The Moat

Bored as a blind bum deaf and dumb begging for dimes in the desert, I watch out my apartment window as my landlord, Charlie Cho, builds an impressive moat around the small apartment building I’m writing this in. I ask him why the moat Charlie Cho, why the unneeded expense, why the effort, especially when his business is in its infancy and revenue can so easily be reinvested in more practical improvements like garbage disposals. He tells me that terrorism is a ballooning threat and we should all build moats around our places of sleep and masturbation as to minimize the potential of death via automatic machine gun, dirty bomb, car bomb or airplane. I do live next to a busy road but I don’t see how a moat could stop an airplane in any circumstance save a mid-runway moat which would be tough to build with all those new aviation regulations. But I guess any of those passing cars could have bombs in them but probably not. Although, if I were a terrorist, Bloomington, Indiana would be the first place I would erase from the earth. I mean with the large frat population and the fact that Riverdance and Dennis Miller will be performing at the university auditorium, I’d say that this is a hot target. In fact, I may reference Wikipedia as to the best and most cost-effective way of manufacturing a homemade nuclear device and save al Qaeda from having to squander the precious few resources they have left. Charlie Cho just doesn’t know what he has gotten himself into. Now he’s stuck here with me, the budding terrorist and nuclear physicist and he hasn’t even built a God damn draw bridge to escape the island slated for certain destruction that he has so carelessly created. I’ve always wanted to operate a draw bridge with a large metal hat on my head so that dream will be slashed if my plans ever come to fruition. O the decisions we terrorists have to make! O the costs of opportunity we must endure! O the pangs of fundamentalist Islam! Maybe I’ll apply for the position if he builds the bridge and delay my personal nuclear proliferation plans for when my beard comes in thicker as to blend in with the rest of the terrorist scenesters.

DVD Rack Transfigurations Interspersed With Connecting Fragments

The Shining Odyssey

Is just a

Bulletproof Requiem for Raging Psychos

Stalking

Seven Wall Street Chainsaws

Like

Cool Hook Luke

During the

American Apocalypse

Where

The Hills Have True Lies

And the

Pirates of the Departed

Smash

Schindler’s Romance

Into

Vanilla Magnolia

And

The Silence of the Scissors

Mocks the

Murder of La Dolce Vita

At the hands of all the

Full Metal Rejects

Living in

Gilmore’s Garden

Or

Beautiful Taxis

Where we

Kiss Drink Bang Woman

And where

The Assassination of Mulholland

Was covered up by

Bill’s Red Velvet

And we all scream

Blow, Cinderalla Man, Blow!

But we know it’s just one of

The Usual Omens

And that

Life is Beautiful on the River Kwai

And all

Unplugged Bicycles

Ask

Who Killed the Electric Casino?

And it all causes

A Mean Vertigo

That stings like a

Haunted Blade

In the

Devil’s Bonfire

Under the

Untouchable Sunshine Sky

Little Boy, Little Girl

Her eyes are protected by a thick crust that keeps moonlight from creeping through her long lashes and closed lids. I stoop low and hover above her sleeping naked body that would float away with a strong gust or a stiff drink. Outside in the tremor of night on the pale sea sands, a row of gulls squawk in sequence all balancing on beams of disposed cigarettes. A rotting dock unusable juts out into the calm endless expanse and I suddenly realize that the world is flat. My open mouth lets free a foamless salted water stream and awakens the sleeping deranged angel brown eyed and haired. The crust flies free from her long-closed slumber eyes though too quick to see without slow motion capabilities. A flash of fear appears in eyes red stained from drink drugs and long episodes of insomnia punctuated by restless bouts of stunted hibernation. I look over my shoulder and see an old sun-leathered man draped in rags standing idly on the boardwalk in front of a closed salt water taffy store staring at the curling waves under the black star speckled sky. He looks over to me, at my scarred face and down to the naked nymph buttoned below me. Through tattered gloves his fingers stretch. He reaches up to his left eye, removes it without expression and offers it to me. The squawking gulls circle and flee by flight and leave a serene silence allowing the crashing waves to become the only remaining sound. I peel back the sky and jump into the white void, leaving them together to pick up the fallen stars.

a slice of america the beautiful pt. 1

a seven legged dog walks past me solitary on my way to buy frozen pizza for a dollar fifty nine at the long line fluorescent gray of supermarket America with only marijuana and beer on my mind and breath. I cant figure out why the dog has seven legs but I’m sure there is a reasonable explanation for this. from evry open apartment window I hear the shouting of tv talk show hosts game shows and the corresponding scream from the excrement audience none wily none really there, only on tv and only coming out of open windows and closed minds. there is more to this phenomenon than we can ever comprehend. doctors dont make me better, drugs make me better, the information superhighway is more like an empty trailer park of dusty remnants of meaningless masquerading fuckery. blip blip sound bite byte bite bite byte bite. (im burning every dan brown novel tonight I can get my stringy fingers on). its a sandbar of isolation im sitting on and im damn pleased to be here with my thoughts, books laptop (or is it notebook) marijuana and naked Rimbaud dancing in my head with that damn seven legged dog from earlier attached to a spiked leash also attached and choking Rimbaud, as evidenced by the bulging neck pipelines about to burst and drown my delusions in poetic red.

Neighbors

I can’t get the royal blue blinds on my front window closed before the old bald bastard living in the decaying shack across the street sees me. He gets up as quickly as he can from his ancient once red, now pink rocking chair on his unpainted porch and starts toward my house. He stumbles across the road that divides us and calls out my name. Hey Jimbo (my name is James). I let out an audible sigh and make the seven step walk from my front window to my front door. I make sure to keep the screen door shut as a reminder to both of us that this isn’t a friendly visit. He asks me for five - wait for it - ten dollars because he’s had a hard day and just needs a few beers to unwind. I can smell the cheap whisky (Beams 8 Star no doubt) on his breath and can see the glassy coating on his eyes hiding him from the outside world. You already owe me twenty five dollars I say. He tells me with absolute sincerity that he is working on that outstanding debt. A lying drunk begins to believe his own stories and it’s hard for me to believe that he works for anything but favors. I tell him to hold on and grab the last beer out of my fridge and hand it to him (a Newcastle, fuck). He thanks me with a shadow of disappointment in his raspy cigarette voice. I stand in my doorway and I watch this sad lonely man stumble back across the road to his miserable rotting life and decaying shack. It’s times like these that I wonder if my mom would still be alive if maybe her neighbor had given her the vodka she so desperately needed instead of getting hit by a car on her walk home from the liquor store on that rain dead November night. Maybe I should have gotten him more beer.