one found him for two weeks.

but they knew what he had been doing that last race around the kiln-walled room.
behind the old Victorian’s melted window that splayed rays into the sea view.
I craned and projected meaningless nonstop mind chatter up and up to that window.
he blew his brains out looking at the ocean after rehearsal.
reversals in the up and up.

I wasn’t around and around when it wasn’t on the up and up.
no. one. found in the around and around. for two weeks.
grey sea. rays seen falling apace
an in nonstop mind chatter cut line win fall
now I crane forever around the up and up
after rehearsal reversals and cooled kilns
grace serene. for two weeks.

is this it?

you mean they forget?

I wonder when whistling became a mark of appreciation?

guilty of grotesque self-deception
an old rose bush blooms in the drought
refusing to make plans that are realistic
and I, sensing a kindred straggley spirit,
stumble toward it's canes as if to an altar
down on my knees, and water it with tears

that my eyes couldn't see before is a crime
but forgetting one's self is a gift
and I have always been a thirsting savant

...a birdsong late at night when all is quiet...

despite it all

we remain tired
of things forgotten
or ignored
because the price
is too steep.

Ashley Hope 2005

You are the collective antidote to the breathless travesties
that clog hopeful minds everywhere.

You are the anti-TV eye
that destroys secreted possibilities betrayed...

I have lost my attitude of reptilian detachment as a result,
but there is nothing there.

take 3...


playing now: Cease To Exist, playing later...

There comes a time. Absolute. Unquestionable. Darkly permeated by every breath that you have taken. All things lead up to this day. This moment. This thought. However fractured and seemingly crystalline. There comes a moment. And it is irreversible. Your heartbeat is more tangible than usual. Your body is plunged into a backstreet filled with shots of tired adrenaline. Tired shame. Tired. This breath. That reaching. Those words. The ones that fly out of your mouth like vandals sacking a city. The irretrievable mistaken thoughts formed between firing synapses jumping to your tongue before you can call them back. Atomic bombs unleashed without consideration. Yes, inconsiderate. Like a child confused and pushed to a breaking point. No. That is too easy. Like an adult fucked up and not thinking. Years of anger and sadness and loneliness pummeling what little you might cherish to pieces. It is a grand delusion constructed to make things “fit” just so within the horror show. Your horror show. Externalizing the internal like a shotgun shell expelling its pellets. I shot you. Because it was time. Absolute. I see nothing but disease. Because I am diseased.

My failings are legion. Your patience is sanctified. I play out my days like a revolving door. Better (today). Fucked (tomorrow). Ruined regardless. I started out with a different desire. Simplistic and unadorned. Now the complex crown that I carry is covered with broken pieces of misunderstood flotsam. Perverted into a way of life so far removed from any idea of potential “being” that they are impossible to not recognize as malformed unrecognizable once-upon-a-times. Anger. Pain. Anger at the pain. Pain due to anger. A feedback loop that can never be disguised. I am disingenuous. I am a mistake. My mistakes have made me carnate. Like some fallen god that once was held in esteem. By myself? All by myself. I tore my playhouse alter down. I pissed on my “good” nature. I become death. Slow and putrefied, all that I once possibly could have been is rotting. Has rotted. There is no redemption. I am not special. There is no magic. I am not gifted. There is no way out. Because I am diseased. That’s the only thing that makes sense now.

So I became a shadow. A post-Atomic puppet. Deep in this moment I know that there is nothing of any worth. That is freedom. To act and know that you are worthless. To be free of all illusions of meaning. But I have you. That is irreconcilable. Juxtapositions work though. Pretence is reality. I…am…not…here. Not anymore. I am a counterfeit. Yes, I feel. And I feel deeply. But I know that what I feel, what pains me so, what angers me, is indeed meaningless. So I bite you. I hurt you. I destroy myself. If I were a teen-age head this would still be acceptable. But I am almost the same age as my father when he died. And I will never wear his vestments. And I love you. How can that exist?

I have no one. “I’m your kind, and I know.” Lie. So true. Pick up the papers. Walk across the park. Step into the traffic. Tempt fate. But I always live to come back and hurt you. I love you. The curb looks mountainous. The street a long valley between monoliths. Our door an altarpiece. You the ever-present lamb. I crawl into my Butcher’s coat—white and pressed—and call to you. It is just a small cut in your happiness, I promise. But I say it differently this time. I worry that you remember all the cuts I have stolen from you. Over a life. Do you believe in that? That? Swift and sharp like a shot given quickly, you won’t feel a thing until it’s over. A life that is passing by. I’m your kind. And I know. So kiss me and give me a tender spot that I can encase in pain. Ah. Now it’s my turn. I don’t need to show a tender place. I am a raw piece of meat walking on awkward stilts up to your lips. Any place will do. Should I speak? Something that I believe is true or important? A gift. This is the place to slice me. Yes. There. You are my family. Cease to exist. Feel my wick of a tongue kill that hoped for happiness. That is what you were hoping for isn’t it? To be with me? I-am-not-here. Cease to exist.

When we didn’t know any better
And you hair was shorter that mine
And blacker than your pupils

And you bit my shoulder
And I bled
And your mascara was running…
Did you think that it was okay?

Even for you
Even for that moment
Despite my long hair

I mean that small sniff
That running down side streets
Through forests of crack heads
Around private hedged shooting galleries

And you were always smart
And you were always fucked up
And I was too scared and too
Too smart to sleep on the street

And you bit my shoulder
And I bled
And your mascara was running…
And you hair was shorter that mine
And blacker that your pupils
When we didn’t know any better

84th

You are so incredibly slow,
Each step forming over years,
Meeting pebbles over-examined
For an answer

My hands plunge through strata
Reaching out to clutch your hair
Which I know has not decomposed
In the quicksand of my journey

This life that goes off to nowhere
Keening clutches that fall empty
Because I have not travelled far
Across the void of years today

But I am weak and incredibly slow,
And my feet refuse the pain,
Resonating from the under-tow
Hot in memory

Bleeding conceptions over-thought
Your teeth sit grinning under dirt
Each breath laboring in space
Mouthing the words

A Bamboo wife,seido (also Jukbuin or Chikufujin),
is the East Asian version of a "Dutch wife",
a hollow bamboo form roughly the size of a human body.
Essentially used in hot weather,hugged,or wrapped between the
sleeper's legs.

I envision a lonely denizen of a bamboo forest
inventing the cooling wife after many tearful sleepless nights.

then there is this korean poem from the 19th century:

"Nong Li plays the four-stringed lute,
the wind blows away the matting
Zhao Hua plays the flute, the moon seeps into the floor
I have no red-sleeved girls to make the night fun
My true love: the seido, with its unmatchable coolness"
(translation is Korean to English)

after being translated into Japanese, it was translated again:

"There were geishas called Nong Li and Zhong Hua
Who could pluck the biwa and play the flute
Fit to blow away the rugs and let the moon shine on the floor
I haven't got a woman like that to keep me company by night
So I sleep with my bamboo wife—keeping cool's what I love best"
(translation is Korean to Japanese to English)

I wonder how different the bamboo wife would be
if it traveled the world via translation, to arrive once again in Japan.
Much as I wonder how my words are translated via the
experiences of "others". The bamboo wife is essentially a
reminder of our existential perview. After some trouble
in understanding...she told me,with pursed bamboo lips,
that I was perhaps right.

That's why I think I married her. But I am no longer sure of anything.
I would sleep on that thought, but it would be in a foreign tongue
when the sun came up. Having slipped through the lattice, meanings
cooled, reminding me of something once red-sleeved.

Horse Hair, 2007
Ashley Hope

Top: Lake Shoji date unknown
Middle: Minuma River,Omiya 1930
Bottom: Snow at Night in Terajima Village, 1920
Kawasi Hasui

Hasui
Kyoto, 1923

The Life with a Hole in it

When I throw back my head and howl
People (women mostly) say
But you've always done what you want,
You always get your own way
-- A perfectly vile and foul
inversion of all that's been.
What the old ratbags mean
Is I've never done what I don't.

So the shit in the shuttered chateau
Who does his five hundred words
Then parts out the rest of the day
Between bathing and booze and birds
Is far off as ever, but so
Is that spectacled schoolteaching sod
(Six kids, and the wife in pod,
And her parents coming to stay)...

Life is an immobile, locked,
Three-handed struggle between
Your wants, the world's for you, and (worse)
The unbeatable slow machine
That brings what you'll get. Blocked,
They strain round a hollow stasis
Of having-to, fear, faces.
Days sift down it constantly. Years.

Philip Larkin, 1974

how can you sleep with someone when you know you are going to commit suicide?

too little too late
some people should never have been born
there is no way out
some pieces can't be
put back together
courage to do what
should never be done
just putting order back
in the universe
such as I've known it
too little as always
pure ruination soon
disappears into nothing
I hope...I hope

if I said I would, it wouldn't matter
but I probably would say it anyway

downy mildew
"offering"
directed by M.Stipe
me friends...in low-tech low-fi

in response to DC asking the question:
"What are/were your father's and mother's professions?"

My father:
My father crawled into paintings while asleep. He would come back home, back to his sleep, after having repaired someone that was always waiting. Sometimes, despite the attempted repair, someone would die. These experiences caused sediment to build up around his bed, to the point at which he felt stuck. During his years of doing this work, my father was asked to teach the art of crawling. There was a profound recognition within him of the limitations of his ability to do so.

He couldn’t leave his bed. He had accumulated too much sediment, so much so that he had become an island. There was a red and black book on the nightstand beside a small reading lamp--a small atoll within reach of his island. One night he slept deeper than usual and, while crawling off into the painting above the teak headboard, he became stuck between the planes; stuck within the oil and canvas and the sandy mattress. He died with his body dangling from the wall. Some part of him was never found.

Not that this has anything to do with who my father was, but it’s connected with my memories of him, so I’ll tell you about it. The red and black book was rescued from the nightstand and tucked into a new bed in another room. This bed did not have a headboard. Nor was it encased and enshrouded in sandy moments. Another painting—one created by the same artist as the one in which my father had died—was hung above the book and headboardless mattress. It was hoped that this would facilitate—or more properly “awaken”—the abilities that some speculated lay dormant in the book. But the book never moved. It did not crawl, could not crawl, and perhaps would not crawl. This point has always been unclear. I always thought it was because they used the wrong painting.

In retrospect, it seems that no one really cared much about the book. The bed sat in an area where the afternoon sun beat through the window. I remember that it was sad to even look in that room. The red and black ink eventually became oxidized to a faded pink and grey by the sun. In the end the painting was removed and sold along with the others. The room was emptied. My father was eventually forgotten. As to the book, it was thrown into the trash years later after having been watched very very closely for any signs of talent.

My mother:
My mother was a linoleum tile. It was hard work as near as I can tell. She never said much about it. But I knew. She would come home with scuffmarks on her face sometimes. But she was beautiful. They don’t make patterns like hers anymore. It was sad when she got older really. She stopped even trying to wash and strip the wax off of herself.

I remember when I learned that she was actually cracked—this wasn’t long after my father died. She hid that fact very well to everyone but me. So well in fact, that no one believes me when I talk about the times that she took a linoleum knife to herself. It was hard on me. One afternoon, when I was a teenager, I came home stoned—I wore a silk bag rubbed with sandlewood oil to cover the smell--and found her in a small bathroom wedging the door closed. I thought she was broken forever and called a maid service to rush out and buff her up. I guess she was trying to fix the crack. It was weird and kind of horrible in its violence. That experience peaked my interest for a while—I read everything I could find on linoleum repair for a year straight. Of course, repairs were what my father did for a living. I never had that gift. But, hey, I was a kid. I think that’s what she was really doing with that knife, trying to invoke my father to return from the dead and fix her.

So in the end I just accepted my mom as she was, used and broken, but capable of incredible shininess when she put her mop to it. She died when someone didn’t recognize that the waxy build-up was smothering her. I wasn’t there to recognize the signs. If I had been there perhaps she could have been stripped, cleaned, and waxed again. I have to live with that. Some part of me believes that her’s was an unnecessary death. Yeah, that’s the truth as far as I am concerned.

One last thing about my mom:
My mother always told me how she wished that her and my father had gone through with having me laminated. She would say that would have been best. There would be no need for me to be repaired or cleaned. I would be immune to wear. Plus she speculated that if I ever found myself stuck between planes that it would be much harder to become cut in half like my father. She always wished that I could crawl like dad. But she realized that despite my having been born a tarot card—a pip of the minor arcana no less-- I was far more like her. I too get scuffmarks.

There is an important difference between my parents and myself though. I am afraid of knives and I don’t sleep well at night despite living on an island of moments. No one reads me consistently anymore. I have more in common with dad’s book than anything I guess. Despite being frayed and having a small tear in my left-hand corner—or being able to allow someone to pretend to crawl into my image-- I am not like my parents. No I am more like the book. I am oxidized and fading. I am talentless unless someone reads me and even then they are usually wrong. I elicit no repairs of any substance. I cannot respond to chemical cleaning agents. That’s where they went wrong while watching those moments in that sunny room—no one bothered to read the book. I wish they had had me laminated.

boom! for those who pay attention...bang! and the end...

Peacocks on the roof
escaping through the holes in my head
I take this as proof

it says so on the bottle
wash, rinse, repeat
like a soggy heart
of gluey, rotting, thick
napalm

Bamboo shoots to the sky
escaping through the holes in my head
I can't read the directions anymore

it says so on the box
and I couldn't believe
wash, rinse, repeat
a little piece of brighte sonne
napalm

wait for the 30 seconds
escaping through the holes in my head
napalm heart conditioning

towel dry

if you kill a poem...does it have a ghost?

grey sea. rays seen. grace. serene. grey sea. meaningless nonstop mindchatter all while craning up and up. melted window pane slowmotion up and up. Walkin fireplace. kiln wall race. win fall pace. around and around the up and up. He stood in there. there in the up and up. hoping for grace serene within the rays seen above the grey sea. pace around the nonstop craning. he stood there. after lighting a huge fire in the walkin fireplace, he stood up there looking at the grey sea. win then fall, no more time to pace. no one found him for two weeks. but they knew what he had been doing that last race around the kiln-walled room. Behind the old victorian melted window that splayed rays into the seaview. I craned and projected meaningless nonstop mindchatter up and up to that window. he blew his brains out looking at the ocean after

So…go figure. Something things amaze. And for good reason…or so I so choose to guess. After DC put out a desert island disc thing on his site…well. It’s always interesting…isn’t it always? The few who chose The Dead…granted a small handful…but in context from across the years of friendship with Dennis it is, indeed interesting! Yeah…it’s a mixed bag growing up being a deadhead…you love ‘em like some weird balm for your world weary soul…and resent them for their mindless following who contributed to an aspect of the demise of descent smart visceral music in the late ‘70’s (in particular, and beyond the beyond). But here I sit across a sea of years and foibles…lost dreams and attained reinforcements…it has not been a “long strange trip” as much as a painful mindful slog on my belly across time. The promise of beauty was washed away by infirmity of purpose. Thrown into the wash during a rainstorm of growing up. Did I ever? No. And whose fault is that? Certainly not Garcia’s. Or the promise of dropped veils that my early teenage trips promised. And they promised a lot, or at the very least gave me a vision of otherness. No. I learned that the questions were far more important than the answers…after all it’s malleable…no?

So I sit old and, yes, freaked out ultimately. I listen to The Dead and the once upon a time promise sits on my knee, crawls up my arm, whispers in my ear and mocks me…not viciously, rather with a bitter sweet smirk…”you could have had it kid!” But I fucking dropped it somewhere. Slowly, bit by bit in some weird perversion of Hansel and Gretel…a Schizophrenic trail across the forest floor of my life. And the bitch is I can’t remember whether it was between that umpteenth line of coke (oh so many years ago) or in a far more pedestrian place …like maybe deep in an accumulated bitterness based upon unacknowledged promise flushed away (again and again and again…but gee the sunset sure is fine)…oh yeah, I always sucked at a good game of cards…our bets laid…my life in the balance…The Loser indeed.

So…yeah…virtual strangers pick the Dead as a component of their Desert Island Disc reality…shocks the fuck out of me! I mean I have had to hide some part of that love away in a prized box that shouldn’t be trotted out into the light of the post punk world that I live in…that gave me an identity no less! No! It’s something that makes me remember myself, shyly and privately…sweetly and sadly. The hippie kid with a reason for living versus the old man who thinks he’s living to die (preferably sooner than later). But it’s Jerry now isn’t it? I mean he’s our man…our template regardless of dope addiction and fucked up death. Including image death…the worst thing for a pop icon to inflict upon their followers…. No? I mean a fat fucked up genius…no…we want beautiful gifted visionaries…proof that they actually saw the beauty and incorporated it enough to become it…that’s the promise after the morning comes…after the induced visions and the resolutions and the tenderness…we can be our own icons in some small fashion. Not fat and fucked up despite the vision and gift of musicality. The genius of the pied piper…The Dead.

So I was just a kid sitting and waiting for the whole thing to go down and it dropped on my head twenty years later…in a desperate fumbling, as if this memory was some girl I didn’t have a clue of how to touch while my hormones said, “move with me kiddo”…a sweet and horrible memory that. Why is that The Dead? Well they were there…the girls…the psychedelic yummyness of a morning after…that girl, the one who shared The Dead and therefore a secret…oh yes, taste. It was about all inclusiveness while at the same time being about exclusiveness…Jerry…like a Jazz god on acid…a sweet understanding gift laid on you with a feather touch. But not Jazz… and that’s an important distinction…no, Jerry was indeed unique. Beyond genre…he and his were their own, something that jumped up from the night illuminated in colored coats of a cut from a very foreign land. Nothing so lovely as that humor dressed in depth.

And yeah, it's about tenderness ultimately. The music is fucking tender. I defy anyone who actually has had a moment that they can’t explain to say otherwise…granted a trip, more often than not, from a shore receded with age at this point (we are, or I am, old after all)...yes, tell me otherwise, please do…and to me, yes, still it resonates like a dream remembered when you were “just a kid”. And that can mean, well, yesterday dependent on your state. A friend told me, “Every year you’ve got to sweep the cobwebs you accumulate away…by virtue of chemistry…no fear…just a recognition”. I am afraid, Jerry. I can’t follow you anymore…I am not stronger that you. Or, really, I am as weak as you. I will end up a dope addict, fat and fucked up. But if I possess your gift for making others feel…I would die too. Is that the end? Is that the lesson? Is that the moral imperative? To be sucked under while others float by on the goodness you generate? Maybe. I sometimes fantasize that therein lies some semblance of truth. But, no, that is dissemblage. Illusion, Maya, the beast of self-gnawing at your foot. I want to be good… I want to be St. Stephen. I want to touch you, and you, and you, and feel something other than how far away I am from reality. But nope, not in this life…or at least not today.

THESE TYPOS ARE BROUGHT TO YOU BY...Marquee Moon's Comet Emporium "Just a Touch in an alley!"

Shelter
Ashley Hope (2005)

I held a séance over your flesh,
my grasped hands circling the table.
Candlelight lit my previous selves,
who all showed up for the occasion.
We quieted ourselves and begged,
I told me that we were in contact,
that the spirits were with us,
as your pieces came tumbling out,
from one old me’s opened mouth,
parted lips, birthing fallen dead gods,
dispelling your breast, or part of it.
Then another me, spat out our past,
it flopped like a newly caught fish.
The other me, possessed, said a prayer,
a loamy recitation filling clutched hands.
Wax dribbled down across my belly,
a certain scar, misplaced and below,
mirrored the miracle plough's course,
a crescent, furrowing your revived skin,
across you, our familiar’s right breast,
which we kissed and welcomed home.
The ghosts began to speak, in tongues,
warning against the new frontier of hope.
Quitting, I placed the Ace of Swords down,
on your scar, and poured my tears out,
in the wasteland of our tempered promise.

Hey Kids!!! Got problems? I blame Australia! I hereby launch the "Kick Rupert Out" campaign. Get this man out of my country and out of my politics. He's a pathogen don't ya know!

In Which I Faciley Dissemble Facile Dessemblage

This whole Palin thing is predictable, almost too predictable. She is like a new contestant on any of the myriad number of brain-numbing TV shows. She is the new American Idol contestant trotted out to spice up the end of the season. Or she is akin to the cliffhanger that everyone watches even if the show sucks. It is a cultural phenomenon of transient quality. It is not a meaningful collective experience beyond the salesmanship inherent in it. And predictably, that salesmanship seems to work. Honestly I could never say what "Americans" value or conversely don't. I'm Californian (and Southern at that) and I think that disqualifies my ability to understand. You know? I am too provincial to have the hubris to speak universally.

That said, being from SoCal doesn't disqualify me from having shocked emotional/intellectual responses to "American" politics (or the lack there of). Personally I know a lot of people who don't vote. Regardless of the potential impact of my solitary vote, I feel very strongly about voting. There has never been a candidate that mirrored my politics, but there are those who more clearly are antithetical to my seemingly marginalized belief systems. So, I have little or no time for those who don't at least symbolically participate in elections by voting. It’s a cop out to say it doesn’t matter. I view that sentiment as tacitly saying that, “if I don’t participate, I am not culpable for outcomes.” That is entirely too facile a position for my tastes. A strike may not always succeed, but you have to walk the line or you risk becoming a fence sitter in the truest definition. And a strike is participatory and negotiable. Compromise is not always desirable, but often inclusive. Wishy-washy? Weak? Doomed to failure in the face of power? Perhaps. But standing up makes it harder for abuses of power to occur. At least this Pollyanna thinks so.

McCain/Palin have gained traction primarily (in my view) due to the fruit being beared by the rather systematic marketing of fear/rudeness/self-interest, which are prevalent in TV/Movies/periodicals, coupled with the ongoing assault on public education. Much like the erosion of teamwork in the marketplace as a result MBA programs designed to benefit the divide and conquer marketplace.

Evidently lots of folks want to be the bully that laughs at the bespeckled kid at school (read: the panel on American Idol, dismissive tastemaker arrogance, etc.) and as a result be part of the popular clique of ‘winners” (us vs. them), even if that means labeling yourself an “outsider” (viz. “alt rock”, chasing the next “thing”, etc.) which is identifying with the bullied rather than the bullies—ultimately that leads to the same ideological pitfall as I laid out above—we want to belong somewhere, no? But do we actually belong with “them”? The outsider naturally gravitates to the loner on the borders of the collective. Yet they are often the canaries in the proverbial coalmine.

Still, divisiveness is the work of cowardice in the face of responsibility. Social and emotional responsibility. It is as if we are all potential victims of a culling process, and we know it. Fear lives in the lonely that are desperate for validation. Homogeneity is a womb that denies respect for difference. No, a love for difference. Boredom lives sameness. Boredom leads to complacency in the face of horror. Boredom has no voice beyond the smoke and mirrors of the “us vs. them” bedroom community of the collective American conscience. Lock-stepped, either side of these faux dichotomies, march off to the arrogant safety of certitude.

But either socio-cultural direction one identifies with, there is a sacrifice of emotional and intellectual curiosity that perpetuates the knee-jerk “us vs. them” dichotomy—an artificial dichotomy of control in my view. Once again, I am not innocent when it comes to foaming at the mouth in the face of beliefs that scare the shit out of me. But how do you deal with intolerance and still remain tolerant? My answer is to not cultivate feeling too precious about my ability to always see the “way” through the forest.

I am a hypocrite though. I fucking hate injustice and dismissive social liassez-faire for the few. And as a result, I can spout off with best of them. I screamed “fascists” at the TV during the whole Republican Convention. I’m sure that my blanket statement made a real difference in helping someone understand my personal viewpoint. Nope. I find myself angry and feeling marginalized. The horror is that those feelings are constructs I have cultivated by virtue of my personal identification with “outsiders” despite declaring myself as an egalitarian liberal. I am a John Reed socialist I suppose on some level, despite the recognition that he too fell on his knees before the altar of true belief. Yet I still think and feel. Otherwise my time exploring mind-suicide would be deemed a complete success!

It is this lack of recognition that we live inherently in a Rashamon world that leads to the necessity of backing an identity at all costs. The elimination of divergent opinion, within these compartmentalized blocks of whatever stripe, is a result of increasingly simplistic and jingoistic criticism, sans humility laced debate, further bolstered by media and the subtle-- and not so subtle machinations--of Madison Avenue. Am I paranoid? Perhaps. Perhaps not. But I do know that I am fallible in the extreme at times, and need to have the ability to remain emotionally and intellectually plastic. Hence my distaste for over identification with any group that cuts strangers to my ken out of my purview.

No. Now we have anathema. You can't be thoughtful enough to have been wrong about something, and as a result, change your mind. Nor can one allow others to evolve over time in a thoughtful manner. Adults are now supposed to be shortsighted long-term adolescent true believers. If you don’t embrace the dichotomy you are morally and constitutionally weak. This is tastemaking/tastenumbing of the highest order. Did I say fascists? On that note, evidently Rove is working directly for the McCain campaign while also working as an "impartial" commentator for Fox News.

I guess the Palin thing points out that if you are a "journalism" major, and as a result learned to read off a teleprompter (and worked as a TV "news" reporter for a little bit), you are qualified for anything regarding public service. Wait! Oh that's right, Palin has a "B.S." in Journalism from the University of Idaho. Funny I don’t think they don't offer a Bachelor's in Science for that discipline at U of I. But it looks better than having a lowly B.A. Dissembling at every turn. Now experience doesn’t count for everything. I hold intuitive intellect in high regard. But it is the “hive mind” aspect that so clearly runs counter to intuitive individual intelligence that Palin exemplifies.

Palin's RNC speech was written by members of the Bush administration and reeked of that most classic of Rove-ian tactics; co-opting language for use in making an argument for the opposite of the definition. As a Kate Millet self-styled Feminist, I am greatly offended by the giant step backward that this co-opting of language implicitly implies in the case of Palin’s impact on women and politics in general. And yes, I can be a Feminist and be wary of a black-and-white world (read Millet).

So yeah, the Republicans are indeed great at the vilification of intellect game, but they have a lot of help. TV. TV. TV. Nary a spreck of intelligent analysis to be had anywhere on the box. It’s all shills all the time (who is there? Moyers perhaps?). Of course, Credit Card Joe from Delaware sends shivers up my proletariat spine. He did as much as anyone to solidify the future of debt slavery in this country. God knows, I used to kind of like Biden. But the “Obama is too smart” argument that is the implicit backbone of the Republican “just plain folks” spiel is an embarrassment. And people are buying it seemingly. Once again, whom do you want to kick out of the house on Big Brother? The hunter or the lawyer?

Anyway, the last presidential candidate who was "too smart" to be elected was Adlai E. Stevenson (Governor of Illinois who came to initial national prominence via a keynote address at the DNC. Hmmm?) I just reread a Stevenson campaign speech from Denver 9/5/52 called "Time for a Change?" Pretty amazing that it is in many respects the same speech given at the DNC by Obama. And the issues Obama spoke of in responding to the Republicans agenda remain the same as those spoken of by Stevenson: fear (cold war), economic elitism (instability leading to recession), isolationism wed with unilateralism (foreign policy debacles—then Korea and the Cold War--again) all of which the Republicans utilized in paralyzing the electorate in 1952, all the while running on a ticket for "change". Pah!

We have stood still. The hippies had their chance and fucked up. Let's see what my generation can do--probably nothing. My generation has always been politically lazy and, I suspect, jealous of the hippies for having had their way with culture (however briefly). All we gave the world was punk rock and that lasted for two years tops before morphing into business as usual.

success in self destruction
that "high road" of individuality
nothing gets done living yesterday
an embarrassment of poverties
blind faith forever beyond a glass
bad, a bad person, a bad man, bad,
awake now on the "low" road
from without this isolation of intent
not minding the salvageable anymore
I surrender with a handful of cowardice

Tennis with Dad

The Game, March 21
As if it happened this way:
my hand was made of concrete
I was your scalpel
you were fragile
I was Bjorn Borg
your pain never came
my forehand volley was bad
I was never there
you were made of glass
I was a blowtorch
your tongue melted
my memory was real
I intended to kill you
you crawled to the alter
I was Bjorn Borg
your life was a game
my days were sleep
I had ever grown up
you were a scalpel
I was made of flesh
your body was immortal

Your Bedroom, March 22
I was Bjorn Borg
an all powerful boy god
decisively removing oxygen
placing it in small cylinders
wheeled beside your nightstand
self medicating your pure breath
stopping you from uttering truth
when you said you were dying
you hadn't smiled at me then


The Hospital, March 23
As if:
I was Bjorn Borg
the moment was televised
to my whole family
when in black and white
you died playing with me
I wasn’t and it wasn’t true
that you were ripe
and split open for me
and like a time-bomb
exploded two days later

The ICU, March 24
As if:
I was Bjorn Borg
and had never won a match
I was assassinated on the court
before you were dead
and left these concrete hands
as a legacy trapped at home
I wasn’t your same age now
you the surgeon laying down
or you were left a widower
and tennis had never existed
and you let me win just once

The Graveyard, March 27
I’m an old child caught netless
with nails in his birth certificate
refusing to argue the bad call
I had thought I was Bjorn Borg
and wished no one knew me

Now Awake

This calcium latticework upon which I dwell,
harbors a hatred for flesh related and personal.
A resentment for the hours of neglect.

And for the toxin laden softness of tissue,
burdens arterially pumped across years,
as if a flood forever swelled the world.

When those many soft sins accumulated,
mortality deposited in cellular divisions,
this blindness unaware jumped ship.

An indictment of some magical relief,
vision now as clear as unwashed glass,
my saline bag begs for more time at your feet.

Yes, these remembered bones despise me,
forgetfulness imagined so deliberately,
like a pouting child ignoring punishment.

Self referentially blindfolded then and again,
falling now forever inside this graying light,
unveiled as some hard mortification at hand.

These polluted bones will suddenly fall apart,
crepuscular comrades have joined the charade,
wailing a protest to the minutes remaining for me.

an old post that still holds true:
this is depression...you're cruising along and then...

This ride is closed for refurbishment

me (in black of course) and my friends...
my eyes are still closed...
I've forgotten how to open them

Tennis with Dad 1974

As if:
my hand was made of concrete
I was your scalpel
you were fragile
I was Bjorn Borg
your pain never came
my forehand volley was bad
I was never there
you were made of glass
I was a blowtorch
your tongue melted
my memory was real
I intended to kill you
you crawled to the alter
I was Bjorn Borg
your life was a game
my days were sleep
I had ever grown up
you were a scalpel
I was made of flesh
your body was immortal

As if:
I was Bjorn Borg
the moment was televised
to my whole family
when in black and white
you died playing with me
I wasn’t and it wasn’t true
that you were ripe
and split open for me
and like a time-bomb
exploded two days later

I was Bjorn Borg
and had never won a match
I was assassinated on the court
before you were dead
and left these concrete hands
as a legacy trapped at home
I wasn’t the same age now
as the surgeon laying down
or you were left a widower
and tennis had never existed
and you never let me win

I’m an old child caught netless
with nails in his birth certificate
refusing to argue the bad call
I was Bjorn Borg
and no one knew me

partial selfectomy


When I begged for forgiveness
My ulcer began to bleed, again
And your eyes clouded over
With the assumption
That shortly I would
Stop

This ending made it clean
As the dirty bathroom mirror
In which my revulsion dances
Around the spots
Of spat toothpaste
Flecks

When I begged for forgiveness
Your cancer twitched around, again
And your mouth scabbed over
With the assumption
That lately I had not
Begun


It was the only thing left
On the spotlessness here, again
And I am filthy with sadness
About those assumptions
That I cannot remove
There


Like surgery carefully tended
Like toxins carefully administered
Like miniscule breaths blended
In which my revulsion dances
Before my reflection


If I could cut myself out
Purifying my failings, again
Like the cancer you carried
And radiate your wounds
Placing them far away
Forgotten if they could be

Forgiven and forgone
My scalpel would be legend
Dancing with revulsion
Over that amazing callousness
Cultivated in a vacuum
A hose filled with my words

I am a convictionless convict
Striped from the rod laid, again
Opening this invisible flesh
I carry up endless stairs
And place at your feet
Spotless, clean, ministered

Acknowledged and perfect
A fantasy of stopped beginning
Within the rolling veins
Of a stronger penitent
Than these knees can carry
In the face of the scars I give

When I begged for forgiveness
My needs broke your back, again
And I could never look at you
With the innocence
That my days
lost

I remember...but you forgot that I tried to reach you...

“What are these winds?”
“They are the Santa Ana winds.”
“This?”
“The winds…yes.”
“Oh. I see. The winds.”

“Whose hand is this?”
“That is my hand.”
“Yours?”
“Yes my hand.”
“Yes, your hand.”

The distance between the hammer-head and the nail head is finite--sometimes greater, sometimes less. The space between them is what matters; the air between them, which compacts and separates, dribbles down and out, and eventually away. The impact is beside this point. It is what happens in the void between the violence of the strike. The slow arc of the immanent swing. The sighting of the target. Peripheral events. The wind blows between them. The Santa Ana winds of Southern California. The hot glare of the Eagle Rock sun. The truth that lives in that space. That hand. Your hand. That wind. Yes.

“Where is this place?”
“Here? Between the objects.”
“Between?”
“Yes. Between the hammer and the nail.”
“This place is between them?”
“Forever in this wind we are between them.”
“Oh.”

One of those deeply burning afternoons –surely eye spotting and July sapience dew laden-- a hammer was raised. Within it’s wood, golden with worked age, the grain strained against chipped varnish. A 2-ounce head of steel perched enamored. Shadow thrown, the implement cocked to embrace a cross-section of parabolic flight. A downward descent. The wind carried a scent of sawn years; measured and marked, relegated to fit, soon to be fixed in place.

The Hammer family sat under the west facing low-slung back porch, glasses in hand weeping released drips off of tumblers assembled; ice and booze. Nail Hammer was the youngest of three children. His brother, Ivan, stretched an explosion of blond hair across the glass, shielding the melting cubes from the 100-degree heat. Silk was twenty-three and her small features hunched in the torn folding chair, squished behind one of the patio posts. When Nail was fifteen he had thought that his sister would eventually succeed in disappearing behind whichever inanimate object she could find. They were close. All three fit together as some thrift-store puzzle. Only the occasional missing piece appeared over their childhood. Now Ivan was twenty-five. Nail remained forever, at the moment, a mere twenty-one.

The premium which shadows paid in this tide pool of heat were never underestimated. A huddling of anenomie haired youth swaying in the currents of wind. Nail never knew what exactly had become of shade. All he knew was that there was a sticky spot where his body became adhered. Home. This place. This wind. This space. Tangerine sticky and summer gorged tiredness invaded this place. Like clockwork, Ivan assembled the three of them together, gently offering the drinks to his siblings. Silk sipped at the fluid as if it were an exotic visitor from her dreams. Perhaps the very one which would pick her up and place her under the stippled boughs of a flagrantly aged tree. Blessed cool swirling across her sweaty neck. Nail clasped the melting drink in both hands and wished she hadn’t done it. That’s what he thought every day with every sip of every fantasy shipwrecked somewhere beyond understanding.

“She shouldn’t have done it.”
“No, she shouldn’t have.” Ivan pushed back his hair and touched the liquid to his lips but did not drink.
“Where does this wind go?”
“It goes away from us Nail.” Silk responded. Her eyes opened slowly, squinted and revealed the dark blue of some enameled casement trapped behind glass in some museum.
“Why?”
“There is no reason for it. Things leave. These hot winds take things away.” This time Ivan sipped once. Then again.

From beyond the porch door a faint whiff of Silk’s paint attempted to invade the foreign country of the Hammer children. Designs created themselves on her old dress. Spots and smears, dark and light, oil and charcoal, the mediums of her days. When she had come back she didn’t smile when she hugged Nail. College had not changed her. He knew her still. Wherever she had been had not been hungry enough to devour her place within the trinity. He had hoped that she would come back different. As he had so much hoped to change himself. Loose change is all he saw before him now. A small shift toward the shadow, a demure nodding in these foothills, a quietly adjusted book on the same old shelf. Silk painted pictures perpetually covered over again and again. Today she did not erase the figures from the canvas. Today she huddled against blows of the wind.

“Should there have been a reason?” asked Nail of either of them.
“Not anymore.” Silk said standing up to move her chair away from the glare.
“If there was a reason it’s lost now.” Ivan stood as well holding the tumbler loosely in his hand. Slowly he touched Nails’ cheek.
“Do you know about those things…about reasons Nail? Do you want a reason? Need a reason? You know I would give you one, so would Silk, if we could. There’s just us…we are the reason I guess.” Ivan pulled his chair closer to Nail’s.
“She should have given a reason.” Nail said staring across the yard. “She shouldn’t have done it.”

Nail looked into his brother’s face. Angular and tan, Ivan sat illumined by the flames of the sun. His long blond hair flailed across his lips and whipped at his chest. Ivan never left Nail. Not for long anyway. It was as if he had been born to translate the quiet of Nail’s thoughts. To express those oil-like sheens which flowed across Nail’s tongue. Ivan held this place in his mind so that the other two could find themselves when they got lost.

“We are the reason?” Nail said, his voice catching.
“Sometimes no reason is reason enough. We don’t exist beyond each other anymore it seems.” Ivan pulled his hair across the glass. Nail reflected on that movement so Ivan-ish.
“We are not reasons?”
Silk bowed her head and said, “Reasons. We are reasons. Ivan don’t say things like that. She may not have had a reason. But we do.”
Ivan reached for her empty glass. Nail proffered his up as well. Another one would do well this afternoon.
“You are both my reason…you are.” Ivan walked back into the house carrying the glasses.

“I’m sorry Nail…sometimes Ivan doesn’t know what to say when you have the touch. We love you, you know? Have patience with us. You are the reason. Just as the winds are the reason. That’s not as bad as it may sound. That’s the way she made us. Made you especially for us.” Silk smiled, her first in weeks, and held her arms out toward the fruit bowl of embers in the sky.

“But the winds take things away.” Nail said.

“Yes. Like the winds you take us away…for a reason.” Then Silk reached out and took the new drink from Ivan. Laughing, she then swallowed a deep daydreams swallow and flew dancing across the shimmering mirage of the porch.

2
I was born during a mountain fire. Flames cantering across San Gabriel canyons. In the absence of the sun I cried. But my mother held me and called to me…Nail. I have seen that fire return after vacationing like a snow-bird. I was conceived on a lawn, so she told me.

My first memory is of a stack of letters spread out across the kitchen floor. I remember my brother holding one letter aloft—as if it were an answer from some God encased in vanilla. My second memory is of her, my mother, holding up another letter and spitting at it – as if it were a charlatan encased in dead flesh. Silk hid under the kitchen table, as always, looking at her.

When I think of that moment, I think of her -- dark hair falling across her spittle laden lips. Her eyes twinkling with the sound of a darker colored memory than I can inspire to mind. She laughed. Always winking and laughing. Always kissing and dancing. Silk should have been more like her. We all should have taken those creamy winks to heart. Instead she built me to be a mountain fire. Consuming fuel like a forever gaping machine. But she made me quiet…like the night I was born. Only the wind to sing to me. But I have never known the words to that song. Ivan says I do. Silk says I am the song, and therefore, I don’t need to know the words. I am the words soundlessly crushing up against the world. She made me that way. But I only hear the wind and smell the burning chaparral. She would probably be very pleased by this.

*

Nail’s real name, the name he was born with, was Niles Ishmael Hammer. My mother thought it was funny to call him Nail. I have always known him as Nail. My brother. Born during a firestorm. Born at Midnight. Born to mother.

Shade Hammer, our mom, used to sit for hours and stare at nothing. She would talk to herself as if the room was full of angels or devils. As if we didn’t exist. As if the fire on the mountain had broken off some piece of her. Yes, she was, by all accounts, “normal” before Nail was born. Not that Silk and I ever knew. But we were told stories, fairytales, of her days before his birth. When we, Silk and I, were toddlers. Shade draped cloth across the world and protected us as an old nymph running across the canyon. A wood nymph quietly taking her children across a glade. Until Nail. Then the touch jumped off her back and landed on us all. Especially Nail. Even when he was two or three by all accounts. A fire on the mountain. A fire in her womb. A break. Broken. Seared across us all. Dad was dead now. Burned by the touch. Burned by Nail. Burned by mom’s insistence that we jump with her across those charred canyons. I was born to hold my brother. To keep him safe. To never let him out of my sight for fear. But we were happy children. Happy then and now in knowing secrets. Ours and no one else’s. I danced with my sister and brother across mom’s canyons. As fire leaps periodically in the wind, we dance.

*

By the time you’re 44 you start to feel it. By the time you’re 45 it’s real. Everybody goes through body wreckage. I just thought it wouldn’t hurt so badly. Without Pinks you’re just another slob trudging ever slower off to the chem mills. But that’s what the big banks want. No? Yea we knew about the Swami and his flow kid dark market. We had heard about Revolution and all the rest. But when you got make the rent, you just bite it and go. As the saying goes, “Well you can just count me out…”. But the flow jumpers always echoed, “In,” and laughed their heads off. And their heads rolled alright. The Phi kids always hunted them down with parental approval and ripped them to shreds. You never heard about such things on flow net, nope. Only from some poor slob whose “cousin” had gone down the wrong path. The Swami. Damn my body ached. I probably didn’t have much more than a few years left. Then I would be cooked. Finito. Aborted from the works like yesterday’s papers.

When the whole subcurrent came drifting through my mind, I’d thought it was just more mist feed crap. “Nail takes the Blows for you.” What? I mean I’m working away at some bullshit grid when this feed comes bubbling up. Who the fuck anyway? Then someone slips me a patch when I’m going home. Who? You got me. All anyone has to do these days is target you with a Blow hole and you’ve got an infection. I mean we all want to relax. And if you’re gonna get infected then you always hope it’s from some whore down in San Pedro who’s enhanced the medium enough to give you good dreams-- if not a compulsive desire to split and get lost. But no. That day the infection spread “Nail’s Coming.” I thought it was another ad. Then it hit with more force than any Pedro dive ever had, “Nail’s got your back.” “Nail can mend your ways.” “Nail is the ONE.” All the while the subs drummed out these retro soul riffs: Brahmin Fletch OZ cranks, wild sick wahini gyrations, sunsets unknown, sex, surf, life, elasticity. Nail? Who the fuck? Someone said the Swami was slipping Pink-ware into Adland just to drag the decays down to the dark market. I knew that wasn’t his style. Never was. See I knew the Swami when I was just a young Grid grom. I gave it all up. No surf, no Hini’s or Hula girls to be gobbled up by the handful, even torched my skater, for what? A job. Just like everybody else, I had to survive. And my grid work wasn’t that great. Just enough to get into the Bank’s warehouse and pipe down til I could get a piece of Pedro every once in a while. Then Nail came. Then the swell came. Then they came. The groms. They ate the hills and secret spots like an infection from the Queen herself. Shit, my body hurts.

*

He was a little man. Rotund with a slightly graying goatee, and a fringe of hair carefully cut around his bald head. When he smiled it was with an air of sarcasm. Maybe this was due to his business clothes. Or maybe it was due to his lack of empathy. And empathy was supposedly part of his business. And business was how he viewed his work as a psychologist. Dr. Greeb sat across from Silk and draped one leg over the arm of his chair.
“You can justify anything in your life,” Greeb said staring at silk, “It’s just so much mental masturbation.”

Silk shifted on the couch which faced Greeb’s chair. She didn’t know what to say to him. Greeb had been late for each of the five sessions that Silk had with him. Five, ten, fifteen, twenty-five minutes. Somehow she thought that he didn’t think much of her.
“You think I could justify anything in my life? You believe that of me?” Silk looked him right in the eye as she said this. She was scared and disappointed that Greeb would say these things to her. About her.
“You can keep talking about the past and your traumas until you’re fifty if you want. I’ll do that. But that’s not what you need. You need to make a plan. Will you do that?” Greeb’s face became serious as if he were looking through her.
Silk didn’t know what to say. She felt off balance. This is why I came to therapy?
“Sure…if that’s what you want. I mean I came here to get help and if that’s what you think will help…” She looked at her hands and thought about how uncomfortable Greeb had made her feel. Maybe that’s good. Maybe that’s progress. Maybe I don’t need to like my therapist. Or maybe he’s just a self-satisfied little toad. No that’s not fair she thought.
Greeb leaned forward and made notes in his hand held.
“So, next time I want you to bring a plan, okay?” he said not looking up. “Or I’ll make a plan for you, or we can do it together. Okay? So see you next time.”
Greeb stood and tossed his handheld down on top of his old fashioned folder which held who knew what in terms of notes on Silk’s sessions with him.
Silk was angry now. She knew that much. They didn’t like each other. At least there wasn’t any natural report that she felt between them.
As she was leaving she decided that he wasn’t the therapist for her. Further she realized that he wasn’t a good therapist for anyone. The touch is a sensitive thing. While she didn’t have it the same way as Nail, both she and Ivan had it. Looking at Greeb as he started to shuffle her out of his office she felt the touch mount her. The room became dark with just Greeb’s face illuminated in her sight. She could see the threads in the collar of his expensive white dress shirt. She could see his pulse buried under his double chin behind the close-cropped goatee. She could see his irises start to relax, becoming wider and wider. When the touch comes the Hammer children always said it was like seeing reality. They didn’t live in reality. No one did. The touch sent tingling warmth down Silk’s spine.
“Doctor?” she said as he turned toward her.
“Save it for next time okay?” Greeb managed to say right before the touch hit him. With his arms suddenly lacks at his sides, and his mouth slowly falling open, Greeb looked surprised.
“This is something I can justify. This is Justice Dr. Greeb. Are you a just man doctor? Do you think that by spending three and a half hours with me in total that you can justify saying that I just mentally masturbate to justify my life and actions? Doctor?”
Greeb tried to back away from her and bumped into his desk. Her folder fell on the carpeting—an institutional grey. Noncommittal and supposedly soothing to therapy clients. Then he sat down hard on the ground in a sitting position.
“Doctor? Are you okay?” Silk said as the touch reached into Greeb and pulled out a moment of laughter due to having characterized a patient as pathetic. Me? Silk thought. Pathetic? Me? She almost lost control of the touch. It usually wasn’t this strong in her and Ivan. Only in Nail. She then saw it didn’t matter who it was. Greeb viewed them all that way. She saw him at home gorging himself on various junk foods in front of the vid feed. She saw him leering at women in his mind. She saw him smiling while sending in his bills to the UNMH. Silk saw him. The real Doctor Greeb—a short bald fat man who hated his patients. Wait, there was something else. No he didn’t hate all of them. He liked an older man. Yes a clearly well dressed and successful man. Greeb would do anything for this man…for his money and respect. Respect? Is that what you need so bad little doctor? Silk thought.
Greeb looked up at her terrified.
“You’re inside me…please not that…I’m sorry.” Sweat had begun to bead on Greeb’s forehead. He almost vomited.

Then Silk said, “Justify yourself doctor. Now.” Her hand swept up to her eyes and covered them as if she was playing hide and seek.
“Justice is blind Greeb. Say something in defense of yourself.”
Greeb felt the warmth of urine puddle under his buttocks. His nose began to bleed. His arms twitched at his sides. He couldn’t stop looking at Silk. Her hair appeared as a flame and her body as an oil painting forever becoming and then disappearing under a white erasure.
The mounting changed her. Silk became the old man that Greeb so admired and envied. Her face became that of an old woman, then a young child, and back to Silk’s own features.
“The truth now doctor.” Silk revealed her eyes, bluer than blue. Greeb lurched forward but his rolls of fat kept him sitting up. His breath rasped, “You’re all just a bunch of godless losers. Fuck all of you.” His eyes rolled in his head and the settled on Silk. Fear of the just. Fear of the pure. Fear of the touch. Silk had seen it before, but never like this. Nail would never do this. But she would…now she knew she would.
“Greeb do want someone to have your back? Do you know who’s coming? Do you know about the One? No, I didn’t think so. He’s here Greeb and he’s kind and just. Think about that. I know you will.”
Silk turned and walked out of the office toward the elevators. Greeb slumped back and hit his head on the corner of his heavy weaveware desk. Silks files began to become erased; electric, organic, and memorized. She didn’t exist for Greeb or anyone he knew or dealt with. We are our reason…there is just us. Shade made us this way. To serve Nail’s calling. Silk got into the elevator and pushed the button for the tube pad.
Later Silk heard that Greeb had been found in the park across from his office with a vial of H-Bombs in his pocket. He had nailed his own hand and feet to a tree. The hammer sat on the grass, golden and scratched. In his pocket was a note that read: “He’s here and I’m not.”
Silk called another therapist as soon as she heard about Greeb. Only this time she took her brother’s advice and found one that practiced Occuflow. Then she proceeded to white out her last painting of a short fat man nailed to a tree.