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The Undiscovered Country 3
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% the Undiscovered Country %
% issue 3 %
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#/# editors: #/#
the insane season #/# cblanc@pomona.claremont.edu #/#
end of the seaside #/# rm09216@swt.edu #/#
autumn sunlight #/# #/#
leaves like my palm #/# 05FEB93 #/#
veins in my eyes #/#/#/#/#/#/#/#/#/#/#/#/#/#/#/#/#/#/#/#
reflected against the sun
debacle
this morning's debacle entranced
in the rainfall the faces speak
silent mouths and wordburnt eyes
and people lashed beyond the pale
and nothing here and nothing then.
lightly grass like spiders
bends beneath the rain
arches dropping dewfall
a world I must regain...
enthralled
to the potency &
virulent nature of life.
-- srp
EXTENSIVE PRETENTIOUS INTERLUDE: tsunami I
this is the heart of the wasteland, i think. i am surrounded by wreckage --
three empty cases of beer, a large steel cannister of sapporo, newspaper, food
bits, notebooks, clothing, some full beers, and my spiff boots with the condom
pockets empty beer bottles populate every open surface. out the window i can
see that the side of the dorm facing me knows no sunlight, but i cannot yet see
rain. wreckage is the maxim for the season, as i see people come and go and
merge and flow -- leaving behind wreckage. in the halls, empty boxes from a
student suspended for grades, and boxes left by a parent who labored for days
in his daughter's room (she wasn't around most of the time), who, if he labors
like mine, do it out of some twisted guilt. wreckage in the fifteen bottlecaps
i bounced off of the bathroom door. wreckage in a bloody punched-out
windowpane, the result of too much explosive anger lubricated with too much
milwaukee's beast. more than that, we are the detritus...we are those
unwanting to come back but not wanting to be "home" and hating the indecision.
outside rain washes the desert walls...
memories from the austere curtain
she murmurs, chanting restless waves
silk whispers in display windows,
windy parks long forgotten.
children clatter in selfwrapped play,
accost myself behind a thought,
seeing these days echoed before,
when pleasure strangled all but future.
her throat opens like dawn
calling from the darkened halls
a high school wrecked, a cemetary
flight in haste i've left it cold
echo victorious, empty fields
of eternity and other coughs
as i watch my window smear
these places by,
drowned in sympathetic rain.
the ed meese show presents:
pornography
masquerading as
literature:
Ascending the porch steps, they stopped at the front door, Gurn,
waiting for Tess to unlock it, she standing motionless before it.
Gurn's eyes never left her on the way back to the cabin, as he
stood studying her now, he knew something was wrong. She just stood
looking at the door, as if not knowing what to do. Concerned that
the blow to her head had harmed her more than she realized, but not
wanting to upset her further by mentioning it, he gently covered
her hand with his, taking the keys from her and unlocked the door.
Tess smiled up at him, as though nothing was out of the ordinary,
entered the cabin, peering at the contents of the room. Gurn
stepped close behind her, placing his strong hands on her smooth
shoulders, leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. "Maybe you
should rest for a while. Come, I'll put you to bed". Gurn guided
Tess to the bedroom. She was hesitant, looking around the rooms
they passed through. If he didn't know better, he would swear she
didn't know where she was. His fears for her increased, but he
controlled his features, not allowing his concern to show. Reaching
the bed, he turned her to face him, slowly easing her down onto the
bed. A seductive smile came to her full lips, as he reached to
remove her sweater. Her eyes shining brightly with a playfulness,
and something else, something he couldn't read. As he started
removing her jeans, she sat up quickly, her arms going around his back, her
nails digging into his flesh, scratching him from his spine to his
ribs, as her mouth went to his neck, biting him. Her head fell back
to the pillow, her grin almost wicked in her intent. Gurn stared
hard into her laughing eyes, as her hands splayed across his
muscular chest, squeezing and pinching as they roamed, reaching his
nipples, pulling at them until they stood erect from her
manipulations. "Teach me lust", her voice raspy in her request.
Gurn was stunned; he knew Tess to be passionate, but she was
showing an aggressive side he had never experienced before. His
hands rested on the tops of her jeans, now half way down her
slender thighs, her body writhing in anticipation of his touch. She
sat up again, her beautiful face just inches from his, her hands
moving to his powerful arms, stroking and squeezing the muscles,
her nails digging and tearing his flesh. The laughter he read in
her eyes only moments before, was replace by a look of extreme
hunger. Her tongue flicked out, running over her soft lips, she
looked to Gurn as if she could eat him alive. A low growl sounded
in her throat, her face tilted to his in expectation. His body
responded immediately, heating his blood, swelling him in his need to give
her what she demanded. His lips joined to hers in a kiss that was
soft, gentle, but she would have none of that. She roughly pushed him away
from her, that wicked smile returning to her lips, as she lay back
on the bed, stretching like a cat. Gurn watched her, his appetites
increasing, his blood pulsing through his veins. 'So she really
wanted to play', he thought to himself, an amused smile on his
lips, as he jerked her jeans the rest of the way off her body. He
covered her instantly, his mouth brutally coming down on hers,
bruising her tender lips, their teeth scraping, his tongue pushing
into her, forcfully exploring her warmth. An electric charge shot
through him as he flet her respond. She met his fierce attack in
turn, his roughness stirring her into action. She wriggled beneath
him, her hands once again digging into the taunt muscles of his
powerful back. Her head came up off the bed, pressing her face
closer to his, their tongues engaged in battle. Tess wrapped her
legs high around his back, squeezing his hips between her thighs.
It was as if she meant to devour him. Grabbing her hands, he
brought them up over her head, securing them in one of his. He
locked his other hand in her golden tresses, taking a handful at
the nape, he pulled her head back, exposing her lovely neck. His
hot mouth moved over it, sucking and biting at the sensitive flesh
below her ear. He heard her moan low in her throat, he could feel
her pulse racing. Releasing her head, he cupped her breast,
bringing his mouth down on it, sucking and biting her, then drawing
as much of her into his greedy mouth as possible. Her body jerked
beneath him, she cried out, her voice sounding low, different to
Gurn. As he continued to feast at her breast, he moved his hand
down to the apex between her thighs, his fingers seperating the
tiny blonde curls, locating the cleft of her pleasure, stroking and
teasing it, before plunging his finger deeply inside her.
Her body spasmed, her feminine flesh contracting around his finger.
She screamed as the pulsations shot through her, her pelvis arching
up to meet his hand, then dropping back to the bed as pleasure
washed over her. She broke his grip, freeing her hands, locking
them in his hair, and pulled him from her breast. Gurn grabbed her
hands, forcing them to the bed, as he moved his body between her
thighs. Releasing her hands, he quickly grabbed her slender legs,
placing one over each shoulder, pressing them back to her chest
with his body. Positioning himself he thrust deeply into her, her
head arching, her hands clawing his arms, at the feel of him
entering her. He grasped her hands again, locking them over her
head in his, as he drove his hard shaft violently into her soft
flesh. Her head moved from side to side, her hands pushing into his
with a strength he would not have believed she possessed. She cried
out, as he quickened his pace, moving in her with short, rapid
strokes. His mouth came down to claim hers once more. She bit him,
drawing blood from his lower lip. Low gutteral moans escaped her,
sounds that were foreign to Gurn, but passion was driving him too
strongly for him to hear them. He was consumed by the force of Tess'
desire, her legs quivered around his strong neck, and he could
tell she was near exploding in her pleasure.
-- tess trueheart & gurn blanston
paranoid
we were marching ashore through the brilliantly despondent clearblue eyes water
spreading around the island like bastard menstrual flow and we came upon the
grenadiers who were short men pitching large grenades into the splashing
electrically pissing water around us while we screamed and pitched down our
large new boots from two days before into the muddy frustration while around us
plays the ambient terror of seven men grinding seven minds and seven-string
guitars distorted to the howl of satan's fiery orgasm into the anus of the
fallen angel beelzebub who smoked more stem of the flagrant ecalyptus than any
mortal and spat back fire and retorts at the gods waxing idiotic above him in
the sunset like blood on a dashboard or perhaps rising to the skin after
thousands of lacerations are made as sacrifice to the great junkie god icon ego
of happiness leaving the will resplendetly ignored refulgent in the back
dumpster igniting the trash to inhale the fumes and feel the endlessly darkened
voice rising in his throat until the agony starts like the power chords sluttly
sliding downward and all that can be heard over the mewling howl of the flames
is fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck over the frustrated range of the reigning
bowelsplat like children sundered in grass under the roaring nazi planes coming
to teach us sense & take our souls and all that is left is fucking ...
virulent music, inc.
nocturno culto & s.r.p.
UNLEASHED "Shadows In The Deep" (Century Media). Unleashed
came to the forefront in the winter of 1990 when they toured through
Europe on an Earache package featuring Bolt Thrower and Nocturnus.
Even then, they caught the attention of critics with their
unpretentious and definite brand of sound. This latest work does
little to dispute initial enthusiasm for this band, whereby their
style, too, has come a long way in the last couple of years. In
particular, the two tracks "The Immortals" and "Shadows In The
Deep" indicate that a progression in traditional death metal is
taking place, which relies less on the music relying only on speed than
drawing on the energy slower tracks can produce; in any sense of the
term, these are two outstanding pieces of music. Traditionally
fast tracks are also featured, such as "Never Ending Hate" and
"Land Of Ice"; at times, however, this album comes disconcertingly close
to joining the abundance of bands specialising in banal lyrics, which
it doesn't deserve ("Bloodbath"). Despite this and Johnny Hedlund's John
Tardy-esque growling that is too monotonal for comfort at times, this album
lives off the actual music and a particularly good arrangement that
leaves no loose ends. Scandanavian death metal has always set
standards and Unleashed's clever reliance on shrewd breaks and tempo
changes on this album has certainly contributed to this trend. -- nc
THERION "Of Darkness..." (Grindcore). Socially-conscious Swedish death
metal with a touch of the cerebral, Therion provides a topical and
musical alternative to standard death metal. They are not as
outright heavy as many bands of the Swedish genre but provide much
more musical variation and complexity than many examples commonly
seen, plus a good bit more of the speed metal presence in some of
the virulent riffs on this album. Lead guitar is more competent
that the usual, with much more variation, especially in the
interplay between the lead and rhythm guitars for the rhythm of the
music. Lyrics focus on nonstandard topics such as the destruction
of the world's rainforests, human rights, pollution and the terror
of being human in various circumstances. The language of Therion
is erudite English, with some fairly complicated expressions and
words, and fits snugly into this well-structured and potent music.
This is the first death metal band I've heard where a discernable
Metallica influence can be sensed. Overall, very good, and many
hopes for the future of this act. -- srp
KREATOR "Renewal" (Noise). Mille and the guys behind Kreator have
certainly come a long way since their vocation of professing
"Endless Pain", "Pleasure to Kill" and raising the "Flag of Hate".
Their latest album (recorded at Morrisound in Tampa curiously enough)
may, however, be their most discussed output to date. The obvious
progression in the sound begins with a completely different voice and
initially promises to end with the "industrialesque" sound that
accompanies tracks like "Karmic Wheel" and "Realitaetskontrolle".
However, even the guitar riffs and arrangement of some of the tracks
leave an impression that they are too thought through, and some of
the spontaneity that is associated with earlier Kreator work seems to
be lost. When interviewed recently on German radio, Mille Petrozza
said that the band wanted to try and sound "brutal" in
a different way on this album, which is, by all accounts, not always
apparent. Nonetheless, leaving any allusion to previous work behind,
tracks like the opener "Winter Martyrium", "Renewal" and "Depression
Unrest" are pieces that certainly remind us of the thrash sound
Kreator initially could have trademarked. In a nutshell, this is a
very concise album that will require people that are familiar with
their previous albums to re-assess their committment to the band or
listen to it ten times intensely to come to the conclusion that the
intentions are good and that we are dealing with a natural progression
here. This album takes getting used to, but objectively speaking, loses
and lacks nothing that would qualify it as "neat and tidy." -- nc
IMMOLATION "Dawn of Possession" (R/C). This album provides a good
example of how to create solid death metal musically and lyrically.
This New York outfit takes the best musical aspects of fire & fury
death metal with multiple riffs, exciting tempo changes and some
actual effort thrown into solos. The standard chord stream main
riffs alternates with bridges and interludes expressing the most of
brutality as can be hoped for in music. Some rather innovative
techniques populate this album, including some quirky tempo
fluctuations and descriptive use of feedback. Complemented with
competent and powerful lyrics involving an epic vision of good &
evil wrangling for domination of the universe, "Dawn Of Possession"
surfaces as one of the better examples of this genre -- the classic
pro-Satan, pro-Speed, pro-aggro-emotion death metal album. -- srp
INCANTATION "Onward to Golgotha" (RoadRacer). Heavy, fast, low and
rumbling, this music tears across the airwaves like a buffalo stampede
out of hell. It varies enough musically to be somewhat intriguing, but
the aim of this work appears to be total and demorphing heaviness;
it succeeds almost completely, being one of the heavier bands
without detouring into complete pound, smash, and thrash noisecore.
Vocals are exceptionally low and probably carcinogenic. The energy
level remains high throughout this album, something exhibited also
in the venomous lyrics, which destroy conventional Christian
paradigms with an acrid offhand manner. There are no real
surprises on this album, but none are needed, either. -- srp
AGTHOCLES "Theatric Symoblisation of Life" (Cyber). Make Minor Threat
less predictable and cross them with a Carcass that pulls even more
punches, and you have Agthocles. This Belgian (slight accents)
quartet hammer through some songs, and grind through others, and
deliver others with a style completely unique to this band. It
originates in the brutal-disgusting extreme end of grindcore, but
as the band state explicitly, they are into individualism, and to
that end it varies musically quite often. Lyrically, this album is
one of the most unique I've ever seen; philosophical, poetic,
personal, social -- there is a tremendous variety that cannot even
be covered in a paragraph or two. This album contains about eighty
minutes of music, from early demos to more recent creations, and
should delight any grindcore fan with a zen for zeal and energetic
aggro-intellectualism. -- srp
REPULSION "Horrified" (Relapse). Sparsely come the bands that become a
definitive subset to a genre, much as the Misfits did to punk or Venom did to
metal; however, Repulsion come close as one of the most energetic and focused
extreme grindcore bands I've heard. Lyrics are not as good as Brutal Truth,
but nestle nicely between the pure gore of Carcass and the outright outraged
politicism of Napalm Death. The sound takes the shuddering massive-impact feel
of grindcore and adds to it the fluid and expressive muscled riffs of a good
death metal band; bass work gets an extra mention here, for in a genre that
generally doesn't do much with bass, Repulsion takes it beyond the immediate
stage. Vocals demonstrate exceptional clarity, possibly because they derive as
much from the original thrash vocals as the more modern sandblasted voice of
music's most extreme. Although some may be frightened by the radical sound (or
the fact that one band member strikingly resembles a tattooed Hitler) there is
in fact vital element to this music that raises it beyond the "let's make a
point" destructive noise of some grindcore. -- srp
Deicide "Amon: Feasting the Beast" (R/C). This "new release" is demo tapes
from the now-(in)famous death metal act Deicide, back from their days as
starving death metal hopefuls called Amon. Supposedly re-released because of
better, heavier production, this album provides the raw versions of early songs
and one early intro (the inclusion of which is stupid, because the intro is
amateurism redefined). Serious fans will like this because in many ways the
production is better -- it doesn't have the artificial raspiness to the voice
as the first album did, and it doesn't have the same anemic guitar sound,
something rectified in the second release -- but selling it as a full album is
a dubious move. -- srp
a sniper's poem
judex
Hail Eris, Full of Grace.
Won't you sit upon my face.
(...)
the world spins like a phonograph
from here the center despondent
or maybe grooved in the outer ridge
my needle finds its placement
spinning, turning, memories fade
housing collapsing like sunburnt bones
heartcage of those who die deserted
falling like piano keys through hazy smoke
in the tepid afternoon midnight of a blues bar
abandoned buicks in saddened rows
for harvesters that never arrive
rising like rushes into the noon wind
in the six o'clock shadow of a surging storm
spinning sepulchres on thick walls of glass
music surmounting sweat energy subsided
rhythm like breathing that stewards our lives
pervading the essence with echoing resonance
this is the season of anything goes,
the music of life around our eyes flows.
-- srp
christmas
& in the golden wilderness of winter at sunset i crouched on the porch with my
armor in drink and staggered against the cold without moving a flinch or
diverting my gaze from the great unbeknown & realized again that my favorite
friend comes only to maim when there's dormantlike pain (...) "don't hold me
back/ this is my own hell" proclaims the voice from the voxbox with an echoed
rash tearing of vocal chords & i am alone even though far inside there are
people good people all chanting out lies and around this great tree they
surrender their lives with these clues and desires and fabricant lies. do you
understand? it was the day, then, the end of the day and there i was bourbon
grasping my hand like a firm highat handshake squirming below i found myself &
then turning at a female hand to back into the warmth & the room all aglow.
children slid like worms over tearing crystalline wrapping paper & strings of
lights hung like dead men from the room's sharp corners & i sat there and mused
as if i had anythoughts worth keeping from the noisy air. they handed me a box
i smiled and said okay and ripping paper slowly trembling hands i tore into the
package and unleashed the gift which was nestled in paper through which i must
sift again like the memories of some dying mind and there in the womb-box i
knew i would find a gift that gives sparsely, a bottle standing soldierlike
proud against the comfortable, safe packing paper. absolut, my champion, i
roared with delight & spoke pleasant murmurs and put aside papers and ribbons i
strew. some eyes in darkness visited, withdrew.
christmas is the holiday without a reason for me & for most everyone else,
which complaining about is stupid because it was never designed as a religious
holiday, but as a celebration. more of life than an actual god, although the
god-icon factors predominantly. i gave a lecture to this effect once but noone
believed.
the first day falls like a dying eagle, coming up in the morning like a
malignant sun over my shaking hands. hands shake, people shake, vision shakes,
and everything sensitized much like the area of impact under the eye of a
nurse with needle. sweat inundates my hands, my brow, and under my eyes. my
throat is swollen, my voice deep, shaking out of the gloom of my face
like the rant of a dying king. the outside is so incredibly bright, so alive,
and yet so resoundlingly, despondently dead. my corpse wiggles and stutters
and slips through cracks in crowds and buildings and trees, unable to really
keep a straight line. concentration isn't; i can't hold a conversation,
and if i do, the context is"i want a beer, nay, i think i need
one." i can't write -- the series of serpents that shake from my quivering
pen are nothing like the characters i want to form. the words that
sluggishly roll out of my mouth like dying silkworms resemble negatively what I
wish to say. my nerves are charged rods of crystal, ready to
shatter but vibrating with the most imminent news of my life, the most exciting
yet mundane details, sped up, slowed down, alive and then dead. my mind aches
above sad warriors my eyes, surrounded by sickness and fixed like the dead.
the dominant emotion can only be fear.
it's a countdown, the fundamental need of the human spirit to unleash itself.
it is the "i need a vacation" mantra of the amerikan worker converted to the
extreme, the basic need of humanity to have outlets at times. think about the
holiday: we persist in the ludicrous supposition of santa claus for our
children and make him an icon, plaster him everywhere. we put up trees and
spend inordinate amounts of money decorating and venerating our idols for a
supposedly idol-free religion. we use it as the icon of good cheer, of the
good time, of giving and freedom yet we are so easily manipulated into giving
up our hard-earned money for frivolous trinkets of the holiday. what's the
point, here?
the second day arrives like an indecisive storm to a valley. the physical
symptoms mostly abate, except for paranoia and extremely brittle nerves, which
make me feel like a glass snake, ready to shatter at any minute and spring into
thousands of disparate, desperate individuals. i still can't say
anything valuable, and disappoint friends that i now can talk to with my
boring clutterspeech. emotions are today's crisis. moodiness inflected
with stimulus ravages my mind & sends me into asocial binges or intense
desires for human contact. i talk, i become afraid, i leave.
incredible restlessness, driving me to each end of the campus, to each darkened
door or open room, and then to just walk, feeling the good bite of my boots
into the damp ground and feeling the crowded emotions of memories and intruding
people lapse from my mind. some physical pain on occasion, and many hours of
weary eyes. there is no consistent emotion, there is no consensus, no
decision.
there is a fundamental sense of alienation endemic to humans in the twentieth
century. they live their days as functionaries, not feeling even very
functional as their jobs either underutilize them or treat them like machines,
and then attempt to fill the remaining time with something fulfilling, only to
find that much of whatever "meaning" they could sense died with notions
outdated by technology. these people voyage onward in confusion and often
stumble over their own efforts, appearing foolish while in fact being
self-destructive, as in the void of alienation there is no reason to continue,
but no acceptance of this in the over personality, preferentially relegating it
to the subconscious where it can act without causing recognition. some turn to
drug abuse.
the third day is dawning around me, or at least it is rising, and i can feel
only an immense tiredness. it is not physical. it is the tired of the mind,
the fatigue of too much life not unlike what happens after a life-value crisis.
the onset of this was shortly after the break of scientific day when my eyes
rolled into my head and my limbs collapsed, tense but tired, wired and shaky.
i slept then, and slept for many hours, but still could not shed the profound
sense of fatigue. my heavy head slags and falls routinely, and my strength is
that of a child. maybe i am a child, only having childish thoughts. here
there is no color, only ache and tired. it must be hypothermia.
the christmas tree fell, somewhere in a blur. children crying, there is broken
glass on my hand & there is blood on the tablecloth. and amy, who before we
married was the beautiful woman leaning on my arm and holding me and making the
air so light and springish and renewed, the woman i met and explored and fell
in love with and kept up with, is crying and asking what she has done and the
children are crying the sighing death song and the candles are burning bright
with the pain there is blood everywhere i have done it again and so i turn in
sorrow despair and the buzz and the bottle unbroken hits floor with a thud and
through all our crying my arms circle her hands meeting in blood union and my
lips speaking the tears that are scouring my cheeks with hope love and fears
and saying i'll try it i'll try to be straight and amy is crying as children
are ushered from the sarcophagus room by uncles & mothers and there in
desolation i know she has gone and i stare at the fire waiting for morning
to come
life desecration
true evil is in the nature of pus.
purulent, yellow, green, orange, beige, puce, or brownish-jerkoff yellow,
running from the degraded eyes of a minister with six catholic boys impaled on
his skinny penis. behind him the mother mary bleeds from an exposed breast
encircled in thorns. two steps behind that the altar collapses, and a seething
fart blasts the twain stone halves through stained glass windows, the broken
glass descending like four thousand bloodvials cast at the sun.
pus, slitting silently from the slit of a slut, slopping slovelnly onto her
thighs as she laughs at a dinner party, hors d'ouvre perched on on leg, tossing
her spitty tongue from one man to the next, trying her thighs on for the size
of the universe, oozing pus as she picks checkbooks and drifts like the corpse
of a fish on waves through the assaults on truth she concocts to fabricate her
life.
sloshes softly against the shore, oozing from the porelike mouth of the death
accountant with the speaking problem that brought four x four columbians and
their shiny clickclack shoes to slice him, splice him, slash him and slam him
into the trunk of the car, now sunken beneath pus-covered pus-desecrated
seaweeds, above the body of his family who happened to be with him at the time.
pus in a dying kiss from an 80-yr-old cancer patient festering in her hollow
ward from mustard gas & methadone & mercury that floated like invisible pus
from the water supply...
nothing new under the sun but above the sky sings its undone and mankind
troubles in the fields to kiss and tell to tell and feel and there is nothing
left at home but confrontation, the great unknown; i found her on a sunday blue
and now she calls to say it's gone and there is nothing left for fun and there
is nothing for the sun...never leaving my last house, never moving onward out
never kissing more dead ground never finding the last word never writing
slavery never slaving writer's pain, and never, ever, never poeticizing in
plain blood and bodies made of ice we wander through these appliance days and
find our controls by our corpses made to last a thousand years...the circle
eyes and shuddering the earth it heaves and breathes and sighs and i can't see
beyond this day because out there is where danger lies and people coughing,
running, singing playing with the chanting priest; above it all there is no
lying, only prediction, predilection and defeat...
. . . ..
like, the plains of
elysius? . . .
merry merry marry
marrow, sparrow, scared
. . . .. . .
newyrseve wasunsoberly uneventful
shitty useless holiday
forty lawyers spittin' shirts starched
stuffed into a wetbar drano room
kissing sheets & french art
to christmas and mozart on the piano
. . . drew
& I & friends talking, drinking
finest 8.99 champagne from barbiedoll twopart glasses
watching high school children age,
sort of, stuffer, nonsense
. . . . . . .
sort of an island-outrage modern thing.
recollections
Strange hopes amd omcodental acheivements
confusion at lost chances layers of illusion
blanketing the sky in a muddy brown which
is a color not unlike confusion itself.
Hopelessly hopeful wandering amongst skulls
and daffodils cruching both thoughtlessly
wreaking violence and wrecking beauty in
an unbidden flash for silence and open ears.
Some small moment of blue would be a blessing
for that is a clean color free of silt and
dead things blue sky blue thoughts all
honest at least while the world is brown.
Gray now no black no blue and white all
in shadows of color shadows of meaning
shades of truth and ghosts of yesterday
found now hidden under wounds not left to heal.
And that is green fresh and young living
only for the life no inner motive or
buried secrets silent hatred and unheard
longings.
Give me a rainbow in the soul and free me
of the shadows at my door and shades of
who or what I never was but once could
have been clear and sweet silence of
understanding.
-- fern
PM Housewife
The post-modern housewife
she carries a gun
she searches the streets for sustanace
throws crap from the streets to open beaks
she dreams...
of smashing the butt of gun into the face
of a male...
-- j.a. clement
Dancing on moonlight,
sunbeams wil the truth
silvery cobwebs hide the honesty in a smile,
beauty forming an evil facade.
Only a simple smile...
asking not for gold,
for spider-spun metals or jewels
of moon and sun.
The turn of his head,
twinkle in his eyes,
the need for simple things
overwhelms.
Only in this,
our simple world.
-- fern
i take no side but my own,
i am Nemesis, i hold forth alone
coming from darkness to it i must fall
here in the center it supplies all
emotions & fears & wandering angels
ageless & aging & tainted and painful
procession unswerving wearing the sidewalk
daylight scattering with the dead day
midnight glows in the dawning of morn
encornered, surrounded, i await it alone.
-- nemesis
APPROACHING THE DORMANT STATE ...
A kaleidoscope of death covers the mountain side.
A vibrant show of strength as all life is sucked within.
The last hurrah, before the wind pulls the vibrant shroud away.
Exposing a multitude of mighty torsos.
>From death comes life...
-- j.a. clement
They fight on and on,
words flashing like laser,
cutting like knives,
snipping scissors through
the fabric of my life.
Weaving in and out of time,
I'm sure these words
have all been said before,
yet they slice and old scars
bleed again as new.
-- fern
stoner adventures V
As usual an auburn day in spring when Spike and I (Burr, that is,
stoner by example) went to the carnival after smoking some of that wonderfully
exciteful insightful Kawaiian green bud, the kind that virtually pops out of
the bag it is so big and fruitful and beautiful and fragrant, like mint just
like the scent of mint on my mother coming in from the garden, standing in the
kitchen doorway to let the sun out of her eyes so she could see her home as
anything but a cave. She's dead now, but her mintiness lives on in these
abundant plant parts that Spike and I grappled for with sweatrembling fingers
in our greedy lust for dope.
"Where is the instrument of destruction?" I queried Spike, and he who
must have taken so many bong hits from his sad soft slitted eyes led me into
the bathroom which was fitting for his rathole apartment building, an aging
creaking wonder with urine for tiles and faded yellow lather for walls. All I
saw was a cracked-up titanic bathtub and a toilet, with the ripped and sagging
shower curtain like the dress of a crucified woman between them. "Where?" I
said again, lifting up a tube of toothpaste in case it was the instrument in
question. "Look," said Spike gleefully.
It was an older toilet with a high tank and a low lever. I stared at
it for some time but couldn't figure it and then realized there was a spare
hose leading off of the back of the tank. I when I looked at the lever to
flush the thing I saw it was a real bowl, a thick wide one, on the end of a
tubular lever device. "Dude, that's gross! I'm not smoking out of a toilet!"
"Relax. Do you know how these things work? Ignorance kills you again;
this water is harmless, it's the clean water. It runs into the bottom bowl (so
to speak) and flushes out the unclean. You are in no danger. Trust me, as I
am your friend" (all of this was true, and still is, because Spike despite his
faults is a caring person and a good friend).
"Okay, fuck it, load the bowl!" (gleeful greedful & Spike complies,
stuffing in fat sweet greenness with hope in his eyes). I picked up the hose
to look and then gave it to him but he pushed away my hands with the light
touch of a fresh spring frond on a palm tree and said you try i've been baking
all day long and so I did and took a huge, sweet, powerful bonghit and realized
the beauty of this thing, that noone would ever suspect it and there would
never be any evidence as bongwater could be flushed in two flushes and my how
easy and bow wow boy was I stoned. "My god, that's gargantuan bud," I
stammered, letting my lungs relax and flex and twitch.
"Yeah," said Spike. "I lied: I only took one hit today, and it wasn't
big. Nothing near that size." I would have replied to this except that for
that moment speech seemed highly unlikely, so I played with the gossamer
playland of the mind that was the shower curtain, and Spike took another hit (I
might add that the position for these hits was incredibly ludicrous; one sat
backwards on the closed toilet and grabbed the bit of hose and inhaled while
lighting a lever-bowl nearly at one's crotch level) this time a biggie and I
saw his eyes roll. We both took two more, and the world around us was lit up i
mean lit up like winter sun blazing from my eyes & then we headed into the
swirling dry winds of autumnal spring.
Everywhere around us people clustered like leaves and swirled into the
parks and parkways of our city, talking and gesturing like excited birds
heading south in the cold but indecisively skittering through the clearing
skies. Spike and I entered a cold doorway and stood in the warmth, dripping
and figuring what we could see in the obscurity. The starchy white ceilings
hung above us and the dark wood floor resounded to our eyes & ears as we
climbed, thumpsliding our way up two flights of stairs. Spike knocked on a
door jeweled with brass and the numbers were fluid, moving along the frame, and
a face appeared where the door fell out, and we went in. This was Neb's hole,
a collection of mattresses connected by strewn clothes and ripped paper and
beer bottles and even the body of a man, beer spilling from his mouth like
blood, with a lighter in one hand and a beer in the other. Beer was
everywhere. "We were just having a small very small drinking session," said
Neb, casually slurring the finally sounds into obscurity, "when you stopped by.
What's happening in your reality?" Spike held up the bag, with the big,
succulent, enticing buds hanging like demonic phalli in the light.
"A lot, I see," Neb let the words slip like smoke from the corner of
his mouth, where a cigarette sounded its claim to his face, the territory of
which was darkened with dirt and days without sleep. Somewhat tall, with dark
hair in half-dreadlocks and dark eyes held in thrall by his days of his beers
and cigarettes, Neb was a friend from some days past when we had consumed an
entire bag of imported bud from Iceland, which we figured would suck because
... hey, Iceland, no sun, right? but apparently someone up there converted and
old fish-gutting plant into the world's greatest hydroponic growing factory,
using the natural elements and vitality in the viscera and excrement of the
local fish to produce this wonderful bud of a thick greenish-pink color. It
reeked of fish, and we had figured then that it doubly sucked, so we decided to
smoke the whole bag, but it actually turned out to be potent with the added
side effect of not kicking in until twenty minutes after consumption, which
caused us to be very stoned very suddenly, which was a complete legacy when
Neb's mother (he was living at home at the time) threw a TupperWare party and
we came in and bought all kinds of tupperware, and then went upstairs and made
a really nice bong out of a TupperWare juicer. It was an electric bong, and
delivered a really nice hit, but his mother eventually discovered it and tried
to make virgin pina coladas in it, which resulted in sticky white fluid being
squirted across the room with arterial timing just as her husband came home,
causing him to stop drop his briefcase and shout "I'm in the valley of
heartbreak & fear" and go flying out to his genericman car and drive for days
in the suburban desert until they found him holed up in a 7-11 reading jackmags
and stimulating himself with a gluestick, at which point they hauled him to an
insane asylum to join his wife (& from where there they later deposed
themselves to aid a well-known millionaire run for office) and then Neb left
home and has been a fellow wastoid ever since.
Neb's companion had had too much beer (if that's possible I suppose)
and was looking at the wall with the fixed stare of the really passed out which
means I guess that he was indeed passed out and not looking at the wall but
rather the wall was in front of his eyes. Neb said, "Let's smoke."
The new bong which Neb had been telling Spike about while I had been
staring at the passed out man (whose name was Gordon Bleu) came out and
appeared to be made from the most tarnished dusty & battered tenor saxophone
that I have ever seen. Any one of the holes used to make notes would work as a
shotgun, but Neb showed us some chords that delivered bongs hits like I have
never experienced since. It was a masterpiece. "Dad and I made it," Neb
explained, alluding to his grandfather who had fought in WWII and gone a little
nuts and charged off to Vietnam but was arrested because he was fighting
without being in an army. The 175th Motorized Rifle Brigade was grateful for
his presence, however, and repeatedly said things about a certain ambush that
he resurrected from failure & slaughter. Dad had a whole crowd of shop tools
that we borrowed one day without him knowing to make a bong out of a motorcycle
gas tank, but Dad caught us and appeared mad but then laughed and showed us how
to put the drill bit in and we made a helluva bong and offered him a hit but he
said no he had to make some plastique that afternoon for the Libertarian rally
& wanted to be clearheaded (and so we smoked his share but loved him with our
foggy hearts). We each took hits, pausing every now and then to stuff more of
that juicy sensuously amazing almost sexual bud that sprung back up to full
form after we crammed it until until we had to thrust with our fingers until it
hurt and then it stayed in, in, in and burned brightly and scented the entire
room with its brilliant smoke and orange warmth & light. On the side of the
bong was written in grey marker the words "Inhale" and "Saviour." There was a
large dent in the curvature at the bottom.
Neb was staring out the window with the impassiveness of someone who
figures that everything is illogical and figures he has no involvement and
therefore he should simply accept it and watch it and hopefully someday
remember it and see it again. Spike was sort of leaning against the wall,
smoking the cigarette with the smoke creasing the edge of his mouth like the
blood of a dead man after a vicious gunshot staggers him backward into another
realm of agony and the crushing collapse of his chest and life into the painful
unknown. "What goes," murmured Spike, less asking than talking. Neb stared.
Outside there was a crowd, rushing at each other and tearing. They
were protesting the arrival of the Bohicans, a race of people with large
soft hands and big orange eyes, like the eye of a glowing bowl of dope. They
were not stupid, but they were excessively quiet, and into that quiet like the
drumbeat at a Melvins concert you could hear the fear sweat and ooze and sizzle
like spit on a hot grill, and the people out there were swarming around some
Bohicans, the people from the dark & warm land up to the north. Spike and I
had once smoked out with Bohican Mike, a longhaired Bohican who loved the music
of Venom, so we got really stoned and sang sweet Satan songs in slow time until
we all passed out. We had liked Bohican Mike, but he had moved to find a job
in the other valley over, over this crest of buildings apartments and jails and
we had never seen him again. Two Bohicans held soft butterfly-fan hands in
front of querulous faces, and as Spike and I stood smoking the sax we thought
we felt the gentle hands of Bohican Mike stroking our spines near the base of
the skull. Fear came from the sweat of the crowd, and it was joined by the
sweat of the Bohicans like the smoke from a flame fresh pure and stingingly
painful, making the eyes twitch closed and the waters aflow. Fear brought the
sacrifice.
Bohican Mike had his ways, but my ways Spike's ways Mike's way all were
our ways when we smoked together. We also hung together sometimes, but because
we are stoners and can only speak think dream of drugs and are always smoking
we always ended up smoking out. Some stoners dick you in the dirt, smoke your
shit and leave, but noone there was like that, and for the year we lived in the
flatroof cheap plastic apartment nightmare above the canna plants we lived well
and found ourselves okay. Bohican Mike had his culture -- apparently in Bohica
they worship someone like Satan and listen to loud amplified music, so he was
perfectly at home with songs like "Women, Leather and Hell" and didn't mind the
louder newer metal music coming out of the LA basin from people so mad they
would tear the flesh from your eyes except they never seemed to want to do that
only to be mad and sad and energetically gleeful at the same time much like
Bohican Mike, although I don't know how he is now because living in the dark
tunnels of the cities (like the dark tunnels of chords) changes someone and
dulls their eyes and makes them smoky and slow and bitter and crass. We all
went one time to the police station to meet a cop who we knew was you know wink
nudge pay and bought from him a bag of what turned out to be very good dope and
we liked him because he sold it to us cheap and would really help but two years
later he got sick somehow and he died and his family buried him in a cheap plot
and when we went to go burn with him yes even after death we couldn't find it
and noone knew him, just like noone knows the living dead flesh of a junkie or
alcoholic deep in the skids but this cop was a good cop one of the few if not
the one, and now he is a mailbox somewhere collecting bills chain letters and
fliers for hair repair. We missed Bohican Mike, just like we missed many
others, but stoners drift through life accepting and enduring not trying to do
anything really because we tried it once honest and some quit and some came
back but in the end we're all here trying to stay patient and load the bowl and
not look at the faces reflected in the mirrors or the tattoos on the hands of
the children in the pictures on the news because we know that that is the world
outside the warmth of our circle and alone we can't touch it because it is cold
and dense and wet.
We saw the blood beneath the feet of the crowd before anything else, a
seepage like slow tears from under closed eyelids gritted against the pain of
the loss of a lover or friend or maybe even a life entirely yes no gone and
dead and there in the grave the smoke doesn't permeate because these are the
corpse alive, and they can't even flail like children wrapped so tightly they
cannot breathe. They were moving squirming like one, like a giant sea creature
crushing and churning and fighting like the storm with the storm, and under
their shoes their bargainbrand fake leather flat shoes dollhouse dimensions
from the second floor window there was the hot red steaming lava of the pain
& rage & fear of generations descanted and naked in backlash whiplash ecstasy
of the tasty riot. Ned stared and I stared and Spike left the room and we saw
him walk forward but someone brushed him he fell down and Ned and I were going
to help him but we met him coming back in and he was shaking his head nothing
was wrong no nothing could be done and then we bolted the door against the
pounding and the screaming.
The sacrifice was over, but in the back of my mind I could see. And
they were out there the two of them meeting at the main place wearing the
costume of their ancient home and all of its absurdities the maroon leather and
soft floppy caps the goofiness like the ears of some aged elephant and smoking
something probably not dope but probably harmless in any case when some came up
and asked them for help and they tried to help him but spoke not the language
and did what was taught them from birth until death which was carry the
helpneedful to someone who knew and there was a cop down the street they had
seen so they picked up the child where he had fallen and carried him down the
street previously unseen but the masses unleashed themselves called out a war
and went on the charge and damaged the two, and there they were outside staring
around speaking no language utt'ring no sound and then they were fallen the ire
so rising like flames from a fire tearing through the ceiling. Spike and I
joined with the coroner's crew, still staring at bodies and collecting clues.
Noone was mentioned and noone was blamed, but in the bronzed snow there was no
need for names.
In Ned's apartment we heard the child falling, the knee skinned and all
of us sat for a second and remembered the joy of a family when parents could
hold on to limbs and make the pain heal for the majority of times. Spike
banged the bong against the table. "It's dust," he said.
closing quotes
"Thanks for reading this issue of the Undiscovered Country. If you
didn't think it was _all_ outright shit, please forward copies to friends or
print it out and tape it to your least used extremity. We take submissions at
cblanc@pomona.claremont.edu, and would love to hear feedback as well. Thank
you again and join us in our fight against rational thought & the dominant
paradigm."
s.r. prozak
l.b. noire
ps - if you're in the los(t) angeles area, check out metal radio on fridays
from 6-9 pm on KSPC 88.7 FM.
[EOF]
