I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to fully comprehend, to fully piece together what happened to my friend, Parabola Finch, on that awful Fall night. I was woken up by a call from the Nassau County police, an oddity in and of itself because I generally keep my cell phone on silent when it’s in the bedroom. It was about 3 in the morning; the voice on the other end apologized for waking me, but wanted some information concerning my friend, Finch. I didn’t understand why I was being called, and I said as much but the officer on the other end only repeated that mine was the only contact number they had. Finch was dead. I didn’t know how to understand that just then. Information like that—the death of a young man—a friend, there’s just no way to prepare for that. Minutes of silence passed before the officer suggested that I come down to view his personal effects myself, and to see if I could find contact information for anyone else they would need to call.
Was there anyone else? What did I really know about Finch? How did he die? At the time I assumed suicide, but when I intimated that to the officer he negated my assumption. I didn’t even want to suggest murder, and before I could the cop said that they weren’t quite sure how he died. Some kind of freak electrocution it seemed like.
Finch was going through some rough times. He’d just split from his wife—not divorce, just estrangement. They’d grown apart, he said. He’d moved out of the apartment they shared out on Long Island and had taken a garret room in an old boarding house near Lloyd Harbor. He had taken on an obsessive need to write, and blamed the demise of his personal relationships on this. He seemed almost to care more about filling up notebooks—which he did readily and with speed—than about people as of late. The people in his life, his family (what little he had left) and friends became sources of synthesis for him. Objects he could release into his stories, always able to control the outcome of any conversation or encounter. After I got off the phone with the police, I couldn’t get to sleep, so I started sifting through some letters and emails Finch and I had sent to one another. We had communicated in some fashion at least every day, and we’d developed almost a shorthand language between the two of us. Most of it silly wordplay, nonsense; but it kept us creative. I empathized with Finch and his desire to write, and we would often talk about taking a road trip and renting a cabin up in the woods to just write in solitude. I guess Finch did his own version of this, moved out of his co-op and into that garret room. He stopped sending me emails then, and only sent handwritten letters. A scrawl of black ink on lined paper. Harsh slashes and curves. He was writing again.
“Tim! I know that no one understands why I had to leave. Why I needed to get away from everything. Why I needed to dedicate myself to writing and writing alone. For now at least. I think that you understand, and I know that you’re not going to judge me. At least I hope you won’t. The pull was just too strong. I didn’t bring much with me. Pens, paper, my books, my notebooks, a portable typewriter. As soon as I moved in, and put my stuff down I had the urge to write. The instantaneousness of it, the creative urge blasted out from solitude. This can’t last forever.”
I wasn’t quite sure what he thought wouldn’t last forever. His estrangement from life? His urge to write? I just don’t know, and not wanting to make him feel bad about himself I never asked. I wrote him back, told him that I was excited that he was making the move to write full time, but expressed how wary I was about how his personal relationships would suffer. I also asked him to describe his new place to me.
“It’s off. It’s clean and neat, of course, but it’s an attic. There’s a separate entrance on the East side of the house; a rickety zig-zag of stairs that were added to the outside a while back (so the owners told me). The room is basically a large rectangle. The ceiling is a sloped peak—so much so that you can only really stand at full height when walking down the center of the room, and a couple of feet to each side of the center. It’s really pretty nice and roomy. There’s a tiny bathroom to the East; just a toilet, sink and shower (the bathroom ceiling slopes too!), and a small kitchen area just opposite the bathroom. There’s a little nook that doesn’t slope, an open area on the North side, this is where I’ve put my writing desk. There’s a window on that wall, but it’s been boarded up. I’ll have to check that out soon.”
We went back and forth a few more times. Short letters, story ideas and plot summaries mostly. We had wanted to collaborate on something, but our collaborations very rarely made it past the outline stage. It wasn’t long after he moved that he had his first short story published in the Magazine of Science Fiction & Fantasy. It was a strange and terrible story about a man who commits a crime in the present, but is sentenced for his transgressions in the future—an alternate future. The man’s punishment is to live imprisoned within the mind of the man he intended to murder. It was brutal, and screamed of loneliness and uncertainty. Throughout the course of the story, the main character, the murderer, decides to kill an innocent man based on a cascade of paranoid and almost wholly made-up list of perceived wrongs. There’s one scene where it seems as if the main character is being guided by some unknown force, as if he’s being controlled. I wrote to him as soon as I‘d read it, to congratulate him on his success.
“Thanks, TIM! I didn’t mention submitting to F&SF because I knew you subscribed and that you’d see the story if it got published. I just found out which issue it was going to be in a week ago! What a surprise. People seem to really like it. It’s weird because, and this will sound strange, but I don’t really remember writing it. Not all of it anyway. I definitely outlined it, and I found some of my older drafts, but I must have gone into one of those writing trances—like we used to talk about, that place of pure creation…in the “zone.” Ha ha ha. I’m still giddy at seeing my name in print. Have a great idea for the next one.”
His next letter didn’t come for another three weeks. I’d tried sending him a few emails but they all bounced back. His next few letters were alarming, and strange. I was shocked upon reading them again after receiving that phone call from the police. I didn’t really remember reading them previously, bits and pieces stood out in my memory, flashing to life as a re-read the words, but on the whole it was as if I were reading them for the first time.
‘TIM! I submitted another story to F&SF. I probably won’t hear back from them for a while, I just wanted to let you know beforehand this time. This one is about a writer who is able to transform his world through his writing. First just in little ways, then in profound reality warping ways. After a while he becomes unsure about which world he’s living in; the real world, or the world of his own fictions. He even begins to doubt that he’s the actual author of either world. I have a good feeling about this one too. Oh! Also, I pulled those boards away from the wall—there’s a window behind it! The glass is filthy and covered with tar, or black paint. I’m going to scrape it clean one day this week. Since it faces North I might have a good view of the park from here. I’ll let you know if the story gets accepted.”
Attached to this letter was another, dated the same day, but sent separately—I must have paper clipped the two together when I received them.
“Tim! It’s weird, I just re-read the story I was just writing to you about, and it’s really good—but there were whole passages that are unfamiliar! I think we’ve both probably been in the “zone” while we were writing. Where it feels as if something else, our higher consciousness or whatever is guiding our writing. This feels different, though. I mean, most of it is clearly me, but the parts where Austin Zenn (the protagonist) is writing his book-in-a-book are just weird. Odd staccato sentences. I don’t know, it’s good though. I’ll send it to you!”
I put the letter aside and sifted through the box of Finch stuff I’d collected, which was mostly handwritten letter, but included a few email print outs. I put the bulk of his letters aside and lifted the stained and dog-eared manuscript he’d sent me. I read most of it, mainly because I wanted to wait to read it in print, but he was right, there were parts that were unlike anything he’d ever written before. I’d simply chalked it up to the progression of his artistic talents. I picked up his next letter.
“I finally got around to cleaning off that window. It’s pretty amazing what I’ve found; a great view of Caumsett state park—which I didn’t even think I’d be able to see from here; A broad expanse of tree-tops spreading out into the distance, and rising up above the trees something that shouldn’t have been there. At first I thought it was a church steeple, or some kind of weird water tower but it was much too thick, much too tall. You’ll never believe this, but it was an obelisk. A large stone, brown and pitted as if it’d sat amongst those trees for more ages than mankind has walked upright. I just sat there on the floor in front of the window looking at it. Watching as the trees undulated like an ocean below it. Like an ocean or a great grey-green organism with strained breath, wounded by that thick stone spike sticking out of it. I’d never heard of anything like this existing on Long Island. I’ll need to do some research, maybe even walk to the park and see if I can find it.”
Truth be told, I didn’t really believe him. He was very interested in themes of false realities and loved to explore what was it that made us human—often he would send me stories that mixed fantasy and reality, so I’d thought that this was just another one of those. I was intrigued however, and sent him a letter asking him more about the oddity in the park. His next letter came a few days later.
“Got my acceptance letter from F&SF for the newest story today. Feels really good. I had a strange dream last night. Dreamt that I was here in my room, but it was all blue shadows and black ink. I was sat at my desk, looking out the window at that monument. It rose above the tree line—which was purple, and still—and the sky was yellow and grey. The clouds were arrayed around the obelisk in disturbing striations, as if the sky were a giant muscle, relaxed now but ready to flex at any time. Or maybe it looked like scar tissue up against the vault of heaven, left there as a reminder of some long-forgotten transgression. A flock of monstrous birds wheeled their way out of the west and began circling the tip of the obelisk, lazy and sickly. As I watched they began to drop, silently and one by one, into the purple forest beneath them. I looked down at my paper, I guess I was writing, and it was dotted with blobs of black ink, black shapes scattered across a white page. The ink continued to spatter onto the page, and then I realized that it was coming from my face. Ink was running out of my eyes and nose, and as it dropped onto the page it formed words. I couldn’t read them though. But I tried. I stared and searched my mind trying to find the key to unlock this new language. The ink dropped faster onto the page and suddenly…SHOUTING…PROPHET…
I found it, and I breathed out sharply and a great gout of black liquid belched out of my mouth. I could see sinew and bone and, I think, my glasses vomiting forth in that black torrent.
SO weird! I wonder if I can work that into a story.”
I didn’t know what to think about this. I was getting worried about Finch, but I was also going through a few personal struggles, so I lapsed in my correspondence. But Finch didn’t…
TO BE CONTINUED
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
Sunday, April 4, 2010
underunderground
1
don’t sit too close to the TV, you’ll burn your brains out. tie your shoelaces, close the door
look both ways before you cross. make sure to chew your beliefs before you swallow. lying in bed at night remember to check your heartbeat.
gasp for air–
feel it filling your lungs. feel the fear and emptiness as the room gets bigger
underunder the covers.
move on to adolescent indulgence, forever self-loathing and other masturbatory behaviors. invent the quote best years of your life. the way it all seemed so innocent like outta some fucking bruce Springsteen song. its all wasted
away in a cloud,
in blurred visions of birthday candles,
in spilled cups that were always half empty.
now when that telephone rings and you hold up to your ear and that voice being transformed into electronic data tells you “you’ve lost it kid.” leave in search of another message or lit neon bar sign. one drink for the childhood nightmares that kept you awake.
for the monsters have all become a reality of evil thoughts.
put another song on the jukebox and try to forgetforget
2
i burn every bridge i cross. i am a sick fuck of nowhere hells vicious cycle of bad luck– another spilled drink, a broken condom, an unemployment check
i’ve never had a whore
before, but now i’m drunk
so i walk by them stoned,
and go home and masturbate to the dirty cunts.
i am the dented bumpers and forgotten hubcaps of the highway. the gambling debts, unemployment lines, painkillers. the great impounded vehicle. i am rape and pillage. i am the mindless jobs, the blood filled black phlegm cough. i am being forced by my own ignorance to steal to lie. i am
to be sold into this life like property and made to be a capitalist slave of democracy and the dollar.
i am being broken down and left with nothing. being ignored, remembering all your falls, all your mistakes. i am continuing to dull the senses, the lack of hope. i am dark rooms, insomnia and withdrawals. i am why you keep your fists clenched and grind down your tobacco stained teeth. why your patience is getting shorter with every carton of cigarettes.
why you wish you could do it all over again
3
keep using balled up newspaper to wipe your ass. leave your mark on the walls you choose to piss on. get canned food from the local churches and drink in front of the sacred television waiting for something else to happen. when you feel the breaking point and your hands wont stop shaking and the walls are closing in and the world seems so heavy–collapsing overover you
there’ll be a knock at the door and you’ll wonder if its death
and you’ll be standing at the window there, and you’ll see that dark blue summer night sky flashing with fireflies. and you’ll answer the door and find the landlord left you an eviction notice. so you finish your bottle of whisky, light that last smoke, and grab your pistol. you’ll remember your father
lying in the hospital bed dying
saying you end up with what you started with
don’t sit too close to the TV, you’ll burn your brains out. tie your shoelaces, close the door
look both ways before you cross. make sure to chew your beliefs before you swallow. lying in bed at night remember to check your heartbeat.
gasp for air–
feel it filling your lungs. feel the fear and emptiness as the room gets bigger
underunder the covers.
move on to adolescent indulgence, forever self-loathing and other masturbatory behaviors. invent the quote best years of your life. the way it all seemed so innocent like outta some fucking bruce Springsteen song. its all wasted
away in a cloud,
in blurred visions of birthday candles,
in spilled cups that were always half empty.
now when that telephone rings and you hold up to your ear and that voice being transformed into electronic data tells you “you’ve lost it kid.” leave in search of another message or lit neon bar sign. one drink for the childhood nightmares that kept you awake.
for the monsters have all become a reality of evil thoughts.
put another song on the jukebox and try to forgetforget
2
i burn every bridge i cross. i am a sick fuck of nowhere hells vicious cycle of bad luck– another spilled drink, a broken condom, an unemployment check
i’ve never had a whore
before, but now i’m drunk
so i walk by them stoned,
and go home and masturbate to the dirty cunts.
i am the dented bumpers and forgotten hubcaps of the highway. the gambling debts, unemployment lines, painkillers. the great impounded vehicle. i am rape and pillage. i am the mindless jobs, the blood filled black phlegm cough. i am being forced by my own ignorance to steal to lie. i am
to be sold into this life like property and made to be a capitalist slave of democracy and the dollar.
i am being broken down and left with nothing. being ignored, remembering all your falls, all your mistakes. i am continuing to dull the senses, the lack of hope. i am dark rooms, insomnia and withdrawals. i am why you keep your fists clenched and grind down your tobacco stained teeth. why your patience is getting shorter with every carton of cigarettes.
why you wish you could do it all over again
3
keep using balled up newspaper to wipe your ass. leave your mark on the walls you choose to piss on. get canned food from the local churches and drink in front of the sacred television waiting for something else to happen. when you feel the breaking point and your hands wont stop shaking and the walls are closing in and the world seems so heavy–collapsing overover you
there’ll be a knock at the door and you’ll wonder if its death
and you’ll be standing at the window there, and you’ll see that dark blue summer night sky flashing with fireflies. and you’ll answer the door and find the landlord left you an eviction notice. so you finish your bottle of whisky, light that last smoke, and grab your pistol. you’ll remember your father
lying in the hospital bed dying
saying you end up with what you started with
Broken Beer Bottles
where to begin is in the confusion of the mind…it starts when you’re completely alone, the ticking beating breathing (get on with the dying already.) take the bad news as a sign of the times, of crossed lines, of a bar coded existence, of failed dreams and the big lie…our haunted corroded eyes in the mourning sun from defeated bleeding sidewalks of Newark to empty heartland factories of Detroit, hurricane green seas of Mexico to the old world deserts of the Middle East, the genocide of Mother Africa. (it’s all so uplifting.) peril is in the air, taste it in the water, feel it in the ground beneath you, keep an ear out and hope for a new day when the ones screaming or with no voice at all find a new meaning, a new passion, a new dope…our modern illness is mental, the drones following one another with no lord or leader no prophet no mess sigh uhhh just two boards. look to your holy walls and floors, holy lighting fixtures, holy high definition. holy wars…the truth is in the liar like the bite of an apple is to original sin (and the genetic inevitability of tragedy hate greed.) my addiction is tired today, i think i’ll bring my burdens with me and carry them from my hole in the wall out to the city, a city divided by kolor kreed klass…the thoughts of a flooding end to wash away this mess we call the US, comfort in knowing my heavy heart is half-sold and my soul is the only collateral i’ve got and ever had…i stopped counting the minutes long ago (now the days just seem longer.)
Suburban Loser - Chapter 1 - Screaming at the Wind
The ding-ding-ding of the car door provided the backbeat as I reached to turn up the volume on the stereo. The band whined and wailed my pain, I squeeze the bridge of my nose, fighting off my headache. I stepped out of the car, fished around in my jacket pockets as I looked around the empty gas station.
Just the guy nodding off behind the counter. The wind whipped down the empty parkway and pressed itself against me. I pulled out my pack of smokes, flipped it open, and stared long and hard at the last one left sitting alone in the crumpled box. I pulled it out, popped it in my mouth, cupped my hands and lit it up with my zippo.
It's moments like this that I'm glad I smoke. Sometimes you just need a vice to fall back on when everything else is gone. I took a drag and leaned back on the hood. The engine was still warm, helping me fight off the chill. I released the smoke from my lungs and closed my eyes. Nicotine rush made my legs wobbly.
The music roared, pumping from out of the blown speakers, that slight vibrating tick of the soundwaves reverberating the broken pieces. I've never been much to pay attention to lyrics, but something about sadness, doomed relationships, emotional trauma, wrapped around me. It made me feel less alone.
Somewhere out in this godforsaken reality lies a promised land, an urban utopia, a metropolitan mecca to experience, where kids just like me are living it up and creating something, anything at all to express themselves, to have fun, to get laid and party.
But that's beyond me. My time had passed. I was stuck just beyond that impenetrable veil, despite the Long Island Railroad and a few bucks being able to get me there, that life was not to be mine. I was not made for New York City, it would chew me up and spit me out. No way would I survive out there, alone.
I finished my cigarette, flicked it towards the gas pumps, and stepped up onto my bumper. I walked up onto the hood, denting in the metal, not giving a shit, turned towards the red flashing stoplight and gazed angrily out upon the empty streets. I thought about how in an hour or two, the sun would rise, and cars would be rushing about as if these people's lives mattered.
I reached deep down inside, took a huge, gasping breath, arched my back and threw my body forward as I screamed for all I was worth. I screamed at my family, I screamed at my friends, I screamed at my girlfriend, I screamed at nothing at all.
The music died down as I sat on the hood, my arms wrapped around my knees, and I cried at what a pathetic loser I was. Trapped in suburbia.
Just the guy nodding off behind the counter. The wind whipped down the empty parkway and pressed itself against me. I pulled out my pack of smokes, flipped it open, and stared long and hard at the last one left sitting alone in the crumpled box. I pulled it out, popped it in my mouth, cupped my hands and lit it up with my zippo.
It's moments like this that I'm glad I smoke. Sometimes you just need a vice to fall back on when everything else is gone. I took a drag and leaned back on the hood. The engine was still warm, helping me fight off the chill. I released the smoke from my lungs and closed my eyes. Nicotine rush made my legs wobbly.
The music roared, pumping from out of the blown speakers, that slight vibrating tick of the soundwaves reverberating the broken pieces. I've never been much to pay attention to lyrics, but something about sadness, doomed relationships, emotional trauma, wrapped around me. It made me feel less alone.
Somewhere out in this godforsaken reality lies a promised land, an urban utopia, a metropolitan mecca to experience, where kids just like me are living it up and creating something, anything at all to express themselves, to have fun, to get laid and party.
But that's beyond me. My time had passed. I was stuck just beyond that impenetrable veil, despite the Long Island Railroad and a few bucks being able to get me there, that life was not to be mine. I was not made for New York City, it would chew me up and spit me out. No way would I survive out there, alone.
I finished my cigarette, flicked it towards the gas pumps, and stepped up onto my bumper. I walked up onto the hood, denting in the metal, not giving a shit, turned towards the red flashing stoplight and gazed angrily out upon the empty streets. I thought about how in an hour or two, the sun would rise, and cars would be rushing about as if these people's lives mattered.
I reached deep down inside, took a huge, gasping breath, arched my back and threw my body forward as I screamed for all I was worth. I screamed at my family, I screamed at my friends, I screamed at my girlfriend, I screamed at nothing at all.
The music died down as I sat on the hood, my arms wrapped around my knees, and I cried at what a pathetic loser I was. Trapped in suburbia.
Saturday, March 27, 2010
Farmingdale
I moved in right quick having found a room that day. Small dormered with a story-book green dresser and a single bed smelling of stale cramped life like the inside of a draw. It was my second time living on a top floor if I include my stay with Grandma, the one I fled that very morning after having been up all night, and when I think of how I might explain why I left I can only say this for now, fright.
So one week in and already found work bussing tables at this Italian family style restaurant, it smelled too and how particular, fetid, damp and garlicky. Finally I thought here is my life. Having made the prodigal return from Queens back home or at least one town over, I thought, this is great, everything being the same but now here and now now.
I had plans to eaves-drop on my customers, study the living, mabey for a screen-play I'd tell others to impress knowing then what I've always known, that everything is a reward unto itself or none at all, and to know people, to live among them with the ears, with the heart open would always be enough.
I still dreamt big but it was a lie to impress myself, to subvert my egoistic conditioning, an attempt to live in between plans, and when those lie's wore thin I thought it was beer or pot I lived for and again another cover for living, for with all its meager winnings and great upset, not once has it been uninteresting.
Like this yule visit with crack toking friends at the end of the hall, a Christmas eve to remember, the unatural acrid smell, the way each would pick and scrape at there pipes at bits of foil in preparation for the next hit, immediate to the last, like insects with big blood filled human hearts and eyes which sought to drink the whole world with you in it, there was real love there.
When living the low life we find it trembling and jewel like there in cramped rooms, in the parking lots of seven-eleven, we hear it falling up the stairs with a head wound, or with pupils grown big enough to house the waking dreams of not one but two boxes of somanex, we clean up a months worth of it's piss in milk pint cartons, we talk with its failure it's deep sadness, how it scams the grocery store's for five towns over, we listen when it describe's the work of carting it's body around, of how it clinicaly died once and the nothing it had seen there, we let it sleep on our floor when it's man-friend is raging scared all the while, we talk with it sipping german dessert wines smoking nat shermans, its face large as life the eyes all a twinkle, blink, blink it says, it claims to be your soul-mate, it begs for sexual favor at three in the morning when your just trying to have a drink, there it stands in it's whities stumbling before a 19" color set clutching a half gallon of Georgi having just bleed its heart out for its boy, it's deceased father, it's failed marriage, it smokes something nameless and black while the last light fades behind the tree-line out of doors, there through the quarter windows, and it thinks, are we out of beer?
So one week in and already found work bussing tables at this Italian family style restaurant, it smelled too and how particular, fetid, damp and garlicky. Finally I thought here is my life. Having made the prodigal return from Queens back home or at least one town over, I thought, this is great, everything being the same but now here and now now.
I had plans to eaves-drop on my customers, study the living, mabey for a screen-play I'd tell others to impress knowing then what I've always known, that everything is a reward unto itself or none at all, and to know people, to live among them with the ears, with the heart open would always be enough.
I still dreamt big but it was a lie to impress myself, to subvert my egoistic conditioning, an attempt to live in between plans, and when those lie's wore thin I thought it was beer or pot I lived for and again another cover for living, for with all its meager winnings and great upset, not once has it been uninteresting.
Like this yule visit with crack toking friends at the end of the hall, a Christmas eve to remember, the unatural acrid smell, the way each would pick and scrape at there pipes at bits of foil in preparation for the next hit, immediate to the last, like insects with big blood filled human hearts and eyes which sought to drink the whole world with you in it, there was real love there.
When living the low life we find it trembling and jewel like there in cramped rooms, in the parking lots of seven-eleven, we hear it falling up the stairs with a head wound, or with pupils grown big enough to house the waking dreams of not one but two boxes of somanex, we clean up a months worth of it's piss in milk pint cartons, we talk with its failure it's deep sadness, how it scams the grocery store's for five towns over, we listen when it describe's the work of carting it's body around, of how it clinicaly died once and the nothing it had seen there, we let it sleep on our floor when it's man-friend is raging scared all the while, we talk with it sipping german dessert wines smoking nat shermans, its face large as life the eyes all a twinkle, blink, blink it says, it claims to be your soul-mate, it begs for sexual favor at three in the morning when your just trying to have a drink, there it stands in it's whities stumbling before a 19" color set clutching a half gallon of Georgi having just bleed its heart out for its boy, it's deceased father, it's failed marriage, it smokes something nameless and black while the last light fades behind the tree-line out of doors, there through the quarter windows, and it thinks, are we out of beer?
Thursday, March 11, 2010
I Need Some (Time & Space) From You
He sat balled up by the front door, silk pajama pants clinging to his wet, sweaty thighs. He itched his hands, and let loose a facial twitch now and then, perhaps a chatter of the teeth as he lips attempted to speak, to ask for something, to plead, to reach out and connect. He was mad. He was pretending.
It all began so simply, a chance encounter left them both drunk and smiling, pitching themselves into the dark night with reckless abandon. A drizzle upon their heads, a chill upon their bones, goosebumps riding up their arms peaking just at the shoulders with a tingle of the neckhairs. He recalls looking at her, deeply, richly, but he can't remember what it was he saw. Lightyears of distance from each other, in love from rival dimensions.
The cosmos buckled and swooned simultaneously as they came together. It all mattered as energy collapsed upon itself, exhausted from a pantomime of creation, our naked bodies sprawled across the bed. He held her close, they sighed, and their souls slowly began to drift away from the ultimate union, whirled up within one another's electrons.
He held his hand out to her, sitting at the edge of the bed, head hung low. She looked at him, concern was there, but so was self-pity, self-absorption, self-righteousness. He wanted to stop pretending, to stop holding on to so much, to release the gravitational pull of the debris he carried in his wake. The swirling mass of science fiction novels, pop psychology books, and comics all begin to slip from their orbit.
She came home to the apartment, the door unlocked, the desk upturned, the dresser smashed. Everything of his was tossed on the floor, set on fire, or obliterated completely, strewn across the wood floors. He was heaving, chest turned inwards, as he took in sharp, shallow breaths. His brow furrowed and fell over his eyes, his hair dropping into spikes, nostrils flared and snarling. Arms dragging, blood streaming from his hands.
He did it, he made her leave. He was the reason, he knew it, somehow it must be him. His outburst scared her. His intensity was appropriate for the world he knew he must belong in, a world that existed parallel to hers, one were he was right, where the rules of logic actually existed. Math was form was science was everything. There was a rhyme, there was a reason. To it all.
So above, so below. A sun, so far from our own that it's distance would be a number quite longer than even this sentence, so please forgive me if I leap through the dark matter of the Milky Way, and warp to this star not unlike our own, only perhaps smaller and brighter, as gravity gives into itself, atoms falling like dominoes, a drain circling within itself. Instantaneously everything is inverted, and stretched right out of space. All the energy within this sun as now burrowed itself away from reality as we know it. A black hole is formed and even starlight can not outrun it's gravity well.
A trillion miles away, yet we'll still see the light from that star for years to come, the particles still passing through the deep sea of space, piercing our atmosphere. Then suddenly one day, we'll all wake to find he's not there anymore. Where there was a twinkle, a peg of a constellation perhaps, if one was lucky, and now there is just darkness, a void. How many of us would look up the sky and ever even knew that a star shone there once upon a time?
His mind cracked, a splinter running through the crystalline consciousness he imagined himself within. Curled up fetal, rocking, pretending not to be sane by muttering gibberish, gasps, and twitching all the while. Eyes flicking about, a stroke of the beard absently as he searched for meaning frantically, knowing that everything was about to disappear.
Things went clear first, the color sucked from their bones like marrow. Then it all went soft, gooey, plastic, mush, decomposing into gel. A small egg-like circle around him, all blank and soft, his clothes fell off leaving him as if in the womb once more. Hair follicle by hair follicle fell from his skin, drifting away like snowflakes. The pain and aches faded away quite nicely, as his skeleton system and muscles no longer were a problem.
He could just lay back and enjoy as molecule by molecule fell in upon itself, his mind taking stock of every drop of information contained within every single cell. Before his facial expressions dissolved into the floor, a smile slid like a snake, a ripple through a stream. Eternity lingered beautifully, drifting along with the casual patience of a caretaker. A blink, consciousness plunges deeper, the light no longer able to draw the electrical impules up the neurons and synapses, it last forever and a day, until he opens his eyes one last time.
The door rips from the hinge as it is atomized in a flash, the floor tearing up and curling, everything not nailed down sucked into the nothingness where he once lay. Now a minature black hole, the swirl of the drain whiplashing itself ever wider, engulfing more and more material, matter to be masticated upon. The pages of his books all ripped from their binding, the data from his DVDs seeping off the disc, dissolving all the shattered remnants of who he once was.
His name was Kenneth. Kenny to family, Ken to girlfriends. She just called him K. Or maybe she called him Baby. She loved him once. She still does. He made her run, pushed her away, drove her away, some part of him flexing magnetic wavelengths in order to propel himself higher, to the peak of creation, Nirvana. She was the yin to his yang. Why did she bring out so much of himself? The eruption of their interactions, the crucible of aeons, pure fourth dimensional soup seeped from the space between them. Her name was Mary.
Marilyn. Not Mary-Lynne and certainly not Merilyn, good god no. She was funny and sexy at the same time, she knew how to laugh, enjoyed herself at every turn. She wasn't a bad person, she didn't hate him or try to hurt him. Why would he have said that. Not Mary. She, she made him laugh to himself, a mere breathy grin, perhaps a roll of the eyes, when he mentioned her name. Notoriously defiant, resistant to his charms, lightning in the wind.
The building broke itself down brick by brick, the roof swallowed whole, every apartment from the center outwards, was emptied of its contents, as was the owner and their contents. It all became nothing, just like he now was, one with everything. Bi-polar tornado devouring the block, negating the neighborhood, and eradicating the island of Manhattan. We all instantly hit the event horizon, where things slow down to eternity, and we slumber into forever along with Kenneth and his dreams.
Eventually she turns, and sees him standing in the center, the outline of his image appearing projected from inside. His energy field holds her back from the event horizon. She falls into his arms, safe, for a moment, before the slow crunch of the center of the black hole consumes them til the end of time. He lifts her head up, brushing his hand behind her hair, cradling her neck. Lifts her from melting into the middle of collapsing reality.
She meets his gaze and disapprovingly shakes her head, shoves him away, and they fall backwards, sent soaring into the center til her hands pressed against his chest, penetrate their way through the plasma wall into the dimension beyond.
"I missed you."
It all began so simply, a chance encounter left them both drunk and smiling, pitching themselves into the dark night with reckless abandon. A drizzle upon their heads, a chill upon their bones, goosebumps riding up their arms peaking just at the shoulders with a tingle of the neckhairs. He recalls looking at her, deeply, richly, but he can't remember what it was he saw. Lightyears of distance from each other, in love from rival dimensions.
The cosmos buckled and swooned simultaneously as they came together. It all mattered as energy collapsed upon itself, exhausted from a pantomime of creation, our naked bodies sprawled across the bed. He held her close, they sighed, and their souls slowly began to drift away from the ultimate union, whirled up within one another's electrons.
He held his hand out to her, sitting at the edge of the bed, head hung low. She looked at him, concern was there, but so was self-pity, self-absorption, self-righteousness. He wanted to stop pretending, to stop holding on to so much, to release the gravitational pull of the debris he carried in his wake. The swirling mass of science fiction novels, pop psychology books, and comics all begin to slip from their orbit.
She came home to the apartment, the door unlocked, the desk upturned, the dresser smashed. Everything of his was tossed on the floor, set on fire, or obliterated completely, strewn across the wood floors. He was heaving, chest turned inwards, as he took in sharp, shallow breaths. His brow furrowed and fell over his eyes, his hair dropping into spikes, nostrils flared and snarling. Arms dragging, blood streaming from his hands.
He did it, he made her leave. He was the reason, he knew it, somehow it must be him. His outburst scared her. His intensity was appropriate for the world he knew he must belong in, a world that existed parallel to hers, one were he was right, where the rules of logic actually existed. Math was form was science was everything. There was a rhyme, there was a reason. To it all.
So above, so below. A sun, so far from our own that it's distance would be a number quite longer than even this sentence, so please forgive me if I leap through the dark matter of the Milky Way, and warp to this star not unlike our own, only perhaps smaller and brighter, as gravity gives into itself, atoms falling like dominoes, a drain circling within itself. Instantaneously everything is inverted, and stretched right out of space. All the energy within this sun as now burrowed itself away from reality as we know it. A black hole is formed and even starlight can not outrun it's gravity well.
A trillion miles away, yet we'll still see the light from that star for years to come, the particles still passing through the deep sea of space, piercing our atmosphere. Then suddenly one day, we'll all wake to find he's not there anymore. Where there was a twinkle, a peg of a constellation perhaps, if one was lucky, and now there is just darkness, a void. How many of us would look up the sky and ever even knew that a star shone there once upon a time?
His mind cracked, a splinter running through the crystalline consciousness he imagined himself within. Curled up fetal, rocking, pretending not to be sane by muttering gibberish, gasps, and twitching all the while. Eyes flicking about, a stroke of the beard absently as he searched for meaning frantically, knowing that everything was about to disappear.
Things went clear first, the color sucked from their bones like marrow. Then it all went soft, gooey, plastic, mush, decomposing into gel. A small egg-like circle around him, all blank and soft, his clothes fell off leaving him as if in the womb once more. Hair follicle by hair follicle fell from his skin, drifting away like snowflakes. The pain and aches faded away quite nicely, as his skeleton system and muscles no longer were a problem.
He could just lay back and enjoy as molecule by molecule fell in upon itself, his mind taking stock of every drop of information contained within every single cell. Before his facial expressions dissolved into the floor, a smile slid like a snake, a ripple through a stream. Eternity lingered beautifully, drifting along with the casual patience of a caretaker. A blink, consciousness plunges deeper, the light no longer able to draw the electrical impules up the neurons and synapses, it last forever and a day, until he opens his eyes one last time.
The door rips from the hinge as it is atomized in a flash, the floor tearing up and curling, everything not nailed down sucked into the nothingness where he once lay. Now a minature black hole, the swirl of the drain whiplashing itself ever wider, engulfing more and more material, matter to be masticated upon. The pages of his books all ripped from their binding, the data from his DVDs seeping off the disc, dissolving all the shattered remnants of who he once was.
His name was Kenneth. Kenny to family, Ken to girlfriends. She just called him K. Or maybe she called him Baby. She loved him once. She still does. He made her run, pushed her away, drove her away, some part of him flexing magnetic wavelengths in order to propel himself higher, to the peak of creation, Nirvana. She was the yin to his yang. Why did she bring out so much of himself? The eruption of their interactions, the crucible of aeons, pure fourth dimensional soup seeped from the space between them. Her name was Mary.
Marilyn. Not Mary-Lynne and certainly not Merilyn, good god no. She was funny and sexy at the same time, she knew how to laugh, enjoyed herself at every turn. She wasn't a bad person, she didn't hate him or try to hurt him. Why would he have said that. Not Mary. She, she made him laugh to himself, a mere breathy grin, perhaps a roll of the eyes, when he mentioned her name. Notoriously defiant, resistant to his charms, lightning in the wind.
The building broke itself down brick by brick, the roof swallowed whole, every apartment from the center outwards, was emptied of its contents, as was the owner and their contents. It all became nothing, just like he now was, one with everything. Bi-polar tornado devouring the block, negating the neighborhood, and eradicating the island of Manhattan. We all instantly hit the event horizon, where things slow down to eternity, and we slumber into forever along with Kenneth and his dreams.
Eventually she turns, and sees him standing in the center, the outline of his image appearing projected from inside. His energy field holds her back from the event horizon. She falls into his arms, safe, for a moment, before the slow crunch of the center of the black hole consumes them til the end of time. He lifts her head up, brushing his hand behind her hair, cradling her neck. Lifts her from melting into the middle of collapsing reality.
She meets his gaze and disapprovingly shakes her head, shoves him away, and they fall backwards, sent soaring into the center til her hands pressed against his chest, penetrate their way through the plasma wall into the dimension beyond.
"I missed you."
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Sub*Text
Hello. Welcome to Sub*Text. An experiment in DIY publishing, a way for me to promote myself and others of considerable talent, a literary zine that pushes boundaries. I'm putting this work out there into the world and seeing what it becomes.
Start something. Anything. Whatever you want, however you'd like. Let me know what it is and I'll help you in any way I can. I'm trying to build connections between the solitary artists that I know and hopefully we'll create a new scene.
I've never belonged to anything larger than myself before. No literary journal really clicked with me. There's not one contemporary author that I truly admire. A void exists where I linger, the space I roam between mainstream and alternative. Part beat poet, part science hero.
I've been writing poetry & short stories since junior high, screenplays in college, and comic scripts through my 20's. I have a few shorts published in comic anthologies, a nearly completed fictional autobiography, and a massive graphic novel about to see print in the coming months.
I also co-host a writing/comic book podcast called Write Club. We try to promote the smaller creator, just beginning their ascent, on the verge of making a splash, just needing to find their audience. I would encourage the entire world to create more if I could, for I feel that's the best way to save ourselves.
And Sub*Text is my way of showcasing the work I wrote that helped save me from quite literally going mad. I know I'm not alone in that feeling, that desperate cry for attention while locking yourself in your own mind. And you're not alone either.
There's something going on beneath the surface of mankind, a fire burning, consuming us from within. Let me help spread the flames and we'll all burn together.
3/7/10 5am
L train to Brooklyn
K
Start something. Anything. Whatever you want, however you'd like. Let me know what it is and I'll help you in any way I can. I'm trying to build connections between the solitary artists that I know and hopefully we'll create a new scene.
I've never belonged to anything larger than myself before. No literary journal really clicked with me. There's not one contemporary author that I truly admire. A void exists where I linger, the space I roam between mainstream and alternative. Part beat poet, part science hero.
I've been writing poetry & short stories since junior high, screenplays in college, and comic scripts through my 20's. I have a few shorts published in comic anthologies, a nearly completed fictional autobiography, and a massive graphic novel about to see print in the coming months.
I also co-host a writing/comic book podcast called Write Club. We try to promote the smaller creator, just beginning their ascent, on the verge of making a splash, just needing to find their audience. I would encourage the entire world to create more if I could, for I feel that's the best way to save ourselves.
And Sub*Text is my way of showcasing the work I wrote that helped save me from quite literally going mad. I know I'm not alone in that feeling, that desperate cry for attention while locking yourself in your own mind. And you're not alone either.
There's something going on beneath the surface of mankind, a fire burning, consuming us from within. Let me help spread the flames and we'll all burn together.
3/7/10 5am
L train to Brooklyn
K
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