A few other artifacts from that period are also posted elsewhere,
including Anal & Nasal Retentive Ramblings,
StringMan & DollarWoman, Large Vegetables and
Jer's Story.
Dear God:
What hast thou, in thy dubious wisdom, wrought? What say thee, that
thou cast thine eyes my way, that thou might see thy work?
Why, God, am i?
What is thy grand plan for glen?
O God, for a sign of thy design! i ask that thou makest merciful on
me, ultimately. Please heareth mine plea, that thy servant offers
reverently: for i cannot see what thou doest want of me.
In mine own way i search for thee, quite absorbing all i see, rarely
ever feeling free, and never, ever finding thee.
So, where art thou o mighty Lord? Driving in some cosmic Ford on the
highways of the galaxy? If that's the solace that thee crave, let me be
thy Burma Shave.
Amen
The Great Almighty God insists thee purge thy mental motorists
traversing highways in thy mind, in thine and others of thy kind
Top
High Wire Dive
the images which splash before my mind's eye form a pool in the
center of my brain, and i am on the high dive wire, looking down into
the swirling, murky depths. teetering left. teetering right.
the pool is closer, it is farther away, it is throbbing, zooming to
the rhythm of my heartbeat, that familiar music. it comes close, it
fades away. it swerves to the left, below me.
my eyes are my camera, but my stomach rides the motion and my ears
are filled with the jumbled sounds of the waters below.
a giant hand rises up from the fluid, and it is holding a razor, and
it shaves my head and it shaves my face and it shaves me all while i'm
balancing on the high wire dive, and it is not satisfied with hair. and
the long arm with the hand and the razor takes the skin from my cranium
and the red drips down to mingle with the swirling image waters,
wriggling into the color like it belongs there, like the missing link.
it forms an outline in the waters, and the colors begin to congeal, and
before the red sheet of blood veils my sight and before i surrender to
the liquid gravity, i can see down that long long arm with the hand and
the blade and in the coalescing colors i see its shoulder taking form,
and a torso and a head.
and the last thing i see as the red overtakes me and i fall sliding
down the razor's edge is the face taking form, as i fall in two neat
slices into the void, and it is my own.
Top
The Red
he is irked — seeing the world thru a throbbing red filter. all he
can think to do is to smash some... thing or one. he's tired of being
jostled about in the turbulent waves of humanity that are the streets of
Manhattan - his ankles had been bruised, his ribs smashed, his balance
lost one time too many.
an innocent but careless fool crosses his path as he
travels
full-speed, weaving around slower moving bodies. he smacks into the poor
fool (who does not lose his balance), goes into a comical spin,
lands hard on the sidewalk and starts to roll from sheer momentum.
still rolling at the corner, he hits a spare on a 7 - 10 pedestrian
split, finally splashing to a stop in the murky waters of the St. Marks
gutter.
and now, he is sitting up comically in the filthy pool, filled with a
blind, aimless rage. ah, but where to vent it?
it being a commonplace occurrence on the streets of
Manhattan, the
fool, careless perpetrator of the deed, had taken his leave long before our
hero came to his aqueous rest. and even if the little scumbag had stuck
around, what could he have done about it? he himself was equally to
blame for careless haste. alas, there was none to blame, and our hero's
rage turns to frustration, his violence turns to tears, and he sits
there in his filthy puddle, crying and splashing childishly until the
Belleview crew arrive to escort him to the relative calm and dryness of
his padded cell.
Top
Call it a Glen
take a skin
stuff it with bones and meat
pack it with food and pour
blood into it
cram it full with ideas and
imagery
jam in some love, some hate,
some confusion
top it off with lust
call it a "glen"
Top
Call it a Life
eat and drink
sleep some
eat and drink some more
maybe smoke a little
flex your pencil muscles now
and again
think occasionally
move about at random
spend a lot of time making
somebody else a lot of money
eat and drink again
sleep a little
call it "a life"
Top
A
Father
i had a dream of a different
life i led, and it was of a father that i had had there and he was
naked and i had feelings about him that i could not express because i
knew he was dead. i tried to keep my mind active so i wouldn't think
about him, so i wouldn't see myself as his product, so i wouldn't
believe myself as possessed by him as i knew i was.
and i tried to live my life.
i involved myself in things,
but i never understood them, could never be at peace with them,
could never hold them long enough to know them because whatever i did,
he was there, the naked man who made me, restless and relentless,
plaguing me with the guilt of the undone, the undoable, the unresolved.
and i woke up in my real life
with clenched fists, bathed in cold sweat, and i was yelling "you
bastard!" at the air.
[ed note: this is NOT
about MY dad! I don't know what the hell it IS about, but it definitely
is NOT about him! Jer's Story IS about him,
but only from an ancient and very limited perspective.]
Top
Tale of the Empty Mind
this is the tale of the empty
mind. it was being carted around on the body of a man. although its role
was to control, it seemed a victim of its transport's whim, although it
vaguely knew that they were together in this.
and so, it ambled along thru
the heart of the great metropolis, day after day after day. the mind let
the body eat, it let the body sleep, but it refrained from regulating
these and other functions.
Top
In the God Household
god rocks his babies to sleep
in cradles made of human rib cages. mrs god bops in to ooh and ahh at
the cuteness of this tableau. god winks at her and begins to sing a cozy
little melody, which moves the babies to tiny tears of happiness. their
tears crystallize on their precious little faces as the breathwind of god's
song moves over them, catching the crystals and shattering them into
little feather diamonds which scatter across the room, settling in
the crevices of the rib cradles.
it's a common domestic scene
in the god household.
Top
Sushi
City
After 20-something years
of vegetarianism, I had finally broken down and listened to my inner
voice, which kept yelling "I CRAVE SEAFOOD!" I was uncomfortable about this, as it
challenged all aspects of my personal politics. In the end, my cravings
won out, and I've still never quite come to terms with that. Not long
thereafter, I discovered, and fell madly in love with, sushi. This next
item is a subconscious groping for self-help to make sense out of this
strange and wonderful new experience.
it's sushi city.
the streets are lined with
delicate little slabs of raw flesh, waiting, just waiting to be
selected.
this is their life: they are
birthed, they live and learn, they die, and their raw flesh is consumed.
it's better this way: don't
char my flesh when i die. i want to go out delicately, subtly.
so, before i go, i glide down
the sushi streets and check out all the little meats and they beckon
me. they say, "be like us, lay bare your flesh and feed it to the world
— it is the ultimate offering."
i'm hep.
so i take my blade and start
to cut thin slices of meat off my arms. clean little muscle steaks. and
i lay them in the sushi streets where they mingle with the other meats.
and from my calves and from my thighs and from the cheeks under my eyes,
i whittle away at what i was, for what i'll be is more, because i'll be
a legend for this feat: yea, tho i die, the world may eat.
Top
A Son
I found several weird
items about a drunken son. Honestly, I have no idea how this crap gets
into my mind...
he sat gnawing on the opening
of a thunderbird bottle, his eyes inflamed, focused on the air between
us. his face a landscape of tiny volcanoes and lava flow in a
surrounding desert of cracked mud, punctuated by the rise of his gnarled
nose and the blistering crevice of his mouth, he managed to sort through
the various particles in the air before him, at last coalescing a
semblance of my image standing over him. "dad?" he managed to grunt. the
word shot through me like a rusty razor, pinning my tongue to the roof
of my mouth. ˝ of his body seemed to stay on
the bench during his spastic rise. in spite of myself, i cringed at his
touch. his smell singed my nasal hairs... i could still smell him two
days later. his clothes were a ratty nest of assorted filthy rags which
were rudimentarily lashed together in such a way as to leave gaping
holes here and there. i would have laughed, were he not my son. he did
cut a comical figure... always the artist, even in decrepitude. he sat
me down and started his mad rap. i'd gotten used to them.
Top
Richard
Serra Sculpture, Manhattan
Walking just inside the giant, leaning, curved sculpture, 1000000 tons
of Richard Serra steel, there's a feeling of impending about-to-fall-overness,
especially with the wind rolling like waves over the lean. Watching little trash tornadoes circulating where
the great curve cuts the other, opposite curve of stone in front of the
Jacob Javitz Federal Building.
Walking in there is a metaphor for life in New York City: one pushes
fearlessly on with the humungous weight just barely propped and waiting
to crush.
A new appreciation for Serra: I can understand how he must
have felt when one of his assistants was crushed by the hand of
creation. If there is a god, he has two hands — one creation and
one destruction — and it doesn't appear that one hand knows what the
other is doing, if this be the outcome of great art.
On the outside arc of the piece is a pool of blue water. On the "dangerous"
side, leaning in, is the entrance to the Federal Building and the
U.S. Court of International Trade.
Top
Jewish Guy Takes Back the Night
Before the angst set in, big-time, there was a brief period when I
was enthralled with Manhattan night life. I frequented clubs and bars,
mostly keeping to myself and, as I am wont to do, observing. But
occasionally, I managed to grow a pair and actually put myself out to
make contact with the fairer sex. These occasions were exceedingly
occasional — anomalous to almost the entirety of the rest of my
life. Here is documentation of one such anomaly:
He's shy, but willing to overcome it. He's out tonite to see what he can
do.
He steps into the bar. His eyes are scanners: all the surfaces
in there register after a few passes, and — he has evaluated the
scene. He might have left, save for the empty bar stool next to a cute,
neo-waveish punkette... His animal instincts shift into high gear. He's
ready to chose it or lose it and fuck the consequences. He stops at the
cig machine, plopping quarters kachink kachink, presses Marlboro and
escorts the pack to the bar.
His heart is pounding — it's do or die trying on the physical plane of
existence. He feels other planes shifting as he moves into the energy
vortex that is boy-meets-girl.
He deftly opens the pack as he takes the stool, proving, he thinks, that
he can do two things at the same time. He orders a beer, igniting the
stick (there it is again — the action man of the two simultaneous
moves). He hates to smoke, but it gives him something to do. He's GOT to
have something to do.
The beer comes, he plops a buck on the counter, takes a deep drag, a
slug glug o' beer, and is ready to make his move. All of reality is
focused here. Pulsation like a fist inside his chest, he's gonna offer
her a cigarette.
He turns toward her, offering the pack and it flies out of his hand,
onto the floor. Fuck. Bends down, picks it up, gives her one, has trouble lighting
the match — gets it lit but snuffs it out against her cig-end before it
lights. Strikes another one, burns his finger, but gets her stick lit —
finally!
This display of dashing coolness roils his nerves into a barbed wire
tangle. Well, what the fuck, he says, we live to die and die infinitely
in the process. This one seems hopelessly botched, his coolness having
evaporated from his fashion, and he's back to square one.
But the girl seems to understand. In fact, she chuckles at his
too-obvious awkwardness. They drink, talk and smoke and it's last call,
bar's closing, and she's gone. He's alone again, feeling a bit less
dangerous a lady-killer, but ready to lay it on the line again,
penetrating deeper into the glossy New York night, seeking out after
after hours activity.
Top
On the Trains
There are constant reminders to "watch the closing doors." An old guy is
rushing, slow-mo, towards the train — the doors are staying open an
abnormally long time, seemingly waiting for him. He's gonna make it! He
gets to about a foot from the door, and it slams in his face. Move
backwards down
the train to watch the movie of his surprised, helpless face,
window-frame-by-window-frame as the train pulls out of the station.
Watch the closing doors. Is this is an insidious plot to keep eyes from
meeting? Another subliminal attempt to alienate man from his fellow man?
Is it but one tool of many: "keep your eyes on the road," "watch TV," "seeing is believing," "seek and you shall find?" Never look
another man in the eye — you might be shocked at what you'd find in
there.
Trainloads of stray vision paths — I watch them trace from all
their eyes like lasers in the hazy car,
watch them intersect in shifting patterns, hundreds of pairs
of searchlights moving in anarchistic sequence, never shining into the
source of another.
Watch the closing doors so you don't see each
other.
Insidious plot or survival mechanism? You decide, but don't look me
in the eyes when you tell me.
