There's a needle.

Bernard stands outside a hotel room, trying to figure out what city he's in. There's a big needle in the distance, but it's not really that big. Is it Seattle that has the needle? I mean, that needle isn't that big. Is it like a fake needle? Bernie's gotten so good at tripping acid at work that he can't even care what city he's in. He says to the taxi driver, "Take me to the Holiday Inn," after he gets off work. When he's supposed to go back to work, he says, "Take me to the airport."

Everything is automated. When he shows up on the plane, the people all go to the same places, and he stands off to the side while the prettiest flight attendant talks about how to fasten a seat belt or properly die. When he opens the fridge at the back of the plane, it's filled up again with juice and soda. All the meals, whether vegetarian or kosher or halal, are arranged by seat number. It doesn't really matter if Bernie's tripping. It just makes everything much more interesting, yet also more predictable.

So Bernie's still tripping pretty decently once he gets to his hotel. He smokes his Lucky Strikes and thinks to himself, The name of the city should at least be written on a fuckin' bus or a taxi. There are probably maps or something in the lobby. He smokes another cigarette, and then another, etc. The sun sets enough that the needle isn't so interesting anymore and he stops looking at it.

He goes over his daily checklist:

1. 8 months and 4 days since I last drank alcohol.
2. 3 months and 3 days since I last drank soda.
3. 9 months and 6 days since I last ate meat.
4. 1 year, 2 months, and 9 days since I last had sex.

He briefly wonders how Sal is doing, and immediately regrets asking himself that question. I wonder if this is the city we met in and the city where I grew up. A strange thought, but even stranger that it's true. Who knows if the city decided to install a needle somewhere downtown to revitalize the city. He hasn't paid attention for at least two years. He realizes that someone is sitting on the bench next to where he's standing and decides to ask him, "What's in that needle?"
He gets a blank answer of, "Umm, there's nothing in it. You just go up and look at the city"
"What's it called?"
The guy scratches his head and answers, "The Panoptacle?"
Bernard laughs until he starts dry heaving.

AMENSIA

The ease with which I forget certain characters
In the telling of my story is a sorry mistake.

It is, however, a ubiquitous ritual among humans,
to casually and chronically forget each other.

But every person is sentient and deserves to
Be remembered by someone, sometime;

The curly haired, obese woman met in the grocery
Store line who said, “I just found out I have cancer;”

A child in her bedroom with the lights still on
Listening to muffled shouts and screams, weeping;

The mustached man whose smile reminds me
That I am still an innocent child, deep down inside.

An entire race of beings and their plights are
Constantly forgotten, saved for another day.

I am sorry now, too, to have forgotten those who
In naïve, desperate teenage sobs suddenly become

Missed – sorry to think of all the promises I made
To myself in many somber, inebriated ceremonies

Which later, in the future, are broken and shattered,
When I would beg of myself,

Do not forget them.

VIOLENT AIMS

The he- or she-bat swoops in and shrieks and flies past our fancy crème candlesticks which are not lit with flames that dance, and knocks them onto the hardwood floor, snapping them in half like broken tibias and fibula’s. The bat is confused and scared and does not know what to do – and neither do we. With the windows shut, with the bat blind loose in our living room, with Joan and I locked in a damp and dark closet all disoriented, the world upside down, we clutch each other and are in between laughs and sobs. I become slightly aroused as Joan brushes her hand against my thigh, but immediately after I imagine this dark, black ‘other,’ this creature of the night, a creature without sight who mostly, from what I’ve seen, is never kept as a pet, with all these intentions to infect me with terrible disease, I begin to feel less like a sexual being and more like an object for its pleasure. I am a bit scared in the closet with Joan, and feel some need to be “the man” in this situation and “take care of business” but she knows me too well. And besides, she let go of me more than a few seconds ago: I’m still clutching her sweatshirt, shaking (just a little bit). And then she, of all the two of us, is the one who surprisingly dispels the fear exclaiming, it’s cute! Joan busts out of the closet and I am frozen in terror with the door flapping open and screams and shrieks and calamity melting into one loud sound. I am frightened of a rodent with wings, and a bit ashamed and guilty of fear. In this house, where we make ourselves masters of nature, I am scared of that which crept in from the outside and came inside and has taken over my serene surroundings. Once I hear Joan scream I got it out! I walk out of the closet, ashamed and saddened at the thought that I cannot recognize the beauty in such natural things – that I was scared of what is also myself. And I stand there in the living room with Gone With the Wind paused, the frankly my dear I don’t give a damn scene, with a tremendously cool October breeze sneaking in through one open window, while the leaves rustle outside on the sidewalk, and the scent of carved pumpkins and burning wax seeps in, and the children with dirt on their hands hold them open for their favorite treats and giggle and smile and I smile at the thought of such a creature, stigmatized, marginalized, this bat with his leathery wings entering down through our chimney to remind this animal, this man, me: you have absolutely nothing and everything to fear.

There is a reason bugs don't belong on a notebook.

There is a reason bugs don’t belong on a notebook. As the geometry of writing begins with its rushed lifts and bends, sharp lines and dots, and a fluidity that belongs to each writer, the arrival of even the most miniscule perceived life alters the writer’s actions. Instead of a left curve of ball-point, perhaps a right twist teases and prods the creature to follow the stream of consciousness to the next line of text; the writer feels led to create new shapes with the words before him, making a 2-dimensional city for the speck of moving color to glide within, as the man-god looks down and for the first time truly visualizes the power of words and ideas to control life.

Life is a series of movements and moments--a game of Russian roulette--except in this case it is the person that dances, not the gun. I‘ve always looked at life as assuming different views of that barrel. “If he has forgotten her, his victim, then she must not forget him or her own past. Their murderers need to forget, but their victims must not let them.” But the problem is that we are all victims and murderers at some point; it is a matter of position, and we all control and are controlled by collective ideas and the need to both remember and forget.

There is a reason bugs don’t belong on a notebook. You see, with even the slightest accidental stroke of the artist’s quill, the life on paper will no longer glide between the divots and stick of not-quite-so-dry ink, but become a smear of color in the specific dimension of paper and ideas, and, like everything else, blurred in the writer’s mind and thus made material in scribbles. And then, you see, what remains left for the man-god is but to examine the work before him and consider his position, sitting with a pen and paper, alone.

fuck you, ghost basket

Woah man, where am I?
I run my moist palm down my face. Why do I even do that? What good does it possibly do? Anyway, it's a ritual, an integral part of waking up on the floor and feeling like shit. Maybe it's action imitating emotion. Maybe it doesn't matter at all.

My stomach wakes up too. Making all sorts of gurgly noises. It's sloshing around some stale beer from last nite, hoping for some breakfast. Who knows what it really wants, though. Cuz my gut definitely just wants a cup of coffee.

Wait a couple of minutes, coffee or not, and my brain starts kicking into gear. Bad news bears for me though, because all it wants to do is sulk, long, or bring up a bunch of really nice things that are not longer possible.

It's all ghost pains, though. Makes no sense at all. I've got a pain in my gut and hole in my brain because I did what I knew was right.
Makes no sense.
I cut the threads that were keeping the picnic basket from falling off the edge of the cliff. It's a waste of red wine, but I was told not to cry over spilt liquids. Too late for that good advice, I guess.

Ghost pains. I couldn't get to the basket, but I knew there was some good shit in there, missing pieces of myself, good books, discovery, full course meals, and a lot of mind-blowing sex. Amazing that it could fit all in there. Suppressed giggles aside, and continuing with a really shitty metaphor, I knew full well that this basket wasn't well constructed, obviously made by a white person who thought they could do anything with the help of the internet. The basket was also full of poison, not down to the marrow of the thing, but sprinkled around on various amenities so you could never be too sure of what you were sinking your teeth into.

So yeah, SPLAT. Then came that feeling of vertigo, looking over the cliff, really considering the pros and cons of jumping after it. To the passerby it's obvious that the man on the edge of the cliff is fucking nuts, and he is, but the jump sure is attractive.

Makes no sense. It shouldn't hurt to let go of what I didn't have, but I guess you really don't have to touch someone to punch them in the gut and make them puke blood. I wonder what else you can do an ocean apart.

How's it going, man? Like hell, but still kickin'. Singin' lullabyes and spitting out my own teeth. Thinkin' about pain so much it makes me sound like the goth girl in middle school. I'm pretty sure I'm plagiarizing her work.

I'm going to keep on walking, not a clue where I'm going, 'can't feel my legs, totally half-smiling. Trying to be angry so I don't have to be sad, but anger isn't my nature, and sadness is usually what I have to work with. Nothing new there, I'll have my own damn picnic in fucking stormy, hot, late August. I'll be laughing while it's pouring, I'm not even worried about eating. I'm a child in a tantrum, but grown enough you can't stop me.

Oh yeah, and I'm glad you didn't hesitate to go back to your whore.
You've always been a gentleman, you piece of shit basket.

catch more flies with honey-mustard

*****

eddy takes another pull. "why does anybody care what rich people do??" he bellows. "I have four warrants and I build hot-air balloons in my yard..."
The boys will never know exactly what happened back at the complex, tho there was plenty of postulating. She-thought-we-were-after-her-credit-cards led to she-thought-we-was-disposin-somebody and finally to she-thought-we-found-the-body-she-disposed-of. No one guesses that the crack in the air, the little lightning that met just above their heads, it snapping down from Sal's window and welling up from the squishy roach-ridden dumpster. It bringing them to wince a split-second before actually hearing anything unusual. It being the force that inspired their panic and the force that inspired her cry. The sound itself serving only as alibi for their loss of balance and form, and of course they can't understand that they were met with a memory that was not theirs; of course they don't know they were just lightning rods. Of course they can't figure why the lady would scream like that.
They decided to hightail it home. None of 'em are rich enough to get bothered by cops (even tho eddy doesn't really have 4 warrants out) and the beer store's still open. Now they're trying to undo their encounter with Sal's memory (of some twit named Bernard) the only way they know how.
"...and soon enough I'll be dreamin' of a life I just finished every sundown"
Eddy gets incoherent sometimes. It's unpredictable, but so's lightning. Sometimes Mark writes down what he says for a laff the next day. They're at Eddy's house. It's clean in a messy way, devoid of hot-air balloons or balloon parts. The colors all seem to be dropping-off somehow, not changing or growing dim, rather falling into view from behind themselves, tipping into focus.
"brain-bleach, brother - where's Mooze at?"
Mark insists that you know you're good friends with someone when their drunken rambling works like a lullaby. He's dozing off, lit cigarette stuffed between the middle and ring fingers of his left hand. Pitz found a roll of duct tape and is busy setting fly traps around the room. Now Eddy's settled pretty well into watching him work, having come to accept Mark's habit like his parents told him to accept the Italian custom of belching loudly after a good meal. (He still hasn't witnessed an Italian doing that, and he suspects the "custom" might be a fable thought up and smuggled into popular knowledge by some old-fashioned racists. Eddy is sensitive to these things.).
Mark inhales and sits up sharply when the fire burns close to his fingers. He tries to take a drag but burns his throat, calling up a bit of wetness round his eyes. He puts out the butt, but not without dropping a pile of ashes into the carpet. He blinks slowly, watching Pitz watch. Kneeling on the floor like that, it almost looks like Pitz is praying with his eyes open or working a spell. Mark yawns and sez you catch more flies with honey-mustard before falling back to sleep.

There's no accounting for taste.

Somewhere in some DNA strand, or actually in every DNA strand I suppose, is some mistake inside of me. Not a mistake to the point that I'm necessarily handicapped... some people would say it's a blessing. That I'm not missing much, or that I'm lucky for the lack. And these DNA strands keep getting replicated into RNA, and float around to the right spot and make a new strand of DNA, but they keep fucking up over and over again. The same garbled code for type 2 taste receptors making my tongue wrong over and over again. As a test, I put phenylthiocarbamide and 6-n-propylthiouracil on my tongue, and nothing happens.

Some biology class in some distant memory is all crashing metal and flickering lights falling from the ceiling onto lab benches, while I sit there with some synthetic chemicals in my mouth. Everyone's running to bathrooms, water fountains, and sinks... panic ensues... and I sit numb, or not even numb, but just completely unaware of the gravity of the situation.

Banana and orange peels, coffee, beer, olives, tonic water... It's not like there's something missing to the flavor. There's not even a particular aspect of the taste to which I can point and figure, "That is where what I'm supposed to be tasting this." Taste isn't a place, or a quantity. No discrete measurements can convey complex chemical reactions. Literally, completely ignorant. Bitter truth, sorrow, enemies, words, criticism, tears, cold. Infinitely complex imaginary word associations, feelings, nuances, colors, and shades of colors. I'm ignorant. It's honestly not a big deal, really. It's just what it implies. Sour. Check. Savory. Check. Salty. Check. Sweet. Check. All very significant tastes... or at least significant to me. I can savor things. I've tasted sour grapes. I know what someone means when they say they're salty. I've tasted sweet. They all seem so important. But.. Bitter. Negative. Am I missing a lot? Can I say that outside is bitter cold without feeling like a charlatan or a symbol impostor? Can I even feel bitter if I've never tasted it?