7 Sir Winston Churchill Square

              Edmonton, AB

date| Thursday, October 28 | 8:00pm - 10:00pm

location| The Black Dog Freehouse | lower level

It's the same deal as always. Read, drink, be merry. Come dressed up if you want. After all, 'tis the season.

* I'd like to post images and recordings to the blawg. So if you have a stellar camera and like to take photos, bring it along and be the evening photographer... I would but my camera takes crappy indoor photos.

 

performance by andrew beltaos at the very first spzw.

andrew is a member of the martingales. i'll be posting a link to check out their new album space and sound. but in the meantime, check out their myspace.

This video is courtesy of my lovely sister. Video form of what you missed at sette sette spzw spzw: school's out!

“Adam, I canʼt find it!”
    “Canʼt find what?”

    “My period! Whereʼs my period?!”

    Adam and Eve had to find that piece of grammar before things got natal! Run-away sentences go on long after a necessary period arrives, and these two certainly didnʼt want to wait for the lateness brought on by unpunctual punctuation…

    “Did you check the bed?”

    “Yep!”

    “Did you check the couch?”

    “Uh-huh!”

    “The kitchen table?”

    Gasping, “yeah!”

    Anxiously, “the shower?”

    Panting, “nothing…”

    Frantically, “Coffee table?”
    “…”

    Just as it looked like they examined all conceivable places of conception, they shouted in unison: “the dryer!” 13 seconds later, it was exceedingly evident the dryer not once had taken English grammar in his life, and probably couldnʼt spell, either!

    Adam was leaning against the wall, fidgeting with the pencil he often kept behind his ear for carpentry purposes, when an idea came to him:

    “Wait! An idea has come to me!” Extracting a piece of paper from a place where paper was often kept, he scribbled furiously:

"■"

    “What the eff is this?”
    “Itʼs a period; eat it! Eat the paper!”
    “Iʼm not eating the effing paper…”
    “Eat the effing paper…”
    Once it was decided that eating the effing paper would not give Eve her period back, there was little recourse but for Eve to look in one last place…
    “Look, Adam, thereʼs one last place we havenʼt checked, but you mustnʼt be mad, okay?”
    “Where?”
    “Promise?”
    “To look?”
    “No, not to be mad!”

    “Okay, I promise that I will have complete control over my emotions specifically anger without even knowing what it is youʼre about to tell me and—”
   “Good; we have to look in Professor Garterʼs office…”

    “Eve! Professor Garter has your period?!”

    “Maybe, but itʼs not what you think!”

    “Eve, heʼs your professor! Professor Garter is your professor, Eve! What am I supposed to think about you, Eve, and your professor, Professor Garter?!”

    “Look, he was helping me one night with my thesis—”

   “The bastard!”

    “—and, well, he noticed a few fragmented sentences—”

    “He—he noticed your fragmented sentences? I thought—I thought only I noticed your fragmented sentences…”

    “Oh, baby, not like that, it was purely educational… really, it was very objectivational and professionalistic—”

    “Go on, please!”

    “Well, after he noticed my fragmented sentences, he… well, he… um—” Eve was having problems getting it all out in one go, which you may imagine is difficult when one is missing oneʼs period, but she was a trooper, and even in adversity troopers do things that troops do, like troop and kill junk— “he suggested I use a…a...a-choo!”

   “Bless you!”

    “He suggested I use a colon!”

    “The ass! But how would that help your fragmented sentences?”

    “He said you wouldnʼt find out if we used the colon…”

    “…”

    “…”

    …soon Eve and Adam found themselves outside of Professor Garterʼs office at 2:33 am in the morning. They had to break a window to get in because Adam said, “weʼre not going in until I break his window,” so Adam threw a piece of petrified wood through the window and then Even opened the door and walked inside:

    “Is this it?”

    “Ew! I donʼt know whoʼs that is, but it isnʼt mine!” Adam applied some hand sanitizer…

    “Adam, itʼs—itʼs here…” Eve had a difficult time finding it because Professor Garter had hidden her missing period on a secret file on his Apple computer; Adam walked over to Eve and they both looked at Eveʼs period for a long time on the glare of the computer screen, and then looked at each other, “Are you sure you want it back?”

    “It was sort of thrilling, wasnʼt it?”

    “Yeah, it was… and, you know, I kind of got used to it—the idea of, you know…”

    “Aww, baby… but do we want it to be like this, in Professor Garterʼs office and shit?”

    “Good point, put it back,” Eveʼs hand moved to her zipper—

    “Donʼt look!”

    “Alright! Sheesh…” Adam turned around as he heard the fly buzz, “finished?”

    Grunting, “uh… yep, got it!”

    Eve and Adam hopped on their bikes, and on the way home Eve slowed down in front of the all-night drug store two blocks from their apartment, “Adam, wait—I need to get some tampons.”

Two a.m. My bike faithfully glides through the gentle trickle of snow. The only sounds are creaking pedals, my breathing, and my nose corralling its runaway snot with sharp intakes of cold air. Bamboo lines the deserted road on either side: fasting monks whose intentionally thin frames divulge the quiet beauty of patient consumption. Leaves dance without wind as the moist snow plays on their green.

Gears shift, squeaky brakes are applied. I lean my bike against a fence. A stone torii eyes my presence with stoic invitation; there is curiosity in that look, too. 

“Come, then,” the torii whispers. I wipe snow off my brow and walk between the large pillars, offering a wary glance to the stone lions indifferent to my passage. The forest steps are bordered with orange smears: lanterns. They are unlit, and in being so exaggerate the night.

My shoes crunch on gravel as I ascend. Despite the snow, the air, I am warm from the bike ride—and despite my warmth, my body, I erupt in goosebumps. I stop. Did I see it? Was that it? Snow curls up in my hair and calmly melts as my heart beats furiously against its ribbed cage. A moment passes, I decide to move forward, and the goosebumps say goodbye for now.

At the top of the stairs I am confronted with an image so beautiful that I forgive myself for failing its description. It is a shrine: decorated with snow, squatting on frozen ground cloaked in golden leaves, themselves draped in snowy garb. I have been here many times before, but never at night. I was warned against coming here at night because of what haunts the shrine. But now, my last night in this town, where I have lived for the past two months, I need to see it. The sound of the cleansing fountain beckons me, and my hands faithfully glide through the gentle trickle of water. Ice clings desperately to the dragonʼs basin as the artificial current threatens to evict it.

Purified, I stand in front of the shrine. I close my eyes. I donʼt know the protocols, the rituals, so I stand silently and reflect on what November and December mean to me. Time was too frightened to accompany me, and remained with my bike. 

When I open my eyes, I expect to see an ethereal effigy. I expect it. Goosebumps arrive again, but without their previous immediacy; they are coming, one by one, to see what I am seeing, here under the moonʼs second-hand light, and I share it with them eagerly. 

I bike home, quietly slip inside, shed my clothes, and crawl into bed. Fuji-san sleeps on clouds for pillows, dreaming about what I might be up to, as I sleep on my pillow, cloudy dreams of Japanese countryside flitting through my mind. Iʼve said goodbye, to be forever haunted by the beauty that resides in that shrine.

 So you think that because you live in Edmonton nothing scary can happen? “Nothing scary ever happens in the City of Champions!” Well youʼre wrong. And ignorant. But thatʼs okay, because youʼre about to be educated.

     This story is true, and happened to me. So sit still and maybe youʼll learn something about truth and terror. Maybe youʼll learn something useful for a change.

     It was October 31, 2009. The night was bumping. Crazy parties everywhere. People were drinking alcohol, doing drugs, and doing each other. Bonkers. And me? Well, I was sticking to my six-pack of Mikeʼs Hard. Nothing too crazy, just enough to chill out and get a buzz. I love to get buzzed. And maybe you think itʼs funny to chill out and get a buzz on Halloween 2009. But that only makes the story more terrifying. No one believes a boozehound. But you better believe a guy buzzed on a 6er of Mikeʼs Hard.

     My buddies and I went to four keggers that night, each one more disgusting than the last. But in a good way. Like how often do you see Cleopatra throw up on herself? And when was the last time Gandhi beer-bonged a shit mix of red wine and whiskey? And Iʼll put money on the fact you donʼt know Abe Lincoln fights dirtier than Mike Tyson.

     The last party we went to where I learned all these interesting facts about historical figures was downtown, and it was packed. At least a hundred people. We got there at about 1 and it wasnʼt going to slow down any time soon. My buddies were all getting shittered, but like I said, I was sticking to my Mikeʼs; so when they ran off to go to some shots I took the opportunity to take a piss.

 You could hardly even get into the basement for all the people, and the line to the bathroom wasnʼt inviting. I couldnʼt be bothered to find my shoes and go outside, so I went upstairs. The place was three-stories, and I went straight to the third floor.

     Itʼs kinda weird when thereʼs a hundred people in a house, all on the first floor and in the basement. It was a big house, but upstairs was dead and sound didnʼt carry very far. My ears had this strange muffled feeling, like I was wearing a thick wig. But that couldʼve been because I was actually wearing a thick wig. Or maybe it was because of something else. Actually, no, it was pretty hard to hear people in that wig.

     So I took a piss in their deserted upstairs bathroom. It was the fifth door at the end of the hall, the only one that was open. I figured the rest were bedrooms either being used by sexy couples or locked up with the valuables. But when I stepped out into the dimly lit hallway again, that was the first thing I noticed—that it was dimly lit. It was really dark before, and I had actually knocked a picture off the wall when I was feeling along for a light switch I never found. One of the doors near the stairs was open a crack and an faint orange light was coming out.

     Iʼm not a creep. Watching people fuck isnʼt my thing. But when a door is open sometimes you just want to take a quick look, you know? Natural human curiosity. It didnʼt matter anyway because no one was in there. It was a weird room. Like I said it had an orange light coming out of it and that was from all these Jack-O-Lanterns around the room with really fucked up faces. They were awesome, super creepy. I was looking really close at this one where the eyes looked like they followed you around the room, when I heard a floorboard creak. I turned around maybe a little faster than normal and there was this guy standing in the doorway, really still. I couldnʼt see his face because, well, he didnʼt have a head. It was a pretty cool costume.

     “Can I help you?” he had this really deep voice, but it didnʼt really sound like it was coming from him. I mean, it sounds stupid to say it out loud but it actually sounded like it came from the pumpkin he was holding at his waist.

     “Oh hey, man, yea just lookinʼ around. These are some fuckinʼ cool pumpkins man, are these yours?” I  motioned to the pumpkins with my thumb without taking my eyes off the guy. Iʼm not a fag, but I couldnʼt really take my eyes off of him. Good costume, right? He didnʼt say anything, though. “Thatʼs a wicked costume, man. Headless horseman, hey?” He didnʼt saying anything again, and I started feeling a little awkward. Fucking social misfits, they all come out on Halloween. “Well, Iʼll just go downstairs then I gue—” 

     “Who are you?” It sounded like it came from the pumpkin again. I looked down at it for the first time, and saw that it had the same face as the pumpkin I was looking at earlier—the one with the Mona Lisa eyes. I donʼt know how triangles can follow you around, but I was shit in geometry class, and this guy was probably a math wiz.

     “Oh, Iʼm Crane, man. My last name, but everyone calls me that.” I put hand out there for a handshake or a bro grab or whatever this social goof did to introduce himself, but he just stood there, his pumpkin staring at me. “Oh, do you mean my costume? My friend got it for me, itʼs like an eighteenth century dude, a merchant or teacher or some shit. Itʼs a laugh, hey? The wigs awesome, but I sweat like a pig.” There was another awkward silence. “How do you get your pumpkin to do that, anyway?”

     “What does my pumpkin do?”

   “It sounds like itʼs talking, man, not you. And I canʼt see where your head goes, seriously wicked costume. How does it do that?” Guess what? The fucking goof didnʼt say anything again, so I just decided Iʼd have enough of this garbage, and almost said so, but thought Iʼd be polite. You want to be careful who youʼre rude to at a party where you canʼt see faces—could be anyone, you know?

     “Okay buddy, Iʼm gonna join the rest of the party.” I shoved past him a bit, but when we were touching, me half way in the door way, half way in the hall, he asked, “Where do you live, Crane?”

     “Near Whyte. This your place?”

     “You live across the river?” he said it like he was repeating the punch-line to a joke I had told him, like half-amused, but like the punch-line was obvious and he was really amused at the person telling the joke, not the joke itself.

     “Yea, man. Is this your place, or what?” I asked it as I was walking down the stairs, clearly not interested in the answer. Fucking creep show.

At three thirty the party was deflating faster than the blow-up doll Brendan brought along for his costume. They were going to some girlʼs after party, but seeing as how I had been chatting her up all night, then found her making out with some dick dressed up as a unicorn, I wasnʼt keen on tagging along. Never go after the pirate wenches.

     I had my bike, so it wasnʼt a big deal. We had all biked to these parties, a small gang of Jekylls and Hydes, Kermits and Miss Piggies, and, well, me. Another friend was suppose to pair up with me as something historic or whatever, but he got swine flu. Probably from Miss Piggy.

  It was snowing really wet, and I knew itʼd be a bit of a bitch to get back. It was nearly fifteen blocks to High Level bridge and that wasnʼt even the halfway mark.

     The streets were pretty quiet, only cabs, really. I was hoofing it, some left over energy from good old Mikeʼs Hard. I took a breather when I got to the park on the north west side of the bridge, Victoria park I think. Plucked a smoke from behind my ear and looked at the river all sentimental and nostalgic, probably also because of the left over alcohol. My lighter was giving off a pretty strong light, I thought, until I saw something glowing on the bench not far from where I was standing. I could see it was a Jack-O-Lantern. I didnʼt move at first, but took a long drag and squinted at it, sort of like, “what the fuck are you doing here?” Thinking it would be a gooder I went over to it.

     My smoke sizzled on the snow when I got to the bench. My mouth had fallen open. It was that creep showʼs fucking pumpkin, man. The one with the staring triangle eyes, that geometric mind-fuck. But it was different somehow—then I figured it out, there wasnʼt a candle in it, but it was still glowing. Like, what the fuck man? That shit was fucking scary. I was tripping balls. I ran over to my bike, rammed my ass down and was just about to hoof it when I froze. Really, what the fuck was this? Some shitty Halloween joke? And I was being a pussy as my friends were probably laughing their tits off behind a bush. I biked over to the pumpkin.

     “You want some, agent orange?” I picked it up and cycled with it in one arm pretty clumsily to the bridge and chucked it off. “Fuck you, pumpkin! Jack-shit-O-Lantern!” Then, I heard something that made my skin pull on my bones.

     I like horses. Theyʼre smart animals, and I wanted to be a cowboy when I grew up as a kid. But that clip-clop-clip-clop I heard then was not a welcome trip down memory lane. It was fucked, too, because it was echoing, like we were in a tunnel. I was looking all around wildly, but couldnʼt see a damned thing, but the sound was getting closer. I hoofed it, straight up, on my bike. Marathon man. I didnʼt give a fuck if this was a joke, it was a good joke and I deserved to be scared. They had obviously put in a lot of effort and it would be rude not to give them a show. But seconds after I started I heard a horse nay, a nay, man, a nay. This wasnʼt any Monty Python coconut shell horse, but a real thing.

     I smoke and Iʼm fat. But shit I can bike hard. But even though I was biking hard, the bridge was taking a long time to cross. Felt like hours, man. I kept looking over my shoulder and couldnʼt see anything. Couldnʼt hear anything. I slowed down, caught my breath a bit. I stopped. I looked around. Nadda. I looked back at the park, then down at the river. I couldnʼt see the pumpkin. Then I heard this deep, deep laughter. I knew it was coming from far away, but it also sounded close. I looked at the east side of the bridge and there was that social goof. But he wasnʼt social goof anymore. He was on a fucking horse with a pumpkin in his hand at waist level. The pumpkin was different this time, and had this maniacal grin, fucking insane, out-of-its-mind bat-shit pumpkin grin that made my bladder loosen a bit. The laughter grew deeper and deeper and suddenly was all around me, like there were a dozen pumpkins laughing at me, and suddenly I felt like I was back in that fuckerʼs room with all the Jack-O-Lanterns looking at me, surrounded, and laughing their tits off.

     “Fuck you, you crazy bitch!” I donʼt know why I said it, I donʼt know why I say lots of things I do. It broke the laughing fit though, and in the time I blinked the falling snow out of my eyes the pumpkinʼs face changed to rage. I knew what that look meant. I hoofed it.

     This time the sound of my squeaky peddles was paired up with that clip-clop tunnel horse and I nearly lost my mind. And when flaming pumpkins began to crash all around me, I thought I had for sure lost my mind. The only thing I could think of was, “Holy shit. Make it across the river.” Looking back I saw that the headless horse fuck wasnʼt on the other side anymore, but was chasing me down throwing his bat-shit crazy pumpkins at me, laughing like a hyaena.

     That clip-clop was getting closer, closer. I could hear the sound in my brain, feel the evil horseʼs breath on my ass crack, and the smell of those pumpkins was in my nose, which actually smelled pretty good. I mean, at the time, yea I was fucking terrified, flaming pumpkins were being thrown at me, but roast pumpkin is a good smell. Think about it.

     I did an impression of my little sister, and I screamed like Iʼd never screamed before. She screams good, and it seems to help her cope with fear, so I tried it. I was screaming, he was laughing, the horse was clip-clapping and the flaming pumpkins didnʼt make a sound. Just when I thought I was dead and figured, well Iʼd had some laughs, I guess, it all stopped. I had just cycled past that pillar at the beginning of the bridge—you know the one, on the west side, it sticks right out and Iʼm sure people plough into it all the time. Whatʼs with that fucking pillar?

     I looked down the length of the bridge, and all I could see were pieces of flaming pumpkin, nothing else. I threw up a little bit, mostly in my mouth. I hadnʼt had a work out like that in ages.

The next day I when to the bridge with my buddies. I didnʼt really tell them what had happened, just that some fucking guy pulled a prank on me, and I wanted to show them the aftermath. We got there early, like 8.30 in the morning. No traffic, no people. No pumpkin pieces. They got bored of looking after about five minutes and started walking back to the car that was parked by HL diner. I caught up with them just in time to hear Tim say, “man, it smells like pumpkin pie here.”

     So donʼt for one second think that scary shit canʼt happen in the City of Champions. It happened to me, and this was a true story. Halloween 2009, baby.

The timing was impeccable. Only a backpack held tactically in front of his stomach could shield from view his impromptu erection. It wasnʼt just when the bell signaled for lunch or for end-of-the-day, either. If “Orson” or “Mr. Swells” was called to face the whiteboard, his bored white face flushed a timid pink. Hardly enough for any to notice, but they certainly would notice the reason why creeping embarrassment lit up his average features.

   Of course disaster of the impeding sort could usually be tactically averted with a simple “Sorry Mr(s). ------, but I donʼt know how (to do the answer)”. And in being plain-faced, silent, and situated in the middle left of all classroom desk rows, he was rarely asked to do much of anything, except to “pack up your bags” or “copy this down”, but even then these commands were to the general classroom population and never with specifically personal aim. And as soon as Mr(s). ----- had moved on to the next student to come forward and “give an example of a covalent double bond” or “identify in which period Japanʼs global isolation was ended” or sometimes the correct spelling of “Albaquerque”, Orsonʼs “pelvic problem”, as he thought of it, instantly remedied itself.

     It wasnʼt as if he was aroused or stimulated or some other sexually clinical term. He found none of his teachers remotely attractive and they displayed no characteristics of fertility or reproductive fitness. Jessica he permitted “pretty”, but not Instant Erection Material; it was moot in any case: the girls who were IEM intimidated him into an anxious fit enough to stifle even the most hormonal rampage. And certainly Jeremyʼs winks followed by what could only be a mime trying to eat a slippery banana did nothing for Orson in terms of arousal or stimulation. (Though it did arouse his curiosity as to why Jeremy continued to behave in this manner after three months of baffled noncompliance.)

     No, it seemed to Orson that his pelvic problem was more of a pink elephant response. That is, in trying not to do the one thing he didnʼt want his body to do, he was subconsciously forcing his body to do it. He likened his theory to such anecdotal hiccup remedies as “think ʻhiccup!ʼ and they will stop, but thinking ʻstopʼ will yield nothing but more hiccups”. However, his attempts at empirically proving his organ science resulted in neither an end to his raging manhood or, alternatively, when sitting with calm boyishness, produced no hard observations. Orsonʼs latest attempt at psychological reconciliation was falling asleep to Radioheadʼs Sit down, Stand up (Snakes and Ladders). But, of course, the lyrically crooned “stand up” had as much effect on his penis as watching lions eating gazelles on a nature program (almost none).

     As tricky as the problem seemed at first, he soon discovered it was easily avoided by strategic placement of his backpack, followed by such explanations as “sore back”--or resorting to the more recent brilliance of sabotaging his shoulder straps, thus rendering the pack less than ideal for back wear, but sufficient for unquestioned erection camouflage.

     But the problem had a new development as of late which gave Orson a heavier opinion to its psychological nature. No longer the ringing lunch bell, nor a normally menial request by an indifferent high school teacher, would induce certain potentially fatal embarrassment. Now a mere “Iʼll need a volunteer to come up to the front” from the educational representative was enough to evoke genital catastrophe. And a ringing bell no longer sufficed: at five minutes to ringing, exactly, he was encountered by his mutinous member. It became so predicable Orson would whisper to his reasonably polite neighbor “five minutes to!”, followed by a show of watch-less wrists, in the classroom with the broken clock, in an instance of self-reflective ironic humor of which none knew Orson to be capable. (This never impressed his neighbor, but in being reasonably polite the expected response was duly administered. “Cool”.)

     All this meant little to Orson except a frustrating hint towards psychological phenomenon, which was quickly amounting to an investigation in undergraduate psychology programs at local and regional colleges and universities, until one Wednesday, upon sitting at his usual assigned seat, he found the following penciled on his desk, in what looked like the exaggerated size and jerkiness of opposite-handed penship:           

save da tents 4 kamping fagit

     Orson knew the allusion to woodland recreation fairly well, as “donʼt pitch a tent!” was often screeched from behind the anonymity of indoor bleachers during the formal dance module in gym class. The meat of the pun rested upon the shaky imagery of a properly assembled camping tent (or “hobo mansion” as euphemized by some of the more dim-witted students) juxtaposed with what is presumably a pyramidal shape of an erection while housed in what must be loose trousers, for stiff jeans usually force such a problem down stream, i.e., down the leg. To reiterate: shaky imagery. 

     However, Orsonʼs level of allegorical evaluation was not sufficient enough to make such a judgement call, but even if it had been, his one track mind was somewhat dully focussed on the blatant spelling and grammar mistakes of the taunt. Well, blatant to Orson. Perhaps, he thought, they were not blatant to the budding author, whose genre of choice appeared to be aggressive proverbs? So, inspired vaguely by the comradery of his reasonably polite neighbor in the preceding class, his sharpened lead confessed the following spell-check: Save the tents for camping, faggot.

     Those of you who are impressed by Orsonʼs editorial altruism, it may be wise to note a certain revision to the above mentioned thought process. It was not the influence of the neighbor who patiently listened to Orsonʼs prophetic proclamation of “five minutes to!” under which Orson endeavored to correct the hideous errors. Rather, he reasoned that his secret antagonist had meant to misspell “the”, “for”, and “camping”, as was fashionable for the current generation, and simultaneously was in no hurry to make his or her sentence punctual; however, “fagit” probably was the believed spelling. And not much else can mash the potatoes of a festering bigot more than mending his or her own poorly communicated, but admittedly devastating, slurs.

     Proudly stood the correct English of shrewd slander underneath the pour engilsh of that same slander. It looked much more calculating, cunning, and haughty when stenciled within the rules of its expressed language. It made a better insult. As Orson contemplated how the secret antagonist would react to a timely improvement on what probably took him or her a night to design, he was already making for the door, struggling to keep his backpack on his back while sabotaged straps toiled against his efforts. The bell had rung, and for the first time in five weeks Orson was first out of the class.

My first real, albeit excessively basic, animation from nearly nine months ago. I doodled the owl at work and created this animation later in the week... probably in an attempt to avoid schoolwork.

Music snippets from "I Love You Like a Mad Man" - The Wave Pictures

There was an off-white mattress with a red print of thin and elegant strands that a well-trained florist could tell you were the long red tendrils of a spider lily. The off-whiteness was not a decorative feat, but a marked beat of age and weariness. An occasional loose spring punctured the flabby fabric. Leaning against the wall of the darkened hallway waiting for hands strong enough to hoist it, the mattress resembled a runner too old to compete, gasping for breath against some barrier of firmness. And when those reasonably sturdy hands finally came to grapple with the awkward shape of old and stained silky flesh, the mattress was heaved into the bed of an idle truck to be ferried to the landfill.

     The accumulated stains offered nothing unique in the way of storytelling; coffee and tea, sweat, red wine or blood, blood, red wine, a patch of human urine once played off as catʼs, and deep blue ink. There was, however, one particular stain that had something to say by way of never being able to say it. Off-center on the off-white body of the mattress was an offer of off-whiter color. Careful in all their years as they had been in never letting a drop of semen impregnate the threads of the mattress, the owners had decided, in a spontaneous, primal way, to have a sexual send-off. It was with a smear of irony that the first time the couple chose to be amorous each completely fully clothed, they premiered their seminal work on the alien canvas of a naked mattress. The impulsiveness of the act meant that there was no condom to catch the climax; thus, the logical recourse was to pull out. But—again due to the impromptu nature of the scenario—being fully clothed, neither was expected to bear the load themselves—and so it was with a mixed bolus of relief, nostalgia, panic, and guilt that the mass of semen was projected onto the midriff of the old mattress.    

     It didnʼt bother the mattress that in one contracted moment of sleek muscles its role shifted from a cradle of sleeping humans to a cradle of damp chromosomes. Nothing could bother the mattress, because it was inanimate and had no means by which to be bothered. It could never be hurt or pleased. It could never become hurt or pleased in the future by means of cerebral development and sentient growth. But the semen…

     As the wind whipped and winded around the worn plush skin brought on by the speed of the cruising truck, the semen slowly dried and shriveled. Shriveling, too, was the chance at experience the human form who could come from this semen could have. Shriveling was the chance for the first slurp of apple sauce; for the first fit of tickles; for the first crawl through grass to eat a beetle. Shriveling was the chance at forming the memories to recall until death; at admiring the beginnings of a row of teeth; at petting a cat and unintentionally listening to ska. Shriveling was the chance to kiss someone and feel it between the legs; to grind the earth between fingers; to build a pulley. Shriveling was the chance to know something unshakably; to defend a loved one; to gather wisdom and share it with a growing family. Shriveling was the chance to know that death is inevitable, and accept, deep, deep down in the axiom of your gut that it is okay.

     What a pining glimpse of the pleasure of life! A future being denied is the denial of the pleasures that make a life even worth it. 

     But shriveling also were those chances unwanted, the other shoe. Shriveling was the chance at sitting in diapers filled with urine and shit; at growing pains; at dealing with strangers. Shriveling was  the chance for someone to steal possessions; for physical violence; for learning that mom hates dad.  Shriveling was the chance to willingly hurt another being, and to know it will happen again and again; to fail and regret; to love someone who doesnʼt return it. Shriveled were the chances of euthanizing an aunt; taking a son to chemotherapy; having a partner betray; betraying a partner; knowing how to solve a problem but lacking the resources to do it; being abandoned by family because of age; crippling doubt and indecision; being powerless against injustice; forever fearing death and grasping until the last moment to try and make life good.

     Is there an equinox between the possibility of day or night for the precarious unborn? Can we judge and guess? Is it wrong to bring beings into the night, and right to bring them into the day?

     One half of what could have been a human was now lifeless crust. These questions stood beside it, asking whether to lament the potential life of pleasure lost, or feeling relief at a life of pain avoided. Yet without knowing which course would have been, in what state of mind should the question be answered? Was it service, or disservice?

     What did the old mattress feel as the man who had nestled into it for almost fourteen years gracelessly tossed it into a heap of other rejects? Nothing. And the stain that would never be human, what did it feel? What could it feel, when the desire to be created depends on being created? As the crusted semen flaked and the last sperm died, somewhere a well-trained florist was telling a customer that higan-bana, or spider lily, means lost memory and represented the equinox.

this is an excerpt from my mass appropriation and manipulation final project for write 399. it was my attempt to create a multimedia project, combining poetry, music and visual art.

 

this next image contains the final product accompanied by lucid, an image by david.

the following video is a reading of the final poem with a song of david's called azurite. the image is another piece of david's, sour.