There once was a drunkard named Charlie
Who tried to go swimming in barley
When he inhaled his first breath
Dumb bastard choked to death
And naught a soul in town is sorry
Rant of an Oilman's Son
Rant of an Oilman’s Son
My father is an oilman. I grew up in Texas, going out to the derricks with him. When I saw a puddle of that dark stuff ooze up from a newly-vacant cavity in the earth, I wanted to jump into its tarry center, to breathe it in, sucking all that ancient, ancient fat into my lungs until I was as dead as those animals from which the stuff comes.
You want me to repeat that? Yes, animals. Oil is a tangent shadow of faraway death. Ages ago, when smarter, murderous monkeys like my father hadn't yet stood up to shake their fists at God, a troglodyte died and began to decompose. Much later, an abandoned infant brachiasaurus collapsed from starvation in the same place, decomposition adding to the soup. The thick stew accumulated over eons until men like my father dug a hole and found it, sucking it out of an enormous cave to fuel trucks that shipped cancerous vegetables to people in South Carolina and South Korea, giving them stunted energy enough to fill up their own vehicles with old animal soup to buy more food to eat, shit and die.
But the hatred of my father didn't spawn from the discovery that he got rich on the world's reliance on the spoils of history. We are all babies suckling at the corpulent breasts of that which came before us, suckling with blind, feverish pleasure and need.
At some point, even babies must be sated and open their eyes.
I hate my father for not understanding that he continues to empty the cavities of the Earth. The world loves both the life and death of its children. Life moves upon the surface of the Earth like a smile or grimace upon the face of a loving mother, and when that life has ended, it sinks down to her heart, into hidden pockets of rich memories guarded and held secure. These are the memories of the physical world; she cannot pursue the future without this petroleum past.
My father steals the memories of the world in order to accelerate the movements of men, movements ridiculous and shameful in such a canyon of time. Soon, the caves of the world's remembrances will be hollow, as dry and abandoned as ice sifting forgotten through the far corners of the incomprehensible universe.
This hollowness, this world with an interior of devoured memories, cannot support the weight of men and women and children upon the surface.
Soon, the ground will collapse beneath my boots. I cannot convince my father that he is wrong. I cannot replenish the deposits of history.
My father is an oilman. I grew up in Texas, going out to the derricks with him. When I saw a puddle of that dark stuff ooze up from a newly-vacant cavity in the earth, I wanted to jump into its tarry center, to breathe it in, sucking all that ancient, ancient fat into my lungs until I was as dead as those animals from which the stuff comes.
You want me to repeat that? Yes, animals. Oil is a tangent shadow of faraway death. Ages ago, when smarter, murderous monkeys like my father hadn't yet stood up to shake their fists at God, a troglodyte died and began to decompose. Much later, an abandoned infant brachiasaurus collapsed from starvation in the same place, decomposition adding to the soup. The thick stew accumulated over eons until men like my father dug a hole and found it, sucking it out of an enormous cave to fuel trucks that shipped cancerous vegetables to people in South Carolina and South Korea, giving them stunted energy enough to fill up their own vehicles with old animal soup to buy more food to eat, shit and die.
But the hatred of my father didn't spawn from the discovery that he got rich on the world's reliance on the spoils of history. We are all babies suckling at the corpulent breasts of that which came before us, suckling with blind, feverish pleasure and need.
At some point, even babies must be sated and open their eyes.
I hate my father for not understanding that he continues to empty the cavities of the Earth. The world loves both the life and death of its children. Life moves upon the surface of the Earth like a smile or grimace upon the face of a loving mother, and when that life has ended, it sinks down to her heart, into hidden pockets of rich memories guarded and held secure. These are the memories of the physical world; she cannot pursue the future without this petroleum past.
My father steals the memories of the world in order to accelerate the movements of men, movements ridiculous and shameful in such a canyon of time. Soon, the caves of the world's remembrances will be hollow, as dry and abandoned as ice sifting forgotten through the far corners of the incomprehensible universe.
This hollowness, this world with an interior of devoured memories, cannot support the weight of men and women and children upon the surface.
Soon, the ground will collapse beneath my boots. I cannot convince my father that he is wrong. I cannot replenish the deposits of history.
Dream - Labrat Liver is Good for You/ Naked Trainstation
The student named Me sat high in the rear of the auditorium, looking down at his teachers as they performed a play about labrat liver pate and its superior nutrition. He was apart from and above the other pupils, peering at the action over the top of a stuffed rolling suitcase, which was crushing his lap.
Said Mr. Turrible, “By the time I am finished with this pile of delicious labrat liver, I will have so many more fingers with which to buy more labrat liver!”
Said, Mrs. Jinglebells, “All the little children on the world will see through extra eyes if they have more helpings!”
The entire faculty formed a circle around a small table upon which stood a plate of crackers with labrat liver pate. They held hands and sang while dancing round and round.
After two of their revolutions, the suitcase on Me’s lap exploded open, spewing out fountains of brightly-colored underwear and pants and socks and shirts. Me held tight to the luggage while the column of seatbacks directly in front of him lowered, creating a clear descent to the floor. An inordinate amount of blue silk pajamas fell from the air, covering the new path, molding tight onto the surface like melted cellophane.
The auditorium tilted forward, pitching Me and the suitcase into the clothing storm and down the silken hill. Me landed in the suitcase on the floor before the stage. He looked up at the audience. The boys and girls laughed at him without pause. Me glanced down and saw that he was naked from the waist down. He yelped and closed the lid against his chest to cover his dangledoo.
Mrs. Jinglebells, Mr. Turrible and a few other unimportant teachers jumped down and stood between him and the students.
“Do not worry,” said Mrs. Jinglebells, looking at his dangledoo. “We won’t let ANYONE see your dangledoo!”
Mr. Turrible said, “I think you will really like next week’s assignment.”
All the clothing in the air turned to water and splashed down, soaking everyone. A wet young woman descended the stairs at the other end of the auditorium, pointing at Me. “Follow me! I know where we can find your underwear!” She turned to the wall, which transformed into a thin pane of glass. The glass quickly slid up into the ceiling, revealing a train station platform. An infinite train powered through the station. The woman rushed onto the platform.
Me leaped out of the suitcase and ran after the woman, laughter at his back like gravel under the skin. He passed through into the station, and the wind from the train ballooned his shirt. The train was a constant streak of forest green. Me caught up with the woman, who had stopped beside a black button floating in the air close to the endless train. He tugged his shirt down to cover his dangledoo.
She pointed to the button. “Remember to push this if you fuck something up.” Turning, she ran a short distance to an empty ticket stand. Me followed. She opened a door to the office. “You will find your underwear in here.”
The train stopped and a door opened, out of which writhed an ethereal, forest green hand.
“Goodbye,” the woman said, and the hand jerked out and surrounded her, squeezing. The hand retracted back into the door, leaving only a clean skeleton standing before Me. The train resumed its eternal course, while the skeleton started to walk away. It tripped on a chocolate wrapper and smashed to the floor, breaking apart, and the hundreds of bones squirmed into the concrete and were still.
Me stared at the bone ridges for a moment until he heard the collective voice of thousands of people gain volume and near the empty station. People were coming! Frantic and horrifed, Me raced into the ticket office. A pair of shining boxers hung suspension above a glass vial on one of the desks. He quickly maneuvered around a counter, hearing the WHOOF and whimper before his heel crushed down on bone and flesh.
His brother’s Golden Retriever lay on the floor close to the counter; Me had smashed in her poor skull. Her Berenstain Bear legs pawed at the air in futile escape. He bent down and caressed her side. “Oh, shit. Shit. I’m so sorry.” Her head was cracked open, but it was strangely clean and dry. He remembered the button. Me ran back to the rushing train, sick in his throat. His brother loved the dear pup; how the hell would he tell him?
The ebony button responded to his nearness by flashing. It was shaped like a coconut. He pushed it and the train halted, then began to thunder in the opposite direction. As it moved backward, he watched ghostly images of him and the woman dance through the last few minutes in reverse. The coconut button flashed again, changing color to a blood red. Me pressed it again; the train stopped and resumed its original, furious journey.
Hopeful, he went back to the ticket office. The sounds of the impending crowd increased, intensified by the addition of two footsteps on stone for every voice. When he reached the office, he sobbed. The Retriever had stopped moving; her tongue was a moist black ribbon stretched across the floor. The dog’s head was now perfectly split like a blooming flowerbud. The brain had turned to mist and the brainmist rose and drifted back to the vial on the desk. His glowing underwear was gone. The brainmist caressed the vial and slowly filled it with a blue light, and once full, a shape began to emerge from the mouth of the vial. A head surfaced, blonde hair parted in the middle that continued as the being rose until its lengths ended plastered on the wet shoulders of the rising, naked woman. Her form billowed out into normal dimensions as she passed up through the neck of the vial.
The naked woman stepped out of the vial and dropped to the floor. She looked at Me, but she didn’t look at his dangledoo.
“You fucked up,” she said to Me. “But that’s normal.”
She walked out of the ticket office toward the train. The crowds had arrived, and they ambled hurriedly toward nowhere. The woman jostled through them in her nakedness, and each time one of the crowd looked at her, that person froze like Lot’s over-curious wife.
She looked over her shoulder at Me. “Follow me to find your underwear.”
So he followed.
Old Dream 2002
More miscellaneous shit. What about Jack's compound? Wasn't that one of the most bizarre dreams you've ever had? Were you the actual arsonist who exploded the gas-line, or were you a horrified observer? It was excruciating when the city began to fall, and there was no where for me to go. Rob didn't make it. He still worked as an Intern for Fifth Third in downtown Lexington. That entire building shrugged its shoulders, as if to say, Who the fuck cares?, and tumbled. I think he was in there, along with all the trust fund documents. I had to get to the Safehaven, but separating me from the Safe- haven was miles and miles of wasted city engorged with angry killers. And they were all so bright. I found temporary rest and solace and sustenance in Jack's compound on the way to the haven. It was there that I realized that Weckham not only owned the land upon which my family had built their home, but he also owned the World. Even though I knew him, there was nothing he could do personally to transport me to the Haven. We stood and talked just within the gates of the compound, and I learned that Ralph had purchased a home not a mile from my family's, and for a moment I was filled with a strange joy and anticipation. I had no friends left. I thought how wonderful it would be to visit Ralph, to talk about some of our old adventures, taking flowers to pretty girls' front doors in the small hours of summer mornings, with a safe margin between us and dawn. But then I dismissed it as impossible. I left the compound and mounted a tram to Safe-Haven. It moved very slow, but the doors locked and I was safe along with a dozen people with muddled profiles. We traveled through the eery wastelands. The angry killers climbed on the tram like ants, and shouted and shrieked and cursed and cried. They all had terrible weapons clenched in their hands or attached to their bodies. I remember one man in particular. He stood alone, wearing nothing but red overalls. He had blonde hair and his mouth stayed open in a toothy snarl. A splintered baseball bat rested, aware, upon his shoulder. As we passed him by, I pressed against the glass of the tram and it yielded. It stretched against my hand like cellophane. My hand bumped against this guy's head and he howled. He glared at me and told me he was going to kill me, pushing his face into the elastic glass. I quickly apologized and his wild anger disappeared. He said, "Okay." He boarded the tram and sat down next to a profile and became another profile. We moved on.
Over
Over
The Commerce of Judgment
The Commerce of Judgment.
I planned to meet with the Regional Manager at Crackhead Barrel Thursday morning to eat eggs and babble.
So, I sit in a rocking chair to read Stephen King's Everything's Eventual. I rock back and forth, reading about Dinky Earnshaw and his fatal geometry while locals and dapper businessmen walk up to the front doors for a breakfast.
While caressing the edges of the pages with the tips of my fingers, enthralled with Mr. King's imaginings, I notice movement beyond the reading tunnel and look up to see an old man striding out of the restaurant. His face is creased from the weight of the work he has done and the weight of the work he is thinking about doing. He picks his teeth with a toothpick.
Two feet and three moments later, an old lady emerges behind him. She's dressed in a pink paisley wrap-thing that was probably designed by a committee reeking of Palmolive and baby powder. A smile is on her face, but dark speckles gather in her eyes. Speckles of guilt.
I didn't make the biscuits today! It's another day I didn't make the biscuits!
Her hair is piled atop her head like an iceberg thrusting out of the Arctic Ocean. As she passes before me, her eyes alight on my paperback book.
"Oh!" she exclaims. "Is that a Lillian Braun?" Peering closer, she freezes. Her mouth goes slack, and a lone breeze makes the sparse hairs emerging from the crust of makeup around her lips stir. The lady's hand presses against her pink paisley heart, and I feel the horrified exhalation from everyone in the committee. It is a horde swollen and neutralized by entropy. My spine cracks in the wind of that exhalation.
Rising from her stoop, her face crumples as if she discovered the Cracker Barrel breakfast had been fried in shit.
"Oh," she says. "Stephen King." She turns to follow her husband. Her eyes catch mine. "I'll pray for you."
As she floats away, her shoulders square. The speckles of guilt rise from her head like bats on fire. She has been scoured by her good deed. And within her peanut mind, an angel who looks too much like GW is knitting her pink paisley wings.
There is a smile on my face. I continue to read Stephen King, a man aware of darkness, but more aware of the light we need to keep the darkness at bay.
Vitamin A
Vitamin A.
Something tickled the back of my neck. A fleeting note of wrongness on the plane, a new window into some vast absurdity.
I closed Killer Angels and slowly turned my head to look for that absurdity over my left shoulder. An elderly woman, perhaps in her mid-seventies, sat in an aisle seat. She had not succumbed to the Old-Lady-Bob-Hair-Trend. Her hair hung long and limp across bone-sharp shoulders, and the sunlight from the portals discovered an ancient gleam of strawberry at the roots.
The object upon her dessicated lap inverted rightness.
The woman was hunched over a number 10 can of chopped spinach. The can had been raggedly opened; a serrated circle gleamed with green juice. While her toothless jaws repeatedly mashed together, dripping juice, she dug into the huge container with a wooden spoon.
A little boy sat in the seat next to her. He wore a blue cap that read: WILBUR. The top of his bewildered eyes had disappeared above the brim of the cap. He gradually tried to become both one-dimensional and transparent.
The woman caught me staring at her. She finished her mouthful and stabbed her spoon into the can.
She had rainbow eyes, somewhere over which mutant birds flew.
"Is there something here you see which makes you stop and think? Some curiosity?" She indicated the spinach. "I will not dry up in time! I will no longer dust the floor with my breasts!" She grinned at me, a green and leafy grin. "The creams don't work. This once worked for a cartoon sailor. Thought I'd try."
I have since learned that minding one's business is the core of wisdom.
Something tickled the back of my neck. A fleeting note of wrongness on the plane, a new window into some vast absurdity.
I closed Killer Angels and slowly turned my head to look for that absurdity over my left shoulder. An elderly woman, perhaps in her mid-seventies, sat in an aisle seat. She had not succumbed to the Old-Lady-Bob-Hair-Trend. Her hair hung long and limp across bone-sharp shoulders, and the sunlight from the portals discovered an ancient gleam of strawberry at the roots.
The object upon her dessicated lap inverted rightness.
The woman was hunched over a number 10 can of chopped spinach. The can had been raggedly opened; a serrated circle gleamed with green juice. While her toothless jaws repeatedly mashed together, dripping juice, she dug into the huge container with a wooden spoon.
A little boy sat in the seat next to her. He wore a blue cap that read: WILBUR. The top of his bewildered eyes had disappeared above the brim of the cap. He gradually tried to become both one-dimensional and transparent.
The woman caught me staring at her. She finished her mouthful and stabbed her spoon into the can.
She had rainbow eyes, somewhere over which mutant birds flew.
"Is there something here you see which makes you stop and think? Some curiosity?" She indicated the spinach. "I will not dry up in time! I will no longer dust the floor with my breasts!" She grinned at me, a green and leafy grin. "The creams don't work. This once worked for a cartoon sailor. Thought I'd try."
I have since learned that minding one's business is the core of wisdom.
The Day the Towers Fell
I wrote this on the evening of the terrible event.
September 11, 2001
"The Day the Towers Fell"
I was adjusting inventory for my brother's business when ---, the good-natured racist sot walked through my office, asking me if I was watching what happened. It was a little after nine am.
"Watching what," I asked him. I was busy and wishing that he wouldn't interrupt my concentration.
"They got us. They bombed us."
"Say what?"
"Check it out."
I didn't turn on the small television immediately. I prided myself on being immune to news, to all the media shit that floats in and out of our country every moment of the day. But the magnitude of his statement was just too much for me to ignore. I switched on the set and saw the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center smoking heavily from close to the top of the buildings. Right beside this image in a split screen was the Pentagon, smoking as well.
The newscasters jabbered away. Two planes had crashed into the Towers, and one into the Pentagon. Believed to be a terrorist act. Befuddlement settled over me at first. Disasters like this, offensive disasters projected from a foreign state don't happen on United States soil. Pearl Harbor was the last time our country was hit, but even that was safely hundreds of miles into the South Pacific, away from the mainland.
But this was New York City and Washington, D.C. D.C. carries the title of capital, where our leader resides. Although, John Lennon put it best, "The United States is the Roman Empire and NYC is Rome." The Towers of the World Trade Center are the pulse of our Economic Sovereignty.
As I thought this screams emanated from the television. With a rumbling, the South Tower collapsed. To see a building collapse is nothing new to any American privy to the movies. But I was watching it live, and I swiftly imagined the thousands of people within those Tower walls, all of whom oblivious to any kind of script or cut in action. The last moments of their lives tumbled with the behemoth. Before I could try to understand what had just happened that second of my life the North Tower fell. I think I blinked.
On the heels of my thoughts for the horde of lives just vanquished in a few leaps of a second-hand came a selfish,selfish thought.
There will be a war. And the war will take your brothers.
I pushed it away, but felt it lingering outside the perimeter of my thoughts.
There were others in the office with me, watching the news. A Palestinian terrorist group claimed responsibility for the tragedy. "Raghead," and "Sand Nigger" were bandied about. The words were said with both anger and glee, as if those expressions had always been boiling deep inside, and this terror had prompted and reconciled such responses. I remember one bold statement from within the office in particular: "Would any of you allow a stranger into your house? Then how come our country don't take up that policy? It's all because we're letting them in and the Democrats. The democrats are giving away our country!" The tirade shifted to the computer and how he thought it was the Beast of Revelation.
I am not refuting the anger. Anger was justified. Of course, I was just as angry at whoever had done the ferocious thing. But that anger must be directed at those responsible. We have too much history of casting blame where blame does not lie. As I listened to him I began to feel another layer of fear atop what I had just seen blanket me. I began to sense history creeping up on us again. The repetition of damaging history thrives within an environment of anger and ignorance. I thought of the recent German removal of Jews. I thought of the sequestering of Japanese-Americans after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. Are we going to do it again? How many Americans of Middle-Eastern descent are going to find that their lives are changed tomorrow? How many bruises on children's faces? How many jobs lost?
Of the one who refuses strangers into his house I wanted to ask, How many generations can you count back to he who first came here? How was he received?
The Falling of the Towers is already too strong an anchor on our hearts. We must make sure to end the misery between our shores there, rather than fall prey to our anger and spread that misery within. Let's make sure those who planned the hijacking of the planes have the regrets. We don't need any more.
September 11, 2001
"The Day the Towers Fell"
I was adjusting inventory for my brother's business when ---, the good-natured racist sot walked through my office, asking me if I was watching what happened. It was a little after nine am.
"Watching what," I asked him. I was busy and wishing that he wouldn't interrupt my concentration.
"They got us. They bombed us."
"Say what?"
"Check it out."
I didn't turn on the small television immediately. I prided myself on being immune to news, to all the media shit that floats in and out of our country every moment of the day. But the magnitude of his statement was just too much for me to ignore. I switched on the set and saw the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center smoking heavily from close to the top of the buildings. Right beside this image in a split screen was the Pentagon, smoking as well.
The newscasters jabbered away. Two planes had crashed into the Towers, and one into the Pentagon. Believed to be a terrorist act. Befuddlement settled over me at first. Disasters like this, offensive disasters projected from a foreign state don't happen on United States soil. Pearl Harbor was the last time our country was hit, but even that was safely hundreds of miles into the South Pacific, away from the mainland.
But this was New York City and Washington, D.C. D.C. carries the title of capital, where our leader resides. Although, John Lennon put it best, "The United States is the Roman Empire and NYC is Rome." The Towers of the World Trade Center are the pulse of our Economic Sovereignty.
As I thought this screams emanated from the television. With a rumbling, the South Tower collapsed. To see a building collapse is nothing new to any American privy to the movies. But I was watching it live, and I swiftly imagined the thousands of people within those Tower walls, all of whom oblivious to any kind of script or cut in action. The last moments of their lives tumbled with the behemoth. Before I could try to understand what had just happened that second of my life the North Tower fell. I think I blinked.
On the heels of my thoughts for the horde of lives just vanquished in a few leaps of a second-hand came a selfish,selfish thought.
There will be a war. And the war will take your brothers.
I pushed it away, but felt it lingering outside the perimeter of my thoughts.
There were others in the office with me, watching the news. A Palestinian terrorist group claimed responsibility for the tragedy. "Raghead," and "Sand Nigger" were bandied about. The words were said with both anger and glee, as if those expressions had always been boiling deep inside, and this terror had prompted and reconciled such responses. I remember one bold statement from within the office in particular: "Would any of you allow a stranger into your house? Then how come our country don't take up that policy? It's all because we're letting them in and the Democrats. The democrats are giving away our country!" The tirade shifted to the computer and how he thought it was the Beast of Revelation.
I am not refuting the anger. Anger was justified. Of course, I was just as angry at whoever had done the ferocious thing. But that anger must be directed at those responsible. We have too much history of casting blame where blame does not lie. As I listened to him I began to feel another layer of fear atop what I had just seen blanket me. I began to sense history creeping up on us again. The repetition of damaging history thrives within an environment of anger and ignorance. I thought of the recent German removal of Jews. I thought of the sequestering of Japanese-Americans after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. Are we going to do it again? How many Americans of Middle-Eastern descent are going to find that their lives are changed tomorrow? How many bruises on children's faces? How many jobs lost?
Of the one who refuses strangers into his house I wanted to ask, How many generations can you count back to he who first came here? How was he received?
The Falling of the Towers is already too strong an anchor on our hearts. We must make sure to end the misery between our shores there, rather than fall prey to our anger and spread that misery within. Let's make sure those who planned the hijacking of the planes have the regrets. We don't need any more.
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