DR. LARRY MITCHELL

Open letter: If You're a Conservative...Maybe You NEED to Be Offended.

2009-06-13T19:21:00.018-05:00

You people just wouldn't fucking listen.

Like schoolyard bullies with a parent as a chaperon, you thought you would never be sent to the principal's office. Your political irrelevance would be funny, except...you dragged all of us down with you.

If we questioned YOUR president, WE were unpatriotic. If we questioned YOUR facts, we didn't know enough to follow a real news source and were 'Victims' of the liberal media. Oh, we withstood your condescension, even all the while knowing that you could barely spell; that your lack of a worldly or human perspective was the main reason you believed as you did; that your innate laziness led you to inquire no farther than the level at which your pre-supposed views were validated, and no deeper.

You watched Fox News and read Michelle Malkin and Ann Coulter; you made cracks about niggers being lazy and Jews needing to be 'perfected'; you agreed when it was promulgated that 'Non-Christians' were aggressive and inferior; and you questioned not once the fuzzy math or the slanted slop that passed for journalism in the intellectual hovels you frequented.

Well, you weren't the only ones. You have had lots of company at this particular trough. Ignorance has run rampant for far too long. Now people are dying. All that hate from the 2008 presidential campaign- you know the one; the one wherein people at Republican rallies chanted 'KILL HIM' about Barack Obama and NONE of you spoke up- is coming home to roost.

I of course recognize my own culpability here. I wanted this particular Helter Skelter to occur, because it had been a long time coming, and it was needed to thin out your particular herd. I liked Barack Obama from the outset- he is smart, and funny, and articulate and that was a whole new reality after eight years of having a president who truly was dumber than a third-grader- but first and foremost, I wanted him to win, because I knew that the knuckle-dragging Right Wingers would lose their fucking minds. And they have. For all the piss and vinegar I can muster towards conservatives in general, that are mind-numbingly predictable, and they never let you down when there is a chance for them to be vocal, violent, and ignorant.

A doctor was killed- IN A CHURCH. A security guard was killed, doing his job protecting people at a HOLOCAUST museum. Had the Conservative movement looked inward? No, they can't. Deep down- on a level that can't reach and would never admit to- they know that they all had a hand in this.

Bill O'Reilly now claims- after 28 mentions of 'Tiller the Baby Killer' that he had anything to do with encouraging his listeners to violence against the doctor. Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh have tried to spin the the von Brunn museum shooting was an isolated LEFTIST incident. They are indignant and insulted that anyone would associate them with those bad anti-abortion zealots or white-supremacists.

Even after such a series of events, Sarah Palin is mad again, because the world knows that she is both the joke and the punchline, and she is too pig-ignorant to accept as much and kindly go away. She lives in her own little world where nothing matters but her, and she's mad because David Letterman made a few jokes at her expense, and some of that comedic jizz spilled over onto her lovely daughter. You know, the lovely daughter no one in America knew about until Palin herself shoved her down our throats. No, not that one- the OTHER daughter. You know. Whats-her-face. Trick? Trogg? Trip-Trap? Oh, it will come to me.

Sarah Palin is a media whore. She is a demonstrably ignorant bumblefuck hillbilly, and she paraded her kids on the political stage during the campaign and put her unmarried, pregnant teenage daughter out there to be gawked at and commented on.

So now what the hell is her problem when someone makes a comment? Dave has always been a smart-ass and makes fun of everything with a tongue in cheek sort of humor, so she needs to get over herself. That mama bear act ain't working! She won't go on Letterman because she couldn't handle his quick wit and snarky comments. She wouldn't be a very good guest anyway because she doesn't have a high enough IQ to give Dave any sort of snappy reparte. Palin dragged baby Trig, the one with Down's syndrome, all over the stage during the campaign, as if he were some rag doll. I have no respect at all for that woman.

If what I've said offends you...Maybe you NEED to be offended.

If You're a Conservative at all...maybe you NEED to be offended. You need to be shocked out of your complacency. You need to take a good look at the people you've chosen to believe, support, emulate and parrot. You need to look inward, and question whether or not you want o carry on in this way. The People spewing hate and nonsense- YOU gave them their voice. You made Fascistic policy acceptable. YOU did this to US.

WE are sick of YOU.
Yes, YOU- Joe Six-Pack. Yeah, the Nascar-watching brother-fucker (entranced with cars driving in a circle) who becomes a political powerhouse on a level with Benjamin Disraeli whenever he clicks onto the Fox News channel. The guy who insists upon having that dreck playing in every bar, every barbershop, every airport lounge. We're onto you. We are NOT happy, we will NOT be nice. We will NOT apologize. We will NOT stop.

We will ask you why your political views are more suited to the backwaters of Alabama in the 1950's as opposed to the fluoridated present day. When you get your facts wrong, we will NOT allow you to continue on blithely spilling your ignorance. We will call you out for your stupidity, and we will not longer pretend- for your benefit alone- that you're alternative world-view is relevant. It's not.
It never fucking was.

GEORGE ARTHUR MITCHELL

2009-03-10T19:33:00.002-05:00

Born on 3-9-2009.
3 X 2 = 6, and flip those 9's, baby!
6 lbs, 14 oz. Happy, healthy and here!

JESU- DEAD EYES

2009-02-17T20:44:00.006-06:00

One Day Yet Hence

2009-02-10T18:24:00.001-06:00

Once day yet hence, and perhaps someday soon
Beneath scorching sun or star-dogged moon
Into here you will click, and think that all has gone
And believe that all faith hath been placed here wrong

But the URL will give, unto thy sad weeping orb
A newfound paradiso full of wonder to absorb
An ever-growing epidermis full of text, grammar and wit
And an input interface so that you might add to it

To those who've shown faith, I wish to thank them here
For their words and their karma that I continue to hold dear
To those who did not, I cannot say that I blame you
I only hope in time that my efforts will shame you

But someday soon, and I hope much sooner than that
We can gather in the garden for our unusual chat
But new is the watchword, and some things may change
And the aegis of input you'll have power to re-arrange

Delays and waylays and things had impeded the progress
But in mind a vision true, and forward to our congress
And in advance I thank you, for entering our world yet anew
And I will bid you welcome to the realm of TIBU2

John Updike (1932-2009)

2009-01-27T14:47:00.002-06:00

"We all dream, and we all stand aghast at the mouth of the caves of our deaths; and this is our way in. Into the nether world." -John Updike 1932-2009

AMUSE BOUCHE

2009-01-01T00:32:00.001-06:00

TIBU2.COM launches in 30 days!
This ain't no party.
This ain't no disco.
This ain't no foolin' around.

DIE BEFORE I WAKE

2008-12-29T16:50:00.001-06:00

CANCEL MY SUBSCRIPTION TO THE EVERYTHING
I’VE FOUND EVERYTHING I’VE BEEN LOOKING FOR
EVERYTHING I COULD EVER NEED
HIDDEN WHERE I WOULD LEAST LIKELY SEE IT
HERE AT THE BOTTOM OF THE PIT INSIDE OF ME

IF I PUT IT THERE WITHOUT THINKING
THAT WOULD MEAN MY GUILT WAS SHRINKING
I KNEW THE ROAD I WALKED UPON
WAS PAVED WITH BROKEN GLASS
AND WHEN IT’S ALL OVER
I WON’T BE AFRAID YOU’LL ASK
NO REASONS WHY, AND ALL THE ARROWS POINT THERE
TO A PLACE I THINK I SEE, IN BETWEEN THE AIR

BUT WHERE WAS I?
OH, AND YES, AND ABOUT TO DIE
AND IT’S A MOOD THAT I GET QUITE OFTEN
AND IT NEVER SEEMS TO SOFTEN
I KNOW I CAN BEAT IT- BUT MAYBE I DON’T WANT TO
I KNOW I CAN DO IT- BUT MAYBE I DON’T WANT TO

IT WOULD BE EASIER TO BREATH, IF I STOPPED SEEING
IT WOULD BE EASIER TO SEE, IF I NEVER BREATHED
AGAIN
IT WOULD BE EASIER TO BREATH IF I STOPPED
IF I STOPPED
IF I DROPPED
IT WOULD BE EASIER TO BREATHE, IF I DROPPED AND NEVER GOT UP AGAIN

FOR SOMETHING COMING FOR SO LONG
I DIDN’T PLAN THIS, AND IT SEEMS ALL WRONG
BUT ALL MY ARROWS POINT TO THIS PLACE
AND I’LL NEVER LET YOU SEE
THE LOOK UPON MY FACE
YOU’LL MISS THE LAST THROES, THE NOBODY KNOWS,
WHAT NOBODY KNOWS, BUT WE ALL KNOW ANYWAY
AND IF I DIE BEFORE I WAKE
I’LL CONSIDER IT MY LUCKY BREAK

FORWARD

2008-12-29T16:19:00.000-06:00

Putting a name to the malady nullifies it.
Fear of a name only increases fear of the thing itself.
Naming your price makes you worthless.
Being known makes you easier to forget.

-DrLM 12-31-2008

AFTERWORD

2008-12-17T20:33:00.001-06:00

A great many ideas and inspirations- from both within and without- go into the writing of any book of fiction. I’ve written eight of them so far, and each one of them has been a vastly different experience, with respect to which ideas hit me when and so on and so forth- and so I would like to thank, without naming, all the different little chapters in my life. Neither the journey, nor the words, would ever have been quite the same without you. Even if you were not noticing these individual and beguiling moments of beauty, clarity and striking definition- I was rhyming and cataloging them, all the same.

Beauty comes in many strange disguises, culminating in many glorious aberrations, and most times we only recognize it later, after the fact. If not noticing these things at the time was my sin, then I hope that my salvation lies in the telling of the tale. Everyone will see flashes of themselves, but please- in the spirit of fair judgment- pull back and take in the entire picture. If there is any blame, it is mine. I did the best I could.

Beauty is both harsh and terrible in its blinding swiftness. Sometimes it hurts- and sometimes it doesn’t. By the time that it occurs to you to cling to it- it’s already gone. It is a lesson always known but never learned. Some of you aided me, while others impeded me- but in any instance, you invaded my processes, and for this I swear that I am eternally grateful to you.

It is a difficult and dicey business, at best, to attempt to measure the beauty in the spaces between the spaces, but that’s exactly the task at hand when you’re trying to create a work of truth, beauty and timelessness. Some people helped, and some people helped with hindrance. These myriad interruptions came in many forms, and sometimes they were a blessing.

Sometimes, though, they were a curse, and those are the people I’m thinking of as I write these last few lines. It has been said that hate is a wasted emotion and is the equivalent of letting people live rent-free inside of your head. I try to not act out this scenario, and I try to not look back in anger. It does no one any good in the long run. But I DO remember. If I’m being purposefully vague here, those of you who are curious know why. And those of you that I’m speaking of know exactly who the fuck you are.

THE PAST WAS A PROLOGUE

2008-12-14T16:59:00.018-06:00

Brother Matthew walked through the ruins of the Abbey of St. Ceresi, shaking his head silently, recalling the solemn and dignified history of the brethren that resided here. He had passed many hours over his life, doing this same thing, over and over again to take the journey and to never arrive.

His reasons varied, but at the heart of every one was the desire to feel close to- and at one with- the brethren of the Order that has passed before him. Centuries may have separated them, but their cause was the same- to protect what was not known, even with their lives. Matthew was born into a time where such sacrifice had not been necessary for many decades. How long, exactly, could not be told, because the history of the Order was sealed away from human sight forever. Once in the Order, so went the saying, you did not leave save for in a pine box. You were dead to the world, and the world was dead to you.

This was the life he had trained for, and this was the life he had chosen, once he was old enough to do so. He was speechless, but there was no one to speak to; he was alone.

And yet, all those whom he had loved throughout his life- and toiled with, and fought with, and returned to in love- were surrounding him. He could feel and touch their silently accusing stares in every corner of the Abbey. Their smoldering, broken bodies lay in torn heaps here and there, with occasional extraneous ritualania having been performed as time and taste had allowed. Who, or what, had done this was beyond his knowledge.

The air stank of brimstone and rubble. The smell of burning flesh was in the air as well, stale incense, acid, smoke- urine, sweat, feces and fear.

Pink acidic bubbles were in some places scouring the stones in the floor. The acid had poured forth from the jets in the walls, in some instances hitting the very brethren that had set them up in the first place. But it was better to die in the service of the scrolls. It was better to die and have the secret of the scrolls be safe.

The abbey had always been, since the tongues of man had started stirring to describe the world around them. The actions of the tongues of man had always served to undo the actions of their spirits. It wasn’t solely devoted to religion, but rather the preservation of the politics of religion.

Prior to the intercession, Pope Piror had visited the Abbey and saw that with its situation- built into the hillside, beset on three sides by the northern sea- was perfection for the protection of the scrolls. The Pope following Piror had many years later sent the scrolls to be kept here, instead of in the Vatican. Metok told Matthew that many men had died for knowing of the decision, and many more men died in bringing them here. And here they had stayed. No one in the outside world- save for the papal advisors- knew that they existed up here, or that they possessed a secret buried deep within the earth. The villagers they traded with knew nothing, for the brothers said nothing- their benignity was continually assumed.

Matthew shivered with cold, although he was fully robed and the sun was shining outside. The aphids had only just this past moon come into bloom, and their scent had been heavy within the abbey- now, all that could be smelled here was the slick copper of blood and the stench of fear and forced attrition. Only a few hours ago, the sun had warmed the clay walls of the Abbey, filling each of them with the blessing of warmth and light.

Now, it was no more.

Matthew remembered Metok’s jovial laugh as they had broken bread this morning. They had been sitting in a circle, the twelve of them. Time goes from the present, to the past- the way forward is always that way back through time. This was one of the lessons they taught. Franchise had been grumbling under his breath, and Metok had tried, unsuccessfully, to draw him out. Franchise had simply stared at him, in that inimitable way that he had about him. Not a word was said- Franchise was stoic, and firmly in keeping with their vow of silence. He conferred without speaking that he reasoned, and rightly so, that to speak to a brother was to invite his inevitable riposte, and thusly encouraging him to break his vows, and all because of a carelessly runny mouth. Franchise therefore spoke only when it was of the utmost importance.

Now, he was no more. They were no more. It was almost as though the brotherhood had never existed. The Pope would never acknowledge that they existed before, and they would admit that they existed now.

Matthew’s breath frosted in front of his face, in spite of the heat rising from the bodies scattered throughout. His tongue tasted like ash. The monk’s entire body- except for his face and his thick fingertips were hidden beneath the folds of his vestment. He wore, in the tradition of St. Ceresi, a broadly-hooded black woolen raiment- doubly thick in front, where it folded over on itself. Along the hem was where Matthew’s vestment differentiated significantly from good old St. Ceresi: there, just along the bottom of the hem, tucked just out of sight, were a series of seven silver stars, with each one of them inverted or otherwise bastardized.

The other robes on the brothers in the room were similar in this respect only, being bloody and shredded.

St. Ceresi had given his life to protect the scrolls, and many generations of men- and women- from St. Ceresi’s village and those that lay in the fields surrounding it had given their lives as well to protect the sacred secret of the scrolls. None of the villagers had ever known for certain what the scrolls said, or even what they pertained to, but speculation was certainly heard in and about town and gossips were often able to be overheard wondering aloud what in the name of Christ did the words of Christ say, and why were they cursed with keeping its secret from the rest of the world? But those who silently understood adopted the black raiment, and Matthew’s Father had before he, and now Matthew walking the ground of the ancients, his sandaled feet tread the same ground that his forefather’s had in the centuries before now, and their fathers before them. It was an ongoing circle, or cycle, and therein lay its perfection- there was no way out, no way to end.

But all around him, on every side, the broken bodies of his brethren lay in ruined pieces, scattered helter-skelter in fresh pools of cooling blood.

The gape-eyed rictus grins on their faces hastened Matthew’s step. He moved quickly across the foyer and into the main antechamber. He could hear water trickling in between the bricks on either side where the heat from the sun outside had caused condensation from the moisture in the mortar mixture. Only an hour before, he had been sitting here with his brothers, living a quiet life of the mind, protecting the prophecy.

Had the seal been breached?

He raced to the other end of the room he was in and looked at the crude warning system mounted to the wall. He searched it from top to bottom, looking for scratches or burn-marks, but there were none. The seal appeared to be intact. There was that much to be thankful for, although his brethren had paid for its sanctity with their lives. Matthew knew that his own soul would soon be following theirs, down much the same path. He had lived every moment of his life in scripture and piety- his every step foretold- and with the knowledge that he might have to relinquish his life to protect the sacred scrolls. He was as willing to die for their safety this day as he’d been at any point in his past. He had never felt an ounce of regret for the life chosen for him, by dint of his birth order and the region in which his family had flourished. His father had been of the order, as had his father, going back as many generations- as many generations at least- as Matthew had fingers, and not once did he question his life, or how it would be spent. It was an honor to toil amongst the scrolls, for precious few knew of their existence.

From where he was walking here until he got down to the vault, he knew he would have to increase his caution; there were nooks and alcoves where as many as ten men could be lying in wait for him, and Matthew would not be aware of their presence until it was too late to back away, due to the design of the church itself. The walls curved into each other, creating a whirling sort of composition that was initially confusing to the untrained eye. Quite simply, it was an optical illusion achieved by the design of the walls that made it difficult to maintain one’s sense of balance. Each brick seemed to stretch out and elongate as a form of camouflage for the next.

The light given off by the torches that lined the walls was equally deceptive, and created further tricks of the eye that made walking through the abbey nearly impossible if you went by your eyes as a guide.

There had once been a time where such traps weren’t necessary, but that was a nearly-legendary and in any instance a bygone time, extinguished long before Matthew’s birth. Since time out of mind, men had wanted to keep the words of Christ out of the hands of other men. Theirs was not an unknown duty, and many men had died to protect them, from one set of
people or another. It was odd, how such a thing rumored to be for the good of mankind should suddenly be deemed to be a poison, yet it happened every time. Matthew had seen such fervor take its toll firsthand, back in his village, when he was still a small child.

Matthew’s mind returned to the abject carnage behind him- the brothers with their robes and their bellies slit open, their entrails steaming in the early morning sunlight. These were the men with whom Matthew had spent the greater portion of his life.

He had lived intimately with them, and yet none of them had ever known of the other’s life outside the walls. It was that way to keep their families safe in the event of a torturous disaster such as this. Many dwellings would be burned to the ground in search of the lost scrolls, but the homes of their relatives would be passed over, because no monk, even under the most extreme torture, could divulge their location.

This was, as so many things about the lives of Matthew and the brothers, the way things had been since time immemorial. All of that would change, from this day forward. The brotherhood would be dissolved, and no one outside of the one true church would know that the order had ever even existed. Their anonymity had been assumed from the first stone set in the floor of the abbey; but this slaughter made everything seem a little senseless to brother Matthew.

Scarcely ten words might pass between them in a season, but these were Matthew’s brothers. Providence is a queer and capricious master. Had Matthew not gone down to the village to purchase beef and mead from the brethren, he too would have been slaughtered, and the secrets of the scrolls revealed and destroyed in one swift action. Matthew himself had many questions, but he kept silent, for faith is belief without proof. He simply believed, because it was there to be believed in.

He had assumed that it would be like this. The retribution for questioning the divine authority of the One True Church would be fast and swift, and even more so for the brothers daring to ask that they be released from their binds with the One True Church. A peaceful parting would be best, they had all agreed. The church and the brethren could each go their separate ways, with no conflict between them.

The brothers had voted their feelings, and a succession from the One True Church seemed to be the only possible option left open to them. For a little better than a decade now, the brothers had been practicing their alternate version of the good work, based upon the New Words of Our Lord and now, the Papal leaders knew their secret. The Popes did not pay credence to the New Words, nor did the One True Church even acknowledge the existence of these papers. The New Words of our Lord were a blasphemy in their eyes, and those who had read it now needed to be punished, lest the lies and prophecy spread. Why these men came, and who sent them, were questions never properly answered.

Brother Matthew had been among those monks who, practicing here many years before, uncovered a text that purported to be the words of Jesus Christ, and these words gave a different history to the Bible. In fact, it rendered much of Jesus’ role in the Bible as fiction. He had at first been skeptical, but in time and after much study, he began to see where the words written upon the paper did seem to make a lot of sense contrary to the teachings of the church though they may have been. And the critics had come with their swords drawn.

Whoever did this, he thought, whoever did this is inhuman, and the men that killed these priests did so because they enjoy forcing others to taste their blades. They will likely return for more of the same. The edge of the isle is not so densely populated that there would be enough other targets to sack before they came back this way. They were not looking for answers. They were out to make corpses.

All around him were sights that in a lesser man would have induced madness. Blood fills the corridors in stinking, steaming pools that gummed the edges of his raiment, as well as his sandals. None of this would be remembered long enough to be forgotten- the word of the brethren would die on Matthew’s lips, and be forever entombed in secrecy. There were hoof-prints throughout the abbey; the scent of burning dung was in the air. There, impaled on his own sword, was the Minister of Ceresi- the man whom Matthew and his brothers had called their spiritual leader. His brilliant smile- and equally brilliant blue robes- had both been wrenched apart, looking for the scrolls. His jaws had been cracked as forcibly as had been the fissures in the walls of the abbey itself. For almost his entire life, Matthew had known the Abbey of St. Ceresi to be his home.

Home it remained, though he was having difficulty in recognizing it. A bright bubble of air pushed through the viscera at the cardinal’s throat, and burst. His eyes caught sight of Matthew, and a glimmer of recognition shown in them as brother Matthew approached the cardinal. Matthew brushed the cardinal’s blood-soaked hair out of his eyes and looked at him. It was hard to believe that he was still alive- and then it occurred to him that perhaps he wasn’t. The body looked totally devoid of life, with no movement in the chest whatsoever, yet when Matthew brought his ear close to the cardinal’s bosom, he could indeed hear shallow, watery breathing taking place.

Whether Matthew was correct in his assessment of the cardinal’s condition or whether it was all just a trick of the light, the outcome was not going to change. The cardinal would pass from this earth, and the knowledge of the scrolls would pass with him. Matthew himself had never laid hand nor eyes upon the documents; no one had, save for each cardinal at the moment of his
ascension, and at that moment only.

At that very moment, a low moan was heard throughout the chamber, a moan that was followed by a curiously hollow laughter. Matthew looked behind him, but there was no one there. The voice must have come from the cardinal.

Matthew looked up, and saw that it was true. The old man’s countenance had changed, somehow, and there was a look of intimate menace across his face. He looked like someone who meant to do another harm.

‘You will die…as we all have died…’

A shudder passed through the cardinal, and his face in mortis looked like he was smiling as he died. He knew- perhaps he was. No other words issued forth, from either the cardinal’s mouth, or the wound at his throat. No words were possible, for either the cardinal or brother Matthew, from either the living or the dead. But both of them knew that they were one in the same.

The candles in the sconces were burning low, guttering out their light.

Brother Matthew moved quickly to the back of the abbey, to a staircase located behind a wall of bookshelves. There, descending the spiral staircase, Matthew was careful to avoid every third stair, being as these special stairs would when stepped upon spring a bear trap shut around the ankles of the offending intruder.

There was an assortment of traps and step-overs, ranging from a step that would suck an offender straight down into nothingness to a pig’s bladder, the inside of which was filled with a dose of pressurized salt acid. Matthew had himself designed a few of the more recent additions, having conceived of an ankle-level razor device- designed to sever the Achilles tendon- as well as the pipe-full of diseased vermin that would be set loose if anyone tried to step on the floor tile in between the X and the I in the Roman numerals spelling out the year of the brotherhood's inception on the floor leading into the heart of the abbey.

Stepping down over the stones was an art, and the art was practiced elsewhere with a model. Some of the brothers never got the knack of it, and so they weren’t allowed down here, for their own safety. The model was utilized to increase diligence in the brothers, as well as to weed out any possible pretenders. It was a simple ninety-seven step staircase- but it offered one hundred ways to die, with increased mortal activity on the thirty-second, forty-ninth, and seventy seventh steps.

This staircase had been the result of seventeen years of architectural planning and design, and it took another three years to construct. It was at this point in time that the neighboring towns started to speculate about the possible demonic elements to the way the monks worshiped at St. Ceresi; soon, the brothers were shunned publicly in the streets when they would come to town for their mead rations. This, in turn, lead to the brothers of St. Ceresi becoming much more bitter than they already were towards those in the outside world, and this led to an increase in distrust and hatred between the two factions.

Matthew knew that he needed to be quick about his business, and not betray his presence here to anyone that might have followed him down here. The air was musty and damp, and Matthew’s flambeau did not hold much fire. He stepped carefully across the flat surface of the floor of the chamber, stepping to the left first and then to the right, thusly avoiding further traps.

He had been trained since the age of seven to walk these cobbled steps without setting off the alarms. Brother Metok had shown him the way, and had practiced with him in theory for many months until he had mastered it, just as brother Antonio had done for Metok a generation before. Brother Antonio had been among the first in their order to experiment with chemical deterrents, as well as their more traditional lethal guardings. In the walls, periodically, there were pressurized jets of ammonia, many of them at eye level. The amount of liquid they expelled was minute- perhaps one hundredth of a spoonful- but the force at which this toxin was hurled through the air and into the eyes of an infidel was astonishing.

Brother Matthew had once seen brother Antonio demonstrating a new version to the old theme, in the courtyard, and the ammonia had been delivered at such a rapid rate of speed that from an arm’s length away, the blast was powerful enough to half a tree limb that was as thick around as a brother’s thumb. Matthew descended three more stairs and was on the bottom level of the abbey. Here there was more acid, as well as a flood of starving rats that were stuffed into a canvas bag, and would be dumped upon the unsuspecting heads of any and all intruders. It was only after many unnecessary breaches in the safety of the scrolls that these further
renovations were decreed. One aberrant monk- brother Alfredo- had lived and toiled among them from three years before making his bid for the scrolls. And Alfredo had nearly succeeded, and it was only brother Franchise’s midnight wanderings that kept the scrolls in their right place within the walls themselves, in the abbey.

Brother Franchise- still half-asleep and in a profound state of shock had immobilized brother Alfred and alerted Matthew as to what had happened. The two of them scrambled to get out of the room, down the corridor and outside. When both brothers returned to the scene, brother Alfredo’s body was still smoldering, and the corner of the scrolls that was touching his fingertips glowed brightly once, like an ember, and then died as well. But the scrolls were safe, and that was paramount. Even if the newfound words of Christ were poisonous, men would still kill to possess them.

It had been the same throughout recorded history. Brother Franchise had told Metok of many tales of plunder and savagery, all in the name of possessing the words of Christ. Brother Matthew stroked the brightly polished stones that lined the walls of the chamber along one side of the space behind which the sacred vault, containing the new prophecy, was hidden from all eyes, save for the brothers. And now, there were no more. Matthew was the last brother left standing, and he knew now what he had to do.

The scrolls needed to be buried in the Earth, as it was apparent that no one of this age would be willing to look into the authenticity of the scrolls and contemplate their wisdom and meaning. Perhaps those of a future day would discover the abbey, and in doing so, locate the scrolls.

Random traces of light from Matthew’s flambeau licked across the sad faces of the saints, painted in chiaroscuro along the walls around him. He remembered being told the details of each saint’s individual history, but he recalled more of the Brothers who had shared their knowledge of the saints, as opposed to the saints themselves. Each set of eyes seemed to be looking down on him, gauging and judging his actions. Matthew needed to draw the vault down into the Earth and remove himself from the abbey. In any instance, his own death would be imminent. None who knew of this could live. None of them. After today, the Abbey will no longer stand. They will burn it down and crush it to rubble, but the Lord will keep from them that which they seek.

He stroked the stones in the precise manner he had been instructed, lingering neither too long on this stone over here, nor pressing too lightly against that stone over there. The pattern was repeated a second time, and eventually, a third. There was a thud, and a panel slid aside to reveal a crude lever. Matthew wiped the sweat from his brow with the sleeve of his garment, and pulled the lever toward him.

The stone walls in front of him closed themselves and there was a dull grinding noise as the rotors pulled the vault down into the Earth. The door itself had been inlaid with the finest diamonds, sapphires and perishment stones that Brother Benin could safely carry back from the vault of the Ceresi in Italy. The bottom edge of the door was staggered and jagged, and fit perfectly into pre-cut slots in the floor. The dust on the floor by the door was blown outward as the teeth of the door slid home.

Matthew heard a quick hssss! come from somewhere behind him, and then he felt the arrow slamming home, the point of which was pushing through his breastbone, only to emerge through the tissue of his chest, just a few inches below his chin. His eyes felt large, and seemed to be near to exploding inside of his skull, and he knew the last breath that he expelled would be his last. He tried to hold it, to remain pure in the thought that St. Ceresi was with him, even now, in his hour of need. He thought he tasted the winds of heaven as his last breath leaked out of his body. A bubble of blood issued forth from his lips, and popped as the lion’s share of his breath was expelled. His jaws locked, and in that state he perished.

The soldier that had released the killing arrow stepped forward and, with a snort and a smile, reversed the switch. There was a cheer from his fellow countrymen when the mechanism that had plunged the vault down into the Earth retracted its movements and began bringing the vault doors back up, but only part of the way.

And then, the cheering stopped. There was a low rumble. The flank guard looked to his left, and read what the expression on his commander’s face meant. A swarm of wasps were funneling down a chute that would deposit them directly over the heads of the soldiers as they stood, directly in front of the vault. The wasps, once they arrived, were so crazed in their desire that a few thousand of them, too late to gain living victims, were continually stinging Brother Matthew’s corpse, drunkenly dragging their stingers across his stiffening flesh.

The walls around the bodies began to implode, and large hunks of rock began to fall from the ceiling, concealing the soldiers and their last victim.

When the dust settled, there was a subtle vibration coming from inside the wall itself. Small mice scurried out of the fissures down near the floor and ran for the light from the outside.

There was a burst of thunder overhead, and soon the bodies underneath the rubble were soaked with rainwater. The flames on the torches were extinguished with the sweep of wind that blew forth when the ceiling cracked. A few of the soldiers groaned, but that was only the work of a moment, and they were silenced once again. The water running into the Earth was a deep shade of pink. A few of the rats drowned, being trapped under the bodies of falling men, but a majority of them stood astride the bodies in the water, even hopping from one corpse to the next in the search for tender meals. As they died, these men screeched and thrashed, trying to escape a watery death. The ones left alive were quickly dispatched by the rats that attacked them.

The stone doors in the wall that Matthew had touched only a few moments before slid open with a hiss, and threescore sightless eyes viewed the glory contained inside. Pure, glorious sunlight was pouring in through a hole in the roof. The glass partitions had shattered with the first blasts of the soldiers, and now lay in tens of thousands of shards throughout the prayer area and the temple. There was a pedestal, a sort of natural oratorical podium sprouted up from a rock formation in the earth.

Behind it, was a short knee-level credenza of sorts, upon which were scattered all forms of stone and metal candelabras and boxes of spare candles, each candle weighing three and a half stone, and each one of them the length of a man’s fisted arm.

Underneath the boxes was a false panel that concealed a hand-shaped locking mechanism that vaguely resembled a puppeteer’s crucifix. When pressed in the proper formation, the mechanism would slide open a panel underneath the credenza, in a hollowed-out portion accessible only from underneath, where a second brother would be standing in an alcove in the tunnels beneath the abbey, reaching up and over to access the pressurized steel vault. In that vault were kept what many dangerous people believed to be the true final words of the man known throughout the world as Jesus Christ.

NECURATULATA

2008-12-13T11:34:00.002-06:00

Exira also found release that evening at 6:29, but it had been ready for what it knew would happen; it had an easier time slipping back into the world of the living because it had done this several times before, the first time it could remember having been in 1348 in what was then called Persia. Today it was either Iran or Iraq, one of the two, and Exira hoped to hell it didn't pull another assignment out there in that region. Sometimes it was allowed to float for decades and other times it was required to report to the elders at the very moment of its release. So far, it had heard nothing, and it was likely that it wouldn't. Exira wasn't much in demand these days and there was a feeling circulating the lower pits that Exira was inept. It made its horned flesh bubble and crack in anguish, knowing that they thought this about it, but without a difficult assignment there was no way it could go about proving them wrong. It would amount to another waiting game.

The details of its many lifetimes blurred whenever it tried to call them into focus, so many of these lives were forgotten about as soon as the living and eating was done. It had gone through the procedures of changing over so many times that it was no longer even the slightest bit frightened about going through from one level to the next. It could get cynical about these matters and let its guard drop down, but surely the overlords would let him hear about his bad judgment in a matter such as that. It was a slave to their whims- and it knew that it had to listen to them, no matter what they were saying to do- and it was all much like mortal employment that to laugh about it was like wasting one's breath.

Exira smiled the sickly grin of a wounded angel.

It felt a certain affinity for its host that was most uncommon, and now that Timothy was gone, it missed him. It would certainly miss the daily tunneling through the folds of Timothy's puckered mortal flesh, racing from one lung to another to avoid its detection. Once- just for grins and giggles- Exira had worked its way upwards through Timothy's esophagus and past his epiglottis from its safe positioning in a bronchial passage in Timothy's right lung. From his lower esophagus, it moved ever upward through the oropharynx and then the nasopharynx as nothing more than a tickle in the throat, exiting through the host's nasal air passage. Exira got himself stuck but good in Timothy's left nostril because- in its excitement over finally being able to stretch its legs- it had started to revert to its preferred size prematurely.

Timothy had experienced all this as nothing more than a chunky booger that needed to be blown through his nose in the middle of the night- and it was only through quick thinking that the demon had been able to alter its natural coloring from fiery black to a wan greenish-brown hue- but Exira had seen for a sorry moment having to explain to its elders that both the parasite and its host had met their respective cessations of life because it had ascended in size inside the guy's nose. Exira would be drummed out of service and left alive only for the sake of breaking entrants into hell without any possibility of ever being released from that state again.

Eternal life was hell.

Once it had been sure that both the man and the woman were safely asleep, Exira pushed its way through the folds of the Kleenex and dropped over the lip of the wastebasket onto the floor, landing with such force on the hardwood flooring in their bedroom that it feared that it had sustained a mortal injury in the physical world- which would be yet another cause for immortal punishment. The demon got to its feet and stretched out, in much the same way that a human being does in the morning after a good night's rest- only this was Exira's first wake-up call in nearly a year and a half. It saw part of its body in a silhouetted outline as its size doubled and then re-doubled itself.

A phone number, written in a woman's flowery script, lay on the bedside table, scrawled onto a piece of pink stationery: 573-o3o3.

A candle that the woman had laid out on the dresser guttered and spluttered as Exira's skin soaked up all the available oxygen in the air surrounding it. The man snored for a moment and it sounded as though he was having trouble breathing. Exira was quite momentarily alarmed, because it didn't want Timothy Karacas to wake up while it was outside of his body, stretching its metaphysical legs. That would be catastrophic to its mission objective. It considered itself to be a master of the realm between here and there- and here, in the physical world, was where it had always felt the most vulnerable.

Its knowledge of human languages and customs was superfluous, and it had found Timothy Karacas out of blind luck and chance. With humans the rules were a little different but it enjoyed infesting them nonetheless. Exira had needed a time of hibernation before it started its infestation of Timothy's body, and it had enjoyed that rest gratefully. It felt it owed Timothy a little consideration for that if for nothing else at all. His bowels had sustained it, unknowingly, turning into a black tissue the intestinal placenta from which it had been feeding.

When Exira awoke, a year after it had seeded itself within its host, it had grown to seven times its intended size. It was being choked on all sides by fecal matter and digestive juices that burned its skin. Its first movements had brought about an intestinal rupture that had landed Timothy in the hospital for a week and a half, before it had magically healed itself. It had not been ready for Timothy to die yet.

The horn-like nubs lining its forehead glowed a dull yellow, as they did whenever Exira was in a state of repose. As it uncurled itself on the bedroom floor, a plethora of bizarre images- both past and present- flooded though its mind.

It stood to its full unblemished height of four and a half feet, then wickedly squinting its eye-slits, checked itself out in the reflection of the polished glass. Perhaps in anticipation of its next haunting, Exira stood in front of the mirror and admired itself for perhaps twenty minutes or half an hour, posing athletically in the pitch darkness. When it heard the woman start snoring again- and it loved to hear her protestations to Timothy that she didn't snore, that she had never had snored, that there was no chance that she would ever snore at all- Exira walked around to her side of the bed, staring down at her sleeping figure lying naked and supine beneath the sheets. With its mind, Exira was able to taste and enjoy her most delicate folds of flesh, wantonly soiling with its seed the woman's most secret, most intimate tissues as it caressed her. In its fashion. For a moment, Exira thought that it could remember its own life, in its own fashion.

Such joys were short-lived.

Thank God it had been able to get the woman to leave, although it had enjoying playing with her mind for the few hours a day that she was home with Timothy. Exira could make Timothy twitch or belch or fart or scratch himself or say things that even he wouldn't remember having said only minutes after his mouth had pushed forth the syllables, and before the cancer treatments had been discovered, Exira thought that it could get the woman to leave simply with Timothy's behavior. More than once, Melanie had tried to get Timothy to see a psychiatrist, and more than once, had accused him outright of having a split personality.

But for those few sweet, short moments, there it was in the mirror.

It looked like something that might result from a cross between a stork and some black-skinned angelic form of reptile. There was nothing short of a divine grace with which it handled itself in the few moments it could live without a host. Its arms were reverse-jointed, making it possible for the demon to climb up a wall without even looking at it.

The moments of physical actuality were the most dangerous, and on a few occasions over the millennium- no more than a handful, but each one of them equally mortal in their potential for its eternal extinction.

Once, in Egypt, an old man had seen it changing into this form from what it had been prior to the killing of its host- an egg-like tumor in the belly of an asp kept in a wicker basket in a market fair about sixty kilometers outside of Qattara. It had chosen to implode the snake from within- this had been when Exira had enjoyed being vicious more often than was absolutely necessary- and the snake had literally choked on itself, splitting open from stem to sternum with a tearing sound that brought harsh light into Exira's eyes for a blinding moment before the lower demon had been properly able to recognize the source of this light for what it really was: unblemished, unspoiled sunshine.

The old man, fascinated by the sight of the snake exploding, had time to call three or four of his friends over to witness what he was seeing. Exira pulled itself to it full height in double-time, and it felt its skins stretching before they'd been ready to do so. With its pointed beak, and teeth, and scaly skin, and hand-sized blinking eyes, they started to mention the name of Osiris, the god of the Dead.

'It is an abomination,' said one of the men, in a language that Exira understood almost instantly, out of pure intuition.

'Daimon- Qiyamat, qiyamat a tawil! Qiyamat, qiyamat insan al kamel!'

Again, the names and images of Horus and Osiris were invoked.

These were the first unfiltered human words the Exira had heard in ages, and all it could to was laugh in response before speaking:

'No, friends,' it had said to them in their native tongue, 'I have feasted upon the likes of your gods, and ejected their bones from me.'

The four or five of them- Exira couldn't remember how many there had been, only the efficiency with which it had dispatched them- had turned on their heels to run, but it had been on them in an instant. One of the men, Exira had figured, had been felled by heart failure: he lay limply at the demon's feet. That left only three or four of them, and those he had decimated with a single sweep of its claw in a semi-circle, effectively slicing open their backs from the napes of their necks to the tops of their wriggling buttocks; even in death, they still looked scared. Their eyes stared brightly and sightlessly into the mid-morning sun, these eyes having brought death to their owners by viewing something that no mortal being could have digested in a realm of acceptable sanity. They would have run off screaming of demons, warning their brethren of plagues, of bastards of nature that had come back to life to return to their rightful places as Lords of this world.

As their corpses stopped twitching, as their blood cooled into tiny fragmented rivers on the sand, Exira poked a tentative finger through the sheer opacity of time and resistance, and pulled forth a name as old as any other, but with more meaning for the demon.

Nona.

The demon blinked in unstaring confusion.

Nona. My mother's name was Nona. She was the ninth child- of ten.

Where did that name come from? What did that name mean to me?

A daughter?

My daughter. I have a daughter, named after my mother, Nona.

And all at once, such memories were years ago, impossible to trace.

Blinking its eye-slits, unable to remember what had just seared its brain, Exira tried to decide its next action. Into the sand at its feet, Exira scratched a simple picture as it squatted, pissing a blackly trickling rivulet of urine, next to the dead it had so recently dispatched. In its design was a woman, a woman drawn with the head of a jackal and the heart of a viper, her eyes distant, her heart somehow bleeding, as she stared hard into an unseen sunset. This woman wanted to run for the sunset- all but invisible in the distance- all the while knowing in her heart that she would never be able to run at all. All of this, all these memories, now years ago, past any recall.

A Release From The Pain Of Living

2008-12-13T04:25:00.000-06:00

Wax Episodic and then
Wane neurotic and then
Cripple yourself and then
Stifle yourself and then
Shut your mouth
Don’t let those words get out

Fornicate and then
Masturbate and then
Expectorate and then
Abacinate and then
Kill your mind
Leave It All Behind
And…..Don’t Let Those Thoughts Get Out Of Line

Hallucinate and then
Disintegrate and then…
NOTHING.

The Step Never Taken

2008-12-13T04:24:00.000-06:00

I found
Myself
Again
In that terrible, divine place.

Trapped
In the thoughts
Of all I had done
Of all I had become
And could not undo.

Frozen,
In a moment
That was not mine.

I had gone no further
Stopping in my movement
Stopping my pursuit
My happiness
Was in stopping.

I had stopped.
I am stopped,
My every step forestalled.
My wish to propel myself out
And yet for what?

Only to stop again.

THESAURUS GIRL YOU'VE EVER SEEN

2008-12-07T22:29:00.002-06:00

This was a real plush hotel the company had him booked into, he had to admit- as if that changed anything. The past six weeks had gone by in such a rush that even he- who was used to and actually encouraged extreme situations in his life- was left totally out of breath by it all.

He was twenty-seven years old yesterday, and the past month and a half had been everything that he had ever dreamed of all rolled into one.

He was McInerney at 29, or F. Scott at 24. He was getting his first novel published. True, it had cost him- and then some!- but he was here now, and it felt damn good. He had come a long way in his pursuit of this.

And now that he was here, he didn’t know what to make of it. His book was sold- it was going to be published, it was going into print, that much he was certain of-and his advance had been huge, by his meager standards.

The book was also something to be proud of. After the seven books written before it, he had produced a wallop of a horror novel- 736 hard bound pages- and he was fucking proud of it. He’d been scared in there, getting the damn thing down, but he’d come out on the other end of things alive and with a manuscript that he was proud of and considered sacred.

His pursuit as a man of letters hadn’t been the choice of many in his generation, and this was a vindication, of sorts. Maybe it was like Diamond Dave had said- that every time you get up on stage, you’re dancing someone into the dirt, someone who had fucked you over, or kept you down, whether they knew about it or not.

He hadn’t really known what to expect when this whole thing started, so he did what he could to keep his expectations low, to lessen the likelihood of being disappointed. He was taking each day, and each experience, at face value and nothing more, discarding the faces and images that passed in front of his eyes as they happened to him. He knew that he couldn’t let himself get disappointed- not if he didn’t really expect anything in the first place.

This was his first time around this particular block and he had been worried that he would get the out-of-towner, crane-neck geek-shuffle routine from people. He had come from a thousand miles away to be here tonight- in this lobby, sipping a double Jagermeister and waiting for his taxi to arrive outside. The doorman would let him know when the cab showed up, and there was, he could see, a huge barrel of umbrellas waiting next to the concierge pedestal by the front door of the hotel, to keep him from getting wet in the rain that was falling outside. It was snowing where he’d come from, and soon that weather would make its way east, following him.

He had all the necessary accoutrement: the dark sunglasses, pushed up on his head; the bandanna that kept his hair from falling into his eyes. When he looked in the mirror after he showered this afternoon he’d looked twenty years older than he had the week before. But he was having a blast.

He was going to have lunch with Barry, his agent, and then they needed to go to the house and review the final galley prints of the book. All in all, he was looking at a twelve or fourteen hour day. It was a good thing he still had most of an ounce of weed on him- it would do wonders for his concentration. The part of it that had him mildly concerned was that pot was a felony to carry here, in New York state.

He was looking at six years in Attica if he was caught with it, which would be a fucking bummer.

Thank God for Tupperware and Buddha bless with the Sneak-A-Toke. He’d bought one at the bodega down the street from his hotel. The Indian guy behind the counter was helpful, to say the least- just like his brethren counterpart back in his hometown- and he left, smiling and waving, twenty minutes later with $35 worth of dope paraphernalia.

You had to have your priorities straight.

He need not have worried how things would turn out- it was just part of his nature. It was everything he could have dreamed it to be. If he was green, and new, it seemed as if people wanted to come next down beside him, and taste the newness of the ride he was on- he had made more friends in the previous two weeks than he had ever bothered with making over his previous lifetime, here on earth.

Their faces might escape him, but he had accumulated such a list of contacts in his notebook- email addresses and websites and phone numbers and P.O. boxes- that he would never need to meet anyone else, and would have a jump on already knowing the people he did need to know.

The surroundings and accommodations here in the hotel were more than plush- they were downright arrogant. The sandwich he had ordered from room service at four-thirty this morning had cost seventeen dollars.

And Rob was sucking it up. The whole of his experience had been nearly out-of-body, but he knew that this was where he was meant to have been all along- he was a lost son coming home to roost, ready to eke out a kingdom of his own. Everything seemed different now. And it really was.

It had only been fifteen months since he’d scribbled his signature across the contract, and here he was. There wasn’t too much time to think here in New York- this was a working holiday, and he needed to squeeze the most out of his minutes- but from time to time he did have a few minutes to himself, and at those times he found his mind returning continually to Elise.

He had broken her heart in leaving the way he did, but he wanted his pre-publication life and his post-publication lives to be bifurcated completely. She seemed to occupy every empty corridor of his heart.

He saw ghosts of her visage flash across the faces of total strangers, everywhere he looked. Everywhere he looked, she was all he could see, and it was so much like a trite song lyric that it made him chuckle. He laughed, but not very loudly- and never as loudly again as when he was with her. Every accusing glance belonged to her; every glance, an intimate damnation.

For weeks- months, perhaps- he had been plagued by recurring dreams and alternating nightmares of her- but he enjoyed them in the same way one can enjoy a dream of falling from an airplane, if one only remembers that it’s just a dream. It was a way to be with her again, after all this time. Even if it was false.

As the pictures of Elise scraped through his mind, he was caught in the grip of each successive memory, wanting to remember more of the minute details than he could. The crinkle in the skin on her nose when she smiled, the crow’s feet beginning to emerge at the corners of her eyes, all that sort of shit.

It was the things you forgot instantly that went to make up a lifetime.

All the scenes of unimportance, like random photos in a frame- were the very things that went to make up a life. It’s the song you remember only half of the chorus to, the movie you can’t remember how it ended, but you know you saw it. These things are all lost in the fullness of time, and only resurrected on rare occasions into the fitful half-life of distorted memories.

WRITING

2008-12-06T19:55:00.012-06:00

He is aware that he has finally discovered how to do just that - after ten years of trying he has suddenly found the starter button on the vast dead bulldozer taking up so much space inside his head. It has started up. It is revving, revving. It is nothing pretty, this big machine. It was not made for taking pretty girls to proms. It is not a status symbol. It means business. It can knock things down. If he isn't careful, it will knock him down. -from IT, by Stephen King

Writing used to mean something.

If you were there, you know what I mean. It involved a great deal of testicular and intestinal fortitude to lay your words, your thoughts- and yourself- down on a piece of paper for other people to read or dismiss. It was a fool's gamble, but one that once taken would change your life and how you viewed the world forever.

I remember sitting down to write- in longhand- my first novel at the age of seventeen, having nothing tangible to go on save for the knowledge (however inarticulate) that I had something to say about life and the world in which we live. I wrote ten pages a day, religiously, and in forty days had 400 hand-written notebook sheets of something unworldly in my hands.

What it was, or what it meant in the grand scheme of things, I had yet to discover.

But I had an identity, now- more so than I'd had before. Writing in longhand taught me the value of the word- and the cipher of a wasted word. Editing became internal, and no ink was wasted. After a ten-day break of sorts, I sat down to a typewriter, to blast that bastard into something anyone could read. And I did. In another forty days- and I'll spare you any Biblical allegories here- I had a new manuscript in my hands. It was not a book, not yet, and it wasn't a story. It might have been a novel in the technical sense, but in the corporeal sense, it was a manuscript- and not too many seventeen year old kids had one of those.

I was not even a senior in high school. I'd never kissed a girl. I'd never done anything, really.

But I had done THIS.

THIS was twenty years ago, and change. While the book was never published and still had four years of re-writes to go through- life does indeed get in the way- something had changed in me. I had a place in the world. I observed for a higher purpose, and everything I did, everyone I knew, was simply fodder for the next one. And while it is true that books age one more so than birthdays, this book was a levelling-up that I needed- as everyone needs at such an age.

The words- while mine and somewhat derivative- were an accomplishment. The manuscript was a tangible thing. Something now existed that had not existed before, and was the cause of it. It was something I could point to and say that I had done. It was something I would do anything to get better at doing. It was a pyre upon which everything could and would be sacrificed.

Writing used to be a calling, a rather celestial one, a path in life that chose you rather than you choosing it. There was a certain impoverished nobility to the trade. Not many people pursued such a path, knowing that their finances would never recover. Reagan and the 1980's greed culture assassinated any notion of doing something simply for the good of it, for the love of it, and for the betterment of all mankind.

Now that any cretin who can find the "ON" button on a laptop can blast their screeds hither and yon at the click of a mouse, not only has the intrinsic value of the word gone down, but the quality of our thoughts themselves has devolved. Everything, it seems, is a copy of an imitation of a reference to a pastiche. Nothing is brought forth from nothing anymore.

And it makes me wonder...

INTERVIEW

2008-12-06T00:42:00.002-06:00

WHY DO YOU WRITE? THAT IS, WHAT IS THE ATTRACTION TO THE WRITTEN WORD?

It's word-love, to a degree- and I've always enjoyed what the English language, and other languages, can do. There's a certain...I dunno, a certain sense that comes to it, like math people will relax by doing calculus, which I cannot for the life of me comprehend, but there it is.

IS IT HARDER FOR A WRITER TO GET NOTICED THAN IT WAS, SAY, 30 YEARS AGO?

Of course it is. With the internet, the world has become microscopic. But there are trade-offs. The internet has brought us Retarded Animal Babies, and it's made it easier for me to track down all of those Henry Rollins spoken word recordings that I treasure. And that, bringing your question back home, informs my work, so you spins the wheels and you takes your chance, Traveling Jack, because the world isn't gonna act like it owes you nothing. The playing field has been leveled, to a degree, but it still comes down to self-promotion and belief in your own work and worth. If you don't KNOW in your heart of hearts that you are the best writer on the planet, you shouldn't even fuck with it. There's too much BAD writing in the world, and your gut will tell you what's good and what's bad. Good writing is so very nourishing- it's not bullshit and your stomach knows bullshit because you see bullshit every day of your life. Bad writing is everywhere- it always has been. The widest part of the pyramid is always at the bottom. But you have to work to develop your own sense of taste- you can't lick it off the rocks. I truly hate to discourage people from reading populist fiction, because at least they're reading, but reading those summer blockbuster beach books is about as bad as watching network television- it's like putting sugar in your mental gas tank.

HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE YOUR WORK?

I’d say it’s like...that’s always the toughest question to answer…I’d say it’s like John Updike getting felt up by Clive Barker at a party thrown by Norman Mailer, with Aphex Twin DJing the event.

HOW DO YOU SEE YOURSELF IN THE WORLD OF FICTION?

I am the last, best hope for philosophical pornographic satanic trash literature.

WHO WERE YOUR LITERARY INFLUENCES, COMING UP, AND WHY?

Well, Norman Mailer of course, and John Updike and Clive Barker- although I really do prefer his earlier work as opposed to all the fantasy he’s written in the past fifteen years or so- not to knock the guy for trying.

WHO YANKS YOUR CRANK THESE DAYS, LITERARILY SPEAKING?

Um, Jay McInerney gave me hope for a while- except for that third book he did (Story Of My Life- 1988). Poppy Z. Brite was a a well-timed kick in the ass. But for the most part, literature in the past twenty years or so has kind of sucked...except for Chuck Palaniuk, who is so good it's frightening. There are the occasional bright lights, but it’s been bleak. And not just literature, either…everything seems to have gotten the dimmer switch turned down on it at some point. It’s the same with films, and music, and art in general. It makes me hopeful, though, because I’m not the only one who sees it, and whenever there’s a vacuum like that, things get better. Music, in general, before Guns N’ Roses released Appetite For Destruction was in pretty sad shape and then- BAM! They changed the face of popular music overnight. A few years later, after the record companies had signed every twit in Hollywood who looked like Guns N' Roses, hoping for a repeat, and cock-rock had reached its pathetic nadir, Nirvana had the same effect.

WHY DO YOU THINK PEOPLE ARE READING LESS THESE DAYS?

Because there is so much going on, but there is so much less of any real value happening. I don’t think that books or fiction in general is as important to the society or culture at large as it was in years gone by- we are the products of what I believe is a decidedly- and purposefully- less literate culture. To utilize a symbol everyone can understand intuitively, Big Brother WANTS you to be stupid- and He wants you to tune in to Joe Millionaire and Friends, to Wife Swap and Dog The Bounty Hunter, and a million other circuitous destinations where He will provide you with examples of precisely how brainless and inane He wants you to be. Stupid is as stupid does. Stupid citizens aren't a threat to the status quo.

WHY IS THAT?

Big Brother has no interest in well-informed citizens capable of critical thinking. Big Brother wants you to shop at Wal-Mart, where He will control the media that influences your life. The media works with the government and with the large corporations to form mass culture, which is utilized to create public consent, and most folks aren't even aware of this process as it goes on all around them. Big Brother is actively seeking the complacency of the wage-slaves. Big Brother doesn't want you to know about the spoken word performances given by Henry Rollins, or Jello Biafra or Terrence McKenna- or a thousand other people- because they will crack your laminate of societal posturing. Big Brother doesn't want you to know about Bill Hicks, because Brother Bill will provide you with the courage and impetus to spit in Big Brother's face. The internet is but one facet of our mass-marketed popular culture, and everyone is plugged into it. If you're reading this, you are a part of it, the internet, one large hive mind, a singular consciousness. And that can be a good thing, but too often, people let themselves slip into it, into this world, to the point where they are no longer able to differentiate between what they think, what they know, and what is thrust upon them. They have no access to their own point of view, or their own spiritual consciousness, for lack of a better way to phrase it. So, to answer your question, in a lengthy and circuitous fashion, I would say that disgust with intellectual sloth, puerile voyeurism and dissent are the primary proponents in my work.

WHEN DID YOU START WRITING?

When I was sixteen, I started for real. There were a few false starts prior to that, but sixteen was the point where I looked at myself in the mirror, so to speak, and saw what I was. I couldn’t relate to the people around me, for the most part- there was always something different going on inside of my head, or so I thought- and I think it was around that time when I read about Truman Capote’s observation that when he was younger, he thought that he was having fifty observations in his head per minute as opposed to everyone else’s five. That’s when I realized that I wasn’t so much of an anomaly or a freak. Or if I was a freak, I was a specific kind of freak. It was a separatist thing, to be sure, but it was also a way to belong to a certain sub-strata of the populace that I was only faintly aware existed prior to then. And I wasn’t being false with myself, I wasn’t going a way that felt wrong- in many ways, it was the single most righteous decision I ever made in my life. And like most decisions falling into such a description, it really wasn’t much of a decision at all. I’m not this way because I’m a writer; I’m a writer because I’m this way.

WHO IS- OR WAS- YOUR FAVORITE WRITER?

For style and consistency, I would have to say John Updike. No one else in the world writes the way that he does, and very few have enjoyed the longevity of career or employed the breadth of scope that he has. Mailer’s a close second, but they are completely different animals. Bret Easton Ellis, whom I unintentionally left off of my answer to the previous question, is good as well- he creates a goodly number of inimitable situations, and his dexterity of language produces many, many killer lines- lines that belong in any literate person’s lexicon. I would say the same for Jay McInerney as well. But Easton’s output is spotty: every other book is crap. He did Less Than Zero, and that was fucking amazing, and then he did The Rules Of Attraction. After that, he wrote American Psycho- a brilliant but sadly misunderstood book at the time- but the follow-up, Glamorama, sucked horribly. At least, in my humble opinion. After that, I kind of lost interest. If you occasionally throw off a collection of shitty writing, it does affect your credibility when you seek to speak with your constituency about matters of life and death. Fiction is a deadly serious business, and if you're dry and out of ideas, then just fucking say so and keep working at it until you’re finally writing something that it would be a crime not to let other people read.

WHAT IS YOUR WRITING TECHNIQUE?

To quote Jimmy Page, “Technique doesn’t come into it- I deal in emotions.” I copped that line a long, long time ago, and it is a coy way to deflect the question, but as I’ve gotten older and more experienced, I’ve discovered that it is a very prescient and true statement. I try to create a mood within myself, and then I convey that mood onto the page- or screen, as technology would have us have it these days- using the best word choice that I can possibly muster. What are the trappings I employ? Oh, candles, music, a bowl of Mother's Finest- it’s like seducing a woman, if you can believe it, but it’s all in your mind, and then you need to get it out, in as unadulterated a fashion as possible. It’s no good if people see the puppet strings as you’re pulling them, and if it seems like a seduction- the lights too low, the music too slow- then she knows what you’re up to, and it’s all gonna seem false. The best seduction happens without anyone knowing that it's happening at all.

Allusion to Illusion

2008-12-04T05:15:00.002-06:00

All I can see, is you looking at me
And I don’t think I like what I’m not sure you see
If you keep in constant movement, your head can’t catch you
Try to kill it all away but it won’t let you
Life is like meat on a bone convulsing above the ground
and I feel so high I'm afraid to look down

And as I’m sitting here sifting through your leavings
I’m hardly here and I’m hardly breathing
This way now I can place the blame
And call a scourge around your name

But whatever game we play
It’s clear I’d best be on my way
The stink of flesh in the ashtray
Gives all my broken thoughts away

Smoke of me clings and disappears
Taking with it all my fears
And if I alone hurt myself this way
There’s no bite left in what you say

And if I can just keep myself in here

I’m convinced in time I’ll just disappear

Buddha (In The Rain)

2008-12-04T02:04:00.002-06:00

Six hours ago my whole life was changed
My entire future was re-arranged
Now I assume the truth, much to my pain
And I walked away, And left Buddha in the rain

Picking up after you
Is all there’s left to do
Would I do it all again?
Well, I can, and I would
Though I don’t know that I should
But I might, and I will
Until there’s nothing left of me to kill
Running forward until time stands still
Well, I will…
I would do it all again…
But I wouldn’t end it
With Buddha in the rain

Buddha was me, you see
And it was all I wanted to be
And I was…
A chubby smile, free from pain
Not a chunk of wood left in the rain
Because…
Would I do it all again?
Well, I can, and I would
Though I don’t know that I should
But I might, and I will
Until there’s nothing left of me to kill
Running forward until time stands still
Well, I will…
I would do it all again…
But I wouldn’t end it
With Buddha in the rain

DSM-IV (A Short Creedish Poem)

2008-11-26T19:50:00.000-06:00

I had almost

finished eating

when I saw the heart

of my food still beating.

Disciple (version)

2008-11-26T19:45:00.003-06:00

Not since the syphilitic man
had the master plan
To deliver Superman
Have we had a chance to start anew
Reckon all we do
Follow start with follow-through

It makes me catch myself in thought
Where I can’t be caught
Go against what I’ve been taught
All the time I try to see the way,
Struggle everyday,
With no Hell, there’s Hell to pay

All the time the marks upon my arms
Working all their charms
And they do nobody harm
Except to open closed minds
Threaten all the time
Replace your thoughts with one of mine

And now that we've reached the fucking end,
Say it all again
Long-dead brains can be your friends
And it affects all that I do
The way I look at you
Truth is, THE WAY OUT IS THROUGH

TASTE THE PAIN

2008-11-25T22:05:00.003-06:00

I’ve got two feelings: bad and worse

And I still don’t know if it’s a blessing or a curse

Those in the ground pray for those trapped above it

There are people who are dying, but still alive, claim to love it

As I sit, steeped in my drink

Only a fool is wise enough not to think

Even if I locate every answer

It still won’t keep me from dying of cancer

Love is an involuntary

Descent into co-dependency

I feel sad and I feel scared

And I kind of wish that I wasn’t there

Taste the metal

Taste the pain

Pause for effect

And then taste it again

All fucked-up and ravaged

And with much similar damage

And a commensurate challenge

An equal taste for sin

The same days wasted

In the same ways tasted

The bad flavors pasted

That I painted my life in

Where were you when I didn’t know where I was?

Where were you when I did it, did it just because?

In my panicked rush

To move it from here to there

to move it on down the line

It was like my mind wasn't there

I think in the end I was

The one really left behind

Those who just stayed

where fate had put them

and had never strayed

may not have been wrong

I sold myself to the invisible wind

and they know that they belong

Chinese philosophies

might still your tongue

But you can’t walk around

with your brain all weak and numb

Nothing will cause a soul to burn

Quite like the lesson you never wanted to learn

Used to think that life had fucked me over

and I wondered why that'd be

then one day I looked in the mirror

and I saw that life was me

Taste the metal

Taste the pain

Pause for effect

Then taste it again

I pray for death,

I pray every day

The sky is empty:

I pray anyway