We are here

to search for the word, the line, and the way. It's on.

You're an admin now too, Ror, so you can change the aesthetics of the blog anytime you want.

I'm dazed and a little overheated, so at the moment I'll focus on keeping my promise of sharing writing. Below is the current state of the (fictionalize, as you'll see--it's similar to the poem I posted to Rod) epigraph & introduction to the book I was telling you about. Of course, the title will probably change a bunch more times, too. But who cares! This is US we're talking about, I don't need to hedge! Feel free to respond in any way you want, or not at all... and let's crack this blog open. Bust the seams and see all the stuffing come rushing out.



...Who Got Everything They Wanted


Escape Velocity
          a poem by Acedia

what word not undone to noise)(

the sound of steam pushing through a pinhole

what fringe)(not frayed to flare

the canopy of nerves

rain on down)(rain on

temptation take the next

)(blankness to bay

light the chords of flesh

and flesh)(the fire

the pot boiled too long

to belong)(anywhere momma

the sound of steam pushing through a pinhole

I love too much)(to love at all

the sound of steam pushing through a pinhole

momma I'm too old)(to come home

come home

*** *** ***

[YOU’RE INVITED]

             “I always want something I can’t get from you.”

Jesus, I’ll never forget that first phone call. The voice faraway at first, a nastiness  in the tone you’d only spit at a lover, the sound of turkey dinner and china hurtling against drywall, … Luxuria slowly realizing her call had gone through.

Of course, she was talking to me.

Back then, I was shocked—I hadn’t gotten a call about a job in over three months, so I thought they’d dropped me. Bottom-of-the-rung, over-the-hill, I’ll ask you for a 200-word bit when Ozzy decides to start biting the heads offa chickens again or whateverthefuck. At best, I was hoping Ren would call me up and demand I head on down to BorderLands, go on a bender, and write some Hunter S. Thompson bullshit about how the decaying profitability of the music industry has launched shallower and shallower bands to superstardom, a hook on top of a hook slipping closer into the blackbody vortex, what a waste, tell us there’s some chance of escape.

You know, the kind of crap no one—not even 20 year-old off-the-street nubes—will touch these days because it’s been written a thousand times before. You know, since the Beatles became world-wide heathens. I mean, heroes. I’m hysterical.

But if I hadn’t been shocked, if I’d been expecting to cover this… this experiment, someone would have thrown me in the institution for goddam schizophrenia.

You can’t predict yet another moral apocalypse and expect to be taken seriously before you die. This was bigger than tightass flare bottom jeans and black eyeliner, I just didn’t know it yet.

See. I grew up somewhere where the summer sun sweats out of the road tar, a fist of blue hyacinths yellowing on the kitchen table.  More dishes in the sink than there were days to do em. Where you want what’s lacking so you can put your feet up on the goddam table and leave a row of half-empty beer bottles making circle stains in the wood. Then this, “I always want what I can’t get from you.”

“Hello?” I said, still hoping she wasn’t talking to me.

“Alright, finally. Shut up,” she yelled, too close, “I got him on the phone. Close your mouth Ira, don’t make me hurt you. I will punch you right in the temple and lick the blood off your face. Do not doubt me.

Hey, listen, we read some of your work on the LA Burners and we think you’d be perfect for this. We need you on site, now. Now. We’re living in a flat in the Heights. We’ve got a room set up for you, a dartboard of Ren and your whole former staff included, anything to get the monkey off yer back. And we’ve got a private investor, she thinks it’s fucking hilarious to call herself The Hand. We call her Oz, touché, right? But don’t worry about cash. You’ll have one thousand dollars UPS’ed to our door each day you’re here. Bring a good digital recorder and a lot of GB for photographs. I’d really like it if you wore a vest. Gula demands you bring your pizza stone, he knows you have one. Invidia says we could really use a harmonica for our four-piece, but—“

“I—I don’t understand what you’re asking me to do. Is Ren involved in this? Leah? Don’t bullshit me. I need work, but not that badly.”

“We want you to listen, asshole. Forget own overblown brewhaha for a second and just listen. If we get everything we’ve ever wanted, of course we want some press. Daily group chats and weekly one-on-one interviews because as we all know, ach-EM, some of us are fucking liars. Outside of those responsibilities, I expect you to pay. Attention. And when it’s all over, you’ll have the rights to our story. There’s a lot of freedom in keeping secrets, but more in giving them away.”

“What story? What is it you’re doing over there? Am I supposed to feel… Grateful?”

“We’re living, without living without. Until the juice runs down my chin. We’re the new purity, buddy, the new body art, so you better get your ass over here before you miss out. A car will be there to pick you up at eight A.M. tomorrow morning.

Listen, we know you’ve got nothing better to do.

Don’t fuck this up.”

She rambled along so fast I thought I was part of some social research project investigating the reactions of unsuspecting strangers to prank phone calls. Ha.

Me, dumbstruck.

“Listen, my mom once said to me that all she ever wished for her children was to be happy, to work hard and to get what we wanted. She just didn’t know the kind of odds she was investing in.”

Dial tone.

Me, dumbstruck.

Now I wonder if it really was me coming down with a serious case of idiocy, letting Luxuria bait me. The mystery. And if nothing else, a goddam income.

No reason to lie, though. Above all, it was the, Really? The, This is really fucking happening to me right now?