Rain ticks at the window pane.
Mozart touches
over the centuries
my heart.
Death can be beat. Time
cannot.
Just give me time
tonight to hear my fill
of the rain, the Mozart,
the resistance of the pane.
editor's note: Death can be beat! Keep that harmonica humming, don't throw stones. - mh
PRAYER AT THE OPENING
Flies swarm the opening to the crawl space. Inside, across the dirt, all dead, save myself, we sprawl. Maggots, wriggling their black magic, blanket
the greediest eaters, the bloated kingpins who first hemorrhaged.
I, the runt, ate last. Am the longest to last. The meek shall inherit the
valediction.
To die like this in the midst of rich new food...
Blood leaks internally. I retch, knowing a thirst no water on earth can
slake...
Did we make too much noise? Too many babies? Neglect to hail the luck that brought us to this heaven turned holocaust?
If (as I suspect) the last: For this twist, on the altar of our drought, let rodent awe ooze.
Eye stove, sink, fridge, counter, trash. Pull down the board to iron a shirt for tomorrow. Think – ironing the yoke – of iron enriching the blood, iron at the earth’s core, the irony of steeling myself for the office.
Linen steam calms the nose. Smoothing wrinkles soothe the eye. Thunk and glide of iron lull.
Wince at stud pierced tongue.
Think of the – creasing sleeves, smartening cuffs – office as a cathedral of icy digits, jargon-blizzards, techno-blitzes, hoary acronyms that freezerburn the mind not to mind redundant hells of worsening change for the better.
Tug at tongue frosted to altar. Concentrate on – to sidestep daymares – perfecting tails. Flatten facing between buttons.
Finished, spring board back into cabinet between fridge and stove. Prop iron upright on counter. Don clean fragrant Arrow. Button up. Tuck in.
Step through door beside trash into garage. Start Civic. Amble around behind. Kneel between trunk and wall displaying rakes, shovels, shears, other garden implements of torture.
Drape quilt over head. Press mouth to exhaust. Hyperventilate.
The iron in the blood bonds to monoxide. I fall – with a slight headache – asleep against the pipe. Find in a fist the key to the gate through which to throw myself at the claws of the iron throne. Ironed shirt warm still from smoothing the irony of new and improved.
Went on down to the Sound to stand around on the wharf and look up and down and wonder about the locals. Three winos dumped on the grass. An Indian barfing over the railing. A septet of tourists scarfing hotdogs, pepsi, mustard, ketchup and chopped onion at a nickel extra a crinkled paper cup. Two cops just coming up to poke at the winos in the grass and let the Indian finish.
The tourists rotated their sunglasses. Bugged out over the sunny water at the snowcapped Olympics. Smacked lips. Grinned at all the beauty.
Two businessmen on lunch entered the park on the wharf. Sat on a bench in the sun. Fiddled with their ties. Laughed at each other. Removed sportcoats to reveal tailored shortsleeves, digital watches, the coppertone of a perfect weekend. In rich authentic tones they turned over lincoln continentals, sailboats, yachts, a piper cub, reno, tahoe, two weeks once in a picadilly hotel drinking nothing but seltzer because the beer was warm and the bathtub cold; then they bitched about the gals at the office.
The cops returned for the Indian. Very businesslike they prodded him with a club. Convinced him to stagger over to the van he climbed into – tired, coughing, accustomed to losing to the alien city.
The tourist carrying the cameras, the bank americard, the visacard, the first national bank card, the master charge and a commanding portion of the fat let the wrapper where his hotdog had been get away in the wind and drive the seagulls briefly crazy.
Didn’t feel so hot myself, taking the Indian’s place, leaning over the railing, looking for myself in brine lapping barnacled creosote. Went on down, to end up at the beginning, to the Sound.
I’m a cop. Go in to cop a donut, coffee; sit by the window; take in the scene. Myself – can’t help be seen. Not so much a bull as a bull’s-eye.
Oh, not all bad. Leastwise I’m a target can shoot back. Not to mention, should it come to that – take a sip – purse lips – initiate fire.
Clown stumbles in with bulges. Carbuncular adam’s-apple. Medium boob. Mystic look of sex beyond the grave. Strides up to the counter all tic and attitude.
It’s OK. Routine transbender – guy/gal schizo between pills. Nasty odor. Knife eyes. Atrocity city tattooed on knuckles. Venomous, yes – but not the type kills.
Joker spits at the barrista. Hisses like a joint of spitted pork. Launches a gamut of language that cuts and stings. In process of which vituperation the counter kid catches a goober green in the eye.
I start to shake. Stuff into mouth a bear claw; to keep from busting out laughing. Craziest show in town – not only rockbottom free, but I’m into the bargain on the payroll!
Customer grabs out of his crotch what actually does prove to be a weapon. Guess after all no guy/gal. Instead some new breed of unknown fucking idiot.
Looks like a .22. Girly popgun. Semen crusted, urine stained, sweat rusted. Even if loaded likely misfire.
The kid waxes a whiter shade. Can’t be a minute over nineteen; graduated last month from barrista college – six-week course toothpasted him out of course unprepared for rotten teeth screaming obscenities, plus a muzzle nuzzling his nipple.
This is where the barrista cuts or not the mustard.
Scoot back in plastic chair. Carefully swallow masticated bear claw. This where the show trangresses funny; verges on real.
Kid heaves hands up. Reaches for the sky; more like for the honeycomb fluorescent fixture hung off the popcorn ceiling.
He’s backing toward the espresso machine. Finally shrieks, “Take the money. Please – I ain’t seen nothin’!”
The boomer gets stuck in a loop. “Cocksucker! Suck, cocksucker! Suck cock, cocksucker!” Head begins to bob in time to C-word detonation – thumb cocking hammer, grimey forefinger on trigger whitening.
Gulp java to hide hilarity. Damn near choke. Eyes squint shut. Pretend I’m nowhere to facilitate tricky shit with the pipes – coffee down, giggles out the nose, while simultaneous air in.
A gun – likely the gun – barks. God, sometimes it’s a bitch to be a cop!
Slam open eyes. Cough into fist. Look up fast as can – quick as beans out of a can…
The kid seems OK. Except the kook – lunged across the counter – has crammed stump down kid’s throat. Looks like gun exploded, blew off hand. Smoke leaks from barrista’s mouth around bloody wrist.
Wrestle phone off hip. Order up a medevac, trauma team, recommend MHP on top. Got one nut, detached carpus, needs attention at scene.
Scrutinize – hooking cell back onto hip – kook: scrawny, tall, bald, bearded. His/her heroin history. Late fifties – fullblown second Saturn Return.
I’m planet hip. Cop to astrology. The stars are my beat. Hole up periodically in corporate donut holes. Devour horoscopes abandoned on tables. Legend in my own mind dubs me Officer Nostrodamus.
We all got a myth. My name is Smythe – silent E, Y like I, hissy S. Same as the joe works hard, beats all day iron against iron.
Kid starts to choke. He’s stopping arterial bleeding – stump wedged against pharynx; blasted ulnar throb feeding gag back; on some level torn between improvised tourniquet saving a life and his own personal gasp. At nineteen one so often ripped between Christ and a thief.
The kook, on the other hand (Mercury retrograde in the pun house), can’t seem to care, C word again exploding out of his goiter, Viet vet with wannabe stings.
And I’m laughing my buns off – this all such a scream; morphed into a dream, as the morphine the monkeys hit me up with hits and the stump tumbles out of my maw. Another day, another holler at another exit botched.
Einstein was the heaviest mass murderer of the Twentieth Century. Proved Hiroshima could with a toggle be annihilated; he Jewish peacenik as they come; as the Prince of Peace himself – although some say, on the Q. T., J. C. was in fact a guy/gal.
What a show! And remember kids, and babyboomers, too: the best you can do is act your part. Even if that means many parts all at once falling apart. Suck cock, cocksucker suck!
- Willie Smith
(added 02.01.09)
HOW THE COPS FIXED MY ASS
I was bung outta dung.
I was bunged in.
I didn’t know where to crap I was
gonna get any more dung.
I checked inside my wallet and
nope, not a turd, not so much
as a drop of piss.
I was bung outta dung,
I was bunged in.
I knew there was a lotta dung downtown.
I could smell it. All that dung rolled inside
paper assholes, crammed inside cash registers,
bung up in the banks,
bunged sky high to the lid of the First National Bank Tower.
I tried bunging my way onto a bus,
but nope, no soap,
the driver slammed the door in my nose
because I didn’t have so much as a drop of piss.
So I hitchhiked and it rained
and I got downtown a little later than I had hoped,
but Lord! the stench of dung was overpowering!
Bunged-out winos crumpled to the sidewalk
like men made of turd. Businessmen shiny as piss
walked by and
grinned at themselves in shop windows across the street.
I was sickened… there was nothing else to do:
I entered a bank and shot the teller and stuffed my jeans
with clean green dung.
Easy as pie. One, two, three. I
ran out filthy with dung, and almost made it
to the new car I was about to buy,
when Bung! Bung! Bung!
the cops shot my ass off.
- Willie Smith
MEDIA BLITZ
Came the day all the microphones in the world turned into penises. Sportscasters sported in their fists big dicks. On location in Beirut, some guy in a suit suddenly found himself spewing the news into an orgasm. Frank Sinatra, Ronald Reagan and all the presidential candidates began to resemble nothing more than a bunch of arrogant cocksuckers.
To avoid the charge of homosexuality, the President was kept under wraps. The First Lady stood before the podium, like Cinderella at a gangbang, and declared a national emergency.
The situation worsened. By afternoon of the second day, every speaker on earth had metamorphosed into a throbbing, hairy vulva. Over the air, fundamentalists howled this was the wages of society’s obsession with sex to the exclusion of Jesus. But since these prophets ranted into squirting hardons, their jeremiads proved hard to swallow.
Throughout the terror, Madison Avenue continued selling. Commercials screwed inside skulls. Chewinggum married suppositories. Cars supposed to save lives killed toothdecay on contact. Men sporting bras were invited to compare headaches, while scarfing a breakfast tiger; purchasing for added protection a brass doorknob. The 4th dimension turned up inside a kleenex. Sanitary napkins invaded the privacy of dogs wolfing horsemeat. Odor eaters burst, like overstressed rubbers.
Most of the public succumbed watching the latest chocolate filled bugspray. The rest fell to razors – knifed in the shower by rhinestone-studded mikes.
The third sex materialized. Then radiated starward. Humanity, at last cheap and affordable, if not free.
- Willie Smith
photo by S. J. Sanders
A bit about Willie: Willie Smith is deeply ashamed of being human. His work celebrates this horror.
His novel OEDIPUS CADET is available from amazon.com. Story collections SOLID GAS, EXECUTION STYLE,
STORIES FROM THE MICROWAVE and GO AHEAD SPIT ON ME are all currently out of print.
