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The End of Civilization as We Know It
Question is, how many carpets did you see flying in close formation?
Question is, which hand would you use
If you were asked to choke yourself for the sake of civilization?
The real question is, if you could
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amongst the other gentlygathering flotsam up against my internal dictionary's borders. Doesn't matter much if the deed is life rushing itself through a tube that poured us out together like this, or just mutual need that…
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It's just me.An October afternoon.Ocean and Ocean and Ocean. if you keep looking, down the coastthere is fog.Only fog and me and sea.I imagine him before I see him.Slow walk just above the water line, the fog catching up behind him,fantastical cape.The rational…
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Our flesh was on fire like a flute with wind, or a little reed next to the dried river. I was like a voyeur whose heart was a sponge, brushing up against all that disturbed man. I was only and ever the flower of our notorious youth, aware of more than the
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Everything's inflatable. Here we go. It's all plastic. Give it a rest, kid.You could say that I just want to enjoy nothing for now. But. Let's go ahead and buy into its precisely sealed with a rubber stamped kiss kind of survival rate statistic for…
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the drive-ins now are dead and gone /
where once we laught through splatter films: / our screens too small, our horrors do not fit— / no monumental screens are left, / no close-ups show us what we think we fear.
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I found Marty sitting out on a neighbor’s front porch across the street from his house, which was next door to mine. He was sort of crouched down, early one morning as I headed off to work at the paint factory down in West Berkeley. I wasn’t absolutely su
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The light on his face from a lamp
Felt hat with a black band
Scrunched down
The nose creating a strong shadow
With dark, straight eyebrows under the hat
Red and orange beard
Leaning forward at the café table, watching
A damp curl of ha
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"Polio?" people wondered. They asked: "Is that contagious?" Nobody knew. It was 1953. The epidemic raged on. Children in some towns were being made to stay indoors during the polio season for fear that the disease was airborne. It was putting an unnatura
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A man learns too late
How small deer laugh
It’s true
When a man goes mad
Ropes come down from the clouds
He cannot be sure of anything
Anything
The way’s uncharmed
He thinks someone else’s strange thoughts
And it all seems a simple
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She was deaf, but he was not; they both could sign.
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Crosses sitting on the hillside
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“Have the tomatoes come in yet?”“Dottie…”Mrs. Dorothea Tilden pointed a trembling finger at Harriet.“You promised me tomatoes, Harry.”Harriet put her hands on her hips, a stance Dorothea knew well. One more sharp word meant fight; two…
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"Why?" is the question I ask, but no one is around to answer. What would an answer change anyway? But it is all I can do. So it is all I can do.
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I realize I am standing with my hands on my naked hips, my panties and shorts are clumped around my left ankle.
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Here was the situation, as I recounted it to myself: somehow, I was trapped in some unearthly dimension where Baltimore, actor Emilio Estevez, and myself had somehow collided in a big cartoon scrum complete with onomatopoeias and clouds of dust.
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Imagine a morning without dawn, without daylight ... The night birds still hoot, the flowers wait for the light to change their make-up, black birds have locked their beaks. A morning unlike any other ... The moon above continues to reign over the milky way, the stars to…
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Bands:
Free Blankie
My First Dustbuster
Sledge Hammer
Glove Compartment
Hot Weather Lady
Cattle Prod and the Punks
The Cowpokes
Poker
Two Fingers In
Occupy This
Tidy Up
Goal Keeper and The Kneecaps
Leslie Sweet And The Kitchen
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Steve Kramer was a brilliant young artist on the scene in New York in the 70s when I was starting out as a writer. He built little electronic dioramas displaying stuffed rats in various bizarre settings. Flip the switch and they would get fried in a little rat-sized…
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As has happened many times in my life, I heard his voice in my sleep and I saw him, though only briefly. Over the years I have seen this man I thought was him clearly and known when he was in danger – a car wreck at twenty (I was correct on everything b
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It’s the longing from another life inside that pulls me along by the fine hairs below my navel, exposed at the midriff, and by the short fine hair at my neck, also the dense bunch between my legs, as you might imagine. And it’s the longing of the love I
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The sacrificial tendency is a real ugly one A pound of flesh, because it grows back But gnarled and scarred For you, So you may smile or cry Whatever you need How about an ounce of truth? How about I make a maze And you walk through…
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It was just her way. Slightly down and off to the left. Mom never looked anyone in the eye.
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Prologue Late at night, an old man named Drevin Philpott stands on the deck of a cruise ship, looking out at the sea. The man is hunched and very small. His arms and legs are thin and he's got a bowling ball for a gut. He's standing on a chair so he can…
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I'm in a pediatric emergency roomThere are teenagers who don't want to liveAnd babies who won'tBecause viruses still spread and people won't learnThe election results are coming inAnd somehowFucking somehowUnderqualified, overly bigoted politicians still winUnder the banner…
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They say his irrational outbursts and insane rantsare the results of untreated syphilis. Well, thatmakes perfect sense to me. I've always thoughtof him as a tessellated spirochete, a narcissistic chancre,festering pustule of a blistered imposthume. And whywouldn't a…
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The fire was so fierce,so fair like an opal;the most primal burn."Death haunts these trees,"the woman said, as she held the potof beetroot soup above the fire.They spoke from the basement; living in the dark space,nerves too locked up to to look out the windowand…
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muse of my heart, with each palace in love: / when Januaries lash with storm and sleet, / their dread dark nights all muffled in bright snows, / will you find coals to warm your purpled feet?
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The winter sun was going down and she watched it out the window.Light like shards of glass,time had melted.It took hold.She was held down by brown leather straps and she couldremember the smell of incense and little hands and little eyesof an infant cold on the bed.She…
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Orchids strewn over the floor...
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