walking through memory's places (Act 2) by: Jeremy Hight

A fierce santa ana wind is blowing so hard it is bowing in the window here in 1987 in my bedroom. The dry wind other years will send huge fires up and raging, some to burn to the ocean shore so far from here. My mother’s Multiple Sclerosis has sent her through the sad progression from walking to cane, to 3 prong cane , to walker, to wheelchair…soon it will be the humming electrical one she will ride around in until her body denies her even this. But in this memory and place she is asleep downstairs while the wind blows and will awaken to another day here in this world , this tissue paper thin world of many slivers of past and place. The stereo plays a Kraftwerk record, that one scratch soon to click and pop. The wall posters are Theda Bara and SST records. The bed by the wind has covers that change colors , I guess I can’t remember which ones to fit here so it flickers like some insane illuminated sign or a John woo film fight scene set to fabric. It is a melancholy room. The walls are a bit dirty and the closet is cluttered. The bright green of the artwork Cameron Jamie gave me when we were friends glows in recall amongst crushed books, magazines and old clothes still vivid now. The wind again bends the window, this time in the shape of a glass toenail. My brother’s room down the hall as I walk toward it moves from painted lines n the wall, rush records and a surfboard to the empty room and mattress on a floor, the dusty hall of spiders it became a decade later. The bathroom as I pass has bent wood for the floor, the shower is a glass so frosted in recall that it is near white. The sinks are aligned and waiting with a sad little floor dresser full of aging junk and beer cans. The window is a hole and the wind should blow through now as I move toward it but this synthetic place has no wind, only this illusion outside, outside the illusion inside that I still dream of, have nightmares of, hold onto for reasons I can never grasp. I walk down the stairs and front door is vivid and feels accurate while the hallway is half empty and half some stock image from a hundred horror films, the huge impossible banister pointing out to the windy night that forever exists and is long crushed into a past never to again be touched. This place I want to leave but in dreams I will always return.

walking through memory's places (Act 1) by: Jeremy Hight

It is 1992. There is an odd glow in the distance that changes colors in this memory. The air is cold even though it surely wasn’t , again some literal placemarker of the past in some electro-chemical confetti and the way it re-assembling (flawed) into memory, the way of old television sets of a time never to be seen again, of the color off and knobs for it, of horizontal , of vertical, of static and fuzz and fade.

This lawn is surely from a series of photographs that now sit in a bag behind old clothes in storage as much as this moment or all the years of these steps and spaces now forever undead with all the oblique great distances and closeness that memory entails. The cold seems more acute now and there a santa ana wind that was not there.
I did not know what was coming, those words from my father’s mouth in that water bed now forever a country and lone island at once. The television with the brown cable box above it will glow forever like
some ember more than integer in front of this long discarded bed.

The door and the hall lead past a living room now a carpet on nothing, another television I took soon after this world and place to San Francisco to later die in Grad School at Cal Arts painted, damaged, but with the grace of someone who has lived a long life and wears the years , a beauty we cannot possibly touch nor fully understand like my luminous souled grandmother we will both bury and celebrate in a few days from tonight. Her grace nearing 100 we cannot touch, only celebrate even as we mourn.

My father says now “It is on” as he did then. His words are clear even now as the back wall undulates and the window changes shape behind that tv in this forever and gone room at is forms and people and place . The L.A riots have begun. The distant glow was the city burning/ is the city burning. In south central unbeknownst to this space of memory my grandmother can see flames down the street. The images of unrest, of police brutality, of corruption and anger, they are a sort of oatmeal of motion on the tv now as I turn back in this past and walls vanish, , my mother turns and looks at me , her eyes now only of photographs and recall , my father soon will turn up the volume on that tv in this room now unfinished and vivid, breaking a bit in recall as time goes on. The bed undulates and the lamp light grows clear now in this place drawn from a million pieces , surely one of a thousand places like this to walk imperfectly as past. i will come here vividly and incompletely for the rest of my life in sleep.

A Conflicted Poem for My Knife

I want to whole-heartedly
give you
to someone else.

Hell, I don't even know
if it's you we're talking about
here.

I want you to become
a part of someone else.
I want you to twist up
their insides
when you break it off.

I want to always
look at you as something
better than sandpaper,
or hand-to-hand combat.

I want you
to always shimmer
when we go out
at night.

I want everyone to
know you're there.

I want no one to see
you loosen up
when we're under pressure.

I want you to stay
tight, together,
stable, unnerving.

I want to give you
to someone else,
so I can stop feeling so...
-i don't know-
compulsive about
this 1-way relationship we have.

I want you to be
your perfect self,
to hold you in place of a pen,
to hold you in a place
akin to the esophagus
of a putrid mammoth
before the bulk,
young & needy valentines
in corporeal envelopes.

I want to buy you a sheath,
to polish your skin
with japanese waterstone sets
& Shapton mineral oil.

I want to give you
to someone else,
so I can see the flash
of NO FEAR
reflecting from
the rodent's eyes.

I want to give you
to someone else,
so I can learn to finally
fear DEATH.

-photos & artwork via Meth Lab photo/art-correspondent:
Pantifesto's Porntastic Phunhouse-

"Not All Writers Write, But Some Do" by an Online Friend

"Not All Writers Write, But Some Do"

(for Clement and Rodney but not Cycic)

I.
A writer writes as often as a writer can, but he often neglects to do so because sometimes all there is to write about is the writerly struggle to figure out what exactly to write.

II.
When a writer neglects to write, he'll still consider himself a writer and arrogate to himself writerly qualities. Some of these qualities include (but are not restricted to) an inexplicable passion for bar fights and bus rides, as well as an obnoxious habit of yelling obscenities from a third story apartment window or hurling orange peels at a passing bag lady.

III.
A writer will promise to write sooner than later, then postpone all writing in order to masturbate. When he's done masturbating, he'll begin procrastinating. When he's done procrastinating, he'll begin to think about starting an outline, then put off writing it for a few months. Once he's ready to start thinking about writing his outline again, he'll push it to a later date and likely masturbate.

IV.
When a writer isn't writing, he's probably driving, or eating chips on the sofa. Either way, he isn't writing. He's sitting. But when he's writing, he's also sitting, which is why he often confuses writing with driving. When he reaches his destination after a long drive, he'll often fool himself into believing that he's actually gotten some writing done.

V.
When a writer isn't driving, he probably isn't writing. He may be thinking about writing, but he's easily distracted by the bag lady that passes by his apartment every day. He'll probably devise a plan to kill her, so that he can then write about it. But he'll quickly realize that another writer had written the same story and called it Crime and Punishment.

VI.
When a writer realizes that he simply can't bring himself to write, he'll do one of two things: emulate a prodigious, celebrated writer of the Western literary canon or jump from his third story window in despair, only to land on the bag lady who'll break his fall and be killed forthwith.

VII.
When a bag lady breaks the fall of a suicidal writer and dies forthwith, the writer will then be free to write about the experience without ever being suspected of ripping off Dostoyevsky. The experience is now authentically his, and all that's left for him to do is write about it.

VIII.
When it comes time for a writer to write about his authentic experience, he'll then struggle with form. He'll have trouble settling on a narrative technique and even switch back and forth between the first person point of view and third person omniscient, at which point he'll grow discouraged and give up writing---but only temporarily because he still views himself as a writer. Not just any writer, but the next Dostoyevsky.

IX.
When a writer considers himself the next Dostoyevsky and hasn't written more than three paragraphs of material, he's in for an unbearably tough time. This is the point that either makes or breaks a writer, and he is more defined by what he doesn't write than what he does write.

X.
When a writer is defined by what he doesn't write, he chooses to write only when he wants to, which is never. But he will perpetually think about writing and being perceived and lauded as a writer---a great writer in fact, who didn't have to lift a finger, or waste his breath, just pretend.

Three sisters lick your caramel-tipped Drumstick® by: Ryder Collins

Even if unseen, three sisters know they rule. Three sisters like to remain unseen because they are all titties. Three sisters have the biggest titties ever. We are talking ginormous nuclear warhead titties here.

Three sisters’ tittiess make everyone stop and stare. Everyone. Even Inanna before Gilgamesh. Even Cleopatra before the asp. Even Nero before the fiddle. Even Buddha before the lotus. Even Christ before the cross. Even Napoleon before Russia. Even Haile Selassie before the Battle of Anchem.

Even Van Gogh before the razor and Duchamp before the toilet. Even Sylvia Plath before the oven. Even JFK and Lee Harvey Oswald. Even the bullet that killed JFK and ricocheted. It ricocheted all sporadic because of the titties. The bullet stopped and stared for a full three seconds then zigzagged all over the fucking place to make up for the stoppingshort, for reals.

& after that is when the sisters decided to move to a small town. They didn’t want to be a part of or responsible or even somewhere near to the unnecessary deaths they saw coming. Malcolm X. Robert Kennedy. Martin Luther King. MOVE in Philadelphia. Those are just a small part of the list they keep hidden in their big big bras…

Three sisters moved Deep South because Deep South would incognito they thought. But they moved in to their three bedroom ranch house to find it was the same in the small town Deep South. The movers dropped boxes, broke lamps and cauldrons and bedframes because of the big big titties. Three sisters took their dogs for a walk and three sisters’ titties made everyone stop and stare. Even the mayor. Even sports players, even church wives, even bullychildren beating up the gays, even rabid squirrels, even wounded deer, even pursuing dogs, even scurrying palmettos.

Three sisters then disturbed College Bowls and baptisms, graduations and weddings and infidelities and births and deaths and homophobia. So, therefore, three sisters, even though three sisters liked fucking with the homophobias (because, really, they thought, who cares? and if they could find anyone who would love them beyond their hugeass titties they def wouldn’t care man or woman), three sisters tried even harder to remain unseen.

Even if unseen, they know they are a force. You do not fuck with three sisters.

YOU DO NOT FUCK WITH THREE SISTERS
YO.

Three sisters do not pull no Macbeth shit. Three sisters do not hurly-burly and three sisters do not pilotthumb and three sisters do not chestnut and three sisters do not hail and vanish and three sisters do not.

Three sisters have one computer and three sisters fight over Facebook. Three sisters have one computer and forecast the weather.

Three sisters set that weather shit up.

Three sisters go to the Kroger’s and the aisles clear for them. The foodstuffs they want fly into their grocery cart and the checkers always small talk them, Did you find everything you needed? How are you today? Going to the game?

Three sisters nod and bob like bobble heads.
The checker always scans their items and always does not know the veggies they buy, Is this a rutabaga?
Three sisters bobblehead.
Is this collard greens?
No, kale.
Is this cabbage?
No, blind-worm’s sting.

Is this cantaloupe?
No, it’s eye of newt.
What is this?
It’s your wang, if you don’t shut the fuck up.
That is the feisty sister, but they are all feisty so how can you tell the difference between them, especially when all you can see is their big big titties.

Centuries ago, three sisters gave up on saying my face is up here.
& it is white asparagus that is in the plastic bag that the checker now thinks is his wang.
& that is even funnier cos later after the three sisters leave he will not remember that he was all worried his wang was in a bag. So worried he starts thrusting his pelvis against the conveyor belt side.
One sister tskstks, one mews, & one is oblivious.
It is the mewing that makes the checker drop the plastic bag of asparagus and then three sisters titter big. Titter titter their titties are big big big yet they now move unseen through the small town because they have been practicing for centuries how to move unseen and they now use that moving unseen skill sometimes when they feel like it and they have been practicing for centuries spells to make them unseen and they have been alive for centuries so they should be able to do whatever they set their fucking minds to since they have set their minds against mortality and won so far it seems, and they move unseen down the cereal aisle and down the frozen foods and past the ladies in blue and orange who can only talk about past glories about sororities and now those ladies are in their forties and are unbelievably sad inside and only acknowledge their sadness when they hit that hidden caramel in a frozen ice cream drumstick

& then they do not know why they want to cry and so they try not to cry and they try not to cry too because that’ll mess up their Estee Lauder mascara even though everyone, even the big big titties sisters, even the three sisters, especially the sagacious three sisters, knows the only mascara you needs is the cheapass Maybelline pink tube, yo.

Three sisters never say yo.

Three sisters are not always unseen cos it is tiring this unseen thing so they allow themselves to be seen by the checkers & the people in the aisles who are crying inside and need to get out their way.

Those are the bitches that don’t get out the way cos all they can think of is that deepdeep thing inside that they cannot think about. Most other people get out three sisters’ way & do not see them at all. It is the sad stuck in the

caramelsororityheydaywhathaveIdonewithmylifebesidesprocreatedselfishcreatureswhohavenounderstandingofmysacrificeatallbutImustwearasmilebecausethatiswhatImustdo,

who see them and sometimes see beyond the big titties but they cannot acknowledge any of it cos if they acknowledged what the titties represented to them it would be all over, yo.

Peoples in the aisles get out their way because three sisters roll down the aisles singing, Move, get out the way, get out the way, BITCH, get out the way.

Three sisters like the hip hop.

Three sisters like musicals.

Three sisters like 80s New Wave.

One of three sisters even likes Morrissey.

Ludacris’ “Move, Bitch” is their spell because they have the magic and the big big titties and they are the force.

They are a force, yo.

Non-Nude Preteen Model

“Non-Nude Preteen Model”

He lived in a ground floor apartment, next to the playground. Through his blinds he liked to watch the children. Especially the little girls.

There was one girl in particular, must have been 10 or so. He didn't know her name so he gave her one. “Melody” he called her.

Melody always wore ballerina clothes. Tiara, tutu, all that. She'd carry a fairy wand and wave it around and dance and pirouette near the jungle gym.

Her movements dazzled him. So graceful and smooth. That slender frame. Those budding breasts.

He loved the way the sun would glint and sparkle off her golden hair. The way her pig tails rested on her shoulders.

She occupied his thoughts endlessly. Sure, he fantasized of her sexually, and would pleasure himself while watching her from behind his blinds. But his feelings were more than merely sexual. He genuinely longed for her romantically.

He'd picture the two of them slow dancing somewhere in the forest, Mozart in the background. Them having candlelit lobster dinners in posh restaurants. Walking through the streets of Paris. In a gondola in Venice. Them in a convertible, top down, cruising the Mediterranean coast.

The majority of his free time was spent on Melody, but he liked other young girls, too. Not only on the playground but also on various non-nude preteen model sites.

He enjoyed viewing the photos of scantily clad prepubescents in high heels, makeup, and thongs. Especially when they bent over. Pretty much every time he visited those sites he'd wind up masturbating.

After masturbating, he'd wash his hands in scalding water. Then he'd delete the photos and clear his browser's history. Sometimes he'd cry. Sometimes he'd pray to God. Sometimes he'd cut himself w/a razor blade, usually near his armpit.

Curiously, he never cried or cut himself w/Melody, though. Not even w/the photos he'd taken of her from between his blinds. She felt different.

However, shortly after the crash of Flight 150, his relationship w/Melody took a turn for the worst.

He began having unsettling visions, which'd usually occur while he surfed the Internet. In them, he'd be alone on a white sandy beach w/her. They stood naked, facing each other, on the shore, crystal clear blue water lapping at their feet.

He'd hear a soft sibilance and see a raging fire somewhere off in the distance. Ashes floating around them, he'd gently finger her bald vagina while she cried into her hands.

His erect penis would then grow, into a boa constrictor-like snake, and it'd wrap itself around Melody's neck and strangle her. As she gasped for air and slapped at it, he'd come to, out of breath, screaming and grabbing and punching at his crotch.

These visions disturbed him terribly. He hated them. To cope he cut himself more and in different places. Sometimes even the tip of his penis.

But it didn't help and the visions evolved into a series of night terrors, which all took place in his kitchen.

In every one, teeth unloosened in his mouth as bent Melody over, in front of the kitchen sink, which was running and producing a deafening hissing sound. The window behind the sink would burst into flames and he'd pull a plastic bag over Melody's head, yank her tights and flowery panties down to her feet and his snake-penis'd shove itself inside her and rape her, under her tutu, blood streaming down her legs.

He'd often awaken from these nightmares w/o clothes, in the kitchen, sweating, out of breath, holding his penis in one hand and a plastic bag in the other. A few times, upon awakening, he found he'd defecated on the kitchen floor.

The nightmares were so vivid and disturbing that he didn't want to sleep anymore and decided he wouldn't. So he went over to the rough part of town and purchased some meth from a guy in a hooded sweatshirt. Then he went back home and snorted it.

The drug kept him up for three days. During this time he called in sick to work, watched the 700 Club, cut himself and did all he could to erase his thoughts of Melody.

But it was no use. And the stuff in his visions and nightmares he started seeing all the time. He saw Melody in every room of his apartment. Appearing and disappearing. Sometimes nude. Sometimes w/a plastic bag over her head.

What's more, her left leg seemed to be deformed, and she'd often limp toward him before disappearing.

And he swore his penis really was a snake, and every time he went to urinate, he sat down to piss so he wouldn't have to look at it.

And that awful hissing sound soon began to replace the volume on his computer and TV. And it'd even bleed into his mind, drowning out his thoughts.

He worried what might happen, like really happen. That he might go outside to the playground and try something. Little by little, he realized he couldn't control himself. Eventually, however, God told him what to do.

Around midnight, he made a few holes in a plastic bag, pulled it over his head, painted a cross on his bedroom wall w/his own feces and mumbled a quick prayer to it. Then he prostrated and crawled on his elbows and knees into the kitchen, where he stumbled up to his feet and flung open the drawer under the sink and dug out a Ginsu knife he'd bought from an infomercial.

Fishing out his dick from his soiled sweatpants, he tugged its tip, elongated it and swung downwards w/the knife, hacking it off at the base.

Blood erupted from his crotch like a geyser. He threw his amputated appendage into the kitchen sink and saw it slither into the drain. He then flipped on the garbage disposal.

Then he collapsed to the floor and saw a flickering computer screen image of Melody hovering atop his kitchen counter. She was smiling, w/her arms reaching out. He smiled back and pushed the button.

"Prison Rape Story"

Martin Bayer got busted selling LSD at a Grateful Dead show. After pleading no contest to two counts of felony possession of a controlled substance, with intent to distribute, he received a mandatory minimum sentence… 24 months confinement. No less than 12 to be served.

When he was transferred to CCA Penitentiary, there was no stereotypical movie type scene where everyone hooped and hollered and threw toilet paper at him as he entered.

In reality, it was far more methodical and routine than that. After being stripped, probed, and issued a dark blue jumpsuit and other prison clothes at intake, he was escorted casually, w/o any boisterous fanfare, to his cell, to begin life as inmate #528668.

His celly was far older, maybe 60, and Mexican American. A lifer. Had a couple teardrops tattooed on his face. After explaining the rules of the cell and the joint, his celly never spoke to him again. He'd just keep quiet, sitting in his bunk, reading.

Martin also kept quiet. Kept his head down. Didn't talk to anyone. He did all he could to avoid trouble, but trouble found him.

A group of Aryan Brotherhood members, three of them, kept on staring at him during meals. The staring soon escalated into them strolling by his table and stealing away his milk or fruit.

But Martin didn't say anything about it. Just kept his mouth shut and head down.

The food swiping continued, and the AB guys began to taunt him as they passed, lewdly commenting on his “long hair and eyelashes.” Still he didn't respond or even look at them.

The prison assigned him a job mopping the mess hall after meals. His second day on the job, he noticed the guard in charge of watching the cleanup crew abruptly disappear. Then the three AB guys burst in through a door near the kitchen.

They chased him into the corner of the room and tackled him to the floor. One of them stuffed a dirty pair of underwear into his mouth to muffle his screams. Then another of them punched him in the head repeatedly, subduing him.

The men propped him up to the wall and restrained him. His sweatpants and underwear were twisted down to his rubber sandals. One of the men stuck a shank to Martin’s neck and forced him to finger himself up the ass for a few seconds.

The shank remained to his throat and strong, tattooed hands clutched his hips from behind and Martin suddenly felt a horrific jolt of pain as a warm, thick, slippery object pushed into his anus. There was laughing and catcalling and the thick object thrust forcefully in and out of him for around a minute or two before shooting several spurts of hot liquid up inside him.

The other two men took their turns and as it happened Martin wept softly and worried about catching AIDS or some other disease. Then his feelings turned to vengeance and he wanted to violently kill his attackers, but soon enough, he himself just wanted to die.

Once the last one finished, the men pushed him to the floor. Before they left, he heard one of them whisper into his ear, w/hot breath, not to say anything to the hacks or his throat’d get slashed.

It took him a couple weeks in the infirmary to recover. He did his best not to think about what happened, but every so often it’d wake him from a dream.

While in the infirmary, he didn't answer any of the guards' questions re: his attack or even say a single word to them. He just kept totally silent and stared at the ceiling.

When he was released back into gen pop, he worried the men might attack him again. But they didn't. They left him alone, ignoring him entirely. Even during meals. Seems they'd focused their attentions on another “fish.”

He served the rest of his time quietly. Didn't talk to or look at anyone and spent most of his time studying the Bible, doing sit-ups, and cutting himself at night, after lights out, with a sharpened toothbrush.

After serving 12 months he got released w/good behavior.

Upon release, he craved female company. Though he didn’t think about women much inside, they were the only thing on his mind from the minute he got out.

He went after every girl he could, trying ex-girlfriends, the bar scene, Internet hook-ups, anything. But he simply didn't have game anymore. Every time he’d go out with a woman or even talk to one, he felt dead inside, like he was made of stone. He just didn’t know what to say or do around them.

He hadn’t masturbated since his rape but he did still have occasional sexual thoughts about women. So he decided to try to at least have some sex, thinking maybe that'd help. He found a hooker online and called her over to his apartment.

But when the hooker entered his apartment, something happened. Upon seeing her, a rage overtook him, and instead of paying her, he reached into his pocket and drew out a fist and began striking her in the face, again and again, punching her to the ground, beating her into unconsciousness.

As she lay bloodied and motionless on the floor, he suddenly noticed he had an erection. Adrenalin shot through his veins and he kicked her over, onto her stomach, pulled down his jeans, and hiked up her leopard skin print miniskirt and yanked down her black thong.

However, before he could stab himself into her, he noticed his erection had gone soft, and that the dead feeling had returned.

Frustrated, he kicked and stomped on her limp body for another minute or so. Then he pulled his jeans back up, sat down next to her, stole a cigarette from her purse and started to cry.