Delirious as a blowtorch and begotten in the luminosity of love — This is the infamous out-of-orbit literary journal that delivers storytelling fit for a gathering around fire. Home to unpredictable fiction, revealing personal essays, bitter social assessments, subversive hymns, underwater obscenities, uplifting bad news, veiled confessions, hints of the erotic… And maybe even some dicey advice.
I enjoy the smell of blue Play-Doh it reminds me of childhood wounds so give me a piano bar and let me sigh eternally amongst the dark, doldrums beat where man is nothing but an enclave, a water dish for God’s mighty piss it’s time machine day watch all the lovers fall forward into another happy moment of ashes on carrots and whimpering in designer hallways tape these bleeders closed I’m leaking to much embryonic fluid I will never forgive the doctors for letting me live they should have stabbed me when they had the chance rhythm isn’t all that and why is my cigarette all wet she must have sucked on it too long like a crimson call of the balls a jungle gym for her hands and mouth and what is it all about when the pressure rises and the beat rises and the teeth chatter and the hands shake and all you want to do is pound! pound! pound! every senseless array of light pound it into the ground and play blind man on the street corner with a couple of dimes and a couple of cobs of corn to boil in a pot of your own soul
Forget history forget the curds and whey forget the memories of your lullabies let me rephrase that — there is never any hope in love when you’re banging the drums on Skyline Drive shooting asphalt high in her eyes it’s a rhythm that means nothing except to her unfaithful hips her hungry lips the javelin rodent prays to Mary the metal plate in his skull sends messages to his doldrums let me feel your hair, come sit on my lap come swallow shotgun shells at sunset and watch cowgirls on Texas junk
Do the mice really care how intricate the tapestries in Babylon are? Does anyone care that Teddy bears aren’t real? What is the basis of all our motives what grips the brass ring in your belly? The tug of a lover the tug of a memory the tug of a prophecy dialing up in your brain making you spit down the drain where is my lumber? where is my sword? step aside whilst I stricken you with damage who will care for the bloody mouth who will stare at the red wine running south who will submit to my need and not be forsaken because of it???
The boy from the refrigerator was perched upon a steel beam like a vulture high above them in the old shoe factory. His slick black hair was more slick than usual. The dead eyes of alien blue that punctuated his pale face swirled like a spiral arm galaxy as he looked down at them. He cocked his head in an odd manner as he listened to them talk beneath him. Adam Longo recognized the boy as one of them that was there when they locked him in the old refrigerator that day. He was one of them that held him roughly by the arms as they led him down into the pit of the dump. The girl was someone he recognized from that school he knew as his living hell. She was the one he stared at when she wasn’t looking. She was the one he thought about at the closing of the day when he would lie atop his bed in his quiet room at home. She was his only good memory.
Then Adam Longo recalled how the other one, the red-haired one, their leader, had laughed without remorse, how he had gotten right in his face and said something like, “Are your balls all shriveled up… Is that why you don’t ever talk?” His breath was overpowering. Rusty was his name. He hated Rusty. And now here was one of his rooks and that girl thinking they were all alone in this immense place lost in time. He thought about leaping out into the air and floating down and he would come upon them in a fury of revenge. He could do that now. Something drastically changed after he went into that refrigerator unwillingly. Sheer human cruelty had given him a power he never expected.
Veronica took a step back from him. “You were part of that?” she wanted to know.
Andy paused for a moment. “I was against it.”
“But you still allowed it to happen.”
Andy looked up and sighed with frustration.
“What!?” the girl snapped. “You’re angry because I’m upset you let a boy get locked in a refrigerator? He could have died.”
Andy bent down and picked up a metal rod and tossed it into the void. It tumbled and clanked loudly. “Why are you getting bent out of shape? Let’s just get high.”
“I think I want to go home,” Veronica said.
Andy’s demeanor suddenly changed, and he grabbed her by the shoulders. “What’s your problem?”
“Let go of me!”
He pushed her away and turned. “Fine. Do what you want,” he said, and he started to walk away.
She called after him. “Where are you going?”
“Just go home,” he called back, and then, like the sudden snap of a bone, something fell from above and was on top of him. It attacked him with the ferocity and conviction of an angel bred by animals, and the boy struggled and shrieked as he was mercilessly beaten and clawed.
In the epilogue of the boy’s torn moans, a panting Adam Longo turned to look at her through the dim light. He was mystically aglow, and his gaze froze her in place, and like in a dream she struggled to run but her legs refused to receive and follow the command. Veronica had no control over her own self now and could only watch in wonder as the figure stood. He was just a boy, but nothing like a real boy. He looked down at Andy twitching on the dirt-strewn floor of the factory. Then he looked up, toward the place from where he came, and he suddenly ascended in a completely inhuman way.
Her legs became free from their dream burden and Veronica ran toward the lighted frame of the doorway they had entered. She burst into the outside world and leapt down the iron stairway, past the loading bays and toward the hole in the chain-link fence. She scrambled through, a piece of metal bit into the top of her shoulder and she winced as she dove into the sea of weeds and tall grasses on the other side. She went for her bike, lifted it up and got on. She pedaled toward town with an urgency and fear she never knew she could possess.
Once she was long gone, her scent and heartbeat now carried away to the place where the terrible people were, Adam Longo curled into himself for comfort and warmth as he perched on the wide beam. He watched the day turn to night through the broken factory windows. Living had been lonely enough he thought as his eyes set on the few stars he could see, but now, now this, whatever it was, whatever he now had become. It was lonelier than death itself — lonelier than the dirt piled upon the lost ones.
Zombie in sweatpants jogging in the ghetto arms stuck out lean and mean cold soles slapping the greasy street and my little girl thought she had just escaped from the cylinder, the bilingual, the catastrophic farm of listless stones the graveyard a cold and misty day cold and teary and smelling of sludge who was to judge the importance of the non-potable headache swimming in my tender sockets man, I am a rambling’ like some loose-geared jalopy on the old road, but I found a letter to the dead full of things left untold
I and my two cases of flesh and blood we stormed the dam doodled in the cool, green waters of some lake that is really a pond, but in an area where water is practically non-existent even a pinprick of piss is considered a lake, but we clambered the slick geometrical stone the water skimming off the surface flushed through the portals and we shook on our balances feeling the fluttery wings in our bellies as we did ballet on the precipice of the sun in our eyes clutching hands skipping stones hopping logs and life was a memory of ice cream dripping down sticky baby faces and now they were being brave and curious and interested in the lives of the dead
We climbed a hill shagged it rotten like cotton candy between the legs of an angel and at the top of the hill we found a flat, gravely place I wanted to name the place Ashley because it looked burnt and turned over and all that remained was the ashes of destruction and great piles of tumbled trees and mountains of unraveled gravel and off behind us was a fence a chain-link fence topped with rusting barbed wire and beyond the fence acres of dead — it was a cemetery and the fence encircling it was cluttered with the debris of loved ones’ tokens, tokens of love tokens of regret plastic and paper flowers rolling in the wind candied tumbleweeds smashed against the wire and in this lot called Ashley I found a letter in a plastic bag and the words were intact and all a hush fell about my brood as I began to read to them this letter to the dead
It was a mom speaking to a daughter and from the letter I gathered the daughter’s life had come to an end in a most tragic way suicide it seemed perhaps gunfire or violence extreme and in the letter the mother was very weepy very weepy and full of regrets regrets, weeping and wondering why why? why? why? dear daughter why did you have to die so, I felt kind of bad that this piece of weepy sad writing was like litter in an open field and my youngest slice of flesh and blood my youngest elixir of greed and breed wanted to comb the graveyard to find the stone of the girl in the letter but there was only a first name — SHARON and how could I find one Sharon in a field of thousands of dead and so, I simply put the letter still encased in its plastic over the edge of the fence believing the wind would carry it back, back to the place it belongs and we felt better for that and we carried on with our journey watching the jogging zombie sweat through her velour and the world smelled dirty and the sky was gray and Sharon was free and so were we
This frustration of motion this inept spinning of my tangled web all the deceptions we weave all the arrows we sling at ourselves when there is no reason and I am empty without her as lovers fill the home and I still spark the sunset bewildered and alone
I come from a place not known a high hill tucked far away behind the sugar plants and the factories belching out babies in bleached Red Radio Flyers bleached by the sun bleached by the burn of innocence aged and I am an astronaut floating untethered a radio-free lamp ray looking for a light bulb to suck and swirl
I came upon a disillusion a fair lady needing to escape and I have the power at my foot but I am empty and frayed for love is a magic trick something splayed secretly in the shadows and I have knife points in my heart slowly choking on the trickle a scissor slice an orange wave salting the wound and when I am brought down by Paris will I ever be enough?
Where has my patience gone where has the image in the mirror dissolved to and the bottle keeps me warm as I pace restlessly in a chill and maybe when I meet God I’ll just come out and ask her when is love ever real?
So nothing ever works out as planned you see winds up being just Gallo and me my empty need raining through the moon sparks dripping off the razor’s edge and me bleeding helplessly until she comes to me but my fate is drowning so stop being so pained and jealous but I can’t help the shiver inside that nervous twitch of wonder left adopted by the night sweats so why don’t I just give in and count all my blessings in disguise?
I am not an iron cross I am not a thermostat so what am I? the unexplainable the paintable tab in a ghost story the sexed up frolic on a smooth hardwood floor come on give me a moment to explain my reckless stance and I know I feel too much baby broken clouds weep my name
I don’t understand maybe I don’t need to understand this ritual of disturbances I just want to care
I could tell when I walked in the door that I was motionless moving some parade of wrecked divinity caught off guard by the sizzle frying my heart an empty line an empty space a tent stake forced through my handicapped resistance I don’t want to feel the shock again of another love left abandoned just whisper to yourself it’s all right it’s just life it will all end someday soon
So fuck this feeling game it will never be the same I’ll always be capsized my soul is a hurricane aimed directly at myself and I am not some Wizard of Oz with a magic touch and spit my road isn’t yellow brick I’m getting sick in a Denver trash can you can see how my madness wanes then comes back again in waves I’m just crazy about her sticky needles in the haze I’m just a camel with no Baghdad a radio-free lamp ray electrifying the endless sea.
You invented love like dragons spit fire the longing when you are gone, is an immediate reaction I’m drawn to your eyes I’m drawn to the night the full vibrato of darkness the stars splashed so randomly across the universe we can touch them if we try
Candles melt away so quickly here this otherworld, this neverwhere We are a collision of chemistry wrapped in coils of electricity The ache of our day becomes the joy of our night empty wine glasses and ghosts the bluest tears, the reddest blood
The valve has been wrestled loose the drips drop incessantly throughout the house Impenetrable venom impenetrable malaise Someone broke the switch on the furnace and it’s coughing up hot laughing gas and I choke on my own experiences Am I sad? Am I happy? Am I a supernova, Or just merely a simple star, blinking randomly from within this skull of space?
Am I a colored moon peacefully napping with a nightcap perched upon my point Or am I a black hole, sucking on everything that exists? Or am I merely a chemical byproduct that sits in an empty room, waiting for night to pass and day to begin, when I can talk to you and feel my heart thunder against the world
But sometimes, I just want to be a rocking chair, swaying gently amidst the dust of a long-gone grandparent’s den, listening to the easy tick of the clock on the mantle, watching the footsteps fade deeper into the carpet, waiting for the sounds and smells of a childhood lost forever lost in the woods of autumn, across the icy bridge of winter, into the wet grass of spring and along the thick dreams of summer on some Midwestern small-town porch
And so, when do dreams end and reality begin? When is night’s finale and day’s birth? One fluid sweep of time and the Earth still tilts and I still stare at the ceiling, catching glimpses of you in my mind’s eye the baby’s breath in my fist falls, landing in a blanket of fresh snow, you pull up into the white gravel and I can see your smile through the windshield my heart still rattles as the sun breaks through the clouds, and your hand clutches me in dreams.
Why is this world so dirty? why are the lumps playing King? I look around, look around can’t see anything can’t avert my eyes to all the splashes of filth that survive
Dirty walls and dirty streets a laundromat full of dirty sheets stained with all those lovers’ dreams helpless infants, toddlers too drinking from dirty bottles with their dirty little mouths wet with the slobber of an ineloquent tongue
The dirty gravel lots lie like flattened skeletons on the grid littered with glass eyes, broken bottle-rocket lies there is no festival here this is the Kingdom of Broken Dreams where failed, exhausted lives retire and bed down in this filthy hole called: A MEANINGLESS DOT ON THE MAP
The sky is gray but bruised with some blue there’s a Latin girl walking she’s overstuffed in a pair of dirty jeans Does she see it too? with those frightened eyes, wayward and crooked eyes void of concern does she see how dirty the world really is? or will it all vanish when she crumples up nice and tight in front of her dirty TV screen before goodnight
To my far left a crumbling beauty shoppe so, this is irony a beauty shoppe left half-eaten by a bulldozer crumbling beneath this wide, empty sky the shingles reaching out from the torn edges like broken fingertips the guts of beauty torn asunder again, left to rot on a dirty lot
All these crumbling houses shelters with fractures pained monsters dwell within clutching scepters of whiskey and bashing out teeth
No scuba diving today the water has all dried up leaving us with ink spot scars on the brown land it’s all so BROWN here where is my lovely GREEN? luscious, wet green Luscious wet BLUE it’s just all brown and gray like the trees themselves spindly, gray skeletons in their slow-motion seizures prying the horizon open with their brittle, wayward branches
The desolate ranches plots of invisible earth miles and miles out into the void how do they live there? how do they breathe there? when the relentless summer sun pounds at them with its golden fist.
I sat in the broken window and looked out onto the burnt grass and the weeds; the sun was gone, the moon was gone, the stars were all gone; a blank, hollow shell of a world and this scratchy ticking in the background behind me and so I strolled across the creaking floorboards and met up with my ghost in the broken mirror hung crooked above an old dresser.
The needle on the record player beside me dug rhythmically into the last grooves of some wobbly, distorted album a century old; dusty glass bottles of old colognes were neatly placed on a cloth on top of the dresser, half empty and oily, I opened them up and smelled them – memories of daddy drown in the deep eye of the now bitter liquid.
A stirring wind rushed in through the broken windows, cutting itself on the jagged edges of glass and howling off through the paper walls in pain; something rattled the pots and pans in the kitchen down below and before I went to the stairs, I looked at myself in the mirror and suddenly I wasn’t there – the linoleum was curling and stained with dust and dead bugs who had come in for some type of shelter from the rain, the weeds outside had grown tall and unruly; an old dirty engine sat in the grass, beat to hell, old and used and rusting away… The breeze belted away and went howling off to the woods to hide and cry, to slither up the trunk of a tree and rocket off to space, to dissipate.
And I stood in the doorway, knowing I could never step outside again, destined to forever look out windows and watch the world lose itself in the waves of time… I cannot leave, I will never leave; I will forever wander this old, broken-down house, try to catch the wind before it so rudely rushes away. I’ll listen to the needle dig into the record for eons, I will smell daddy’s cologne until it completely evaporates, unlike me, I will never evaporate; I will forever be the blind reflection in the mirror, and I will wait painfully without food or sleep or company for heaven’s hand to finally sweep me away.
