The Only Thing(s) to Fear

There's a review of Monkeytown in The Brooklyn Rail this month. Thanks to Stephen Cicerelli for his kind words. Also, thanks to the Rail.

Fascist-Dogma-Nectar Overflow

Know that it’s not cool to jump off a Subway restaurant. It just isn’t. My brother was neither holy nor insane, so I can’t tell you why he did it.

“I am an IED and this Walmart life is a short fucking fizzle,” was all he kept shouting down to the security guards and latex-gloved sandwich artists waiting to catch him.

Fearing that the slip-of-tongue might cause some friction with a minor fast food butt buddy (and more importantly, a possible decline in sales in the Global Regression aisle), Walmart decided to sue the entire town for malicious suburban redundancy.

We thought we had a pretty decent case until they brought in the Disney lawyers, who immediately started handing out 10-percent-off passes to Space Mountain to the judge, the non-Hispanic members of the jury, and every third octogenarian who promised to buy a Five Dollar Foot-long. That’s when we knew they’d take everything.

Now my brother can’t go to the U2 concert next week because he doesn’t have eyes anymore. None of us do. Just old, raw sockets. It really isn’t cool.

PTSD Is So 2005

Oprah agreed on a fair way to decide initiation, which involves two closed fists and pretending your grandmother’s in the room. The compromise proved to be a big ratings boost in most major markets (except, of course, in Kandahar) and was rated as favorable by almost every viable demographic besides panty-sniffing Japanese stock brokers vacationing in Haiti and bomb-sniffing dogs out on recon.

Honestly, I think it made most people feel a little better about the future: vapid suit-herders could still meditate under clouds of dharma-jizz in obese central-air pumping boxes, highways would still shimmer in the hot afternoons and block complete glimpses of fields, bizarre tension vibes and unprovoked assaults would still be the two most sought-after traits of every washed-up child actor.

My brother came home in August with half a femur and a pull-one-over-on-you Midwestern drawl he got from watching too many John Hughes movies in the hospital. Maybe that’s why nobody argued when he stopped taking his Ambiens and started stashing them away for what we assumed would be one heck of an Alive Day party the following year.

“The least coolest person on TV is more interesting than anyone I know,” he told me while I sponged him down for the last time, his Budweisers raised above the tub like night goggles.

5 Tent City Poems

Avant-Girl 2011 (Washington Square)

The azalea,

she said,

means temperance,

passion,

sisterhood,

good-luck drum circles

and fragility.

We waited

in her tent,

smoking.

 

Minority Report

Face it, blondebeards,

waves burned

this prairie

more than twice:

Our time is moot.

The Media Materializes as a Schaffner Film

Apelike quadrupeds

with widescreen lenses

strip us in vitro.

Time to stop drawing

prosthetic crucifixes

on the sidewalk.

PTSD is So 2007 (Rubber Bullet Sonata)

                        

“The least coolest person on TV,

more interesting

than anyone here,”

sings Private Jimmy

while we sponge

his vegetable legs.

Historical Context

When asked why he felt so compelled to douse his body in flames, the elderly monk replied, “My feet hurt.”