Wednesday, December 21, 2011
Wednesday, December 14, 2011
notsomuch
microsnoz components piss me offthey're too small, they never piece together
right
the instructions are in English
olde
and the diagram
when folded in three
then spread wide like a flapping accordion
depicts the grand history of Peter D. Smeek
door knob salesman
.
plastic nozzles
the small round ones with teeth
get stuck in unfortunate places
in cracks
in hoses and tubercles
and nooks and crannies
they make noises
confounded blurts and hiccups
when the winds blow up along
the floorboards
.
these components
stamped
made in China
manufactured and sold to the highest bidder
they come with a guarantee
and a solid state home engineer
well oiled
coiffed to perfection
it sits on a spring ready to tidy up
.
the user fee is enormous
.
everyone ought to have one of these
microsnoz components
they fuel the planet
with round incompetence
and everyone agrees
what the world needs
.
is more of that
Sunday, December 11, 2011
Wednesday, December 7, 2011
these things will happen...
“Can't you see the margins are too wide?” he yelled at the walls. The walls cringed back from the abuse, or so he imagined, being a short man and nearly bald. At least the walls should fear him, if nothing else did. He sat on a stool and ate his soup. A wee mousy peeked out from its bed of tatter in a corner, under a broken shelf.
Two men looked through a port hole down at the captive man. “What is he doing now?” “He is yelling into the air. And waving his arms.” “Let me look. Oh, he is eating the soup.” “Fantastic.”
The little man was a throwback. Some officials from a division across the ocean had found him wandering in the streets. He didn't speak the updated dialect of the reset language. His speech was archaic, at least two or three hundred years ancient. Some of the locals had been throwing bread at him and the little man was growing fat, sitting against monuments, shouting at the birds. They finally crated him up and sent him to the research institute.
“Where did he come from?” “Maybe an aberrant time shift.” “Aren't they all regulated?” “Sometimes one will get away...”
The rodent was agitated. A colored light started flashing from the ceiling, twenty feet overhead. The little man saw the mouse chittering and scrambling in the corner. He started muttering at it.
“I suppose you will be wanting some of my soup. Well I ain't got any crackers to go with it even. What kind of nitty natty place is this anyway? No crackers, pfaw!”
The two men exchanged looks. “Is it working?” “I think so, it is starting to. I wonder what he is saying?” “The transcripts will tell us, if the program can decipher them.” “Certainly. Oh look, the mouse is going forward with our plans.” “Excellent.”
The colored light was blinking and the mouse began running circles in confusion. The man put down his bowl and stood up to get a closer look. He slapped his hands together and laughed. “Dance mousy, dance dance dance.”
The mouse darted across the floor right at the little man, who came from a time familiar with mice and hadn't any fear of the creatures. He knelt down and put a hand on the floor for the rodent to climb onto. The mouse was incensed, and bit down on the man's little finger, then ran up his arm and jumped onto his head, started rummaging around the only tuft of hair it could find and hunkered down, breathing hard.
“Freakin' little shit!” howled the man. But he didn't jump up and slap the mouse away. He settled back onto his stool and leaned into the corner.
“He's sleeping. With the mouse in his hair!” “Astounding. But will it work?” “The contagion is taken from storage, who knows?” “Well, time will tell.” They watched for an hour, taking turns, until one of the men started to see a rapid progression from the mouse induced serum. “He is changing!”
Three days later, the man got up from his stool, walked to the door and entered a code into the glowing blue sensor from his enlarged frontal lobe. He looked back into the room with his left eyeball, and into his mind with the right. He was eight inches taller, equipped with a flowing manly mane and the mouse on his head had grown veins that spread from forehead to the occipital.
The two men rushed down from the loft and watched as the man walked into the glass assessment tank. A simple diagnostic program pushed air around his body and inserted microscopic aluminum viruses into his veins. He stood on a polymer disc that rotated and his hair stood wholly on end. All checks complete. Integration formalized. Modern man fully functioning. They grinned and opened the airlock.
“How do you feel?” “Do you remember anything?” “What was the world like three hundred years ago?”
“I feel like a god. I remember eating steak, sipping wine, and loving women. It was great and you are the two butt ugliest mother effers I've ever seen.”
“Oh.” “Well, do you have any questions for us?”
The man thought about it. His mental processes were amazingly fast. He could
do computations in his head that only computers could accomplish in his time. “Only one. Are there jetpacks yet?”
Two men looked through a port hole down at the captive man. “What is he doing now?” “He is yelling into the air. And waving his arms.” “Let me look. Oh, he is eating the soup.” “Fantastic.”
The little man was a throwback. Some officials from a division across the ocean had found him wandering in the streets. He didn't speak the updated dialect of the reset language. His speech was archaic, at least two or three hundred years ancient. Some of the locals had been throwing bread at him and the little man was growing fat, sitting against monuments, shouting at the birds. They finally crated him up and sent him to the research institute.
“Where did he come from?” “Maybe an aberrant time shift.” “Aren't they all regulated?” “Sometimes one will get away...”
The rodent was agitated. A colored light started flashing from the ceiling, twenty feet overhead. The little man saw the mouse chittering and scrambling in the corner. He started muttering at it.
“I suppose you will be wanting some of my soup. Well I ain't got any crackers to go with it even. What kind of nitty natty place is this anyway? No crackers, pfaw!”
The two men exchanged looks. “Is it working?” “I think so, it is starting to. I wonder what he is saying?” “The transcripts will tell us, if the program can decipher them.” “Certainly. Oh look, the mouse is going forward with our plans.” “Excellent.”
The colored light was blinking and the mouse began running circles in confusion. The man put down his bowl and stood up to get a closer look. He slapped his hands together and laughed. “Dance mousy, dance dance dance.”
The mouse darted across the floor right at the little man, who came from a time familiar with mice and hadn't any fear of the creatures. He knelt down and put a hand on the floor for the rodent to climb onto. The mouse was incensed, and bit down on the man's little finger, then ran up his arm and jumped onto his head, started rummaging around the only tuft of hair it could find and hunkered down, breathing hard.
“Freakin' little shit!” howled the man. But he didn't jump up and slap the mouse away. He settled back onto his stool and leaned into the corner.
“He's sleeping. With the mouse in his hair!” “Astounding. But will it work?” “The contagion is taken from storage, who knows?” “Well, time will tell.” They watched for an hour, taking turns, until one of the men started to see a rapid progression from the mouse induced serum. “He is changing!”
Three days later, the man got up from his stool, walked to the door and entered a code into the glowing blue sensor from his enlarged frontal lobe. He looked back into the room with his left eyeball, and into his mind with the right. He was eight inches taller, equipped with a flowing manly mane and the mouse on his head had grown veins that spread from forehead to the occipital.
The two men rushed down from the loft and watched as the man walked into the glass assessment tank. A simple diagnostic program pushed air around his body and inserted microscopic aluminum viruses into his veins. He stood on a polymer disc that rotated and his hair stood wholly on end. All checks complete. Integration formalized. Modern man fully functioning. They grinned and opened the airlock.
“How do you feel?” “Do you remember anything?” “What was the world like three hundred years ago?”
“I feel like a god. I remember eating steak, sipping wine, and loving women. It was great and you are the two butt ugliest mother effers I've ever seen.”
“Oh.” “Well, do you have any questions for us?”
The man thought about it. His mental processes were amazingly fast. He could
do computations in his head that only computers could accomplish in his time. “Only one. Are there jetpacks yet?”Sunday, December 4, 2011
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
skin tight
I see it now, my body parts laid across a table and displayed, grotesquely in a pattern of fillet and general dismemberment. Even the muscles are open for all to see, pinned and labeled. All given a formal name, more distinguished in part then I ever was whole. Backing up, I can see the whole, more than pieces and what I see could be nothing less than human, whereas in parts who knows...a sort of squidtopus or limp mollusk from another world?
Who is to blame for this thing done to me? The foul deed needs a villain, be it Asian mastermind, a scribe with his quill. Or maybe a simple musing heiress with the devil on her shoulder, whispering vile deeds in the guise of sweet nothings.
The student artists gather round now, recording my despair, brush stroking canvas. The squares rest upon an easel, translated into geometrics or self serving self portraits, all knees and elbows, laid open for admirers and critics alike. How does this slight woman see in the monstrous display an engine cut in twain? Why does one ask? She sits astride a tricycle invention with a planetary globe to hide her features. She seeks anonymity in the whole, giving my parts new life and a noble function. If only I could tarry and discover my new name; alas.
Even now I feel this will all be arranged upon a parchment, bound and distributed to any who care. What have I become if not some diversion for the masses? If so how will it differ from a postage stamp licked and stuck on preposterous correspondence, what is so unique about my bit of flesh next to an etching of a pretty girl who admires her form upon an ebony reflection? The scribe scribbles furiously to keep pace with my reproof.
I would sooner hold in my hand a blackened sun then paste morbid anatomies onto my library wall. My only recollection of her reveals her bound in foil, dancing in the desert with its alien trees, arms like clubs raised to batter all who approach. She took me into a corner room and sat across me on a chair folding her arms into each other like an optical illusion. She bowed and her neck was smooth like porcelain, white as the naked hands she laid upon her knee. We met in the middle and now I can see in retrospect there were two of each, she and I, leaning in for a kiss and reflected upon each window in the corner room.
The only way out was to go further in, for to retreat was to smash the facade and break apart like ceramic figurines in a play about love and loss. I wasn't willing to sacrifice what we had. I would have given the world, or run wild in the abstract cloth of a wild Ubiquitous before I relinquished the gift she laid upon my brow. Now from my ethereal stance perhaps my sight is clearer. She is behind the easel, painting a tilted square, relegating my lost soul to mathematics. Our love was a magic act, I was the skeleton in the portrait, eerily laid to rest.
Even as a child I found it difficult to learn, resting my head on the desk in a plaid universe. Then, I felt like an animal in a zoo, one among many, a naked procession of muddied specimen chained for perusal of the elders. A chosen few were braided and set into collections, ogled on from spectators on goggled shelves. If we ran it was only to fall into a gutter and lay there dreaming of vast tentacled atrocities and tiny words that only twins with superior eyesight used in tandem could translate. Even then I could see her, smiling with a hand upon her hip, leading me unsuspecting into the maw of an ancient subterranean, with only my tibia to ward off evil spirits – how was I to know?
No sign could have been more apparent than the one she herself held, but I only saw the white sand, not the tug of war between the inhumane and heinous alike. I rode into their midst and they squeezed me like a ham, dripping in agony, in ecstasy, foreshadowing my portrait in advance. I was with her when she reclined, open as could be in a mesh wrap, she said my time was numbered and the number was two. There was no doubt, it was written on my skin. With the right illumination she could count my teeth, the only bones to see the light of day. And the string around my fingers, and the moths alighting, buzzing and hoarding precious space upon my pate, all told the tale of my life, of my loves, my failures and my conquests.
I couldn't see then what I see now, her easy way and beauty, hidden by a strange light that cast a shadow on her face. Was it a cricket that only a pinprick, a ray of sun, would clarify? Was she a fancy contradiction in a soda glass dressed in frills? She was abstract and two faced – one face born out of another – graphed and charted, lips in a vast circle of conspiracy. I thought I was in color, but now I know she is black and white, born of serf and pecked by raptors. Amalgamous, obtuse, two in an envelope and poured viscous onto black tile.
My time has come, a meal unto itself that only a relevant slug could fathom. My eyes are in the palm of my hand, a receptacle of sight. I have but one skull, but two empty sockets that will never see another beauty bound, no sumptuous crustacean or chariot on the wind. My bones lie stacked, floundering in a vortex, riding a blank highway on flaccid wheels that tell no stories, no tales to be mowed into the lawn or etched upon a virgin's captive flesh. She sold me out for a star atop a verdant green. She stole a bauble for my soul, and many hands together and many feet in unison and couples stretched as one touching skin in skin will never touch her empty breast that I once believed teemed in color. There was no truth in the fires she wrought and her grin lies naked to the netherworld I dwell. My reach is powerless. I am nothing now.
Who is to blame for this thing done to me? The foul deed needs a villain, be it Asian mastermind, a scribe with his quill. Or maybe a simple musing heiress with the devil on her shoulder, whispering vile deeds in the guise of sweet nothings.
The student artists gather round now, recording my despair, brush stroking canvas. The squares rest upon an easel, translated into geometrics or self serving self portraits, all knees and elbows, laid open for admirers and critics alike. How does this slight woman see in the monstrous display an engine cut in twain? Why does one ask? She sits astride a tricycle invention with a planetary globe to hide her features. She seeks anonymity in the whole, giving my parts new life and a noble function. If only I could tarry and discover my new name; alas.
Even now I feel this will all be arranged upon a parchment, bound and distributed to any who care. What have I become if not some diversion for the masses? If so how will it differ from a postage stamp licked and stuck on preposterous correspondence, what is so unique about my bit of flesh next to an etching of a pretty girl who admires her form upon an ebony reflection? The scribe scribbles furiously to keep pace with my reproof.
I would sooner hold in my hand a blackened sun then paste morbid anatomies onto my library wall. My only recollection of her reveals her bound in foil, dancing in the desert with its alien trees, arms like clubs raised to batter all who approach. She took me into a corner room and sat across me on a chair folding her arms into each other like an optical illusion. She bowed and her neck was smooth like porcelain, white as the naked hands she laid upon her knee. We met in the middle and now I can see in retrospect there were two of each, she and I, leaning in for a kiss and reflected upon each window in the corner room.
The only way out was to go further in, for to retreat was to smash the facade and break apart like ceramic figurines in a play about love and loss. I wasn't willing to sacrifice what we had. I would have given the world, or run wild in the abstract cloth of a wild Ubiquitous before I relinquished the gift she laid upon my brow. Now from my ethereal stance perhaps my sight is clearer. She is behind the easel, painting a tilted square, relegating my lost soul to mathematics. Our love was a magic act, I was the skeleton in the portrait, eerily laid to rest.
Even as a child I found it difficult to learn, resting my head on the desk in a plaid universe. Then, I felt like an animal in a zoo, one among many, a naked procession of muddied specimen chained for perusal of the elders. A chosen few were braided and set into collections, ogled on from spectators on goggled shelves. If we ran it was only to fall into a gutter and lay there dreaming of vast tentacled atrocities and tiny words that only twins with superior eyesight used in tandem could translate. Even then I could see her, smiling with a hand upon her hip, leading me unsuspecting into the maw of an ancient subterranean, with only my tibia to ward off evil spirits – how was I to know?
No sign could have been more apparent than the one she herself held, but I only saw the white sand, not the tug of war between the inhumane and heinous alike. I rode into their midst and they squeezed me like a ham, dripping in agony, in ecstasy, foreshadowing my portrait in advance. I was with her when she reclined, open as could be in a mesh wrap, she said my time was numbered and the number was two. There was no doubt, it was written on my skin. With the right illumination she could count my teeth, the only bones to see the light of day. And the string around my fingers, and the moths alighting, buzzing and hoarding precious space upon my pate, all told the tale of my life, of my loves, my failures and my conquests.
I couldn't see then what I see now, her easy way and beauty, hidden by a strange light that cast a shadow on her face. Was it a cricket that only a pinprick, a ray of sun, would clarify? Was she a fancy contradiction in a soda glass dressed in frills? She was abstract and two faced – one face born out of another – graphed and charted, lips in a vast circle of conspiracy. I thought I was in color, but now I know she is black and white, born of serf and pecked by raptors. Amalgamous, obtuse, two in an envelope and poured viscous onto black tile.
My time has come, a meal unto itself that only a relevant slug could fathom. My eyes are in the palm of my hand, a receptacle of sight. I have but one skull, but two empty sockets that will never see another beauty bound, no sumptuous crustacean or chariot on the wind. My bones lie stacked, floundering in a vortex, riding a blank highway on flaccid wheels that tell no stories, no tales to be mowed into the lawn or etched upon a virgin's captive flesh. She sold me out for a star atop a verdant green. She stole a bauble for my soul, and many hands together and many feet in unison and couples stretched as one touching skin in skin will never touch her empty breast that I once believed teemed in color. There was no truth in the fires she wrought and her grin lies naked to the netherworld I dwell. My reach is powerless. I am nothing now.
Thursday, November 24, 2011
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