Hitchery, or, I try to get through to you, in my own special way

Wipe that smile off your mug.
 
Twenty years today. Huh. Pause. Here, a dozen half-ass semi-starts on the complexity of hex mapping low-maintenance rainbows' blood-drenched maws requiring a top-flight tool kit to finish pretend-devouring gleefully chucked philosophy never discussed, hour-long stares through right + wrong axes slope equaling consequence natch & into dry wall & brick, all whilst navigating drunken tidal currents but then I remembered my heritage to filter like a fancy English smoke, so I'm left with a nagging cough, ear-stuck buds, inkless demons, those crumbled-up cringe things, & being one of those where the fuck am I folks. I was promised an ulcer! 'tis nothing congratulatory, spambot acquaintance, merely an approximation spun out of this rock's orbit of a G-class star.

Humans sure love marking the miles before the dirt, which rules 'cause darkthroning is cool & refreshing, unless it's summer, then it's only refreshing.

SUPREMECOURTHEALTHCAREKHAN!

Fooled you. 'tis hot outside, mofos.

Hey look, a bunch of new student orientationeers.

Say kids, do you like wizards?

Good hygiene is magical, & affordable, even if your healthcare ain't.

Dammit, fooled me. Going to watch footie. There might even be a goal.

Flibbertigibbet's thingamajig of prestidigitarianism*

Chicks, man.

*Almost one more case of the title outswanking the contents, but Uncle Acid fucking rules enough to temporarily halt the devilish effects of summer, the unspoken CHORTLE, & the holy fuck I'm so fucking bored with this.

Roll d6 for rumor control:
1. Wotan's bolt killed waiters dead.
2. Sacred cow scoffing exhausted in a ditch.
3. Olly olly oxen markets up 545%. 
4. All this food talk makes one hungry too late.
5. Is off campaigning for Cthulhu.
6. Found a scroll with Rip Van Winkle's Improved Sleep.

Berserker sleep now

The Duchess posts the sacred, yours truly posts the profane.

♪ MY LOVE FOR YOU IS LIKE A TRUCK BERSERKER
WOULD YOU LIKE TO CLANK THAT MONK BERSERKER ♫

Lulled to calm, propulsive waves wash in, tossed & crashing like a longship in the North Sea, good times. Though what a misleading title, I'm just a mellow cat who longs to zone out, zapped with a zzzz IV.

Variations on one theme this is, yabba dabba's doo doo, but you know what the agitprop office says, loose lips sink guided missile cruisers.

On the other hand, Pooty's ex-Puppet's livejournaling, on the dismembered hand, Pooty's KGB Tales is invite only.

Zombie Proust cries at such weak paragraphing.

Do zombies dream of electric tears, or just chomp chomp chomp?

Ponder this string of developments I must; being dumb, one at a time.

Stop swashing your fucking buckle, or, Mr. Sandman bring me a dream hold the police

Don't you hate stanzas. 
Why I sport shorts. 
I'm the walking dude.
No gasoline. Bath salts, light these.
It's a teeth grinder.   
I can see all the world in pulp battles.
Rhymes are crimes. 
I vomit tomato soup in your general direction.  
Juiblex is a vomiting möbius.
Oh where oh where have those fish crackers GONE.
Danno, murder one. 
Anti-pachycephalosaurs --
Midnight mountain handclapping I will be.
Clap or clap not, there is always your rotten core.
-- welcome to thunderdome.
We're gonna need a bigger bowl. 
That's what I'm talkin' 'bout. 
Fried arterial shocks, yum. 
I am Albino, you wish to see me inquisition your Spain.
Your eyes are anticlimactic as your brain --
Tra la la la, yawn.
-- the discouerie of a supernaut's frozen bravado fifty proxies too late.
Fifty shots, none on target.
Matthew Hopkins, in the library, with the red-hot thought.  

We now return you to your regularly scheduled Peanuts reruns, pentagrams of blood holding the jackal's truth, Frost & Fire, booze, & the letter Q.

P.S. Go wish Zizou bon anniversaire before he cracks your chest open.

Placeholder

No Place, though; skull's piloting auto.
The 14,175,226th opinion on X, Y, that's Z.*
Whata buncha other shit? Prithee, fuck thee.

*save Geaux Grease

It's never too stuck with a useless brain hot to post

Fenriz says "it's fuckin' diabolical."

Solstice-y!

Foresight is 20/20

I hate surprises. Don't be daft asking why, everyone but the terminally spontaneous knows they're hideous blots upon the paper, the ruinous mirror to cherished overthought, the afterimage of people themselves Jake says ewww, or perhaps fate's too successful cloning of such rough beasts. Rules & exceptions, rules & exceptions except when a surprise rules, a royally gnarly proof. Rumor & hearsay, a new platter cometh from those neo/medieval/folk/kitchen sinkers, Unto Ashes. 'tis true, as rumor & hearsay go, Burials Foretold lying in my purple fingers, & surprise, one that doesn't direct me to Plath my Yorick: maestromind Michael Laird is rejoined by Natalia Lincoln (after a one-album absence) & Ericah Hagle, i.e. a nice slice of the temporal lobe trust responsible for the majority of the band's initial triptych, i.e. I'm doin' the Snoopy dance.

Such musicking for the terminally moody spades the first dirt with the guitar & viola da gamba title track, one of those short, intriguing stabs (viz. Interpol's Interlude, Witchcraft's Merlin's Daughter, Sabbath's Embryo, Kyuss' Capsized) you wish the spiders would spin further but are secretly ashamed to be glad they plucked because, like the best horror, the unseen/heard always trumps showing too much. Voices don't enter till they shadow the percussive bagpipe of Pilzentanz, lyrics lifted from the authority-whipping twelfth century Apocalypse of Golias. Then, boom, boom, shroom, Laird's hazy emulsion running over French horn (She Binds Away the Night); his no bullshit willow wisping 'oh it's dark' on glinting teeth & eyes, as the earthy soprano-less chorale enters 'with gloom/Night Is Coming Soon,' reminding why I swooned over this sound in the first place; some are just in our spectral wheelhouse.

A tradition, laying notes below third-party verse: Fire + Ice, a reinterpretation of Empty Into White's wrathful Flayed by Frost, itself originally inspired by Robert's masterpiece in miniature, the circle squared; Bierce's satirical [ed. note: Redundancy Department of Redundancy] Worm's-Meat gnaws on a gentle undulation; & a hurdy-gurdy lilt for illustrator Cicely Mary Barker's Spring Magic.

Piper's Song leads Bart Farar's cover, a single wary, weary eye lodged in washed-out burnt orange flesh, its companion long rubbed out as the world's wont to do, towards the old shuttered rooms of Witches' Rune, Sonnet 87, Estuans Interius. See Hermes T: "I beget the light, but the darkness too is of my nature."

Showing they could make a buck or three as one of the world's finest cover bands -- see their original-what-original stab at the Cure's The Drowning Man, & the hauntingly [ed. note: this overused word applies with perfection, trust me] deconstructed (Don't Fear) The Reaper. Now, stripped of Eddie's crunch, Mike & Alex's manic pulse, & Dave's ah yeahs, Van Halen's Runnin' With the Devil, here Running; youthful defiance is now experienced resignation.

Kept short n' bittersweet, only one track pointing above four minutes, polaroids of a broken tongue only able to spill ichor accompanied. I'd relate -- but would still keep quiet, I'm not that strain of fool -- if it wasn't for this keyless, bird-killing warble; I don't even sing in my car. Blood For My Lady's solo-in-spirit coursing & the molded sole-on-industrial-glass that scratched hither & tiptoe through Grave Blessings & Songs for a Widow have vanished, the latter more than the former, exorcised by the vocal entanglement of old (Young Men Leave for Battles Unknown), the British folk of Too Late to Begin, Lincoln's piano from a silent film denouement (Rubine).

A loamy ouroboros of raw-head & bloody bones salted with a decay-fueled rebirth, one reading of Burials Foretold is a reflection on band breaks up/gets back together (yeah, a stretch, given the myriad folks who've picked, hit, crooned), another is that mythic macrocosm, a third, fourth, tenth is the listener's personal. In any, either, all case(s), while there's nothing immediately otherworldly clutching as Widow's The Snow Leopard, & Empty Into White remains (Moon Oppose Moon? Saturn Return? Magic 8-ball says ask again later) their finest, I get the sense that the fifteen songs about love, sex, death [ed. note: every song ever written, once you peel the rank, absurd layers of the human onion, is about either love, sex, &/or death, except that one, you know which] on Burials Foretold relish the chance to go chord to chord.

State of the union

Read into this whatever you wi -- SOMEONE CALL THE MARINES*

*fuck, fatso forgotso they're assaulting our amphibians this SHW**

**Sammy Hagar Weekend, not to be confused with FW***

***Fenriz Weekend

Going off the rails on a crazy train

Didn't need to be on time, musicians operate on a different clock. That statement's half-true, otherwise we'd have had to have parked on the other side of the next set of tracks.

Some also operate on a different social planet, the drummer -- a weird breed, ain't they -- of these blokes & one ladyfolk instigating the pre-show chitchat. Friendly creatures, one & all. Behold the power of Raspooty.

The Heats rolling, grr, the headliner's neighbors Lord Dying rip late through a six-song set, their Tad Doyle-esque frontman & Co. showering the sparse crowd with back-in-my-day Slaytanic riffs, audible & not just a pot of sludge & endless double bass, but marching with menace. One to keep an eye on, but dudes, how about some CDs to peddle next to the seven inches?

One confontational LeBron fan contra the entire bar. No fisticuffs were thrown, though I did see more than one chick in her summer dress with a flowery ribbon banging along with the head it rested on; a guy post-midlife crisis sporting one too many & a shirt adorned with 50s autos; a post-post-crisis greybeard who probably saw Sabbath on their first American tour & metal geeked out the whole show by pen & papering the setlist, collecting shots, & banging the head that's banged for four decades so quit the chuckles young bro 'cause that's our future, yours & mine, unless you suck; & that worn & old Ian Gillan lookalike from downtown darkthrones. All rocking. That is the riddle of steel fucking metal. Humans begin to spontaneously fill the room, though no time for people watching, Dr. Jones, it's the witching hour, time to rock.

Dude, too clear. Turn off the flash & let's get back to cosmic.

Heavy as a really heavy hundred tons of bricks. Look folks, everyone says our new record's our heaviest yet, so-&-such is heavier live, blah x3. It's true, oh, it's fucking true. & better. Witch Mountain does what every band should do, says they do, but never do, "stretch" & "mature" & "progress" while kicking my fucking ass even more. An inverse evening where a propulsive Nathan Carson & Neal Munson rhythm section kept executioner's time & bees, the bass stinging like a rhythmic blade that allowed the first to throw shapes & runs, Rob Wrong pulling double duty of lead & more rhythm, oft simultaneously like all the best can do, yanking Christmas how-the-fucks out of his ass. The dude can play. Uta Plotkin owns the adjectives inked her way, siren & further, sailing on with range & power that will belt your guilt, whatever it is, for nine eerie, sad, venomous, defiant minutes, six times slow.

Spinning Cauldron of the Wild on the way home, the live did indeed confirm the grooves or bits or whatever the fuck this is. What it is a fucking beautiful punch in the heart.

Witch Mountain @ Now That's Class: The Ballad of Lanky Rae, Beekeeper, Shelter, Veil of the Forgotten, Wing of the Lord, Never Know.

♪ let me help you out of your chair, Cleveland ♫

 
The King is alive, long die the King.

Born in '56, is 56, it's 6/14, 1+4 is 5, that's a heaping firepit of spooky noochies I hope to invoke & give Polska some extra Saturday kielbasa. So many hours of chips, house brand fizz, Unearthed Arcana (d12 HD berserker motherfucker), & solo velocipeding to this epic E-VUL in days of yore when homie Tom K. & His Thrashing Ukulele wasn't trying to sell me on the "qualities" of the Dead Milkmen & Dread Zeppelin fuck that trying-too-hard-to-be-clever college shit I can't fucking hear you over the heavy dood, so the SBH & I are going to celebrate with crushtacular Portland doomsters Witch Mountain this eve in a local dive,



knowing that if there're big riffs aplenty, metal is metal is metal, fuck split ends.

Hail to the King, baby.

Waiting for Wotan's European Vacation

"Uglee Americains, Wotan waz last zeen zees way."

"Bollocks, Wotan ran me over, stole me Python DVDs, and wen' thataway!"

 

"Dad, what's that light?"

"I don't think Wotan wants to be found."

Semper fudge

I'd love to (not really) pen a few-thousand-word screed on this nothing's shocking smooth criminal agitprop but 1)I'm on staycation & 2)I've got to download and print my very own Harrier and follow the simple instructions to start my Marine Air Squadron for my triumphant return to the Towering Slab.

Ya'll gettin' some troo kvlt shock & awe, motherfuckers.

Old Euro

Club football's where it's at? I don't care, whispering sweet nothings to the big R over post-whatever as I swoon over a knightly tournament between the rich man's borders mapped in corpses, at least until 2016 when future FIFA Pretzeldent-for-life (you used to be cool, man) porks the Euro out like a North American everyone's-a-winner playoff. Hungary, there's hope for your very own group stage failure. I'm hungry. While I make me some chow, i.e. buy salt from the vending machine because this heart won't attack itself, learn who'll advance & hoist a trophy far less useful than Lord Stanley's Cup & bet accordingly opposite.

Group A: Easiest quartet, possibly. Hardest to predict, certainly. Russia (Zenit), like Spain (Barcelona), has a core familiar with each other, but keep your ushanka on. For now, having no dog but four cats, I have decided to use my mutt heritage to uncover a temporary rooting interest. Scotland's too awful to qualify for anything these days (thus their hope in joint-landing 2020's bloat), Germany's the Fucking Yankees, Merrie Ole's that annoying brat who won't shut the fuck up, thus I'm leaving my kielbasa in Krakow. [ed. note: Parmastan's Polish Village, smartly tapping the zeitgeist, rerevisited the garage days, JP2's wrinkly mug once again decorating Via Popeorosa, though perhaps Jan Tomaszewski's would be more appropriate] Sure, solitary threat Lewandowski's feeds are gonna be marked into the turf, but at least Szczęsny [ed. note: no i? Decadent West, pshaw] won't always be suckered into cleaning up a Wengerian back four disaster. Right? Furthermore, Nergal told leukemia to fuck off somewhere near the Baltic, worth at least one game winner.



Solidarność! Cech's punchless Czechs grind out the other spot. Unlikely, though 'tis a convenient excuse to type Pooty garrotting someone in a dark alley. This Greece ain't as greasy as 2004, but bottles tend to break on the second bolt.

Group of Death: Since Bert van Marwijk's pragmatism incorporates the presence of Sensei Nigel's Withering Touch, I don't see how the Netherlands don't advance unless Arjen didn't waste all his misfires against Fucksea. Not opening against the Germans, who are really fucking good going forward, helps & then there are the hard-luck Danes. Someone's gotta finish last whilst a preening Ronaldo whines for another foul. Wow, that's a lot of negativity, but what's life but parking the bus so the 0-1 doesn't become 0-5?

Group C: Oh, Yugoslavia, dicked by nationalist dickheads, what might have been. Croatia may have the sniffles, such as a few greying scalps & an kinda-sorta out-of-form Modric, but the champs don't. Or do they? Too much mileage, plus no Napalm Death & no David Villa means Prandelli's house brand Baresis perhaps dash past. Speaking of the boot, Trap's Irish are tenacious D & little else; score early, & lollygag.

Group D: Each write-up is smaller than the last. Maybe I'm tired. France is back less of an epic clusterfuck than in South Africa, but the egadsly Gourcuff's ostensible "replacement" M'Vila is hurt, so maybe they're not, though Benzema's on fire, so maybe they are, look at that word count climb, Sweden is Sweden only in reverse, Ukraine Nation digs techno too much, & a well-coiffed England would win the MLS.

Quarterfinals: The Dutch cash the Czechs [read: Russia], groan, Sweden expects the Spanish Inquisition, groaner, Germany bests Poland (insert your own witty world war punchline, I'm at my Gleiwitz end), groanest, & the eye-talians cheese the inconsistent surrender monkeys, weak like an Uwe Boll flick.

Semifinals: In a rematch of Bladder's ugly final, the Spaniards huff one more time. 2/1 on someone receiving an unprofessional foul. Easy picking the obvious, which is, when there's a scandal (Totonero, Calciopoli), Italy flourishes. Does Serie B criminality banish such bathroom theories? They're going down in the group stage, aren't they. Naw, here. Maybe.

Final: The third time's charmless. Sorry, mushroom man. Germany 2, Spain 1.

Waiting for Wotan #18

 

♪ spear and magic helmet ♫

"Spear and magic helmet?"

"Shit, just another cosplay geek."

 


"So sick of those nerds. You know, fuck this waiting, let's go play D&D."

Misty watercolor memories

Burnout is tired of doing the same fucking shit. The mirror may say 'tis, but the shadow knows even better. Since all devilry shall pass, I won't, unless it doesn't, then I will, but in honor of hmm-maybe global thermonuclear war, six yeas:




Play 'em loud & simultaneous, scare your neighbors who are probably bonging to some hippie peacenikery. Yeah, that'll rile 'em up. Jesus H Cthulhu, this post has nothing to do with that yawn. I'm bored with disclaimers. Pass the rabbit holes.

Who d'king, Part II, a play in three-quarters 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
King Diamond, King Diamond
Fadades, Gaulish misanthrope, pretend musician, & sky pie aficionado  
Kid Darkthrone, not-very-noted local misanthrope, reformed
Bear, bait, & lovable ursine scamp

When we last left our intrepid Peonage, they interstellar overdrove like 'twas Space: 1999. Thus exhausted from both the shark attack & a bad Jules Verne mock pastiche, they would gladly resume their lives of quiet desperation at the Museum of Palimpsest Oddities. Aliens always fuck shit up, ask any abductee.

EARL: Where are we?

DUCHESS: Not Prussia.

KID DARKTHRONE: Not Russia.

EARL: Nor Tunguska.

DUCHESS: That's -- nevermind.

BEAR (pointing): Growl.

EARL: This is like a bad Jules Verne mock pastiche.

DUCHESS: Only real.

FADADES enters.

FADADES: screech screechscreech screech screech!

EARL: Ja ja ja, mach schnell mit der explanation things, huh? I must get back to Dancecentrum in Stuttgart in time to see Kraftwerk.

DUCHESS: This is your brain on zero gravity.

KID DARKTHRONE: I've an idea.

KID DARKTHRONE whispers to BEAR. BEAR turns to FADADES.

BEAR (with menace): Growl.

The spaceship crashes near where it first blasted to the stars.

FADADES: screech screech screechscreech screech!

DUCHESS: Okay, now this is just lazy writing -- hey!

EARL: I can't move!

KID DARKTHRONE: Me either!

BEAR: Growl!

DUCHESS: Oh no! Pyramid power!

KING DIAMOND enters.

KING DIAMOND (singing): Osiris! Anubis!

FADADES (flabbergasted, like hearing Cold Lake for the first time): screech!

FADADES exits, running off into the desert, probably to pass out from screaming in abject horror then get eaten by a camel but since your humble playwright has no plans to bring him back, who cares.

DUCHESS: King Diamond! What are you doing here?

KING DIAMOND (still singing): Lady, gentlemen, & ursine tragic,
the most fantastical, blackest magic
from darkest depths was bestowed upon me
by the metal gods! The ability
to know the most silly of vocal traits;
heed Fadades well, headbangers, do not wait!
A clumsy attempt to save all of you,
why he attacked Hannibal's ship, 'tis true.
You know the legend of the Krypton Stone --
but where it lie, this modern Croatoan?
Beware! The Gaul's no villain of the piece,
but a fool, a poorly-chosen lackey!
In desperation doth wrathfully groan
the grim shadow behind his comic throne --
this, your heaviest metal advantage!

EARL: Who do we look like, the Avengers?

DUCHESS: A bad Marlowe mock pastiche.

KING DIAMOND (yes, still): Kid, whilst I recover from heart surgery,
I dub thee caretaker of metal, temporarily!

KID DARKTHRONE: Golly gee, Mr. Diamond, that's swell!

DUCHESS: How sweet.

EARL: Sniff.

DUCHESS: Back to work on time?

EARL: Got nothing better to do.

KING DIAMOND & KID DARKTHRONE board the former's viking longship, sailing down the Nile into the sunset, BEAR returns to Poland to devour any rowdy fans at Euro, & DUCHESS & EARL considered beginning to contemplate the next one-act but what can a Dr. Doomish cat really do in three months' time? There's no cat.

fin

The abyss also gazes into you

Face-eating Floridian zombies,
sartorial Seattle shoot-em-uppers,

necrophiliac Canuck porn actors on the run from Interpol,
politicians.

Oh, cosmos, so tricksy.
Necrophiliac Politician, the best grindcore* band you've never heard of.

The apocalypse, it ain't coming, you've been soaking in it since day one.
Pass the popcorn, hold the delicious yellow chemical sludge.

Ain't feeling wordy sans offline, & that ain't for you.
This counts as 54% of a post, 38% of an MFA poem.

*example of an oxymoron