It takes a whole brigade of evil ducks quaking along a single file line, trampling down the five-inch blades of grass with webbed boots, snapping unkindly at the sludgy red substance dropping from the sky just outside the porch where Madame Zinger is knitting a new chain mail for general Krag of the Fucked-Up Liberation Army. They try to dodge the splots of goop, but it’s like trying to duck the rain (pretty quaky). So they tuck their heads and shake their feathers as the Madame hums tunes from the Wizard of Oz and Barrows, the lanky washwoman, comes stumbling out stiff-legged and trying to wipe flour from her face but only making it obscenely worse until she looks the perfect image of death half rotted for the open sores on her flesh. “Somewhere over the rainbow!” The Madame can’t help but bellow out loud and more than a little out of tune. Then Billy Saunter, who’s been leading the line, hangs his ducky head and wanders off the path, dejected, unsure of his life from here on out, disappointed with Madame Zinger’s whole garden and sick of this fucking wasp blood! Over the rainbow my ass! Then in response the Madame looks up from her work with a sigh, “I think I’ll retire to the astral next incarnation. I’m so sick of Malkuth.”
The words echo out and resonate in a single blade of grass on which a little red knight and a blue knight are preparing to battle in classic medieval style and a lady bug as referee, though momentarily distracted, mumbling to himself about the spot where he once buried over a ton of baseball cards before heading off to vacation in Ecuador and something about the injustice of being a man constantly referred to as “lady.” The knights are getting impatient, the horses pacing and rearing until the red knight taps Mr. Bug politely with his javelin, clears his throat, “excuse me your honorable ref, but might we be on with this show? The audience is clearly growing weary.”
He barks, “what fucking audience you bloody twit?” Wilbur, surly as ever. But does finally wave the flag and the knights charge valiantly, the red knight with his javelin pointed high, the blue with his pointed low until– oh god I can’t bear to look– crash! Except it runs out the javelins are just made of wet cardboard that go to mush on contact. They throw themselves to the ground and roll around both whooping big hyuck hyuck hycuks, beavers lifted when the blue knight surprises red with the ol’ Hidden Mallet Space Pie Grenade Gotcha Maneuver, whap, right in the face... mmm, cherry of course...
Yes, it takes a whole brigade of evil ducks, intentions bad, wills weak and unfocused, clustering together now, wishing they could destroy the whole damn world, but not even getting to the point of brainstorming on how to do so. It’s a regular standoff here below Madame Zinger’s porch. The Madame grins and has Barrows roll out the General Krag 4000 Multi-Place Computer which she wraps in chain mail and leaves to guard the entrance.
[The following is taken from the journal of a young duck by the name of Mann Hank, translated from the duck by Dr. Alan T. Hazer.]
At first we just blinked at each other for what seemed like forever. [Fragment missing] as though we had to ask it questions. The whole situation I found very disconcerting. There was a dark gloom cast about the whole s[cene...] our ambassador, stepped forward and faced up fearlessly. The first thing he asked was, “what is your will?”
The computer snapped into a hum, then answered. “I do not have a will as such. It is my only purpose to answer questions.”
Then perceiving [fragment missing] asked directly, “can we enter?”
“No.
“Why not?”
“Because you do not have the focus necessary to do so.”
As I looked about our ranks, I had to agree. We were a sad, scattered lot, most of us [not] even paying attention to the answers given.
[...] If I were to tie a piece of fishing line from one tree to another, what would be my chances of tripping Madame Zinger in her own garden?”
“20% with a 3% margin of error.”
“If we were to launch an attack here with, say, frisbees, what color frisbees would be the most affective?”
“Most certainly blue.”
“Fuck!”
I looked back at the pile of orange frisbees we had brought for the occasion. That was it. I mean, that really killed it. We had come all this way for nothing.
Sunday, May 25, 2008
The Battle of Oh Chronicles vol II
Even white magicians must have days like this, clouds growing thick overhead, stacks of books rendered cold and meaningless, and the heart swollen from the remote pain for a girl I’ve never met. Oh well. It’s too convenient to think that your state of being in the present must be permanent, for better or worse, for a bowl of cherries bartered off the Dalai Lama or a stubbed toesie. If I reach inside often and persistently enough I know I can find infinity where nouns of various shape and quality that I’ve never even heard of reside and how I might run naked in the middle of the road on a hot day, waving my arms frantically at traffic or just lay down, rough black asphalt warm against my backside, and feel the crunch of my head as a tire rolls over it. I am not suicidal, but full of whimsy and wishing for a warm day and blue above and green below and how I might sometime be at liberty to hold the girlie beauties in loving grace, “darling, how I would like to sell you a jack rabbit.” That ruins the mood and she pushes away saying nothing, though I can see the taste of “freak” or “dweeb” on her lips.
That’s what’s really going on in my head when I wake up in the graveyard back in the clusterfuck Battle of Oh, trying to re-establish the warm feel of her body against my arms and wiping away floppy jack rabbit tears from my ghoulish face. Okay, what’s the scene now, as I get up and gaze across the rows of headstones feeling lonely for some reason and affirming that sentiment in my observations. Where was the battle? Where was the party? I head off in what I think is West for what seems like miles of graveyard before I find anyone. First it’s the commander still wasted in a cheerleader skirt of pleated blue and yellow, blond wig on crooked and the dregs of a bottle of vodka in his left hand, mumbling about karate mouse next to a heap of smoking rubble that was probably once some grandfather’s tombstone. The ghosts of innocence cluster around him, scary as shit. I can’t even look them in the face, completely vacant and completely untouchable, ready to reflect even the most subtle hostile feelings back into the deepest regions of your soul. I continue West, then, only a few paces when out of the fog of war emerges what’s left of the party, the farmers and avant-gardists still squared off and taking cover behind dead trees and elaborate statues of hiphop artists and evangelists. They take a few blind shots at each other with bb guns and .22 rifles, enthusiasms burnt out, lust for war gone, really, such that Patsy Booker, the most obsessed of the whole lot, just looks more the buffoon pitching spider grenades at both camps until little Ellie sneaks up behind him with a rope and drags him down by the throat. I intervene, remembering how the story went before, and insist that the proper thing to do would be to castrate the fucker. So the League of Angry Women descend out of nowhere like ninjas and pin him down all force and fire, making burn marks on his skin with cigarettes. I take out my pocket knife, which has grown extra long and sharp for the occasion, hand it off to Ellie– who really should do the honor after all– who only lingers for a brief moment, small fragment of her old compassion, before sheewwrut splat! cuts his nuts right off and tosses them to the Dogs of Nihil. She licks my blade clean and gives it back with a thankful nod. That done, I need only to check in on the Business Camp where I find the lawyers, bankers, politicians and realtors have all been torn to pieces, air choked with fabric of three-piece suits, limbs strewn about a grand pyramid of ribs and hollowed skulls, heads full of pennies, and the Buddha singing, “avarice is the sin of the world. IAO IAO.”
That’s what’s really going on in my head when I wake up in the graveyard back in the clusterfuck Battle of Oh, trying to re-establish the warm feel of her body against my arms and wiping away floppy jack rabbit tears from my ghoulish face. Okay, what’s the scene now, as I get up and gaze across the rows of headstones feeling lonely for some reason and affirming that sentiment in my observations. Where was the battle? Where was the party? I head off in what I think is West for what seems like miles of graveyard before I find anyone. First it’s the commander still wasted in a cheerleader skirt of pleated blue and yellow, blond wig on crooked and the dregs of a bottle of vodka in his left hand, mumbling about karate mouse next to a heap of smoking rubble that was probably once some grandfather’s tombstone. The ghosts of innocence cluster around him, scary as shit. I can’t even look them in the face, completely vacant and completely untouchable, ready to reflect even the most subtle hostile feelings back into the deepest regions of your soul. I continue West, then, only a few paces when out of the fog of war emerges what’s left of the party, the farmers and avant-gardists still squared off and taking cover behind dead trees and elaborate statues of hiphop artists and evangelists. They take a few blind shots at each other with bb guns and .22 rifles, enthusiasms burnt out, lust for war gone, really, such that Patsy Booker, the most obsessed of the whole lot, just looks more the buffoon pitching spider grenades at both camps until little Ellie sneaks up behind him with a rope and drags him down by the throat. I intervene, remembering how the story went before, and insist that the proper thing to do would be to castrate the fucker. So the League of Angry Women descend out of nowhere like ninjas and pin him down all force and fire, making burn marks on his skin with cigarettes. I take out my pocket knife, which has grown extra long and sharp for the occasion, hand it off to Ellie– who really should do the honor after all– who only lingers for a brief moment, small fragment of her old compassion, before sheewwrut splat! cuts his nuts right off and tosses them to the Dogs of Nihil. She licks my blade clean and gives it back with a thankful nod. That done, I need only to check in on the Business Camp where I find the lawyers, bankers, politicians and realtors have all been torn to pieces, air choked with fabric of three-piece suits, limbs strewn about a grand pyramid of ribs and hollowed skulls, heads full of pennies, and the Buddha singing, “avarice is the sin of the world. IAO IAO.”
The New Country
Turn once about where you’ll find me that’s not me but some future self who makes wax skulls and pointy sticks for a living in some country called New Shitheadbrook. There will be blood in the soil for initiation’s sake, for dead Arabs’ sake and false passports blurred and obviously Warhol prints of young Elvis passed out to every migrating hipster kid this side of Gaza. I had to lay down on sharp rocks and think about the notion of empire for the sex fiends and Magus men and itty bitty kitty cats upset and mewing with ruffled hair and gashed ears. Oh how I love them all. There’s a girl kneeling in the street, about to get run over by an elephant, next to Nigel pounding cock into her tonsils and– hold on, I’m about to, oh yeah! And wet gug gug sounds spewing out around her lips. “What a purposeless purpose,” says a small girl with a mohawk, frightened and shaking in the cold. Yes, but it’s like eating or sleeping– how stupid and wasteful a thing– like calling yourself captain of the football team or Johnny Rockstar even though you’re a beedy-eyed artless son-of-a-bitch working in a financial office for Howard Co. The airplanes overhead open hatch and drop jellybeans and men with big dicks who land with a splat– parachutes anyone?– all over the North end of Baddadgag. Charlie’s playing standup bass and trying to catch jellybeans in his mouth, though none of them land close enough. Ted joins on tenor sax and quicker than a porn star falls from a plane they’ve got kids galore dancing it up, singing fragments of Elvis songs way out of key. “Damn, can’t one note be right in the whole lot!” I’m still on the rocks trying to solve the problem of a legal system in the context of relativistic morality and a police state where liberty is the rule. Then my neurons snap quite audibly, so much so that a goblin sitting next to me says, “sounds like someone has an idea,” and I leap up like a social Darwinist gorilla hooting and hollering, waving what was once some dead sap’s femur suddenly out of nowhere, trying to say, “eureka!” but vocal chords no longer capable of accommodating. I run up to where Charlie is plucking his bass and make for a smashing assault, only find myself standing erect in an Armani suit, sweating from hours of intense debate and the capacity for thought that claims modern superiority. Charlie claps me on the shoulder, says, “the world takes care of itself man. The world takes care of itself.” We dance late into the night.
Kephra Space
Planet Earth 2008: It’s a Throwdown Kidney Bean Contest here in the middle of Winter in Montana at thirty degrees below. I’m Frink Watson reporting from channel 93– and I hear this event is being broadcast to over fifty regions in the galaxy... With those words the sleepytime agent jumps into the river carrying on about wooden gates and how there’s always a mystery behind it, possibly initiation into the White Light; only last time it was guarded with a well cast voodoo doll tied by a rope. The agent makes splashy and hits the bottom where the fishies and bacteria are. There’s not really room for him, actually; he’s just wedging himself awkwardly against the side of a hill where the river runs. No fish to eat, no nothing. Back on Earth they’re still finding ways to waste food and entertain the locals. Badly chosen belief systems aid this matter immensely. Like this guy here thinks that keeping hundreds of watermelons on his barn roof will repel unseemly things such as sunlight, angels and aliens. And Loretta here believes that filling her panties with raw meat every morning is just plain good luck. So I smack the raisin bran icon (who ever that is) in the face to do something about this goddam tragedy already. He just winks and tries to sell me on protein and vitamins while posing for the cameras.
..
Okay, we’ve already heard about the things that happen on the surface of the sun, but what really goes on? Things you’ll never understand you ignorant child. Lets say it’s that roundy fiery feeling of a refulgent heart burning shining hallelujah light across the world with beamy open scintillant arms of glorious little beastlings roughly the size and shape photons living out immaculate solar lives of mitochondria. What will really get you are the beetles and things sacred. Kephra, the mighty mighty beetle, comes swooping in around midnight from some Nuit-knows-where outside of Pluto to grasp our great Sol in his buggy pinchers. Boy, NASA didn’t see that one coming. The bureaucrats just drink coffee out of cups that say “solo” while smacking dents into their foreheads as their satellites all bounce off a cosmic beetle. These fucking archetypes, there’s no stopping em. And another thing, why has Neptune been spewing out gamma rays lately? On Mars Crunk Stately, the only person to ever set foot on said planet, is waving his arms in performance of the supreme Martian ritual dance. That’s it, we’ll need no more Scorpio or Aries after this. They can finally blow those constellations to smithreenos. Two down, ten to go and soon those government wet dreams of a blank night sky will come true. Kapow! just like that. If we can’t control ourselves and can’t control the world maybe we can control the cosmos. That was their place: control and chaos. Thank you Miss Jenkins, I don’t think I’ll be going out tonight for the biting cold air full of nettle teeth. But thank you for the words on the dualistic matter... And now nobody can be born under any sign. The astrologers just hold their heads in Silence. The sky was trying all it could, but science only made divination harder while remaining completely empirically ignorant, always ready to say the sign is the same as the thing signified. But that was just right, that was their lot... Thank you Kephra for bringing our sun back home from the war...
..
Meanwhile, the Resource Destroyers have filled a luge track completely with raisin bran. Then Marty Scumtooth gets the idea that instead of pouring milk down the thing they’ll just toss in cow after cow and arrange it with industrial spinning razor blades at the bottom. A Tibetan bicyclist rides in and explains the rules of the game: “Okay, so you’ve got to watch this whole thing without cringing, blinking, or even scratching your head. For the losing contestants will be given the choice of the pit of fire and lions or of darkness and gnashing of teeth.” Darling little Elvisha Parsley comes in with a pirouette and a tutu, bright blue eyes glowing with pre-adolescent compassion, says, “isn’t that a meany-headed thing to do?” “You shut up, we occupy your ass!” Then they chain her up in the dungeon and wait until she’s eighteen to show her what they really mean. Tibetan cyclists, what are you gonna do...? Watermelon John, what they call him now, is mellowing out, reaching an equilibrium of sorts in which he’s no longer wearing the tin foil hats and dying his cows blue; he’s not passing out over fifty pounds of change at a time to the neighbor kids anymore. What he does do, though, is actually find a dead alien sprawled across the Briar path, big black tongue flopped ten feet out of its mouth. When he shows it to everyone, nobody tries to say he’s crazy, but looking at that huge lumpy slimegreen head conclude he must have created it with the power of thought alone. The reporters shuffle into town in abnormally tiny cars from which absurd amounts of them pour out like clowns, shoving microphones in everyone’s face. “Yeah, I ‘spect he somehow done it with peanut butter and masking tape, you know, not conscious like.”
End.
..
Okay, we’ve already heard about the things that happen on the surface of the sun, but what really goes on? Things you’ll never understand you ignorant child. Lets say it’s that roundy fiery feeling of a refulgent heart burning shining hallelujah light across the world with beamy open scintillant arms of glorious little beastlings roughly the size and shape photons living out immaculate solar lives of mitochondria. What will really get you are the beetles and things sacred. Kephra, the mighty mighty beetle, comes swooping in around midnight from some Nuit-knows-where outside of Pluto to grasp our great Sol in his buggy pinchers. Boy, NASA didn’t see that one coming. The bureaucrats just drink coffee out of cups that say “solo” while smacking dents into their foreheads as their satellites all bounce off a cosmic beetle. These fucking archetypes, there’s no stopping em. And another thing, why has Neptune been spewing out gamma rays lately? On Mars Crunk Stately, the only person to ever set foot on said planet, is waving his arms in performance of the supreme Martian ritual dance. That’s it, we’ll need no more Scorpio or Aries after this. They can finally blow those constellations to smithreenos. Two down, ten to go and soon those government wet dreams of a blank night sky will come true. Kapow! just like that. If we can’t control ourselves and can’t control the world maybe we can control the cosmos. That was their place: control and chaos. Thank you Miss Jenkins, I don’t think I’ll be going out tonight for the biting cold air full of nettle teeth. But thank you for the words on the dualistic matter... And now nobody can be born under any sign. The astrologers just hold their heads in Silence. The sky was trying all it could, but science only made divination harder while remaining completely empirically ignorant, always ready to say the sign is the same as the thing signified. But that was just right, that was their lot... Thank you Kephra for bringing our sun back home from the war...
..
Meanwhile, the Resource Destroyers have filled a luge track completely with raisin bran. Then Marty Scumtooth gets the idea that instead of pouring milk down the thing they’ll just toss in cow after cow and arrange it with industrial spinning razor blades at the bottom. A Tibetan bicyclist rides in and explains the rules of the game: “Okay, so you’ve got to watch this whole thing without cringing, blinking, or even scratching your head. For the losing contestants will be given the choice of the pit of fire and lions or of darkness and gnashing of teeth.” Darling little Elvisha Parsley comes in with a pirouette and a tutu, bright blue eyes glowing with pre-adolescent compassion, says, “isn’t that a meany-headed thing to do?” “You shut up, we occupy your ass!” Then they chain her up in the dungeon and wait until she’s eighteen to show her what they really mean. Tibetan cyclists, what are you gonna do...? Watermelon John, what they call him now, is mellowing out, reaching an equilibrium of sorts in which he’s no longer wearing the tin foil hats and dying his cows blue; he’s not passing out over fifty pounds of change at a time to the neighbor kids anymore. What he does do, though, is actually find a dead alien sprawled across the Briar path, big black tongue flopped ten feet out of its mouth. When he shows it to everyone, nobody tries to say he’s crazy, but looking at that huge lumpy slimegreen head conclude he must have created it with the power of thought alone. The reporters shuffle into town in abnormally tiny cars from which absurd amounts of them pour out like clowns, shoving microphones in everyone’s face. “Yeah, I ‘spect he somehow done it with peanut butter and masking tape, you know, not conscious like.”
End.
For Love's Sake
I ask a shower head, “what the fuck?” but he doesn’t answer and only proceeds to get out a pair of scissors and cut down peaches from the ceiling. Fortunately I already stacked the furniture into a pile on one wall where I climb up and try to push the ceiling higher so he can’t keep ignoring me this way. The tiles crack and crumble over my head in perfect yellow shards that get under my shirt and make me itch and bleed. Finally he answer me, “what kind of a relationship did you want?” I tap my face with freshly cut peaches while I think about it: “what sort of love could a boy give his shower head?” And get this, he’s all like, “lets not talk of love or chains and things we can’t untie.” Then I hit the shiny red Leonard Cohen button. “You lose! That wasn’t a question.” Hahahahahahahaha ha hahaha ha hahah aha h ahahah ahahahah hahahah ah ha ha ha ha hahahahaha hahaahahahah haah hahaha hahahaha haha haha ahah ahah....
Outside in the rain a woman’s voice screams in orgasmic delight, “oh my god white T-shirts!”
Hahhahahahah hahahaha ha hah ha hahahah ahahah ahahah ahaha haha hahahaha ha ahhah hahah ahh hahah ha ha hahahah hahahah... so I get tired of this bathroom and decide to grow wings and fly out the door where the 8x8x8ft lead cube is waiting for me. “Hey, that’s no way to say goodbye.” I get out my crossbow and shoot everyone in the peach, pulpy juice splattering the walls all about. Then cubey boy and I stare at each other, still afraid of malnutrition until I take a step towards him, hear gravel crunch under my feet and the both of us finding ourselves in the driveway getting soaked with rainwater. I’m still holding up my crossbow. I let it down and hang my head, trying to love, but just sticking a fist through my chest where my heart should be. “That’s the least of your problems isn’t it?” I try to respond, to tell him that maybe he missed something, that maybe that is the thrust of the issue, but my face is completely covered in peanut butter and I can’t even breathe let alone open my mouth to talk. I’m too lazy to try to get it off, so I fall over and die.
Outside in the rain a woman’s voice screams in orgasmic delight, “oh my god white T-shirts!”
Hahhahahahah hahahaha ha hah ha hahahah ahahah ahahah ahaha haha hahahaha ha ahhah hahah ahh hahah ha ha hahahah hahahah... so I get tired of this bathroom and decide to grow wings and fly out the door where the 8x8x8ft lead cube is waiting for me. “Hey, that’s no way to say goodbye.” I get out my crossbow and shoot everyone in the peach, pulpy juice splattering the walls all about. Then cubey boy and I stare at each other, still afraid of malnutrition until I take a step towards him, hear gravel crunch under my feet and the both of us finding ourselves in the driveway getting soaked with rainwater. I’m still holding up my crossbow. I let it down and hang my head, trying to love, but just sticking a fist through my chest where my heart should be. “That’s the least of your problems isn’t it?” I try to respond, to tell him that maybe he missed something, that maybe that is the thrust of the issue, but my face is completely covered in peanut butter and I can’t even breathe let alone open my mouth to talk. I’m too lazy to try to get it off, so I fall over and die.
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