Big Cool Torture Brain

An assemblage of subway maps in the alley show the variety of ways that the world can become a representation of our past lives. A jellyfish web of reasons to seek help, reasons to be scared, reasonable assumptions about the behavior of our organ groups. The mainline assumption of painkillers, hamburgers, small talk, deadlines, aggressive panhandling, is that there is an endpoint and a pointed end. A pinprick in space we are trying to stick to. An apple core. As we age we grow outwards from a downtown, a hub and spoke model, into a series of concentric suburbs and industrial parks, and we spend our lives commuting and getting lost in the backwaters of ourselves. Yes, the main reminders of mixing salt, vinegar, chili paste, semen, gasping lotion, nocturnal animals, missionaries, lie in the lie. Live the best lie you can think of. Think of the best lie you can live and make it a real lie. Edge effects are the only thing the eye sees, color saturation kills the ability to discriminate. And we are the ability to discriminate. We are the lie. We are trying to operationalize a system of self-abnegation, of concentric denials. The atomic models of selfhood. The atom-smasher of neutral values, of not sin, of careless reason. Of reasonable people writing off their actions as economic necessity. Self-employed tax-collectors build their homes on hills of bones, on sex, on literature. It is a luxury system, a carriage forest, that carves out the heart, that invents nation, that gives birth to every good thing we know. Every good thing we know is a show. Tender pools of data parse a felt architecture of human family.

Southfacing

for Kim and Pam and Pat and Cathy

---

Midstate Marshlands

Capitol Air is off my back, how sweet this country breathes!

But the rust which mars the longest track has gathered in the eaves.

My Aunt is sick, still sick, on my first visit in a year.

The stem-cell harvest over and more chemo drawing near.

She met me with the faintest smile, a scarf about her head,

another green across her breast; we spoke and we broke bread.

And in her second-story flat which heaters had made dry,

we laid our coats upon a bed, unwrapping with a sigh.

And she, reluctant, shed her scarf, sent slowly sliding down her brow

I saw her head - thin, hard, and pink and, like the rough flanks of a sow,

there was hair, but light sparse hair that showed her head in plain.

And even this would soon be gone before the cool spring rain

which flushes out the Delaware can make South Jersey green again.

The marshlands, as they call them, are a wreckage 'cross midstate;

the juices of old industry lies like gravy on a plate

in greasy reds, cherubic stains of unlatched leaden pipes.

But still, through this hole and through that, long creeping grasses snipe,

and nail-white reeds patch up the land, make virginal the plain,

but each thick stalk, each jaundiced stalk, can't mask its liver-stains.

Aging Cannibals

When the snow stuck to the North side of all the trees

it looked like it was caking to the backs of old men

bent over to pick up firewood.

Breakfast Buffet

Those lightbulbs South of Chinatown, those bellies digesting gasoline

Those unripe organs, jury rigged

Ready stumps nest fat poached eggs

Cubes of cheese, grey persimmons

Heating pads for saline grapes

They gape, in hungry stench of ovens

Clean steel bins of Northern lovin'

Make me fat in trays of vinyl, chewed-out folds hash-browned and gummed

God I hunger for industry, this bridge

is lovely, beyond conserving, there should be nickel binoculars,

even the river slows to watch

its death.

Petroleum Pastoral

On symmetric branches, from the smoothest spires

perch blackhawks and osprey fierce with red,

who gorge themselves on coffee fish,

who swim upstream from airless lakes.

From across the seas in desperate migration

from the fatting lands and the deep rocksprings

come the minnows, squirming to silver glints

where live-bait skim the ocean top.

They know their course from a barreled compass;

separate, pliant, to hydraulic tides,

sometimes rushing forth into the marshes,

schooling and clotting the environs there.

I mourn the petroleum fishes, I breathe their bones

downtown, I see them in brown heaven

hesitating to acknowledge me,

who gave such little recognition this morning

after so much love in the corroborator three nights back.

Sieving the Mind

The pot is coming to a boil.

The pasta is stewing in a thin white froth,

and must be placed in a sieve.

Amazing how the water goes through so unhesitant

while not a single curious noodle slips through.

Thank god for engineers.

It has been a few days since I got back,

three days of seeing you stripped and straight-jacketed,

three days of wondering how much water they would strain from you,

and if any noodles should slip through.

After all, no hospital could be held to the exacting standards of a sieve.

It has been three days since the drive home from Jersey,

with the compass on the car always reading south,

always except when we had to take the beltway around Philadelphia in a slow oval.

It has been three days of wondering.

Three days,

and I am still facing South.

A Tender Resignation

The bottom dropped out

When the litmus tests started coming back positive

And the archangel positively flipped

Started recalling contacts left and right

So I bought stationary with balloons and Goethe

And tied up my wings behind me in a bow

Out of respect that would get me nowhere

Inside, gingerly pushing the envelope

I prepared to tender my resignation.

It stated with a clear throat:

“As the soft-minded

Crabs scuttle into any moist crevice

After shedding their gray-blue cigarette blankets

I am infested with the unemployed

Who nurse sores in my public dens and moorings.

Infected by congenital

Harpes, who plague the night-minds

Of guilty men, sea-sick and passed out on keeling decks

Splintering like dry oak if they are rigid

Or else tied to the yardon as eternal gaping mermaids.

“And so I find myself

Chewing the last of this wiry placenta

Hairless and pinkish in colour

Face wrinkled like a stubborn and bitter Polack

Mouth desiccated and instinctively gasping for nipple

But alone, and by my choosing

Having licked off my scent with a long pebbly tongue,

And covering my tracks in the pure-black excretia

Of my own self-discipline.”

The door does not open

  But the secretary is philosophical.

He smiles at me with big topaz teeth.

I straighten my tie and rehearse straight into them:

“And so for these reasons,

and for others which I am sure are quite evident

I hereby relinquish my muse

And any benefits thereby bestowed:

“1.        I have been writing so much between the lines that there is little to no room remaining.

2.         I want to go to the playground.

3.                  Obscene quatrains have been appearing with some regularity on the back of even my right hand.

4.                  I get teased constantly by astrologists and Cabalists.

5.                  The Maypole is in season; It is intended as a phallus: an image far too painful to visualize.

6.                  If historians were to visualize my past, they would find manifold incongruities.

7.                  I was rejected from Berkley due to the suspicion and paranoia of Balladeers.

8.                  I have personified my dinner and proceeded to eat it with greater enthusiasm.

9.                  I have begun to romanticize obscure and expensive drug habits, such as “absinthe”, for euphony’s sake.

10.              I don’t have a dog, but. . .”

“WhlHhmmmeeeeemhkEeemssgkHH!!!”

The archangel hocked up a complete child,

  And I turned and walked through the door.

I saw a round man large with kindness,

  Dressed in linen, the whole man was the shape of his own bottom.

He spoke generously:

            “I am sorry to interrupt you, Mr. Wilson

            But I thought I should inform you

that there has been an awful inexactitude laid on your doorstep.

I am in fact not the archangel, but a temp,

And tax interpreter from Outer Detroit

An incipient manifestation and general body-double for the great Logorrhean.

I was flown these thousand miles to inform you

That the grotesque acts for which you have been held responsible

Are in fact the work of a vicious carnal puppet

Of the infamous Beringer family

Who has been working out of San Diego’s Turkish garment district.

Your position will be reinstated full of benefits and lubricious vindication.”

I bounded across the room to embrace this unctuous vision

  But his bald head collapsed like cantaloupe jelly between my thin fingers.

I stood in the mess for a second

  Knowing that this must be yet another wicked ruse.

Feeling that I needed to tip the secretary,

I handed him a pack of gum like a downed bomber pilot

Would pay for cabbage soup with lipstick,

  And walked slowly out into a light, sweet rain.

Tight Circularity

I

I live in the New World,
I live in space,
real human being and real butt scientist.

Every time an angel cries, the stock market rallies
for God's sake, someone scribble another poem about a sprouting flower.

II

“We write out of revenge against reality, to dream and enter the lives of others."
'It is not possible for you to sink lower than the infinite light of Christ's atonement shines.'
"To grab your own leg as a foreign object and to ponder
and to photograph. I think it is very profound."
'It would be pitiable if a man couldn’t follow an argument & shifted the blame
away from himself, hating and reviling reasonable discussion'
"If you are caught in Satan's trap of pornography,
remember how merciful our beloved Savior is."
'year of sexting and frustration, year you lay armfuls of begonias 
in her lap, year you folded her hands across yours'
"The Lord sees weaknesses differently than he does rebellion."

III

[crawls back into the womb]

Not by wrath does one kill, but by laughter.
The man of knowledge must be able not only to love his enemies
but also to hate his friends, for each ecstatic instant
we must an anguish pay in keen and quivering ratio to the ecstasy.

The Millenial star, Kate chooses apostasy:
We have already gone beyond whatever we have words for,
in all talk there is a grain of contempt. The family
is the original fascist unit. We are shaped by our thoughts.
We become what we think. When the mind is pure,
joy follows like a shadow that never leaves.

IV

Welcome to Berlin, everyone here wants you dead
and there's an implacable scent of death in the air.
Load Universe into Cannon. Aim at brain. Fire.
I began to have fantasies of becoming very powerful
and stopping everyone from having sex.

Dear future children (if I buy you):
I promise your life will not be like the plot
of a TV show. The currency of Cis
people is violent, deadly gender enforcement.
It is their lifeblood.

And their god you can still become,
everything you were created to be. Don't
make excuses. Don't wait for a more convenient time.

V

Is the placebo effect getting stronger, or is it just me?
Consumption is the fuel on which this system depends,
[so] how can [it] take place without running
counter to the interests of liberation? Dig up

one sad dimension (is mercifully extinguished):
timelapse video of you at home, the things in the room
disintegrate to ash but you don't. You stay the same
horrible person you've always been: spiders, dummies,
and a whole lot of memes who want to go 3rd person

VI

The phrase "white trash" exemplifies the prejudice of the postmodern
era, which is primarily classist but historically based on race. My youth
pastor listens to dubstep. Mondays are God's punishment
for what we did on the weekend. Momentum lost,

momentum never gained
in the same building
that have different floor numbering schemes.
Sorry guys my life has been taken
over by rust.

Eat. Sleep. Craft. Repeat.
Welcome to our community of reality expats.
This is what happens when you give every kid a trophy for just showing up.

Gathering and showing more always and with velocity,
Big Data - it's not just a buzzword. It's here to stay.

I live for the moment when I drag a foot-long, eyeless newt
out into the light of day so everyone can point at it and marvel...
the thing I feared was exactly the thing I needed to grow

Styx&Stone

My friend is wheeling a grill he found
in the trash back to his house
and I am imagining as christ with his cross.
I also like rocks and there's a subset of the industry
that's just like "naw, we ain't about your
corporatized misogyny". In retrospect,
this would probably make a better NPC
and occasional antagonist:
let your demons control you.

imho people trying to throw rocks at god are stupid.
He lives like 100ft in the air you need a gun,
for in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead
bodily. Feeling: If you're talking about codeine,
then I will worship whichever supernatural figure is responsible.

I've successfully sustained a human life for 4 months
using only my body, sorry if I consider myself a goddess,
I'm just being honest...then doesn't that imply God
is some kind of anti-vaccine, pro-disease jerk,
whereas Satan is a Prometheus-like heroic figure?

Why? many people achieve very little
despite spending most of their time.
A priest and a rabbi walk into a bar.
They order some wine and have
an enjoyable evening. Oh! the little fly
drunk at the urinal of a country inn,
in love with rotting weeds, a ray of light dissolves him!
When I die, sprinkle my ashes in the half pipe
during the x games. Make sure they get in Tony hawk's eyes.
I want him to fall. I've never really thought about this until just now,
but birthdays are like how many years
it's been since you left home.

I do not know much about gods;
but I think that the river is a strong brown god
The value of any coin isn't determined by what it's made of
but by the image stamped on it. Same with you.
Whoever controls his mouth protects his own life.
Whoever has a big mouth comes to ruin.
you can sequence human DNA to any animal.

Meet Logan, he's an openly gay Mormon who doesn't like broccoli.
Mormons can eat broccoli though. Southern charm is absent here.
Instead, they have a soul-sucking, ravenous pit that's hungry

for human life. My stick figure family is just a decal of an empty fridge.

 we have seen the man; forgive us for lingering. 

the children are the new daises 

from which we observe&speak fury&weighted light.

Hypothetically, when is the right time to tell your divorce attorney 

that you've never been married and you love spending time with him?

a list of all of you because of that.

I sleep . . . . I sleep long.

I'm trying to be like Jesus

through me many long dumb voices,

increase your productivity with fetal position.

I like knowing that we are unlimited, 

like tap water and sadness.

With the click of a button, you can access

 whatever your heart desires. That’s the key

—what does your heart desire?

Illuminating all the motionless world of time between, 

Peyote solidities of halls, backyard green tree cemetery:

There are cruel things I want to say but I self-censor 

because I don't want to hurt people, then I feel small.

What doesn't kill my vibe only makes it stronger

during sex, which is an incredibly complex system

of DNA integration from 2 systems. 

All beliefs require element of faith.

In vain the plutonic rocks send their old heat 

against my approach; Bible is accurate

in mathematical equations. 

Mathematicians aren't sure what exactly pi is. 

Its something we made up. I'm looking for approval 

from individuals who couldn't care less about me.

Points programs. Preferred shares. 

Anti-discrimination policies. Logos.

and it comes with a rare full honey

-shaded moon.

Avocado

The stubborn simple avocado

          born of green and butterfat;

friendless, childless, plump mulatto,

          what heartless tree conspired in that?

                    No fruit at all, the seedhead sat

upon a pile of ripe plantains

          enjoying their last curving days.

(There's much to say for lacking brains

          and nerves; no sane banana flays

                    in pain, in stomachs where it lays.)

How terrible to be a-spread:

          how awkward and undignified,

to be forced down into the bread

          and have your private organs pried

                    apart; resigned, my butter sighed

"What shall I do with my young life?"

          All needed words, the lone pear said:

Who wants the strife of fork or knife?

          I clutch a ripe plantain in bed

                   and grin, I am as good as dead!

Communion

A mortal in his life enjoys

            the use of fragile wonderous toys

And till my scalp does meet with sword

            I'll glory daily in the lord

From Lucifer suckled and born in sin

            I kneel open-mouthed, ready, to take you in

Though atheism seems much safer

            my tongue, it aches to taste your wafer

Lord I glory in this cock

            which, barnacled, sits at the dock

Lord I pray to keep this tongue

            with beads of salty pleasure wrung

God I worship with these eyes

            each, to the heavens, your glory pries

Lord I glory in those curves

            which only mortal man deserves

God, exultant is this nose

            your world infects with spectral prose

Lord I glory in each crease

            wreathed all around by brownish fleece

My prayers take form in each curved ear

            whose shaking makes stark hymns, and dear

This skin, light pink, with hair imbued

            spares me your vissiccitude

Cloudbourne you, must hardly see

            the droplets you inflict on me

In slanted paths your armies sud

            from Gulf to spirit, rain to blood

Your stomach is a crucible

            in which I, pitied morsel, cull

Each moment I in leisure set

            is calculated in my debt

And in this cauldron set on high

            my ears they strain to hear God's cry

"Children!" he screams to mortal kin

            "Communion is a taking in!"