Ornament of Our Lives Outlives What Deprives. Holiday Edition.

The birth of a king is always well regarded amongst those driven to holiday creation. The tree sways under the burden of another ornament and your strange uncle unabashedly treats his body like a playground amid the falling pine needles. Have you eaten too much? Or had a dozen too many booze drinks? Or slammed a square of fudge too many? You mustn't let your mind stray away from the truth: Nothing is wrong as you slide into another holiday delirium. We've been raised on replicas and faith in winding roads, according to David Berman (a Jew). Though there may be a disconnect with the religious, just hold joyous commune with your deep fried Legos and sweeten your eggnog to the point of insanity. Lovingly massive, our competive capital is losing its virginity in a department store while toddlers scream amidst a wailing drunk Santa Claus with scissors clutching. We're moving en masse through fields of white with car insurance policies gleaming and problematic tendencies tucked deep within our red velvet sacks. Those who are good keep their lips tucked in and we are the chosen. We've arrived at the perfect gift of eternal satisfaction and Peruvian switchblades imported for proprietary free trade agreement with the militants. Roads winding, replicas trembling like lost wastrels swept up in the arms of vagrants, we've all got our plastic evergreen smiles on and itchy boas entwine everything we've made up. Crumbling effigies of obese bringers of gifts swing out over the gallows of the suburban mall to the cheer of the over stimulated teenagers. They writhe on the floor to pounding dance beats, awash in Ritalin and fixative. Groupies leave the club in order to powder their noses with charming albums. Musical balladry takes on a hue of cinnamon and ivy. Money leaves every hand whilst a sweet smile graces Lil Bennie Franklin's face. A deafening jingle echoes across the chambered halls of Commercial Embrace. We all love one another. Let another year ring itself in while we bring ourselves out for another fleecing.

Misappropriated Funds Leave Without a Trace.

Teething on a rubber ball like an impassioned pup keen on survival, he burned a hole through the fabric of reality with the vacant fervor of a street preacher living by an ever-paranoid world view. Southerly winds caught upon his over exposed brow. Zoologists were currently describing his behavior. As of two hours ago it was uncharted. He didn't know why things had to be laid down in scientific law. For him life was more like a jigsaw puzzle with pieces missing; judgemental gaps in the flawed existence he lives. With shaky hand he attempts to map out a cauterized scar that resembles his tonage. Weighing heavily is all they seem to do, memories, so he just stops as soon as he starts. But the outside keeps dripping into the inner sanctum he's constructed around himself. His personal life is a cartographer's dream; full of dim mystery and greasy bags of money. His mind overgrown with foliage, he stumbles out into starstruck traffic, headlights screaming. Where had this catatonia sprung from? Maybe it's a self-imposed ignorance that keeps him from light. The experts lower their expectations for flight. He must be land locked. He'd been touched by an internal sickness to be lost. Some say it's another form of self preservation. Monkey barred, unconscious, tell-tale, trim, and over medicated, he fears the moving shadow; the abysmal harbinger of truth that is the modern attempt at locating his fears. If he weren't so consciously unconscious one could say he was actively avoiding detection. That theory cheapens what may be the truth: He is Uncharted because he is only superimposed over the vision of reality. He'll soon be drifting away like the last grains of sand within the hourglass; never to be gauged or accounted for.

I Shook It With an Urgency.

He was beginning to feel like a piece of the continent fractured millions of years ago; drifting into the sea away from what he knows. It's as though he's become something unthought of while so enclosed within himself. The structure of his life maleviolent and everchanging within the confines of solitude. A piece of himself is missing; he's worried it isn't what's inside himself that makes up what he is. He's worried he is made up of that which he once surrounded himself with. And now what surrounds him is ever present memory. He's not so sharp anymore. Not so keen. He's dull and waning and wondering. He's overly kind, probably boring, and drumming his support muscles into aching pain. It hurts to lift a pillow. A sense of internal disappointment builds with each social interaction, prompting an increase in isolation. He thought he'd be stronger than this. He thought he'd be the toast of the world. He didn't know that the network of friends he'd created in the past was a form of life support. It's a good thing in a way: to realize you need everyone you love. But to be away is like the pangs of the phantom limb. Laughter that isn't there. He longs to stem the continental drift within himself. He is the piece that is missing. He wanders further from the whole. Oh, sad sack bloated with memories, this mind that tortures.

Another Pointless Emanation.

Looking up at the squalor of another fledgling sunrise brought him yet another conclusion. He'd been walking the surface of the turning world as the undead probably too long. Yet. Another. Pointless Emanation. Were those signs in the rays of bright abandon or just a fleeting example of all our lives brought to a daunting close. Mortality seems like the end. Not for those with a second chance to wander. He'd thought he was dead when the brick that had been flying for hours finally connected with his forehead. The heartbeat quickened, then slowed, then stopped. Then he was resurrected. He awoke stumbling up onto his knees and there was a crowd gathering with cell phones filming. He has risen. Pointless Emanation. He would semi-live to somewhat see another seemingly endless day. His torso cladden in a torn trash bag he flailed in the winds of dawn; fists clenching, unclenching, jaw drawn in a tight foreshadow of what was to come. He was homeless, dreamless, suntan-free, and billowing. Too few could see that his eyes cast an empty longing that resembled the dim pang of a tincan kicked down an empty alleyway at dawn. Cannery Row was his favorite novel; this favor emerging from a learned mind hoping to grasp at the straws of hobo-centric optimism. The classics taught him one thing: the life once held with love now lost could somehow been caught in between yellowed pages of novels written across centuries past. Those things that were gone could be captured within prose to be set down in stone. That's, he thought, the only way to reach an end to searching. Bring a close to this life just so he won't have to keep up this savage charade. But then again, he had already been cast down by mortar, only to be brought up in a post 20th century world. Was there any end to these Pointless Emanations? He thought not; possible pointlessly.

Five Oh Five

A long gone memory resurfaced with hands grasping whatever it was that made me a passionate drunk in the first place. It was hung askew, drawn bent, questioned widely, dreamt belligerantly. The sign hung upon a door shielding a poor, sober student from countless inebriated assaults; screeching incoherence, pawed inconsistencies, passed out wastrels sagging across the staircase. Often two towering whiskey drunks slung their insults of 100 proof breath into each other for laughter, insanity seen by most; the reverb of these delightfully tact-free interactions oozed into the room. The room in which a lonely man sat, guarding a tired soul. He's lonely. He's was waiting a long time. And he was there for you right beyond that door: Waiting. It was an empty threat, this man's droopy hand, but it was a latent one. A threat that seemed to waft into the room like a series of blast-drunk yelps at 4am. A legend was being built upon gallons of distilled liquid, droning cigarette clouds erupting from dank basements, whispers of windowpanes shattering out their insides after being wounded by a BB gun. Fireworks left glowing streaks of smoke under swaying chandeliers while the Lebowski machine spoke of wondrous lifestyles of limber minds. Muffled thumps were heard behind a wood panel door that marked the beginning of the gimp room. A spare tire hung from the porch above two broken out televisions that begged for attention from the neighbors. A shattered twinkling disco ball warned others of gross injustices done to our realm. Nothing could take away what the man upon the door held throne over. We all were what this man upon the door was: searching for that which would keep us company. May we all see that door open.

Toothsucker Takes His Reward.

It feels good to hold the young punk's head underwater. It feels good to be a young punk while holding another young punk's head underwater. He'd scattered his brains across these streets like confetti for a decade and the steamship coughs smoke into the opal green sky just the same as it had when he first began. Now he is just as desperate as before. His cup is just as full of an ebbing tide of dim lit change and coagulated blood flecks. Here was this little fucker telling him off. Here was his head going under a murky depth of seafoam. It just feels good to issue a fee that is nonrefundable. It feels good to hold a young punk's head underwater. A feeling of remorse peaks up in someone's conscience. It's not his and he sucks his teeth thinking of all the injustice done to him in the past thirty nine minutes. What was it that was said to him by this fledgling mistake of a young punk? Dream on fatbag. Slop doesn't eat itself for free. Now, thinks the young punk who happens to be holding another young punk's head underwater, what is that supposed to mean? What is a fatbag and am I one of these things? Can slop really not eat itself? Or is it that it just doesn't do it for free? The young punk ascribes a dire meaning to his taught arm muscles by sucking his teeth to a further degree. A slurping sound licks itself up and down the throbbing alleyway and the young punk, the one with his head underwater, writhes like the photomontage of a genocide flowing past at a rate of two thousand images per second. The scene is there: a young punk holding another young punk's head underwater.

Sing It, Bluesman! Or Don't. Just Be Drunk Instead.

Let us all rejoice for our heads are bulbous and our souls are treacherous. We do not steal from the gold pit, we mitigate it's sadness. We leave behind a stench of decadence like a cloak of happiness for those without. We look upon the derelict house we once were told was our home and slip upon the ice to crack open our tiny childish dreams. We treat our weariness with gray liquid, sullied, staunch, and sanguine. A complexion of rouge blooms under our cheerfully flat eyes: we are complacent and we toy with ideas of grandeur. We, at one point, let our hands lose grip of our passports, our mainline, our poor, poor dayjobs. We, at some point, saw the ship approach to take our love away. We, at no point, lose the will to take matters into our own hands. We are together in this because we have no more to be sorrowful for. For sorrow beholds that which is empty. Like a ragdoll. Or a pin cushion. For we laugh upon sorrow's rapturous journey through our lives. We look straight into the soothsayer's eyes and declaim, "Low and behold! The drunken taxi driver keels over, perilous and dry, finally bringing us to our final destination!" We do not cry tears in the booze. We cry like the orphan who spies the lurid details of a lonely man losing his virginity. We cry out in agony and lust. We cry for the dreadnought who surpasses our very desires. We pain ourselves to seek that which won't be made clear: if it were just the future than it would soon be the past. So let us rejoice. For the future is always there. To be taken like a pinprick.

Not So Silly Walking.

Straight up and down his hands are restless, jittery, even. He looks at those old worn planks rotting along the river: Am I older than them? Will I last as long as them? They are the skeletons of a forgotten industry. Steamboat apparitions left to worry about all the cargo they once serviced. The river laps against them taking a bit of themselves with each lull of water. His own utility now looks futile. He wants to tell the clock on the wall to shut up. I'm not here to rest! I'm keeping this fusion of life and despair alive! Like an encumbered log taking in the restless sea, no, like a tiny splinter of wood already taken from the tree, he is looking foward to a future uncertain. These are the days of the snapshot of archaic lanterns. They cast a dim light upon an age of backbreaking work, coal streaked on cheek, miscarraige left ungrieved. The age of toiling away without a thought. The mind wasn't so pristine as to wonder what it was then. It wasn't there for itself. It lifted hands for the shovel. It tore blisters from an axe. It stole years with a pick. Now his kind has all of time on their hands. To while away with thoughts bouncing, sending terrifying echoes of self fulfilling mortality. He is of the age of self awareness, lack of industry, tourism, the sights, leisure, entropic delight. Your checkout time is 10am and there is no extra charge for the forthcoming uncertainty.

Lynch, Palm, Island.

Frightened by his own sentimental mind he drops everything he has with mouth agape. Looking out of tearstained eyes at dazzling island melodies, sun sharpened knives of light and color tear through the palm fronds sheltering the temperate dreams trembling in his skull. The tropical climate makes him mad. Those around him play cards, tend yards, bleat "howdy 'pard." He's caught in a lowly intermission of thought: Nothing keeps this sun alive except salt water drunks. Snapping back to the parasol of reality, he wonders what he's been doing here in the middle of the ocean calm on drugs and edgy with panic. He's even further on his way to an even further panic. A further destination. Condensed experience melts down into wisdom, he tells himself, and the conveyor belt of mundane dribble he's been working on for years won't abide any character development. "This won't change a thing, these worldy pursuits." says the tired midget starved with chicken wing dangling inches from mouth. The midget that inhabits his soul. The little guy so warm inside with self doubt. So he was here to make amends with the lifeless existence he'd been living. He was here to wonder aloud, with strangers staring, what all those glistening babies that were his cherished memories had grown up to be. They may be drunk rumbling castaways tearing apart fabric with mangled cogs of hands; society reeling for an answer for this madness. They may be tight little curls on a young, affluent women's hair style; bobbing as more money changes hands. They may be burning an effigy cast alight for fear of losing the keys that once entered upon sanity. They may have never even been born, those trembles: to think, I've done nothing but sit here for the bite of worrisome thought. I've done nothing but hold out my hand, asking for change. The sun beats him down, his face is withered paper, his hands are kids gloves. The salt licks up and down his legs, leaving a floe of silt like purposeful snow banks upon an ancient river. Frozen, or wishing to be, he doesn't want this equatorial climate taking his moments for a malarial ride much longer. Deciduous thoughts are raining down on him like tattered leaves from a long gone elm in November. He faces towards the bottom of the world and he gasps.

Order for Do Not Resuscitate.

...that this world is falling apart. Once I saw the thirteenth advertisement for a plea to "raise your voice without saying a thing," I realized my spectacles had long since been tinted a dead gray. I'm looking out upon a child swinging his arms in the air like a mad beast laden with woe. He screams, "I am a blackberry phenomenon and I love the way the Walton's give me LOW LOW OPTIONS!!!" We are inside of one another fighting for a way out. I met a gypsy cyberpunk who told me of his days flinging oversized computers into the Pacific. It was the only way he could hack into the system. I suggested he take his chip out and cleanse it in the waters of solitude. He sneered at me with obvious glee: "I won't be taken for a ride by an acid reflux disease of the mind." With the world gone will the information junkie fold? Like a wasted paper bag will he flutter in the breeze, caught up in all of our past misgivings? The hard drive is the long drive and we've been on this drive for a long, hard time. It's all about to give up one of these milliseconds. Keep your eyes peeled for the shapes shadowed on the wall. When they begin to vibrate incongruously I'll be there to unplug you.

Sin is Always Fun at First

Dramatic outings carry themselves from the lake stumbling. Confessions of a hanged man: Sin is always fun at first. You're left thinking of the past; left wondering whether you are the shining example of goodness you once thought. All choices have come together and everyone keeps saying, "You must be so excited." You can only reply with a vague shrug. Maybe I've gone too far? Maybe it's never been the gold rush but the oil boon. Maybe I've got a pocket full of cash long since turned to ashes. No, they do have value, these rings cast of precious metal pawned as spent fossil fuel. Though these pollutants poured into my soul may be causing the smog, that bright pink sunset leaves me with the hope that the pollution may be a benefit. The back and forth of a guilty conscience will produce some solace, some content. Content with leaving for a while, you know those loving creatures leaving marks on your memory will be here when you return. A dream informs you of what will be when it won't be and how things might be. A nightmare seems to be what was and all that may be if things weren't. A waking moment gives clarity to life; telling you there is pain with your existence. That aching back lets you know you've arrived. From the world of nothing but wisps of smoke to the world of tactility and touch. Facility is rough; for that which allows the ease of use can often create the loss of meaning. It's been such a free flow run for now that the truth has been overcome by the need-to-know. Agency is tough; for that which allows for use of power can often create a nameless victim. Without knowing who wronged who there is a loss of order. You've forgotten why your emotions are playing tricks on you.

A Comedy of Errors.

Lowlight bitches saunter like streamers hanging in ditches with stitches holding together their elbows like hinges. It's evening now and tumble deeds for cars roll on down the lonely plains keeping the bankruptcy attorney in love. Without his slobbering child to keep in line he knows he'd be king. He's several beers deep as he ponders why all of those under exposed women he wants in his snapshots keep flinging their panties to someone else. The door slams wide open in the dusty wind and he stands there agape; minstrel, tuneless in the sun, strings popped. It might have something to do with the dim googly eyed toddler of wonder he knows must be, at this ungodly hour, wheeling around the front room with a dumpling hanging out his diaper. So stupid, he thinks. This is why he drinks. This is why he never got nowhere. It's 2 past whatever he once thought was early and the careening boob of a bartender lulls down, easily sweeping the grub bucket underneath the man's chin into oblivion. The grinning wildeye barman replaces it with something else. Looking down, a grin scatters the man's gaze and everyone in the bar knows where the toddler at home got his vacant stare. Though this easy-grinding desk jockey throws his own son's accusations out the window, they all know: You beget your son and thus beget yourself. He stumbles from the tavern dripping spite: "Sir, could you spare a minute to save a child?" The charity gatherers are on the street in full regalia. It is two o'clock in the afternoon. He crouches in the glare of unholy sunshine. An arc of spew springs from his mouth, hitting the pavement in a splatter effect so unlike beauty it's unavoidable. The not-for-profit beggars careen as far away from this wreckage of a man, no doubt running off to some other change in policy. Oh why do they ask for my treason? I've given up my wayward child. Seven fingered like the serpent with one more digit added, this toddler of wrath and pain was slowly sucking the dredge closer. Those banks that were his sanity have eroded long ago yet this managerie of electric drunk continues on. He is a comedian and his last show is years from now.

Superior Treatment for Blimp with Nothing.

You're tooling the upper echelon of the atmosphere displaying your candy feathers. Dancing about with sweet bits wrecked between your teeth like dreamy forcepts extracting pleasurable rapture, you don't know that the sugar fuels all that keeps you sentient. The sentience only goes so far. It's like a twig snagging the summer dress of the catatonic mental defect wandering the woods post-escape. It only presents itself as an unnoticed blip on the radar. As we all know, becoming aware of one's self is a treacherous journey down a one-way sluice chute lined with broken glass and sexual predations. The path ends with a throned monkey telling you all the lines are busy in a condescendingly dubious tone and the candyman grins in the corner blaring early hip hop incantations like some sort of half-gone teenager leaving traces of his sickness all over the tupperware bowl of your soul. Grease fat drips all over your precious Ipod from the headlights in the ceiling and your ultimate playlist is scrambled into darkness split with lightning in the night. That hand you call your conscience drops like a rabbit raced hard against foaming dogs and high fructose corn syrups runs into the IV keeping you alive. Until you are comfortable with yourself you will be kept alive with superior treatments. You'll swerve lazily across the ominous sky; blimplike, suntanned, peeling, and burning. Only until you are comfortable with yourself will the honey bee stop droning over your head stinging the very air you breathe. Beware though. Those who come down don't feel much better with themselves. The conscience will still be there.

O.J. Immunity Boost to Stave Off Minor Coolness.

He knew when he slipped on those completely stupid shades the neon pink would envelope him like the abrasive arms of an insipid mother treating her infant with creationist myths. He realized upon the don of these shadez that the man he'd become would be found tangled among the brambles the next morning, screaming. Or, perhaps, found marooned upon the beach tied to a buoy, screaming. No doubt it would be the morning when he'd be found. It would be stylish and sexy and slippery like whale skin. Sopping, dripping, sudsy little wastrel keen on losing the mainstream to forge a new crystallized passion path of glitz: He'd open his eyes fluttering and crooked capped red skinned saps would shackle his wrists for he would be too metropolitan for this world. Luckily, the cage they will put him in will have two doors and a dual vestibule design. This to encourage sexual visiters to come in through the front, leave through the back. That's just to avoid confusion. Those staring through the bars, blowing kisses, can't seem to get it straight when there are people coming and going through the same door. Entrance and exit are distinctions of clarity. They mustn't be blurred. He knows if these lines are crossed, all will be lost. If these lines are crossed, he won't have a sensuous saunter as he creeps down the street: he won't have a dazzling effect on every little thing that enters his raunch radar and he definitely won't leave an impression upon the daughters of governors left dying on the vine. And we all know those daughters are the ones that keep the bullet holes from taking down the careening Ford Bronco stitched upon his heart. How cool is the coolest of all speeding recreational vehicles? One mustn't think too hard upon this point. Unless, of course, one has created some sort of simulacrum that shields from the realities of a high speed blast down a stupid road; the notion of cool, for example.

Infant Swaddled in Notoriety Across Middle America

Baby boi born bleeting but not bearing straight towards; more like a crooked little finger egging ever onwards. He is Lil Picasso and he's been boggling minds for at least sixteen months crawling around in stupid muck keeping his mouth-like orifice filled with jibberish. His crib, plastered with gang warfare teen dream slop magazines, isn't fit for a conventional child protection services officer. With a the flourish of the wrist like the well placed kick to the balls of a probation officer, Lil Picasso often wows the crowds gathered at the Decatur farmers market. Though he seems to be under two years old he shows up to various community gatherings without any noticeable guardian in tow. The jungle gym is his mortal enemy, as this is where all the sniveling, sportily dressed choice children gather to swing their underdeveloped limbs about in gestures of faith. They've been brought up to believe in the empirical and so they test their bodies physically; all the while Lil Picasso stalks the outskirts of the playground dreaming up Donner Party plays constructed with Jonestown themes. He knows that what he does is mystical and that is why he slowly sews together a cape made of material torn from the backs of these pre-masculine children of the jungle gym. Parents are lacking a sense of proprietary righteousness inherent in everything Lil Picasso lives for. Crayons melt in his grasp while scented markers barely bring a vestige of cherry to his olfactory nerve. His patents cover everything from memory loss to purity laws. Though he is faithful to his creativity, he believes nothing but insanity distilled in freakdom can bring about true change to the mind of the plaintiff. Bail set like a boulder on the edge of a cliff, Lil Picasso doesn't see the point of the cage we all live in. As he rolls around in a pile of leaves in a random suburban front yard sneezing, he wonders why all around him seems like a dream.

Emotionally Bankrupt: Withdrawal Imminent.

As the tears well up his facade begins to crumble. He can't even tell if there is humor or horror or some sweet selection of the two behind this outburst. No, he isn't beside himself the way some might be; he is miles away from himself. He gazes upon the scene before him: dozens of screaming children emerging from rabbit holes holding remnants of animals extinct stream across a lawn of broken bottles and hot coals. Steam slowly lazing upwards makes secret designs in the vibrating air. Breathing like a plains beast the atmosphere pulses, making the sunshine seem as though it is casting a room aglow with simulacrum lighting of citrus blood orange. Debutante centerfolds gape open under pop of camera fizzle and saturated images are created under direction of mustachioed, carpet-chested, and altogether greasy men keeping their hands thrust tight in their polyester pants. The pressure system bubbles outward; his ears detect shifting air mass problems and the wind sucks out around him: the tears flow. The tears flow and he doesn't know whether he's laughing or crying. Dreamscape depression pulls taut his heartstrings; yet joy tears his tears out. Like a nightmare aura turned anxious post traumatic sedative, he keeps the little pet of sadness love held in his lap for further use. A desperate polyemotional cage match rages on in his mind. Dreamt for lightyears these two fighters hold one another at bay like two lovers starcrossed with whiplines. Lashings cut deep into worn pewter, carved out of soapstone he is a sculpture worn through days of storm. While he stares out across the carnage carnival before him a deception grows over his eyes; milky white cataracts bloom flaming as sunspots. Dripping dry held high, he's seeing the nexus of the human condition for there isn't a division between loss and gain to be spoken of. The river of time, experience, problems, obligations; it floods over high water marks and runs his ragged existence threadbare. He's lost distinction.

Going Alone, Coming Alone.

He knew he couldn't come around anyone but he'd never tell those he wasn't coming around. His emaciation level had brought on a particular lone quality and he couldn't climax without the help of solitude. Only himself. A loner of ecstacy. A loner of pleasure, love, maturation. A loner of sticky dripping sweat; kept and wept and lost and bereft. Solitude bringing about intense, erotic egomania to the point of massive memory collection. A sickly little memorabilia fucking down every timed interaction with those he hates, loathes, defies, keeps, weeps for, cheapens, endangers, panders, jams on, and fucks up. He's left behind. He's crept behind. His deft rewind of what has past keeps the treasures of Freud sunken. He doesn't want to know why human heat frightens him. He doesn't want to know what the shakes mean. He won't confront his mortality. He will not ford the river of sadness his life has become. The fun that clambors down his staircase like a piano with fruit bowls keeps him up at night. He tosses and turns in his bed thinking of That Perfect Panic Room. The one where he'll utilize pure solitude to pursue and perhaps peruse the various baubles and jimcracked out bullshit within the cobwebsome depressions of his cranium. For pleasure is all in the eye of the beholder; and if that beholder beholds nothing but himself let him behold all the has been held within himself. Lest history decides to rewrite itself within the confines of itself, this shall hold true. Looking in a mirror excites him to the point of probable overload and he sinks within himself; the polyp of humanity slowly consuming itself for nonsensical ideals.

Ultra Drummer takes on Young Boy.

He couldn't dance. He couldn't walk. He sussudioed all over his own face so many times as to scar his likeness unrecognizable. His widows peak kept wisping into a Genesis-like formation. His drums were beginning to take on an epic, booming quality and he couldn't stop wearing his microphone headset. It all began with an exclamation in a late eighties haze: "No Jacket Required!" With the drop of that terminal phrase his life proceeded on a trajectory similar to that of the manic depressive having made the choice to step off the window ledge. The spa began bubbling with red swirling champagne. He was hooked and there was no escape. He was Philled to the brim with Collins. Though he felt it unfashionable, he began shaving his head. Though he felt it unfashionable, he began taking full headshots for his fantasy solo album covers. Though he felt it unfashionable, he began wooing hot middle aged women into unanswerable, questionable positions and censoring their faces for the documentary. Peter Gabriel began calling him on the phone to scream sexual obscenities and no one but the cheesiest of cheese dared to grope his crotch. The Story of Genesis takes on a new meaning as he sifts through the meaning of his life; a serious amateur gold miner sharing his hours of desolation with the soil in hopes of discovering something of worth; but all the he finds are glittering Radio Super Hits that bring him further into the fan club of ultra pity for nothing and everything. It's a fist pumping jam that tears his mind apart further beyond repair ...But Seriously, he asks himself. No one will see me this way, right? They all think it.

When the Aquanet Finally Entangles...

The introduction of pure metrosexuality into modern culture has bred some interesting mutinies of biology. Demand for male hair products continues to sky rocket as men further their glitter encrusted journey through Avon tour guides and aloe-verification. Some, however, have gone truly awry. Too deep they've gone, too stiff are their frosted tips; even Ronald McDonald would cringe at the amount of self preparation needed in order for these long lost beauties to bare their torsos, their sexy, hairy torsos, to the public. And yet there are those who've gone even further. There are those who soar like the Double Down KFC sammie in the mind's eye of an obese child in the throes of grease laden adolescence. These truly immaculate individuals no longer deal with the efforts of gravity, the milling about of humanity, the effortlessness of perfection: they've transcended it. Adorned as one would a Christmas wreath they are shining so bright for pageant squinted glares. So stupid, so cool, so sloppy: SO chic. When shit hits the fan it arcs straight away from them in an awe inspiring radial pattern. Splattering fecally they aren't one for treatment other than salon quality. Professional quality. Kooky bongos mysteriously carry a whacky beat amongst them as they saunter down the aisles of grit, glitz, and street tits. Tripped once they'll fall further higher until clouds gather their dewy entrails together again to go to that Beauty Shop in the Sky. The Glamor Slaughterhouse where they'll get that last dose of acid scalp and dandruff eradication. Dry skin be damned they'll show this world why we all long to drop our tattered skins and treat this world like a goddamned stripper pole glistening with rainbow refracted oil slick.

Love is a Bitch.

Dementedly challenged was his heart. Tear streaked was his face. Blood beaten down and filling slowly with heart break he clings to the shattered pieces of his once flush dignity. The trump card that was love had taught him he was over and done with by the likes of happiness. What was this pointless journey into lost romances? He never found his morals intact. Instead they are like dusty records left in the basement: warped and broken. His trust had been maimed; a twisting, writhing path quite like the winding trail of crimson left in the wake of a hooked fish. Oxygen has been cut off too long. He is a vegetable. And so he clutches that which he has already lost. Like a phantom limb. Like the tooth fairy's mission to take what was once your smile. A row of teeth he'll come to replace, he tells himself. Poor poor hope. Poor little wasted soul turned strange. He was not one to leave behind a wall erected around his heart. But he had done it for one fleeting moment. And now his inner yearnings seem more like maze than moat. Castle burning and castle crumbling, he'll treat this memory like a medieval form of torture. The iron maiden was his mistress. The rack keeps pulling the bindings ever more taut. His limbs seem useless yet bring pain. The rending of arm and leg, the tending of phantom and ghost, the sending of loss turned hope. This is a war that doesn't require much thought aside from one's last words. "Only those that long to be true can ever lose sight." With the saying of these words, he was dead on arrival. The tender gesture that is a warm hand holding another is only that: Nothing more than an apparition's caress. He had lost her so long ago yet the the memories persist. He is in denial. He is in freefall. He is inconsolable. Let those who keep their hearts intact never stray into this man's world. For this world is dark and dire. For this world is one of ice. This world is not for the happy.

You are being watched.

Graciousness can't even begin to describe Creeping Tom's ecstatic demeanor post-interception of personal moment. He is king of all that should not be seen; in the community of various voyeurs he is reigning upon all that is so stupid its creepy. He is Creeping Tom, they say. His eyes glitter like six year old jumpsuits lost in garbage pit. His stomach lining spits acid with gilded delight; those poor enough to get lost in the haze of his belch realize their lives were never worth living. A tube of Rolo's clutched in his hand, Creeping Tom leans closer, drool intact. He stares out into sexualized precious creation and sneers at all that is so easy it's visible. He's gone for the duration: that time period known as a lifespan. Chemicals taken to the dome in anticipation, he is not one to lose sight of what is pristine. Like crystalz of all pureness, every stolen sight is of his mental collection: a man picking his nose unawares, two teenage lovers sneaking a kiss with cigarettes clutched in fists, an obese man slipping his hand down his pants with a wry grin on his face. They all hold sway in the tangled mind he loses each day. Oh those that have no idea! Oh those who keep themselves from those who seek them! All in vain! All for naught! Keep yourselves futile says Creeping Tom. He will find you. His daily shift at the strip mall down Rt. 45 has been a shifty one alright. He's only received a sliver of dark satisfaction thus far. He feels his grip upon his sexual fears slipping as though lubed with grease of bacon. Nimble fingers play upon the web of his midnight thoughts without suppression; within the creaking shelter of his brain there is hope for relief. All that brings such a thing is a fleeting moment of sick embellishment. He's a yesman for chinks in the armor of the public. His eyes stab holes in the perceived anonymity of the faceless existence. Though his day is as of yet to be fulfilled, his twiddling fingers give him reason to believe there is something about to reveal itself. Something that doesn't want to be seen. Popping another Rolo for sweetness, his eyes scan the parking lot for a real time fissure in the world of saving face.

A Child of Linger On

I am a child of linger on, I peer through the window gone. Running and running these thoughts won't leave the gloom of his mind. Treatment for isolation breeds freedom of intent and he seems to loll his head back in a world of loss. Dropped from the human registry, those who had known him call him deceased. Drop out high school passions were all that he kept alive. His next of kin was a washed out big brother who left whenever the heat comes up. His next pint of gin helps wash out the longing that leaves when the sun comes up. I'm doing fine, his head suggests. He used to stroll down prepubescent hallways dripping of gym class sweat swinging hard for the burnout challenge. Now he digs deep and buries dead lighters in the sand. Lit by a single childhood dream, his joy was kept chained, whipped, beaten down for all age shows that go on til the last teenager overdoses. Yes, he relishes in the sight of youth squandered. This is the only way to gauge his relativity. He truly is peering through the window gone. For he hasn't seen the light of day in at least fourteen true months. He waits for a summer slight crescent to peak and pours another glass. It's half empty before it even reaches his lips. A guidance counselor's nightmare, he haphazardly slips off his chair and hits the floor hard. Twenty minutes later the sun peaks over the horizon like the dead eye of a caribou lost in wasteland of brush and wreckage.

Under tha DOME!

His is a life of solitude and horror. He can't talk too fast. He isn't much of a looker. He often feels inadequate size wise. The baggage strapped to his brain tows heavily upon his ambitions and aspirations. And to top if all off, his heaving breast of a mother had named him Pookie in a fit of stupid rage. Huffing spray paint isn't much of a problem as he stumbles into a Wal-Mart with visions. Being knee deep in skin mags had gotten him no where and it was time to "move on." He had heard he would be able to find a "Stephen King novel" at this establishment: he was looking to be enlightened. Long ago, before his skin condition, he had been told of literary adventures sure to loosen him up, idiot savant like. He wasn't maladjusted. He just wished he could spout uselessness like all of his acquaintances at the eCoffeeShop. This all to further himself from the inevitable question: Why did he have to fall in love with something that had never noticed him? What was to be gained of longing for a dead affection stripped bare forever ago? Wandering amongst the romances, the westerns, the mysteries, the horrors, he couldn't pin down where he was heading; towards or away from a cliff. Alee of winds within his own mind he longs to bare the storm and weather his opinion with the hatred of others. Just to burn at the stake seems akin to dreams come true. He wants to proclaim he is king of book club international with tomatoes flying. He wants to hook up with a "hot chick with sweet jugz" online. He'll show them all that he can discern between no and no way and maybe if you dont take off your pants. He has learned to ask a sexual broad to "just put the tip in" to get his foot in the door. He can claim he reads books; though he has only gazed at the directions on a box of Stouffer's Mac 'N Cheez while huffing silver spray paint, he feels that his now frazzled attention span can bridge the gap. Thus, his grip lands upon a thick volume. His mind wanders...Under THA DOME?! Wow. This is soundin' zoned. Keep on keepin' on, his step bro used to say as he slapped an aerosol can into his hand. "Here, read 'dis, read so hard you can't see straight." It was a rite of passage in his house and now he was longing for more. "Pookie," his step-BRO would say, "you've gotta move onto tha heavier sorta readin, like airplane glue 'n gasoline." But Pookie wouldn't have it. He needed the love of others; especially from those who had never laid eyes upon him. And the unanswerable void of his mind has decided how to do this: get educated all up in his dome. He stops listening to his stomach turn the sandwich he ate into poop just long enough to purchase a "Stephen King book."

Drained, Crying on Primetime.

She buzzes like the window unit cooling the stagnant air circulating through your empty motel room. Heart pumps dust out of clogged black vessels. She chooses your myths, your trysts, your treated concern; mesmerizing, econosizing, ever-trying. Slip to the floor in front of the unmade bed with bottle in hand, tears flowing for want of some beauty, you clutch the clicker and stare into those eyes of static. Reading into it like a voodoo master tripped out on Bone of Chicken, lip-read mantras slowly engulf the room. The lone rose droops slightly from the vase balanced precariously upon Gideon's Bible. A blue bird breaks its neck across the only window in the room, a muted tick not unlike the sound the remote makes as you frantically press the worn buttons. Don't make me medicate you, she pleads. It's a sad, sad thing to see a wastrel lunge towards the void: a sad, sad thing to hear the soul eke out the last of its lifeblood. You notice strands of hair obstructing your view. Taking a pull of the bottle makes this problematic obstruction seem like a simple drop of ink upon a manuscript burnt long ago; some sort of literary love long unrequited. Wrapped in a terry cloth "dress" you sashay across the square room smashing fast food refuse underfoot, you peruse the perceived diamond rings flashing before your spare, alcoholic eyes. The rose nods once more to the lady of static. Going unnoticed, this gesture of sympathetic desperation leaves you unchanged. No one will treat you with kindness as long as you have a say in it. It's not a matter of degree, for it is as deep as a well. It is a matter of choice. For this self denial leaves tracts so deep they're impassable. Treatment for disease like this seems impossible. Another drink, another smoke, another shovelful of dirt. Roses have said, that television leaves you blue. Don't sink too deep into the carpet for desperation lies waiting there for you.

Mainlining on Primetime

On the eve of another day of dread, the television stares out across a living room teeming with telltale signs of recidivism. Broadcasting a 4am melody of dream states without hope, a lone media imbiber sees what his television truly is. Firecracker. Thought taker, tear maker. A burgeoning sense that all is lost from this world of media injections and drug increase. A life spent with blaring moving images cast upon a hallucinogenic surreality etched out in shadows of saturated crimson blue hues. It bleeds out like crushed roadkill that isn't too much more than something that has twitched it's last twitch. Creationistic ooze jumbles his leprous psyche and a baby boy with lulling milky eyes erupts from the body of the set; a fibrous weed twitching, holding explosives spelling an end to recurring episodes. Starlight, star bright, so full in flight when slaughtered tonight. Ecstatic departure imminent the suburban waste of flesh lifts to the soles of his feet for the first time in days. Cheetos, Ritz cracker crumbs, gummy worms rain down from the yellowed front of his t-shirt. A sickening grimace erupts from the brown leather La-Z-Boi as it releases its grip of the ballooned torso. Montel Jesse Springer screams out to the man: SELF IMPROVEMENT IS POSSIBLE AND YOU WILL NEVER SEE IT COMING WITHOUT IMPROBABLE SENTIENCE OF LOSS! Redneck marriage counselor parades across glittering stage to applause of slack jawed voyeurs eating foot longs laden with insane nutrient overload. So far the weather is partly-sunny-sky'ed and gusts are in excess of 40 miles per hour and the NASDAQ keeps tanking your plans to trade in your supple breasts for the longing unfulfillable. Slowly, ever so slowly, a Keebler elf free falls from the screen and eases down onto the carpet vomiting blood full of cookies. Lifting its cute tiny head and looking straight into the man's eyes there is a spark of glee. A crackle begins. A wick ignites, flaring out sulfurous gas that bubbles into the nostrils of the now proud, now standing man. The living rooms sways around the man as he Hulk Hogans off his yellowed undershirt, screaming, spraying spittle across the wreckage of his household. He's living out the last moments of his life. He's sublimely entertained as the ghoul of network television detonates, leaving a blackened, high fructose crag of carbon amidst a gridded neighborhood. Ice creamed neighbors wander into their yards. Noticing a scuff on his BMW, the neighbor across the street fetches his buffing towel as ground zero fizzles out in front of various indifferently glazed citizens.

Chimp Learns Sign Language.

Wearing pumps like a flamingo steadily hitting the lower end of a bucket of mud, she swaggers into a debutante ball for no one but her self-made stuffed animals tethered to the six foot feather boa lazily swinging from her neck like a pendulum. Threadbare stockings keep her bloated thighs from spilling down upon the dance floor as she does a mechanical tango across the sheen of tiles to keep her image up. She's tense. She's intensely aware of no one but herself. He's staying away intentionally and she doesn't know it. Flipping a lazy hand into the air, a gesture she thinks is a nonchalant wave to a lover, she eyes him across the haze of her drug overdosages. Creation was a myth. It's written all over her face. Everything can and will be undone. These days of opulence and pleasure have taken their toll. She pops another prescription and toils around the inside of his viewing area squirming lugubriously. Tears of graceful junk slowly roll down her cheeks; she's spinning fast for freedom from this world. He walks up to her, finally, with a terse smirk upon his face; those judgemental eyes finally scanning the image that she has stubbornly become. He looks her in her jaded, stupefied eyes while refreshing his breath and says, "Are you experience?" She looks at his feet while golden flair of earrings jangle with the abrupt adjustment of her head. She answers, "I am Crank Styles of the Rich and Anonymous."

Having Had Enough of it All.

Obesity reaches toward the sky and King Bitch slams a XXX Gatorade while caressing a "Lil Baby Bangarang" mini sweater slowly riding up his front side. Hair is all the rage from his belly button and it smells like rotten cheese and the mountain King Bitch stands upon emanates some sort of tired lull of sexual vibrations all inside himself. It hasn't gotten to him yet but the ideas are mounting and he's sleeping so late these days he can't tell if morning wood even exists anymore. If it weren't for massive sedation he'd be out on his ass for something like what seems like a long time; probably seven seconds. Being what he is, an over ripe toy of destiny, there is nothing to do but swing out over the Canyon of Joylessness. Swing until there is nothing but stars in his eyes; saunter about the seedier sides of life with the creamier characters of the city. Needless oblivion pours down his throat as pores do their vomiting of sweat down his increasingly creased brow. No more Yesman. No more Baby Tee'd, cryogenically frozen grandma's from the twentieth century. No more Kept Off Drugs Teens done with euphoria. No more Kooky Bongos rumbling Mr. Roger's Theme Song for the Ages. No more mistaken flake of Raiden electrocution section. No more. Just no more.

A Stunted Greek Tragedy.

No one remembers the little brother of the haughty Minotaur. Poor, possessed Pasiphaë, his mother, couldn't resist that sexy nautical beast thrown upon the shores by the curly, brazen Poseidon. Even after giving birth to her bull headed son Pasiphaë still lusted after the bull. To the chagrin of the cuckolded Minos, upon opening the backdoor of the honky tonk bar he owns (Maze 'O Drunk) he beheld the sight of his lovely wife gettin' ragdolled upside a dumpster by a gift from the God of Sea. Raged out, for this was the second time his love had forsaken him, Minos flipped Pasiphaë the bird and splattered the used grease he had meant to dispose of upside the bulls head; this action of course causing the entire scene to get so much more sensual with meat laden lube. And so the Minotard was concieved. Unlike his older, perhaps keener brother, the Minotard was not confined to a maze. He was, instead banished to the rec room with a 120 color set of Crayolas. He's been in a time out for eternity. And it doesn't seem like any of the other whiney lil babies in the rec room are going to slay him any time soon, as his elder brother was slain so long ago within his maze. No no no...for one, the Minotard wieghs 3500 lbs. For another, he's been rolling around on the Care Bears throw rug situated in front of the Barney viewing area lolling his tongue for 81 years. He has peanut butter caked on the nape of his horns and no wetnap can get the fudge off his mane. His binkie must be replaced every thirteen hours due to grinding jaws and all the other children fling Lucky Charms into his tail. The last time his father visited he mauled the hall moniter and copulated with the school mascot. His grandfather apparently killed 230,000 people in a tsunami a few years ago and he won't be coming to visit any time soon. While his ear medication is administered the Minotard flares his nostrils and swings his mighty horns. While eating his Gerber Carrots he usually attempts to stack his ABC blocks way too high. His lincoln log cabins are never structurally sound. Lest ye be skeptical of of the Minotard's mythical abilities, just take a gander into his diaper to view the shitblast he leaves daily. Please treat him gently when taking him from the playroom, he is very sensitive to light and liable to charge into anything he sees as a threat; a school bus, for example.

Don't Let the Dread Bugs Bite!

"Nothing prepares you for full departure from reality." He laughed when he originally heard this. A plaintiff few chuckles that fell out of his mouth as he poured three "Sugar Crystal Rock" packages into his "Caffeinated Beverage." The teeming life behind the eyes of the feeble, broken man who had said this to him slowly warped itself inward. Obviously a mess of tangled wire and debunked software, the invalid liquefied into the pavement and slid down a sewer drain. A single blue flower grew up from the ground and he looked up just in time to catch a red eyed squirrel scream into the ears of an old woman wringing her hands like soaked rags. I'm going to disregard these things, he thought. But it couldn't be done. An asthmatic child skipped across his line of vision with a chilly green afghan trailing his heels while auras of psychotropic detail swirled around the blood trails left in the boy's wake. He was truly losing it. The sky finally crashed in dripping acidic industrial runoff down upon the scene before him. A dam imploded inward and the doused town he grew up in flowed down to the lower banks of his past where picnics were ruined day by day. Lifting his hand to his face in grief he is terrified to realize his entire face fits into the crook of his palm. With his fingers wrapped entirely around his scalp, tears flowing through the oversized gaps in his fist, he slowly descends into a pit of quicksand while the car he lost his virginity in soars through the sky above, swirling in a cyclone. The windows explode as the viscous thickness of quicksand pours into his cup of coffee. It's not that he is completely disappointed, but it just seems as though his meager existence could've been left behind with just a little normalcy.

Cruisin' for a Bruisin'

The children won't rest. They are stiffly sniffling with pimply rippling nostrils dripping forever upon their particle board tabletops littered with deceptive literature concerning the education of the complacent. The media addled brain of baby faced child slowly fills with chains. Little Jimmy is spinning a book entitled "Crystallography for the Tiny Child of Wonder" upon his drool draped finger. "Hey King of Jesus!" Mr. CruiseMan screams with spittle flung across his Jeering Lobe. "Quit your spin cycle or I WILL show you spin cycle. ALL OVER YOUR FACE!!!!" Yes, Mr. CruiseMan has been teaching his decrepit lesson plan for so long he sees it as a towering monolith of child sobriety. A harbinger of bloody discipline: it is the destructor of meandering adolescent paths. Shoot straight. Shoot it up real straight. Like some sort of schizophrenic heron flying out of the moonlight Mr. CruiseMan swoops down on these cowering shit for brainz and preens their minds of rebellion and safety blankets. He's ever-present; reminiscent of each student's recurring nightmare. Not only do the youth of the nation cower in this smothered atmosphere, so does the lone No. 2 pencil. Due to stifled creativity, each of these yellow sticks of graphite are subject to the jaws of every boy and girl. Chewed to oblivion as these young men and women so often are in the grasp of Mr. CruiseMan. Every twitch of budding limb, every undesired, semi-adult thought squelched in the effort to never join this world of zombies: they all spell the doom of a childhood that will be restrained while it exists. Mr. CruiseMan takes this fact as a rite of education. Let them be absolved of ignorance. For, after all, tis bliss.

Punishment with a Capital P

Looking into the concrete room, the one that features the electric chair as the only piece of furniture within it, Shamus second guessed himself: maybe that killing spree wasn't such a good idea after all. Yes, it was somewhat spastic. It was invigorating and life affirming as well. Like a breath of fresh shit free air after working a double at the Gary, Indiana Sewage Treatment Plant. Like swabbing out those canals inside your head and seeing all that deep yellow wax intermingling with deep brown specks and interjecting (quite belligerently), "Wow, I must be thinking too much." Like sweeping up all the gore of your life into a biohazard bag and flinging it to the mongrel dogs. While breathing the air of all that decieved him and delving deep into the canals of his life with mongrel dogs howling his despair, Shamus broke out his trusting bottle of Dr. McGillicutty Peppermint Schnapps and hit the town. Hit it real hard. With a brick. Sixteen hours later Shamus was detained by a gruff man wearing a badge. A man with apparently no trace of a sense of humor; he had barely cracked his jaw (which was smeared with frosting) with a smile as Shamus screamed drunkenly, "I DID NOT TELL HER TO LIE UNDER DEPOSITION!!! I TOLD HER TO LIE 'DER IN DAT POSITION!!!" Who knows. Maybe you had to be there. So now, 3 retrials and 2 appeals later, his eyes now rest upon the knotted wooden armrests of that which spells his doom. Did he care to die? He didn't know. He did know it was just too easy. You can't snuff out the sneaking suspicion of a life gone mad with a well placed lightning bolt. The feeling is seething under the mundane toil of all those children running mad with popsicles. Those pre-pubescent scoundrels just waiting for the lovely moment when they're chained within their padded, nine-to-five cell. Women and children weren't spared during The Rampage of Shamus: the rejection of a life etched so deep with desolation was. He shuffles in, chains clinging a cheery jingle. A single bubble of spittle forms at the corner of Shamus' mouth as the prison guard, grinning, straps him in.

High Definition Alopecia

Male pattern baldness terrified him so much so that he lost his ability to leave the house for three months. Well, not so much a house but a shack. In the middle of the woods. With no windows. Painted blood red. And not so much three months as three decades. His monthly shower under the bucket which doubled as a latrine had given him a dooming conclusion that rocked his already fragile demeanor. The ever increasing clumps of hair hemorrhaging from his scalp convinced him he would never be the stallion of pride and justice he had sought to be. Testosterone would never drip from his Burt Reynolds-esque mustache as he mounted a steed while carefully, yet decisively, remoulding his quaff of pure masculinity. He was wasting away. His hogs couldn't even stand up anymore. The well wasn't drawing water anymore. His dogs were all foamed at the mouth. His whip had lost it's crack. And this was the worst of it all: His Blu-Ray player had mysteriously stopped working. He used to caress the buttons, getting so sensuous, to stave off the inevitable thoughts of total hairy abandon. But alas, the stripped wooden boards plastered of chipped pornography holding this room of solitude together could conceal no more. Laid bare; barren, sickly, and staring, the eye of the blu-ray will no longer lull him to sleep. He's like some sort of receding hairline off on the horizon; forever lost in a Rogaine commercial he'll never behold in HD again.

Dont Cry Over Sensuousness.

His shifty-pinkeye usually betrays the ultimate sexuality inherently lurking beneath the pale blue iris in his one lazy eye. He is Sexual Rob and his mysterious demeanor and facial twitches bolster the scarily erotic feeling growing in your belly. The tension. The longing. The smell. He is a cassanova slinking along the dark underbelly of Paris, right near the lint inside the belly button. He is the football coach wooing the sixteen year old head of the cheer-leading squad, right near the lint inside the belly button. He once said "I love you" for a complimentary Grande Caramel Frappaccino. Or so he would like you to think. You will question his assertions as his clammy hand plants itself upon your thigh. Are those eyes, caked with a willfully thick baking soda residue, home to all that you desire? Have you been longing for some sort of obscure love predicated upon a blurring of the vision and a recipe for creamy alfredo disaster? These wants may be present but consent is not a tenet of Sexual Rob's belief structure. He is the king of sensuous subversion and he will make you feel how he wants: STRANGELY SEXY. Whether you be frightened or cringing with titilation, you will be confronted with sweaty crimson passion. Yes, his eyes are dead. Yes, he is holding a stack of porno mags. Yes, he hasn't done anything but stare at you for the past ten minutes. Nonetheless, Sexual Rob brings passion to life like a wild eyed necromancer clutching Pure Ruby Red Crystalz and waving a finger puppet through the air as though it were a magic wand in control of all the you yearn for. The sexual revolution is nigh, and it's sticky like spilt milk.

Little Miss Gloomtime.

With the coming of all that was deformed, mutations became a way of style. Like that lovely little fetus suspended within a jar of formaldehyde within your dreams, she will bring about all the rage across your face like a well played slap. Not that it matters too hard. You will succumb to her slowly searching fingers scratching at your inner circle of thoughts no matter how intense your convulsion. Her fingers like tentacles will find that clique of preconceived notions your parents placed delicately within your childhood and let fester into your personality. She'll probe it like it's never been probed before. Imagine a drunk truck driver soaring on crystalz. You'll be probed like that.

The Age of a Dreamer.

Laughter is addictive. Especially after a particularly spirited binge of The Golden Girls. Seeing those geriatric seductions play forth across the screen sent Gene "Moody Goo's" Gambie into fantasies of grandeur involving bedpans, creamed corn, and Mr. Rogers. And no, no, no. This Mr. Rogers prancing about in Gene's private world, bouncing off his synapses like a GooGooDoll splayed out on spraypaint, was no ordinary Mr. Rogers. This explicitly giddy Mr. Rogers wore a trim, curled, silverfox-white wig, lending him a striking resemblance to Sophia, the swashbuckling granny-in-a-wheelchair who doled out crazed idiosyncrasies to her daughter Dorothy and friends during the all powerful reign of the everpresent Golden Girlz. Sparks fly as Gene gazes into this introverted scene. He makes eyes, Mr. R tilts a hip. He pops a collar, Mr. R gyrates grotesquely. All in a days work, thinks Gene as he turns the TV off and detonates the plastic explosive attached to the VCR. This is the only way to kick the habit. He's been hooked on TwoG for years and those post retiremental fancies must come to an end. He was tired of catching the 5:30a.m. Early Bird Discount at the R&R, tired of those lonely eyes tooling around the manicured lawns of the Mt. Everest Assisted Living Facility. That AARP card was looking too delectable these days and it had to stop. He was 37 now and he would finally emerge from his mother's basement like the undead clawing its way out of the crypt. Though the world had changed in the years since Golden Girls was canceled, Gene felt that he could pick up the pieces of the life he had known and move on. Though he had lost a part of himself during the nervous breakdown that resulted from Bea Arthur's tumultuous decision to move on in May of 1992, he would regroup and quell the festering sores of longing scarred across his entertainment preferences. Adjusting the fanny pack around his waist and flipping his Nike Pumps into high gear, he ascended the Woodpanel staircase into his mother's kitchen. The smell of bacon was like Camelot.

Home, Home in on the Pain

It was a stripped out kinship race that had brought him to this point. Of no return is where he stands. Off in the midst... lost to all that call society their home. As one once said, "I didn't move to the city. The city moved to me." Such blind egotism was a mantra for him and he wouldn't let nothin get in the way a that. He screams, "Oh brothers, how have you let me get out this way? Oh brothers, why hast thou given such unfriendly thoughts? Oh brothers, why must I lasso my own urges to keep from falling across the tracks?" These questions lay unanswered because he lacks internal dialogue. Thus, the kinship race. The strung out, fucked down, stupefied spectacle that slapped him across the face and slipped a cold hand down his trousers. He lost. He lost it all: his family, his lifestyle, his pure sexuality, his Turbo Charged Camaro IROC Z-4, his wood tip Back Woods Cigarillos, his "ethics of nothing." All was lost 'cept his Stetson "Totally Fucked" Hat with patented shit stains and sweat-strewn brim. The goofy grin only emphasizes the fact that he is, and has been for eons, a plaything of fate with broken dreams and fractured aspirations.

A Toolshed Full of Drugs.

Toolshed is beside himself; though the tack hammer had done it's job he was unsatisfied. Before him lay the wreckage of seventeen televisions of various sizes. All had given Toolshed a hard time and none would be forgiven. Their screens were blacking out the sun in Toolshed's mind. Their antennae matriculating him into the College of Depression and Sadness. Their constant blare tearing a hole in his mind to be filled with the likes of anti-depressants, painkillers, and appetite suppressants. Could it be that all his efforts were in vain? A wind of emptiness still tore through his petty existence and the predatory pharmaceuticals preying upon his mind were still holding sway. Years previous it had struck Toolshed like a dumptruck slamming through a bridge embankment: he was hanging by a thread spun of medicated sadness above an abyss of woe. Though sidestepping the mental anguish had been fruitful for years, it eventually became futile. He realized the darkness creeping in could not be controlled. And so the media mogul that had been preaching in his living room for his entire life, the television, became private enemy number one within the realm of his broke-down, seedy boarding room. Scapegoats, however, breed more scapegoats. Every box of static was eventually trained under the mental cross-hairs of Toolshed. His latest and largest rampage yet, a raid on the local TV Repairman's shed, leaves him empty still. Popping another Xanax, Toolshed longs for a dramatic, single tear to drip down his cheek. But alas, tears denote emotion and Toolshed is so Zoned that he is just devoid of such things.

Molten Anonymous Love

The campfire blazes like The Mannequin Arm of Giant flung across a funeral pyre. Marshmallows bloated and charred, strung out across a spindly stick of ash, hang precariously from the outstretched hand of Lil Baby JuJu. What was he doing here out in the wilds of Gary, Indiana? Why were these gyrating, masculine bodies of steel orbiting around this flame casting ugly shadows across the torn down life that once was the American Steel Industry? Ah, yes. It all comes together in JuJu's slop-heaped mind. These wonderful men are the remnants of a bygone era of powerful foundry workers, all sexed up on JuicePilez and makeshift stainless steel. The arctic economic climate of today brought with it a stream of erotically charged hardbodies emerging from every exit of every steel factory in the godforsaken pit that is Gary, Indiana. This collective muscle floe had been waiting for the moment when they could finally tear off the tortured chastity belt of American Steel and "Get Real Crazy." Within hours impromptu Discos were set up across the town proper in the form of campfires and boomboxes; creepy smiles and erotic joylessness became an instant way of life. JuJu was drawn to this cacophony of sexuality. Donning his "Cap of Shame," he crossed the state line and found himself engulfed in avid sensuousness like nothing he had ever experienced before. Looking out across the sea of wrangled, tinkled flesh, Lil Baby JuJu screams, "Does anyone want s'more?!" He's not sure what he's offering when he asks this.

Oh, Beautiful Mullet With Sweat of Man Dripping

Though sweat pours off his forehead like a waterfall of pride and shame, his Mullet of Pricelessness shall overcome without the help of an Aquanet injection. His secret lies within an immovable commitment to the absence of hygeine, follically speaking. He is a man of the outdoors and oddjobs; overgrown lawns cower in his presence, methheads bow at his girth, Jesusfreakz zone out in his spiritualism. Thus, the natural baptism of sweat sprung daily from his body gives his quaff daily support in the form of pure human grease. The formative agent keeping this modern feat of Pure Southern Man together is oozing from his pores: he is, in essence, a cesspool on a three week bender. There is no need for hair gel within in this man's world, nor is their time for it; grease of man is all that is required to keep this writhing existence aflame. Speaking in tongues, he wags his head about catapulting tears and sweat across the burnt out front lawn of his trailer. While the Mullet stays solid, the obese women and small children of the trailer park lose they're shit while staring at this abomination in awe.

Zone Tinted Glasses

True, the traffic patterns of today are confusing, petty, pro-life, sexualized, put-off, mumbling, totally stupid, and altogether sensuous. Zoned out highway employees tool the interstates for mink wrapped dominatrices and give up all they can for the last kick of shit in their face. Wifebeater flapping in the wind like a rubber hose flogging a helpless child, the nomads of an age long gone (the times of the sexual hitchhikers of crystalized passion) will soon lose all consciousness and slump recklessly across the dotted line. One radical Mad Maxian will reap the benefits of all this needless wreckage. Growing real huge, maybe four or five feet tall, he'll take off the vestiges of a terrible age and don his Zone Tinted Glasses, wrangle the ruined mass of hair upon his dome into a GRADE A UltraHotPink Scrunchie, and set his eyes upon the only thing holding him back: the Stop Sign hanging from a rusted metal pole at the end of the Cul de Sac his mother lives on.

Knee High Optional

He used to remember the days when he slipped a woolen sock over his head like a slipcase to his totally blasted soul. He used to remember when he ran blindly through the fields of shit, resembling a gone sock monkey off on a psycho tribute. He doesn't remember anything anymore. Those days are gone for him. The socks have taken all they can from him. He now sees himself as an inanimate object with a sack of nails for a body. Silicone wastelands doll up his moving image prosthetic personality and he no longer waits for the moment of footwear ecstacy. Yet, that instinctual yearning lingers: he altogether resembles something machine made and spineless.