I sleep with a basket of cans at my feet.
My monitor flickers. The teevee recites
Some facts on the tidepools not far from my street.
My pizza is finished, the darkness invites
A script from my dreams, where I live on the edge
And snap at the gleanings; the vomit the bay
Has served for my dinner. I watch. On the ledge,
Abutting the rocks—not decayed—dare I pray
For miracles? Pinching its neck with my claws?
Its fat and its alien warmth in my jaws?
I) Genesis of the Lament
Seized and snipped, placenta
Bagged then burned, they branded...
Mother! Doctors etched an
Order, “Live” upon my
Brow! All wet with after
Birth—the lights were blinding.
Greenish curtains bore the
Yolk from which I burst. An
Angel said before my
Birth, the drain creates an
Eye with steady gaze that
Meets the rinser's guilty
Glance. My best dregs gurgled.
II) Homunculus Adopts the Golem
Through the slivers of clouds comes a beam
For the evening: the moon is my rune
In the night. So I follow the seams:
Through the yards, and the fences on dune.
May the cobwebs protect me! I crept.
I was drawn to the chorus I heard.
It was beautiful croaking—I wept
In the mists and the doorway. A bird
Made of leather was perched on a stand.
She's the sister of golems—the hen
For my skull—and she hatched me a wren
From my scalp. I extended my hand.
Welcome to the triple-X ranch, where we work hard to break the faux-virginal sissypants pop smears, who in reality are far from pure and in fact have been repeatedly molested by impotent politicians wearing giant strap-ons molded in the shape of their favorite popes. After being buggered by a Pius XXX phallus for years, young stallions such as Justin Bieber can’t help but hurl up wall after wall of protective stony smiles, the ivory fences of their pearly whites being the only part of them not yet scrimshawed with the graffiti tags of corporate logos. The fillies fare even worse; take Miley Cyrus, her tween twat long since marked with the mark of the bestialist, her bust wet from the slobberings of every linebacker faggot who could unclog the blow from his nostrils long enough to get his pecker hard enough to pork her prepubescent pussy. Eventually the scorch-marks from the branding irons scab over and these girls stop shitting bits of cellphone into the bloody basin every morning, stop vomiting up the gobs of spermy vodka that get caught in the backs of their throats like an extra uvula. Yes, eventually our little Britneys and Lilos grow up and become the glassy-eyes nags they were always destined to be, singing with sandpaper rasps and shaving their snatches like they were still thirteen. We put them out to pasture then, but only after riding them into the dirt, those skeletal cumbags whose bloated udders will soon scrape the ground like swollen condoms. We scratch our names in their hides with our spurs, laugh when they get their hooves caught in their own stirrups. We ride them fast and ride hard, and keep plying them with visions of apples and sugarcubes, and when they complain that we don’t deliver the goods, we remind them that this poor falling-apart old world could always use a little more glue. Now, giddy the fuck up!
He walks swiftly, balancing
An unopened Can of Pepsi
On his clipboard until it topples off,
Thunks to the sidewalk.
He bends over, picks it up
And wordlessly sets it back on the board,
Clamping the dented can beneath his palm
As he darts across the street
And slips between the sliding glass doors.
Surely he must know
That the carbonation inside the can
Has become agitated, that
The can is now a bomb,
An aluminum grenade
Of volatile pop waiting
To have its pin cracked.
Surely he will take the time
To tap the top of the can
And hold it over the sink,
Pointing the spray safely away
When he flips the tab.
Surely he won't forget that.
Surely he won't take his drink
Directly into the meeting
Before opening it.
Surely today isn't the day
He decided to wear
His best, his only
Suit.
First thing you should know is we don't refer to ourselves as demons any longer. PR prefers that we use the term "alternative angels." Anyways, it takes nineteen of us alt-angels to control this particular subject. I'm an eye movement expert; though in these cases the eyes don't actually see anything, proper eye movement is essential when it comes to preserving the illusion that the suit is moving of its own volition. Things have changed a lot in the possession business since the old days when one would just take a lift to the surface and just leap into the body in question and, you know, go to town. I miss those days sometimes. In the digital age, possession is a strictly wireless operation, performed via remote control by a team of specialists. We all work at programming our particular bodily function- legs, head, heart, digestive system- and the commands go through a central processor which checks them for accuracy before beaming them via wireless signals to the subject, or suit. It's kind of like a marionette with nineteen different puppeteers pulling the strings. If this sounds complicated, you're right, it is, but remember we've been at this for thousands of years.
So as you know, recently I've been working with this subject we call Lady Gaga. Hey, don't blame me for the name; that's all Marketing's doing. It's not bad work, though I'd prefer a more established vocalist such as Streisand or Liza. I'm not so much into this dance music crap, but it's a job, and it could be a hell of a lot worse. Take for instance my former associate Horkheimer. Both of us started work on the Gaga woman at the same time, right before her second single came out. Poker Face, that's right. Gaga -or Steffi, as we called her- was what you call a cooperative subject, or coop, rather than a hostile takeover. Seems like more and more musicians are seeking out our services these days; I don't mean to brag but business is booming. Those guys and gals down in PR know what they're doing. The internet helps, of course.
Anyways, Horkheimer was a hand man. You probably don't think about how important the hands are when it comes to singing. Horkheimer had been controlling the hand gestures of female performers for a couple thousand years; his big breakthrough was a little chippy name of Salome, maybe you've heard of her. More recently, he's worked with such luminaries as Marlene Dietrich and Jane Avril. So we felt fortunate to have him on board. It's funny what years in the industry can do to a man though. Horkheimer had a wicked sense of humor that had a real sense of bitterness behind it. Plus he was a little bit full of himself, and I think he felt that by working with a young, relatively unknown singer, that he was slumming it. "Look," I'd tell him, "We're starting with nothing with this one. This is our chance to build whatever we want, to shape her into our image!"
He wasn't having any of it though. "She doesn't have any class," he'd kvetch. "That's something we can't fake. It's either there or it ain't, and with this Gaga bitch, it ain't." Now like I said, I prefer the more traditional vocalist myself, but I wasn't going to kick. I always believe in trying to make the best of things. Besides, my last couple of gigs had been the pits; working with strictly nowhere acts, boy bands mostly. The stories I could tell. But I digress.
So anyways this one time, Gaga's got this big concert to put on at some stadium in England, and we've got everything all programmed and ready to go, and she gets out there, and the first thing she does, before Goldsmith can get her to sing a single note, she raises her left hand, extends her left index finger, and shoves it as far as it will go up her left nostril and starts digging for gold, so to speak. Well, the crowd went nuts, screaming and booing and throwing half-empty cans of Boddingtons. It was a real clusterfuck, believe you me. We had to detain the entire audience, wipe their memories of the evening clean. What's that? Well, to you it may seem like an extreme reaction for such a minor incident. And I know what you're thinking: in the grand scheme of things, what harm can a little nose picking do? It's different in this business though, where careers can hinge on a single wardrobe malfunction, a single inappropriate gesture. It's all about keeping the client happy.
I haven't seen Horkheimer since; no one in our circle has, though rumor has it he's been stuck supervising bowel maintenance for some young act name of Justin Bieber or something. Poor son of a bitch. Me, I play it safe. No crossing or rolling of the eyes, no inappropriate winking. Keep your eyes on the prize, I always say, and keep your nose clean. I plan on being at this job for as long as I can, at least until the inevitable overdose.
Subscribe in a reader
