At Thirteen

At the age of thirteen I went to work for the first time. I worked for my mother’s drug dealer Herman Shelby. That of course is not his real name nor did I fill out a W-2. I worked for cash: my first valuable lesson in the world of finances. I didn’t work selling drugs. He wasn’t that kind of a drug dealer. He was the kind of drug dealer who bought a pound of marijuana at a time and supplied himself and his friends for a profit of free weed and a grand or two a month. He was a good man.

Herman threw the best parties; parties that would go on for days and days; bodies and bottles and plates of bones sprawled about his property; the bedrooms and all around the pool, littered with extra sauce and puke and all night speeders making out in the lawn chair, fucking on the diving board, laughing hysterically in the pool…

One fourth of July I helped him with the pig. He took me to the slaughterhouse so that I could get the full effect. It was not my first slaughterhouse. The bolt ends the hog’s life; quiet fat flat on the floor.

He showed me how to build a small barbecue pit using cinderblocks stacked three feet high. It was my first barbecue pit building. The pit was huge. The hog we got was a hundred and fifty pounds of swine. We covered the pit with a tin paneling and just let that sucker cook. We removed the block on one corner and lit a small fire. Low and slow. We turned that pig every four hours basting it with some sort of orange juice/honey/whisky mixture Herman was famous for. We cooked that meat for twenty four hours and it was the best tasting pork that had ever passed between my tender lips.

That was the same year, when I was thirteen. I had quite the growing up that year. Anyway that’s how I learned how to drive the bobcat. Herman had one, and a backhoe. I was taught how to operate the giant earth moving equipment with the advice that it takes strong concentration, not strong muscles to operate these mechanical monsters. I was informed of some of the third grade dropouts who knew how to drive these beastly machines and of how I would not be able to work for him if I could not handle such a task. It was my second valuable lesson in the world of finances; you do what you get paid for.

Herman was in a motorcycle gang. I don’t think they had a name, like the devils or the wolverines or the red skulls but I don’t really remember. It was just Crazy Dave, Bald Harry, Wino and Skulls. They were nice as hell to me, when I was an innocent child. I often wonder how they would treat me now that I am a cynical adult. Anyhow Herman had a chop shop in his garage and used to disassemble and reassemble motorcycles that the gang had stolen, filing off the serial number along the way.

So for all the work he did for them, the gang stole a backhoe, and a bobcat. They just drove up with a flatbed truck and loaded up the merchandise and took off. I heard them laughing about it. I guess they assumed if I was old enough to know what they were talking about then I was old enough to understand the consequences of my blabbermouth. They were right. I spoke of their practices to no one. They hotwired the simple ignition switches. There was never a key to operate the machines, just a button that anyone could push.

It felt kind of badass to know my mother associated with these types of people. I felt apart of a sinful band, a brotherhood of outlaws. I totally expected to get fat, grow a beard and maybe become adept with a gun and a screwdriver.

Anyway I worked for Herman only one summer, over at a granite/marble quarry in East Knoxville. We put in the electric, and the plumbing. I dug a shallow fifty foot ditch for the drainage system. The owners wanted us to put in ten inch PCV pipes underground, until Herman wised them up. “Why would you want to burry your drainage ditch, just to dig it up and unclog it every six months? It’s cheaper, faster, and more efficient if we put in a concrete trough that flows down this giant hill right here and takes all the shit with it. You’ll never have to clean it!”

So that’s what we did. I dug a huge ditch with the back-hoe and later mixed cement in a wheel-barrow. Mixing cement in a wheel-barrow is the most hand blistering, back breaking work ever. I learned the sensation of breaking my back. I also learned the value of a dollar you earn for yourself. So I bought a knife and started working on my knife collection.

Herman Shelby had a daughter my age that was deaf. I learned a little bit of sign language. My mother was a sign language interpreter. I would often sleep over at their house. They had a pool, and a hot-tub, and parents who let me drink when I was thirteen. ‘Old enough to bleed, old enough for weed’, was their motto and consequently that turned into it was ok for boys to drink at age thirteen. I liked Yukon Jack the most; a syrupy whisky. I thought my mother was over reacting the first time she smelled it on my breath.

“Relax,” I told my mother, “Herman said I can hold my liquor remarkably well,” turned out not to be the smartest thing one can say. I had to confess to her that I had been drinking her wine-coolers since I was ten, and built up a pretty nice pre-pubescent tolerance for alcohol. I don’t remember ever trying to empathize with her emotional reaction to this information.

Should I have?

Smells Like Sex Touch and Scent

smells like sex touch and scent – skin and hands – warm and alive

comes shivering and shaking – fresh aroma of the want

hair over breasts with nipples hard

mouth everywhere

grip secure and the feeling of being ripped apart

just under the surface of the heavy breathing wet with words saliva

eyes on the monster prize lust and erect

bending inserting stroking teasing just in and just out and just back in

licking the feathers on neck sticky and throb in throat

pounding heart and dizzy head

baby skin and Cyprus gas evergreen and loose meat

seat of the pants wet with ready action

finger wrists finger thighs

again and again and

On the road to Wonderland

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Indestructible Ego

ball having

with all comers

tall

darling

all the walls around him

come with ladders

or there might be a rope

from the sky

a helicopter in his fantasy

that takes him away

from your solipsistic reality

and impossible share

even when you search his

tender selfishly

and reach for his safest place

Cannibal Club

Magnum Opus is a weathered soul with cowboy ghost features, sunburned skin and wrinkled flesh, a wide fat head and broad beastly shoulders. His hair is cropped close to his head and now salty where it was once all pepper. He smokes cigarette after cigarette and is disappointed that they haven’t killed him yet. He is a man of constant sorrow, a man with a bucket of blood on his hands, a man of killing and non repentance. He knows how to make a buck.

Magnum waits in a very private and out of the way alley deep in Chinatown. It’s not on the map. It is owned by the important. Magnum smokes a cigarette, leaning on the back door of his car. He guards over his prizes in the back seat of his common Toyota Carola, unconscious and worth a bundle. The kid who hit him begins to stir. Magnum opens the back seat of the car and punches him in the jaw. This breaks his jaw instantly, knocking him out.

“Are you fucking crazy?!” A small Chinese man in a black suit runs up to the car. He is Hung Xing. “Don’t bruise the product!”

Hung Xing is Seventy three but looks forty two. He is five foot seven and svelte. He wears a tailored suit that is not flashy but impressive in its framing of the man. He wears small glasses with oval lenses that fit his round Asian face. Hung has studied cooking under the best chefs on the planet at one time. He was an apprentice under a mysterious man who cooked for Mao Zedong. The chefs who refused to obey his food restrictions, he would have killed and cooked and served to the other chefs and himself. Mao was said to be a big hater of the Yam, calling it a candied devil root. There is an infamous dish for sweet potato fish that no chef dares make to this day, because of the many number of chefs who were slaughtered and eaten for daring to serve the venomous tuber.

Hung learned to kill a living human in many swift and specific ways, with blades of every shape, every size and splendor and with scalpel precision. Hung makes the best Adam’s apple soup any one has ever tasted.

Magnum responds to the dangerous little man, impeccably dressed in three-piece-suit. “He hit me first. I owed him one.”

“You probably fucking deserved it.” Hung pushes Magnum out of the way. He looks over the two young men in the back seat. “Their face is the most important asset!”

Hung Xing motions for two husky young men, seemingly in a daze of order, to take the first kid right away. “Take him to the freezer immediately and have B Mao look at him.” The husky servants do as told and disappear with the body.

Hung scolds Magnum for his brutish and careless ways: “You should know better than to damage the product.” Hung examines the boy closely. “Beautiful!”

The husky servants return for further instructions. “Take this one to the kitchen and be ready with the sedatives, also remove the other one from the freezer, cuff their joints to the carving tables.”

The two servants take the second kid away.

Hung is delighted with his nightmarish friend’s hunting; “I can give you one-fifty for both of them.”

“That’s very generous.”

Hung revels in the glory of his business, the adoration of his clients who happen to be some of the wealthiest and most influential people in the world.

INSIDE THE CANNIBAL’S CLUB

The audience consists of 20 members at a time who sit in a gallery five to six feet above the performance area and the kitchen. They observe the chef and his souse chefs when they cook, when they prepare the food. They watch the entire process of their cooking. However this is not television, there are no cameras, no announcers, only bouncers and the evil genius himself. The kitchen floor is well lit; the tables in the gallery are candle-lit. Each table has its own waiter. The members of the club observe the activities of the evening.

Two large men in souse-chef coats wheel the two boys out in chrome shiny tables obviously designed and shined for their aesthetic value; each identical in their elaborately futuristic and surreally medical appearance. They are followed by two other souse chefs.

The boys are wheeled naked and secured to tables that lock in their ankles, necks and wrists to the center of the kitchen stadium where they are displayed, waiting for the first procedure to be performed. The tables are then locked into place at their base and then tilted vertical. The audience gasps as they see how young the catch is this evening; their tender bodies smooth with ripe skin, rippled with virulent muscles; their faces thin and tight, kissable, lickable, young and beautiful like everybody wants to be forever. The audience clasps and cheers. They know that in the twenty years of the club, there have never been two fine and beautiful a catch as these two young men. Hung bows, smiling mightily, knowing this himself.

“Now if you will please excuse me. I must change into my work clothes and execute a wonderful dinner.” He smiles, everyone laughs at his pun. “While I’m away please feel free to examine the fresh catch of the day.” He smiles most sinister as if he had a secret cure for cancer he couldn’t wait to share with the world; “I might remind you however that the bodies are still warm – as they are still alive.” Hung clasps his hands together, bows and runs off the floor of the stadium. Everyone cheers his triumphant departure, not expecting them to be alive.

Examination: The twenty gormandizers touch, fondle and eye the specimen that they are about to eat. Hung is delighted by the avarice, lust and intent of the gluttonous murderous bunch before him. He would swim in the black aura of their souls if they would let him. He would rather kill the last human woman and consume her than reproduce with her and perpetuate such a wretched species.

Senator Stormstrom yells at his wife; “Trudy! Get your mouth off of the boy’s penis.”

Trudy does and reveals that it is pumped with blood and muscle.

Hung has just returned wearing his famous red chef’s jacket and pants and hat and is excited! He demands every one return to their seats. “Everyone return to your seat! – “This is a special occasion!”

Everyone returns to their seat at once to watch the master chef. He quickly takes a butcher knife from the counter in his left hand. He goes to the boy and massages his penis with his right hand, as if he were a seductive patron of the arts, as if he was a hot jelly pop tart. The cock is full of blood and ready to come. Hung raises the knife to the crowd to silence their chatter and gossip. Hung continues to stroke the boy’s penis with his ungloved hand; his fingers working the trumpet’s valves an exciting up and down; the cock throbbing hotter and harder. Hung knows the danger of this. He doesn’t want the boy to trigger, but he also wants us much of the pre-semen head cheese into the shaft as possible before making the cut.

The audience gasps.

He demands silence by raising his eyebrow and clenching his jowl. The boy groans with pleasure at Master Hung’s liquid grip and strong revolver. The boy is regaining consciousness. He is about to awaken to the horror-show of which he is the sacrifice. Hung places the cold steel of the blade beneath the boy’s balls. The boy gets harder, groans louder. Hung removes the blade from his sack. He continues to stroke the cock with pornographic efficiency.

The boy dribbles the first of the semen from his snake’s eye. Hung wants the boy to almost, but not quite…

Quickly and without hesitation Hung slices the wakening boy’s stiff as-a-board erection off with a blade that no hair wouldn’t split on. Blood vomits forth a crimson tide of cellular syrup into a collection trough at the bottom of the table. The boy wakes up in anger first: Why am I restrained? Who are all these people? Where am I? He then feels the first waves of pain, but not before the warm sensation that slides down his leg. Is that urine; His own blood? of god – oh god- oh god – oh god – ohfuckingod

Hung uses enormous hemo-clips to keep the cock fresh and full of blood and the first traces of semen and stretched muscle. Oh boy; it’s going to be delicious. The boy awakes in total horror. Hung gives the boy’s hemoclipped penis to the head souse-chef. He then slices off his scrotum, sure to get as much of the skin as he is able. The boy now slips into a painful shock.

Other souse-chefs return awaiting further instruction. Hung hands them each a sterling empty bowl, kidney shaped, like a bed pan, to fit around the boy’s neck. Hung takes the large butcher knife and steadies his right hand.

Hung yells to the shocked and traumatized boy with sweaty timber lupus teeth, “Look at me!” The boy cannot focus his eyes on Hung, but hears him. Hung grabs the boy by the face and looks into his eyes, “I’m doing this so that you will cook for me in Heaven.” He quickly and mercifully slices through the first three inches of important arteries and says; so that it will be the very, very last thing the dying dead-boy ever hears “I mean Hell.”

Hung releases the boy’s face from his powerful grip, laughs and turns around to face his audience. The boy’s eyes close drowsily, giving up the ghost by way of shock. Hung believes that in this way he has transformed the boy’s soul into a ghost, an indentured him as a servant to his beck-n-call in the afterlife.

The audience, the cannibal club members stand and applaud the Master Chef’s slaughtering skills. None of these people are strangers to watching peoples’ lives end horrifically. They are the successful monsters of the world who have succeeded rightly according to their own edict. They are the deciders of fates; the liars of words spoken without modesty; the builders and rulers of empires and monarchs that treat individuals like nature does, with little to no concern.

Hung addresses his audience, “Tonight, thanks to Trudy;” Trudy in the audience waves and looks at everyone else. She is excited to have participated in the meal, “I will have the opportunity to serve to you, for the first time in my career in New York -;” The audience gasps “Cock sausage.” The audience applauds the very sound of the meal. “And as you can see he was quite well endowed; so everyone will be getting a taste.” The audience applauds louder.

Hung turns from the audience in full applause and is swiftly again on his victim. He examines the silver neck curved blood bath tubs. “Ok” The two souse chefs take the fresh blood away. They each walk to one cooking station and prepare the beginnings of blood pudding; cutting onions and salting the blood. Two more souse chefs enter the dining room stage carrying platters.

A faster knife does not cut through flesh on this planet. Hung carves beneath the chin removing tender meat, huge chunks, as close to the bone as possible without even a grain of calcium deposit being removed from the skeleton. Hung slices off the meat from the head revealing more and more of the red face. Hung feels the warmth of the spotlight on his back as he peels away layers and layers of fat and flesh from the boy’s face and neck. He is a demon performer. He is an ancient alchemist who has found the vampyric source of immortality. His heart and mind are strong but he can feel the first twinge of disintegration in his joints, in his hips and his knees. He is displeased and yearns to kill more, always wanting more. He slices off the ears. He carves out the eyes with more brutal than usual digs into the bone with a knife that rarely sees anything harder than tendon; sharp, thin and long. Hung flings the sticky tendons and veins into the bowl, they octopus his fingers but finally splash with inertia into bowl. He flings himself clean. He is careful with his placing of organs into the right bowls. He is known for utilizing every part of the person and showing off its own uniquely tasting part.

Hung wipes the blood from his knife onto his apron. He places his knife down. Souse chefs run from the protein source with bins and bowls full of ingredients and are replaced with a new set of souse chefs.

A large Mongolian souse chef hands Hung a small (1inch dm) hand-held circular-saw. Hung motors the blade and daftly applies it to the back of the boy’s skull. Hung walks around the boy sawing into his skull as if about to perform brain surgery. Hung is satisfied with his circumnavigation of the boy’s cranium. He turns off the hand-held power-tool and has a sip of wine. He raises his glass to the audience. They applaud.

“Here! Here!”

“Chin! Chin! Darling!”

“Fi Sahitak!”

“Sante!”

“Salud!”

“Gia Sou!”

“Kong Chien!”

He sets his glass of wine down on the blood soaked table. He licks a drop of the boy’s blood from his cheek to mix with the Bordeaux. He removes the top of the boy’s skull; exposing the brain of the dead boy.

Hung scrapes the brains out with a large serving spoon. The brains are placed in a bowl. A souse chef takes the brain and is replaced with another souse chef; a young Thai woman who was born into prostitution and is incapable of love. She brings the master chef a fresh bowl. Hung now goes for the throat. He slices out the Adam’s apple for his famous soup. He carves down the line for the delicious flesh of the boy’s throat. He stops there. He loads the Thai whore’s bowl.

He faces his audience. The boy behind him is starting to show the ferocity of Hung’s mutilation. He looks like a cadaver designed for second year med students learning the muscular system; red and haunting like a butcher shop prop. “Tonight I will cook for you my famous Adam’s apple soup.”

The audience applauds. Hung continues; but only four of you will be sampling it;” They groan. He knew they would. “There will also be sautéed testicles in a cherry brandy reduction; also for four,” Hung seems to invent the menu on the spot, perhaps he does, “and eyeball ceviche, also for four. Following the course of the head this evening I will prepare for you crisp tamarind ears. They will be served on a bed of stuffed Squash blossoms. I will tell you what they are stuffed with when I figure it out.” The audience laughs, “I will prepare crisped cheek that will be served with one hundred and twenty year old balsamic vinegar on brazened apples and endives. The portions will be small and everyone will have a taste this evening.” The audience politely applauds. “Everyone will get to try brain tonight and also Kidney pie.”

The audience really responds to the kidney pie. The crust that Hung makes to bake on top of the pot is out of this world. The kidney, Hung spices with secrets, cumin, cinnamon, nutmeg and wine. He is a master of flavors with garlic Amarone reduction for the crisped cheeks.

Table #1:

Greek shipping Magnate Paris Onanasis sits with General Custard’s great granddaughter Julie McRae. He is three hundred pounds of olive oil and never takes off his ostentatious sunglasses, not even when he is giving it good and slippery to his wife Julie. She is a spoiled princess of no province. She enjoys shopping for clothes and discussing reality television shows with her Botox companions, who all married wealthy and fear each wrinkle. She is the face of several charities and can’t wait until those particular photo-shoots are over so she can relieve herself of those disgusting panhandling children and their starving odor.

Table #2:

Chinese real-estate developer Sun Li-Kaching sits with his business partners Sum Yun-Gi and Bruce Li-So. Together they have cornered the market on high rise, low grade housing for the lower middle class in Hong Kong, Shanghai and Beijing. They have made billions and recently run out of luxurious objects to buy, experiences to have. They have free jumped into the cave of the swallows in Mexico. They have traveled into space aboard Virgin1 with playboy billionaire Bruce Wayne Branson and screwed the youngest prostitutes in Thailand. They have eaten every source of protein known to man, including man and believe that there is no chef to rival Hung Xing in spectacle and taste. They drink two hundred year old saki from the emperor’s private collection and enjoy special privileges with countries all over the world due to their government connections. They have each murdered themselves, simply to watch the life leave a body. They believe that the world’s problem is too many people, which is ironic due to their success in storing the population explosion of their native country.

Table #3:

Lillian Gishenstein married the wealthiest perfume maker in France. When he died she became the wealthiest woman in the country and had to be hospitalized for stomach cramps due to her exhaustive laughter. She couldn’t believe her good fortune. She was thirty-nine and had the rest of her life to spend her former husbands twenty-seven billion Euros. She laughed for six days straight until one of her abdomen ruptured.

Lillian sits with two boys named Tommy who are both deaf and blind. This type of boy has become necessary for her particular type of lifestyle. She has learned to communicate with the boys by typing into a hand held computer that is actually equipped with a brail ticker tape printer. Anything she wants or demands is read by the Tommies with sensitive fingers that scroll the tape and do exactly as they are told; sexual, criminal, or blasphemous; it doesn’t matter. They were born for her servitude.

Table #4:

Arabian Prince Alwaleed Bin-Linen sits in full white regal gear including red-and-white checkered headscarf, and black headband. He is quiet and still. The evil he radiates is the silent frightening ‘kill everyone’ bad you would expect from Dick Cheney or Darth Vader. He sits with three young women dressed in Versace, Gucci and Lauren. They refuse ancient rituals and want only the best on the planet. They are sisters and the most beautiful women in his country. They expect nothing less from the infamous chef and aren’t the least bit enthralled by the theatrics of his murderous display. They expect flavors worthy of the million dollar price tag.

Table #5:

“Do you think you can keep your mouth off the rest of that boy now that he’s dead?” Senator Stromstorm is not pleased by his wife’s performance, even though he will be able to try cock sausage for the first time ever; the one menu item the good law maker has been dying to try for the last twenty-two years; since he has been a member of the Cannibal Club.

“OK” Trudy Stromstorm has more dirt on her husband than anyone. She doesn’t give a shit. She uses his credit card to hire male escorts and doesn’t give a fuck if they steal his napoleon brandy and Cuban cigars. She would sell her soul to the devil to live forever on the money of the wealthy and the semen of the young. She might one day be institutionalized or murdered for her behavior, but so far she has not gone too far.

Table #6:

The Hamilton triplets; heiresses to the global hotelier’s multi-billion dollar a year business speak with less than one mind.

“I think that man is a genius.” To Brittany, everyone is a genius who has her attention for more than six seconds.

“I know. I am so glad that Mr. Hung knew our granddaddy Hamilton.”

“Who was he again?” Berlin is the dimmest of the triplets.

“Our Father’s father.” Lindsay was actually lucky enough to have dated a Greek importing heir who taught her to read books and stuff.

“Oh.”

Hung returns to the stadium kitchen stage to find Trudy Stormstrom once again sucking on the second boy’s penis. “No luck huh?” Trudy shakes her head with the cold limp penis of the unconscious boy in her aging mouth. “Well it’s a special thing to get any of these terrified boys to become erect at the time of their death. You did good to get just one.”

Trudy looks at hung with big pitiful eyes that do not want to uncork the cock from her sad wine bottle mouth. She spits the caterpillar out with a long string of saliva. Plop. She walks back to her table where the judge has finished the second bottle of wine. He could kill her. He contemplates what crime he could have her convicted of… oh but her father’s fortune, and her knowledge of his actions.

Hung removes the penis first with a swift action. He will incorporate the tough morsel into the tender erect muscle for an added texture to his cock sausage. The souse chef takes the penis and some of the blood spillage away.

The lights glimmer and shine dramatically from his cleaver. The crowd all breathe in as one entity. He then suddenly, quickly, expertly, with great ease and skill slices through the boy’s skin, meat, jugular, hollow, meat again, the whole time blood, and again skin CLAINKM! The decapitated meat was lucky to have not experienced shock. Hung knows what he is doing. He only wants one of the protein sources to be tense with shock before death.

The souse chefs take the same ingredients as the first boy into the kitchen to prepare.

The sweat builds upon the master chef’s face. He drinks his beautifully aged and stored; ’80 Bordeaux; Chateau Petrus. He licks the now streaking blood on his cheek with a devilish tongue that would sup on the guts of the entire species and every species if he could. He turns to face his adoring audience. They applaud, not the least bit horrified by the spectacle behind Hung of two faceless boys red to the head and opened at the top like beer cans to get at the precious juice and sauce, the wonderful meat and tissue. The naked lifeless boys even more terrifying with ruby skulls and spines beginning to show the butcher work of the master chef.

“And now the vitals,” Hung swings swiftly around and connects with the first young man with a ninja grace, slicing with his right hand from the umbilicus to the abdomen. In the next motion Hung thrusts his left hand into the boy and grabs a hold of the kidney. He struggles a second but yanks the organ down enough, so that the next incision would free the vital waste filter into his hand. He removes the knife, plunges again and frees the product. He performs this surgery three more times. The souse chefs carry the food away.

“Kidney Pie!” The crowd cheers his menu.

Hung now slices open the first boy and removes the stomach. The taste of the stomach is not good, but it is excellent for cooking in. See: haggis – See: bladder – See: intestines. Plus removing the stomach makes it easier to remove the liver. This takes some time. He removes the second liver. He has decided to reduce this in a beer porter and pair it with pear and pearl onion.

The heart is next, it comes out the easiest, and how Hung wishes it were still beating so he could show it to the amazed audience. Plop! Into the next pan, blood in the bottom to cook with; the heart falls unbeating ready for its steam and sear.

Hung slices off long chunks of the boys’ thighs. He puts the meat in a pan. He now examines the breast. They are thin and sinewy. They are young and underprivileged. However he will stuff his guests with the meat of these young men. He pinches the boys’ nipples as he pinched their cheeks, with demanding thumb and index finger. He pulls for all they’re worth and slices as much of the breast as he can.

The courses would satisfy the evilest and the holiest among men; though often it is difficult to tell the difference between these two classes. Hung practically removes every piece of choice meat from the skeleton; the violent violet and burgundy mess of a humanoid, with eyelids, eyes, lips and ears missing, scalp and brain missing, with large chunks of their form missing.

Although the kitchen is just directly behind the stage, Hung excuses himself from his audience to prepare this evening’s courses. The audience begins to whisper and discuss amongst themselves the glorious horror of the scene. They one by one and two by two walk down to the stadium floor to witness the warm bones of the freshly deceased.

THE KITCHEN

In the kitchen Hung operates in a massive yet contained kitchen space 1200sqft. Every refrigerator, fryer, oven eye and cutting board is observable by the audience who sits in the tiered gallery and looks on at the slicing dicing broiling and sizzling in the kitchen.

Hung prepares the eyeballs first. They must chill and rest in the acid of grapefruit, lemon, grape and pepper. Hung knows that the eyes should marinate over night but they only have tonight. He is attracted to the idea of the kill and the feast being on the same evening, it should always be. The modern man has forgotten how to hunt.

He finishes his cold plate of citrus heated eyeballs and places them in one of the small refrigerating units. Each unit is set at a different temperature for a different purpose; some are chilling melon, some are freezing ice-cream.

He runs to the next station and immediately begins working on the testicles. He coats them in a bourbon honey ketchup sauce and sears them in hot grape-seed oil. Hey only wants to flash fry them in a hot temperature. He wants the inside to be a little runny, like yoke, like roe, like grape or the best omelet. He wants to feel the floundering fatality of the seeds as they die on the tongue, the sperm warmed by the internal cooking, just right. He serves them with purple cauliflower and hazelnut puree. The hazelnuts roast in the wok. He lets the testicles rest in the strainer, dripping from the fryer and cooling. The hazelnuts begin to smell of their roasting. He picks up the wok with one hand and frees the base from the flame. He swirls the wok around in circular motions away from the flame and rolls the nuts around in the pan. This cools them from the burning, but keeps them coking on all sides evenly.

Hung rests his roasting hazelnuts on a lower flame. The chestnut resonation continues. The pounding drumming of the mallets flatten the breast meat for frying crisp, creating drum sounds resembling a requiem, a ceremonial procession.

The music continues as Hung prepares the four ears. He first coats them in a light tamarind sauce with garlic and salt. He then coats them in flour and then a secret batter sauce. He next fries them in peanut oil, slow and long, letting the oil penetrate the mass to full crunch. He flash fries the squash blossoms in grape-seed oil and prepares the plates.

The Adam’s apple soup is served first, along with the crispened tamarind ears and the grapefruit eyeball ceviche, along with the flash fried testicles, the tongue pate and the blood pudding with jerk spiced throat muscle with quail egg.

The appetizers are a smash and the audience drinks more and more expensive red wine, expensive rare whisky and Saki and Scotch.

The next course is kidney pie. The crowd loves the individual pie crusts, the blood sausage gravy with spring garlic and summer onions; with truffle oil, truffles and fiddlehead ferns.

Cock Sausage is next, because the best dish should be right in the middle, not too anxious to show off, but wanting the customer to still be salivating; cock sausage. The sausage was spiced with ground rhinoceros horn, La Mancha saffron, smoked aged paprika, baby Cheyenne peppers, baby garlic, and baby onion roots, salt and pepper of course, and the fat from some of the intestines. It was served with a baby potato gratin of cream and nutmeg.

After that it didn’t take much to please the gluttonous members of the Cannibal Club. They had consumed the most scrumptious of all dishes.

Hung is only happy when he is cutting or cooking the human being. Everything else pales in comparison to this monstrous activity. He would give up sleep if he could continue killing. He would kill himself in the attempt to kill everyone on the planet. His only passion in life is cooking what he has killed. He is planning on being Satan’s personal chef. He laughs to himself this thought – knowing – the coldness of the ground – the loneliness of death and the eternal solitude of the afterlife.

Pink Fire

My balls are bruised from the tremendous riding; straddling the leather saddle with weathered denim jeans and chaps. I have ridden two hundred miles today. I am at least – not the horse.

How persuadable must the Equidae be? I mean really; what does the horse get out of its relationship with human? What is the advantage of being domesticated? Always pastures? What made the horse submissive to the first taming? Was it a trade? Aware of its own stupidity and peaceful nature; did the horse know that man would hunt and eat it? Did it then decide to assist in the hunt instead of be the hunted?

I was thinking all kinds of crazy shit out there on the road. The road – huh! – You can barely see it with all of the grass and the fallen tree limbs. I guess we may as well call it The Way – cause you either know it or you don’t. Jesus I’ve been in this cabin too long. I have called this cabin home for five and half years and am ready to leave.

I tie the horse up. I go to the well. I pump water. I fill the trough. The other horses are thirsty too. I have been gone a long time. I drink from the well as well, for I am thirsty. I drink last because I know that I am not going to die, and I have been known to ride a horse to its death.

I go inside and see my family is sitting exactly where I left them; wife, mother and child, all covered in spider webs and dust. I am glad the stink has finally gone. It was a difficult winter. I had to keep the house warm and the larger predators at bay. I ate a lot of fox and wolf that year. I am strong as the devil this year. The bugs were difficult though, that year – even in winter, an explosion of maggots from their eye-sockets and mouths.

My family was tortured and killed by Indians, or rather Native Americans; or rather that’s what the U.S. Military wants me to think. I know it was them. I know I can not wage war on any military, and especially not those heartless bastards. During the War of The Aggression I listened to their messages and fought along side of them. I tried not to, but I killed many men. I simply cannot stand by and let someone charge at me with a bayonet. It is important to know one’s boundaries. I was trained in hand to hand combat by the Confederate Army and offer no apologies for my war crimes.

I do not miss my family. I used to. I no longer feel attachment. I have grieved an appropriate amount of time; maybe not the appropriately way, but then I am my own man. I wanted to watch them decompose. I wanted to stay with their lifeless shells and watch their matter wither. I accepted the stink and the melting of their flesh and blood, their tissue and gelatin, but along with their hideous garments of rotting skin dripping and falling off of their skeletons went too my feelings for them. Love is not eternal. Nothing is.

I light a fire in the stove. It will take a while to heat up. I remove the salt pork and the beans and the cornmeal from my saddlebags. I have time while the water is heating. I clean my guns and sharpen my blades. I spit on the axe grind and love the sparks that shoot into the air and fall upon my scalp. I decide that this is my last night in the house.

I retrieve three books from the desk; The Holy Bible, The American Dictionary of the English Language, and Systema Naturae by Swedish botanist Carolus Linnaeus illustrated by a group of artists at Cambridge Massachusetts. I plan on growing and cultivating the food I eat. I pack my saddlebags for the morrow minus the coffee and salt pork of course. I plan on eating a healthy and lively breakfast.

I fart a lot after dinner and play my harmonica. I roll a cigarette. The grocer in town sells his own brand of rolling tobacco which is by far the best blend that can be smoked. He said there was something in it called marijuana and it was his secret ingredient. I trust him. He sells me a bubbly sugar drink that once drunk produces an orgasmic effect in the whole body and lasts an hour and is worth the fifty cent gold piece he charges for it.

I close my eyes for sleep and a half of a second later I wake up with the sunrise. I cook the bacon and make the coffee. I let the rest of the cornbread soak in the fatback grease. I relish the consumption. I drink more coffee then I ever have in my life and get so wired I almost piss myself. I am giddy with joy. Today is the beginning. I pack the salt-pork, the coffee and the three books up in the saddlebags and sling them over my second best horse. I will ride him today. I will also take my favorite and my third favorite horse. They will trail behind us. I will use them for currency. I only own four horses. The fourth is just going to have to keep up if he can, or stay behind if he wants.

I set my house on fire. I watch it only until it is engulfed in flames. I have no interest in watching it burn. That part of my life is over. I giddy-up to the unknown.

We cover forty miles before we have to stop. To my surprise the fourth horse is still with us. He is an old stud, the father of two of the horses, and the uncle of the other one. I think he has something to prove more then he wants to rest his power. He was a great stud.

I shit in the woods like a bear and discover I am being watched by the Natives. There are many of them and they seem to be warriors, made up and fully armed with spear, bow and arrow, and rifles for the ones who had killed the white men and stolen their terrible weapon.

I am held captive. The chief wants to know what my purpose is in their territory. I explain that I am a wanderer, a drifter, that I belong to no clan, and have no agenda. There is a council meeting. They decide to test me. I am made to eat a type of mushroom soup.

I begin to hallucinate. The chief asks me what I see. I tell him an ecstatic blue energy that activates matter and elucidates mind. He asks me if I can dance and I tell him I already am. He laughs. I don’t. I am in a terrible transcendental vacuum. Waves of energy and euphoria are washing over me in sickening pleasure. I vomit. I am told that is common. I sit by the fire and listen to Wolf tell me his story, Bear tell me his then Fox, Otter, Rabbit and Rat. Each orator is the animal itself. Rat has a tiny squeaky voice. Fox’s is sly and easy like a barista or a Madame.

I come down and wake up around sun-rise. The chief welcomes me into the tribe, and looking up at the glorious and vibrant clouds at sunrise – names me Pink Fire. I am proud of the name. I am glory at sunrise. I am greeted by every member of the tribe. I can tell those who are excited, those who are skeptical and those who are interested sexually. I have hunger. I look them all in the eye and bow. I don’t know why I bow. I want to show to them my submissive thanks for the great acceptance of me.

I don’t belong here.

Their language is simple and riddled with mythological significance. I no longer care about the prancing stork or the lustful alligator or the dreaming winter bear – the immortal tortoise or the god mountain.

I am not capable of a peaceful life. I have lost too much. I seek too much. I seek a brand new solitude. I want to absorb myself and shit ruby poetry of godless gold. I don’t know what that means. I have changed some, since the mushroom soup. I have been given a special new wisdom, or so I believe – and this guides my activity.

I tell the chief goodbye. He asks me what I expect to find in the unknown. I tell him the future known. He gives me a magical talisman that I wear around my neck. His son is happy to see me go. I am aware of this, yet wish him well. He does not smile to me. I smile uncontrollably.

I do not say goodbye to the rest of the clan. I ride off in the direction of the sunrise because I am a new type of hero. I seek the source, not in the form of the womb, but the form of the new culture, the new government, the new land that is America. I have discovered a new way to destroy this evil U.S. Military that slaughtered my family. I am going to corrupt its infrastructure culturally. I, Pink Fire ride my stallion east towards the sunrise – to the beginning of the phoenix birth. I ride fast and furious and expect to be there by dawn.

The Grazing Saddle

I started work fifteen minutes late; an inauspicious beginning to be sure. Jodi warned me how much she adored promptness. I promised to never again be tardy. I knew I was lying. Anyway she had some old tart named Virginia show me around the place. I had a nickname for the old sot instantly.

Clown-Face Virginia spoke with a slow witted drawl; southern like corn syrup; “’Is here’s thuh wait station – where we roll the silverware – a hunert pieces - no ‘ceptions – you gotcha salt and paper shakers rite-chair and the extra salt rite-chair in ‘is cabinet rite-chair,” She kept saying ‘rite-chair’ instead of ‘right here’. I was used to this dialect; the southern sloe melting from the tips of the arctic tongues, words frozen and numb… but more fascinating was the amount of rouge she used on her pale chubby wrinkles that brought too much attention to her drunken hung-over inability to gauge tint, space or layer. Her lips were a mess of candied cherries eaten hungrily; disastrous amounts of red lipstick were applied with the DTs – her half century old fingers shaking like rickety pistons in an antique engine applying globs of tar to her grey and decaying eyelashes; transforming her blink into a car crash. The eye-shadow was ‘summer sky’ and she used the whole horizon. She looked like something all the children used to aim at in the carnival; a balloon sprouting from her head, each squirt hoping for burst – circus punk hairdo – frizzled and stringy, brushed too much, waiting patiently for the high school baseball players to wind up and knock her over.

I barely listened as she showed me around the place: Where to find the ketchup, where we kept the kegs of iced tea – sweetened, and the one bucket of unsweetened iced tea and how to make the sweet tea and where the sugar was stored, how much to use, etc, gallons, where we kept the lemon wedges, and how many seconds you’re supposed to wait before asking the bottom feeders would they care to see the dessert menu, which I later learned from Jas to put on the table as you remove the entrée course – cause those fat bastards almost always want dessert, and if they think they don’t, change their mind and sell – because every dollar you sell is another dime or if you’re really lucky two. Clown-face Virginia continued; “Now ya always got to remember to go in and out through the right-sided door only. Don’t never try to go in nor out of the left-sided door never. Ya might get hurt.” She was not the most eloquent of monologists but she got her point across.

I had never worked in a restaurant before, but it’s true – I had been in them, and could imagine trays of hot food splattered everywhere if not for this simple rule. Clown Face Virginia showed me to the kitchen and introduced me to the chefs.

The chefs looked like the gnarlier of the staff; loud, tattooed animals with the radio up and a taste for cutting meat in their genes, sharp knives in their hands, and fire by their genitals; hot oil spitting at them from skillets and hands that seemed scarred and meaty like a villain’s claws.

Clown Face Virginia kept showing me around the place. “Now ‘is is Cindy and ‘is hears Brett; ‘ey’ve both been here forever, so you know, feel free to ask ‘em anything.”

I was so fucking hung-over I had already forgotten their names. My head was caffeine racked and light – airy. I continued to follow Clown Face Virginia around Grazing Saddles learning the ropes – took my first order and sized up my new career. The people that waddled in and out of there had enough oil in their bellies and arteries to fuel lamps for the whole state for centuries. They oozed and seeped rich butter fat from their shortening skin as if their liver was protesting its job. They stank of rotten flesh trapped in folds of fat and unwashed skin, the gas of processed food and neglected assholes. It reminded me of a farm, but without the purity – their shit stank worse than pig and cow. Not all of them, but certainly my first table, my first impression of this line of work. They would have made vampires vomit.

“Hi; may I take your order?”

“Can we have more sweet tea please?”

“I hope you enjoyed your evening and y’all come back to see us soon.” – This was the mandatory closing line, which never got old to the customer, not even as it was being said simultaneously three tables down.

Picnic Thunderstorm

I love the smell of your hair.

It lingers in my peripheral.

You smell like a new born baby.

You are fresh to the world

with your innocent thoughts –

with your childish belief in

everything and nothing at once,

bouncing off the walls

with joy and excitement

and sinking in the tar-pits

of your crushing defeat.

Holiday lollipop.

I will suck your candy eyes for a lifetime

if I can – if the fates are willing.

I restrain my tidal wave nature

to surf in your calm current.

You teach me patience and love

and I lead my unbridled passions

like a beaten colt.

I have buried my lust in the scorching Sahara

and seek no refugee.

I am solvent.

I unglue the joints.

I weather the mortar between the bricks

particle by particle

and participate in the mystic dance –

life –

twisting and wriggling about –

another omniscient fish

with an infinite number of hooks

in my mouth.

I am caught in your charm,

locked to your arm

while we walk down Ninth Avenue

together

Tree Climber

I climb the tree. I crack the nut. I drink the juice of the secret skull. It is sweet and milky creamy. I shave some of the skin and flesh off with my teeth. It is bitter. I throw the drained nuts away. I let them fall from the sky. I have not yet figured out to turn them into weapon, or seed. I sleep in the tree and do not wake unless my primate mates wake me with screaming and hollering which always means panther or python my two worst enemies, I mean other then other primates of course, no one knows how to kill you better than you.

I am figuring out sabotage and subterfuge, the shadows of strategy. I am beginning to play mind games with my tribe. I pretend that I am great and they leave me alone. They do not threaten me. They let me come to them sexually. I am a mystery to them. I have begun to stare at the stars and contemplate dimensions. There’s more to this life thing then eating, sleeping, fucking, pissing, shitting, and watching out for one another; which reminds me: I got to learn how to kill that panther, before he kills me.

I sleep while the others forge for food. They forge for food for me. They believe I have special powers. I found a tree that had been split by lightening.

I made a torch. I’m not really certain how the whole thing works, but I taught my clan to see in the dark. We did not know how to keep the fire going. It went out. I am the Promethean fire bringer to the clan. I watch for the rain. I know that is when the neon bolts strike from the sky. I will follow the rain clouds and hope to find a tree struck from the fire tongue.

We now know that you can survive in several locations of the cave, and we know what happened to Dave, and I’m beginning to suspect that smell is Dave too.

I like the caves. I believe that I have explored the furthest. Well, the furthest that has come back and explained to the other’s what I had found. I walk tenderly and carefully in the impossible darkness rich with sightlessness and blind to the slippery abyss. I feel the bones of my fallen comrades. I feel their faces and know who they are and count the years they have been gone. I have deduced a lunar calendar.

The others have no idea what the fuck I’m talking about. No one studies the language we invented. It is frustrating. I have so many new words I want to invent. And I hate the guttural grunts and groans, the ear piercing cries of frustration when not able to remember the word for Fig. I am wondering if Eve shouldn’t have left that fruit in the forbidden garden, though I do like figs. I like old figs, and old pomegranates too. I like them when their mushy and sour, disgusting I know – but I don’t know – I get kind of like a buzz when I eat them you know – I mean we’re fifty thousand years before wine…

I only let one groom me. I am trying to encourage the others to engage in monogamy, to form perhaps a nuclear family and be responsible for their offspring. I do not attack the other males when they mate with the females of my clan. I encourage it. I am looking forward to meeting their offspring. I am the undeniable king, and leader of this troop. I expect to be greedily assassinated by some ruthless cold blooded brother much stronger then me and the next three of us, but so far, letting them all fuck seems to do the trick, no pent up energy to take out on the restricting command. Free and easy, for soon we will have to write our language. I will have to invent an alphabet and a form of mathematics. I am going to have to teach them abstraction, art appreciation, or at least what I mean when I draw a herd of elk and a compass, possible disguises and new hunting methods.

I try to convince other tribes to adopt a principle similar to ours. I seemed to have engaged them in war with my heretical suggestions of peace and prosperity.

They engaged us in war and tore us to pieces. I mean how could they not have? The other tribes were ruled by one selfish alpha demon and an army of sexually frustrated males who were beaten into submission and ready for the kill – the taste of the blood and the victory – savagery, pure and perfect bestiality. They ate our flesh and enslaved only our youngest girls and women, the virgins.

They saved me for last. I was crucified on a tree on the outreaching areas of their territory. They tied me up and spat on me, pissed on me; dry humped my leg, bit me and slashed at me with their jungle claws. I could see the other skeletons of heretic minded leaders, previously perverted alpha males wiped out by the weakening of the savage gene; their dried and decayed remains falling apart on their respected trees. I am happy we are learning geography but it takes romance to create poetry and there is no love in an alpha run society.

I would last three days and expire. There would be no resurrection or heavenly light. I was decaying carcass. I gave up the ghost and waited for return. There would be no engraving of my dramatic moment. There would be no last words or weeping entourage, only a gagged last spittle breath and an explosion of birds from the tree most recent with expired meat.

We Swam In the Warm Ocean

We swam in the warm ocean. I lay on my back and floated like a well fed otter, soaking my skin and whiskers in the salty brine. I imagined what wild sea animals drifted beneath me. I wondered if I was being stalked by the shark; a great white preferably or a tiger: Man-eaters with rows and rows of smiling razors and a 2600pound-per-inch chomp through bone, leaping out of the water with half of me in their mouth; my corpuscles dissolving with salt – invisible pink in the vastness of water, intestines and marrow spilling out into the sunny afternoon for the krill and the shrimp to feast upon.

I let myself drift in the ocean, my face burn in the blistering heliosphere, my imagination run wild about my death, about the end of material me, all of my matter mere food for other matter, not thought but sustenance; heart, liver and head swallowed whole by the mighty carnivore, limbs falling useless to the sea floor for the crab and the cuttlefish, my testicles sheared and ripped, sliced through and exploded into the ocean, my semen swimming wildly in the ocean hoping for ovum but withering and drowning within seconds; millions of microscopic progeny evaporating in the primal soup. I stain the coral with my blood.

All they will find of me is a belt buckle and a steel button from my cut off Levis. I drift in the sea and let my mind wander, not once opening my eyes, which were red before the sun. I don’t care if I drift to Portugal or Guinea. I contemplate the octopus next, his slithering silk and inch along, a thousand sensitive suckers to feel the complexities with, each sucker equipped with chemosensors.

The cephalopod tastes what it touches; chameleon of the deep, along with the cuttlefish able to instantly change from one complex pattern to another, not only sensing and recognizing the weird combinations of his purple, brown and green environment, but mimicking the rocks and the sand and the textures with his skin, his electric shimmering epidermis. His entire body undulates and pulses like water. Patterns of blue and white lines ripple across his body, synapses firing and delicate receptors receiving, a symphony of deceit and camouflage wafting across his intricate skin.

The octopus slithers and hides, crawls into crevices, abandoned shells and bottles. The octopus is a delicacy, tender and sumptuous, hunted often and torn apart savagely by the predators of the sea, i.e. the bigger fish; limb by limb they are feasted upon until they have lost too much life force and die.

I open my eyes and turn over, observing my location. The water was clear and I kept my eyes open underwater. I could see but blurrily. Fish swam about me of all shapes and colors, schools of ten or twenty at a time, dark colored fish, silvery and blue, like the ocean itself. I changed positions again, getting my head above water, breaking the surface, and taking a much needed gulp of air. I was pretty far out, maybe a half mile. The people were quiet and looked like ants. I decided I should return to my back and do a gentle back-stroke towards the shore. I closed my eyes and gently kicked my feet, gently stroked my arms towards the land. I thought of the blue whale and wondered what it must be like to be the largest thing on the planet, a monolith, a goliath of the earth, without predator, feasting on plankton and krill cruising the oceans like the Earth was no more than a cage in a zoo, a park, circumnavigating the planet often.

I wondered about the sea turtle – two hundred years of life just cruising through the deep blue… Would that be more peaceful than boring? I hope so, maybe a smaller brain helps. I swam backwards towards the shore faster and faster. I seemed to build stamina as I went along. I began to hear the beach-combers and sunbathers, the Frisbee kids and the adult kites.

Eventually I could stand up. I then slowly waded out of the water, an exhausted Godzilla; too beat to destroy the town just now. I needed to rest my fire breathing rage. What a joy it was to be free. I gave myself the time to absorb the spirit of the ocean, the deep and the beach. I let the aquatic life seep into me.

I wrestled with the colossal squid and pried its enormous beak open with my bare hands, breaking apart the beast and enjoying a later feast of calamari, enough to feed the entire Polynesian village I now live on with my fourteen wives and sixty two children. I grill the shellfish, flash-caramelizing the skin, leaving it tender and never chewy. The nine hundred pounds of flesh takes all day to cook, but I am an expert chef and renowned on my island as a gourmand. I produce a lovely palm wine as well, a drink stronger than vodka and sweeter than rain. It takes the entire village to chop up the forty feet of sea monster, but we have plenty of sharp tools and work well in the sun, most of us dressed only in loin cloth, the women’s breasts exposed, brown nipples like doorbells exposed in the sunlight.

I waded out of the surf and located Pistol. He was asleep with a shirt over his face, and a shirt over his legs, to prevent himself from burning further. I joined him and continued my various beachfront fantasies.

Suddenly I am ordering raspberry daiquiris under a Cuban umbrella and writing in my journal, another best selling book about the seductive Havana scenery; the sooty pillars and macho statues of the Paseo de Prado, the poverty stricken princesses with their dark island skin and perfect builds, the boys as well, with their daring legs and able swim. I would lead a rebellion against the rebellion and demand to have my pornography published as high art and really cause a great sensation. My home country loves me but the Cubans are mixed about me. I am a great tourist attraction and also a tyrant, bearded now and with large belly, sucking down bottles of rum by the cartful and cigars the same I do my best to impregnate every beauty on the island. I am an artistic tyrant, a lunatic genius with more cock and balls than sense, but what passes for power these days?

It was a lucky break for me to be born and treated like I was on this planet so far. I had ample time to exercise my free wheels. I was nourished by god and tempted by the devil, recited every oath and believed in no dogma. I was allowed to exist freely in my tiny mind and wonderful style.

I played ballgames as a child in the field across the street from my grandparents. I scored touchdowns and hit homeruns. I made daring catches and won the game often by a powerful swing or a leaping snag. I was always the captain or for certain picked first. I was athletic and daring. When we raced our bicycles I always had to jump the highest over the mound of dirt we ramped off of. I broke many seats and pedals by coming down too hard and more than once came up bloody, but I never stopped jumping until I had the height I craved, which was the highest. In my neighborhood I was the youngest, and the one most anxious to leave town.

I stared at the water – the hot twinkling Atlantic Ocean calm and vast, bigger than anything on earth, except the Pacific Ocean, endless, a body would need a craft to cross it. I thought of Norse Explorers crossing it in the beginning of the Eleventh Century, sons and grandsons of outlaws, in renegade boats screaming across the waters to Newfoundland, one of the most aptly named provinces in the entire world. I thought of the Spaniards and the Italians in their glorious vessels well stocked with food and wine and fresh water, stacked to the gills. Experienced seamen worked the boats. A daring voyage like that, circumnavigating the globe in a time when the general notion is that the world is flat, requires real experts, men of the salt, men of the grind, who can go long hours and never actually break their backs. This is no time for slave work. It takes two to three slaves to do an experts job and the food cost on that is too expensive to make it across the dangerous waters. They would die of thirst with slaves. I wonder how well those seamen were paid.

I thought of the first boat builders, the wild adventurous nature that is deeply seeded in our DNA – how many men perished in the open waters, trying to see just how far out they can go? Row! Row! Row! What sort of ivy league crew could skim across the Atlantic and find new land? – I grew weary in my thoughts and finally just stared, just observed the evanescent waves baking the gossamer spray of rainbow light; the gentle waves crashing on top of each other, one after another, in rhythm, timed to the great pulse of the universe, the tug of the moon, the rotation of the earth, the bizarre puzzle of gravity. Countless bodies past my eyes, but my animal-lust was non-existent. I was exhausted from my swim and my mind was reeling in every direction at once. – I could do nothing but close my eyes and sleep in the waning solar heat.

Those and No One

there are those

who know how to fly

and how small they seem

to those on the ground

those whose sound

brings forth lost travelers

curious animals

flower seeded wind

transparent dandelion float

yellow and sneeze

knows how to rise above the rest

doesn’t know how to

not tease

rhymes his time away

with your pay attention

pushes himself on god

more and more

with his beautiful

I and we multipurpose

all in good time

there are so few here

to take seriously

(thinks)

with their me me me

narcissistic inflexibility

and two dimensional

insecure normality

there are score settlers

and point competitors

game throwers

and game over callers

trophy winning champions

ring bearers and flower girls

alter boys in need of no alteration

and thug angels

involved in hellish crimes

apocalyptic altercations

for an entire community of ants

he has a magnifying glass

laser beam mean streak

and a blitzkrieg comedic

approach to detachment

there are none like him

Celestial Yankee Fan

Stashed in the vanish

witnessing everything’s collision

with nothing

the faint sparkle of

crumbling dust

devoured

by the darkness

it’s her only nightmare

an end without a beginning

on the other side

a stop

to all of this commotion

and ruckus.

peace in the universe

jolts her out of bed

screaming and covered in sweat

she wants nothing to do

with any utopian dream

she wants war and art

drama and comedy

music and fashion

disruption of the void

architecture and killing

blood and feast

the metabolism of carbohydrates

by certain yeasts

a drunken sleep on the beach

she wants the hunt to continue

the search to go on

the meaning

to need rediscovering

and redefining

she wants light to not only shine

but to glimmer

and sparkle from

the precious jewelry

of human eyes

she wants highs and lows

eruptions and concussions

screaming matches

and discussions

poisonous rashes

and car crashes

she wants baby’s breath to bloom

in autumn

and the Yankees to always

be in the world series

Two Barrel Approach

in search of

the next thing to happen

the next spring to spring

the next weight to lift

the next load to shift

artistic endeavor / con

career opportunity / job

interested love interest / god

in whirlwinds of drunkenness

with mad dashing

orgasmic spasms of

unadulterated

feel good frenzy

or

slow

sleepy

taking your time

ease

with nothing

on the mind

creeping along

the walls

of a safe place

to hide

Gemini Boyfriend

antisocial butterfly

semiconscious participant

dreamer

drug user

qualified idealist

(surrealist)

guilty pleading

responsible party:

candidate

coming to you

in dramatic molten

thrusts to the surface

in brilliant volcanic frenzy

erupting in Day-Glo

blood and orange

coming to you

in a high-minded tizzy

with lickety-split and dizzy

like a tornado

in one chaotically

chosen direction

bodhisattva avatar

a conduit

of the gone too far

high

mystic

tripper

glass-slipper crusher

no use for Cinderella

past midnight

loner

loser

neutral angel

boy

fun haver

gift giver

gentle genital licking

way getter

heavenly

earthbound

sound and vision strategist

player

stayer

keeper

freak needy giggler

wine drinker

whore.

Carving Kabalah

I’ll have a limit

a gimmick

a level

and a chisel

something to chip away at

and a degree of difficulty

a naked gesture featured

divine

without wings

posed in an eternity of

wanting to come to life

fluttering about the museum

in heavy marble agony

like an overweight cherub

with too much chocolate

on his muscles

and candy stuck

to his feathers

I’ll have Gordian knots

tied around his boots

in bows

fabulous oils and stains

for his jeans becoming flesh

something to absorb the mess

like a dirty shirt

he loves taking off

but never washing

(like you)

He’ll move with

insect suddenness

slithering

sliding

unwinding stealthily

ready to strike

creating himself in the image

of what nature waits patiently

for him to mutate into

existing in

the electric shockwaves

that resonate

between the thalamus

and the cortex

in every sensory relay

from Kether to Malkuth

from zero to two

and from me to you

Natural Battle

I could hear the bullets whizzing by my ear. I pissed myself twice as two bullets pierced my parachute. They were hot and close. I knew I would kill or die; or kill and die; that war was hell and that no fear can be experienced more than battle.

I ready my Browning 30caliber machine gun and reach into my own guts to find peace with life and death and god and country and all that jazz. I begin cutting the straps of my chute before I even land. I hit the ground running and escape the suffocation of my falling chute. I fall to the ground and open fire. TOOF! TOOF! TOOF! TOOF! TOOF! The gun kicks and jerks like a little mechanical buck but I am strong and keep my grip firm. I blast off 300 bullets in 30 seconds and have actually caught some of the land on fire; or maybe that’s from the flamethrowers. I hope they’re on our side. I’d hate to die like a hotdog.

I wait to see the reaction from my blast. Nothing. Then finally I am joined by two other paramilitary mass executioners and we send another blast into the abyss. RAT-A-TAT_TAT_TAT_TAT!

Nothing. It feels like we are shooting at nothing.

We march for miles and see no enemy. What has happened? The ancient cities are in ruins and there are only corpses. No one is left alive. I find that I am marching alone. I am attended by a large white horse that carries my supplies, large satchels of water, grain, coffee and dried fruit. I have mounted my machine gun on his saddle and choose not to ride him. I am happy to be marching without the weight of the weapon. I guide my steed beyond the smoldering lifeless village and into a field of poppies. There is a winding road made of bricks of gold but I ignore it. I head for the forest, certain that the golden brick road is riddled with landmines. I see a pigeon land on the road in the distance. It explodes. I laugh to myself and wonder how long until I have to eat my horse.