by: marko x
[for mikey welsh]
to say that america has no culture, only smiling song & dance
men, is ragging on the obvious, is like picking on a cripple.
all about schmoozing & banal sex appeal. sadistic pedophiles
& masochistic star-fuckers. occasionally the poor tortured artist
which they know they'll make a neat profit on when he or she
takes their last bang, hit, slice or fall. truly great artists are
ignored for the most part. gallery owners say they can sell your
work if you agree to let them manage you. i dump an entire can
of yellow paint over their head. i tell them it was van gogh's
favorite color. a poor saint of a man who sold one painting in
his lifetime. i scatter sunflower seeds over them to see if they
stick. i ask them what's their asking price. publishers say they'll
print your book if you can send a list of at least a thousand
people you know who will snatch it up. worse, they'll publish
if you agree to take any unsold copies off their hands. i don't
know a hundred people. worse than that, are strictly vanity
publishers making money off frustrated, desperate writers,
who could do the same themselves for a fraction of the cost.
i write art-hater all over their whoring body handcuffed to
a bed in crack motel. record companies sign naive kids to no-win
contracts, which unless they're one in a million & catch the
popular imagination (shudder at the thought) will never make
the band or the songwriter a cent because they must pay back
recording expenses, video expenses, clear channel payola before
they see any profit. i've read an indie label must lay out half
a million before clear channel who has a monopoly on fm radio,
will even start talking. i plant a megaphone in their tin ear
& scream philistine motherfucker. i write a thousand page
suicide note which nobody will touch. what do i care. is that
that a statement or question? let me pretend to touch it up
a little.
Marko X is a reclusive poetry and prose writer from Oregon, or outer space, motherfucker. Don't fuck with his spaceship man. Seriously. He has some of the koolest fuckin' titles this humanoid has ever seen!
The Pistol and the Sneaker
by: Rob Plath
My father held the pistol up to the screen and through the mesh he whispered,
"I’m going to blow your motherfucking head off."
My older brother was asleep right in the bed next to the window. The kid, Al, my brother’s friend, spun around and ran down the lawn in the dark. My brother kept sleeping. My brother’s friends often pulled their car up on the curbside a house down and one of them crawled up to his window to get him to sneak out. My father shut my brother’s door and put the pistol back in the drawer in the master bedroom. The pistol he used to carry when he collected money from the ’bums’ that didn’t pay back the loanshark on time. He had a large bayonet in the drawer as well. Then he went to bed.
The next day after school my brother came home and asked my father if he had pulled a gun on his friend Al.
"You bet your fucking ass I did," he said
"My friends were afraid to come around now," my brother lamented
"That's how I want them to feel," my father shot back.
"Do you have Al’s sneaker," my brother asked.
"Yes," he said, smiling. "You should've saw him run," he laughed.
"Can I have it to give to Al?" my brother asked. "It's his only pair."
"Tell him to come get it," my father growled.
"He's afraid," he told my father.
"If he wants it he has to fucking come get it. I tied it to the garage door handle," my father snickered.
My brother shook his head and went to his room.
Later, John approached the house. John was my brother’s closest friend and one of the guys in the car that night Al lost his sneaker. John was the only one not afraid to the house. John’s father knew my father from Brooklyn. He was in hiding for years ever since he was wanted for murder during a truck hijacking. John laughed when he saw the sneaker dangling from the garage door.
"Your old man is a fucking rip," he said to my brother.
My brother began to laugh along with John. Just then my father came out.
"Hello," John said and then pointed to the sneaker.
"Only Al can untie that sneaker," my father growled.
John laughed loudly. My brother laughed then.
"You kidding," John asked, laughing.
"Tell that motherfucker if he wants his sneaker come get it," my father repeated.
"You weren’t really going to shoot him?" John asked my father.
"I almost did," my father said.
John laughed. My father liked John although he wouldn’t show it. He knew John had balls like his father. My father went back inside the house and my brother and John left. The sneaker still dangled.
An hour later John’s car pulled up and my brother, John, and Al got out and walked up
the driveway. Al a few steps behind. My father immediately came out on the porch. My brother and John laughing pushed Al towards the dangling sneaker.
"You ever come to the window at night again and I will blow your fucking brains out you fucking little punk," my father said.
And he waited with his hands on his hips for Al to untie the sneaker.
"Go ahead, you cunt, take your sneaker," my father said.
Al, his hands shaking, untied my father’s knot. John and my brother were standing there dead serious. Al finally got the sneaker and walked to the car. My brother and John said goodbye to my father.
"Don’t ever fuck with me," my father told them, "or I’ll put a bullet into each one of you," he warned.
He let the screen door slam and disappeared inside the house.
It's Rob Plath. Nuff Said. He is featured in Tree Killer Ink issue #4 from Epic Rites Press as well as any other small publication you can probably wrap yr little head around.
Read both of these guys, or be swaLLowed up by the jowls of Cerebus drunk on three-day old blood.
