…we asked our friends Mira and AJ to tell us something about Poland…

One day in Po(et)land by Mira Horvich and AJ Kaufman

MH 09.00 am (office poet)

‘Welcome to Floo Net Travel. Please, choose the extension or wait for the next available consultant’

I wait for the beep and then dial 1-4-5-2, targeting the glowing keypads with an index finger. There is a certain Miss Anna working in Floo Net Travel, and each time I call her to book some flight for my boss, my thoughts line up in the same way. First, I wonder whether the name of the company is related somehow to our scar-marked, bespectacled hero of the recent years. Judging by the year the company was established it very probably is. Then I wonder whether Miss Anna knows that she has an extension that is the date of the great geographic discoveries. These two thoughts together usually take up the space of one long beep. The receiver still pressed to my ear, my musings turn to the world of great discoverers and ships with scarlet sails and wizards in black robes and pointed hats - do they have discoverers in the wizarding world? - and all that. The last image I reach before Miss Anna picks up the phone is usually that of a towering old wizard, standing erect on the deck of a ghost ship, long streaks of his gray hair and beard dancing madly on the breeze.

‘Good Morning, Floo Net Travel, Anna Lys, how can I help you?’

I shake the image and introduce myself, shifting to the brisk business matter which is supposed to show how confident and competent I feel in my little office environment. From the ghost ship of my imagination, the tall wizard shoots me a disdainful look. Well, fuck off, sugar. Business is business.

I write down the connections Miss Anna has found for me, thank her and put the receiver down. My fingers lingering on the smooth curvaceous shape, as if it were a fucking portkey, my only link with the outside world. Now it’s only office and me. How long can you NOT look at something you should be doing when it’s right before your eyes? I last three minutes. Right then. The mail. The mail would go first, then the coffee for the boss, then the current matters, then the report from yesterday’s meeting. The barren plane of my desk fills up with papers, the ship and the sails and tall pointed hat sinking inexorably beneath the white mess.

On the little shelf to my right, a small destapler sits quietly, its metallic jaws parted slightly in a grin. To be a good office worker, you have to really hate your work. Only sheer fury can take one through the day. Or is the source of my anger really in the fact that I am constantly hurled from one world to another? Taking turns between an evening rambling poet and a morning office girl, I have lost my soul somewhere in between. I take the destapler from the shelf and press it to my mouth. When the metal jaws close on the lower lip, it hurts, and I love the feeling.

AJ.K 11.00 am (fuck no)

How I fuckin’ hate this hour. I always seem to get it when I happen to wake up too early. It’s no happy hour. No free whisky. No warm beer. No nothing. Sweet nothing. Less than nothing. I still got my pajamas on. Nice ones - with flowers and pictures of puppies in x-ray. They remind me of my rascal hippy days… when everything was beautiful… when the mornings were so far out they were almost too far in… everything was acid and acid and Maria Juana Manilla de Hay and acid and more acid and acid and then some acid for a change… and maybe some acid in the evening, too… or a Velvet Underground song… or another goddamn Marlboro, or another Motorcycle Irene kind of fuck… Or best - the sound of a whiplash - the pigeons crashing into my window - the cars crashing yards below, cars crashing bikes, cars smashing heads in WWII helmets thinkin’ of Charlie Manson and pigs all across the wall. Ragged leather jacket. Soda pop explosion. Blood tentacles creeping up the asphalt like a most confined lover of night. Poor motor-boy… poor motor-boy’s song…

I don’t want a pickle
Just want to ride on my motorsickle
And I don’t want a tickle
‘Cause I’d rather ride on my motorsickle
And I don’t want to die…

…the sun as pale as my beer-sunk belly. I wish I could leave this goddamn country. It stinks of vaseline, dead bikers and old toothless folks. It stinks like a goddamn abattoir. It contains rats you could never imagine. Rats the size of a cat. Things you never thought existed… creatures even the devil wouldn’t wanna invent on his biggest drinkin’ day ever… It burns you out when you’re very young. And then it asks for more. It becomes the most sophisticated and notorious parasite ever… It’s fuckin’ kabanos lobotomy country. Kabanos is some kind of sausage. Fuckin’ dry. Exhausting. Like some kind of stranger. Like your not-so-pretty katzenjammer lover without any make-up on. That’s kabanos lobotomy. That’s Poland. The fuckin’ land of ice, as one of my friends entitled his first full CD… the land of passin’ trains goin’ nowhere and you can’t really get on any of these fuckers… plus they all move into one wrong direction - oblivion. Fast. Woohoo! The land of (l)ice! Glorious whateverness… Floosie Wet Travel… How can one work in such a place… I can’t work anywhere… I always get drunk and they kick me out at the speed of light. Guess you’ve got to be slightly masochistic to become a secretary or a fuckin’ “office worker.” “Office worker” sounds perverse enough already… Guess I’ll have a listen to something slightly less depressive. Like “Songs of Love and Hate”. Perfect… or get mehself a pretty “office worker” to plug her through and through, while diggin’ through a goddamn avalanche of her wisdom… towering old wizards standing erect… how very unlike my cock… the little tin soldier of glitter and doom… flat… useless… when she comes home from work I’ll have nothing to offer ‘cept my ugly jobless ass in love with the son of Guthrie. Lizards, wizards and beards of stars… and the day went much too far… thanks god I’m a shapeshifter. Shapeshifters always survive. And god, that’s the Curtis fucker again…

No life at all in the house of dolls
No love lost, no love lost

MH 02.00 pm (lunch poet)

The Polish people just love to eat.

I file into the line at the cafeteria, stretching my neck and returning the occasional greetings from the occupied tables. The fluorescent light above the food trays is too sharp and all the food looks bright and fresh and plastic. I inspect the cheese sandwiches, flaunting its Gouda plumes next to the bowls of salads.

I look at the paprika slices, arranged smartly as a topping on one of the salads. I decide I’m not hungry.

‘What can I get you?’ the girl behind the counter is visibly tired, and the too-bright light is not particularly merciful to her. There are deep shadows under her eyes and her skin looks sallow, emphasizing pale freckles which dot her cheeks and nose.

‘Coffee please. Milk, sugar. And an apple.. or maybe a salad.. no, just coffee, please.’

She is irritated at my indecisiveness but brings me coffee and rings it up on the register without showing it. I’m sorry to add to her tiredness and try to smile as she gives me the change, but she is already busy with another client. I take the steaming cup with both hands and at this precise moment, as I turn away from the counter, a poem comes to me, perfect, finished. I hurry to the nearest unoccupied table and fumble for something to write. The girl behind the counter has a boyfriend. I know, I saw him once picking her up after work, them smooching in the driveway, and then, suddenly, her pushing him away and beginning to holler. What did she say? She was tired. I’m tired, tired, tired was what she said..

I’m so tiiiiiiiiired.
/tie/ me up
in the nuances of your
tedious grousing.
Could I be:
more attentive, less exacting, more affectionate?
Well, right now I think
I could be less tired.
Thank you very much.

/Errrr/…..
How much did you say it was?
I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you the first time.
I’m tired.
/Errrr/…..
I think I will take just the cigs.
I have only six-fifty on me.
I’m sorry
to see the shade of my tiredness
settle under your eyes
in dark circles.
Oh, thank you very much.

/dd-d/
The evening slips its fingers under my jacket.
Inquisitive.
And I suppose it was to be exciting?
I’m only cold.
It’s because I’m tired.
All the symptoms are here
so precise
you could write a mathematical formula:
/Tie/ + /Errrr/….. + /dd-d/ = /’taıərd/
Oh, how original
Is that a good answer?
Can I go now?

Yes, and thank you very much.

AJ.K 06.00 pm (fuck the worst songwriter alive)

“have a great day, fucker!” - you can read it from every goddamn face on the street. Extend the middle finger. Yeah… let’s show’em… lick the finger then clean… feel the wind… I love it when you hate me… it gives me fuel… it fuckin’ immortalizes the writer in me… it makes me invincible… your hate is the fire of my myth-birdie rebirth sort of thing… so hate me some more… give me some pain… smash my face if you think you can… I’ll smash yours so bad that it bleeds out all holy books of the world all at once… c’mon… faggot… bring on your best shot… payback’s a bitch when it comes down to you and the crucifix on your weary t-shirt…

no-man’s land, this is no-man’s land
and we’ll walk hand in hand if we may…
no man’s land, this is no-man’s land
and we’d fuck all death all away…

and goddamn, I’m writing songs again… my momma told me “don’t!”. She was right. But I just love to be wrong. And I’m all lit up on Elvis. That bastard had style. And his momma told him… who knows what she told him… all I know is that I’ve put my leather jacket on today to pay tribute to the King. And who cares if it’s 40°C outside… sweat works good for your muses, and it’s King’s goddam birthday… I’m a king too, a king of these streets… the muses… if you give them bitches some sweat they’d slash some blood on your paper… they’ll give you lines of amazing quality… they’ll give you lines that make love to death and feel so great all about it that it makes you laugh and slit your wrists at once… they’ll give you lines that cum back again… they’ll give you the last lines of a suicidal fisherman… they’ll give you dead fish on salsa… they’ll give you anything for a few drops of sweat… and today I’ve got a goddamn river of sweat… I’m about to smash my goddamn typewriter. Whore deserves it. She’s been givin’ me lines of death. I need to go beyond all that… I need the most abyssal abyss of all most abyssal abysses… the lunatic playground… the winter’s jolly undertaker clown… death’s not enough when you’re in love with her…

scannin’ the land for a bucket of sand
and the sick city lenses are so tired of men
no-man’s land, this is no-man’s land
and I’m scannin’ the wasteland for a bucket of sand…

…more nursery rhymes of pitiful quality… More rivers of sweat. More mindless faces met along the way. More wax heads. More meatheads. More wanna-be-artists. Less balls. More sweat… “I want the abyss, you fuckers!!!” - I howl into the neon-lit sky but I get no response… perhaps I’m already in. Who knows how the bastard looks like… “have a great day, you fuckers!” - yeah, right - that’s one for the city, two for the show, three for the ladies, c’mon let’s go…

siftin’ through the memories of a broken man
sailing on dead sails again and again
pickin’ dead flowers again and again
as I’m scannin’ the wasteland for a bucket of sand…

and they haven’t paid me for a single verse yet… I’ll pay’em back in hate. It always works both ways… and I still have Elliot up my ass at Chopin’s birdshit park.

MH 08.00 pm (evening poet)

It’s 8 pm and I’m going to get myself some love. Properly bleened up, I look at my watch. I’m a bit early but I decide to go down anyway; staying in the apartment after all these preparations feels a little like waiting for the first star or for Santa Clause. The apartment house where I live is an old post-war building, and although the upper flats have been renovated recently, the staircase is still the very picture of creaking splintering wooden disaster. Pausing at a landing half-way down, I look out at the window at what the inhabitants here call the backyard, and which in fact is just a stretch of a no-man’s land, where everybody takes out their garbage and where on hot summer nights city cats hold their sabbaticals.

In one corner of the yard, however, there is a young slim sapling birch, which in itself is the most magical thing I have ever seen. Every time I go out I check on it, half-expecting each time to see it cut down, or torn, or dried up - but somehow it is still there. This evening I notice with delight that it’s magic has spread; in front of the small tree somebody has put an old wicker chair. The chair looks comfortable and solid, at least as long as one’s eyes don’t reach its seat, punctured in the middle as if it tried in vain to catch something very heavy which jumped onto its lap. Happy old chair, even in its exile holding between its worn armrests the memory of some dear presence.

I’m about to turn away when a window from one of the ground floor flats opens with a bang and a young man jumps out of it in a hurry, followed by a cascade of curses.
‘…you fucker!! You jinxed it! And I told you to shut up, didn’t I?! You piece of shit!! Saying the ———-wins!!’ the young man lands on his stubby be-jeansed legs with the grace of a big old tom and looks up with obvious glee. He wears a black T-shirt and a long red scarf hanging loosely from his neck. A football fan. In the window out of which he has jumped, a face of a screaming woman of an indeterminate age gleams frantically from behind the curtains. The football fan blows her a roguish kiss and turning on his heel, disappears in the direction of the City Square, doubtless to celebrate the prophesized victory with his friends.

Can’t help smiling. The woman in the window finally manages to untangle from the curtains and seeing the young man gone, she closes the window violently, muttering things I can no longer make out. Still smiling, I turn away and resume my way down the stairs. In this moment, I’m just loving the fact that I’m alive; seeing, smelling, eavesdropping and spying on everything that surrounds me. There is so much to life. I sometimes feel I’m really just a stalker, following people around, picking up pieces of their life, bits and scraps they leave behind, and cramming them into my mouth like food, chewing on them until my jaws hurt only to spit them out in a form of a poem or a story. I gobble things up, flashes of street life and fragments of dialogs, going after people, going after life, never full, never satisfied.

In Polish, the word “after” is spelled “po”.

A Polish poet, I’m producing words after worlds. Following closely and yet staying always this one step behind.

Living in Poland.

Living in After-land.

AJ.K 04.00 am (dead poet)

and a bitter voice in the mirror cries - hey, prince, you need a shave…

there’s a funeral in the mirror and it’s stopping at your face…

you wake up to the sound of this very song. That’s still your apartment at Bukowska St. (hell, why not “Bukowski St.”? - who the hell is Bukowska? I don’t know this bitch and I know all the bitches in town…)… the bills were never paid. the rent has been paid such a long, long time ago… there, in the Tower of Song… you remember us standin’ at the side of the river… making plans… SOOOOO in love… so young and so beautiful like out of a fashion magazine… some kind of rope is joyfully swinging from the goddamn ceiling… you realize it’s 4A.M… you realize how drunk you are… you realize you’re out of booze. You realize you’re hangin’ on the very last cigarette. A very cheap one. Red&White. There’s this urban myth in Poznan that everyone who smokes them dies. Fuck. Show me someone who doesn’t die and I’ll light a green candle for him… so yeah, you smoke Red&White - you die. You don’t - you live eternally in the Kingdom of Heaven and inhale god’s almighty presence instead of the slightly blueish smoke… ravagin’ the angels and singin’ revolutionary French songs… meanwhile the rope’s swinging majestically, joyfully, ironically… like it’s erotic. Neurotic. Sick. Meta-travel striptease… like a fine ass… like a tight pussy… like a good pair of legs… like something to get lost in. Restless, relentless… like a poem… like a very BAD poem… like an ancient fortress… like sweet death’s kiss for the shaving prince of Poznan. Like a row of twin barstools… like this one twin idiot who’s still our president… fuckin’ brainless midget he is… guess his brother’s got the other half of his peanut brain… fuck all politicians… fuck all those right-winged idiots, those catholic sponges of mindblock.. we have no decent left-wing here… imagine… while lookin’ at the rope you begin to realize you’re quite a good comedian… and that you’ve been one ever since you were born… should perhaps become an actor… or perhaps write a script for Woody… or join some cabaret… Woody would be so proud of you… ah… just look at yourself! And the glasses… mhhhmmmm… you conceal yourself so well… soul behind the dark glass… eyes behind the margin of all existance… yeah, you’d write a script for Woody and then you’d play it all over again… I should take some piano lessons again… I’ve been quite good at this shit… when I was about nine… or best join a communist party… become another Lenin… but now the rope’s still swingin’ and you’ve put it where it is to scare the shit out of anyone who comes to visit…
perhaps a woman… perhaps even SHE… or Lenin.

I am a margin
just as my eyes are
just like a secret life
leaving no traces
behind
just like the furniture
that never quite fits
your
bedroom
just like the poems
I wrote on barstools
never read
spoken
or heard of

…the goddamn Harmonium’s Margin… Welcome, fucker, to the Great Abandoned East-West Divide. Welcome to the every war’s buffer… to the cheap amphetamine wasteland… to the bald realm of the Almighty Kabanos… You’ve seen it all? Warsaw? Poznan? Cracov? Yeah? So goodbye. There’s nothing more to see. And I hope you never come back. Choose life… choose a career… yeah… like fuck… choose methedrine, cheap cigs and a fine, fine death at 4.A.M. in a filthy whore’s smelly bedroom. With Cohen still on and the dawn a-blazin’… death’s so nice if you kindly ask her… and her cunt is perfectly tight… her legs are so inviting…
Dyin’ in Poland.
Dyin’ in Nevermore-land.

three poems by Puma Perl

keep digging

dig we must
to serve you
better and better
con ed declared
between black-outs
dog executions
15th floor heart attacks
dig we must

dig we must
to throw words down
somewhere, who cares
there are millions
of poets
billions of words
“spoken word artists”
me, i just write shit down
twitch all over the stage
go home and eat

i look around
i write it down
hoping my head
will empty itself
of enough garbage
so I can sleep
it’s all a survival mechanism
really

dig we must
i found
bloody bandaids
rusty bobby pins
used tissue paper
dried up mascara
green apple cores
shit- like gumballs
corn and raisins
empty spaces
where I live

i only think

i only think of you when i drink coffee
i only think of you when i lock the door
i only think of you on f trains
i only think of you on highways
i only think of you in the morning

i am not obsessed
i don’t remember your face
I think your eyes are blue
and your nose
is too big for your face
i don’t think of your lips
or tongue
i only think of you

i only think of you when the phone rings
i only think of you when it rains
i only think of you at midnight
i only think of you in bookstores
i only think of you on the bridge

i lay in bed
windows open
as i was
to the idea
of you
lights bounce
into glass
slide through
facades
dissolve
into rivers

you were hiding
in rainy midnights
on highways
concealed
on morning
trains
the you in you
trapped screaming
inside
the idea of you

i never say your name

i will not get up at 5 AM

i will not get up at 5 AM
i’m afraid i am
my father
in his bathrobe
sitting at the table

coffee perked at 4:30
his shaking hands held the times
he read every new york word
he crossed his surprising shapely legs
delicate ankles exclamation points
placed upon worn terry cloth slippers

his despair was patient
watched him work each day
in his flannel shirts, black shoes
he opened a store, named it “hi-ho”
he wanted something cheerful

sometimes his hair curled
at the back of his neck
my mother yelled at him to shower
his sad smell his only answer

other times he sported crewcuts
white shirts, cuff links, bowties
walked late into the night
his head bursting with ideas
sleep laughed at him at dawn

finally, surrender
coffee perked at 4:30
he crossed his ankles at 5
sat at the table with
his head in his hands
twenty years passed…
whenever i saw him
he’d smoke three cigarettes
and tell me to go home

on father’s day
i walked the streets
where he was born
avenue c, east fourth
i bought an icey
from a man on the corner
“feliz dia del padres”
i said, for my father,
for his 5 AM coffee
for the extra tamarindo syrup
on my piruaga

poems and photos by Misti Rainwater-Lites

Virginal Lisp

the air vibrates with it
listen to that gorgeous hum
your eyes find me hiding
and slay me
in the shadows
this is our swollen spring
dripping blooming soaring crazy
the sky kaleidoscopes jewel tones
sunset bleeds amber into sunrise
the clouds and stars smell brand-new
we meet in that meadow
dizzy
and the world
falls
down

Draining You Like A Really Deep Tub

you’re my flavor
I pick you
so be my god
let me call on you
when I’m in a heap in the dark
be my daddy
I like it icky like that
keep me on a short leash
bribe me with dessert
be my brother
play the games by my rules
I don’t exist
without you
can’t breathe can’t shit can’t piss can’t cum
without you
there’s this hurricane
inside my heart
there’s this tiger
furious and clawing
inside my stomach
you’ve got me
aching and throbbing
screaming for ice
Red Rover Red Rover
come over to my side to stay
sew your soul to mine
don’t hang up
don’t hate me
for getting your shirt
all soggy
don’t mind
my puddles
it’s all your fault
for makin’
me melt

Almost Got The Capricorn Tattoo

I’m putting my heart on rewind
I’m seventeen again
shiny and inquisitive
if I suck his dick eagerly enough
what will this get me?
if I listen to M.C. Hammer and Mariah Carey
will he think I’m cool enough
to ride behind him on his Indian
to the next kegger?

the years wash away as easily
as sidewalk chalk
I’m still that girl
giddy over a yesss
how you hissed it with emphasis
over the phone

the first time you told me you loved me
after a six hour telephone marathon
I sat on the stoop outside
the dorm
smoked a pack of Marlboros
watched the sun
pop into
the sky

all those nights on Sixth Street in Austin
I thought if I squeezed my eyes shut
the anonymous face breathing all over me
on the dance floor
could belong
to you
I practiced on skinny frat guys
my tongue was indifferent
to all the bland flavors
always, always
I craved your weird spice

I think of that car wash down the hill
from the park
we could just sit in my car
while the water streamed down
you and me
and a Dallas radio station
the years tiny and as easily lost
as Legos

Closet

I live inside this Jesus closet
this mouse closet
this mouth shut
colors muted
gutless closet
nobody sees
my parade
the world does not know
the carnival of me
the ocean of me
my lights are all
on dim
I’m good
I’m a cog
I’m a robot
going from work
to closet
to work again
I pay my bills on time
I pay taxes
I obey all laws
the only abuse
I inflict
is on myself
killing myself slowly
with vodka, cigarettes
and all the wrong food
when the heart finally
stops pumping
they won’t find me
for days
I hope my stink
will make them puke

Stab The Dreamy Outta My Heart

be vicious
about it
don’t baby me
with terms of endearment
kisses and caresses
fuck roses
fuck carriage rides around the park
throw me down
spit on me
fuck me raw
remind me what a worthless whore I am
give me bruises
instead of amethysts
I’ll lap it up
a loyal dog
put me on a short leash
and show me
who’s boss

High-Tone Professional Classical Restaurant Harpist Introduces Inferior Bus Girl to Nauseating Family by Tom Bradley

The morning was spiffy with Utah sunshine. Just spiffy as the reflection off good Utahns’pearly white teeth when they’re smiling the fabled Mormon Smile. It never goes away. Not even when you spit in their faces. The vitamin D-enriched smile of folks who have Heavenly Father by the short-and-curlies, who know the Answer to all the Great Questions. You can’t pose them a problem that’ll befuddle them. The permanently creased Mormon Smile that in old age curls into a grimace, a rictus, everlasting as the mint-and-pastel Utah sun that grins down the back of your gritty neck in the morning. “Smile and smile and be a villain” as the man says.

Sam Edwine, the High-Tone Professional Restaurant Harpist Prick, was a redhead, therefore recoiled frowning from the ultraviolet end of the electromagnetic spectrum. When he and his little pet bus girl pulled into the white gravel parking lot of the Cowboyland Spaw (sic), he immediately noticed several familiar Winnebagos and trailers, and a few specific old Chevrolet sedans with garish souvenir decals from places depressing like Yosemite, Yellowstone and Yucca Flats. And a dread spread all inside Sam, from below his lungs oozing upward like sickly, cool syrup. He succumbed to his itching suspicion that the Deity perversely delights in disappointing and crushing hopes when certain ritualistic precautions are not taken, and he knocked on the wooden handle of the bus girl’s overnight case.

But then he heard the loud snorts and grunts and bellows echoing from out back by the pool, like a hundred donkeys and cows fucking and shitting and pissing. So he turned to Prissy Clyster (or whatever her name was) and he said, “Wanna come meet my relatives?”

“You mean you want me to meet…” Her voice cracked, and she could say no more. Sam didn’t bother to disabuse her of any stupid Doris Day notions she might have been entertaining at the moment. Instead he merely observed her with objectivity as she hurriedly pulled off her slept-in food services uniform and pulled on something from her overnight case she thought especially nice for the beautiful harpist’s family: one of those fuzzy shirts with moose and mallard ducks on it, looking like reclaimed sleeping bag lining. She kept glancing at him for approval.

Nowhere, outside of Pilgrim’s Progress and a junior high faculty room at lunch time, can you find a quainter, more picturesque array of figures than at a Latter-Day-Saints’ family reunion. Here is Aunt Gluttony, here Second-Cousin Sloth, there salivates Grampaw Lubriciousness. Or maybe, Sam chided himself inwardly, it was possible that he was just projecting his own feelings of personal unattractiveness upon his unfortunate relatives.

“Go gitcher hawrp, Gabe!” they trumpeted in unison from the deck of the pool, naked and sprawling all over each other like a walrus colony taking the healing waters. Even the regular Cowboyland habitues, the swinish locals, had backed away to the adjacent picnic area. They were now watching the show, casting looks of sullen amazement from behind their bags of Fritos.

“Who the good-looker ya got over thar, Sambo?” bellowed his family. Sam guffawed genially, prodding her along in front of him with his thumb between her buttocks, “is my new sidekick. Cleans up garbage down at the restaurant where I play my own transcriptions of dead Euro-trash composers. Go on, mix with them, Honey-Bunny.”

Sam couldn’t recall her name, so he used that endearment. Bus Girl was so humiliated and shy and disappointed that she could barely walk. So Sam prodded her, like a minor character in a Walt Disney cartoon, down into the midst of his bathing-suited, ravenous and buck-toothed clan.

Here, little Niece Bad Seed simmered sultrily in a padded bikini, while, at her elbow, Uncle “I am not a homosexual” Ely (or “The Eel”) sunned himself in similarly padded racing briefs.There, floating on their backs in the shallow end of the pool, actually taking in mouthfuls of the diarrhoea-colored water and expectorating at each other, were Aunt Rhubarb and her hubby, “Unker” Rusty, who’d devoted their adult lives to collecting bottle caps. Standing off to one side, wearing a distracted expression on his face and wiping Sea and Ski on his biceps, was Great Uncle Lou, the ex-basketball pro, who, as soon as he got old enough to start missing foul shots, bought adjacent burial plots for himself and his three (or four?) plural wives and became an adulterer.

Here was ex-Sister-in-Law Marjorie, a filthy fucking bitch, to be devastatingly frank. She was almost dislocating her neck in an effort to look askance at Nephew “Crazy” Pynn, who enjoyed dressing elegantly, if a bit meretriciously, and playing like he was Bela Lugosi. “I vant to bite your nack,” said “Crazy” Pynn to Bus Girl, making her jump.

And don’t forget Great Aunt Flo, who once had some, um, things removed (you mean your fallopian tubes and ovaries, Gr’Auntie?); who had felt so sorry about Sam’s mom’s most recent, um, hospitalization (in the locked ward! You know that! Say it, Gr’Auntie!). Not to mention Cousin “Grinning” Glenna, for whose skull God hadn’t vouchsafed enough skin, around whose feet flopped her brand-new, sweet, innocent baby, its head deformed horribly by the ineffective IUD preggers Glenna forgot (or didn’t know she was supposed) to remove. “Heav’nly Father give me this here child so’s he c’test muh faith.”

Suave Bro-in-Law Geoffrey, the ex-SDS-agitator-turned-wealthy-golf-club-pro, all in white clothes, holding one eyebrow cocked higher than the other, approached and asked, “Hey, old man! And what might you be driving these days?”

“My psychotic mother’s Volvo,” said Sam.

Over by the diving board, Aunt Rhubarb caused her branch of the clan to break out their ukeleles and wallaby boards, and she began to conduct a group-sing with an iron hand: “Monkeys in the zoo. Do the monkey doodle doooo!”

A large upper-case W of sun-baked, leathery buttock fell out from under Aunt Rhubarb’s tennis skirt and panties. With redoubled vigor she continued to conduct and sing in her heavy vibrato, tapping her foot and glancing significantly back at whoever was behind her. Cuzzie Buns, with the eyes hard as blue glass, came over in her black rubber one-piece, bringing the bus girl a flimsy paper plate deliberately overloaded with potato salad.

“Hey you big pah-loo-kah!” bellowed Buns, feigning a grab for Sam’s groin. “Please to meetcha?” she asked the bus girl, staring her down. “And, speaking of which, honey, did you ever hear you could remove them unsightly wrinkles from your li’l face by wiping Preparation H on it?”

Gasps of skeptical wonder were heard to escape from the slackened mouths of the congregating relatives: “Naw, really?” and “The hell she don’t say?” and “I never heard a lick o’ that one afore!” and “Preparation Whom?”

“Only problem is,” continued Buns in an authoritative tone, “you go around the rest of the day looking like a real bum-hole.” She remained calm and straight-faced, staring deep into the bus girl’s eyes, while the Edwines screamed in shocked mirth for two or three minutes.

“Yew could of goed all dang day ‘thout sayin that!” somebody managed to gasp eventually. “Yeah, Bun,” coughed somebody else. “That was so ignernt.”

“No, hey. But seriously,” said Buns, in total control of this difficult audience. Everybody got serious, and silence reigned for the first and last time all day. But Buns expertly paused one extra second, then two, not unlike a professional fly fisher waiting for the right instant to yank back and hook that sucker. Then she raised both eyebrows and said, “Now why d’y’suppose in the hell’d anybody ever want to wipe Preparation H on their face? Preparation H?”

The Edwines howled like tormented demons some more. This time a good three or four minutes at least.

“Even I’m not that wacky and madcap,” said Buns, the family comedienne. “Although I did once accidentally brush my toofums with contraceptual foam!”

“Yew should of went on the dang TV, Bun!” sobbed someone, tears of appreciation flowing down his or her cheeks.

Bus Girl was blushing orange into the reunited Edwines’ howls for mercy when, suddenly, without warning or provocation, Sam reached out and slapped the plate of potato salad out of her hands. She looked up at him, startled out of her wits.

“Don’t just stand there,” he said. “You know what to do. Clean up the garbage. Show them the technique. Bend over and reach for the garbage.”

She glanced left and right, self-consciously, then did as she was told. Sam pressed his right hand down flat on her shoulders, held her in the bent-over position, and dug all four of his giant left fingers up through the seat of her dungarees, deep into her anus. He playfully goosed her, in other words. Buns shrieked for everybody to watch the little lady squirming to get free. More screams of jollity. Aunt Rhubarb came galloping over, screaming also.

The bus girl gasped and whimpered. When he finally let her up, she had real tears in her eyes. She looked down and fiddled with the frayed sleeve of her moose and mallard duck shirt, pulling it secretively down over her lobster claw, too fazed even to reach down and pull her pants out.

“Awwww, she’s blushin,” chuckled Aunt Rhubarb. “Ain’t that cute?”

It was small cause to wonder that Sam had flunked the Minnesota Multi-Phasic Personality Inventory four times, the test where they ask you thirty-nine different ways if you ever had a bowel movement that looked like tar. He actually had a wet, slippery hardon when he and Bus Girl sat down on deck chairs with his aunt. Rhubarb crossed her bare sunburned legs high in Sam’s face and began to bounce them rapidly up and down. She took a deep, fetid breath or two, and asked, “So when you gonna learn that ol’ Stevie Foster on yer hawrp? I’m dyin t’come sing at the resty-rawnt with you backin me up, Sambo.”

Sam paused and looked at his aunt’s face. It was huge and too long, like a horse’s face. And the skin on her cheeks was like a used grocery bag, so brown and crinkly and overexposed to salt-desert wind and sun. It was the same enormous face that had provided him with his very first and most intense exposure to pure loathing. It had sneered overhead in hissing, venomous reproach after she’d caught the three-year-old toddler Sammy seducing “Crazy” Pynn under a back-yard picnic table somewhere.

Actually, the two youngsters hadn’t really been fucking, but they did have their little pants down and were spanking each other with a willow switch and toying with each other’s wrinkly-winklies. Sex play, perfectly normal, except Rhubarb had never read Freud, nor even Spock. Nor anything else, for that matter.

And now, as he sat in front of Aunt Rhubarb, Sam had the lubricated, preseminal sort of chubby. He was thinking in baby-talk about bossing Bussy Girly: make her bend over some more, open her bare bottom, play like mean Dada, spanky-spankums up her poot-poot.

“Got a bit o’ that ‘tatah salad on yer nice shirt, didn’t ya?” Rhubarb asked her, lacing it with a nasal, mockingly sweet and rising inflection.

Sam heard himself say, “She shore did, ‘n that’s a fact.” He was starting, finally, to let go and talk like the Utah baby he was. Muscular release rushed through his insides, like that accompanying movement of the bowels. Family reunion really did reconnect you with your deep roots. He just let it spew and belch forth: “Y’d think a body that cleaned up garbage for a living ‘d know how to not get it all the way up to their elbow ‘n back ag’in. Ain’t that the Gawd’s honest truth, Auntie?”

“Yup,” said Rhubarb, “Crazy” Pynn’s secret personal tailor. “Ex-specially such a swell piece of clothing like that duckie shirt is there.”

They twitted her and, all the while, Bus Girl couldn’t seem to look up from picking at her cuffs. Sam’s act of goosing seemed to inspire the tribe to new heights of celebratory behavior. Somebody managed to get the dozens of clansmen synchronized to execute a choo-choo train impression. It began with a few of the older uncles hammering back the dregs of their creme sodas and rubbing the empty cans on the chain link fence around the pool in slowly accelerating unison. One of Sam’s red-haired nymphomaniac cousins clambered onto the diving board in her string bikini and began to shriek at irregular intervals like a train whistle.

Then, on cue, somebody’s fat wife or mom brayed, “All a-boa-a-ard!” and everybody jumped up and attacked the metal tables and lifeguard towers with folding chairs and ice chests, their buck-toothed mouths screaming choo-chugga-choo-choo noises, faster and faster, louder and louder. Sam gritted his teeth and curled back his lips until he thought his face would burst, a hundred thousand blackheads rocketing. He leaned close to his Aunt Rhubarb and spoke directly into her nauseating ear. He had no idea if she could hear what he said through all the chaos and compacted wax.

“Aunt Rhubarb! You are like a coarsened version of myself: where the line of my jaw is forceful, yours is unwieldy and hangs slack; where I am motivated by high aesthetic impulses and stuff like that, you are just a horny old cunt. Aunt Rhubarb! Everything you do is sexual, and you don’t even know it, like Doris Day. And, like Doris Day’s, your cheeks are disproportionately gargantuan, your eyes reptilian, your singing voice hideous and clammy as oleomargarine wiped on scratchy saltines in the morning when I have strep-throat from a solitary bath in this town’s culinary wa-wa supply.

“And, difficult as it will be for you to believe, I haven’t touched the fucking Stevie Foster. Aunt Rhubarb! If I die unrecorded and obscure, if I wind up having to take my demo tapes and bury them, Qumran-wise, in a jar in some salt-flat cavern not far from the door of your desolate mobile home, it’ll be because I share half the genes that produced you and these other filthy, greasy, enormous animals.

“Only take a whiff, Rhubarb: their collective bellowed breath is making this whole resort smell like fresh, human excrement. Even the local pig farmers are packing up to leave. See? Even they can’t stand it. In my depths I feel it now, in my deepest groin, up from the soles of my feet, I mean it. I am repelled, Rhubarb. I loathe the very air slurping through the pores gawking from these naked legs of yours.”

Suddenly, a high, trilling shriek brought Sam out of his entranced dithyrambs. He found himself, elbows mashed deep in his aunt’s lap, his incisors gritted into the crumbly metal of the miniature Eiffel Tower clamped on her left earlobe. She was giggle-howling in thrilled agony, for Sam had bitten the bauble clear through and had nearly pulled her catcher’s mitt-sized ear out by the roots. And she thought he was flirting, that her heretofore reserved nephew had finally blossomed, come out of his shell and become demonstrative at last. He was actually breathing in her ear! Eeew! An occasion to shriek! And to tighten her crossed thighs! And to bounce!

By this time, the other Edwines had grown tired of concentrating (stunted attention spans run in families), and had left off trying to sound like a train. Now they were just banging and screaming randomly, as each of them pleased. The bus girl, Prissy Clyster (or whatever her name was) turned to Sam, tremulously, and whispered up into his ear, “Are they making f-fun of m-me now?”

Scarcely had she gotten this out, when somebody ran up from behind, yanked one of her pigtails, and screamed “Ba-ooooh!” She was all ready and primed to consummate the initiation, her little spine tightened and locked in terror. So Sam left the bus girl in the capable hands of Rhubarb and repaired to Cowboyland Spaw’s private mineral bath shack for some health-bringing steam and privacy. He ascended to the cactus-covered knoll overlooking this inferno.

three reviews by Aleathia Drehmer

The Mambo Kings Sing Songs of Love by Oscar Hijuelos

This book is about two Cuban brothers who come to America in the time before Castro took over. When they came over it was not about “a better life”, but about new adventure and music and opportunity. These brothers were great musicians playing mambo, cha-cha-cha, boleros and any other form of Latin music of its time. We are talking 1940’s NYC Latin music scene. One brother is a macho….a man’s man, a ladies man and full of life and excitement. The other is a gallego which is reference to a man that would come from Spain, but also one with a great melancholy about him. So they were opposites.

This book is about the journey of Cuban music in NYC through the 1940’s to the 1960’s. It is about love and loss and great, heartbreaking longing. This story is filled with images of pastoral Cuba, of rich foods, and thick with Cuban terms and language that surprisingly does not take away from the book, because the author explains it all to you without detracting from the story. It is as if the brothers were telling you a tale of their lives. It is sensual with many scenes of lovemaking and the pure passion men and women have for each other without it being a trashy romance novel.

I found it to be enriching in Latin culture and I desired listening to the Afro-Cuban All Stars a lot while reading this book, because it felt good. I found myself wanting to eat rice and beans and thick pork chops and fried plantains. I wanted to dance about the room. I wanted to make passionate love to someone. I wanted to play the congas and sing at the top of my lungs. I wanted feel the sunshine on my face, but mostly, it made me long for my family. I want that feeling of having my clan together while eating and laughing and remembering the tales of our lives.

Sometimes it is hard to find a book with all of these things that is masterfully written so that the pages fly by until you have come to the end, weeping and clutching the book to your chest, wanting just a little bit more. This book takes you to another place and the joyousness of music and of life.

The Big Rock Candy Mountain by Wallace Stegner

Wallace Stegner is by far one of my favorite authors in the world. This man can spin a yarn and detail the open prairie with his pen so meticulously that I always feel like I am there breathing in the air, seeing the expanse of the untouched sky, and feeling the breadth of the land. I love stories about pioneers. I always have, and I realize now why that is. I am a woman of hope. These stories about prairies, westward moving men and women all start with the seed of hope; some new life, new claim upon land that might establish them as citizens of this country…..this America. But none of us can ever really claim that. We are all foreigners to this land. In this time and space we have lost that spark of pure hope; that great longing for the original American dream.

This book took me a long time to read. I have many excuses and none of which I will validate. I have been lazy and there is no excuse for it. This book was not riveting or excessively adventure filled, but a slow progression of the lives and deaths of a family trying to mark their corner out. There is something magical about following this family on a journey that none of us could ever imagine in our wildest dreams. Maybe some of us have had similar lives as children and get to the place in our adult lives and look back in wonder as to how we survived as reasonably healthy adults. I know that I do this. I think of the alternate routes my life could have gone were it not for hope and for the understanding that I get in this life exactly what I need as it happens. We all do. It is the ability to open your eyes and see it, to acknowledge that the lessons are there to be learned. So many of us turn the blind eye and it leaves us miserable in the moment and jaded when looking back.

I read a quote in the wee hours of the morning, though seemingly having nothing to do with Wallace Stegner and his book, it is all together apparent to me now that it is. “Most people would rather be certain they’re miserable than risk being happy.” - Robert Anthony

This book is about risk and life and tough love. It is about loyalty to the family and death and the ability to see the truth of the matter. It is a long book with small print. It is challenging, but it is worth it to fall in love with the people and see a life chased after, but never caught.

The Story of Lucy Gault by William Trevor

This book I got on the cheap rack at Barnes and Noble one day and frankly, I didn’t know the author or anything about the story, but the cover was beautiful. It was five bucks. I thought, what the hell.

Inside, I found myself traveling to Ireland in a small town in County Cork. I am a sucker for Ireland and maybe that is because I am a sucker for the sea. I am not sure. This is a lovely story about the time right before World War II when Ireland began to get heated up. It is about a family torn apart from the loss of a child, or so they believe.

The parents leave for continental Europe and this child is found, and the entire book is the life of Lucy and that of her parents, oblivious to her being alive. It neatly tells the story of how one deals with the loss of a child and how one deals with the absence of parents. There are beautiful descriptions of landscape and the quirkiness of Lucy Gault. It is not uproarious in emotion, but tends to deal you its literary blows with a quiet steady hand. There is an unsettling feeling that you cannot quite name about the title character. She has a reticence about her that is moving.

It is just over 200 pages and worth the read for something pastoral and quiet and steadfast.

poem with audio by Melissa Mann

the bag she keeps her mind in

hangs off
her zimmer frame,
the crash barrier
that goes everywhere
with her.

she’s sat down
on herself,
a high seat chair
with her name
written in blue biro
on a strip of Elastoplast
stuck to the backrest.

ninety three,
maud braithwaite is
one of a dozen
elderly residents
strung in rows
across the day room
like worn beads.

the bag’s in her lap now,
her fingers and thumbs
worrying the zip
trying to get
at herself.

she pulls out
a package,
saying to no one
in particular
that her mother
just gave her it
and wouldn’t take
any money for it.

it’s a silk purse,
vintage,
with a silver clasp
and sequins
hole-punched
out of rainbows.

it’s wrapped in
a pair of white
disposable pants

“to keep it nice
‘cause everything nice
spoils.”

Art by Criz de Reve

(c) 2008 by c.d.r.art

Clockers versus The Wire by Steve Finbow

I don’t have a television. That’s not a boast or a way around paying the license. I just don’t have one. Spend a year in Japan and you’ll come away loathing your sixteen-foot by eight-foot flat-screen. Japanese television shows are dreadful - like Swapshop and Tiswas for adults. But I do have a MacBook, and on it I watch DVDs. The latest - after The Sopranos and Buffy the Vampire Slayer - is The Wire.

I’m one episode away from the conclusion to season two (don’t tell me, don’t tell me) and while watching season one I was reading Richard Price’s Clockers (not at the same time - I mean, I was reading when I wasn’t watching - oh, you figure it out). Pure coincidence. And there are similarities. The Wire’s D’Angelo Barksdale conducts his drug business in the low rises from a sofa, Ronald Dunham (Strike) deals from a bench under the towers. Buddha Hat is similar to Omar Little. Dempsy, New Jersey, could be Baltimore.

Both The Wire and Clockers are neo-realist, tough, and, like McNulty and Rocco Klein, they grab you by the balls and twist. Richard Price wrote episodes of The Wire for seasons three and four, joining other crime writers such as George Pelecanos, Dennis Lehane, and Rafael Alvarez, all of whom write about inner-city neighbourhoods and are as gritty and hard-boiled as writers get.

But which did I prefer? The Wire is up there with the best - The Sopranos, Buffy, Twin Peaks - it’s violent, funny, and has well-crafted characters. Clockers is Price’s best work - as involved as any DeLillo, well written, driven. And here’s my problem. The inherent passivity of television, of cinema (don’t get me started), means I cannot fully involve myself. I have to stand back, watch; the implied voyeurism makes it impossible for me to enjoy the thing for the thing itself. I’m always looking for stage props, for lighting, the reality is never real enough, it can’t be.

Yet in the novel, I slip easily between the sheets, go down on the characters, insert my inky digits into the folds, the crevices, come up with a little grime under my nails, a little blood, a smidgen of shit, a dusting of frass. I’m gay for Rocco Klein but can’t get it out of my head that Dominic West (Jimmy McNulty) is English. I can taste the Yoo-hoo Strike swigs from but don’t understand why Kima Greggs insists on wearing her hair up.

Both The Wire and Clockers are post-Zolaesque (that’s Émile not Gianfranco) studies of urban desolation, crime, and corruption - both are true-to-life portrayals of human weakness, bravery, greed, and stupidity; but I prefer the word to the view, the book to the DVD. Television, the cinema, the theatre are passive art forms; the novel, the short story, the poem are active… I wear my red handkerchief in my left hip pocket. Where do you wear yours?

Lit Up Magazine interviewed by Pat King at Outsider Writers

five poems by Steve Ely

 get raped

wasnt there a rumour he was fifteen years old living with cus up there in the catskills post juvie post pigeons post jacking/bedstuy roadwork and sparring and gym everyday fifteen years old a kid needs to relax once in a while get him some well apparently he did they say cus killed the story paid off the broad maybe the cops mike was his boy gone be the best the worlds ever seen no goddamn bookyak gone fuck it all up but whats he learn from that then cus whats he learn then cus croaked and berbick spinks frank bruno etcetera one hundred million bucks he cut loose jim and teddy and threw in with the don and it all went to fuck over buster douglas robyn & mrs givens desiree washington they all got their piece what he got was bankrupt and evanders earlobe see its pimps and whores shysters and conmen fuckers and fucked the bottom lines the bottom line theres a payday for everybody willing to throw themselves onto the train wreck nothing pays like victimhood so why dont you get raped why dont you get raped why dont you get raped go and get fucked

john x

a man whose violent behaviour is so ambitious and remorseless that he is wholly beyond the deterrent reach of the law judge nicholas posner

burning burning burning i fell between my mothers legs carrying a shank dont fuck with me

the storm drain on jackson and sixth chains pipes switchblades assholes want it they gone get it

get out of the car bitch ill shoot you in the face GET OUT THE FUCKING CAR

yeah i done some juvie time whats it to ya ya want some fuckers i dont give a shit how many they are

get off my back jarhead quit picking on me the fuck you mean i cant see my girl motherfucker BOOM

no joint can hold me copper ill cut your fucking throat oh man the fucking armory BOOM BOOM BOOM

flicking water in my face you think thats funny hey asshole your nose is broke you laughing now

toad fitting to rape me hell i was down with those guys fuck that now you like steel nigger die bitch die

maximum security my ass hey screw you want some paint cans tv sets wheeeee! bring it motherfuckers

we yoked this nigger the fellas owed the spics so it had to be done life plus fifty boofuckinghoo

karma lot

what is fame anyway but transitory celebrity somehow cast in brass a haircut headshot soundbite smile yeah thatll do it that plus checking out like james dean live fast die young and leave a good looking corpse from the front anyway this jug eared silver spoon lace curtain mick a bona fide war hero dont look too close a published author dont look too close fresh faced all american boy tacking to starboard in windbreaker and yacht shoes dont look too close [a tubercular cripple whacked out on quackdope for his addisons crohns and celiac diseases ‘urethritis' ulcers adrenal insufficiency] he had it all but wealth and power corrupt cook county bay of pigs operation mongoose he sold his soul to the devil and the devil always collects see i dont think he thought for a second that the rules of the universe ever applied to him because his old man taught him one thing and one thing only anything you want because you can buy it men women silence the white house for example but theres an old west end proverb you can judge a man by the company he keeps dave frank pete old joe lil bro fiddle faddle feelgood FUCKED what i remember was his sporty young hairstyle what i remember was his levi sta prest what i remember was eight seconds of zapruder the devil always collects ask jimmy carlos santo mo triangulation crossfire

the jack (hero boys)

he gave me his mind he gave me his body but he gave it to anybody gaycdc

a round of applause for jack he lost his cherry at platos retreat giving as good as he got and then some hot stuff they all were bruce lance julian hero boys gleetings to you all kok hung the korean desk clerk loved them but the excessive venery irritated dick no good will come of it that was straight up the end turned nasty penicillin salvarsan freddies mercury in vain hot piss rectal chancres kaposis sarcoma promiscuous arsekoitai left us all fucked those of us remaining retreated into germ free monogamy and beat ourselves off to memories of the mat room a twenny four seven mongolian cluster fuck jesus just thinking about it i can feel my cock burning

the life and times of britney spears

1981 sometimes its hard to tell the real from the fake the permanent from the transitory the substantive from the flash in the pan moment v moment the world turns a maternity ward in mccomb mississippi reagan arafat friedman brezhnev thatcher von hayek sands nkomo john hinckley jnr file the copy let posterity run it or spike it

1987 twinkle toes academy as recommended by her agent classical modern and tap one step two step three step development strategy by 2050 all two thousand million of them will live like deng xiaoping send me your grain your scrap metal your unrefined crude meanwhile in paktia province near the village of jaji bin laden took a slug in the metatarsal taking down the spetznaz with blowpipes and stingers m-i-c k-e-y m-o-u-s-e moment v moment can you feel the world turning

1989-1992 eight year old wants to make it she better be a shark madonna drew barrymore jonbenet ramsey ruthless starsearch hollywood frenzy because the prize ohmigod the prize a billion dollars you can live like sting in beverley hills rainforest greenhouse yanomani lip plate dont you know that an area the size of switzerland france alaska brazil and its not just the trees coming down the berlin wall now you got a reason they sold off the rubble for greenbacks thats the way to do it yeltsin jabbed gorbachov on live tv incipit roman abramovich single european market desert storm ruby ridge federal juggernaut running outta control moment v moment can you feel the world turning

1993 michael eisner threw a party for the new kids there was justin christina ted turner rupert murdoch these boffins from mit some nerd from seattle buncha hard working asians bringing fibreoptic cable satellite tv msdos windows world transforming geek shit michael jackson lured jordy to his gingerbread theme park david koresh turned semis to full automatic from wacko to waco janet renos apocalypse moment v moment can you feel the world turning princess di was there and ohmigod madonna virgin whore terrible bitch goddess next door

1998ff BOOM everything went supernova in no particular order uss cole the nairobi truck bomb do that to me one more time you got it dar es salaam pentagon twin towers oops i did it again britneybinladenbinladenbritney has anyone ever seen them together worlds most powerful celebrity man of the year he lammed it to a cave in the karakoram she tongue plunged madonna and shacked up on mtv meanwhile in beijing and new delhi three billion people are aspiring to hummers and cell phones robert from kolkata took control of my screen and said he liked my desktop nathans lit up at night thats a beautiful market sir in six months hell be snarfing a frank and registering at suny londons becoming the suburb of the world white flight plutocrats mittal sinawatra beshinevski running from the squalor and secret police theyll need maids drivers gardeners security but the natives wont do it prefer watching tv on their social welfare asses hence serbs filipinos pakistanis poles ghanaians kurds turks you know those guys the emergence of colleen mccloughlin moment v moment can you feel the world turning

2008 hopped up on goofballs bitch shaved off her hair got sectioned to the ding farm she had a good run but the iron laws of celebrity say its not over yet trangression feeds abasement feeds repentance feeds COMEBACK osamas still sub rosa hauling his dialysis machine around the hindu kush or downtown islamabad the isi know but theyre not saying saddams in his hole the talibs are painting their toenails and applying eyeliner you can buy a blackberry in ulan bator a skinny latte in mogadishu the slavs are moving west africans moving north and across the atlantic from lagos and dakar to dulles international theyre all going to business school large earthquake in china subcontinental tsunaumi crashing in the bay of bengal rippling through the world cnn newscorp gazprom google david beckhams bigger than the galaxy his face could sell genocide and it probably will richard gere groping shilpa shetty on zee tv crazed brahmins and vaishyas burning effigies in slumstreets and these rig veda throwbacks are nuked to the gills next door its even worse you can justify anything with allahu akhbar saw off a mans head flay children with acid s scary sideshow but theres a bigger context these guys got nothing they tried socialism nationalism religious revival and they still got squat what they really want is self esteem and a range rover but ill tell you my friends they wont get it from opec or al qaeda look to the east look to the west moment v moment cant you feel the world turning