i'm rolling down the pacific coast of south america, but i never make it to tierra del fuego
i'm a gutter ball
i was made in hong kong
i have reached a level of unparalleled ugliness — revolting bloated oily ugliness which has metastasized across every square inch of my body
sexual relations are impossible — i am hopelessly ugly, hopelessly silly
masturbation is impossible — my penis shrivels at my own touch and i lack the most minimal powers of poetic imagination necessary to conjure autoerotic fantasies
my gastrointestinal tract is listed as a must-to-avoid in the michelin guide for intestinal parasites
wherever i am at the moment is the remotest frontier of the diaspora
six flags, each depicting a still-frame from the zapruder film, flutter above dealey plaza
and diffracted shards of sunlight impale the ornamental carp who cough little bubbles of blood which cluster above the pond's mosaic floor whose tiles of azure and crimson depict an exploding head of ideas
as nearby, at james dean memorial hospital, nurses use cold bottles of milk to cool the perspiring brows of surgeons who are engraving ideas into the smooth tabula rasa brains of fetuses
an idea being that which exists at the moment a fly ball pauses at the apex of its flight and bids the sky adieu…
that moment is pregnant
perhaps at that moment, in an s&m bar in plymouth, massachusetts, the 50-ft. woman straddles your face and defecates 17,000 scrabble letters, fertilizing the fallow fields of your imagination…
and a new american style is born
when dawn came it was as if we'd been delivered stillborn from an assembly line
identically curled in our bed
our arms crooked in perfect symmetry beneath our pillows
we were like twin fossils
two tipsy vertebrates who had crawled into a tar pool in the wee hours of the pleistocene and slept through the tumult of history
in our mouths the rich creamy taste and texture of raw sea urchins, our breath was rank and aquatic
i pushed the hair from her forehead and her face was taut and limned in shadow like a death mask
when the forensic pathologists performed their autopsy on you
they cried, those hardened professionals,
because peeling the skin from your head
was like peeling the skin from an onion
the flesh between your breasts
was a thin and pasty dough
which yielded easily to their scalpels
and the forensic pathologists, those hardened professionals,
shook their fists at the photographs of the 10 most wanted men,
one of whom murdered you, and wept
oh amy, what threnody matters
in a world whose software
enables a crossword puzzle, orphaned by your death,
to ask, "who now will do me?"
i am not roller-skating through piles of brittle autumn leaves
i am roller-skating down the aisles at macy's in narcotic slow motion to the music of john philip sousa
i'm skating past every surveillance camera
i'm skating across every closed-circuit television screen
salesmen come and go, murmuring, "jerry lewis est mort.. jerry lewis est mort"
if only i had the software to conjure one macy's salesgirl at the end of this endless corridor into whose arms i'd roller-skate deliriously to the optimistic cornets of john philip sousa
but i don't have the appropriate software
and it would be brainless to continue skating
8. in the kingdom of boredom, i wear the royal sweatpants
I finally lost my patience and shrieked: Get out, get out, all of you! My little bedroom was filled with pilgrims, militants, hostages, clerics, extremists, dissidents, mediators, ideologues, pragmatists, and militiamen. If you're all not out of here in ten minutes, I'll have a light-infantry unit equipped with armored personnel carriers and artillery in here so fast it'll make your heads spin. Now out, move it! My ultimatum was punctuated by the boom boom boom of BM-13 multiple-rocket launchers and the whistling sound of rising missiles. I pointed to a bunch of jerks standing near my bookcases — these guys had really bugged me. They'd been continuously making derisive wisecracks at my expense. At night they noisily sucked on sour balls, making it impossible for me to sleep, and they were either actually selling crack to my little brother or attempting to induce my little brother to start using crack. I want you guys identified and then blindfolded and shackled and driven in buses to special interrogation centers — now! A burly fanatic committed suicide soon after he surrendered, biting into a cyanide capsule that had been hidden in a ring on his right hand. His friends leveled accusatory looks at me, as if I were somehow responsible for his death. I don't care, it was his choice, I don't have the patience for this shit anymore, everybody out! We can't leave, someone said. Why? There's a river between here (he pointed to a spot on the map) and our ancestral homeland, there (he pointed again), and the river is too deep to ford. Yes, yes, mumbled his compatriots, too deep to ford. You'll find portable pontoon bridges in my bureau in the second drawer from the bottom— Take them and shove off. An old man with a gray beard edging his craggy face and a leather bandolier of ammunition around his shoulder was gesturing belligerently at another old man. What's the trouble? I asked. He took my AK-47 assault rifle. I walked up to the other old man and sure enough he had two AK-47s. Give him back his AK-47 and I want you both out of here, and be quiet when you pass my parents' room, I don't want them waking up, do you understand? Now we're getting somewhere, I said to myself as people starting clearing out. Okay, there's a 75-millimeter Chinese-made recoilless rifle and a Soviet-made ZU-23 antiaircraft gun in the hallway near the bathroom — whom do they belong to? A guy raised his hand: They belong to my paramilitary security force. All right, I want you, your paramilitary security force, the recoilless rifle, and the antiaircraft gun out of here, and be extremely careful taking the stuff downstairs — that's an antique walnut banister. A young Air Force cadet approached me, saluting. Sir, do you know where I can catch a B-l bomber to New York, sir? What airport, cadet, there's Kennedy, LaGuardia, and Newark. Sir, LaGuardia, sir. Cadet, there are nuclear-armed B-l bombers leaving every hour on the hour from Dyess Air Force Base in Texas, Ellsworth Air Force Base in South Dakota, Grand Forks Air Force Base in North Dakota, McConnell Air Force Base in Kansas, and Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri. I want you out of here and on one of them by 0800 hours — do you comprehend the English language, cadet? Sir, yes, sir. Then why are you still standing here? Sir, a crazy thing happened last night, sir! What kind of crazy thing, cadet? Sir, we were getting ready to go to a party and while I was waiting for Arleen to finish getting dressed I was reading a John Donne poem entitled "Love's Diet," which opens with the lines, "To what a combersome unwieldiness / And burdenous corpulence my love had growne." So Arleen was finally ready, and I put the book down and we left the house, and we got in the car and took the Holland Tunnel into Manhattan, and we're driving up Sixth Avenue looking for a space, and plastered to a wall is a series of posters advertising a band that's playing somewhere and what do you think the band is called? Big Fat Love! I couldn't believe it… the eerie synchronicity, sir!