volume 6 issue 3
volume 6 issue 3
once you notice - kirstin
awkward silence - josh kern aka asilas
night sweats - matt pinkerton
TakeOut - blake bolger
that rattle - james warren coldiron
dating and other forms of disease - marley olson
unfinished poem - copyright © eristikös
a portrait of an artist's trip tips after a san francisco weekend visit...
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when you're not looking,
I'm going to jump in your lap
and hold your hand to mine.
we'll reach in your pants
just to make sure everything is there and doing fine.
if it's not, I'll fix it. I'll know.
someday you'll turn around
and there will be me.
and I will be the me
that i strive to be
that never was there before.
you'll take my breath,
pulling it towards your warm body,
twisting it until it is an exact replica of my breast
so you'll always have something to hold.
before you notice I'm going to chain
you to my clit -- it'll be comfortable, you'll never want to leave.
I won't let you scream.
we'll like it.
my arms will forever be pliable for your fall.
twist me in any position and tell me not to move.
someday, when you crack my elbow
because I am not resilient
you will notice that the splintering of bones, the music of love,
is a haunting melody of
runaway cardinal carousel horses
and red children crushing
mint for juleps.
you'll tell me magical stories
until I fall far to sleep.
before you run
I'm going to slip in between
the rubber and the leather
of your shoes
and glide with you everywhere --
until I have been flattened.
Lucid waves of the brain
alter upon a call.
Curled up, sweating,
smothered in a dark room,
open and raw (raw as can be).
Awkward silence.
Searching for escape
from this shallow doom
of negotiated repentance.
Yea, everything is real including time itself,
until you twist and hang from a shady ceiling,
awaiting a tame death.
Snuff out the burning hidden desire.
No more monotony and materials...
It was all about the materials, wasn't it?
Rise up!
Recognize this strange overblown aquarium
of worthless plastic gray little fishes
drowning in routine.
Stand on the outside
feeling the nothing yet able to breathe.
It's a flawless zone of silence.
No egotistical morals,
no pain, no death.
Just silence,
awkward (pleasant) silence,
Did you ever stop to think why silence can be so awkward?
Well why is the sky blue?
Listen...
Fuck intentions,
fuck interpretations.
A marshmallow toasts over a raging fire,
crucified to a crooked stick...(foaming),
empty of texture,
distraught and deformed,
left with one final thought to relay.
Listen...
Sit back and close your eyes.
Feel nothing, hear nothing...(except these subtle sounds).
Who needs your religion?
Who needs your textbook philosophy?
Put on sunglasses and witness the end.
She looked over at me,
through wet strands of red,
a face of renaissance art.
In that draining moment,
I finally realized what it was all about.
Silence.
The middle of August
No AC
Too hot to sleep
Too hot to breathe
Landlord's away
The rent is paid
And it's too goddamn late to go out
Night sweats on my temples
Night sweats on my back
Night sweats soaking the mattress
Turning old blood back
To dark liquid
And staining me
Again
And the rage is, of course,
here
As I ponder the day to come
Another night without sleep
As a prelude to office boredom
The power's been out
For hours
My eyes are weakened from reading
By flashlight
Anger so sweet you want every crumb
And wet your finger tip
To slip
every ounce of lava
from your life plate
And lick the devil's dessert fork
clean
Anger you think you can vent
with pacing
objects hurled
harsh words to those
least deserving
And a heart beat felt
In your skull
But that don't bring
The lights back
And it don't make the still wind blow
And the sleepers still sleep
The dreamers still dream
And no one's in pain
'cept you.
Every word I hear is smoke, like chilled water
poured on a thousand red briquettes.
The thai-ish waitress gives systematic query,
and always hides her laughs behind plum colored nails.
I tell her the place looks more classy this way
(not the new decor, more that it's empty today).
I'm stiff (from the sun and the night before)
as a thousand cardboard squares glued together,
I'm a crumbling wet tower, shaking like hail.
She leaves to the kitchen, leaves me at the bar --
and fainting seems like an option, somehow,
like picking a college, or a dress to wear,
but she'd never know I was lying on the floor
so I cling to the counter, chewing my lips.
Clawing my brown bad away with my slow...
I'm too bitter to be sick.
this must be hung over.
with no fortune cookie to show.
That rattle shall tell you that story
Of your life before you were born.
Gourd, elderberry, rawhide, or turtle...
It shall all come in moment
To reveal and remind you
Of your present position
In future, in past.
That rattle shall become part of your story...
As you discover
That those songs and dances
Both explain and conceal wonderful mysteries.
All I wanted was someone to brush the hair out of my eyes, give me redemption
and make me breakfast in the morning. Instead I got lice. Maybe this was the reason
no one brushed the hair out of my eyes, danger of infestation.
The lice simulated my life at that point: diseased, contagious, requiring everything
to be washed in extremely hot water, then raked with an inordinately small comb. He
left by this time. I think this is why it took me so long to recover, he broke down my
immunity.
The sound of skidding tires outside
reminds me
that I am not really under control.
I am living a terrible lie.
I talk
I smile
I eat sleep drink and pee
but I am not recovering from this virus.
Do you affect --
do you infect --
others this way?
Or am I a unique petrie dish,
warm, wet and inviting,
begging to grow disease?
I can only...
or my new life, part I - nadine kachur
I should have shortened the title. I should have shortened a lot of things... like
the time I spent in Prescott; the time I spent at low paying jobs in Prescott; the time
I spent working on the Prescott house that I eventually signed over to my soon-to-be X,
King Marc; the time I spent with the King, especially once we moved to Prescott.
Prescott was his idea. He had a new idea every six months and it always involved a
move. I was very happy blistering in the Valley of the Sun Cancer. I was warm and I was
happy. I had a job that paid twice as much as anything I could get in Yavapai County. I
had my own house. I still have the house, but after evicting my crackhead tenants that
moved in when I went north, I found myself with over five thousand dollars in damages
to repair before I would even use the bathroom; don't even get me started on the legal
fees. My Motto: Don't leave home. Even when your insignificant other, who you shouldn't
be with in the first place no matter how good they look, whines and whines and whines
until you have no choice but to follow or let them leave without you. My Advice: Let
them go. It is for the best. It will cut about one and a half years off the tail end
of a bad relationship--the sooner you can start another bad one with the time you've
just saved. And let me tell you, there's always another bad one waiting, waiting
specifically for you. Preying on your hormone-induced vulnerability. Heck, my next bad
one waited 15 years to restart the sad aborted tryst we attempted a decade and a half
earlier. Let's name him "Tristram." I will be Iseult (L.). Tristram is quite obsessed
with a fantasy of me that does not, of course, exist. I find this intensity, over a false
illusion, a very attractive and proverbial garden path to follow. I mimic the fantasy.
It would be a shame to stomp his dream. And what makes this could-be coupling completely
unstable is that he wants me to NOT want him because he thrives on the pain of unfulfillment,
and on his delusion of holiness and deception of control over the EVIL OF SEX (in My New
Life, Part II, it is revealed that he is actually impotent). Being a father-rejected Scorpio,
it is hard to resist such a psycho-dude with whom I can replay the whole Freudian story
of my childhood. Think of all the minor encounters we can bring to the extreme: The push-pull
of a dysfunctional pairing; the constant agitated state (and imagined safety) of no sexual
contact fueled by lust-heavy mutual attraction; the subtle games and the subsequent denial
of those games, inducing in me a cloud of self-doubt to obscure all prior rational knowledge
of the subject in question and also to effectively confuse my usually accurate intuition
with his baseless so-called reality. Consider all the above is executed under the guise
of "a friendship only." Consider the fact that he is married (to Iseult W.)--well, not
formally, but, ah... that makes everything even so much grayer-hard to draw boundary lines
in the dark, especially when the boundaries are always moving around. Lastly, consider
his invite to San Francisco for a long weekend at a spiritual retreat (he's as a saint;
I'm like a sister); I know I considered it. Holy Glory Wall! As an artist who has never
been there, I could not NOT go.
So, we go. I wish I had kept all my research papers from grad school on Tristram and
Iseult as I would just cut and paste at this point. Having said this, I will now leave the
episodic non-affair affair episode until Part II, and promptly provide a short travel guide
founded on my own experience during a two-day excursion through SF, CA. Here are 12 points
I'd like to share:
1. Fly into OAKLAND, not SAN FRANCISCO. I'm not sure why, but this is what people do.
The landing is very smooth, long, and over water. I always believed one has a better chance
over water.
2. CHINATOWN has live fish for sale in street markets. The fish are cut completely in
half and appear to be alive as they are breathing, bleeding, writhing. Be forewarned: the
visuals are graphic. They also have vats of large live frogs in the same area, I assume for
non-vegetarian eating pleasure.
3. If you are a FEMALE, you will find yourself sexually ambivalent to 4 out of 5 males,
and although I suppose it could get tiresome, then troublesome if you lived there for any
length of time, it is quite a relief in small doses. Moving to SF may require switching camps.
However, if you are a hetero MALE, consider experimenting while visiting. It's a big city;
no one will know.
4. The famous intersection of the 60's, HAIGHT ST. and ASHBURY, now has a GAP on one
corner and a BEN & JERRY'S on the other. I say, "If you were born before 1968, don't bother."
And the street art sucks.
5. CITY LIGHTS BOOKSTORE still stands, but unless you can go back in time, it's just not
there. Nice store (no coffee), but the BEATS have become only a room upstairs, albeit filled
with an excellent selection of writings, postcards and a $50 scarf that I'm sure I lost there.
6. If I didn't lose the scarf there, then I left it at CAFE TRIESTE. This place has
better coffee than SEATTLE. I suggest the MOCHA or the AU LAIT because that's what I had. The
whipped cream is almost butter. You must have the whipped cream, regardless of what you order.
You can meet strangers here, even foreigners. And what an applicable name this coffeehouse
has to my "companion situation." Think Carson McCullers, ballads, and desolation.
7. Climb to COIT TOWER. At the bottom of COIT TOWER is a wonderful
"workers-of-the-world-unite" type mural. For $3, you get to take an elevator to the top where
the view of the city is panoramic and educational. You can see THE ROCK and other landmarks
that I forgot to take notes on. THE TOWER reminded me of Remedios Varo's famous triptych,
which I believe to be one of the best visual metaphors concerning the enigma of life.
8. If you have ever been to a mall, skip PIER 39... though the walk to THE PIER is filled
with entertaining street performers--STATUE MEN, PERUVIAN MUSICIANS, A BUSHMAN (this one jumps
right out at you)--definitely worth the while.
9. The CABLE CARS are dangerous to me because they don't always really stop like a NEW
YORK SUBWAY does, but I went on anyway because it was "fun" dangerous, but not really
dangerous. Sort of like my new non-relationship in reverse, which is dangerous fun, but not
really fun.
10. If you rented a car, you will find that street parking is a total drag. Be patient.
Someone eventually will pull out of a space. But sometimes you have to have Plan B, like,
"I will go around the block twelve times and if I do not find a space by then, I will skip
the restaurant that I waited three years to visit." Note: Parking can become a VAST SEXUAL
METAPHOR... the waiting, the maneuvering, an easy fit, a not-so-good one... and sometimes
it's just easier to pay for it.
11. The GOLDEN GATE BRIDGE is RED!!
12. There is so much to see that two days in SF are not enough. As for my anomalous
relationship, I like a line from an old SACHA GUITRY film. To summarize, GUITRY (who often
stars in his movies) hears from his vacationing wife as to when she would be returning home;
then, his mistress asks if they would have "forever" together; he replies, "Better (than
forever)... We have TWO DAYS."
(to michael)
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