earrings in my mouth
air thick with incense
my room is a brothel
and sacred grotto
beneath the tapestry
of Giordorno Bruno
burning with his dream
in constant paradise
your legs on my shoulders
are my wings
my hands are your necklace
wear it, priestess
Babalon, scarlet woman
incarnation
ornament of heaven
feather of Eros
labrodite idol
obsidian flame
on your knees in
supplication
receive my blessing
my curse
my little death
your profession is
longing
and my God is
Desire
Mostly I’m thinking of the two things I half-stole
from Paolo. The book and the knife. I didn’t really
steal them. I mean the book, he let me borrow it,
and when I broke things off he didn’t ask for it
back, so I figured it was mine to keep. The knife
is another story. Let me start by saying: I don’t
know why I was with him. Our whatever-it-was
lasted less than a month and that was a month
too long. Let me start by saying: it was a time
in my life when I flung myself at anyone
and everyone who’d have me, hoping something
would stick, to distract myself from the feelings
I had for this guy I was in love with, like, angel
chorus, slam pit, no amount of whiskey in the
world could get me past this, I want to have
10,000 of his babies, oh God I think he’s The One,
in love with, because I was too scared to tell
him or even admit the truth of it to myself. Enough
excuses. Back to Paolo. He was a jealous
macho jerk wrapped in the body of a scrawny,
swoopy-banged emo kid. He was an asshole,
and also a total dumbass. One example:
soon after our first date, he tried to impress
me by saying he ‘used to be in Yellowcard,
before they got famous.’ Which was a.
a total lie, I checked, and b. dude, if you’re gonna
lie and say you were in a band to try and
impress me, at least pick a band I like. He
could’ve said he was in Black Flag and I
might’ve half-believed him—everyone was in
Black Flag. Another example: the time I
went to the Kwik Mart across the street
from my apartment to buy a 40 oz.
of Icehouse. I was gone all of ten minutes
and in that ten minutes Paolo called me fifteen
times and when I returned his call and
told him where I’d been he accused me
of fucking the Kwik Mart clerk. (You’re right,
dude, I totally fucked him! And when I left,
he said: “Thank you! Cum again!”) Two
weeks in and I already wanted to cut
and run, I mean we’d only been on a few
dates and had only fucked like twice; we
hadn’t labeled our relationship and I was
still seeing several other people, and speaking
of cutting, we’re getting to the knife now—
One night Paolo was lying on my bed, holding
his knife. Not a true switchblade, but it had
a release button which you’d press down
then flick your wrist and snap! The silver
blade—half-serrated, half-not—would pop
out from the shiny black sheath-handle.
Then you’d push it down and click it back
in again. So he’s lying there, idly playing with
his knife, and, flick! “You know,” he said.
Snap! “If you ever cheat on me?” Click. “I’ll
kill the person you cheat with,” flick. “Then,”
snap! “I’ll kill myself.” Click. Flick, snap!
He traced the blade across the veins of
his skinny little wrist, lightly, not drawing
blood, but. What the shit, dude? For me to
cheat on you we’d have to be exclusive,
which we are not, and if you think we are,
you gotta get out of my bed and my life, like,
yesterday. Is what I should have said. Or:
“Oh, you wanna slit your wrists? Be sure to go
down the road, not across the street.
Make it count!” But I didn’t because, look,
I was drunk and yeah, he was scraggy
and pathetic and I could beat him
at arm wrestling but it’s kinda scary when
someone threatens you with murder-
suicide. So I just made some noncommittal
hmmm sound and pretended I hadn’t really
heard him. Did I mention his dick game
was weak as hell? And he was a fucking
whiner. Constantly woe is me I can’t find
a job I’m always broke you’d rather spend time
with your friends than me I’m so lonely the
world is out to get me, blah blah blah, poor
lil’ hipster whiteboy, meanwhile if I said
anything about something shitty in my life
he’d brush it off as so much nothing compared
to what he was going through. About a week
after he’d made those threats he lost
his knife, and that became his newest proof
that the world had it out for him. Yeah.
Paolo was a veritable god damn carnival
of red flags. I finally broke things off about
a week later—because he’d read my
fucking diary and had the nerve to get angry
with me over what he’d read there. Less
than a month after that when I was packing
up my shit, getting ready to leave that
apartment and hit the road, I found his knife
under my bed. And I still had that book
he’d let me borrow. I guess I could’ve called
him but I had less than zero desire to ever
see him again so the book and the knife
went on the road with me. The knife became
my traveling companion; my reward for
having to tolerate that shitface, Paolo.
The book, which was Rocky Horror related
though I can’t remember how exactly, I sold
to a bookstore for store credit, which I spent
on a stack of postcards and an anthology
of stories about Pittsburgh.
she was late, 2 minutes,
to the date — 7.02pm
and she apologised.
I appreciated her
candour. later
back at hers after
some foreplay
she told me she
was a virgin and
I thought of breaking
it off then. her first
some sick fuck like
me who wasn’t
planning on sticking
around. she was a great
girl mind but she didn’t
fit my type. she was
a church girl for
chrissakes. a different
kind of Sunday service.
she never
said a word when
I took the lord’s name in
vain. she was hooked on
the idea of a future.
she wanted the lies,
she’d believe them.
a relationship, all the
familiar tropes. the silver
tongued casanovas
sticking their lying cocks
into slippery cunts. and
here I was, a hypocrite
doing the same thing.
I was filling a need, a
consumer in a consumer
culture; I was becoming
a marketing machine.
and I knew it wouldn’t
last so I grabbed her
phat ass with both hands
and stuck my wet tongue in
deep. I never fucked her
though. did us both a
favour.
What is the measure of a mouse? Is it in a long lost heyday revisited in mind and diction daily? Is it a willingness to suck a bag of dicks to keep a roof over his head, however tenuously? Is it in a belly full of jism after a long day at the factory? Only God can judge.
Steamboat Willie awoke in black and white, on the couch, to the sound of Felix T. Cat coming in through the front door.
“Wake up, Mickey. I’ve got a present for you.”
The air was thin with stale smoke. Willie sat up and grabbed a Pall Mall. “I told you my name is Steamboat Willie.”
“You’ve gotta quit living in the past, man. You had one role 40 years ago. Let it go. Besides, everyone calls you Mickey.”
Steamboat Willie lit the cigarette, dangling by the grip of his lips. “It’s hard to be nobody again after being somebody.” He took a long, regretting drag from his cigarette. “Just a point of mockery in my near-feral state. I want to be Willie. But perhaps I’m just Mickey.”
Felix sat on the chair near Mickey. “Those residual checks can barely pay for your smokes anymore. It’s time to give up the ghost and think about your next move.”
Mickey said, “I don’t know…”
“Here. Stick out your tongue. This will make you feel better.”
Felix was always bringing in various health tinctures, so Mickey didn’t think anything of it. Felix dropped 10 fat drops onto Mickey’s tongue.
“What was that?”
“It’s some really high quality LSD. You’re going to trip for days.”
Mickey’s eyes widened, “What! I can’t trip now! I have work in 30 minutes!”
Felix lit a joint and laughed, “Yeah well, I wouldn’t recommend going in. Your job sucks. Literally. Go be a fry cook or something. Then you’ll only have to suck metaphorical dicks.”
Mickey got up and started pacing. He resembled a locomotive, pacing and smoking. “This pays better than a fry cook. And I’m just two months away from getting healthcare. Then I can get surgery for my fucked up jaw.”
“Your jaw is only fucked up because you suck dicks all day for your job. And you hate it. You hate sucking dicks.”
“I can’t believe you dosed me, dude. That’s pretty fucked up.”
Felix toked and choked as he said, “Just don’t go in, homie. We can have an arts and crafts day.”
Minnie’s voice bellowed from the other end of the house, “Are you getting high before work again?” She came out of her bedroom, fully bathed and professionally dressed. “I’m tired of covering for you, Mickey. I got you this job and you’re making me look bad.”
Mickey looked ashamed, “Yeah, I don’t think I can go in today. Felix dosed me with 10 hits of liquid acid.”
Minnie said, “That’s your choice, but if you don’t go into work, you can find somewhere else to sleep tonight. I’m tired of this shit, Mickey.” She didn’t yell. It was more of an exasperated tone.
You can still go to the Tenderloin
on a Saturday night and lose yourself
in the noise and the terror
of the dirty shining streets
the life and the death
swirling about in the lights
and the rain
you can evaporate into the cries
and the laughter of the broken
and the lost
buy a poet’s heart
down at Turk & Taylor
no more damaged than the next
stop for a drink
in some little place
hip hop on the jukebox
pretty girls playing pool
try and get a few lines down
before they’re gone
try and give a voice to this
to glean some kind of truth
from the lonely men at the bar
imagining the right word
the right line
will open a window
into something necessary
and trick another moment from the world
that has already forgotten your name.
Ash(ley) is a country-girl, romantic scum, pastoral eroticism poet. She’s genre fluid; and her style—she got it at Ross and stock shows. Her poetry as been put blished in Bullshit Lit’s Second Anthology, Tiny Spoon, Sage Cigarettes, and SWAMP.
Instagram: @c.ash_m
Twitter: @ash_m_c
Every time I get paid, I always go straight to the grocery store to buy new panties. Always thinking that they are going to fit me perfectly and I am going to look soooo sexy—like the models on the packages…always look so effortlessly mature, classy, wise… with their French Cut casual sex glamour.
But when I get home, it’s always the same. Polyester chaffing, loose elastic wedgie, poor fit sadness. Yet I can’t stop buying panties from the grocery store. I am hooked. So now, I turn my panties into canvases for words that share some lessons I learn or reflections I ponder while wearing them.
Fruit of the Loom Claim to Fame: Poliester Princess
These panties were worn when I finally fucked my hot crush and right when things were getting hot and heavy, he asked what I wanted… I said “Cómeme con los chones puestos. (Eat me with my panties on.)” and he said “mmmm que rico sabe el poliester. (Mmmm polyester is tasty.)”
Fruit of the Loom Health PSA: “COME FRUTA: para lograr una pH vaginal adecuado.” / “EAT FRUIT: To achieve a balanced vaginal pH.”
I wore these panties the second time I fucked my hot crush. And since I had been on a poor-poet diet of sardines and rice for a long time, I made sure to eat my fruits and veggies for a balanced pH… and less of a polyester, iron rich experience.
Fruit of the Loom Reality Check: I swore I’d never wear granny panties.
I remember the times I would see my mom in granny panties. She was maybe in her early thirties and I, a fashionable middle schooler who saved money for fancy panties at Ross. I always told my mom, “I will never wear granny panties when I get older.” And here I am now. Never say never.
When I was young, I dreamed of living in a dystopian society. An eye in the sky or androids created to serve man until they revolted and enslaved us. Or even a moon car, for Christ’s sake.
How about being a survivor of an apocalypse?
Back then, I was a teenager. We had things called film and television. It may have altered my perception of reality somewhat. It looked and sounded awesome when I was young. Driving around in rusted cars and on bad-ass chopper motorcycles in the desert looked cool. All the while sword-fighting with cannibal vampire mutants. Who ended up simply being nothing more than misunderstood beings. In the end, all they wanted was to be loved. That fantasy would have been amazing. Just thinking about all that sweet mutant-cannibal-vampire love still gets me going.
Nobody is entirely sure what caused the apocalypse, but at least we know what didn’t. We know it wasn’t a virus or bacterium. Scientists had concluded this months before the world gave up its goods and turned to shit. We are also almost positive it wasn’t some mad scientist’s lab experiment gone awry. It wasn’t angry monkey rage, but acts of God are still on the table. Most survivors think The Earth just decided it was time for a culling. All we do know is that it happened in a short period of time. In just over one week, most of civilization’s food became tainted. The meat had become inedible by humans, and animals were no longer on the table.
After the Earth, God and a gaggle of angry monkey scientists rendered all the livestock inedible. We collectively had to make a change. For the ones that refused to adapt, things didn’t work out so well for them. It started with cattle, then rapidly jumped species. Not only were we unable to consume the meat, but the people who did quickly turned into something freakish and scary. Technically, they weren’t dead. We think science is up in the air, but “zombie” is still the name of choice.
It wasn’t contagious, but once you ate the meat, you got sick and died, then you came back. It took a while for people to believe that our livestock had become tainted. Entire groups of people thought it was a government conspiracy. One conceived to raise the price of food and gas. To strip us of our civil rights and take power away from the everyday human, but, alas, they were wrong, dead wrong. With death came zombies. With zombies came death. It had become the vicious cycle of un-dying life.
I have since endured being bitten, scratched, soaked and submerged in bogs of blood, brains, guts, and waste from zombies. Apart from dysentery, I was fine. Lots of water, a few stitches here and there, and lots of antibiotics did the trick. Nature has been making antibiotics forever. A bit of honey on a wound works wonders. It pulls moisture away from bacteria, causing the bacteria to get dehydrated and die off. It also works internally, so yes, we still keep bees. Soak some garlic in oil, and you have an extract. Which also works when applied externally. Thyme oil is for external use only. Do not ingest. I found that one out the hard way. Lavender oil kills bacteria. Oregano is also quite handy to have around. And finally, vinegar. It comes in handy for cleaning and disinfecting surfaces, and if you mix that with a bit of apple cider, voila, you have something to wash your hair. The same ingredients also work well in a soup, but I will address that momentarily.
As a person who loves to cook and, more often than not, cooks for the entire community, I have plenty of these ingredients and so much more, always on hand at a moment’s notice.
Now the world is ending, and it sucks. This much I now know to be true. How the world is ending is a waking nightmare. We messed with the planet’s ecosystem to the point of no return. Summer temperatures rose to deadly highs, and the winters dropped to subarctic conditions. But, it was Spring and Autumn that became the worst. Seasons’ rapidly changing weather system caused extreme polar vortexes to occur regularly. Not only did we get good old zombies, but the weather was havoc on our lives. The two seasons, Spring and Autumn, had turned. They are what we now refer to as “Touchdown Seasons.” Tornados were touching down all around the planet, and they were massive. At first, they had been hitting the usual belt areas, and now, with such drastic changes in temperature, they had become way more aggressive. They started hitting major metropolitan areas, wiping out entire cities in a few short days. It became commonplace to find body parts hundreds of miles away. And with body parts came the zombies. Touchdown Season was upon us on two fronts. The world was a cacophony of calamities. And now we, as its caretakers, were getting fired for our lacklustre performance.
Not that any of these situations isn’t a complete hell on earth, but on the right day, when the moon is in its proper house, and Mother Nature has thrown a banana peel on the ground, we get the perfect storm. Zombie, let me introduce you to Tornado. Tornado, meet Zombie. Gad zukes! There is no good way to put this, but it freaking sucks in “the bad way.” Granted, mostly the flying zombies get torn to shreds, but that turns into a different kind of a specific nightmare. We were constantly on the lookout for touchdown zombies. They would show up just about any place the wind blew. And boy, that wind knew how to blow like a drunken sorority girl with daddy issues. You have to look out for dust devils that pop up and sweep across the land. We call them decay devils. They consist of approximately ten or fifteen rot bags that will come through with minimal damage. Maybe a few limbs are missing after spinning around, but those bastards can still bite. Crazy Mary from Two Caves Away claims she once saw a Zombie Tsunami, but we all know that lady is off her rocker. I mean more so than the rest of us so-called “normals.” She is a hoot at parties.
We also get Zombie Falls. Stay away from the Niagara region. Dead Ramps are anything involving a river and a pile of flesh-eaters. I think they learnt that one from the ants. We also have Stink Towers. That’s when zombies pile on top of one another to scale a wall. They do this to get to all your tasty bits, no matter how small Crazy Mary tells us our bits are. Watching them fall over the other side can be fun if you are far enough away.
It’s almost needless to say, but humanity is in a pickle. (food pun intended.) With the population mostly annihilated, our food source consisted predominantly of stuff we could grow or forage. We still had quite a few books. There are a few survivors that could grow food on a large scale. But those first few winters had been brutal, and we struggled to hang on. Most of the remaining population hadn’t any clue about agriculture. Food was scarce, and humanity had crumbled. With only a few remaining survivors scattered around the globe. With limited forms of communication at hand, we were lucky to survive. At least we still had Ham radios, and it didn’t take long to figure out how to work them. One day at a time, I always say.
The apocalypse was indiscriminate in who it took from us. It didn’t matter if you were a farmer, doctor, lawyer or criminal. All were gone in a short amount of time. For most of us simpletons – even the most basic act of putting a seed in the ground was confounding. I mean, how hard could it be, right? You dig a hole and then do a crazy thing like dropping the seed in the freaking hole. Cover it up, add some water and voila, you have dinner. Not quite. Our numbers continued to dwindle. The culling was quickly transforming itself into an extinction-level event.
The planet started reverting to much greener pastures. For one, the air was clean and fresh when the deadheads were not around, toxins from burning fossil fuels, only the comforting scents of campfires. The skies held a deeper cast of azure blue as clouds whipped by at breakneck speeds. When the weather was calm, you could see green as far as one’s aging eye would take them. Planet Earth was a magnificent beauty and seemed a strange new land.
A dwindling population was on the brink of starving its way toward expiration. One morning, we were out foraging for insects and berries when we discovered a small child. Somehow, a zombie had gotten tangled up in barbed wire. It was still alive, attempting to feed on the young girl, who was just out of arm’s reach. We watched in astonishment as she fearlessly pulled chunks of flesh from the creature’s leg and happily filled her mouth. We watched her for days with no signs of any ill effects. And that’s when we realized. We could consume those that consumed us. It was a fundamental change. We scooped her up and brought her home with us. She lives in the cave with Crazy Mary and is the closest thing we have to a rockstar around these parts.
Even though the winters had become life-threateningly cold, we always looked forward to them. The tornadoes stopped, and almost all the zombies froze where they stood. Sudden tropospheric polar vortexes would drop temperatures almost instantaneously. The meat was ripe for the picking. Parties would go out for days and bring enough food back, lasting us for weeks. We had to be careful not to overfarm the livestock. After all, tomorrow is only a day away.
Summers sucked the worst if you had a sensitive nose, especially if all the zombies started hoarding together. Even though we, as a civilization, now had to live underground to protect ourselves from the elements. The stench of summer still made its way to us. Thick and rancid for months on end. The smell was so foul that it stuck to the papillae of your tongue. While also taking root in the back of your throat. It didn’t matter how much water or urine you drank. That stench was there all season because of the damned zombies. Thanks, tilted earth’s axis for the seasons.
The end of the Fall season drew near. While foraging for meat one bitter day, we noticed a band of white arcing across the sky. Earth now had a ring system. It didn’t take long to discover what it was. We had long incorrectly assumed the tornadoes had torn all the poor souls apart due to the carnage. But what we didn’t consider was this fact. Because of the massive size of these tornadoes, the humans that got sucked far enough into its eye had jettisoned out into the icy, unforgiving arms of outer space. Unfortunately, the billions of souls ejected into the stratosphere are frozen and locked in a low earth orbit. Forever to circle the earth as a reminder of how we, as a civilization, had messed things up. “Rings and Things” have become a term nowadays for someone who makes monumental mistakes.
So here I am, stuck in this tree-hugging hellhole of a world where everything is as beautiful as a postcard. (Sarcasm is still the highest form of comedy.) Now I’ve always got dirt under my fingernails and nothing to watch on the old boob tube. Thank God for court jesters. They are like royalty around these parts.
I would openly welcome a plague of locusts. Better still, succulent amphibians that fell from the sky. I love to work on my culinary skills to pass the time. One of my more desirable dishes is tongues, lips and eyeball soup. The foggier the eye, the better. Now throw in some cockroaches, wild garlic and a few dried berries.
Pure heaven.
At least we’re back on top of the food chain again. Well, kind of.
Navigating an eat-or-be-eaten world whose weather wants to kill us has its challenges, but now we can do it on a full stomach. Sometimes I worry we might run out of those tasty undead bastards, but that’s tomorrow’s problem. For now, we all only have one wish when we see a shooting star – that we don’t become someone or something’s next meal. As we watch the skies of August light up with meteor showers, I wonder if that’s Bill from accounting? He was always such a dick!
Soup’s up, everyone. Come and get it.
Bon Appétite, and let the trumpets blow.
three o’clock every night
at the airport a cold wind
would start blowing
most never thought
anything of it
i always said it was the
ghosts waking up from
their slumber
they always thought i
had something a little
extra in my cigarettes
i use to sit back and
watch the lightning
see if i could blow
the perfect smoke
ring
never could
i once watched a
woman strip naked
when that cold wind
started blowing
ghosts for sure
the sex drive never
ends
You think you can read minds
when you can’t even read faces,
assigned readings, or job applications.
Not that I’m bold enough to be as forthwith,
as forthcoming when you waste away weeks
building forts in fantasy games and
shedding physical tears
over magic guild politics.
Sometimes I wonder if I’ve left the VR headset
sweat-stuck to my forehead,
fallen into a dream
and crossed wires,
over worlds
to live this
diametric
to you.
Our last “good time” was our worst,
even though it kept me clean a year.
I thought your friend was joking,
packed away too many other potions,
when he said that pill was made of crystal
and puke-splattered our firepit.
Whatever was in that brown sugar
you swatched my gums with,
it wasn’t pure anything,
and least of all ecstasy.
I watched you seize on purple sheets,
blond caterpillar brows sopping like mop pads.
You kicked inside your mom’s curlicue comforter
like you were diseased from a Sudanese mosquito,
too caught in convulsions to mouth “malaria.”
Yet, three hours later, all you could say was “More.”
That’s when mine kicked in.
My perception of you and the world folded in and over,
double-helixing in freefall.
Forget all the chills and purging and
paranoia of the floorboards breathing
and lifting me like the Gravitron at all
the fairs you wouldn’t attend with me.
Forget the Yellow Feverish comedown
that wouldn’t let me sleep for days,
and the serotonin-sap that wouldn’t
allow me to smile for almost a month.
What sticks with me the most is me crawling
to the sitting room to seek solace in the
rhythmic waterfall and rainbow fish of our aquarium,
and watching them all slowly die, enflamed with
pusy white bumps and transparent clamped fins
with an ailment too childishly/cruelly named “the ick.”
Our first home purchase, my dream tank,
dissolving in sudsy flesh, sinking into jagged caves,
not to be seen again until I unclogged the corpses
with bare hands, wishing I had the wherewithal to cry,
as you laughed from the other room.
I never thought much on or mentioned this until a year later,
a whole one sober but somehow sadder,
when we were broken up and I tried to give you
the only surviving fish before you moved,
and you said, “Why should I care about a life
that’s just a fish’s?”
That’s when I finally cried,
clutching zebra-zagged little Milo,
hands cupped in the new tank one-tenth the size
even though he’d grown twice the inch he started.
Milo’s sponge-brown eyes flicked between me and my ex.
His spiney tail splashed against
my weak palms and I thought
I deserved to be slashed
for ever entertaining this was
someone to share a life with,
someone strung lower than algae-eaters
and the detritus they suckle from.
Not long after, you said the same about an actual baby,
busy sucking up more “MDMA” pills, fat green bars,
and whatever could rattle inside an Rx case.
That’s all that gave you the courage to tell me
you couldn’t get over the way I looked that night
in the streaming blue tank light,
disgusted and sick and tired
and how you were to blame
—but not enough to change
like the mulm-molting
creature in my hand,
not enough to love
like the pleco fish
appling my eye.
Were you there the night the Pilot Light closed down? Like, 2006? No–we just booked it. Matt broke his dumbass arm on a halfpipe, two weeks before the show.
It’s all these kids in black, denim jackets and jeans with patches. Cheap face tattoos before they were cool. And dreadlocks, lots of white kids with dreadlocks. This scummy pond of black-clad kids with tattoos and filthy dreadlocks. Before the show even started, everyone’s shoving inward, thronging the band. There was maybe an inch of space for them to set up, the guitar players (they had at least ten), the bassist, and singer. Vocalist. And they’re just bathed in B.O. and beer breath. No stage. The band just set up on the floor. I bet they slept there.
My back’s jacked from sleeping on the couch in my man cave. Anne hates it when I snore. With some coaxing, Anne drove me to the chiropractor. I read this thing about a guy getting paralyzed by a chiropractor snapping a nerve in his neck. I went, though; that shit works. Not the next day, but two days later, after he cracked me around, it stopped hurting. Like magic. If we went on the road, I could probably sleep in a car for a few nights, maybe sitting in the passenger seat.
The vocalist–I always thought that sounded goofy– was wearing a black knit hat with his hair shoved in his eyes, mumbles all shy into the mic, “We’re Remedia Amoris,” and then, “from Chicago.” This big, drunken howl bursts out of the kids, who can’t wait to bash each other. One of the guitar players lit the fuse with this sick little lead lick: “deedly dee, deedly dee.”
I figured out how to play that, here–check it out.
All hell erupted. The drummer bashed away in that jazzy, off-time crashing, thing Matt could do–like “Bap, bap, buh, bap.”
We should call Matt. Have you talked to him? I Face-timed him when they were tearing the statues down two years ago. He was smoking a blunt, blacked out, wandering around downtown Charleston.
All those guitarists had their volumes perfectly set to drown each other out, though the drums cut right through. Always. Those drums clanged directly into your eardrums. I always heard the drums until I passed out. Like 3 a.m. and my skull’s going “eeeeeeeee.”
You know, bands have these headphones now where they can hear every instrument specifically. With computers or something. They’re not that expensive. I don’t think I could play with rolled-up toilet paper anymore.
The screamer hunched over his microphone, red-faced, inaudible, but giving his best. He looked like he was shitting a baby. The front line of sweaty, black-clad dudes bounced him off the drums. Some big, meaty tall guy bent down and lifted him to his feet, then the poor guy pretended that that hadn’t hurt like a motherfucker. The last twenty seconds passed, and the screamer, already horse, coughed “Thank you” into the mic, announcing which song–some Kant or Nietzsche quote–came next. Wild cheers erupted from the crowd.
Don’t you miss that shit? Come here. It’s on YouTube. That show is. I watch it all the time. There we are in the back. Look how smoking; they still let you smoke inside then. And you never moshed. You were too cool for that. I guess someone recorded this with their phone? It sounds like the inside of a beehive.
I played the EP on Bandcamp for Anne. She said, well, she was nice about it. I got embarrassed, and we had a fight–I need to stop doing that. But, when I’m alone, and the house is empty, I crank it. She hates it when I turn the music up loud, but she’s still got her hearing–right?
Do you think the cavemen longed to be twelve again?
“Hey, Oog, remember when we ripped the wings off that eight-foot butterfly?”
Oog smiles all wistfully and acts like he doesn’t really remember, and the first caveman, Dook, tells the story. They have this same conversation every time they hang out. They’re, like, twenty, which is middle-aged for cavemen, I read.
The halcyon days.
Anyway, you want to start a band, man? I have this sick riff in my head. Listen, it’s like, “Rugga rugga dow-ow-ow, chon-chon-chon…”
Horror Sleaze Trash 