The little big head knows that his head is small so he flaunts it. S’what happens when a pecker’s dick is sharper than his peck; when a soft May breeze caresses the asshole of July; when ancient new testifies to the sin of open eyes.
I need to be restrained. Court is in order. Someone order me to stop smoking. Not you, mom, you had your chance.
Does no good to be too precious about all this, it does no good. Care is taken where care lies and where we lie, assuming that by now you know us well enough to know so.
sadly looking at your pictures
why you have no change for quarters
why we told you she’s not pretty
how the west was never won
It’s so important to be not boring. A constant rearrangement of things is what is required. Also, a somewhat steady acquisition of newer things is imperative. One must endeavor in any and all cases to cease to be faithful to the letter and conversely be fast and loose with a jackhammer on the windowsill. Only boundlessness will be rewarded.
“I’m sorry but you can’t possibly be who you say you are and have done these things that you say you have done.”
“Why not?”
“Because my whole life no one’s ever been true and I’m not true, therefore I suspect you are not either.”
“Oh. Makes sense I suppose.”
“Yes.”
“So I don’t even get a chance to prove it, huh.”
“Nope. You can’t prove something that just isn’t.”
“Huh. Okay then. So I guess this is it.”
“Wait. No. What?”
“Well I mean, why would you continue to associate with a liar?”
“Well, I mean let’s not be hasty.”
and this one she can lately only write at night, with the lights and the ghosts flicking in and out of the frame like moths in the dark dying, hungry. i see the lights and i think my god, that sounds nothing like me, what is this voice they call sweetly. me i don’t know about you, but me, i’m fucking petrified, i see things at night, i talk to people who don’t understand, i hear noises, i hear the whirring of my own machinery and i freak the fuck out man, because i don’t fucking know what’s out there you know. but fuck it, sometimes i’m like dead outside, like a coiled snake not poised just sitting waiting and i hear that voice and i think goddamn girl, who bade you speak that way. i don’ fucking know but i promise you once i find that fucker i’ll fucking kill him.
Once me and daddy were outside in the dust by the pack of trees (you know the one that sat huddled like cigarettes in a packet in the middle of a quiet expanse of dirt) and i said daddy listen. Can you hear ‘em? And daddy said no youngin’, I ain’t heard a thing out here in this motherfuckin’ pitch dark and I’m like daddy what are you talking about it’s fucking daytime. Daddy hand me that flashlight, cain’t you see. Daddy was always very suspicious in those days, he thought me and you and mama had been sent by god knows who to do god knows what to him.
Eventually I felt as though the voice that got inside me, i.e. me, my own voice, would swell then dissipate and be subsumed by the rest of the voices and form one coherent chorus, but no. wherever i looked, i saw - whenever i typed, there it was. it was him, he’d come for me, i was sure of it. i typed now blindly, listening to the clicking of my nails on the keyboard i used to type a lot faster than this a lot faster i’m feeling sleepy now but this is the first time in such a long time that i’ve typed so much an dit just seems like a waste to stop right in the middle of this paragraph it’s obscene. i never took no writing advice from nobody, least of all my daddy.
i was a fine if shaky girl, i ate my meals and listened to what my mother said and did it, mostly. i was quiet and calm and had the patience of a million gods. it took a lot to make me angry and even though my blood was always at a low simmer, you could never really tell. You wouldn’t really tell until it was time for the pot to boil over. i think touch typing blindly and not proofreading is better for everyone involved.
i think a lot about things that will never be. i think a lot about a boy for example, a white boy from atlanta or mississisisissippi. he lsitens to southern rock and he has a big dumb name like bob or jim and i think about his calloused hand often gripping my throat until i stop laughing because that shit ain’t funny anymore. But jim he don’t listen because he’s a big strong guy and he’s used to getting his way and jim, he kinda wants to fuck me and well i don’t mean just fuck me i mean fuck me up. because jim he hates the way i all the time sound like i sort of know what i’m talking about and jim he can’t stand for that. jim knows he’s bigger, i mean he knows he can take me, that much is obvious but jim knows i’m going to put up one hell of a fight and he loves that as much as he hates it because it spurs him to be just who he is, a cruel sadistic little fucker who likes hurting women. i mean yes, somewhere in that big ole head of jim’s there’s the voice telling him beating the women folk is wrong, even jim knows that. but how can jim fight his baser instincts? he can’t. and i’m there to make sure he doesn’t.
See what you have to do to write a story in someone else’s voice is to hate yourself deeply. first you work a shitty job all day then you come home and eat something terrible and drink a few beers. then you watch porn and masturbate and the mix of endorphins and shame will put you in the right mood to release. and then you guiltily do. you sit down in the most uncomfortable position and you take the low level pain maybe in your back or your wrists like you know you deserve it. you look around you in a way that suggests you are looking to ensure no one’s looking but of course no one’s fucking looking, you’re home alone. any tortured soul worth its salt knows you live alone. you can’t have communion with communion, that’s like eating the wafers, drinking the wine and ass-fucking the priest. you just don’t do it. well, i don’t.
But look they will say, this automatic shit this isn’t writing and everyone knows it and everyone in the schools they talked about it years ago and you, you don’t know nothing. we know you like to feel loved and we know you like to pretend. don’t laugh, we know how you like to escape into other people’s stories and become them. you’re a vampire and we know how that flatters your teenage goth kid sensibilities, but listen. this is stupid. and will never amount to a pile of shit. We told you not to laugh. You think this is funny you thinking this is a game is that what you think this is? should we have you strapped down and removed from the fantasy and shown how to show a little courtesy?
Because it would be jim’s pleasure to fuck you in your tight little ass and by god if we don’t bet you’d love it.
nobody likes your posturing
i mean the way you sit down to write
distilling so-called
existential truths
no, more than that
everybody wants your funny
your siren song
a floppy hat to signal the way
you in the front, with your eyes open
you don’t know where you’re going
you’re going to get us killed
ah, fuck it
nobody wants to see the inside of your nose
with a flashlight
when you’ve been picking at it
with a penknife
nobody wants you to speak in absolutes
nobody likes the way you hang your head
everyone hates that you’re so this
we’re all ticking our boxes
How are you? Who cares? We are here to talk about me. But remember that I love you.
More than I love you though, I love Chris East. And I love Catherine Maskell by extension, though I have not yet had the pleasure of making her acquaintance, I am assured that she has impeccable taste, for she, along with the aforementioned object of my affections, the estimable Mr East, are publishing a wonderful book via the lovely love love Bureau de Books of love (HOT YOUNG PUBLISHING HOUSE BITCHES!) and, after much cajoling, cursing and a not inconsiderable amount of idle threatening on my part, they have included my never-before-seen-on-this-blog-or-PIFFLE-or-your-bed-poem, CAN I OFFER YOU A REFRESHER? in their new book:
(and, breathe)
But what’s in it for me? you might ask, in an as yet uninformed nod to the spirit of the book itself (QUESTIONS people, are you paying attention?):
Jimmy Chen, bitch!
Vaughan Simons, bitch!
Sam Pink, bitch!
Crispin Best, bitch!
JA Tyler, bitch!
A ‘veritable who’s who’ of my blogroll plus a million question marks worth of cool stories with even more question marks in their titles, bitch! Finally! The answers to the burning questions you have sweated over:
AM I HOW THIS IS?
WHAT ARE WE?
WHEN WILL I FINALLY DIE?
and,
WHOSE GODDAMN OATMEAL IS THIS?
¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ I love you, bitch ????????????????????
I INTERVIEW MIKE YOUNG, AUTHOR OF MC OROVILLE’S ANSWERING MACHINE
FOR WRITERS’ BLOC
Contains: skateboarding, BBQs, masturbation, magic helicopters, persimmons, shit-talk, charcoal, country music, assbags, and …
I’m going to Paris with a boy, but we are not in love. We are not getting married. While we are there he will not propose. We will not walk hand in hand down tree-lined boulevards, or share coffee and a pastry at a sidewalk café. Well, OK we might go to a café but we’ll have one pastry each. Maybe two. I’m going to Paris with a boy, but there will be no hanky and definitely no panky; no hilarious language barrier moments with the old woman who’s the hostess / ruthless dictator of the quaint bed and breakfast where we’ll stay. He will not kiss me at sundown under the glittering glow of the Eiffel Tower. Absolutely no one will be wearing a fucking beret.
You’re someone I could fall in love with and those are words I use because I’ve heard them said by many people and they seem good to say. You’re someone I could easily cajole into hurting me. I could call you on the phone and you could say, I need quarters for the laundromat and I could cry, I would cry down the line. Because your need to use a laundromat is mildly worrisome but your lack of planning is tear-inducing.
You were lying on the couch and you said, come here baby girl, come here, so I did and then you said, no not you, I meant the cat. But I fucked you anyway. I pushed you back with force like I never have in dreams because I’m the type of dreamer that leaps wide when she means to fly. Then we both became naked.
I straddled you and I tried not to orgasm because I wanted it to last forever and I morphed into a fourteen-year-old boy and I thought about baseball except I don’t know what it is about baseball that you’re supposed to think about. I only remember hitting the softball, flinging the bat and running like my ass was on fire. Thinking of fire and my ass smacking against your pubic bone and upper thighs and hip bones and I came. And that’s not the only bad piece of 80s movie advice I ever followed.
When I quivered and my insides clenched your cock you smiled up at me and I smiled down at you and made a fuck-that-feels-good face and you said, I need quarters for the laundromat.
And then you didn’t reply to my email or link to me on your blog; you didn’t invite me to Thanksgiving at your parents’ or to their summer home; or to an expensive or an affordable meal; you didn’t speak to me after fingering my ass behind the shed near the sandbox after the sixth-grade dance; or at any point during the dance; though you did dry hump me several times during particularly soulful songs; also gave me an in with the other boys which I appreciated; but you never called to tell me whether your clothes were clean.
Still. I’m the one that fucks you and you let me and I keep your secret I am your secret. Not because I’m selfless or worthless but because humiliation agitates me several ways.
You seen this shit lately?
Alright, alright. I know I (WE) am (ARE) not the most consistent gal (HUMANS) this side of the internet, but I’m a poet, right?
Shut up.
Do you know how long it took me to accept that I like to write poetry? A long fucking time is what what.
I refuse to make apologies.
But wait, this wasn’t supposed to be about me. What I meant was:
PIFFLE. Now with added Gena Mohwish sprinkles and marshmallow Chris Easts! Mmmmm!
Eat it up spit it out tell your mom watch us burn.