Wednesday, May 30, 2012

Cold Storage

COLD STORAGE

“Joe Chip on a
fifty-cent piece?”
—Philip K. Dick, Ubik

“I don’t get it.”

“What don’t you get?”

“The way Ubik ends.”

“What do you mean?”

“You know, Runciter’s remark at the end of the novel. When he sees Joe Chip on the 50-cent piece.”

“You mean the Joe Chip money thing?’

“Yeah, the coin. And probably all the bills in his billfold too. He gets this ‘chilling intuition’ thing.”

“About what?”

“That that was just the beginning.”

“Yeah, that was kinda strange.”

“To me it meant like Runciter was dead—in cold storage like everybody else.”

“How so?”

“Well, up until then it was Joe Chip doing the weird ‘kipple’ thing—weird money, time going backwards, things decaying & falling apart. The whole fuckin kipple nightmare thing.”

“So you’re saying Runciter is dead too?”

“Aw c’mon, don’t be such a dumb fuck.”

“Oh, don’t mind me. Just playing the Devil’s advocate.”

“Well, yeah—Runciter’s dead like all the rest of them. Instead of being the only survivor from the Hollis moon setup. He’s like hallucinating funny money like Joe Chip at the end of the novel too.”

“Hmmm. I know—weird isn’t it?”

“And Ubik? The spray can thing? Reverses things?”

“Well, maybe not reverses it. More like making Joe Chip finally realize he was actually dead like the rest of them—he didn’t survive the Lunar explosion either.”

“Joe Chip didn’t know? I thought he was a smart telepath on top of things? Runciter’s best man?”

“I dunno. Maybe teeps, precogs, para-kineticists, ressurrectionists and animators are too smart? Maybe psionic powers down in cold storage can deceive telepaths into thinking they’re still alive?”

“All of them?”

“Well, maybe for awhile. And then they each sort of fade away from Joe Chip—for one reason or another. Creepy isn’t it?”

“Well, Runciter ran a business. They were a team of big time Psi activists—and Psi is like a mosaic. It takes different specialists. It’s like a personnel department, I guess—it has to be balanced out. It takes time to work out an anti-Psi program thing.”

“You mean like corporate espionage? Yeah, I suppose so—anti-Psi tricks to protect trade secrets and research and intellectual property rights & all that.”

“A cut-throat business in the future. And you know that’s probably already happening. It sounds like sci-fi to us—but it’s just SSDD business as usual for the big guys.”

“So they’re all dead—Runciter and his whole team of Psi-specialists tricked by his Psi-competitor Hollis’ Lunar set-up explosion to get rid of them?”

“Yeah. They’re all in cold storage in Switzerland—in the Beloved Brethren Moratorium. Weird, huh?”

“Dick keeps you fooled to the very last page.”

“Yeah, well, I guess Ella Runciter has been there for quite awhile. Runciter visits her & they discuss telepathically the business. She gives him advice. She’s waiting for her next reincarnation to kick in.”

“Pretty expensive though. Keeping a loved one in cold-pac storage that way. In a state of half-life suspended animation. The remaining time left to her pulse phasing out & ebbing away. Then the rest of them showing up.”

“So you’re sayin all these anti-telepath employees of Runciter’s were still communicating telepathically with each other while in deep freeze?”

“Well, yeah, maybe. Kinda like a cold storage chat group…”

“And Joe Chip’s whole adventure getting to Runciter’s supposed funeral in Des Moines—it was all just an illusion? Death, dreary & non-being creeping into his half-life fantasies? In deep-freeze?”

“Well, yeah. I suppose. That’s why everything is regressing. Decaying. Falling apart. The cars, plane, time itself. Kipple in cold-pac makes everything turn to shit, reverse itself to nothing.”

“A kind of entropy thing?”

“The telepaths & Joe Chip & Runciter—fading away like Ella Runciter, propped up in her cold-pac coffin there in Switzerland. Dreaming her Bardo Thodol thing—doing her Tibetan Book of the Dead Swan Song like all dead people go through…”

"I gotta go now." I said goodbye—turning off my cellphone. I wasn't feeling so hot...

I emptied my pockets and billfold on the desk. I looked at the coins and bills with a certain amount of aggrieved sullenness. My face was on a $100 bill.

Hmmm. It figures. Like it didn’t even surprise me…




Monday, May 28, 2012

Coffee and Cigarettes


Coffee and Cigarettes (2003)

 “Champagne”



“Are you all right, Taylor?

“Uh. Not really.”

“What’s up?”

“I dunno. I feel so divorced from the world. I’ve lost touch with the world. Do you know that song by Mahler? “I’ve Lost Track of the World?”

“No.”

“It’s one of the most beautiful, saddest songs ever written.”

“I can almost hear it now.”

“Can you hear it?”

“I think so.”
___________________

This last scene of “Coffee and Cigarettes” with Bill Rice and Taylor Mead by Jeim Jamusch. A haunting scene centered around an ethereal piece of Mahler drifting thru the air.

The Mahler piece extended here is “Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen” by Magdalena Kozená with orchestra directed by Claudio Abbado.


A related rendition with the lyrics from the song-poem by Friedrich Ruckert sung by Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau (baritone) is here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTqbTP5qy7k&feature=related



Sunday, May 27, 2012

Thursday, May 24, 2012


Interview

—for Dennis Cooper


who am i — what am i?
puppet — or puppeteer?
mastermind — or masturbator?
pinocchio — or pinhead?
androgyne — or android?
dennis the menace —denny dimwit?
sado — or masochisto?
LA poet — or paris pimp?
dr. jekyll — or miss hyde?
abbott  — or costello?
idiot — or idiot savant?
ariel — or calypso? 
dennis — or denise?

Saturday, May 19, 2012

Adam and Steve


ADAM AND STEVE


Adam and Steve—
Out cruising around
Thru time & space

Outta one garden—
Into another garden
Sleek Eden moderné

Cute diaspora boyz—
Tooling their way down
Along the coast

Past Half Moon Bay—
Way down to LA
And then Acapulco

Serpent offspring—
Bad boyz out looking
For forbidden fruit

Not exactly your—
Typical str8t couple
Like Adam and Eve


Friday, May 18, 2012

Hail Britannia!!!


Hail Britannia!!!


“I’d be arrested if I
unzipped that dress…”
—Prince Philip
Mail Online 5/17/2012


“Here, oh majestic Prince—
Let me unzip it for you”
The big bosomed beauty said

Beatrice Bigbottom—
Lined up with all the other
Diamond Jubilee celebrants

ZIP! Went the zipper—
Out-popped her Big Tits!
The Queen simply shocked!

Thursday, May 17, 2012

PALE FIRE



“Pale Fire” (2009) based on Lyonel Feininger’s original 
"Vogel wolke" (Wolke nach dem Sturm) 1926



PALE FIRE

“a discreet ephebe in tights…”
—John Francis Shade

CANTO ONE

I was shadowing this cute waxwing boy—
In love with the false azure of his eyes.
He was always fainting in my arms—
During my Wordsmith College office hours.

The innocence of a hot young freshman—
How I selfishly robbed that cradle blind.
The manuscripts for my next novel scattered—
All over the desk and over the floor.
Poor tragic Professor Humbert Humbert—
But meanwhile I had my own problems. 10
Vladimir my cute Zemblan Boyfriend—
My exquisite young Vlad Shadow.

Vlad wasn’t the bashful type, my dear—
When he lost it on my desk just for me.
Awkward yet streamlined at the same time—
His legs tight around my cormorant neck.
No matter how many times I said no—
Mother Nature’s endowment always won.
So full of surging young male hormones—
His physique growing in all directions. 20
From his long distended nozzola—
To his abnormally large Adam’s apple.

But mostly I remember his pale thighs—
Paler than snow in the New Wye moonlight.
Standing by the window each winter night—
Letting his adolescent beauty destroy me.
How shame turned his head in the pillow—
So I couldn’t see the look on his face.
How he blushed deeper than a red ruby—
When I squeezeed his trigger. 30
Shooting me between the eyes—
With his smooth pearl-handled pistol.

CANTO TWO

A long slow boat to China all semester—
Intensely doing my Sherlock Holmes thing.
Trying to find out who murdered me—
The boy, the butler, my ogling eyeball?
Was it my Shadow who did me in—
The cruel stilettos of his svelte thighs?
Not enough gay nomenclature exists—
To possibly describe all the nuances. 40
All the different ways I suffered cruelly—
My eyelids bruised fruit in a still-life.

These footnotes my sad commentary—
The way I kept track of an amazed heart.
Marveling at my cunning seduction—
Capturing a handsome Zemblan Prince.
The fragile trophy of an indoor scene—
Pigeons cooing in the eves overhead.
My favorite young student at Lake Road—
The folds and furrows of his pale forehead. 50
Bronzed by the hot golden soccer sun—
Except where dark garland shadows fell.

His throbbing dark-blue Tintarron vein—
Writhing like a purple helpless snake.
Like a dark waxwing with a broken wing—
Fluttering in my clammy little palms.
A boy spraining his neck just for me—
In the backseat of my dumpy Mercedes.
The house felt it, the solarium groaned—
He got surly and insolent sometimes. 60

Listening to the buzz downstairs—
My wife Sybil fixing tea and crumpets for us.
While behind my door of Please Don’t Disturb—
A fine ancient honey flowing through his veins.
His louche Family Tree gnarled with thick roots—
Half-fish, half-boy, the waxwing golden paste.

Such a moody handsome Zemblan Prince—
What can I do to console your exile?
Opal cloudlets drift by high overhead—
Your mauve lips pampered with a pout. 70
Dismembering you like a gone Osiris—
Then putting you back together for tea.

Twin-lipped Isis making Zembla complete—
Beside the Nile beneath blood-red columns.
Languishing in the languorous reeds—
Lazy crocodile-boys moiling in the delta mud.
All my priests of Luxor down on their knees—
Beneath the swaying twisted palm trees.
The royal barge is docking at the temple—
The young prince back from his long sojourn. 80
A thousand years in a teaspoon of love—
Equal to Fort Knox and all its fine gold.

A shuddering afterwards all around us—
Flaming meteors falling behind the pyramids.
Things so much more vulgar and creamy—
Than the eternal Milky Way high above.
Already very athletic and well-built—
Hidden foretastes of a Joe DiMaggio.
Swinging bats, stealing bases, homeruns—
Everything young Americans are good at. 90
Plus something Old World and plutonic—
All of that I could sense as clear as day.

Nonchalant sexy couch-potato kid—
Bypassing Venice and Taormina.
After teaching my class on King Thurgus—
Racing home to my teenage concubine.
A thread of sweet pain and gay remorse—
Tugging at my weltschmerz heart again.
Then suddenly that old ache of déjà vu—
Sinking again into ancient swan-song. 100
Corrupted and terrified by his love—
Feeling ancient icy shivers up my spine.
Knowing the secret of Vlad’s success—
All his tomorrows inside his funny bone.

Once upon a time (that first morning when
I made love to the waxwing boy in bed).
Thinking there was a vast conspiracy—
Of books and people and hidden knowledge.
Earnestly bent on one terrible thing—
Making me impossibly happy back then. 110
That surely there would be a Fall from Grace—
Worse than Hitler in his Berlin bunker.
Worse than Nixon and awful Watergate—
Worse than Popeye losing his Olive Oil.
Knowing such happiness was forbidden—
Surely such happiness couldn’t last.
The sacred, the profane, the Abyss—
Keeping me up sleepless each dark night.

How I manicured and clipped his toenails—
Giving each toe a delicate pedicure. 120
Worse than even suave James Mason—
With his lovely Lolita nymphette.
The unflinching likeness of his Big Toe—
To something bigger and more primitive.
His little pinky with its gold pinky ring—
Moiling about erect in my moustache.
Each finger, each toe, each bent ankle—
Groping him, feeling him up, soft foreskin.
The helpless paralysis of not knowing—
Not knowing him enough & wanting more. 130
Needing to know him even better—
All the way to Zembla and back again.

A terrifying journey for my tenured lips—
I wouldn’t wish it off on any Full Professor.
It always gave me a bad case of nerves—
So difficult to give lectures with tonsillitis.
It required steel-nerves to confront each day—
An impossible fine-tuning of teen flesh.
Pink and delicate as flamingo sunsets—
Bedroom-eyes the color of bent sinister. 140
Impossible utterly impossible—
The undisguised joy I felt around him.
A nice pair of ephebic loin-chops—
The kind to grab and squeeze forever.

My insidious serpent’s tongue striving—
To outdo even the Linguistics Department.
New ways to do umlauts and diphthongs—
Worming my way up his rosebud rectum.
Making his long eye-lashes even longer—
His sullen peach-fuzz moustache erect. 150
Gnawing his thin cruel Hyacinthine lips—
In ways that would make Helen of Troy blush.
Worshipping him in my Lilac Lane mansion—
My communion with a thimbleful of love.
Sometimes a Saturday Night Special—
A whole tablespoon of Vitamin Love.

Am I not John Shade the Great Poet?
Am I not the Dark Double of Miss Poe?
Am I not in love with Vladimir Shadow?
Am I not a Professor of Zemblan Lit? 160
Am I not broke and getting destitute—
Paying a fortune to keep this Kept Boy?
Unzipping it whenever I get the chance—
Giving it tennis lessons and badminton too.
Taking it out on the town like Gogol’s Nose—
Treating him like the Prince he actually is?
My handsome Rumplestiltskin lover—
Weaving gold in the dungeon of my heart.
Each golden thread glowing in the dark—
Each thread a delicate touché of love. 170

CANTO THREE

And then a kind of tragic Travelogue—
That’s when the footnotes got down & dirty.
An embarrassing Blue Angel cabaret—
With Marlene singing in the background.
A Zemblan narrator took me through the paces—
If you’ve been there you know what I mean.

“Was that the phone?” I began asking—
Thumbing through my catalog of worst fears.
The same parted lips, same swimming eyes—
How could this male beauty ever leave me? 180
His rosy cheeks, his secret groin all mine—
How could Arcadia come and go so quickly?

Something slithered in the living room—
It was my heart playing roulette with itself.
Kneeling before an altar in the bedroom—
The wind roaring through a marble temple.
The oozy footsteps at the top of the stairs—
A blind date and preview of things to come.
Cool as the kiss of some frigid Ice Queen—
Torqued beauty, an adolescent’s twisted lips. 190
My ogling eyeball the ultimate voyeur—
Murder in the moonlight one last time.
Definitely a film noir Grade B loser—
Whatever I saw I began tasting as well.

The various ointments, the various creams—
The riding lessons he took on my face.
Eyes always averted, never meeting mine—
No time left for games or messing around.
How could a boy so cute and gorgeous—
Possess something so incredibly ugly? 200
And yet it was exquisitely pretty too—
Prettiest thing in the whole wide evil world?
How could a shy Freshman from New Wye—
Be the master of such sublime pantomime?
With me in the act playing old Mother Time—
Bent cleaning woman with slop, pail & broom?
Always ending up playing the Fool—
Disconsolate, sobbing in the men’s room?

“Don’t be a queen!” the wood duck quacked—
“Rejoice in carnal knowledge!” said the crow. 210
“Bail out now!” the bob-o-link’s sage advice—
“You’re a fool to fall for a Zemblan boy.”

Innocence went out of style rather quickly—
With our round-the-clock love-making.
How could I demand everything new—
Resplendently shrink-wrapped just for me?
Surely I should have known the awful truth—
How long would it be before the phone rang?

Young freshmen just aren’t dependable—
Unfortunately they’ve got glands for brains. 220
Soon there was screeching of tires in the gravel—
The lacquered night opened up like a wound.
He was off to some crummy after-game dance—
Or was that just another Lolita-esque lie?
I swore I’d keep him Prisoner of Zenda forever—
In some secret old Appalachian château.
Stuck out somewhere deep in the sticks—
Not even the gauche hillbillies would know.

How my love was returned so shabbily—
New tears, new defects, new miseries. 230
Sometimes when College Town was packed—
Streets full for some foul football game.
I’d wait for him on the library steps—
Reading Miss Proust or pretending to.
Desultorily thinking alone about him—
Desperate to know what he was doing.

Was he tricking with his shy frail roommate—
That ugly expressionless Korean kid?
The one with psoriatic fingernails—
Back there in that diseased dormitory? 240
Murmuring sweet nothings in his ear—
Not knowing English quite well enough yet?
But knowing enough to seduce my lover—
To catch him at a vulnerable moment?
Spreading his skinny legs, looking back—
Inviting my Prince to fuck him silly?

I hardly smiled thinking things like that—
Feeling myself falling into a Bay of Despair.
I had strange fears of losing him that way—
In some morose oriental romance. 250
Playing Mah-jongg waiting for him—
Sometimes puttering with a Latin text.
It didn’t really matter what I read—
It always ended up the same way.
How could a high-brow intellectual—
Find the gutter much more compelling?
How could I read “engazhay” poetry—
When New Wye was a chthonic pig-sty?
Was I casting my pearls before swine—
Or was it the other way around? 260

The bus-stop to Lochanhead at night—
Full of nice young cruisable jailbait.
There was plenty of fish in the ocean—
And the ocean was dark and deep.
But now all I heard was a quartet for queers—
A pirouetting force was driving me mad.
My usually keen instincts had failed me—
I was vulnerable to chicken death-rays.

I’d go upstairs and read a stale galley proof—
I’d sit quietly in the dark den for hours. 270
It was a vulgar time of foolish pretension—
Waiting for his call, woozy on the phone.
Out on the town with his drinking buddies—
After a great victory game with Yeslove.
There had always been a fierce rivalry—
Between New Wye and Yeslove.
Two stupid little college towns—
Stuck out in the middle of nowhere.
Was Vlad Shadow really my Prince—
Was this really New Zembla Romance? 280

I’d always end up in a quiet rage—
Preposterous for a grown man like me.
“I’ll catch the next plane out of here”—
But then I’d always change my mind.
“Was that the phone I heard?” I’d ask—
Running downstairs to catch his call.
The insufferable humming sound—
Like some snickering sea-shell from hell.
No green, indigo, tawny surfing sounds—
No flock of seagulls on the other end. 290
No sudden love beneath the boardwalk—
No moonlit tide to draw us home.
Not even a “Sorry Wrong Number”—
Only a man sitting alone in the dark.


Naturally I felt like a total imbecile—
A pinhead geek in a carnival sideshow.
Worse than Olga Baclanova in Freaks—
Groveling in the sawdust for rubes.
The grandfather clock kept ticking—
Demolishing young roots and old time. 300
“Midnight,” I’d say to myself pensively—
“What’s midnight to youth on the prowl?”
And then there he was at the front door—
Suddenly I knew, I knew, I knew!!!!!

I knew again what love was all about—
The night thawed and I was happy again.
He was drunk, shivering, wet and cold—
He had a runny nose and a black eye.
I got him into bed as quick as I could—
Beneath the blankets he was all mine. 310
We warmed each other up again—
Finally, finally, finally he was home?
But that night I knew it was the end—
The end of Wordsmith, Vlad and me.

Sometimes I lectured in Newshade—
About life and death and the Worm.
Mostly I stayed in my ramshackle castle—
With the iron gate, the swimming pool.
Like most children of the bourgeoisie—
He wasn’t interested in Metaphysics 101. 320
I told him I died every day, every hour—
Oblivion would rule my life without him.

But he didn’t care about such things—
His pale thighs were smooth and white.
Deep inside him flowed an ancient river—
It was blood-red like the Volga and Styx.
He was growing more cells than dying—
His best tomorrows were yet to come.
The girls all noticed how fat his fly was—
His young meat was never melancholy. 330
The way he smoked a cigarette afterwards—
Always thinking about something else.
Nonchalantly contemplating the ceiling—
His left arm cocked behind his neck.
A snail-track down his hard stomach—
Sometimes all the way up to his neck.

Snapping the latex band of his shorts—
Getting ready for class in the morning.
Convincing him to skip class that day—
“But it’s your class, Dr. Shade” he smiled. 340
“Yes, Shadow—yes, Shadow, I know.”

Lavorium, violets and gravestones—
For my crypt in Academe’s Ivory Tower.
Did I expect too much from Paradise—
After all I was just a mere scholar of love.
It appeared out of the New Wye void—
Something suspended in time & space?
Hadn’t I always been falling down into it—
The terra firma of my shame and sin?
Wasn’t I still falling constantly downward— 350
Into the weird Colors from Outer Space?
Wasn’t I experiencing it all over again—
An old reincarnation & a runaway heart?

I consulted esteemed fake mediums—
Floating mandolins greeted me in parlors.
I had séances with old ouija boards—
Peered at tea-leaves in dim teacups.
Beneath a shagbark tree one fatal night—
I had a talk with the Prince Youssoupoff.
“What’s that funny gurgling—hear that?” 360
“It’s Rasputin below the ice, my dear.”
“That’s revolting—how long did it take?”
“The wine, the pastry—then bullets.”
“After the revolution where will you go?”
“To Paris naturally with the other exiles.”
“Do you think he did in the Romanovs?”
“No more than they did in themselves.”

Later came moments, hours, days of grief—
It was a gift to me: a writer’s shadow.
Without it these words wouldn’t be here now— 370
Crawling like caterpillars over the page.
We went to Aruba for the spring break—
We sprawled on the white beach & baked.
We flew back to New Wye after awhile—
The critics were raving about my new book.
A bunch of dreary second-hand essays—
Remanded of course almost immediately.
Wordsmith College slowly filled up again—
Like a sad old Colin Clive horror movie.
Libido started flowing again on campus— 380
But I felt somehow strangely removed.

“It’s alive??? Really alive, my dear???”
I kept murmuring to Igor the Hunchback.
Nelly Miss Thesinger in the background—
Cruising her next Bride of Frankenstein.
“Not the lever! Please not the lever!”—
Boris the Undead Boy her greatest fear.
I wasn’t quite myself for some reason—
Half a shade rather than a whole one.
I tried the usual Vitamin Love routine— 390
Imbibing his blue eyes and freckled arms.
Daily injections of fine Zemblan wine—
It just didn’t do the trick anymore.

I glanced around at the blue-rinse hags—
There at the astute Ladies Faculty Club.
I used to give such spirited readings—
Titillating renditions of Miss Proust.
To say nothing of exciting Miss Gide—
And the incorrigible Miss Verlaine.
But now I felt self-conscious about it— 400
I felt foolish standing in front of them.
Giving readings about it was one thing—
But actually doing something else.
I didn’t feel like talking about Vlad—
But I could feel his Shadow in the room.

I realized then the awful glaring truth—
The peevishness of the queer quotidian.
Like that news story I saw on TV—
A chuck of blue ice fell from a jetliner.
It fell from a thousand feet above— 410
Down onto a Balkan king out for a drive.
His limo stopped for a red light—
Just in time for the ton of blue ice.
Crashing through the Rolls-Royce roof—
The poor King instantly crushed to death.

I decided then & there against text itself—
Everything was surely subtextual.
Between-the-lines lurked the awful truth—
Narrative was just a big fat Lie.
I nervously fidgeted about it every day— 420
The insanely cruel Garden of Forked Paths.

Slowly realizing how gauche it all was—
Miss Aristotle’s sad old lame poetics,
No more beginning, middle and end—
No more nice character development.
None of that was engagé anymore—
Rotting rhizomes now plagued my brain.
Everything became suddenly ornamental—
A sullen art-form of accidents and chance.
A strange labyrinth born out of the blue— 430
A subtle game of words and coincidence.

Terrified by my sudden new insights—
I strode onto the Wordsmith College campus.
Desperate to share with Professor Kinbote—
The horror of my unsettling discoveries.
(Encouraged by his vast literary skills—
A virtual Biographia Literaria!!!)
Surely we could come up with a plan—
To combat this insidious pretension.
This evil orchid blooming in my head— 440
This bankrupt bricolage of awful chance.
Beyond subtle Negative Capability—
Even Miss Keats would be shocked!!!

Anticipating a lively discourse—
I girded my brave intellectual loins.
I barged into Parthenoassius Hall.
Opening the door to my colleague’s office—
Almost having a shocking heart-attack.
A lively discourse was indeed taking place—
But it wasn’t the kind I anticipated. 450
Vladimir Shadow was on Kinbote’s desk—
Spread-eagled and enjoying himself.
My decent trusting Professor Kinbote—
Engaged in obscene oral intercourse!!!

I paused a moment taking it all in—
It was a scene out of Dante’s Inferno.
Hoping for some kind of decent solace—
To salve my savage heart’s discontent.
I’d come for my colleague’s assistance—
To ferret out the true meaning of it all. 460
Only to be faced with an even worse truth—
The awful truth of Vlad’s betrayal.
And even worse the deceit of one—
Whom I held in highest tenured regard.
My esteemed academic colleague—
Herr Doktor Professor Charles Kinbote!!!

I closed the door quietly behind me—
I slunk away discrete and unseen.
I scuttled down the hallway like a crab—
It was the last Ding Dong day of my life. 470

CANTO FOUR

Then I spied on male beauty as never
Before—and I cried crocodile tears as
Never before—then I tried to do what
I’d never done before—then I did what
Surely had to be done—some mute command
Testing the performance of my Wordage—
Dropping my pen in angst and agony—
Caught up in a jumble of enjambments—
Would-be inspirations and tacky bursts
Of Intertextual jests—sudden frightening 480
Ejaculations of whorish heteroglossia—
Strange satirical incantations having
Nothing to do with linear thought—
My mind flooded with awful flashbacks—
Assisted by that indiscrete ephebe—
The sudden image of his betrayal!!!

But beyond the momentary agonies of
Cuckold chance and coincidence—
Beyond Vlad’s louche flexed artistry—
Beyond nude unicorns and ebon fauns— 490
Beyond the pulsing pale pulchritude of his
Pugnacious prick and cute pug-nose—
Beyond my mincing milquetoast ways
And stupid melodramatic mendacities—
I slowly began taking a more calm
And realistic look at—

My queer life.

And then a strange thing happened to me—
My delicate heroic couplets flew the coop.
Never to return to save the day—
But without rhyme or any kind of reason. 500
Like the day Little Sheba ran away from home—
Like the Day Bus Reilly Came Back to Town.

I felt like the man in the Gogol story—
The haughty bureaucrat who lost his Nose.
The barber finds the Nose in a loaf of bread—
From then on it’s got a life of its own.
It talks back to its owner in church—
It parades around in a fancy uniform.
The truant Nose causes disappointments—
Especially for the victim’s women.

Once found it won’t stay affixed to his face—
Obviously upsetting the vain owner. 510
That’s how I felt about Vlad Shadow—
It was like suddenly losing my Nose.
He’d become a part of my everyday life—
Breathing fresh air into me each fine day.
I can still feel his quivering nostrils—
Those New Wye nights in the winter woods.

It was a new way of composing love—
Holding the Zemblan youth in my arms.
It was a test for me as a writer—
Overcoming a blank sheet of paper. 520
It was a test for me as a writer—
Getting inside the youth’s blank head.
Teenage boys can be so tabla rasa—
Especially those cute virgin Freshmen.
We didn’t waste our precious time—
As we fell down into the inky labyrinth.
It was a young male performance art—
Much better than a poetry reading.

Maple leaves cupping the topaz dawn—
Standing on a wet lawn with one shoe on. 530
Robins stopping and cocking their heads—
Listening to big fat worms under his feet.
A midsummer sun coming through the trees—
Leaving its stamp on the damp gemmed turf.
His bedroom eyes stained deepest blue—
Bluer than ancient Tintarron in the sunset.

He was a discrete ephebe but abstruse—
All my commentaries are just footnotes.
Dialogs with the young prince my double—
Notes for a vast obscure masterpiece. 540
I was his shade and he was my shadow—
In between us fell the ancient sunshine.
I trundled behind him like poor Verlaine—
He was the Kid from the Drunken Boat.

Then I tried what I never tried before—
Undoing the past through coincidence.
Something I did completely without words—
Letting him dance between me and Kinbote.
Possessing him too tightly wasn’t right—
I didn’t own him anymore than Kinbote did. 550
Surely there was enough of New Zembla—
To inspire us both to new heights.
And so humbly I bowed before cute Vlad—
Yielding to the Will of Gogol’s love....








Wednesday, May 16, 2012

Pale Fire


What Is Pale Fire?


“Pale Fire is not designed to be one overarching problem, but many interlocking ones.”—nnyhav, “Realighting on Pale Fire,” Stochastic Bookmark 13.3.12 http://nnyhav.blogspot.com/

“Pale Fire is a Jack-in-the-box, a Faberge gem, a clockwork toy, a chess problem, an infernal machine, a trap to catch reviewers, a cat-and-mouse game, a do-it-yourself novel.”—Mary McCarthy, The New Republic, June 4, 1962

So, if I may ask, what is Pale Fire? A book? A novel? A poem? A clever satire on academic research? A kitschy lit crit set-up? A mise-en-abyme story-within-a story? All these analogues are rabbit-holes—each choice will probably take us down into many different Alice and Wonderlands.

But taking all these avenues as well as NABOKOV-L into consideration, well, I tend to agree with nnyhav that Pale Fire is dominated with a concern for an otherworld or even otherworld(s):


“But underarching the oeuvre are a watermarked concern with an otherworld (potustoronnost, an orbit overlapping the afterlife … [I tend towards eccentric usuage of ellipses]), per Véra, and an unflagging dedication of the work to Véra herself (however much he strayed outside the text).”—nnyhav, “Realighting on Pale Fire,” Stochastic Bookmark 13.3.12 http://nnyhav.blogspot.com/

So where are the crown-jewels?


Tuesday, May 15, 2012

1984

Scandalous Laptop Spying

POUGHKEEPSIE — An insurance company says it won’t pay to defend a suburban Poughkeepsie school district accused of spying on students through laptop.

Meanwhile, a lawyer for a student suing the Poughkeepsie School District said the two sides met for several hours Wednesday but are far from reaching a settlement.

Sophomore Johnny Jerkoff charges that the district invaded his privacy when it remotely activated a webcam to take photographs of him at home, sometimes when he was watching online porno beating off or partially undressed later on cleaning up the rather profuse seminal mess.

“No settlement can take place until the full scope of the spying on Johnny Jerkoff and the other students is fully known,” lawyer Jake Jizzjoint told The Associated Press on Thursday.

“They filmed my JUNK!!!” Johnny Jerkoff vehemently ejaculated at a recent Poughkeepsie news conference
at the local downtown YMCA.

The audience of local queers and gay activists tittered and acted shocked by it all. But secretly they were all Ogling Eyeballs along with everybody else when You Tube came out with its clandestine film feature showing the 50,000 clips of Johnny Jerkoff doing his naughty Thing every night watching insipid str8t cheap porno on his laptop every night.

The Poughkeepsie School District had chastised the parents of Johnny Jerkoff for letting him dillydally every night in front of the quickie screen. When the Principal pulled out some screen captures of the porno the kid was beating off to—that’s when the shit hit the fan.

“What the fuck are you doin filming my kid in the privacy of his own bedroom—in my own goddamn fuckin HOME!!! Your no-good Peeping Tom Voyeur Perverts!!!”

The Principal pulled out a stack of 50,000 captured webcam pics—showing graphically not only the young sophomore male misprisions of Johnny Jerkoff every night, but also what the kid was looking at.

Mr. Jerkoff was livid with rage. “You’re supposed to be Teaching my kid—not snooping around playing Big Brother in his bedroom at night!!! What about me and my Family!!! How dare you sneak around in my own Home—and then have the nerve to tell me how to raise my kids under my own fuckin ROOF!!!”

The Poughkeepsie district admits it secretly captured at least a million images through the remote tracking program, but said it did so only to locate lost or stolen laptops.

A set of six laptops had been stolen from a school gym locker room. The tracking program was left on for months, and helped identify a suspect who was later prosecuted.

The school district did not immediately respond to requests for comment Thursday on the status of negotiations in the case, or on a lawsuit suit filed last week by its insurer.

In its suit, Graphic Arts Porno Insurance Company said that costs stemming from the Jerkoff lawsuit are not covered under its personal injury policy with the district.

The insurance company’s stance, if upheld, could leave the district responsible for litigation and any settlement costs.

The district has admitted its policies about when to turn the software on and off were lax at best. In fifty thousand image capture cases, the program was left on long after students reported they had found their lost school-issued laptops.

At a school board meeting this week, school district lawyer Harry Hooker said there was no intentional wrongdoing by the district, “but clearly those million trackings should have been turned off earlier.”

Johnny Jerkoff argues that he never reported his laptop missing, and doesn’t understood why the program was activated.

In a court filing, technology coordinator Valery Voyeur argues that Johnny Jerkoff had damaged or destroyed two other school laptops by jizzing all over them, and failed to pay the required $55 insurance fee for gumming up the laptops. He therefore had no right to bring the laptop home, or any expectation of privacy, Valery Voyeur’s pushy lawyer opined.

The Jerkoffs, in their lawsuit, have zeroed in on Valery Voyeur’s actions, accusing her of being a nefarious pedophilic sick disgusting “voyeur” and demanding the right to inspect her personal laptop to see if she moved or hid or deleted any of the student images from it.

Especially any images of Johnny Jerkoff intensely masturbating or doing what he was really good at: doing that infamously shameless, nasty “sixty-nine” routine, going down on himself & getting himself off.

Haltzman reiterated Thursday that he cannot entertain settlement discussions until he reviews the contents of her home computer.

Valery Voyeur, one of two employees authorized to ogle with the tracking program, has said she refused to answer his questions at her deposition in the civil suit, invoking her Fifth Amendment right to avoid self-incrimination.

However, she has said in television interviews that she cooperated during an interview Wednesday with the authorities, which are investigating potential wiretap violations, and said there is no reason she should have to surrender her home computer.

Valery Voyeur “vehemently denies” downloading any pictures of students, her lawyer, Charles Cheesy, wrote in a court filing this week. “Mrs. Voyeur is not a voyeur,” the filing states. “This scandalous, malicious and abusive attack on Mrs. Voyeur’s character, in essence labeling her a sexual deviant, is false, outrageous and without any basis.”

THE MARK OF CAIN


The Mark of Cain

 __________________

“And the LORD said unto Cain,
Why art thou wroth? And why
Is thy countenance fallen?”
—Genesis 2:6-7

I fucked him good every night—I couldn’t help it. I fucked him to death—and got him good. If I hadn’t done it—nobody else would have. He didn’t have any girlfriends—he didn’t have any boyfriends. What does a couple of red-blooded young guyz do anyway—when you’re all alone there in the Garden of Eden?

I got him loaded—I got him high. I got him drunk—I got him day and night. I was good at it—“Murder, My Sweet.” I got him on weekends—I got him to whimper real nice. I got him to faint—I loved the way he banged his head against the Tree of Forbidden Knowledge.

Afterwards, I’d help him back through the Garden—limping down to the river Lethe flowing with the verdancy of primordial cummings and goings. Fucking him the way I did—it wasn’t easy for him. It took everything outta the poor kid—down to the last fuckin drop.

I’d steady him by the river—he was so weak in the knees. His obscene inch-long slit made him—piss in the riverl and piss on the ground. He couldn’t help it—he was so loaded and out of it. I helped him tho—holding it gently from behind.

I took it seriously—young brotherly love. Even though later—it sadly became male fratricide. He was 16 and I was 18—both of us were doomed East of Eden exile boyz. The Queer Genesis I’m talking about—aint the Genesis you’ve read in the Bible. It’s a heartbreaking soap opera—that renews itself with each plucked Forbidden Fruit.

Abel was my cute young brother—everything about him was more handsome than me. We were both lonely boyz there in the Garden of Eden—and that’s why I was obsessed with him. Call it incest if you want—but what else could God expect?

I was just a white trash boy—I was evil Cain, my mother Eve’s first offspring after the Fall. The Devil made her do it—the Devil made me do it too. I had the Serpent down between my legs—just like Adam did.

But where were the Women—the cute chicks of the Garden of Eden? I was in love with my own kid brother—I was obsessed with my perverted Family Tree. Was I str8t or queer? How would I know until my own young slinky Eve showed up?

Eve was our mother—but we had different fathers.
Adam was my father—but then there was this awful divorce. Then Eve shacked up with this handsome young alto sax player stud Snake—who played at the popular Eden Garden jazz nightclub. He fucked her good day in & day out—and my brother Abel was the result.

Eve ditched both Able and me fast—she had better things to do than be a mother. She had other more important things on her mind—like having fun and living it up with the Snakes. Her family was wealthy—her father a rich Lethe Lakeshore attorney and businessman.

So Abel and I ended alone there in Eden on Ocean Drive—in a swanky apartment on the top floor of The Carlyle. That’s how we grew up—a couple of stoned Art Deco bon vivant Eden boyz down by the beach.

All of Abel’s brains—were down between his legs. What else could a guy do—with 10” of meat in the basement and a faggot older brother who desperately craved his nice fine tight little ass?

We go cruising in a slinky Cadillac convertible—a nice big long slinky baby blue ’59 road hog. It had big chrome tits in front and a sleek pair of garish shark fins whooshing in back. I kept him to myself all the time dontchaknow—I didn’t share him with any of the Snakes. Can you blame me?

Sometimes I fucked him fast—sometimes I did him slow. Sometimes I strangled him to death gently—other times I used a big violent vibrating dildo. Sometimes I dragged it out for a long time—other times it was awfully fast, down and dirty.

It wasn’t pretty or sophisticated—doing the down-low. Teenage dick-homicide never is very chic or sophisticated. I sprained my neck I don’t know how many times—doing my daemonic kid brother down there in The Carlyle in Miami Beach.

When Abel got to be sixteen years old tho—well, he’d had enough of my whitey miscegenal incest urges. He got tired of me & bored with it all. That’s when he said he was gonna sign up and join the Navy—just to get away from me.

That’s why I offed him—my kid brother Abel. Gawd, how God and all the Serpents—were pissed off at me. They branded and tattooed me—with the Mark of Cain.

From then on I was cross-eyed—and harelipped. And I had this awful lisp to deal with—and this terrible mince when I walked down the street. It was Double Indemnity in Reverse—I regretted it the rest of my miserable so-called life.



Monday, May 14, 2012

THE SECRET OF THE SERPENT


The Secret of the Serpent 


God got pissed off at the Serpent for seducing Adam & Eve to taste the Forbidden Fruit in the Garden of Eden.

God punished the Serpent by turning the Serpent into a Snake down there between Adam’s legs. What could be worse than to be a Dick forever!!!

To be covered up and hidden from sight. To snake around down there and lurk forever in dirty shame? To be a victim of Naked Ape urges—forever despised as nothing more than a Dick with Two Legs? 
 
But the Serpent was one of God’s most sneaky and wily creatures. Even though it was enslaved down there between Adam’s two legs—the Serpent tried to take advantage of Adam.

“Even though God said you shall not eat from any tree of the Garden…” the Serpent was saying to Adam one fine day in the Garden of Eden.

Adam stood there dumbfounded. Sensing he’d be cursed for generations and generations—with this Genealogy of Evil Meat moiling down there in his Groaning Groin forever.

“You still don’t get it, do you, Adam? You fool,” the Serpent hissed to his hapless Host.

Adam couldn’t believe the Serpent could talk. Not like another human—but more like telepathic messages beamed from his reptilian medulla at the base of his brain.

“We’re married now, you Fool? For better or worse. You ate the Forbidden Fruit and woke up to the whole game. God queered you good forever and ever—now I’ll haunt and rule you forever,” said the Serpent with a smirk.
Adam wasn’t that smart. The Serpent-Dick was smarter. And the Serpent seemed to know what he was talking about—a Same Sex Marriage down through all of Time. They were conjoined now—as Man and Dick.

“Yes, dummy Adam—you’ve got the true ultimate Tree of Good and Evil. Gnarled down there—lurking in your grungy Groin. You’re the big horrible godforsaken Secret—on this forsaken Forbidden Planet called Earth.”

Adam was simply shocked! He stared down there at the writhing Serpent hidden underneath the Maple Leaf. “Surely it can’t be true. Who the fuck would believe anything that a slimy Snake would say anyway?”

“But it’s true Adam,” the Snake hissed. “The Garden of Eden was made for you and me, baby. It’s a Prison Planet for Pricks like me. Just look down here between your legs, Adam—and what do you see?”

Adam stood there naked—looking down at himself. It was a horribly ugly Anaconda—a cruel uncut Cobra coiling and uncoiling down there. He had no control of it—it was a Monster of the Id.

“I’m the big bad Root of the Tree of Good and Evil,” the Serpent hissed. “I’m the Forbidden Fruit itself. Because Earth is a Prison Planet—for Interstellar Pricks and Gangster Galactic Cocks like me. Comprende, kimosabe?”

Adam shuddered and started getting erect for some reason. The Serpent-Dick had a life of its own. He felt self-conscious and embarrassed. All this attention he was getting from this nefarious Serpent creature.

“Yes, my dear Adam,” the Serpent said. God punished you for tasting the Forbidden Fruit—but he punished me even worse by imprisoning me down here between your legs. A Prison Penis Planet of Awful Pain and Exquisite Pleasure—from which there is no Escape.”

Adam was erect all the way now—all twelve inches of him. It was grotesque and huge. It did look like a Serpent—it was a Serpent!!! All of a sudden the Fall made sense—like Nuts falling from an Oak Tree. Adam felt himself losing it—the Serpent was beginning to shoot Adam’s runny Brains out.

“My gawd,” Adam said God. “To be the Snake with Two Legs—to be haunted the rest of my life with this Serpent down here between my legs. Stuck on this forlorn Forbidden Planet of Naked Apes—ruled and dominated by Alien Dicks!!! I’m fucked doomed for sure—doomed to be nothing but a Dick Head!!!”

“Now you’re getting the Big Picture, dummy,” the Serpent said.

Adam could feel it—all the way down to his toes. All the way from his Reptilian Brain nestled under his monkey cerebrum. Down to his alien retro genetically engineered Dick—slithering down there in the primitive Jurassic Schlong Pubed Jungles of Hell!!!

Adam felt weak in the knees—covered with sweat. He felt a wave of sickening Skull Island King Kong jizz—started to ooze like a Snake outta him. There wasn’t anything he could do—falling and sliding around down there on his knees in the weeds and crabgrass of the Cursed Garden of Eden.

The Serpent just smiled—this was his Curse. Not to exist in a Prison Planet of pain and suffering—but rather to go spaz in a Prison Planet of Uncontrollable Undeniable Pleasure. No bars, no jails, no penitentiaries—it was a Prison Planet of primitive, fabricated Erotic Pleasure.

The dumb Naked Apes like Adam—they were the unknowing, unsuspecting Prison Guards and Wardens of the Prison Planet. The Prisoners were Alien Rebel Revolt Penises from Mars and Sirius—both coveted and despised by their Monkey-Brained Hosts. Hidden from sight—down there in the darkness. Moiling about—causing oodles of male and female trouble. Oozing generations of it—the cursed Genealogy of the Gods!!!

It was the Perfect Penal System—the ultimate reproductive, economical, cheap way of managing Interplanetary Bad Seed and Interstellar Bad Meat and Galactic Bad Biology. Beautiful Innocent Earth—a Blue Marble Orb up there in the Sky.

Prison Planet Earth. That’s where they put the Bad Guyz—the ones that deserved to be Dicks the rest of their Lives. Whether uncut or circumcised—whether small & dinky—or huge and well-endowed. They were all doomed to Dick Heaven and Hell—whether they knew it or not.

“You’re fuckin crazy,” Adam said. “You’ve been watching too many crummy Science Fiction Movies!!! Nobody would ever dream up—a scary Scenario like that. Not even Philip K. Dick or George Orwell!!!”

“Oh yeah?” the Serpent said, pushing a little DNA button in Adam’s head.

Adam was 18-years-old—but he was still having wetdreams at night. Even though he fucked Eve like crazy—and fathered a couple of no-good worthless bad boyz. Both Cain and Able were Eve’s favorites—but Adam despised his wiseass chicken offspring.

But this time it was a real Mother-Lode Nocturnal Emission—right there in fuckin broad daylight for anybody to see. It was so strong that Adam fainted—falling down to his knees and then going spastic and unconscious. Shooting his brains out down in the dirt and weeds.

Adam had this incredible acid flashback—going back into time. Back to King Kong and Skull Island—back to Fay Wray screaming her head off. The Alien Prison Masters—had designed the Prison Planet way back then. Back in the horrible humid Jungle Jurassic dayz—of Dinosaurs, Pterodactyls and Mosasaurs.

And then after the Triassic-Jurassic Extinction Event—the Alien Prision Masters downscaled the Prison Planet and minaturized the penal system to make it more streamlined and svelte.

They genetically retro-engineered the the Big Lizards down to Lounge Lizards—but kept the Jurassic jizzy aggressiveness with the enlarged prison medulla oblongata. The medulla oblongata penitentiary is where anger, jealousy and aggression were kept bottled up from the rest of the worlds.

So that the Serpent inmates were designed now as more sleek, streamlined and elegant creatures—stylishly ensconced down there in their Abercrombie & Fitch pokey-dot shorts to house them in their new deceptive Prison disguised in vanity and stupidity. Cheap, efficient—and totally sublimated into continuous never-ending prison genealogy of Dickhood in the Dungeon.

Young Adam was stunned—what a horrible Revelation!!! The Garden of Eden setup. What a conniving Con-Job—a Prison Planet in disguise!!!

The Serpent didn’t say anything—it was still busy shuddering and oozing itself outta Adam with each last squirt or two of Jungle Jizz shooting outta his Naked Ape Parasite Prick. 

Adam looked down at himself—totally and completely horrified and disgusted by it all. Conjoined to a slimy Serpent Thug—a crummy sneaky Convict Cock from Gawd knows where!!!

Adam couldn’t help himself though—he was conjoined and married to this Piece of Bad Biology. Condemned to be a part of this ongoing cursed Homoerotic Nightmare—ruled by this ugly Gangster Anaconda for the rest of his so-called life.

“How could this happen to me?”—Adam cried out to Gawd. “Imprisoning me with this Killer Cobra—this Penultimate Prisoner Nightcrawler Worm?” 


“Don’t be silly,” the Serpent said. “It could’ve been worse. Gawd could’ve fuckin used his DNA genetic expertise to turn me into a gross-looking Geoduck down there between your scrawny legs instead. They’re probably the most ugly clams that God ever created—so incredibly gross and absolutely disgusting!!! I know you’ve seen them there in Seattle—down there at the Pike Place Market?”

Adam nodded—he knew it was the Truth. It could’ve been worse—a lot worse. The Serpent could’ve been turned into huge gross grimy greasy Geoduck—coiled up down there in his crummy cursed Groin.

“Oh Gawd!!!” Adam said—“It could’ve been a lot worse that’s for sure!!! Jaysus christ!!! Eve would never leave me alone—with such a slinky slimy Schlong like that!!!”



Sunday, May 13, 2012


eUlysses

“A thought-entity—
like Ubik”
—Philip K. Dick
Exegesis

“The cleavage—
is complete”
—William Carlos Williams
Spring and All
________________

riverrun — past eve and adam
from swerve — to shore
to bend of bay — brings us
a commodius — vicus
recirculation — back to
howth castle — and environs

apollonius  of tyana — hermes trismegistus
that which is above — is below
universe — as hologram
according to — pdk’s valis

the tasks above — the flasks below
sez the emerald — canticle of hermes
solarsystemized — seriocosmically
more & more — expanding universe
rhymeless reason — original sun

a thought-entity — like ubik
had it ever — occurred to me that
the written pages — had a life of their own
they themselves — decided
to come to me — deciding to come
and deciding — to depart?
was i aware — of the incredible
deviousness — of language?