Serpent Tongue

I am at church you understand, and sitting in the seats next to this old, loud, boozy sot, and I turn to him and say, “I’m getting out of here. This is the fucking People’s Temple all over again.”

So I go outside and the traffic is bad. I’m in Texas, dig, and there must be some sort of festival going on because the streets are full of people milling about, moving slowly, an Exodus of worshippers perhaps. And so I follow the crowd, but I begin to understand they are headed to a Catholic church, and I’m not Catholic, so I blow and go back inside.

My family is at the Catholic church, I understand.

Someone tells me this.

I’m not sure why I believe them.
***
I’m hungry, I notice.

I’m looking for that free meal.

So this preacher, who is some young cult leader wired like Jim Jones and all these guys, is sitting behind a desk, and the room is filled with his thugs. This guy is some sort of major criminal. He has a jar with a python in it.

He holds the jar against my face, but I sit there and take it. What else can I do? He unscrews the lid, slowly, and the damn thing shoots out, biting him on the back.

He pulls the serpent away from him, fondling it lovingly in his hands. The mouth of this serpent is enormous. It could swallow infants whole. He suddenly thrusts the thing between his legs, and now he has an enormous, writhing snake-cock. It might be dripping semen, or poison, for all I know, but I don’t want to stick around and find out. I make a run for it. Outside, I join a procession of mendicants all trudging toward the great Catholic cathedral that is somewhere in the hot bowels of the city.

Next thing I know I’m on stage. Writhing around, unleashing my serpent power. Bestial, I bite into my microphone. I pull back my hand and taste a mouthful of wires. Someone yells something insulting. The lights go up. The world spins on.

Flying Saucer Creep

She’s fucking the cop dig? Or, he is raping her, one or the other. We stand at the back window with our mouths hanging open, low smiles playing on our lips. I still have drugs in my sock. I realize it is going to be a long night.

“Are they fucking?” I ask. I could plainly see that the Man in Black was humping her righteously, and she must have been enjoying it because there was no struggle. We had been moving across the alley toward a parking lot, and the drugs were in my sock. Like, why did I have to carry ‘em? But I guess that’s the way it goes when you’re young and in love.

Me and the Tall Boy decided to make a run for it. Hell, the cop might not even be human. He got out of his cruiser, and we were standing there about to piss our pants, and he reels around like he is drunk and can barely breathe. Maybe he is one of the Men in Black. I have read John Keel. I have read The Mothman Prophecies, and Operation: Trojan Horse, and The EighthTower, and Our Haunted Planet, and Disneyland of the Gods. They were all righteous books. I could dig that the Men in Black and other flying saucer creeps are said to stumble around like drunkies and be unable to breathe Earth air easily. Not human. That was it. This cop was a fucking flying saucer creep.

Extreme Volume Pop – “DADA” (Extract 1)

Class Dismissed

The German smacks the chalkboard with withering contempt,
shuffling papers for the holiday,
while outside everything is slate cold and black settles down
to pitch night when the children are let out of cages;
little monsters smoke and drop hints that violence
will begin to blossom like a cruel flower from the mouth of the dog that has just bit my leg.

(and we pressurize the hydrocephalic, and we pull the desk backward to reveal the heathen youth, possessed of madness, muttering to himself the falsehoods of the Trade, and somewhere, in an auditorium of the absurd, the Devil has reserved a seat to the right and left of him…)

Nothing is necessary no more. I hate this hell reserved for me, where cruelty waits on tip of female tounge as dirty fingers flick ash on the pavement. Where am I? How did I get to be here? in this callous world of so many hallways and classrooms, screaming out from the black void of regulation stomp, as I know I will never fit into the precise geometric angles of the diagram?

I can’t learn this language. it is cold and merciless and trapped in a frozen moment where rape gives way to yearning.

Tarzan in the undersea world of the animals. A dog with a bowl-like lip. Chickens clucking in the yard. Outside, a bird is screaming deceit.

Georgia

Red sunset swirls color of old orange flames as the car dives between the line.
Hostages to fortune cower in the backseat.
When will night fall?
Draining the dusty throat on broken glass bottle that the mop man picks up,
After stone cold negro trance mutters with broken lip savoir faire “Hey muthafucka, hey.”
Cleaning the muck of the floor and sliding the peppers down your throat,
and heat curls like an untamed cobra into your armpits,
And the darkness in here is broken by jukebox titterings and rumble of
old pinball games as we slide tables together for pool of food.
But outside. OUTSIDE. The psychopath leers into the peach sunset. Peach, peach, everything is peach. The sky is peach, the earth is peach, the dusty old eighteen wheel monster silhouetted against the rays of flame is peach. Where are we going, sliding over the pitted, cratered surface of this non-terrestrial world, and you tell me about hotels in outer space?
This mission is over.
All color has been drained to pink.
The heat is all we have left, and the sunset.

A Dream of Paradise

Okay, so this is the way it went down.

We were in love. Now, I know that sounds hokey and everything but it was true; I was head-over-heels in love with this dame, and as far as I was concerned she could do no wrong. She was a real warrior woman, standing tall and erect, and why in the world she had some sort of fascination for a guy like me I’ll never know, but there it was.

Anyway, we were living in some sor tof magical kingdom. No, I don’t mean the one in Orlando. I mean, we were living in some sort of place where magic and the supernatural are taken for granted. It seemed to be a spiritualist camp or religious commune, but it was staffed mainly by older people, while the younger folks wandered around in Dungeons and Dragons costumes being hippies. I know this all sounds strange but you wanted to hear the story, right?

So here I am, dressed like some sort of Teutonic knight, and I am running across this field, and Warrior woman is with me and the sun is beaming and I yell and I end up writing back to my aunt that I have finally found Middle Earth. The Warrior Woman and I know it is love at first sight, and nature seems to thank us as we crawl down deep into aq bosom of soft romance amid the tall grasses and sweeping majestic wheat of the old fields.

But this is only the outskirts of the camp, and inside is where the weird fun happens. Right away I can see that everyone around me is like a character from some fantastic novel; they are all dressed like elves, leprechauns, wandering adventurers, shit like that. The elders of the camp laugh at us from behind their withered old hands, but they leave us alone. We are the Next Generation, the ones that will be taking over the reigns, so to speak, when the old ones go off into the next dimension or whatever they do. So I am a soldier again, and I’m sleeping in these Eastern European barracks with a bunch of gromy medieval soldiers, and someone explains to me that this place is “Maintained by the counsel for any group of soldiers that just happens to be passing through.”

So maybe orcs and hobgoblins have slept here. Maybe.

Anyway, she (Warrior Woman) was there, and I can see just by the look on her face that she has no intention of two-timing me with any of these soldiers, so I feel a sharp tack of relief. Maybe that is an odd way to put it.

At any rate, we go on like this for a little while, me getting to know her fantasy hippie friends better, and all the while becoming a leaner, meaner guy, the kind of guy that really cuts an impressive figure wherever he goes. So after awhile we are all friends, and we have all shared the magic, and now I am dressed like some Dungeons and Dragons fantasy hippie, and all of a sudden Warrior Woman (who is unquestionably mine) gets the bright idea that we need to undergo some sort of special test or ritual to prove the loyalty of our friends.

So we are gathered in a kind of central park, surrounded by the buildings that actually make up the camp, and she says, “You know, what we need to do is build a castle out of wood. Then, when we have everyone gathered together, we will set the building on fire. Then we’ll see who comes to rescue us. Whadya think?”

I said I thought it sounded groovy, but, inside, I wasn’t really hep to the idea of sitting in a burning building witing for a bunch of pasty wannabe adventurers to come and save my ass. In reality I thought that sounded like a Really Bad Idea.

No matter. Construction on the fire palace began almost immediately, and I had to wonder where they found curved wood to use for the towers. Anyway, I had no intention of going through with it, but one night there was some sort of initiation which I can barely remember save that it was the entire camp assembled and Warrior Woman and I joined hands and there were people holding candles and we raised the cone of power and then everything blanks out…and I knew I was a part of it then, body and spirit, and that I damn sure would go through with it.

After all, hadn’t I met Warrior Woman while patrolling the old fields around the camp, dressed like one of the Kaiser’s own, screaming to the high heavens to bring me an enemy so I could spill its blood? Yes, indeed, the way it was, and it was this ferocious savagery that first one me the heart of Warrior Woman.

So after the initiation I started to realise that the hallways and stairways of the Fire Palace were all hobbit-sized, and that it was going to be a problem for some of these guys to get up and down them, and even worse, it was going to be a problem for us to get out of there when the whole place went up in smoke.

For some reason, though, I couldn’t let that trouble me unduly.

So we met a guy that I use to know who worked for a tobacco company, and he shakes my hand, and says “Tom and I are well-acquainted. You’re looking good, Tom.”

In truth, I was feeling good, too. Middle Earth (the camp, whatever) had been good for me, and I could feel the magic of the place rubbing off, making me over into a new being. Hell, I liked everything about it (especially Warrior Woman), liked the folksy peace of it, liked the power and tranquil majesty of the place and the fact that it seemed like anything, I mean, anything, was possible there.

So we all headed out on a highway somewhere, and I wasn’t even sure what sort of vehicles we were driving, and I was pretty upset that we seemed to be leaving Middle Earth. Maybe we were just patrolling the outer territories, though.

It was a long country road, punctuated by telephone poles, and it seemed to go off into the distance forever. We were obviously riding on Mad Max motorcycles.

I remember thinking that Warrior Woman looked to be getting younger and younger, and I wondered just how old she was, because I had never bothered to ask her her age. I wondered of she was even old enough to vote yet, but then my attention was arrested by the messages being beamed over the telephone lines as we sped down the highway.

It was just a vision, but what a vision it was. A giant, fat Venus, with arms like snakes, writhing in ecstasy as she played with a rubber dong. I know, it didn’t make any sense to my either, but there it was. I guess all things serve the will of the Goddess, especially on the outskirts of Middle Earth.

So there was this television actor in one of our hotel rooms, and he was the star of this particularly famous science fiction show that aired about fifteen years ago. And he was in a real pissed-off mood.

I remember he was lying in bed, and I had a box he carried along with him. In the box were a number of discs of his television program, and there was also an odd device that I took to be a prop. Except, when I laid it on the bed, he informed me that it was, in reality, a phone. I remember feeling really embarrassed, and later he sat up in bed and began to strum the mandolin for my benefit.

So anyway his television character appears and they start rapping about how they lost the hearing in one ear, and the actor says it happened at some fictional battle that occurred only within the confines of the box and I am confused but I follow them anyway.

Next, I was trimming lawn for miles…

The Dance

Life is a shuffle; life is a little dance.

Some of us take big steps, sweep around the floor, and make fools of ourselves. Or, distinguish ourselves, depending upon your point of view. Some of us are content to merely tip-toe around, distracting ourselves with the fact that we are moving at all, making time to the music that only we can hear.

Some of us are wallflowers, and we sit in the corner and stare at the other dancers, content to live vicariously through the movements of others. I think that most folks fall into this latter category, and that is not wrong. Nothing wrong about it. It’s just the way things are.

But there is a silent music to life, a sort of frequency that only we can hear, and which every one of us tunes in just a little bit different than the last person. To some the tune speaks rage, to others loss, to still others triumphant joy and pure harmony, but whatever your music says to you, you dance to the rhythm of your heart, and you do the best you can.

But, one day the music stops, the credits roll, and we are left with only the memories of times gone by and dances begun but never finished. We try to waltz around the room on crippled legs, moving to a tune grown fainter and fainter, as the rest of the dancers shuffle out of the ballroom to take up their places outside, in infinity, where the music is always the same.

We can whistle past the bone yard but can we dance past it, kicking our legs into the air to spite the dirty fingers of death as he clutches our minutes to his loveless bosom? I’m not sure that I can. My dance has petered out until all I am doing is shuffling in the shadows, counting down the minutes until the ballroom closes and the partiers are asked to split. I am trying to find my footsteps again, but it is not easy. Some say the sky’s the limit when it comes to dancing, that you’re only as young as you feel and once you get that body moving again, well, it’s just like riding a bicycle: once you know how, you never forget. I’m not sure all those people aren’t born maniacs or liars.

Because age weighs on you. Time weighs on you. You watch as, one by one, lines start to split your face apart like a road map, and the fat moves in on your body, and you are no longer young and lean and ready to take action, to take charge of that dance floor. You are old and withered and your legs barely work, and that man in the corner with the dance diagram may laugh at you and call you a few polite names but you can’t help it…you’ve forgotten where to plant the footsteps,a nd your partner ran out on you long ago.

But, no matter the music, no matter the weight in your legs or the pain in your back, you can still manage to do a little dance. To make a little time to the music. To cut a rug and show the whippersnappers how it is done. I know this to be true. Because I dance to the rhythm of a life with no music, no movement, no sound or fury. Yet I dance.

When I drink my coffee, I dance.

When I eat breakfast at six o’ clock in the morning, feeling the stuff nourish me and send me back from the brink of despair, I dance.

I am dancing while I am writing these words. It is hard to keep my fingers attached to the keyboard.

When I read a good book, it is like dancing.

When I write down a particularly vivid dream, it is also dancing.

I spin constantly in the still moments of my life. I am like a hundred dancers, all rocking to the internal beat, and maybe no one else can hear the music, and maybe everyone else will think that I am quite mad, but I continue to dance.

Without romance, I dance.

Without a future, I dance.

Even in the grip of my most intimate despair, I am still dancing, still moving to that old internal rhythm, still looking forward to that day when I will be joined, like a vision or a waking dream, by a hundred other dancers all ready to join in my particular madness.

So dance the mysterious dance of life. Because you already are, whether you realize it or not.

Iris Dement – “Our Town”

Dying for a Smoke

Today I am dying for a smoke. I have no way to go and get any, as the car is in the garage and it is too cold and dark to walk to the gas station. I am wearing one of those Nicorette patches, and that seems to be helping a little, but the addiction is still strongly calling to me. Kids, I want to caution you to never start smoking. It is a filthy habit that will eat up your time, money, and health and leave you with nothing in return. That said, I feel like I would crawl through a jungle right now to get a cigarette. The craving is just so intense, so severe. Sigh.

J.J.’s Dream

“Hey, how in the hell did I manage to get here?”

The girl, who was dressed like a farm boy from 1933, looked surprised, shrugged her shoulders, and said “Don’t ask me mister. Does it look like I have all the answers?”

“Yeah, but it’s preposterous.”

“Maybe so. So is my predicament.”

“Okay, how much are we talking? I tail your husband, and what do I get out of it?”

She looked like the cat that just got the cream, and said, “I got all the money you need right here. Take a look-see.”

She hefted a wad of greenbacks out of her belt. The shmoe sitting next to her smiled a wide, toothsome, sharkskin grin, and revved the engine of the car. J.J. turned around in bed, stared at the wall, and realized his operatives were standing beside him, all lined up like ducks at a shooting gallery.

“Woodbine…Corsoe…Krebbs…Jeez, am I sure glad to see you guys. Hey. You mind telling me how my bed came to be resting out here at the side of the highway?”

Krebbs shook his shoulders, chewed gum, and looked faintly disinterested.

“It’s a mystery. You’re the detective, boss. You tell us.”

“Okay, okay, I can see you fellas aren’t going to be any help.” He turned back to the girl in the passenger seat of the car. She was still holding out the wad of money, fanning it in his face, as if to say Betcha can’t resist the temptation of all this green, sucker.

He damn well couldn’t, either.

“Okay, I’ll think about it.”

“Think real hard toots. Think real hard, but don’t let it, you know, overtax that big beautiful brain of yours. I need that brain to work for me.”

“Your husband, the pervert?”

“Let’s just say I want to know why he has such an interest in Little League Baseball games.”

“Geez, guy must be a real monster,” said J.J., and pulled the covers up to his chin, staring at a ceiling that seemed to fade into night sky. A car raced by them in the gathering gloom.

“Eh, maybe he just likes baseball,” said Krebbs. Corsoe and Woodbine remained predictably silent, and after a few minutes J.J. noticed they had vanished. Possibly, they were off on errands.

Krebbs popped a monster bubble. J.J. looked down at himself and suddenly realized that he was fully dressed.

“How did that happen? I was in my pajamas and all of a sudden–”

The girl in the passenger seat laughed.

“You’d think, with a life like yours, you’d get used to little surprises. You seem to be a walking contradiction in terms.”

J.J. felt himself grow annoyed.

“Just what’s that supposed to mean?”

“You’re the detective. You figure it out.”

“You got a smart mouth on you. One of these days, some lucky punk is gonna come along, smack it right off.”

The shmoe sitting behind the wheel (who looked an awful lot like some old film actor J.J. couldn’t remember) said, “Hey, show the lady a little respect, why dontcha?”

J.J. held out one long finger, and saw that there was a pair of glasses balanced perfectly on the end. He scowled; he didn’t wear glasses.

“How’d those get there?”

“Oh brother,” the girl laughed, a sound somewhat the equivalent of a claw being raked across a blackboard, “for a detective you sure seem to be in the dark about a lot of things! Glasses, silly, so you can see things clearly.”

“But I don’t wear glasses. Anyway, as I was gonna say, I’ll show her respect when she shows me some. As of right now, I am pretty damn close to just rolling my bedroom out of here and back to my apartment, where things continue to make sense in the old-fashioned way. One more wiseacre crack out of this chippy and you can call the whole stinking thing off!”

The girl whistled deep and low.

“Temper, temper, Mister Professional. Now, all I want to know is: are we doing business, or aren’t we?”

J.J. got out of bed, paced around a little, looked at his shoes (which were black and white wingtips), stuck his hands in his pockets, considered the running scar at the end of his nose, and said, “Alright. You got a picture of the galoot?”

The girl smiled, fished in her belt, and withdrew a glossy black and white.

“Surely do.” She handed over the photo. J.J. took it, scanned it briefly, and handed it to Krebbs.

Krebbs took the photo in one gnarled hand, continued to chew his gum reflectively, and handed it back.

“Looks like a real hardcase, Boss. I mean, what a gorilla.”

“I know, I know: a face only a mother could love. Say, what is it you see in this clown, anyway?”

The girl shrugged. The car revved. The driver smiled.

“He makes me happy is all. And I have to know what he’s been up to behind my back. Here, take this. That ought to be enough to get you started.”

J.J. took the huge wad of money, spread it out in two hands in front of his face, fought down the urge to kiss it, and then said, “Thanks. That’s generous. That’ll be enough to cover any expenses I incur during the length of this investigation. Krebbs, have Delia bring in one of our standard contracts.”

Krebbs disappeared through the bedroom door as sirens went by in the distance. The door opened again and Krebbs was followed by a stout young woman wearing overalls and carrying a serving tray. J.J. goggled. This was not Delia. This was the waitress at the café down the street.

“Krebbs I said ‘Delia’ NOT ‘Delta.’ This is Delta, Krebbs.”

Krebbs looked apologetic. “Sorry Boss, I just get those two confused all the time.”

The girl in the passenger seat erupted into a torrent of profanity shocking enough to peel paint off the walls. It caught J.J. by surprise, as it was all aimed at Delta. It was pretty apparent that the girl who had just hired him didn’t like Delta one little bit.

“You get that stinking whore out of my face right this instant, or I’ll jump out of this car and claw her eyes out!”

Delta, who had a sad little face most of the time, looked surprisingly defiant, as if she were about to drop the serving tray and get herself into an old-fashioned catfight. J.J. was having none of it, and put his arm out again, pointing at his new client.

“You, now, you’re going to show her just the same amount of respect as you’re going to show me, or this whole deal is off!”

The girl in the car spit. Her face was seven miles of ugly terrain. Her eyes flashed defiant hatred.

“I don’t show respect to whores and tramps; I don’t have to. This is a free country and a decent one. You want to buddy around with back-alley trash like this, it’s your call me bucko. As for me, I calls ‘em like I sees ‘em.”

Curiouser and curiouser, thought J.J.

The alarm clock called an end to the meeting.