Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Waiting for Wotan #5














♪ My love for you is like a truck, berserker ♫
"There's Olaf all over for you, blaming on his song the faults of his tongue."















♪ What, berserker ♫
"Suppose we repented."















♪ Repented what, berserker ♫
"Oh, we wouldn't have to go into details."



















♪ Would you like to see there's actually a truck, berserker ♫
"Wotan doesn't drive."

Monday, February 27, 2012

Through a glass, inky

Hagiographically speaking, the fount of unblocking is 1% my own mock turtle genius; 13% from other written sources that threaten to hack sanity out, envy cruelly stuffed in its place; 44% outright theft from said sources; 28% a pretty picture; 37% pretty tuneage; & fully half from the synaptic vagaries of a drunken stupor. The spirits need not be literal, en fait, usually aren't, usually worse 'cause buzz, thy name is transience. 

As with all numbers, all are lies whose beauty is judged by flawed eyes, save the only truth, that zero is now one. Innards, let us celebrate our new arrangement with, not the adding of chocolate to milk, but the above, 'cause you are an Arab ship hit by Greek fire, & fire deceives by being pretty with a palette of new colors. Settle down, melodrama is bacon & eggs, with a stack slathered in maple syrup, much more tasty than your nutritiously bland gruel.

Dammit, I'm starving. Stupid writer's unblock. 

Saturday, February 25, 2012

You know I'm born to lose, and gambling's for fools, a play in one-half act












Characters
Miss Prunella Vulgaris, The Duchess of Hammer-on-Dulcimer, esteemed member of the Peonage
Juan, The Earl of Valdez, less esteemed member of the Peonage
Lemmy, noted baritone bassist & collector of blow-em-up baubles
Fryer Bungy, English conjurer & skillet gourmand
Kid Darkthrone, not-very-noted local misanthrope, reformed
The Potato Witches of the Caucasus, pastiche weirdos who know a big secret
Baba Yaga, dancing Slavic sorceress
Otto von Bismarck, the Iron Chancellor, made not of iron but of duh
Aide-de-camp, NPC & Hessian
Bear, bait, & lovable ursine scamp

When we last left etc., 'twas some Jedi mind tricksy that both created a new alliance with such deft aplomb that the League of Nations would be sucking their thumb in laudanum shock, & freed the rebellion from the nefarious clutches of the Dark Lord of the Skillet, Fryer Bungy. DUCHESS, EARL, LEMMY, & KID DARKTHRONE stand, having left the German dime store with ten thousand marbles & one other thing, you'll see. Drink up, shoot in, let the third act begin.

DUCHESS: We're --

LEMMY: fucked --

KID DARKTHRONE: mumblejumblewhiskey.

EARL: Stay mellow, hep cats.

OTTO, FRYER BUNGY, & AIDE-DE-CAMP enter, exiting a billowing cloud of dust & a strangely rhythmic yet dissonant rumble in the distance that's less distant with each dissonant yet strangely rhythmic rumble.

LEMMY (enraged): Fuckin' wankers!

LEMMY clocks AIDE-DE-CAMP on the skull with his bass, knocking him out.

OTTO (chuckling): That Hessian was our last hope.

FRYER (giggling): No, there is another.

OTTO: (cackling with snotty glee): & another, & another, & so on, & so on, & so on.

A colossal column or ten of Berk-heads, each of each of the hundreds as tall as a really tall house with equally tall pointy olde tyme helmets you know the ones, march menacingly out of the dust, with menace, & probably some guns.

EARL (chortling): You fool! You foolish fool!

OTTO: Ja, sie blieben quieten und don't call me stupid!

POTATO WITCHES enter.

WITCH #1: Earl --

WITCH #2: use --

WITCH #3: the --

EARL: Schwartz?

WITCHES, ALL THREE: The earplugs!














EARL rolls the marbles, all ten-thousand of them, one for each foot of OTTO's army, that's five-thousand, & since they're marbles & these are real big contraptions made of iron what else, but rest assured that the POTATO WITCHES didn't rest but sent a carrier pigeon to call not for help in desperation, but to initiate phase two of their brilliant counter-counterstrike that would make the Grande Armée blush if they hadn't been freezer burned outside Pooty-Poot's Playhouse. Oh yeah, while the Berk-heads are busy stomping, all the good guys put in their dime store ear plugs. BEAR enters.

BEAR (growls with gusto): *growl*

FRYER: Everything louder than everything else!

The shockwave rattles not just the bones of all present, but the moustache off OTTO & onto the German soil, swimming in shards of Krazy Leim.

OTTO: Gott im himmel! Mein ears! Mein moustache!

In the obfuscating confusion, KID DARKTHRONE, being a kid & thus smaller than everyone else, rushes in between the giant metal legs tripping over each other, grabs the prize moments before it is crushed like so many marbles, & since the stache was magical like a Bag of Holding or a +1 broadsword, I hope that was clear if not sorry, the army crumbles into nuts & bolts & galvanic whirring machines, rusting real quick like one of those time-lapse photographic essays.

DUCHESS: Now, Lemmy, to fulfill your part of the bargain, help us find --

BABA YAGA enters riding her dancing hut & holding the Fabergé Potato, which she pickpocketed from OTTO in the inveigling discomfiture.

BABA YAGA (crowing): this?

DUCHESS: Baba Yaga!

BABA YAGA: That's my name --

EARL: We'll wear you out!

BABA YAGA (sighing): Who writes this thing?

EARL: Don't ask.

WITCH #1 (serious): You --

WITCH #2 (seriouser): must --

WITCH #3 (seriousest): retrieve --

LEMMY: Lemme ask ya somethin' Baby Yags, howsabout --

BABA YAGA: You have the bluest eyes I've ever seen.

LEMMY: They's brown ya fuckin' blind bird.

BABA YAGA (winking): I do need glasses.

LEMMY (nudging): I fuckin' knows how ta get two pairs for the price 'a one.























BABA YAGA: Oh, Lemmy.

LEMMY: Oh, Baby Yags.

You would of course be cordially invited to the wedding of Miss Baba Yaga & Mr. Ian Kilmister but since that was a textual interpolation by a hand devious cough DUCHESS cough, we'll stop here. As for loose ends, FRYER BUNGY either escaped into the Black Forest, was abducted by Atlanteans, or was hired as cook by a traveling harlequin comedie-burlesque troup depending on which rumor you choose to believe; OTTO VON BISMARCK went back to Berlin where conflicts with Der Kaiser would almost sideline Germany's chances in the 1974 World Cup; the Fabergé Potato is back on the mantle in the Museum of Palimpsest Oddities where it belongs; & as for who caught the bouquet, oh, let's say Moe.

fin

Friday, February 24, 2012

On the Town, starring Li'l Edgar

Verily, the Duchess suggested that our morbid pal get some, um, cloud --


















maybe take in a show --



















& an after-performance chaser --



















or five. Take five, Li'l Hangover.



















Please, or they'll be murders, you'll rue, & end up in the morgue.



















The meat that was used up.



















A descent into administration.



















The rectangular portrait.



















The facts in the case of why this bookstore is always closed dammit.



















Quoth the loiterer, I'm going, I'm going.



















The ambassador-hoax.
























It was many and many an hour ago,
In a kingdom by Erie,
That a grave was not found of whom you may know
By the name of Annabel Lee.



















Premature burials, 10% off.



















An imp of the perverse.



















Intermezzo.



















Almond joy.



















You didn't finish the other ones, bub.
























Hopped-frog.
























Thou art The Man.



















The thousand-and-second tale of yeah right.



















A predicament.



















Loss of breath.



















"Big Cheese, did you see anything?"
"No, Peonage! I didn't see you playing with your dolls again!"

Thursday, February 23, 2012

I enjoy rocking back & forth in the corner before circling the drain it makes the ride more pleasant

















So long, library cowboy.

Gloopdooploopdeloopbettyboop when, after removing string after coiled string of Lite Brite because every day is at least 8% Christmas plus tax, I peel the onion & cry because it's an onion & they do that [ed. note: I'm not really because the only onions in the vicinity are caked on vending machine botulism & tears lessen the chance of an ulcer everyone should have attainable goals], & because further & hence writer's block is the midst of boxing up & closeting next to the skeleton all the freeform ready for public jazz joints & since I don't discount dissociation all I can do in reply is to thine own self nelsonmuntz in the mirror in lieu of diatribal rants on how silence is golden makes fools of us all, or at least some, for once not me, or am I the fool, probably. They sure can gab.

Postscript: no, this ain't a sayonara, some of you fuckers take what I say way too literal, a mistake when dealing with someone who talks, as a rule, out of his ass.

Wednesday, February 22, 2012

Waiting for Wotan #4
















"You took me for Wotan. The road is free to all!"












 

♪ Behind veil of gentleness and peace, night is charging, berserker
That's how it is on this bitch of an earth, berserker ♫

















"You are human beings nonetheless. Of the same species as Immortal!"





 







"That's beautiful, man."

Monday, February 20, 2012

The syntax of the corpse



Either a troo kvlt black metal record or, more certainly, a boring-as-fuck (a stupid phrase because, well, no, fucking can be boring, anything can be boring especially Serious Things but not aw yiss = vintage Motörhead & assorted other aw yisses like exciting fucking [wot?], Harry Clarke Blue, & 2d4 of the last twenty-two offline lines I wrote) ivory tower monograph, but I'd drop the Marxism you know you want it Mr. & Mrs. Elbow Patch (Giles always excepted) I don't because really who fucking cares about Byzantine counterpoint that has nothing to do with the Byzantines I don't, A Marxist Poetics of Don't, then add charcoal drawings of dead Ed Wood characters, first edition Monster Manual dawn of Megiddo shit, Turkey Jones dropping Bradshaw on his gourd, some gourds, still life with clementines not oranges because being a nail biter I can peel the former, a jack-o-lantern, about a girl, Ar(t)s amatoria subtilior nouveau brut & Donovan, meadows steeped in pretty flowers, beware zombie pretzeldents in a speech bubble above zombie Vincent Price, the funk of 40,000 years no way civilization will last that long pshaw, & you, smiling, because wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee a bunch of madeleines in the madness betcha can't guess just one oh I'm kidding or not now diagram this sentence I'm late I'm late for a very important fugue state, Nod, I never remember my dreams.

Saturday, February 18, 2012

You know the chase is better than the catch, a play in one-half act















Characters
Miss Prunella Vulgaris, The Duchess of Hammer-on-Dulcimer, esteemed member of the Peonage
Juan, The Earl of Valdez, less esteemed member of the Peonage
Lemmy, noted baritone bassist & collector of blow-em-up baubles
Kid Darkthrone, not-very-noted local misanthrope, reformed
The Potato Witches of the Caucasus, pastiche weirdos who know a big secret
Stagehand, stagehand
Cashier, cashier

When we last just one last this time left our not-that-intrepid-you-remember Peonage, 'twas a not-that-jolly-you-remember jaunt to Incarceration Nation. With the traitorous FRYER BUNGY as their fixer-cum-traitor until his betrayal, the Peonage next encountered a fellow traveler, wow, that's like on two distinct levels, how this has no chance to win a Pulitzer your humble playwright will never know.

DUCHESS (angry): Now wait a goshdarn minute --

LEMMY (angrier): You wait a fuckin' minute --

KID DARKTHRONE also steps forward from the jailhouse shadows.

KID DARKTHRONE (angriest, but not as angry as Lemmy): How about you both wait a minute!

EARL (incredulous): Kid Darkthrone!

DUCHESS (flabbergasted): He's reverted back to nefarious diabolism!

KID DARKTHRONE (okay you can stop now): Nein!

EARL: See, he's working for the Iron Chancellor, just like Che, I mean, Bungy!

LEMMY: Don't know no fuckin' Bungy but Bismarck's a bloody bleedin' bastard & I aim t' burgle --

EARL: Gasp!

LEMMY: the rarest piece of war memorabilia since Arminius's fossilized wienerschnitzel --























KID DARKTHRONE: Otto's stache!

LEMMY (über-emphasizing): His fake stache. Bloke didn't start winnin' till he glued that on his fuckin' face.

EARL: You're not stealing it for yourself, you're stealing it for England!

LEMMY: Fuck off. Wouldn't gimme a work visa. No work visa, no Star-Club featurin' Motörhead, & soon, no fuckin' victories.

STAGEHAND enters. STAGEHAND holds idea bulb over DUCHESS' head. 

STAGEHAND: Ouch!

DUCHESS (whispering): You're not supposed to use a real one. Jeez.

STAGEHAND & bulb exeunt.

DUCHESS: Listen up! We can join together, because two sets of meddling kids are always better than one for purloining perps. That creepy thing for you, & for us --

THE POTATO WITCHES OF THE CAUCASUS also step forward from the jailhouse shadows, also.

WITCH #1: The Fabergé Potato.

Everyone gasps except LEMMY.

WITCH #2: We see all.

WITCH #3: We know all.

LEMMY: 'cept how to avoid Polizei. Parlor trickin' chicksmumblejumblewhiskey.

WITCH #1: We are here --

WITCH #2: because you need --

WITCH #3: our help.

LEMMY: Bloody 'ell.

LEMMY sneers, but THE POTATO WITCHES, through incredible potato alchymie, shift dimensions or tear a hole in space-time or some technobabble but a mystick technobabble because that always sells to certain demographic groups your humble playwright doesn't mind selling out but he prefers the term buying in & send DUCHESS, EARL, LEMMY & KID DARKTHRONE to the refuge of an escape tunnel.

LEMMY (crawling): What the fuckin' 'ell? Why not just fly us to safetymumblejumblewhiskey.

DUCHESS (crawling): My sentiments nearly.

KID DARKTHRONE (crawling & singing): ♪ Laaaaaand of the loooooost ♫

EARL (crawling): Woo-wee-ooh-ooh. I know exactly what the witches' plan is!

DUCHESS (still crawling): How?

EARL (still crawling but now pointing): Look!

Our four still-not-intrepid heroes okay maybe LEMMY exit the tunnel & find themselves in full daylight, the awesomely imposing facade of a dime store lording over them, a German dime store because they're still in Germany. DUCHESS, EARL, & LEMMY enter whilst KID DARKTHRONE stands watch.

CASHIER (bored): Limey gonna purchasen somezing, ja?

EARL: May I have ten thousand marbles, please?

Friday, February 17, 2012

Remember



If I'm being honest with myself, a rarity among rarities, few things (no thing, really, since I self-censor like the charlesdickens & versifying requires you the reader to hold a decoder ring unless there are spoilers) here are more nerve-wracking than reviewing music. It's not the falling back on too-worn tropes, words, phrases. That, I can deal with, as I do each time I jot down new lines in the black notebook, almost full. 99 cents at Marc's. Saying the same thing over & again just is, like the ascension & decline of the sun, people being assholes to one another, the miserable collective failure of Clevelandia sports. The difficulty? Describing sound?

Music equaling memory. No, not as simple as people & places & happenstance grafting themselves onto the notes, tendrils worming their way through the measures from the outside to nestle in a chord, to rupture without premonition Sigourney knows, remember when X said to Y, oh Z, I like root beer floats, too. Never that soundtrack shallow. If only. Nor always that quantifiable. To the mind's ear, sound is roaring ocean, so scream & plead & kick the cold sand all you want, there is only ocean, roaring. Details made imprecise by an emotional imprint. Think a ghost, a painfully bright nebula, a cloud beguiling & poisonous.

New albums mean new ones (or old, not reborn but reshaped, for no one lies to ourselves as much as we) receive their permanence, rooted to a place in the cranial landscape, free will an illusion, & that means both a blessing & a curse, forgive the triteness but naught else applies as the visceral roams the wanderer, possessing, & who can predict the aftermath?

Sounds incredibly dorky, I know, but my innards are neither postmodern nor pragmatic. Sometimes an album-adjacent gut spill is okay since all names have been changed to protect the innocent, statute of limitations, & so forth. This is fresh, thus, whew. Anyway, going song by song on Ariettes Oubliées... which I've listened to nearly nonstop since yester morn save a shade over three for sleep, feels fruitless. Les Discrets is an album band in the finest tradition & given that mastermind Fursy Teyssier is also a skilled artist responsible for band's visual presentation, why waste time with blatherings beyond the album's kernel being the Paul Verlaine poem of the title, the tiny aria re-imagined as a woman, hazy stories of a couple, transmitted mostly through the texts of vocalist/lyricist Audrey Hadorn, spooling away from that conceit.

Yes, there's nothing as immediate as Song for Mountains, & the palette is less busy on the surface, the textures layered more like one of those old topographic globes, richer browns & longer blues spinning sepia slow. It's hard enough unlocking the swirling processes of my own flailing in the dark, let alone those of someone else, so pardon the fluorescent-ruined photography, but observe,




















































































listen,



& understand. What? That's for you. I'm gonna go pretend to headphone, maybe write some bad poems process new periodicals & think about writing some bad poems.

Thursday, February 16, 2012

Little lost lambs















If ordered by confidence, sure, Arsène's Arseholes would have been the runt crushed at the bottom (still not giving up on Give 'Em Hell APOEL only down one & damn right they'll get in at least two home cracks at goal before halftime) not 'cause this Milan is Capellonian, but 'cause of boogers but sweet merciful crap that was Keystonian why did I go home early for that & add to that that the that of not brewing a third thus alerting either the Duchess or myself or a third thing that the pot ist kaput, ja, not knowing till now

♪ this is what it feels like, when Vermaelen cries ♫

Wednesday, February 15, 2012

Waiting for Wotan #3














"Listen!"
♪ My love for singing means hearing nothing, berserker ♫



















"FIAAH --"















"-- woman?"



















"Ian! No time for jokes, Dr. Pozzo! --
♪ Dr. Berserker! ♫
-- Faster! On! Adieu! Pig! Yip! Adieu!"

Monday, February 13, 2012

Saturday, February 11, 2012

You know me, you can't resist, devil's grip, the iron fist, a play in one-half act























Characters
Miss Prunella Vulgaris, The Duchess of Hammer-on-Dulcimer, esteemed member of the Peonage
Juan, The Earl of Valdez, less esteemed member of the Peonage
Lemmy, noted baritone bassist & collector of blow-em-up baubles
Fryer Bungy, English conjurer & skillet gourmand

When we last left our intrepid Peonage, Christmas was nine kinds of crazy, but when we last last left our not-that-intrepid Peonage because how intrepidish is working in the Museum of Palimpsest Oddities really, not very now that your humble playwright thinks about it, they had won the famous Fabergé Potato from the Czar. Anyway, the Towering Slab, interior, though as always it's hard to tell blah blah blah, DUCHESS and EARL are complaining about something, as always blah blah blah.

EARL: Verily, that band sucks. 

DUCHESS: Your crassness is -- great Caesar's ghost! The Fabergé Potato!

EARL: Gone! All gone! No turkey! No turkey sandwiches! No turkey salad! No turkey gravy! Turkey hash! Turkey a la king! Or gallons of turkey soup! Gone, all gone!

EARL feints faints. DUCHESS revives him by dousing him with the heated elixir of St. Drogo.

EARL: What the fuck, man.

DUCHESS: No time for complaining, Dr. Jones. If that Potato falls into the wrong hands, it could finance weeks, nay, months of supervillainy.

EARL: There can be only one person of interest.

DUCHESS: You listen to way too many wax cylinder procedurals.

EARL: Back to Siberia 'tis.

DUCHESS and EARL use their network of contacts to commandeer transport to the continent. As you no doubt correctly guessed, they have no contacts, but they do have a couple of guineas, a give-em-hell attitude & after crossing the channel, a serious bout of seasickness.

DUCHESS: I knew I shouldn't have eaten that shellfish before we left.

EARL: Someone's coming! Hide!




















DUCHESS: Someone's always coming, we're in the middle of Paris.

FRYER: Le halt! Who goes there!

DUCHESS and EARL: Merde!

FRYER: Bloody 'ell, I'm jus' kiddin', ya bird n' bloke. I be Fryer Bungy, a conjurer & right citizen o' the Crown, like ye selves. Come wit' me if ye wan'a live.

FRYER BUNGY takes DUCHESS and EARL to his secret hideout hidden secretly in the Rue Morgue. The sickly stench of death is overpowered by the sickly stench of whatever cast iron slop he's conjuring in his crusty pan.

EARL: So, what straunge beast is after us? The Terminator? An Ourang-Outang?

FRYER: Who stole the Fabergé Potato. You seek who stole the Fabergé Potato.

DUCHESS: You know him?

FRYER: Mmm. Take you to him, I will. Yes, yes. But now, we must eat. Come. Good food.

Skeptical as they are, DUCHESS and EARL were surprised that the foul-smelling slime was indeed good. Naive as they are, DUCHESS and EARL would have been surprised that the foul-smelling slime was also magicked but since they were passed out, their surprise awoke only when they did, as prisoners in some prison.

FRYER: The Iron Chancellor was once the learner, but now he is the master!

FRYER exits, locks the door behind him, one of those real loud locks, the tumbler rumbling like Prussian artillery or the digestive track after a run to Taco Bell.

EARL: That rat bastard. He must be spellcasting for the Czar!

DUCHESS (exasperated): Don't you ever pay attention?

EARL gets up, looking past the window bars at the too-green grass.

EARL: Not enough snow, & it's not as cold as it should be.

DUCHESS: Clevelandia?























LEMMY (gruffly): Deutschland.

DUCHESS: And you are --

LEMMY steps forward from the jailhouse shadows.

LEMMY (gruffly with an extra dollop of gusto): Someone who's come to steal something, something very valuable, & no one is gonna stand in me way. Not these bars --

Dramatic pause.

LEMMY: Not even you.