SLAVE NATION

Gatsby Home Invasion [July 3, 2011]

As I left the liquor store the heat of the afternoon entered my lungs like a hot paste in which I distinguished the smells of asphalt, crumbling plaster, and rotting fruit from the dumpster nearby. Here the bus had its station; it stood on the other side of the street, on a break with its engine switched off. I climbed into my truck, tossed the case of cold daddies clanging down on the passenger seat, and started the engine. Hot wind like dog’s breath smothers my face from the air-conditioning vents until the compressor kicks in. As the buildings through the windows surged past me I thought over my brief interactions in the liquor store. It was the one with ...

The Deep Web [June 16, 2011]

"Information wants to be free." - Stewart Brand I knew I shouldn’t have, but I did. I took the red pill. I sat there and watched the cars on the freeway, they barely moved. In that moment a decision was made. I was going into the Deep Webs. Who the fuck was I anyway? Once a young nonconformist who had no choice but to go his own way, to succeed on his own terms. Now just a tired protagonist holding up the constitution like a shabby homeless doomsday prophet on a dusty downtown street screaming into deaf ears. It was an old trick, writing about life like you’ve got an angle on it. I do it myself. I even admire my ...

Angie [June 13, 2011]

My friend Angie is dead, suicide. Knew her for several years, she reminded me of the book Flowers for Algernon. She was vibrant, and brilliant, and doomed. She was Irish, family with members of the IRA, enter the liquor. She had been in a serious automobile accident a couple years ago, it banged her up pretty good, enter the pills. She was too intelligent to sit around and talk about television personalities, and sports, and the weather. She was a Muay Thai kick boxer. She had Lupus. She knew she was going to die. Angie was a handful, to say the least. She was poisonous, insightful, scathing, and caring almost simultaneously. She would break up with a boyfriend by telling him ...

Ignus Fatuus [June 1, 2011]

Ignus Fatuus The only solitude is Sleep or death We were not clever enough Kind to others and cruel to self When self asked for mercy and was denied The holiest privacy remains waiting on us and all that was misunderstood or abandoned will come together let my failure be your fortune this that was broken and careless error let it be known that to know your own death is to die twice once really and then hardly at all let it be known that there is nothing as ugly in all it’s tangents as the human beast a trick set against the blood of your soul let it be known that solitude is the only mercy and the only lover let it be known that a man need not be Christ to be crucified let it be known that a man can be crucified each day each moment each breath to sleep and awake and (then) to be tormented again let ...

The Self-Licking Ice-Cream Cone [November 12, 2010]

It’s this goddamn heat. I stumble around my apartment sipping whiskey in only my underpants. My guitars are all thrown out of tune. My drunken fingers pluck mellifluous chords as my whiskey voice bellows deep of an unrelenting sorrow. My pores open up, sweat comes out. I’m oozing life and there’s nothing or nobody to soak it up. I stand on my back balcony, hot wind like a lover’s hand, rubs against my crotch. Ahhh yes. Give it to me. Give me this. I’ve been a 3rd world country, owned by interests outside of myself. They walk into my life, exploit my natural resources, steal all the wealth, and then leave. I feel worthless and empty in the arid night ...

Black Maria [November 3, 2010]

It was just another day in the coal mines. I was sitting in a bar on 30th Street. It was around midnight and I was in my usual bewildered state. I mean, you know, nothing works right: the women, the weather, the economy, the bums, the streetlights. Finally you just sit in a kind of stricken state and wait like you're on the bus stop bench waiting for death. People lose their minds on bus stop benches, I see them arguing with phantoms or playing odd musical instruments to doting imaginary audiences. I had walked out of my place just to buy some orange juice and soda water to help me get through the hangover but ended up in the ...

Sinking Ship [October 28, 2010]

I woke up in Serina’s apartment Sunday morning, still drunk. Yeah, she’s that stripper that went war wacky and started cluster-bombing me with calls at 3am every night. That’s right, that same Serina that sent me that handmade gift box and told everyone in her club that I was “born to fuck”. As my bro texted me when I was pondering a hot extract at 8am ‘You are proper fucked’. How did I get here? Where is Johnny? Did Serina and I fuck? These and a thousand more unanswered questions drove nails into my skull. What the fuck happened last night? The last thing I remember is Johnny, Serina, and I crushing five shots of vodka in her kitchen – ...

Snowden [October 24, 2010]

I am wandering the cold wet streets alone at night as dark figures slither in and out of shadows. A conspiracy of whispers and crooked gestures with gnarled hands in the periphery. Until their tenuous union is shattered by a tin can rattling on the concrete and they are gone. Evaporating into the neon afterlife. Only the haunting cry of a stray cat stalks my feet as they grind broken glass against black gravel in the off-color rainbow of grease in pothole puddles that reflect only the dark image of a worn tired face caged by steel towers and concrete walls sneering back at me. Viewing itself only for the few fractions of a second before my shoe stomps down ...

Hissing Cockroach [October 23, 2010]

“Piss on you!” Shirley screamed at me. She's the evil old lady that lives below me, just to set the record straight. “Piss on you!” I was stunned, laughing my ass off. I had asked her not to have her construction people park in my spot. They did it three days in a row and each time I reminded her to stay out of my parking spot. Look, it’s a minor issue I know, but as I told her, I have never parked in her spot and there was a designated spot for visitors literally two spots down. Two spots down, what the fuck you evil hag!? She scuttled back into her condo like a hissing cockroach cursing me under ...

The Ecdysiast Dilemma [October 11, 2010]

I woke up this morning on my couch with a hangover. Yeah, welcome to my life. My phone lay blinking on the coffee table, its tiny red eye telling me that I probably used it to conduct despicable deeds deep in the throes of another hypnotic drunk. I start pulling memories from my head like weeds as I rummage through the pizza boxes that lay ravaged on the kitchen counter for a few edible scraps. I had been up late listening to records and reading comic books with my buddy Dave. He came over under the cover story that we would go out, I even took a shower and put on a button down shirt, but it was not to ...

Robot Monster [October 1, 2010]

I shuffle up the stairs to my condo. Another long day into a late night. I’ve been working nights for a month now. My face feels hot and itchy. My body aches. I feel constantly nauseated. My eyes weep with exhaustion. I’ve been using energy drinks to keep going, two, then three a day. Just to get up, get my boots on, finish my workout. I haven’t been eating right, starving myself. 7-11 has become my blood bank. My body has hardened into a bitter piece of wood. I check my mailbox, nothing but junk. I stumble into my apartment, kick off my flip-flops, the place is empty. There is no life here. A coffin. Used only to sleep through ...

Nadaam, Nietzsche, New World Order [August 28, 2010]

I escaped Siberia, a spoiled wilderness enslaved by a desperate and defeated people. There must be scenic solitude somewhere on this earth, sought refuge in Mongolia, no dice. Ulaan Bataar is a bustling shit town, dirtier than it appears. The Mongolians, I call them Mongoloids simply because I’m an irreverent fuck, seem a friendly and proud people. They are living through the slow rape of the last of their legacy. These are not a large people; I wade through crowds like an alligator through reeds. I keep a knife stuffed in my front pocket at all times, it is beyond sharp. I carry the blade not because I’m worried about getting into trouble, just because this is what’s done at ...

After the Fall [August 5, 2010]

We fly out of Alaska in the complaint addled escape from slightly rainy weather. My clients want sunlight, they want clear skies, and hopefully their disquiet mixes with jet exhaust and is left far behind. On the flight, an attempted molestation turns into a malediction of malice. I am forced to pretend I am asleep while nauseating efforts are made to separate me from my honor. I suppose when you have unlimited funds and are used to getting everything you want at a moment’s whim that sex probably follows this trend. I’m not a mere plaything, this has now been clearly explained. I am simultaneously revered and exiled for defining boundaries and outlining borders ...