There is a type of surety in waking up to snow, a pleasure of weight. Ants had gotten to him in the night, something nudged him. For moments upon realizing feeling, a shy cowardice was born lipid, immobilizing and caustic; assumed the people he knew had buried him, thinking him dead. For moments more he quietly prayed to die, wishing that there were some space in the universe for him to die without trying to move, for that would mean terror.

“Wooden men

In the holla

Faces thin

Hollarin bout what could have been

Horror wets the hole

Encroaching fins

Before you attempt to stick it in”

His poem mantraesque in his death-throes.  He lauged aloud beneath the ground

As his head broke through he gasped and cried out, body assuming a posture of expectancy of electricity and sweet free air. Through hair and muck as if sucked into one another, her brown orb found his.

She watched him. Drinking her Community w/ Chicory feeling fairly “just screwed” and inordinately pleased with everything that was Megan-Louise Darla Doutrmont. Somewhere in between the 5th and 6th grade she knew that she would probably end up killing some people. They were everywhere and they were the worst. Rightly she probably had killed more folks that she didn’t know about, than she did.

She danced a bit then, keeping her coffee steadily placid as she broke into a little robot and a couple of drop-daps.

As she dipped in a traditional stripper drop she looked over her shoulder at the object she had married go crashing headfirst through the ice that had formed as he slept in the lounge chair on the dock. she considered the very tan boy whom had sent a variety of pictures to her over the night and sipped at the scalding coffee with exquisite volume. Maybe he would really die out there. Whipping violently on her slippered foot she lurched forward to shower and take some medicine. Megan knew she would come back down and somehow her husband would be in the kitchen lying on the heating vent or some such.

To her eyes walking up to the window it appeared the reverse of a dramatic movie ending. The villan was hallway up from the lake, crawling with exaggerated slowness, as if shot but he was not shot, just a fuckface. She adored calling him fuckface to his face. At large family gathering surrounded by his children and adoring parents she would write it on napkins so just he could see.  His beautiful face.

“Brainard.”

Through the hedge walked Sonny hollering as he ran and the meth she had eaten wrapped in toilet paper kicked in.

She peed a bit as she ran out of the sliding glass door onto the deck.

“Oh my goodness, where have you been?”

They did this with everyone. A charade of a satire. Privately they tried desperately to kill one another so it looked like an accident. She tongued her broken bicuspid and it tasted like an electric fence smelled. In two hours she would have to give the weather down in Baton Rouge and this fuckface was gonna make her have stress lines.

Fair. From a distance

Shrill leaps of night

Haze of energy offsetting; defining

the surety

that life is not limited to a portrait

    and yet im held

    and I am sure

    that I am not held aloft

    by the purity of the observer.

Its that low call from under the porch

the movement in the trees

Bayou lisp

Low light

shells echo

and I am happy here

sure of nostalgias slow death in me

the dirty gospel

g-d in entropy

watching

the fair

for free.

Dumped her to see how it would feel.

Just to bleed her, seed her, preternaturally lined-

Flip of the coin for that moment in time,

When hope pops unbidden 

Kubla Khanning to mind.

You cannot know until in its singular arc,

The choice becomes a thing to be made

For you

and the proof of the mark

reeks now of Moirai's foray into bones

The gamble of which it frames,

now in loaming,

foaming sea of the choice

gloried inscrutableness of the hand

that be writing but not in Sanskrit or English but in smells

Not of this dimension or land

but the slow of the arc

decision in tow-

The upward rappel so we can see where to go,

but not whose holding us

nor why we must go

Belief be the portent but never the mold

If time is fabrication, 

Ill have mine to go.

But perhaps the tossed up coin

In hopes for relief was answered by the inner man's cry,

that hope is a thief, 

Imagination is the Divine that separates

the meat from the bone, 

the spirit and soul, 

the dead from just gone.

Fringes oh we all believe we are

Fringes snarled on the head of beach.

Out of reach of center

Where her truest children creep.

Accosted by format

Hustling gently to your knees

Condemnation of your conflated breasting of humility

You mistake his nod for affirmation

And that clucking sound you mistake for expressions of adoration.

If you always pray in the same old spot

You'll always get what you've always got.

Her smile was never for anyone, not this one, this smile served its master by just being smiled.  I fell in love with that cosmic forbearance of true self.   Next to hope, there is no higher lesson, I have not learned well yet.

Possible nothing was ever done of substance

Obdurate waves obscure the Judas

is all of us

Deposed of psychic strokes

Whats the base line-

Under your cloak.

talk to effervescence-

offer her a litmus test,

of the regiment of common cold,

hearts stole and courages hole-

that you stuck it in.

Soul of memory,

it comes back colored faint-

Drips out the words you love to hate...

yesterday is a lie you-will-live-in-every-day

until you die.

A ballon on golden thread 

or the closet,

chain, sewn lips, 

and unending moo of lovedonesdead.

Entropy where be the seed,

the horse, the rider, the way, the need,

to match in It's unending greed?

The neighborhood, lil Graham Fallin’s neighborhood, was named Blistering Oaks, it was the type of subdivision that caused ‘division’ to be apropos. On the lofty shores of the Pearl River she sat; stately, sad, and alone overlooking the city…picking her teeth. The children were well cared for and developed into the usual menagerie of attainment. Into this well of knighted upwardly mobile rabbits came Grahams Brigade. They were not a formal gang even in the most nontraditional fashion. Nor as in some was there any one incident that united them or drew from them any common denominator. Not all were Grahams initial students, nor were even aware of the necrophilia’s influence. Simply said it was just a bad bunch…all bad, no redeeming qualities, save maybe well dressed and the invisibility thing. The rapes that were to later distinguish them into a grouping of sorts…a mob of aware and approving individual parts were only dreams at this junction, just magnanimous and effortless dangles of space and time.

The boys had been drinking beer all day. It was a school day, but somehow this just didn’t matter. Graham entered the house via the garage popping with energy, himself working with a healthy buzz. The plan was to go rollerblading on the campus, try to bounce some college broads. Jesse and Brandon’s sister could be heard in the laundry room, muffled groans coupling with periodic high pitched arguments.

Stuart sat under a blanket, a Guinness peeking out by his chin, he wished he had a straw Brandon was heatedly describing his mothers fascination with Indian men, not from India he kept reiterating…American Indians. Its something to do with the rugged individualism and the loin cloths.

“I don’t think they wear loincloths anymore, jeans and stuff.” Remarked Stuart looking off into space. The TV was too loud though and no one heard him, looking over to where the two enrapt girls sat on the edge of the sofa listening to Brandon, he said it again.

Marlene crowed back at him, “That is totally inappropriate, can we be adults here.” She never understood why her real friends from good families let him hang around. So fucking what if this monstrosity with a GQ shitty mustache was an athlete. She knew for a fact he was scholarship.

“Listen you cunt-wad I will say whatever the fuck I want”

Brandon kept up his barrage on his estranged mother disregarding all else.

“Fuck you Stuart you poor fool.”  He loved pointing out his friends poverty because he was poor.  He didnt understand poor.  He associated it with lazy and...Something moved out of the corner of his eye and his train of thought moved on.

Stuarts father was poor. His vocational pursuits included a Christian bookstore manager and the coach of the debate team for the local public high-school. There was a mother, they all knew, but never spoke of. She was living with Brandon’s uncle Dancy at the Beldin Manor, and Stuart lived with them some of the time. Stuarts mother was fine, but never left the house. She hadn’t in over a year or better. All we knew came from Maily, Brandons maid, who heard from Belsie her sisters best friend that the woman was “nottin but a drunken pincushion for Mr. Dancy.” No one with a right mind mentioned any of this, Stu was a goddamned ass kicker.

As the foolish girl got jerked from the couch, Stu still wrapped in the blanket, Graham hopped down the last stair to the den. He was still wearing his black over-sized wraparound glasses, with an unlit cigarette in hand. Stuart was dragging the tanned black haired girl, beer clamped firmly in his teeth, humming a sprightly little jam as she kicked at him. Graham walked by them patting the pockets of his blazer, looking for a light, nodding briefly at Stuart.

“The house in Fort Lauderdale is full of that crap, headdresses, arrows, totems, paintings…” Brandon kept on, “and these fucking Redmen…” looking over at Graham who nodded at his appropriate vernacular, “these Chiefs keep coming to the house, trying to…” he paused, mouth pouting like a child “I think she may be ballin one of em or all of em.”

Graham looked hard in his glasses, like some sort of vigilante. At his hairline a ridge of stiches could be seen angrily sparring with his part.

“So what if she is, God knows your Dad fucks everything that moves. Dudes too.” Graham sucked on his teeth as he said this, as if thinking about homosexuality in a painful light. A well placed blow by Stuart shut up the cussing besieged onyx haired Marlene, flipping her over into a loose choke-hold. They disappeared from view.

No one really knew how to discuss gay issues, in a way everyone tried to be polite to Brandon and his sister, act as if it was ok. This was the new South and protocol had to be maintained. That genteel vetted classed mentality had to be dashed, dashed but still respected. Gay was hip as long as it wasn’t real. But it wasn’t, it was horrific. The girls thought perhaps it was hereditary and spoke to their mothers about it in hushed tones, the guys watched Brandon with skepticism. Graham didn’t. Graham loved him, all the more for his father.

“Listen we really rollerblading? Or does anyone want to go see if the doves are flying today.”

“If yall go huntin Im goin with yall.” Dionne from North Carolina sipping her beer, resolute. Brandon looked up waking himself at the extreme nature of her accent.

“Sure lets go kill tweetys. Go get us some beers Dionne.” She walked out wagging her ass with that two beer adult sway.

“That’s a godamned colored name, aint it? No self-respectin Louisiana mother would name their daughter Dionne…would they?”

“For the love of all thats holy, African American or black, Brandon and no, but be good, she aint from here so lets try to be sweet.” Brandon's sister, Katherine, walked in face deep crimson, holding a Michelob Ultra Light and her sandals while blowing on her nails.

“Where is Stuart and Marlene?” she demanded. Graham and Brandon looked confused at the question, ignoring her for Donnie Darko on the flat screen. She sat down close to Graham on the couch, throwing her feet up and grabbing his now lit Dunhill. Nearly every popular girl that she knew fucked Stuart, nothing new here.

One breast stuck out, smooshed upwards by a violet see-through bra, sad and exposed. This wasn’t the first time that her face had been pushed into a bed and wasn’t the first time Stuart talked softly to her about her little sister as he jack rabbited her with precision. Why did these people let this fucking loser hang out she thought as her head tapped the headboard. They came downstairs, three minutes later, Marlene in his letter-man jacket. When the movie ended they loaded into the trucks, heading out to the Breakers Field where alfalfa had just been cut.

CH 2 -The Knight, Sad Cosita and the Senator

Dr. Robert Bellini was a good man. Decent by any standards, brave and a provider. He also had a deep dark secret on top of his inability to keep his dick in his pants. Lt. Bob was a surgeon and a private polygamist. Private to all save his own wife. Devoted to her husband and their son she bore this knowledge for the better part of their marriage, and though she kept his secret she had help. The beauty of the smallest little demons was well known to her. For in the life she had led as a singer in California had been one inspired and then wrecked by a little rascal that grew up in the mouth nose and veins.

The beige haze of that life had been extinguished and love for her homeland and her man had returned. Bob took her in his arms and swept her away to a brilliant white castle in the La. He kept her right through the marriage and the birth of Abel and the pain of his infidelities. He kept her until the day of the wreck. When the misses was reintroduced to morphine sulfate. Those little green pills.  Abels little brother was adopted the next year, the product of darkness. He kept his family name.  Fallin.  Fell in. FELLINSTO'uggirth.  The Demon of Mirth.

The real truth is Dr. Robert hated everyone. Why his deep hatred of people caused all around him to hold him up in adoration is one of the great mysteries about the man. One of the mysteries but certainly not the only one.  He was a benevolent tyrant, thriving on the misery of all things and people on whom he imposed himself, but never showing his true colors save in his stone grey eyes. His wife Carmelia loved him, his 3 daughters, one real son and one fake son lived for his attention and the people of Louisiana voted him into the office of Senator. The only truly human emotions he exhibited was envy and lust and these with alacrity.  There were only a handful of people who suspected.

Vietnam

The sprawling set of huts and shanties could hardly be called a town nor a village. The population was in constant decline and numbered around 130 the day the Americans came to liberate. Coule played in the puddles of muck and excrement. She had a small dog that pushed itself around minus the two front paws and lived off the insects and garbage that surrounded the small lean-tos. Her mother spent most days in the small rice paddies that the men no longer could work as they had been conscripted into the hill tribes pro-American war. Coule saw them first, the grimy soot covered features of their faces obscured, in shadow. They came low out of the rain helmets on, straps dangling, weapons on-line like pointing limbs; wraiths of politics and new order. They came walking toward her, yet she moved little and not a word was echoed from her dirty lips. In the front one could be seen marking movements with his hands, the headman she supposed. Knowing the power of her small smile one evolved on those same small dirty lips that held in the cry for help. Lt. Robert Bellini had been up for 3 days and 4 nights running on the desire to see this mission completed and an amphetamine driven calm that robbed him of sleep. Behind him the men of his platoon chattered like chimes in the wind. Tired and nerve ridden they had seen no action on the outing and it had begun to eat at the collective psyche. Robert had faith in his outfit down to taking on point himself, though he knew it to be an offense of military code and logic. Kle Quian Duc was the name of the village, at least so it said on the laminated grid map kept rolled in his pack.

The women of the village slowly began to emerge from the huts. These men were large and had a edge that was telling even without the aid of understanding the language. Behind the last bamboo structure in a crawl space sat a solitary figure fingering a Russian made radio and a RPG. He sat enraptured by the voices coming to him from the box. Friends were coming and they were to murder the small host of men strolling with ownership through Kle Quian Province.

Something went wrong as the soldiers spread out across the township. The normal order of a search was not being followed. The small boy Francis Flagler from Flagstaff, Arizona noticed it but just assumed the LT knew what he was doing. As the bicycle chain cut off his airway he became fully cognizant that this was Vietnam and no one knew a mother fucking thing. He should have died there but he didn't. They all should have died, but somewhere in-between the first gun report and the dazed reaction of the American soldiers a generational curse was conceived, fucked and born burnt into the spirit of Lt. Robert Bellini.

The billowing blue-red smoke of flares used to hide the numbers of the North Vietnamese mixed with the low lying fog caused chaos and all of the little order to dissipate. The gunfire deafened both enemies and American soldiers alike.  The slow staccato and the chainsaw sang together. Crouched, screaming wordless warnings and taunts Robert lost all the collective cool of his 22 years. A prayer went out and was answered damning and delivering in its genesis. With the strength of ten thousand laughing demons he stood eyes white blobs of madness and the M-16 a limb of intolerance and reckoning. Walking to the outside of the village magazine after magazine dropped smoking in his tread. The soldiers fell in behind his example and elongated flashing shadow exposed with the guns bright yells.

Coule was hidden as the Americans in a goose flight pattern filtered around trees and huts beautiful and terrible. To her lips a thought of terror lifted by song issued forth.

            Hence they came to devour

            Flashing silver from under green boughs

            Only to prey and eat

            Collective singularity.

            That enemy of my mother's mother

            The white tiger under the clouds

            The dragon of old, full of rest, now hungers again

            Breath fetid and teeth gnashing in the Day Sun

            Power from across the blue

            In that city across time

            Pours out its soul

           Over and over upon us.

Their mantra 

And with them came the death of the Land

Though the verse came out clear and bright the song was never heard. For on its first verse Coule took a round the the throat and the folk song only was gurgled and spat. On the right and left of her still warm body the Americans now running and screaming flew. With a united front the captain of the Enemy held his position, his soldiers hearing rather than seeing their end. The clash of the approaching and the dug in was hideous. Brick on flesh, knife to granite, entrenching tool to skull; the grind of the gears of war regressed in the muck and blood. Lt. Robert was possessed, feeling nothing save the need to crush and move. 15 feet from a forest of Aks and assorted weaponry he finally beheld his adversary as his last shell dropped to the carpet of green. He slowed now chancing a look behind. There they were to a man flanking their leader to death and glory. Raising his weapon above his head, the Viking warrior in his moment of full release, Lt. Robert wooped a primal utterance. A call to his ancestors, to his own powers and the line caught it and returned it 29 fold. As they poured around his shaking body the Lt. leapt forward, covering the remaining ground in leaps. Bullets swept by him swirling in and around his vision like raindrops. Ever before his men he slew the shapes appearing in his sights then with a click click the fury was transferred to his arms fists boots and teeth. Screaming now with a mouthful of hair and scalp the rage he swept across the line of men in his stead.

Mister Bellini, Lt. Bellini stop, stop, their all dead sir.

His head turned owl-like looking down on his hunting ground, on his killing fields. His body followed suit, slowly grinding his boot heel in the beaten grass, a 180 in military form. His cheek twitched spasmodically and droll cleaned a line stupidly down his chin. Clicking his heels he raised his right hand, still holding the empty weapon. His ring finger flicked forward.  Ticking and pointing

Now for that fucking village.

"Little time left to leave

Still waters shallow but haunted

Eyes of variation

Iconoclast of the bereaved." BCCJ

The funeral was lightened

By long looks in the coffin

At the sweating corpse

And the saddened reports

that indeed this man had sprung a leak;

still on bended knee

or  sidillin' up just

to see

to believe

That maybe this man had come back to tell everyone

under the sun,

that they were right

and heaven was fun.

But as he sat up

and begun to espouse 

the notion that man was divine

and we'd been wrong all the time...

Well someone shot him right in the face

and killed him again.

Snarlin, "that mans a liar, has always been."

So we went Applebees where 

kids can eat free.

And toasted to relief from our sin,

again and again and again

Ate some pellets of mescaline

Told our wives they were thin

Dropped our kids off at the Pen

Dirty bomb we pulled the pin

Then he dosed me after I dosed him.

Were divine, we heard somewhere,

we know that we'll come back again.