i saw you, girl in the white dress

and i saw what you did.

it was hot and sunny and you were insane to think no one could see straight through that dress, straight to your white g-string and tan bra. the clomp-clomp of your heels didn't help you go stealth, either.

i was pretending to looking at pants that were way too tight for anyone when i saw you holding up that zip-up hoody.

i was making my way down to the shirts lightly splattered with bleach when i saw you to take the panties off the rack and drape the hoody over your hand.

i was in the dressing area with my pants down when you almost open the curtain on me before realizing someone was in there.

i heard you clomp-clomping around in there really frantically and open your curtain way too fast to have really given that hoody a chance.

by the time i had realized that no matter what pair of pants i try on in this place, they will be so tight that i look like a Rolling Stones album cover, you are on a bee-line to the front door, hips swinging a brand-new pair of green panties with yellow trim. you didn't even take time to get the wedgie out.

so, girl in the white dress, know that someone--a rather creepy guy that takes notice of your underwear--knows what you did this summer and wags his finger in terrible disapproval.

being with you

is like feeling the back of my bottom four front teeth and feeling that they are clean

and the fruits that thy soul lusted after are departed from thee and all which were dainty and goodly departed from thee and thou shalt find them no more at all

being with you makes me never want to fall into quoting anything again because it is all original

we roar like bears and mourn sore like doves, we look for judgment but there is none, for salvation , but it is far from us

i promise this is all as steady as my slip-on shoe's traction against the slope up to my apartment, even when it's wet

They say, let him make speed and hasten his work, that we may see it, that we may know it!

amen and amen.

one thing an artist may or may not tell you is

context is everything.

so here's the context for the shit i'm about to tell. it was last night and it was a dream. when i woke up i just stared at the ceiling for a really, really long time.

it was christmas time and i was home in Louisiana, only it wasn't home, it was this house i'd never seen before. My siblings and i were up to our childhood game of trying to find clues to each of our presents from each other without giving up too many details to cripple our advantage over the other.

it seems that i couldn't wait, and in a dark corner of the living room, ripped the wrapping paper off of mine and opened it up.

inside:

a live baby--me to be specific. this year my mother was celebrating the paganized birth of Jesus by gift-wrapping me as a baby.

I was dumbfounded. I had absolutely no idea how to hold it, much less take care of it. I brought it into the kitchen where my mom was cooking and just sort of held it up. she wasn't really mad that i opened my present early, she just said something to the effect of "i thought you might want it."

thing is, i didn't. it didn't surprise me that my mother knew me so little that she'd think i would want the complete opposite of what i desire in life. that's just how we are.

the only excitement i could muster through the whole experience is thinking about how happy i thought elizabeth would be. she really wanted a child, and i thought she'd be thrilled to have it be me. not just part me, but actually me. i didn't know where she was, but i couldn't wait to tell her.

then i was bored. i didn't have any idea what to do with the thing in my arms so i decided to put it down and watch tv. i had a huge debate with myself in regard to the best position to place it in, but in the end decided that face down was best because if it spit up, it wouldn't aspirate on its own vomit. i reached this conclusion based on my experience with sedated animals.

i placed it on the couch next to me and started watching the pornography that was on tv. the smut was very simple. there was a man with no face sitting naked in a chair in an empty room. he had an erection that a faceless woman came and sat on. after either fake or real cumming, the film cut immediately to another woman then another woman then another woman. woman after woman came and used the cock to her or his own pleasure over and over and over. some were in fast forward and some were in regular motion. sometimes he would cum on them, but he'd never go limp. the only alteration in the lustful loop was the last woman. she was older, probably in her 40s and had a face and red hair. she blew him and he came on her tits then pissed all over her.

i then looked at the baby. it had vomited a gazillion times and was almost dead. i rushed it to the bathroom to try to wash it off. it was covered head to toe in dried and undried puke and when i took its diaper off, saw it had some sort of terrible skin sores. the more i looked, the more it was diaseased. i turned on the water the bathtub, only to see the bathtub was completely filthy. i held the baby in one hand and frantically scrubbed the tub with the other but it wouldn't come clean. the dirt kept multiplying with every swipe.

speaking of dirt, the scene all changes right then and i'm in this all dirt landscape with canyons everywhere. somehow, i know elizabeth is near and i call to her. i'm holding it in my hands and it is clean now.

she is just at the horizon, across the canyon, and trying to catch a bus. the 9 to SE Powell to be specific. in reality the 9 goes east and west, but in this place it apparently goes north and south and she was in a hurry to go north. the baby and i traverse the canyons and get to her and she takes the child and seems happy. i tell her it is me and she smiles and touches me face. the introduction is sweet, but shortly thereafter she continues going crazy about the 9. she had just missed one and was nervously pacing up and down the street waiting for the next one.

i ask her what direction she's going and she points north.

i tell her that we should go ahead and start walking that way, as it would at least let us make some amount of headway while we were waiting, instead of merely pacing around.

she says that my idea sounded logical and we should do that. we start walking north and looking back every few steps, to see if we can see the bus. we don't and i wake up.

now we are back to where i began. the first thing i see when i wake up is the window next to my bed with the blinds that are bent. the bend in the blind is annoying because sunlight shines through right on my eyes. then i turn to my back to look at the ceiling.

once, when pressed, Freud said "sometimes a cigar is just a cigar."

she says

"i keep getting 'owned' on Facebook and its really starting to piss me off."

i say: why don't you just remove the application?

"well, it wouldn't bother me as much if it were people i actually knew owning me, but i've never even heard of these people."

i ask: how much you going for?

" 'L$5,421,' whatever the fuck that means."

she's sitting there in nothing but her "Communist Party" tee shirt and a that pair dark panties with a thunder bolt on the crotch and i think about that time when her mom told me, in hushed tones, about her "animal magnetism" and how it's gotten her into trouble in times past.

i say: what, they have their own monetary system?

"apparently."

i ask: is it like Second Life, where they have their own virtual system that you can transfer into real currency? if so, that'd be cool.

"yeah, then i can see how much i'd go for on the slave trade market."

i ask: what kind of weirdo wants to own their friends, much less go to all the trouble of making some sophisticated script that allows people to go up for auction?

It was just then i figured out that animal magnetism isn't anything more than the irrestible juxtaposition of child-like cuteness and hard-nippled, dead sexiness.

note to self: make "owned" joke shortly after sexual intercourse tonight.

dave not humorus

smells like bloated walrus carcass
alaska--yeah right
more like french-speaking canada
just remember, his soul stained with mushed twinkies
comes from a non-chlorinated gene pool
he is a dangerous liason indeed
just remember, never show mercy, never give in

diamond studded,

with the pancreas of a telemarketer, she calls
endless rings never sounded so hopeless--it was all on the line this time
I could really go for some cod nuggets right now
back to business--mysteries don't call themselves, you know
shallow reverberations wade the silence
time to get crunk all up in this pig
"Is Robert there? he left his hudsucker proxy fruitsnack filled fanny pack."
static and dialtone never tasted so appetizing as it did right then
the operator may be smooth, but this is whiteboard smooth

We don’t want a revolution, (orginially written 9/03 after 4 days with no sleep)

don’t need a sans culottes

These body aches return every night. Prelude to mind aches. Fuck Cartesian dualism and its inherent dilemmas. Body wants sleep, mind wants to kick some ass. My ass to be specific. I can’t explain what happens from the time I sit in this chair to when I lay down on that bed. The body never wins. Mind runs wild, shows the body who’s boss. Puts the heart on a treadmill and turns it up full blast. With every beat it bitch-slaps my self worth with a palm tattooed with my personal sort comings.

Take my pants if that’s all you want

the UPC code is all that matters anymore

is this the independence that you sought?

I can’t leave if you own the store

I don’t even know what I’m saying at times like these. I just want to feel like I’m doing something. I can’t sleep, so I write this trash. I’m no Henry Darger. I just ramble about my shit with articles falling between the cracks. My mind puts articles in, because the mind is the only place articles exist. There is no concrete “the.” When we say “the” there isn’t something physical that we are trying to describe. I guess if I’m losing my articles, I’m losing the immaterial, the agentic—I’m losing my mind? maybe. Impressionists have a point. You just have to fill in the articles for yourself. You have to have a mind. You have to think. You have “to be” in the Cartesian sense. Here we are at Descartes again. Bastard. Criticized by neuroscience, he gave them their one-sided dualism that they treasure so. No respect. But there’s a difference between me and them—they drop their articles on purpose.

the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the

Have to compensate for the material determinists. I promise I’ll never drop my articles because I have to. I’ll only be an impressionist. I’ll only do it on purpose, only do it if I can do otherwise. Thus, I’ll keep them for myself while intentionally withholding them from others.

Take what you want from this village of ruin

speak without regard for those now upside down

Thanklessly call for god to care about what you’re doing

Silence your laughs at my shoes, I’m no fucking clown

I’m not here to make you smile, think, feel, spout advice, or laugh. I tire of being used as a jester—or worse yet—a walking encyclopedia, ready to be opened with bright red tabs. “S” stands for suck my dick. But then I’d be using you. Using your face as Adam’s cave of wonders while your knees ache as the grains of the concrete forge their way into the skin that covers your bone. Then I’d be the villain. Then I’d be using you. Maybe that’s the only thing that hurts worse than being used—using someone else. Just don’t confuse me. Don’t share the intimate with me just for some free counseling. Don’t fuck with me using agenda-driven disclosure. Did it ever occur to you that I want to be close to you? Inside you? Did it ever occur to you that I need answers? I’m not a damned answering machine. I want a home. No more you, no longer me, I want an atom of us. Not you leeching me for advice about your dumbass relationship that you value less than the one you have with me, yet give your lips to.

They honor me with their lips, yet their hearts are far from me.

Dammit Descartes, leave me the hell alone. The only problem is modernity doesn't have anything to replace you with. Mind and emotions can never be shared with the same person that the body is shared with. How can the immaterial interact with the material? That would give one person everything. There would be no escape plan—it would be total bondage. Take my Pineal gland, and you take it all. It’s total black leather bondage every step of the way up mount, hands tied, but with no ram in the thicket. Abraham holds the knife, and you must sacrifice.

It’s almost 3am now. Isn’t this useful? These bits of binary bullshit that no one will ever see? But I will know. just like I know things most people don’t. I know these things because I don’t know other things. It’s all economics, every trade is a fair trade. I trade peace, home, happiness, optimism and naivety for rationale, truth, and insight. I just never remember making the choice, I guess. Lack of memory doesn’t write history.

Do I even exist?

I’d hate to think I’m in all this pain only to find out I only make ant hills

A double-quarter pounder with cheese is about as holistic as I get these days

I’ve spent my days in reductionism, cutting out independent variables with paper scissors

Too bad I can’t super-size my internal locus of control

I shit, therefore I AM THAT I AM

Just found out that all my intimacy is binary. This keyboard is what I come home to. I caress buttons, not bodies. Cut, copy, paste, kiss, hug, taste. Zero one, one, one, zero. I am my own taskmaster, my own Hero. But where is the two that are to be one? Just me and these codes that no one knows. Just these files that I’d kill myself for someone to see. I just want to be heard—maybe even understood. This is too much to ask, though. So I google for love. I google for binary representations of bodies. Others loving, others living. I wish the proxy-power of the atonement worked with porn. But it doesn’t. I haven’t been touched in years. My afferent system wouldn’t know what to do. Not enough RAM. Will you be my screensaver?

CTRL+ALT+DEL

I can’t sleep with these dirty feet

Give me rest, give me a sequence of peace

Take me home Father, taste the crumbs of your feast

When I slip into eye exercise, I have recycled dreams with reduced themes. Okay, just one theme. here it goes, but I already know, and I’m really just talking to myself. In these dreams I have to expose my genitals to a girl in order to solve some gigantic, life-threatening cataclysm. It’s not awkward, it’s not weird, it’s just what needs to be done and we both know it. It’s a matter of life and death. Somehow it always makes total sense in the dramaturgy. I don’t even need to ask anyone for what it means. It’s pretty damned transparent. Pure, uncensored truth usually is.

(nothing censored is pure)

Black lights uncover hot nights of

never ending fictional friction between those who

want to be discovered and those who die to be covered

with acceptance that they are incapable of drinking with

their lying lips and sharp, tilted hips

I wish you could see me now. Read this while I sit here with a hood on my head, a cross in my heart, and no pants on. Watch me struggle with these Saphir-Warf semantics that speak of my limits more than my talents. These words free my anxiety, my soul, but like all patriots, they are also my captors and my jailors. I can’t think what I can’t say.

There’s no word for “jam” in Hebrew.

But that’s okay because we’re all Nazis here. Du hast, motherfucker. I’m rigid on the inside and open on the outside. Like a Skor candy bar I guess. I give everyone else my sweetness and leave the rock-hard reality for myself. It’s a beautiful, life without the French.

Excuse me, but you dropped my name on the floor next to his—

this must have been a mistake because I know that you keep

us in separate containers that have completely different

scents of axe body spray and reinforcement intervals

King James never stops his commissions. Neither does Joseph Smith. They are demanding architects. Keystones or seer stones, they keep a hammer in my hand and a weight on my back. Hymns are scripts sung to lull the sweating. Sing ye sirens, sing until I believe again! Sing until I see, or believe, or whichever comes first. I don’t know what to believe anymore. If God is perfect and perfection is an absence of sin, the God cannot be sinful. Yet, sin exists, and God is everywhere. God has seen every rape, every slit throat, every child that knows that taste of her own blood and her uncle’s semen. He was part of that. He witnessed it. Further, he didn’t do anything to stop it—apparently, he is no Samaritan. Even further, he ultimately created it. So either God isn’t perfect, or sin isn’t really sin. Then he has the audacity to call this shit the plan of happiness. Life is for us to be tested, suffer, and be exposed to sin. No clever nomenclature can convince me that this torture is happiness. Plan of redemption, then. Wrong again. One must fall to be redeemed, so it’s really the plan of push-you-off-the-ledge-and-let-me-save-you-so-I-look-good-plan. Plan of salvation works just about the same way. It’s for our own good. But that’s not answer to the questions that the existential “answers” have stringing along behind them.

Just purchased, for better or for divorce

This wedding dress never felt so good wadded on the floor

We’re just going all the way—back to the source

We all live and die on the threshold of the cervix door

Never wear seatbelts. They only keep you in, they don’t let you out. Pulling safely into my parking spot is my deepest regret. No life-ending wreck, no obituary to heralding my dream has at last come true. They will mourn the loss of another bright-eyed youth with his life ahead of him and cry tears for my all my potential. That’s what I long for. Cut me down before I grow twisted and knotted in the corner of the forest where the Son refuses to shine.

This is how it has to end, you always knew it

No matter what happiness spills, fate sees through it

Face-down in a tangle of limbs, I threw it

Square in a circle, there is no new shit

Decadence without recompense is robbing innocence with broomsticks. That rhymed, but that’s about all it means. That’s all any of this means. Unfortunately, they weren’t even good. Sorry about that.

bob is not a philanthropist

never was
disney his drug of choice, not frappachinos
his little black box has sugary secrets
no one knows, but he is paralyzed by the thought of flash cards
nice guy, nice pants
guys with hearts of swine always get the girl
but never the good headphones

if we all will live somewhere nice

when we die, that'd be cool.

if we'd all just shut up for a few minutes, that'd be awesome.

if there was nothing that needed to be done, that'd rule.

if we all laughed at something other than someone else's misfortune, that'd be the bee's knees.

if we all liked the same things, that'd be swell.

if we all were all little less varied, that'd rock.

if we all lived as one, that'd be some kick'n chicken.

if we all didn't fear the unknown, that be neat.

if we loved everything all the time or else, that'd be keen.

-the fascist.

The old lady on my arm named Leona says

she just needs help getting down the stairs.

Then across the street.

"Have you ever been to Tony's Antiques and Collectibles?" she asks.

I tell her no. I try to keep it simple because she’s asked me that a hundred times already before, and I know she’ll ask me at least three more times before this is over.

Now we are about to pass the big crack in the sidewalk.

I lie and tell her I have a pizza in the oven, and I really have to get back when we are almost to the gas station.

She pretended she didn’t hear me and said

“doesn’t it look like there’s pennies all over the sidewalk?!”

I sigh and decide to take her all the way today. I’d feel like shit if anything happened to her just because I wanted to play GTA IV.

The only good thing about her shot to hell memory is that she won’t question me about my fictional pizza.

We are walking so slow time is standing effing still, so I ask her if she has any kids.

“No, but I’ve had a lot of abortions” she replies, as she stops and re-adjusts her glasses with one of those old people grunts that let you know that this simple action is really takin’ it out of ‘em.

We are to the Korean grocery store when I finish the math—she must have had “a lot” of abortions back in the 40s and 50s.

Shit.

That was back in the day when it was all back alleys, bleach, and coat hangers.

She just wanted a quart of milk, so I get it and the girl at the counter puts it in a black plastic bag and we continue.

It has already been half an hour and we have only been a block and half and she has to stop for a rest.

“Have you been down to Tony’s Antiques and Collectibles down there on Gladstone?” she asks.

I just say that I need to get going and we need to start walking again.

“Too bad Tony’s Antiques and Collectibles is closed on the weekends. They have some very curious things in there” she says as I take her arm and get her to her feet.

I wonder about the black bag. It’s like we just bought a copy of Barely Legal or something.

We approached Tony’s Antiques and Collectibles when I sigh and realize that for some ungodly reason, Tony is selling Antiques and Collectibles on a Saturday.

“Oh my, Tony is open today. You must stop in and see his antiques and collectibles!”

I tell her I have no time for pursuing his wares today, but promise to stop by another day. For some reason, calling things “wares” really seems to resonate with her and we move on.

We are almost back when she stops and says

“I like the sound of children laughing.”

There were 3 girls and 4 boys in front of a green and red house throwing water balloons at each other and screeching.

We cross the street and she watches them from for awhile. I figure at this point we’ve taken an hour to go one square block, so what’s another few minutes.

She doesn’t notice a little girl directly behind us, sitting on the lawn of her house also watching the kids across the street. The scene was set up like some commercial from the Mormons. Kids playing in the yard, a young man helping an old lady walk, an outcast kid watching the fun from afar. I brace myself for some family-friendly trope in voice over to come and frame the situation with some sort of morality, but I’m distracted by the lonely kid’s mother, who is bent over in short shorts, working in the garden. I’ve never seen camel toe from this angle, so I’m taking in the view.

She stands up and I think catches me looking at her so me and Leona continue up back to her apartment in silence.

She won’t let me help her get the door unlocked, and she’s wheezing so hard I swear she’s going to die any minute. Never have I seen unlocking a door be so much of a trial.

I put her black bagged milk in the refrigerator and I tell her I need to go now.

For the first time she just says “o.k.” and doesn’t beg me to stay and somewhere inside I take offense to this, even though I really don’t want to stay.

My hand still smells like old lady, so when I get upstairs to my unit, I wash them.

And the world is worth thirty pieces of silver and some change

God uses special scales that control for inflation. There’s a dial for your specific time, latitude, longitude, physical appearance, and handedness. Most people don’t understand that handedness creates imbalances of cosmic proportions. The Holocaust would’ve have happened if it wasn’t for a left-handed Babylonian King in 312 B.C.

Names aren’t nearly as important in the grand scheme of things.

That's why, in these fallen times, names are all they give you. Because then, the mysteries take a good half-day, especially if Brother Woodruff is officiating. In the future it gets widdled and watered down, first in the name of efficiency, then in the name propriety. Some people get spooked at all the Hebrew and ritual. Now people are scared to death of ritual.

it really wasn't necessary to say there was blood everywhere

but i say it anyway.

she was still and calm and i had never seen her like this before. she was drained and she was still and for once, everyone in the room was completely silent.

the only color on her face was the few drops of blood coming out of her nose and mouth. she was still and i checked her pulse only to confirm what i already knew. it was just a gesture for the sake of a gesture. there was nothing else to do but close her eyes, cover her, and clean up.

she had been up to her usual tricks just an hour ago, and now i'm on the phone to figure out what to do with what was left of her. we all had her blood on us, and we knew it.

all this knowing never put a stop to anything.

they brought the plastic bag and i struggled to put her in it. no one else could do it, but it had to be done, so i did it.

i knew i was the only one who could take her where she was had go, so i washed the blood off as best i could and put on some new gloves. she was in her bag, on a table with wheels, and i was pushing it as fast as i could.

she bounced and jiggled with every irregularity in the cement. i knew if i didn't hurry this would all be a waste. her life and death would not mean anything, and knowing that it was up to me to make it worth two shits made me breathe shorter breathes than i already was.

i picked her up off the table knowing it was the last time i'd feel her weight in my arms. they said to put her in the freezer out by the loading dock.

i fumbled for my key to the icebox but my hands were not connected to my body. i forced my attention away from knowing the clock was against me and back to the keys i was barely keeping in my hand.

at this point, her neural tissue was probably already worthless and i was robbed of any goodbyes. i threw her in the bin labeled "to be processed," but she bounced out on fell into the "processed" container. i fished her out, getting another set of gloves covered in blood.

her weight in my hands once again felt like the providence of god. i knew she was gone, but this one last, unplanned touch was all i needed to cast her off.

another bath in soap and beta-dine and i'm with her on the stainless steel table where she is cut open and processed. i try not to watch as they inspect her insides. i try not to watch when they take the saw to her scalp, only to tell me its been too long to save the brain.

i walk out with a clip of her hair and one 5mm vial of her blood. that's all that's left worth using.

i knew this was futile, i just didn't know how futile.

the last time i went through this, at least i was there, holding her head and touching her hair when she let out that long, final exhale. at least i knew she wasn't alone.

why is it that the best picture of me

is just a picture of you making a growling face with me staring at the wall in the background?

Sometimes, all you need are condiments

pimpin' ain't easy--it's eternal!

best song ever sent to me:

oh i kissed yo' momma
i kissed your dad
i kissed your brother; oh now, don't feel bad
'cuz i got you
i got you on my mind
i got you-oooh-oooh
on my mind all the time.

oh your momma, she liked me
your daddy said no
your brother just told me not to stop, just go
but i got you
i got you on my mind
i got you-oooh-ooooh
on my mind all the time.

oh they say it just ain't right
they say it's no good
they tell me i should stop, and i say i would if i could
'cuz i got you
i got you on my mind
i got youuuuuuuuu
on my mind all the time.

'cuz when you ain't around
i turn into such a fool
i want you so badly that your family has to do
cuz i got you
i got you on my mind.
i got youuuuuuuuu
on my mind all the time.

he's the kind of guy who:

asks for "wheat" instead of white bread at subway (even though he wants white), but feels bad saying he wants white because the man making his sandwich is black

wishes he didn't have a name that was always sold out on the novelty keychain rack in the checkout line at wal-mart

hopes and prays that someone else has his same stop on the bus so he doesn't have to pull the "stop" chord and inconvenience everyone else with his need to get off the bus

Post Coitum Omne Animal Triste Est

you can look it up, but you already know

somewhere in Iowa, this is happening

AARON

Feel it twisting inside you? Is it a clenched fist in here? (puts his finger on her stomach)
Or is it about to beat your breasts right off your chest? (puts his finger on her heart)
Or is it where the north, south, east, and west cross? (crosses her)
You know, it really doesn’t matter much anymore, because it’s all around you.

(takes off gas mask and takes a deep breath)

All your pink is long, long gone now. And know the air is clean, crisp, and full of the reason why I’m here and you’re there. It’s one little word with a hundred big implications.

(he smiles) Are you afraid of loud noises?

TEDDIE

(shakes violently)

AARON

Good. Because that’s what I’m here to tell you. Fear (picks up an M&M), my dear little altruist (eats it), is everything. (lays down next to her)

Did you know that when babies are born, fear is about the only thing they come equipped with? You know what they are afraid of? Two things (holds up two fingers) one, two (touches each of her breasts with each finger as he counts). First is the fear of loud noises, such as a fist hitting a wall, and the second is…can you guess it?

TEDDIE

(still shaking)

AARON

(rolls his eyes)
The fear of falling. Falling Teddie.

Now, let me ask you two questions, Teddie. One, two (touches each of her eyes as he counts) I want you to think about them carefully. Okay?

Question one: Was baby Jesus afraid of loud noises?

Question two: Was baby Jesus afraid of falling?

TEDDIE

(doesn’t say anything)

AARON

No, no, no! The answer is no, no, no! Not in a million years! Jesus didn’t cry, shit his swaddling clothes, and most of all—most of all—he didn’t ever, ever, ever fear. And let me tell you why—this is why I’m here, Teddie—to tell you why. Because he has all power. Saint John almost had it right. He said, “there is no fear in love, for perfect love casteth out all fear.” What he should’ve said was, “there is no fear in power, for perfect power casteth out all fear.” God is God because he’s got all power. That’s why he calls all the shots, that’s why there’s a heaven and there’s a hell—because no one has the power to oppose him. His infinite might makes eternal right. So, Teddie, right now I AM that I AM. I am your god—god with a little “g,” of course. Right now I have all the power in Teddie’s universe. Nothing else matters at all right now. I am all your thoughts, emotions, I’m you’re everything. All because you are afraid.

TEDDIE

(starting to cry)

AARON

(he takes her arms and puts her hands together) Now pray. Pray to me. Pray to your god.

TEDDIE

(garbles, but can’t utter a word)

AARON

I don’t hear anything, Teddie…If you don’t pray, then I will send you to a Hell that you can’t even imagine, Teddie. God has all power and all knowledge, so between the two of us, we can think of ways to make your howl in pain for the rest of your pathetic, fearful life as well as the eternities!

(She begins to sob, closes her eyes) Please…stop…please don’t hurt me…

(closes his eyes and takes a deep breath) (gently opens her eyes, puts his hands over hers) Now this, Teddie, is the true order of prayer.

(moves close to her face) I’m not like the vulgar gentiles you see every day. They are all filled with fear. They are afraid of people, crowds, spiders, things that go bump in the night, going out the front door. My only fear is that you won’t understand any of this.

TEDDIE

Oh God…please…

AARON

God isn’t afraid of what might happen: trust me. He knew this was all going to happen a billion years ago. He didn’t do anything about it then, and he won’t do anything about it now. He only intervenes when he sees he’s losing his power. Right now he has you right where he wants you—praying to him.

(gets off her and stands next to the bed, puts the gas mask back on)

Scream.

TEDDIE

(screams)

Nauvoo, Illinois: 1835

Blood. Water. Spirit.

That’s how this story begins and that’s how this story ends (go ahead, check it out). More importantly, however, that is how every story begins and ends.

One eternal merry-go-round in one little playground at some little daycare in a corner of the cosmos that God’s great granddaughters^10,000,000 spend some segment of some form of time on. Round, and round, and forever round. Constant motion with no real destination. Their absurd laughter is Plato’s music of the spheres, but all I hear this guy I’ve got tied to a tree whimpering some nonsense and sputtering blood all over my shoe.

Blood on my shoe. If there was a beginning, this would be it.

I tell him that blood, water, and spirit is all there is to this, all there is to anything he’s ever done.

Well, it’s really more complicated than that, but a man about to meet whatever powers there may be doesn’t have time for a primer in biology and philosophy.

In fact, I’ve learned that a man tied to a tree quivering like a cell phone with a broken ringer only has three neural pathways that allow three primal thoughts. Chloroform is virtually inconsequential at this point.

Three thoughts.

These are:

1. Oh God please, no
2. Oh damn, oh dam, o dam
3. Oh God damn it, please no, o Goddamit, please no, ogodammitpleesssno…

He starts mumbling something about number 1, but I can’t make it out because his upper left bicuspid just shot out, slurring his speech to:

“Oh gawthdadathphfulllooo”

The tooth rattled the forest like a comet that only comes once every 513.34 years, and even then, only according to the Mayan calendar.

You should see this, I tell him.

Of course, he can’t he’s tied to a tree.

But if he could, he should.

I crouch down to see how the earth handles it’s latest intruder and some blood gently showers my head much like I imagine that the mist that “went up” in the Garden of Eden kissed the face of Mother paradise before everything got shot to Hell with the whole Adam and Eve and Lilly and whoever else mythology.

My friends the ants have the bicuspid now, and if I know them, they are going to give this thing some meaning. That’s how they roll.

I say, look, Sammy, you upper-left bicuspid is getting put to good use.

Shortly, they’ll be sitting in their holy of holies offering sacrifice on an alter than any dentist would be proud of.

I bless the ants.

Ants, I proclaim, bring ye all the tithes to the storehouse. Lie it on the bicuspid and I shall pour you out such a blessing that you will not have room enough to receive!

You see, ants are my friends because we both move large amounts of dirt and draw great pride from our dirt-moving accomplishments. Right now, the ants of this grove are working on their sixth level of their fourteenth anthill. The others were carelessly kicked down by the completely unintentional actions of those simply roaming the countryside looking for their own dirt to move. Paramount among them is a curiously grizzly fellow I keep running into that is never satisfied in moving dirt unless it was the dirt that someone else was trying to move first. The irony of the whole situation is that in his obsession to find and pillage other people’s dirt organizations, he ignorantly and repeatedly stomped my ant friends’ ziggurats into unrecoverable matter unorganized, never gaining any satisfaction whatsoever from the colossal wreck.

First rule of life: You only derive pleasure from destroying something if you know you are destroying it. Otherwise, other beings misery is meaningless.

I stand up and kiss Sammy, that greasy pudge-factory. I’ve got three ropes keeping him to this earth via a fig tree. His adipose couldn’t be held, though. It was a determined rebellion that flopped over the ropes, declaring its superiority. Silly adipose. Enjoy it while you can. In a hundred years, you’ll be conquered by a vacuum cleaner. You are so last century.

You ask, “How does a simple horse-thief from who-the-hell knows and who-the-hell cares Missouri know about wisdom teeth?”

I say, because of these letters from my grandpa. They are typed, size 12 New Times Roman, double-spaced. Not sure what all that means, but it seems that people in the future don’t like looking at lines that come from each other’s brains, they prefer that words be put into a “word processor” (don’t ask) so that everyone is the same. This is their Zion. One mind.

Know he’s on number 3. When they get to number 3, right where I want him to be. At number 3, he’s getting loud and starting to cry. His tears mix with blood, and that’s almost like water. 2 out of 3, we’re almost there.

Why we do what we do

Ouch

i stubbed my toe today
let that be a lesson to my rebellious hand
never touch that which is forbidden
lest ye stir the wrath of the Son of Man

To: these 5 bullets

have fun going where i've never been:
the heart of a woman

Sub-zero wins, Fatality

i'm a capricorn

so that means i'm not a cancer. nor do i have cancer. just severely jacked up bowels.