Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in arrimazombie's LiveJournal:

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Tuesday, April 25th, 2006
9:10 pm	I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix, angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night, who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities contemplating jazz, who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and saw Mohammedan angels staggering on tenement roofs illuminated who passed through universities with radiant cool eyes hallucinating Arkansas and Blake-light tragedy among the scholars of war, who were expelled from the academies for crazy & publishing obscene odes on the windows of the skull, who cowered in unshaven rooms in underwear, burning their money in wastebaskets and listening to the Terror through the wall, who got busted in their pubic beards returning through Laredo with a belt of marijuana for New York. who ate fire in paint hotels or drank turpentine in Paradise Alley, death, or purgatoried their torsos night after night with dreams, with drugs, with waking nightmares, alcohol and cock and endless balls, incomparable blind streets of shuddering cloud and lightning in the mind leaping toward poles of Canada & Paterson, illuminating all the motionless world of Time between, Peyote solidities of halls, backyard green tree cemetery dawns, wine drunkenness over the rooftops, storefront boroughs of teahead joyride neon blinking traffic light, sun and moon and tree vibrations in the roaring winter dusks of Brooklyn, ashcan rantings and kind king light of mind, who chained themselves to subways for the endless ride from Battery to holy Bronx on benzedrine until the noise of wheels and children brought them down shuddering mouth-wracked and battered bleak of brain all drained of brilliance in the drear light of Zoo, who sank, all night in submarine light of Bickford's floated out and sat through the stale beer afternoon in desolate Fugazzi's, listening to the crack of doom on the hydrogen jukebox, who talked continuously seventy hours from park to pad to bar to Bellevue to museum to the Brooklyn Bridge, a lost battalion of platonic conversationalists jumping down the stoops off fire escapes off windowsills off Empire State out of the moon, yacketayakking screaming vomiting whispering facts and memories and anecdotes and eyeball kicks and shocks of hospitals and jails and wars, whole intellects disgorged in total recall for seven days and nights with brilliant eyes, meat for the Synagogue cast on the pavement, who vanished into nowhere Zen New Jersey leaving a trail of ambiguous picture postcards of Atlantic City Hall, suffering Eastern sweats and Tangerian bone-grindings and migraines of China under junk-withdrawal in Newark's bleak furnished room, who wandered around and around at midnight in the railroad yard wondering where to go, and went, leaving no broken hearts, who lit cigarettes in boxcars boxcars boxcars racketing through snow toward lonesome farms in grandfather night, who studied Plotinus Poe St. John of the Cross telepathy and bop kaballa because the cosmos instinctively vibrated at their feet in Kansas, who loned it through the streets of Idaho seeking visionary indian angels who were visionary indian angels, who thought they were only mad when Baltimore gleamed in supernatural ecstasy, who jumped in limousines with the Chinaman of Oklahoma on the impulse of winter midnight streetlight smalltown rain, who lounged hungry and lonesome through Houston seeking jazz or sex or soup, and followed the brilliant Spaniard to converse about America and Eternity, a hopeless task, and so took ship to Africa, who disappeared into the volcanoes of Mexico leaving behind nothing but the shadow of dungarees and the lava and ash of poetry scattered in fireplace Chicago, who reappeared on the West Coast investigating the F.B.I. in beards and shorts with big pacifist eyes sexy in their dark skin passing out incomprehensible leaflets, who burned cigarette holes in their arms protesting the narcotic tobacco haze of Capitalism, who distributed Supercommunist pamphlets in Union Square weeping and undressing while the sirens of Los Alamos wailed them down, and wailed down Wall, and the Staten Island ferry also wailed, who broke down crying in white gymnasiums naked and trembling before the machinery of other skeletons, who bit detectives in the neck and shrieked with delight in policecars for committing no crime but their own wild cooking pederasty and intoxication, who howled on their knees in the subway and were dragged off the roof waving genitals and manuscripts, who let themselves be fucked in the ass by saintly motorcyclists, and screamed with joy, who blew and were blown by those human seraphim, the sailors, caresses of Atlantic and Caribbean love, who balled in the morning in the evenings in rosegardens and the grass of public parks and cemeteries scattering their semen freely to whomever come who may, who hiccupped endlessly trying to giggle but wound up with a sob behind a partition in a Turkish Bath when the blonde & naked angel came to pierce them with a sword, who lost their loveboys to the three old shrews of fate the one eyed shrew of the heterosexual dollar the one eyed shrew that winks out of the womb and the one eyed shrew that does nothing but sit on her ass and snip the intellectual golden threads of the craftsman's loom, who copulated ecstatic and insatiate with a bottle of beer a sweetheart a package of cigarettes a candle and fell off the bed, and continued along the floor and down the hall and ended fainting on the wall with a vision of ultimate cunt and come eluding the last gyzym of consciousness, who sweetened the snatches of a million girls trembling in the sunset, and were red eyed in the morning but prepared to sweeten the snatch of the sunrise, flashing buttocks under barns and naked in the lake, who went out whoring through Colorado in myriad stolen night-cars, N.C., secret hero of these poems, cocksman and Adonis of Denver joy to the memory of his innumerable lays of girls in empty lots & diner backyards, moviehouses' rickety rows, on mountaintops in caves or with gaunt waitresses in familiar roadside lonely petticoat upliftings & especially secret gas-station solipsisms of johns, & hometown alleys too, who faded out in vast sordid movies, were shifted in dreams, woke on a sudden Manhattan, and picked themselves up out of basements hung over with heartless Tokay and horrors of Third Avenue iron dreams & stumbled to unemployment offices, who walked all night with their shoes full of blood on the snowbank docks waiting for a door in the East River to open to a room full of steam-heat and opium, who created great suicidal dramas on the apartment cliff-banks of the Hudson under the wartime blue floodlight of the moon & their heads shall be crowned with laurel in oblivion, who ate the lamb stew of the imagination or digested the crab at the muddy bottom of the rivers of Bowery, who wept at the romance of the streets with their pushcarts full of onions and bad music, who sat in boxes breathing in the darkness under the bridge, and rose up to build harpsichords in their lofts, who coughed on the sixth floor of Harlem crowned with flame under the tubercular sky surrounded by orange crates of theology, who scribbled all night rocking and rolling over lofty incantations which in the yellow morning were stanzas of gibberish, who cooked rotten animals lung heart feet tail borsht & tortillas dreaming of the pure vegetable kingdom, who plunged themselves under meat trucks looking for an egg, who threw their watches off the roof to cast their ballot for Eternity outside of Time, & alarm clocks fell on their heads every day for the next decade, who cut their wrists three times successively unsuccessfully, gave up and were forced to open antique stores where they thought they were growing old and cried, who were burned alive in their innocent flannel suits on Madison Avenue amid blasts of leaden verse & the tanked-up clatter of the iron regiments of fashion & the nitroglycerine shrieks of the fairies of advertising & the mustard gas of sinister intelligent editors, or were run down by the drunken taxicabs of Absolute Reality, who jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge this actually happened and walked away unknown and forgotten into the ghostly daze of Chinatown soup alleyways & firetrucks, not even one free beer, who sang out of their windows in despair, fell out of the subway window, jumped in the filthy Passaic, leaped on negroes, cried all over the street, danced on broken wineglasses barefoot smashed phonograph records of nostalgic European 1930's German jazz finished the whiskey and threw up groaning into the bloody toilet, moans in their ears and the blast of colossal steamwhistles, who barreled down the highways of the past journeying to each other's hotrod-Golgotha jail-solitude watch or Birmingham jazz incarnation, who drove crosscountry seventytwo hours to find out if I had a vision or you had a vision or he had a vision to find out Eternity, who journeyed to Denver, who died in Denver, who came back to Denver & waited in vain, who watched over Denver & brooded & loned in Denver and finally went away to find out the Time, & now Denver is lonesome for her heroes, who fell in hopeless cathedrals praying for each other's salvation and light and breasts, until the soul illuminated its hair for a second, who crashed through their minds in jail waiting for impossible criminals with golden heads and the charm of reality in their hearts who sang sweet blues to Alcatraz, who retired to Mexico to cultivate a habit, or Rocky Mount to tender Buddha or Tangiers to boys or Southern Pacific to the black locomotive or Harvard to Narcissus to Woodlawn to the daisychain or grave, who demanded sanity trials accusing the radio of hypnotism & were left with their insanity & their hands & a hung jury, who threw potato salad at CCNY lecturers on Dadaism and subsequently presented themselves on the granite steps of the madhouse with shaven heads and harlequin speech of suicide, demanding instantaneous lobotomy, and who were given instead the concrete void of insulin metrasol electricity hydrotherapy psychotherapy occupational therapy pingpong & amnesia, who in humorless protest overturned only one symbolic pingpong table, resting briefly in catatonia, returning years later truly bald except for a wig of blood, and tears and fingers, to the visible madman doom of the wards of the madtowns of the East, Pilgrim State's Rockland's and Greystone's foetid halls, bickering with the echoes of the soul, rocking and rolling in the midnight solitude-bench dolmen-realms of love, dream of life a nightmare, bodies turned to stone as heavy as the moon, with mother finally ******, and the last fantastic book flung out of the tenement window, and the last door closed at 4 AM and the last telephone slammed at the wall in reply and the last furnished room emptied down to the last piece of mental furniture, a yellow paper rose twisted on a wire hanger in the closet, and even that imaginary, nothing but a hopeful little bit of hallucination-- ah, Carl, while you are not safe I am not safe, and now you're really in the total animal soup of time-- and who therefore ran through the icy streets obsessed with a sudden flash of the alchemy of the use of the ellipse the catalog the meter & the vibrating plane, who dreamt and made incarnate gaps in Time & Space through images juxtaposed, and trapped the archangel of the soul between 2 visual images and joined the elemental verbs and set the noun and dash of consciousness together jumping with sensation of Pater Omnipotens Aeterna Deus to recreate the syntax and measure of poor human prose and stand before you speechless and intelligent and shaking with shame, rejected yet confessing out the soul to conform to the rhythm of thought in his naked and endless head, the madman bum and angel beat in Time, unknown, yet putting down here what might be left to say in time come after death, and rose reincarnate in the ghostly clothes of jazz in the goldhorn shadow of the band and blew the suffering of America's naked mind for love into an eli eli lamma lamma sabacthani saxophone cry that shivered the cities down to the last radio with the absolute heart of the poem of life butchered out of their own bodies good to eat a thousand years. San Francisco 1955 1956 ALLEN GINsBERG (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, January 10th, 2006
4:05 pm	WE'RE ALL MAD HERE. Well if you can hear me, what did I say? He followed me under, under and he went away. And I said look at the time. Look at the time it is now the hour of a tar kissed flower blooming underneath the purple splotches of our skin--the lips and hands and fingertips blackening lids bluing to the color of a bruise. He followed me under the ground. I prayed to the place where I left him there. On my knees I spoke to the earth and I said: If you can hear me; what do I do? Can you hear me? What did I say? Echo, repeat it back to me. . . We danced under spotlights blazing burning iridescent in our eyes. We waltzed on a dangerous line and the tight-rope was too tight . . . Well in circles now we move, entranced inside my memories, a boy who was so beautiful, locked inside the cage of my fantasies. . . Do I remember or ignore? Did I ever see the boy, or is too a part of me? You turn so slow. Treading underground. You've gone so low. The old bones are the roads you walk upon, right under me, but I can barely hear you, when you speak. . . I got down on my knees by the open mouth staring into the darkness. Infinite like a coin dropped into the channel that spirals and never ends. There was a staircase, and it would lead me to you; if only I just had the courage to go there alone; to find you and seek you, hide you inside me and bring you back to the surface. Do you sing to me? So far down. Do you still go on singing? Am I the rose for you now? Do flowers bloom in that darkness? I would travel so far to seek you out. If you ever were real-- if I wasn't only dreaming. . . Of you. Of a boy who turns in circles and never stops, never dances by himself, beautiful and loved; is he now? Can you hear me? Whisper softly. Can you hear me? What am I saying? Echo, repeat it back again. 1/10/06 (Comment on this)
Monday, November 28th, 2005
10:42 pm	But he is nothing less than an apple husk that floats and sighs amongst the grasses as it will, never knowing anything but its own slow momentum and the quick rate at which it soon decays. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, November 24th, 2005
5:30 pm	--- not for anything. I won't forgive you. Not for anything. That's first. Cigarettes, ashtray, cold water. Your little girl was sitting half-naked, curled up under the bathroom sink, shivering and crying and shivering and crying. We offered her a blanket but she was so cold, so cold. Tiny handprints smeared in blood and whatever else across the sink bowl, bathtub full of water. They asked her questions like, "Did your father try to drown you? Did that monster rape you?" And, in her little black dress-- she was wringing the hem of her little black dress-- all shook up, all hollow purple eyed, all torn up, she whispered, "No. No." And she hugged herself. "I won't forgive him. Not for anything. He tried to drown her..." And then she slumped against the tile, looking at us once, and last, with wary, owlish eyes, before she slept. He slipped the needle out of her arm and into his coat pocket. Then he sauntered out the door-- maybe pretending that none of this had ever happened; maybe not caring if it did. "I think he tried to rape her... I think he tried to drown her... I think he might have abused her." He lit a cigarette. "You saw the bruises. You can't ignore the bruises on that child." And took a drag. "And she's been sitting there for hours... could somebody turn up the thermostat in here? He must have kept it like a freezer room..." And blew the smoke out of his nostrils in a set of perfect rings. "Do you think he hid the bodies here?" Smiling his shark-toothed smile, the man answered: "They're all in the bed, they're all in the bed." (Comment on this)
Wednesday, November 23rd, 2005
2:33 pm	I don't think I can do what you do, "sir". I don't think I can be moved anymore by the words or the music. The lies are seeping in, are creeping in under the bedroom door. I lit a candle for you and I blew it out; I don't love you anymore. And I don't wish you the best. And I hope you're not the best dressed at the party. And I hope the world catches up with you. And I hope, I hope, I hope you can feel me kicking and screaming inside you even now. I am always on your back, you'll always carry me. Over the moon and under the ground-- I'll never set you free. You buried your wife in a plot outside the city limits. You took her old bones and you kissed them away. You made a prayer song; the tears were falling freely down your face as you strummed your black guitar, and you moved outside this space with yourself. I wanted to suck your soul dry-- bleed you dry. I wanted you to choke on your lies, every word you ever said to me. But it came as no surprise that you could stand up and strike me down. Now you carry me in your arms; your devil ragdoll. Over the desert and under the sea. I'll never set you free. You're manacled to me. Body and soul, you are mine. You hit the high note last; and you cried and you cried and you cried. But she's a phantom from your past . . . believe me, put her behind you (like you put her in the ground) and she can't haunt you anymore. Can't hurt you. Won't leave you. I wanted to watch you die, still alive but empty on the inside. I wanted to carve you suck you out, pull you down and drain you into the sky. We could have been beautiful that way.now we can't be. And it came as no surprise that you could come to me and strike me down. Now you carry me in your arms; your ragdoll. Your ragdoll..doll. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, November 9th, 2005
2:22 pm	You are deep, like a river is deep. You are sharp, like the flower is sharp. You will break, as a twig snapping breaks. I run myself into the ground for you. You hate, O my daughter, you hate. Who is a greater object of your hate than I have been? But your love, O my daughter, your love, Is like nothing in life that I have seen. And I run myself into the ground for you. The stars are a blanket that warm you in sleep, You are deep like a river is deep. The stars are my eyes that will watch as you sleep, You are deep like a river is deep. (Comment on this)
2:21 pm	Firefly, flute, mercury, bird of paradise…mocking bird Muse, snow queen rose… Young antelope…colt…horse Water, mercury…vampire Yellow, blue, orange, blue… Puppy scent… gentle rain (Comment on this)
2:18 pm	piece You knew, beyond a reasonable doubt, that we had to get out of there. I was covered in soot and black and I was coughing through my eyes. The blood was wet hot on my lips, spraying; fingers splayed over my chest, oil-black, and rubbing my mouth and my eyes, like burying myself in charcoal. God was smoking a million cigarettes and we were caught in the inferno. You grabbed my arm and pulled me through the fire escape and I wondered -- with the sparks of fire burning in your eyes and the wooden floorboards underneath you exhaling great plumes of flame and smoke that seemed to rise up all around us -- where you’d ever learned to be so fast. I stumbled down the stairs with you leading. It felt like I’d gone blind even though I could see the back of you and the street below us. Your hand, holding my wrist, and dragging me falling down the twists and turns and windings and we were both breathing so loudly, and my heart raced every time the pulse of your veins escalated. You never pulled me into your arms but you wiped my cheek with your scorched, oversized shirt-sleeve. The skin glowed white from underneath the ash. sentence “Will you love me? I will love /you/ forever.” ryukazu temp He was tugging on the loose ends of his hair. Long fingers, diplomatic ones -- better suited for the curved necks of glass flutes and expensive import wines than fighting -- with dirt caked black and blood caked brown collecting underneath the perfect fingernails, wove like trails of starlight through the strands; so many shades of aquarian blue and green. He looked thoughtful and dark eyebrows furrowed in what could be called deep contemplation, though perhaps even the renegade HOLY officer’s moments of soft repose were meant to seem severe to outsiders. One could never be certain. And wasn’t everything with him so steely-looking, by the way? Kazuma watched him from the inside of the cave where he was laying back against the wall, warming his dirty body by the fire. One arm was hooked behind his head, hair tousled, and his fingers clenching and unclenching periodically. Watching. Holes seemed to have magically riddled themselves through the rock wall that enclosed them. Just lasting one result of their earlier battle, which had begun outside the outer limits of an Inner village, and ended here. A strange, dark dampness echoed in the hollows. Kazuma wondered how the bastard could be so cold-blooded. Maybe he preferred the silver sand and empty starlight to the stench of dry blood and the warmth of fire baking skin and rock simply because he would rather not be in such close quarters with his worst enemy and rival. This agitated Kazuma to no end. Or, perhaps, it was simply because he was so cold, and so reflective. A shell of a man, it was true: but Kazuma was both drawn and repulsed by that incompleteness, as was Ryuhou enchanted by the Native’s lazy grin and the blood sticky in his dark hair. Almost as much as being with the other was very much like a finger down the throat for both of them. But he could recall a time when there had been nothing between them, including the feud they had created for themselves and their own personal barriers, but an awkward sense of intimacy that now the rebel Alter User sometimes wanted back for them. He was drunk enough, once, to not remember what he’d said. It had not ended their rivalry but since it had been said -- just once, that strange thing spoken, then forgotten -- well, it had changed his view of the HOLY officer a little. And it stuck with him. “It’s been so difficult, fighting you,” one had said, in a quiet, serious voice. “Oh, but letting go can be the hardest thing to do…” said the other, as he crawled over on his hands and knees and rested his heavy head drunkenly in the enemy’s lap, smiling up at him before he slept. Ryuhou had sat up stiffly and wide awake for the remainder of the night, eerily aware of the warm presence with its weight shifting drowsily against his chest, unnerved. And unable to understand. Now Kazuma understood. “Hey,” he called, growly and lazy with his voice. “You’ve been sitting out there for a few hours, now, y‘know.” Nothing. Not even a soft word or ripple through the skin to show he’d heard. “How’s all that sitting working for the stick you’ve got jammed up your ass?” The other man continued to stroke his long, dirty sea-colored hair, more thoughtfully now, without so much as a bristle of acknowledgement. Now the rebel Native was just pissed off. “Bastard,” he grumbled, and slumped closer to the fire. Ryuhou stood. (Comment on this)
2:13 pm	Sara Teasdale - Love And Death Shall we, too, rise forgetful from our sleep, And shall my soul that lies within your hand Remember nothing, as the blowing sand Forgets the palm where long blue shadows creep When winds along the darkened desert sweep? Or would it still remember, tho' it spanned A thousand heavens, while the planets fanned The vacant ether with their voices deep? Soul of my soul, no word shall be forgot, Nor yet alone, beloved, shall we see The desolation of extinguished suns, Nor fear the void wherethro' our planet runs, For still together shall we go and not Fare forth alone to front eternity. Edwin Arlington Robinson - The Wise Brothers FIRST VOICE So long adrift, so fast aground, What foam and ruin have we found— We, the Wise Brothers? Could heaven and earth be framed amiss, That we should land in fine like this— We, and no others? SECOND VOICE Convoyed by what accursèd thing Made we this evil reckoning— We, the Wise Brothers? And if the failure be complete, Why look we forward from defeat— We, and what others? THIRD VOICE Blown far from harbors once in sight, May we not, going far, go right,— We, the Wise Brothers? Companioned by the whirling spheres, Have we no more than what appears— We, and all others? Siegfried Sassoon - Absolution The anguish of the earth absolves our eyes Till beauty shines in all that we can see. War is our scourge; yet war has made us wise, And, fighting for our freedom, we are free. Horror of wounds and anger at the foe, And loss of things desired; all these must pass. We are the happy legion, for we know Time's but a golden wind that shakes the grass. There was an hour when we were loth to part From life we longed to share no less than others. Now, having claimed this heritage of heart, What need we more, my comrades and my brothers? (Comment on this)
2:12 pm	In the fog of doubt, you are my hope. In darkness, light. I did not ask for you to let me love you. Only-- let me help you. . . I would have died for you! On the sands of Egypt, they could have laid me till the sun and moon had bleached my bones. Still would. I would still die for you. Only-- let me help you. . .if you cannot help yourself. 11/9/2005 (Comment on this)
2:08 pm	Oh, . . .now it’s raining. The day is so young still, I’m actually surprised. I thought it would rain. But I’ve gotten so wet today I don’t even feel like going dancing in the rain. The magnificent blue, too, is gone away; washed away. One of the things I don’t like about rain is that it washes everything away. . . Make the whole world white, people seem to want to say. Wash us clean. But the rain is the dirtiest thing; and all it ever did for me was make me feel washed out; much emptier inside. . . I laid out in the sun- like a warm bath, kind and infrequent, gentle rays- and flowers and prickling grass under the arcs of spraying water, which made the rocks slippery and the small banks almost overflowing with fresh, dark water, and gathered up some flowers, too. . . Almost nude and feeling wonderful. I am presently reading Alexander. . . I marked my page with a stem full of flowers. I am enjoying it thoroughly. The sky was such an impercievable shade of blue. . . Like from a painter’s palette. A blue that is almost impossible; heaven truly does produce the truest shade in sheets-I find- and the clouds were full and magnificent, too. Then the thunder could be heard far off in the trees and the sunlight, suddenly, had run out, and was gone (the sky was still magically blue) . . .so I put on my clothes again and came in. The sun, perhaps, is out of hiding now. . . Nature does provide a certain happy sense of freedom. The inside, here, is dull and gray. I would much rather like to return. I will check on it. . . For now, I must redirect the water; since a certain spot on the backlawn isn’t getting any. I’ll see about it now. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, October 12th, 2005
8:03 pm	You, You, You, you said. You made me believe that I was dead. And I was a corpse bride and I was a landslide and it's all in your head and I'm all in your head. (Comment on this)
Sunday, October 9th, 2005
6:07 pm	If all you can possibly do to make things right…is walk away… Walk away. (Comment on this)
6:06 pm	“What today?” He asked, and she looked strange. “Too much, I think,” she said. He tilted his chin up to the bottle. She was wearing long ripped stockings today and lipsticky shiny lips that spun inside his head. Her little mommy dress was mummified with chewed up metal pumps, the color of a grated ashtray. She looked like a Skeleton Girl with marbles in her skull that shone out all these glassy swirly techno colors. Witchy witchy. “Too much?” “Too much. I think.” She tried to pull the bottle away from him, prying the neck loose from his long latchy fingers with her smaller ones, chipped blood red varnish, and her thick mascara-heavy eyes fluttered at him, looking like bat-wings in the heart of smoke, and silence. “Witchy witchy,” he said. He tugged the bottle back from her and cradled it against his chest like a baby. Broken Bottle Baby. He scribbled that on his left wrist over the black tattoo rose and he thought he’d like to show it to her. “Are you going to go away now?” She touched her nose with one soft fingertip; so small. She blinked a few times before it began to bleed. “Too much,” she said, again, confirmed. “Too much glass. I think I snorted too much glass.” “No, baby,” he purred. “I like your pretty kitty nose. Come here.” She leaned in close enough to smell the amber in his breath. “What is it, baby?” He said, softer. Her bloody nose dripped drops of red down on his chest and shoulder bones. “It’s just that every time I go nuts for a guy he leaves me. And then I go crazy.” “Why?” She touched her nose again. This time it smeared all the way down to her lip, and she frowned. “Because I snort too much glass.” He stood up and left her sitting on the floor. He brought her back a tissue from the bathroom, and she dabbed her nostrils with it, carefully. “You shouldn’t leave me here alone,” she said. “I’m scared I’ll hurt myself.” “You always say that, baby,” he said, and he sat back down, plucking the bottle from her hands again. She had been cradling it, too, and now her arms were empty. “But I think I really might this time,” she answered. He tilted his neck up and licked the last drops from the bottom of the bottle. He left her alone that day. “Please, please,” she’d said, at the door, and hung on to the waistband of his jeans, trying to drag him back with her. He pushed a little towards the front porch. “Baby, baby,” he said, and he pried her fingers loose. She stumbled back and she was screaming. Her bat-wing eyes were flapping black smeary tears against her white cheeks. She yelled and she bit and then she just sort of collapsed, crying on the floor, to the carpet. He said, “Stop being such a skeleton girl.” And then he left. He found her later when she hung herself. She was hanging from the rafters in the bathroom, with the mirror lights all on. They shone on her so pretty white-gold and they made her look just like a movie star. He ran a hot bath and he laid her in it. There were purple bruises all around her neck; a purple choker necklace. He combed her hair back with his long white fingers and he smiled a little for her, for the both of them. “You really did,” he said. To her. To no one. To the ghost girl lying in the bathtub. “You really did.” He pressed his hands against her waist and curled up on the bathtub ledge, smiling. Sobbing, and smiling. “Baby, baby, my baby, you bitch, my baby. You did what you had to do.” Too much, I think, was what she whispered back. (Comment on this)
Sunday, September 25th, 2005
9:59 pm	J. D. Salinger A Perfect Day for Bananafish The New Yorker, January 31, 1948, pages 21-25 THERE WERE ninety-seven New York advertising men in the hotel, and, the way they were monopolizing the long-distance lines, the girl in 507 had to wait from noon till almost two-thirty to get her call through. She used the time, though. She read an article in a women's pocket-size magazine, called "Sex Is Fun-or Hell." She washed her comb and brush. She took the spot out of the skirt of her beige suit. She moved the button on her Saks blouse. She tweezed out two freshly surfaced hairs in her mole. When the operator finally rang her room, she was sitting on the window seat and had almost finished putting lacquer on the nails of her left hand. She was a girl who for a ringing phone dropped exactly nothing. She looked as if her phone had been ringing continually ever since she had reached puberty. With her little lacquer brush, while the phone was ringing, she went over the nail of her little finger, accentuating the line of the moon. She then replaced the cap on the bottle of lacquer and, standing up, passed her left--the wet--hand back and forth through the air. With her dry hand, she picked up a congested ashtray from the window seat and carried it with her over to the night table, on which the phone stood. She sat down on one of the made-up twin beds and--it was the fifth or sixth ring--picked up the phone. "Hello," she said, keeping the fingers of her left hand outstretched and away from her white silk dressing gown, which was all that she was wearing, except mules--her rings were in the bathroom. "I have your call to New York now, Mrs. Glass," the operator said. "Thank you," said the girl, and made room on the night table for the ashtray. A woman's voice came through. "Muriel? Is that you?" The girl turned the receiver slightly away from her ear. "Yes, Mother. How are you?" she said. "I've been worried to death about you. Why haven't you phoned? Are you all right?" "I tried to get you last night and the night before. The phone here's been--" "Are you all right, Muriel?" The girl increased the angle between the receiver and her ear. "I'm fine. I'm hot. This is the hottest day they've had in Florida in--" "Why haven't you called me? I've been worried to--" "Mother, darling, don't yell at me. I can hear you beautifully," said the girl. "I called you twice last night. Once just after--" "I told your father you'd probably call last night. But, no, he had to-Are you all right, Muriel? Tell me the truth." "I'm fine. Stop asking me that, please." "When did you get there?" "I don't know. Wednesday morning, early." "Who drove?" "He did," said the girl. "And don't get excited. He drove very nicely. I was amazed." "He drove? Muriel, you gave me your word of--" "Mother," the girl interrupted, "I just told you. He drove very nicely. Under fifty the whole way, as a matter of fact." "Did he try any of that funny business with the trees?" "I said he drove very nicely, Mother. Now, please. I asked him to stay close to the white line, and all, and he knew what I meant, and he did. He was even trying not to look at the trees-you could tell. Did Daddy get the car fixed, incidentally?" "Not yet. They want four hundred dollars, just to--" "Mother, Seymour told Daddy that he'd pay for it. There's no reason for--" "Well, we'll see. How did he behave--in the car and all?" "All right," said the girl. "Did he keep calling you that awful--" "No. He has something new now." "What?" "Oh, what's the difference, Mother?" "Muriel, I want to know. Your father--" "All right, all right. He calls me Miss Spiritual Tramp of 1948," the girl said, and giggled. "It isn't funny, Muriel. It isn't funny at all. It's horrible. It's sad, actually. When I think how--" "Mother," the girl interrupted, "listen to me. You remember that book he sent me from Germany? You know--those German poems. What'd I do with it? I've been racking my--" "You have it." "Are you sure?" said the girl. "Certainly. That is, I have it. It's in Freddy's room. You left it here and I didn't have room for it in the--Why? Does he want it?" "No. Only, he asked me about it, when we were driving down. He wanted to know if I'd read it." "It was in German!" "Yes, dear. That doesn't make any difference," said the girl, crossing her legs. "He said that the poems happen to be written by the only great poet of the century. He said I should've bought a translation or something. Or learned the language, if you please." "Awful. Awful. It's sad, actually, is what it is. Your father said last night--" "Just a second, Mother," the girl said. She went over to the window seat for her cigarettes, lit one, and returned to her seat on the bed. "Mother?" she said, exhaling smoke. "Muriel. Now, listen to me." "I'm listening." "Your father talked to Dr. Sivetski." "Oh?" said the girl. "He told him everything. At least, he said he did--you know your father. The trees. That business with the window. Those horrible things he said to Granny about her plans for passing away. What he did with all those lovely pictures from Bermuda--everything." "Well?" said the girl. "Well. In the first place, he said it was a perfect crime the Army released him from the hospital--my word of honor. He very definitely told your father there's a chance--a very great chance, he said--that Seymour may completely lose control of himself. My word of honor." "There's a psychiatrist here at the hotel," said the girl. "Who? What's his name?" "I don't know. Rieser or something. He's supposed to be very good." "Never heard of him." "Well, he's supposed to be very good, anyway." "Muriel, don't be fresh, please. We're very worried about you. Your father wanted to wire you last night to come home, as a matter of f--" "I'm not coming home right now, Mother. So relax." "Muriel. My word of honor. Dr. Sivetski said Seymour may completely lose contr--" "I just got here, Mother. This is the first vacation I've had in years, and I'm not going to just pack everything and come home," said the girl. "I couldn't travel now anyway. I'm so sunburned I can hardly move." "You're badly sunburned? Didn't you use that jar of Bronze I put in your bag? I put it right--" "I used it. I'm burned anyway." "That's terrible. Where are you burned?" "All over, dear, all over." "That's terrible." "I'll live." "Tell me, did you talk to this psychiatrist?" "Well, sort of," said the girl. "What'd he say? Where was Seymour when you talked to him?" "In the Ocean Room, playing the piano. He's played the piano both nights we've been here." "Well, what'd he say?" "Oh, nothing much. He spoke to me first. I was sitting next to him at Bingo last night, and he asked me if that wasn't my husband playing the piano in the other room. I said yes, it was, and he asked me if Seymour's been sick or something. So I said--" "Why'd he ask that?" "I don't know, Mother. I guess because he's so pale and all," said the girl. "Anyway, after Bingo he and his wife asked me if I wouldn't like to join them for a drink. So I did. His wife was horrible. You remember that awful dinner dress we saw in Bonwit's window? The one you said you'd have to have a tiny, tiny--" "The green?" "She had it on. And all hips. She kept asking me if Seymour's related to that Suzanne Glass that has that place on Madison Avenue--the millinery." "What'd he say, though? The doctor." "Oh. Well, nothing much, really. I mean we were in the bar and all. It was terribly noisy." "Yes, but did--did you tell him what he tried to do with Granny's chair?" "No, Mother. I didn't go into details very much," said the girl. "I'll probably get a chance to talk to him again. He's in the bar all day long." "Did he say he thought there was a chance he might get--you know--funny or anything? Do something to you!" "Not exactly," said the girl. "He had to have more facts, Mother. They have to know about your childhood--all that stuff. I told you, we could hardly talk, it was so noisy in there." "Well. How's your blue coat?" "All right. I had some of the padding taken out." "How are the clothes this year?" "Terrible. But out of this world. You see sequins--everything," said the girl. "How's your room?" "All right. Just all right, though. We couldn't get the room we had before the war," said the girl. "The people are awful this year. You should see what sits next to us in the dining room. At the next table. They look as if they drove down in a truck." "Well, it's that way all over. How's your ballerina?" "It's too long. I told you it was too long." "Muriel, I'm only going to ask you once more--are you really all right?" "Yes, Mother," said the girl. "For the ninetieth time." "And you don't want to come home?" "No, Mother." "Your father said last night that he'd be more than willing to pay for it if you'd go away someplace by yourself and think things over. You could take a lovely cruise. We both thought--" "No, thanks," said the girl, and uncrossed her legs. "Mother, this call is costing a for--" "When I think of how you waited for that boy all through the war-I mean when you think of all those crazy little wives who--" "Mother," said the girl, "we'd better hang up. Seymour may come in any minute." "Where is he?" "On the beach." "On the beach? By himself? Does he behave himself on the beach?" "Mother," said the girl, "you talk about him as though he were a raving maniac--" "I said nothing of the kind, Muriel." "Well, you sound that way. I mean all he does is lie there. He won't take his bathrobe off." "He won't take his bathrobe off? Why not?" "I don't know. I guess because he's so pale." "My goodness, he needs the sun. Can't you make him? "You know Seymour," said the girl, and crossed her legs again. "He says he doesn't want a lot of fools looking at his tattoo." "He doesn't have any tattoo! Did he get one in the Army?" "No, Mother. No, dear," said the girl, and stood up. "Listen, I'll call you tomorrow, maybe." "Muriel. Now, listen to me." "Yes, Mother," said the girl, putting her weight on her right leg. "Call me the instant he does, or says, anything at all funny--you know what I mean. Do you hear me?" "Mother, I'm not afraid of Seymour." "Muriel, I want you to promise me." "All right, I promise. Goodbye, Mother," said the girl. "My love to Daddy." She hung up. "See more glass," said Sybil Carpenter, who was staying at the hotel with her mother. "Did you see more glass?" "Pussycat, stop saying that. It's driving Mommy absolutely crazy. Hold still, please." Mrs. Carpenter was putting sun-tan oil on Sybil's shoulders, spreading it down over the delicate, winglike blades of her back. Sybil was sitting insecurely on a huge, inflated beach ball, facing the ocean. She was wearing a canary-yellow two-piece bathing suit, one piece of which she would not actually be needing for another nine or ten years. "It was really just an ordinary silk handkerchief--you could see when you got up close," said the woman in the beach chair beside Mrs. Carpenter's. "I wish I knew how she tied it. It was really darling." "It sounds darling," Mrs. Carpenter agreed. "Sybil, hold still, pussy." "Did you see more glass?" said Sybil. Mrs. Carpenter sighed. "All right," she said. She replaced the cap on the sun-tan oil bottle. "Now run and play, pussy. Mommy's going up to the hotel and have a Martini with Mrs. Hubbel. I'll bring you the olive." Set loose, Sybil immediately ran down to the flat part of the beach and began to walk in the direction of Fisherman's Pavilion. Stopping only to sink a foot in a soggy, collapsed castle, she was soon out of the area reserved for guests of the hotel. She walked for about a quarter of a mile and then suddenly broke into an oblique run up the soft part of the beach. She stopped short when she reached the place where a young man was lying on his back. "Are you going in the water, see more glass?" she said. The young man started, his right hand going to the lapels of his terry-cloth robe. He turned over on his stomach, letting a sausaged towel fall away from his eyes, and squinted up at Sybil. "Hey. Hello, Sybil." "Are you going in the water?" "I was waiting for you," said the young man. "What's new?" "What?" said Sybil. "What's new? What's on the program?" "My daddy's coming tomorrow on a nairiplane," Sybil said, kicking sand. "Not in my face, baby," the young man said, putting his hand on Sybil's ankle. "Well, it's about time he got here, your daddy. I've been expecting him hourly. Hourly." "Where's the lady?" Sybil said. "The lady?" the young man brushed some sand out of his thin hair. "That's hard to say, Sybil. She may be in any one of a thousand places. At the hairdresser's. Having her hair dyed mink. Or making dolls for poor children, in her room." Lying prone now, he made two fists, set one on top of the other, and rested his chin on the top one. "Ask me something else, Sybil," he said. "That's a fine bathing suit you have on. If there's one thing I like, it's a blue bathing suit." Sybil stared at him, then looked down at her protruding stomach. "This is a yellow," she said. "This is a yellow." "It is? Come a little closer." Sybil took a step forward. "You're absolutely right. What a fool I am." "Are you going in the water?" Sybil said. "I'm seriously considering it. I'm giving it plenty of thought, Sybil, you'll be glad to know." Sybil prodded the rubber float that the young man sometimes used as a head-rest. "It needs air," she said. "You're right. It needs more air than I'm willing to admit." He took away his fists and let his chin rest on the sand. "Sybil," he said, "you're looking fine. It's good to see you. Tell me about yourself." He reached in front of him and took both of Sybil's ankles in his hands. "I'm Capricorn," he said. "What are you?" "Sharon Lipschutz said you let her sit on the piano seat with you," Sybil said. "Sharon Lipschutz said that?" Sybil nodded vigorously. He let go of her ankles, drew in his hands, and laid the side of his face on his right forearm. "Well," he said, "you know how those things happen, Sybil. I was sitting there, playing. And you were nowhere in sight. And Sharon Lipschutz came over and sat down next to me. I couldn't push her off, could I?" "Yes." "Oh, no. No. I couldn't do that," said the young man. "I'll tell you what I did do, though." "What?" "I pretended she was you." Sybil immediately stooped and began to dig in the sand. "Let's go in the water," she said. "All right," said the young man. "I think I can work it in." "Next time, push her off," Sybil said. "Push who off?" "Sharon Lipschutz." "Ah, Sharon Lipschutz," said the young man. "How that name comes up. Mixing memory and desire." He suddenly got to his feet. He looked at the ocean. "Sybil," he said, "I'll tell you what we'll do. We'll see if we can catch a bananafish." "A what?" "A bananafish," he said, and undid the belt of his robe. He took off the robe. His shoulders were white and narrow, and his trunks were royal blue. He folded the robe, first lengthwise, then in thirds. He unrolled the towel he had used over his eyes, spread it out on the sand, and then laid the folded robe on top of it. He bent over, picked up the float, and secured it under his right arm. Then, with his left hand, he took Sybil's hand. The two started to walk down to the ocean. "I imagine you've seen quite a few bananafish in your day," the young man said. Sybil shook her head. "You haven't? Where do you live, anyway?" "I don't know," said Sybil. "Sure you know. You must know. Sharon Lipschutz knows where she lives and she's only three and a half." Sybil stopped walking and yanked her hand away from him. She picked up an ordinary beach shell and looked at it with elaborate interest. She threw it down. "Whirly Wood, Connecticut," she said, and resumed walking, stomach foremost. "Whirly Wood, Connecticut," said the young man. "Is that anywhere near Whirly Wood, Connecticut, by any chance?" Sybil looked at him. "That's where I live," she said impatiently. "I live in Whirly Wood, Connecticut." She ran a few steps ahead of him, caught up her left foot in her left hand, and hopped two or three times. "You have no idea how clear that makes everything," the young man said. Sybil released her foot. "Did you read `Little Black Sambo'?" she said. "It's very funny you ask me that," he said. "It so happens I just finished reading it last night." He reached down and took back Sybil's hand. "What did you think of it?" he asked her. "Did the tigers run all around that tree?" "I thought they'd never stop. I never saw so many tigers." "There were only six," Sybil said. "Only six!" said the young man. "Do you call that only?" "Do you like wax?" Sybil asked. "Do I like what?" asked the young man. "Wax." "Very much. Don't you?" Sybil nodded. "Do you like olives?" she asked. "Olives--yes. Olives and wax. I never go anyplace without 'em." "Do you like Sharon Lipschutz?" Sybil asked. "Yes. Yes, I do," said the young man. "What I like particularly about her is that she never does anything mean to little dogs in the lobby of the hotel. That little toy bull that belongs to that lady from Canada, for instance. You probably won't believe this, but some little girls like to poke that little dog with balloon sticks. Sharon doesn't. She's never mean or unkind. That's why I like her so much." Sybil was silent. "I like to chew candles," she said finally. "Who doesn't?" said the young man, getting his feet wet. "Wow! It's cold." He dropped the rubber float on its back. "No, wait just a second, Sybil. Wait'll we get out a little bit." They waded out till the water was up to Sybil's waist. Then the young man picked her up and laid her down on her stomach on the float. "Don't you ever wear a bathing cap or anything?" he asked. "Don't let go," Sybil ordered. "You hold me, now." "Miss Carpenter. Please. I know my business," the young man said. "You just keep your eyes open for any bananafish. This is a perfect day for bananafish." "I don't see any," Sybil said. "That's understandable. Their habits are very peculiar." He kept pushing the float. The water was not quite up to his chest. "They lead a very tragic life," he said. "You know what they do, Sybil?" She shook her head. "Well, they swim into a hole where there's a lot of bananas. They're very ordinary-looking fish when they swim in. But once they get in, they behave like pigs. Why, I've known some bananafish to swim into a banana hole and eat as many as seventy-eight bananas." He edged the float and its passenger a foot closer to the horizon. "Naturally, after that they're so fat they can't get out of the hole again. Can't fit through the door." "Not too far out," Sybil said. "What happens to them?" "What happens to who?" "The bananafish." "Oh, you mean after they eat so many bananas they can't get out of the banana hole?" "Yes," said Sybil. "Well, I hate to tell you, Sybil. They die." "Why?" asked Sybil. "Well, they get banana fever. It's a terrible disease." "Here comes a wave," Sybil said nervously. "We'll ignore it. We'll snub it," said the young man. "Two snobs." He took Sybil's ankles in his hands and pressed down and forward. The float nosed over the top of the wave. The water soaked Sybil's blond hair, but her scream was full of pleasure. With her hand, when the float was level again, she wiped away a flat, wet band of hair from her eyes, and reported, "I just saw one." "Saw what, my love?" "A bananafish." "My God, no!" said the young man. "Did he have any bananas in his mouth?" "Yes," said Sybil. "Six." The young man suddenly picked up one of Sybil's wet feet, which were drooping over the end of the float, and kissed the arch. "Hey!" said the owner of the foot, turning around. "Hey, yourself We're going in now. You had enough?" "No!" "Sorry," he said, and pushed the float toward shore until Sybil got off it. He carried it the rest of the way. "Goodbye," said Sybil, and ran without regret in the direction of the hotel. The young man put on his robe, closed the lapels tight, and jammed his towel into his pocket. He picked up the slimy wet, cumbersome float and put it under his arm. He plodded alone through the soft, hot sand toward the hotel. On the sub-main floor of the hotel, which the management directed bathers to use, a woman with zinc salve on her nose got into the elevator with the young man. "I see you're looking at my feet," he said to her when the car was in motion. "I beg your pardon?" said the woman. "I said I see you're looking at my feet." "I beg your pardon. I happened to be looking at the floor," said the woman, and faced the doors of the car. "If you want to look at my feet, say so," said the young man. "But don't be a God-damned sneak about it." "Let me out here, please," the woman said quickly to the girl operating the car. The car doors opened and the woman got out without looking back. "I have two normal feet and I can't see the slightest God-damned reason why anybody should stare at them," said the young man. "Five, please." He took his room key out of his robe pocket. He got off at the fifth floor, walked down the hall, and let himself into 507. The room smelled of new calfskin luggage and nail-lacquer remover. He glanced at the girl lying asleep on one of the twin beds. Then he went over to one of the pieces of luggage, opened it, and from under a pile of shorts and undershirts he took out an Ortgies calibre 7.65 automatic. He released the magazine, looked at it, then reinserted it. He cocked the piece. Then he went over and sat down on the unoccupied twin bed, looked at the girl, aimed the pistol, and fired a bullet through his right temple. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, August 24th, 2005
6:45 pm	Sometimes I wonder if I'm really even alive. There is no rain and there is no sun. There is no sick and there is no tired. There is no blood and there is no life and there is no beautiful hard pain like sleep in my head and thrill in my veins. I feel and I see nothing. My eyes are empty holes that have lost all their color burn depth intensity wisdom. I no longer look as though I'm someone that has seen too much or too little, feels too much and cries too often or not often enough, I cannot see my soul in my eyes, I cannot feel my soul aching out in my body. Because I do not love and I do not remember loving or having ever lost it though I know I have I know its absence creeping through me make me nothing nothing nothing. I am so empty. I am so ugly empty hungry sleeping. I want to disappear just disappear. I want someone to save me ... tell me how much you love me ... how much you love me. Adore me adore me. Adore me. I want to be a body with a soul. I want I need I pray I don't pray I feel ... nothing. Tell me I'm only dreaming. (I'll wake up from this I swear. Do you swear? ) (Comment on this)
6:13 pm	the incarnation (: (Comment on this)
6:11 pm	sanctuary sabotage when to run and so you're gone/so you're gone suicide arachne (it begins with a curse.) (fingernails tearing off in his skin.) morphia hestia/sacred fire monarch butterfly moth scar tissue souldad andromeda (names of stars and galaxies and things in space...) (Comment on this)
Sunday, July 24th, 2005
5:47 pm	could I, a sleek old traveler, curl one day safe and still beside You at Your feet, perhaps, but, amen, Yours. O' Lucifer O' Lucifer Forive Me -- No You've already forgiven me And so Why has it taken for the longest time For Me to forgive You? From the holy mountain I cast You out Out from among the stones of fire And into the lakes of fire Your bed of jewels chains loped in darkess About Your neck and skin pull tighter Tighter all across your back, where wings once lay And now is scarred In 'membrance of that fateful day Lucifer says O' God, Mine God, forgive me Though for my deeds I do not pray You will excuse, I mean it still The follies of their servitude and mine. O' God, Mine God, beseech me Fork my tongue for words of praise From all the seven caves of darkness Where I hide and lie in wait, and say Amen. The Lord says to Lucifer O' Morning Star Son of the Dawn And Covering Cherub Who was protector of this world, and that And now is father of the world in that Your jealousy and iniquity will overrule your love For Me. Did then and Will now. Oh, Lucifer Forgive me. (Comment on this)
1:48 am	I've never cried so hard as I did yesterday. Rain on the windowsills, I've had better days. Out in the field I saw forget-me-nots. Bobbing and pretty and all in a line. It took a moment, but the concrete came running back, turning all the flowers black, and covering everything. It took a moment, but I realized well enough; there was no field at all. Forget-me-nots, forget me not, she said. She didn't know what she was talking about. Maybe she knew better than anyone. In her journal it read something like, forgive me today. This morning I was so in love, tonight I know I'll never feel the same. And I'll never love again. I always knew this day would come. I knew that she'd leave me with him, but I never thought he'd rather be gone than to stay with me, the only person who'd never leave his side, and I sighed, and I cried. . . Oh, remember me. The next morning headlines were already being made. SUICIDE they said, heartbreak I argued. When the paper came, I bought it but I didn't read a word. All I had to see was the name. How many of them saw the girl? Forget-me-nots, forget me not, she said. Her smile was faking the whole entire time. Inside against the cracks her heart was beating slowly, pushing outward in every place he'd ever broken it. On a piece of paper, on a napkin in a downtown bar. In a late-night diner on a business card. Everywhere I went I saw the pieces. Everywhere I went, I knew that she went too. And there was nothing nothing that I could do. But laying here tonight, I look out the window where there are streets and no stars to light what should have been an empty field. I thought tenderly - perhaps too fondly for my own good - I will remember you, until the end of time. . . But who knows, who knows when that will be? (Comment on this)