LIL' THOUGHT BOMBS

MASKING TAPE i plaster

on a phony face a smile

devoid of meaning and

sincerity then i remove

it

no point

no point

habit keeps this facade

this forced conformity

repellent, anathema

no reason

no reason

care too little for

protocol to superimpose

this fallacy

mask of enthusiasm dies

under deadweight of truth

you see these eyes dead

balls of clay lodged in

my face the mask no longer

fits vitality will not

flicker on this screen

no effort

no effort

why lie to you?

myself?

today i found out about you

how you're just like every

one else i can't show my

eyes without betrayal of

their screaming weeping

wounded nakedness

EXIT singed

remnants of

this room

blasted hole

of my outgo

vapor trail

static lingers

electric pieces

of me i

cling to shards

of floorboard

of your consciousness

this burnt pile

of wreckage

simple seconds

mute exit

one bullet

one delusion

empty handed

empty chamber

buzzing after

glow my ghost

coagulates for

a look at the

carnage

no answers

no response

exit

just exit

just walk away

from all of this

HERE the pug

turns to the

diva and requests

a guesstimated

death toll

Copyright 1993 Shockbox Press, 2018 Molotov Editions

These lil' poems were part of a (lost) chapbook I did called THOUGHTBOMB 2462. Haven't seen it in years----if there's a master copy on my person I've sure not found it. Too bad, too, as it was kind of a fave. As you can see by the samples it all followed kind of a unified structure and I was kinda proud of it. The big centerpiece was this longish, self-indulgent poem called “Coffee Table Cerebellum Fugue”. “CTCF” was kind of a conscious tribute to a lot of the language-centered poets that were floating around the small press at the time---Sheila Murphy, John M. Bennett, Jake Berry and the like. I never really understood what most of them were getting at, but I liked it.

******

So on Social Media and elsewhere everyone is running around with their hair on fire what with Trumpy, Putin and the latest string of more-or-less token, symbolic Mueller “indictments”. I don't doubt there are some folks out there who are waiting for myself and others to eat some degree of crow, especially as I've been maintaining for quite a while, now, that Russiagate is a lot of bullshit fueled by wishful thinking.

You'll get this paltry concession out of me: It would seem as though we've ascertained that the origin of the DNC “hack” may, indeed have been Russia. And sorry, those of you who are waiting for handwringing, apologies, wailing and gnashing of teeth....but I'm unimpressed by all of this.

I mean, I know you're all panicking and life is terrible and your hair is on fire---and I know, democracy and woe is us and Trump and Putin are butt buddies, and we're going to share 800 shrill memes that express this, and TreasonTM and the Pee Pee tape that we JUST KNOW must exist somewhere, and...and...and....

….and then I shrug my shoulders and say, “well, if the Democrats hadn't RIGGED THEIR OWN PRIMARY....”

I basically don't care WHO was responsible for the DNC Leak----but I'm still glad it happened. We deserve that transparency and we deserve the truth.

And since this whole “who leaked the leak?” business is settled (as far as we know), whaddya say we put the horse back in front of the cart for the first time in a year and change and deal with the REAL issue at hand, which is the one I've been screaming about for a very long time, now?

Namely, (yes) that THE DEMOCRATS RIGGED THEIR OWN PRIMARY. End of discussion. Good night. Mic drop.

And I know you're going to say, “NO, Chuck, NO! That's not important right now, because TRUMP, and because Rachel Maddow, and because the pee-pee tape! And Look, Chuck, LOOK! MEMES!!!!”

And then I say, no----and your insistence that it doesn't matter makes you the world's worst hypocrite. I mean, I get it---you're concerned (and you might not be wrong) about democracy and how bad foreign actors might compromise our ability to have free and fair elections. To which I'll reply once again....THE. GOD. DAMN. DEMOCRATS. RIGGED. THEIR. OWN. PRIMARY. Thereby proving that we don't HAVE free and fair elections.

Now, where was I....? OH. YEAH. Mic Drop.

I've heard further protestations that the Democrats did nothing that was technically “illegal”---unethical, maybe, but not illegal. And my response to that would be, if you're going to engage in apologetics for unethical behavior, then you don't stand a chance when illegal comes down the pike.

And I'm sure there are those of you who are nonplussed by all of this. “But....but....TRUMP!!!!! Life was hunky dory in the good ole US of A until November 2016! It's the worst time ever in history!”

To which I say, the Rape of Nanking called. They want you to keep it the hell down. They're trying to sleep.

Clean your own damn house, #McResistance....then we'll talk.

THISWEEK'S PLAYLIST:

1. GENE LOVES JEZEBEL-Promise
2. THE DAMNED-Evil Spirits
3. THE DAMNED-Strawberries

ENTRY

The story in this entry was "Hannibal Shooting Fish in a Bucket".

         “Hannibal Shooting Fish in a Bucket” is part of what I call “The Brookdale Cycle” or “The Extended Brookdale Mythos”----which is my fancy-ass way of saying it's a handful of short stories that revolve kinda loosely around my first novel, HELLO, UGLY and its setting, the fictional town of Brookdale, New Hampshire. Most of the stories center around two characters, either Old Man Delprete (who's referenced in the book but who's long-since out of the picture and faded into local legend by the time the action of the book takes place) and this story's subject, Mike Hannibal.

Hannibal is really just a peripheral character in HELLO---in a book whose main characters tend to be marginalized misfit kids, Hannibal is the kind of unpleasant worm burner that even those misfits are wary of. For whatever reason I found Hannibal to be an interesting enough character to where I revisited him in a couple of different stories. The other story, which is one of the single ugliest stories I've ever written, is relatively recent and I'm still shopping it around to potential publishers----hence you're not gonna see it in this blog anytime soon. I briefly brought “Hannibal Shooting Fish” back into circulation recently and what you're reading is a slight rewrite of the story I was peddling around in the early '90s, but hell with it---no avail----stick a fork in it----it's done.

This particular story picks up after the action in HELLO, UGLY where Hannibal is an adult. He's hanging with a gang of friends and acquaintances but as per usual, he sticks out like a sore thumb.

I think what I was getting at with the shooting of fish and then Hannibal getting sick on seafood at the end of the story was your basic stock Christ symbology---I played with a lot of religious ideas and imagery at that time and I think what I was shooting for was a picture of Hannibal's actions as a “rejection of Christ”....although “Christ”, such as it is here, is more a supernatural proxy for general morality, human decency or just good things in general. I'm not particularly religious and this is not a religious story, per se. Pretty much just a character sketch---one unsavory individual doing stupid shit. Theater of the Irrational.

THIS WEEK'S PLAYLIST:
THE S.E. APOCALYPSE KREW-"RISE" (plug, plug)
STARCRAWLER-S/T
RUSH-"MOVING PICTURES"

CIRCA MID '90S

THAT'S HOW THEY GETCHA

and so i'm slamming away on the
assembly line packing books in
boxes--i've got it down to a system,
now--fitting in configurations of five
like clockwork--it took me a while
to get the hang of it but here i am
slogging away for the next three
hours---wiley is falling behind after
showing me a few useful tricks and
i'm impressed by my increasing level of success--
--rat in the proletarian maze of industry,
hammering away on pointless activities run
by a clock---it gets boring, naturally,
so i turn it into a private game,
exceeding wiley's progress and as i get better
and better i'm thinking, i've gotcha,
wiley, you old fart, i've really
gotcha, i'm catching up to your slow
old ass--then i realize, hell, i'm
a rube of the first order--i fell
for the game, hook, line and
dead brain cells--that's how you
become a cog in their machine;
that's how they getcha.



HOW CHRISTIAN OF YOU!

the graffiti in the bathroom
read, "let God show you fuckin'

fags the way home...
                               ...Hell"




WHY I HATE TV TALK SHOWS

the bleachers are packed with a greek chorus
of screeching baboons and barking dogs
exercising loud righteous indignation,
braying hellacious disapproval and
otherwise passing judgment on guests who
look differently, act differently, dress
differently, raised some hell, broke some
rules, fucked someone, killed someone,
dared to do ANYTHING
            but stay home and watch TV.




Copyright 1995, 1996, 2018 Molotov Editions

         In my last several months in Nashua, NH I was living in this slum for about $100 a week. I had quit my 14 year hotel job in a 3-month master plan to cash in my 401(k) and relocate to Arkansas. In the months while I was waiting for that money to get cut loose I was frequenting this fly-by-night temp agency around the corner, who would bus us all out to this book binding plant in Westford, Mass. They paid you by the day and a neighborhood bar down the street would cash the checks. After I left the state my Mom told me that agency had folded up as if it were never there. No huge surprise. These poems are some of my output from around that time.



THIS WEEK'S PLAYLIST:
STARCRAWLER-S/T
OMD-DAZZLE SHIPS
COM TRUISE-ITERATION