BUY NOTHING DAY -- NOV 28TH

photo: saul steinberg

BEARKEG

After killing the bear, the bear hunter hollowed out the animal with a bowie knife and collected the bear's insides in various orange home depot buckets in his garage. Then he attached a handle to the animal's back and filled it up with beer. He spent the afternoon coming up with a way for the bear's body to piss beer into his mug. He had never seen Clockwork Orange and was not being ironic or anything. When he figured it out, he didn't use a mug and just sucked the bear's cock alone.

On Thursday he dragged the animal to the bar and asked the bartender to fill it up with beer. The room filled with the stink and a butch biker woman vomited violently onto the pool table. When the bartender refused to fill the bear up with beer, the bear hunter stood on the bar and pulled his pants down to his ankles. The bear hunter pissed on everyone's head and the piss splattered from their hats and into their drinks. The bear hunter cried with his pale bare ass hanging out ugly because he knew that no amount of falling piss would make these people his friends.

The bear hunter stumbled home that night crying with his pants around his ankles and dragging the bear through the wet streets. When he got home he set the orange home depot buckets of bear innards on fire in the forest and watched them burn while he sat with the bear wrapped around him like a quilt.

When he woke up in the morning he stripped to his underwear and pulled out the bear's bones from the body and used them to beat his wife. The bear hunter cried in his grubby underwear because he knew that no matter how hideously he beat his wife she would never be his friend and the bear hunter just wanted to have friends and feel power.

child pastor

EARTH -- an epic micro-poem

1.

this morning
i walked around
in the forest
and climbed rocks.
my hands were in my pockets
and i was breathing steam.

2.

i looked out
over the mountains.
i dangled my legs
and laid down.

3.

when i woke up
i came down
and ate a biscuit.

4.

there was a troll
and his was mouth was gaping.
he was a trash can
and you were supposed to
put trash in his mouth.
i put my biscuit in his mouth.

5.

the park was open
to the public.
i found a dead possum
floating in the pond.
i squatted on the shore
and poked him with a stick.
when i finished
i put my hands
back in my pockets.

6.

i walked back to summer's house.
she was baking bread.
i ate another biscuit.
the park was okay.

7.

'i would like to live in a treehouse
and i would have book shelves
and a wooden bed.'

8.

'i would like to wake up
in the morning
with the sea lions barking.'

9.

'everything would be okay
because i would know
that i am living in a treehouse.
things would not be so bad i think.'

10.

i said goodbye to summer
and walked back to my house.
i climbed onto my bed
and fell asleep with
my legs dangling.

things i have been reading/seeing

i recently re-read bohumil hrabal's 'too loud a solitude'. there is a blurb on the back from the new york times that says it is 'about the indestructibility of knowledge'. i felt afraid sometimes at what the narrator would do. it felt very real. i think it is more about loneliness and alternate reality and communism in the future. personally.

here is an excerpt:

'so i went back to work, hacking away at the blood-soaked boxes, cartons, and wrapping paper, until they started cascading from the ceiling to drum, and once the hole in the ceiling was free, i could hear everything going on in the courtyard, everything being said there, as if through a megaphone. some of my regulars came up to the opening, and i peered up at them from below, and if they looked to me like statues on a church portal, my press looked to them like the catafalque of charles IV, father of our country.'

****

today i saw a woman breastfeeding and i thought about the curb your enthusiasm episode where larry hires a hooker on the street so he can use the carpool lane and get to a baseball game on time where he tries to ignore the hooker, to which the hooker threatens, 'i will bust out a titty' and larry asks her please not to bust out a titty and she says that if she doesn't want him to bust out a titty to act like he's not embarrassed of her.

***

i feel, when i wake up, in the morning, there is something i am supposed to do today. what i do is lay down and then think 'no, i will not do that thing today. i wil do the opposite of this thing'. i feel like this is very destructive. i feel, when i push, i am being pulled. i feel like i am in the secret level in super mario bros 3 where you jump into the opposite side of the screen if you jump out. i am finding the threads. i feel like inside a frozen block of ice, it is cold and paralyzing and i feel like i am warmly accepting this. when i wake up in the morning it is always late and my phone says i've missed calls from the school asking me to substitute. i always say 'tomorrow'. i always put it off. i have to move somewhere. i have to make motion. i feel very afraid of staying in arkansas for much longer. i think this paralysis is why i have not been posting. i am feeling asphyixated. i feel almost maybe like i know i am falling asleep very slowly and everything feels warm and moist and there is the landscape and there are the fields and there are the animals, but grayscale and i falling inside almost asleep.

***

camper van beethoven - 'eye of fatima'

blurbs (UPDATED)

alicia pernell, conor o'brien, ryan manning and anthony groen have each posted about 'vega' which is a free album that i recorded and of whose details you may receive more here.

there is an interview with me about my music on indiesecret. i make references to blake butler, sam pink, ryan manning, and shane jones. please donate your appreciation here:

love is a faggot

love is a faggot
and the moon is AIDS.
tomorrow i will march in the street
with signs that read
"love=gay"

in the morning
the light was pink
and gray through the window,
the canary danced to be funny.
i didn't say anything then,
but i thought
it was
faggy.

the canary sat while i
ate breakfast on the terrace,
it said:

'take everything quietly into your hands
to consume all in gasping breaths,
compacted into a single molecular unit
of fag and fuck.'

it gave a little cry and
before it flew away,
it shit on my face.

you motherfucker moon,
i don't want it.

it is only that
there is something
i am looking for
in these corn fields.

this is all, i don't want you.
i don't want you to come any closer.

in the boxcar darkness
there was apple milk cream dream.
there was fear.
there was milk and fear.
i woke up in the morning.
my room was cold.

love is a faggot
and the moon is AIDS
tomorrow i will shit
on your face and
write a poem about it.

liberation = joy

this song channels the experience of the past two days living in a completely new country. i recorded it in my bedroom in the afternoon with the window open. It is all improv and is quite very flawed and terrible but exactly, exactly, exactly.

jesus christ...

on monday i went to vote early with my father who is an ecuadorian immigrant born to a young widow with a poor family of 10. he came to america in 1985 and became an american citizen in 1996. for some reason or other he did not vote in any election until this on monday when i was with him. my father has been a social worker, a phlebotomist, a small business owner, a factory worker, a pastor, and a carpenter. he has worked very hard to help my brother and i get to and through college. on monday i voted with him to put a bi-cultural african-american leader in the white house.

i am very, very proud of my father and i am very proud of america and i am proud of people.

last night at work i was watching CNN on my laptop and i couldn't take it anymore. i was getting sick and i really felt like i was going to crap my pants. honestly. when he won i convinced my roommate to put off a paper and we drove to fayetteville yelping and squriming the whole way. we got to the democrat watch party just in time to see obama's acceptance speech. everyone was clapping and crying and dancing. we passed some people outside and they were making expressions that conveyed relief. then we yelled 'obama!' and we acted like animals and it was all royalty and luxury. no one spoke and everyone just felt. usually i make efforts not to speak with strangers sometimes. last night, i 'fist-bumped' a stranger in the bar bathroom and we yelled things like 'we're on our way!' and 'we made it!' i felt like something special was happening in that bar. there were people nearby and then a current came through us and we all yelled and clapped and hugged and we didn't know each other. we were hysterical. i got so drunk i can't even believe it. i went outside and threw up on a tree. i called all my friends and left them positive messages. i said 'hello' to a pretty girl at bar, something i never, ever, ever do. i kept buying drinks for my roommate. it was something connected and beautiful and i felt very much a part of it and i belonged.

last week i burned my hand with scalding water. now the skin is brown and peeling. i feel like i am peeling something back right now and there is something new beneath and it is man. i feel like we are a tiny, tiny bit closer to that paradigm shift we talk about. i feel like things are coming together for people, not politicians. i am overjoyed. i feel burdened with joy and tenderness and goodness. i feel burdened with humans.

election day

it feels like christmas except instead of opening your presents you are either surprised with your cousin throwing up on your head or getting a badass mace.

i have been nauseated all day. i rode my bike. i meditated. i tried to stay busy.

now i am at work watching cnn on my laptop and feeling my stomach churn, pulling at my hair at every bit of news, and trying not to be too optimistic.

today i rode my bicycle down a steep hill and said 'tomorrow everything will be okay.'

halloween -- siloam springs downtown

for halloween the downtown district in my little town shut down for two hours. local business owners stood outside and passed out candy to children. the cafe also closed and i sat outside taking pictures of children in costumes.





i think this kid woke up and remembered it was halloween and then cut eye holes into his bed sheet. i think his mom was pissed.

i don't think this kid was wearing a costume. i feel like he fell on a marker at school and then came downtown. i think this kid is terrific.



this goldfish kid was my second favorite costume of the afternoon. i think it was because of his puffy cheeks. and also he walked like a chicken.





from this vantage point i was able to get drunk and yell at people from the roof of a friend's apartment.