Siamese Dream by Smashing Pumpkins

We used to listen to Siamese Dream in my car, driving alongside the beaches, driving all night. The CD would end and she’d press play again, and Cherub Rock would start, those octave power chords like diaphanous angel wings. She’d sing along. She was seventeen then. The most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen. Ever will see. Wisest person I’ve ever met. Her favorite song was Mayonnaise. I used to lie on her bed and watch her do her makeup, singing along as she painted the most vivid shade of red on her lips. I loved watching her get ready. But I couldn’t watch her undress. Just looked at the ceiling. I wasn’t a big fan of Soma. I always wanted to skip to Geek USA. It’s my favourite, I said. I liked it because it was manic and fucked up. At that time, I thought the more manic and fucked up the better. Happy to cast myself in a tragic role. I’d bang my head to the break down at the end of the song and her soft hands would reach for the wheel of the car. I broke up with her the day before Valentine’s Day. She begged me to see her, begged me not to do this now, on all days. When I stopped to pick her up she was waiting at the end of her driveway. She’d gotten ready to be driven around in my car. She floated across the road like an angel all in black. We drove around that night and listened to Siamese Dream, just like we always did. In between songs, she told me that she’d be strong for me. It was the last time we listened to that album together. It wasn’t the end for us. There was more dancing and more melody in our futures. But we never again listened to Siamese Dream. There was something about it that was too close to the nerves of the past. Billy’s voice on Spaceboy, like resting in the twilight after the sun has scorched the earth. That day on the beach, that first day, when we exchanged books, and saw that her favourite author, Donna Tartte, was friends with my favourite author, Bret Easton Ellis. We thought it was a sign. That fate had brought us together. And would keep us together. And we kissed with the cool breeze of the ocean washing over us. The first time I kissed a man was in an alleyway outside a club. He grabbed me and kissed me like he was eating out a passionfruit. The homeless guy collapsed against the dumpster started clapping and yelled ‘Go for it fellas!’ I stopped seeing the guy after a few weeks because he kept texting me things like ‘I didn’t wear underwear to work today.’ He said he’d never heard of Smashing Pumpkins.

Angel- Massive Attack

She strums my nerves, over my spine. Her finger tips like sex and my head sways into darkness. I feel her leaving, growing distant, but she kisses me anyways and drowns me out.

Her love is a burden, stutting around wounded, shamed, a degraded Aphroditie- stripping her clothes in the rain, tatters in the street.

My skin itches and burns and she soothes the pain with her tongue, biting my nipple.

The sheet strangles, stained with bloody love and a forgotten cigarette. Ashes and holes fill our passion, increases the rush as she breaks skin.

and I bleed.

Between her legs.

Windows break and I hear music playing backwards. Rhapsodies on bones of infant lullabys. There are no children in this world. Innocence is just a myth

and I bleed.

I rip her hair out. In anger? in lust? Strands slicing into my fingers, warring with tusses and muscle.

I commit a million suicides inside her

and I bleed to be reborn again.

Modern Acts of Callousness #28675

I walk around wanting to get in a fight. I bump into people, yell things at cars and make faces at people like they stink or something, hoping they’ll get pissed and take a swing at me. Then I can lay into them. I can only wonder what I’d do. When we were reading Camus’ The Stranger in Contemporary Lit Class the teacher asked us why Mersault shot the guy five or six times. I said because he shot him once so he thought he may as well shoot him again. The teacher said, you’re assuming he enjoyed shooting him. I don’t think she understood me. I meant that if he’s opened the Pandora’s Box of shooting the guy he may as well explore it. Watch the bullets go in. See what they do. If I was in a fight I’d want to bash the guy’s head into a wall. I’d wanna throw him through a window. And yet I don’t understand where that anger comes from. I’m such a sensitive person. I had tears in my eyes when I took my dog to get desexed because I couldn’t bear the thought of them cutting into this defenceless little thing. I can’t watch the news or read the newspaper. I know that Bret Easton Ellis read about people getting tortured in Concentration Camps and Sarah Kane read about soccer hooligans sucking people’s eyeballs out and I know that it destroyed them. I know it did. I want it to be a surfer jock that I fight. I want him to look at me and laugh and think me a pussy. He’ll be arrogant and bored and full of testosterone. He won’t get that I’m arrogant. That I’m fucking bored. And full of testosterone. Plus I have thousands of years of anger inside of me. I have twelve dimensions of anger inside of me. I have anger that stretches from the birth of civilization to the bitter fucking end. And when I find him I’m gonna tear his head clean off his shoulders.

Lear- When we are born, we cry that we are come
To this great stage of fools.

Modern acts of callousness #28674

I'm driving home and I'm thinking about all the things I have to do and I know I have so many things to do and there is not enough time and then I look ahead and see the traffic all banked up and I think what the fuck is going on up there and as I get closer I look out the window and see the sirens and I know there's been an accident and I think who the fuck got in an accident and I turn my music down because I can't stand the noise and I crane my head out the window and look to see who got in an accident and I'm thinking about the person that got in the accident and I'm hating the person that got in the accident and I'm wanting to get out of my car and find the person who got in the accident so I can say to them you stupid fucking cunt why the fuck did you get in a fucking accident and I picture this person all arrogant and fucking dumb probably with a flashy car and flashy fucking sunglasses thinking they're king of the world and not being able to drive properly and getting in an accident and as I crawl towards the accident I want to lean out the window and see them through a portal of broken glass and I want to point at them all covered in blood and bits of broken glass and say you stupid cunt I bet you feel real fucking dumb and I start to hope that they're dead because that's what they deserve for getting in an accident and I want to see them lying on the sidewalk all covered in blood and bits of broken glass so I can get out and point at them and say look what happened to you you stupid dead cunt and

Sneak Peak

There are a few posts that bring up The Play. But, the play has never appeared. That's because it's sitting in two piles of paper on two desks waiting for some of that cash-money to come rolling in to help with the next step of publishing. But, just for now, because I think it's about time- here's part of a scene called Spit from the second part of Swallow.

Janis Get a clue, you fucking asshole. You’re fat and broke it’s not my fault you’re dependant on me.

They start to scream from their chests.

Cary You’re dependant on me.

Janis Because you make me weak.

Cary You’ve always been week.

Janis You’ll always be a failure.

Cary You love it when I fail.

Janis I love it when you fail.

Cary I laugh when you cry.

Janis You’re always going to fail.

Cary You’re just a warm bed and a wet cunt.

Janis You’re just a loser with a nice smile.

They start to scream from their throats.

Cary I lie awake and dream of killing you.

Janis Oh god I wish you would.

The Lion's Mouth

Kamikazee leaves fall around, making up for the lack of promised rain, as the guardian lions watch my back. The sky is a half-assed grey, threatening to rain, but keeping it's calm, cool, concreted New York pallor. It's an earphone kind of world, everyone living out their own fantasies as they pass by, not so much as a glance, or nod, communication at a minimum but we wouldn't want it any other way, would we?
It's the constant defecation on the senses that drives the tourists up and down Broadway, through Times Square. The lights, the sounds, the giant video screens blasting commercials into our sub-conscious. Madame Tussauds, with it's giant gold hand pointing to us, almost in a condeming gesture as people gawk at the effigy of plastic death in the form of a static Whoopi Goldberg.
It's un-natural, this place. It's like walking through a dream, the sidewalks and streets turning into glue-like damnation, pulling you down to its level, forcing you to reality.
A chorus of happy birthday chimes out from behind popped caps of brown paper bags. They sing this celebrating another year gone by on the street in ratty blue sweaters and glistening bottles. They sing, commemorating one more year closer to death. Recognizing time passing when time has no meaning to them. No place to be, no place to go.
The yellow taxi horns bleed through my earphones and then I realize: This is it. New York. Thank fucking God.

Sex on Fire

Sex on Fire by Kings of Leon is playing as he comes on my chest. The sperm is lukewarm and he’s rubbing it into my skin, trying to draw out that final wave of pleasure. My chest hairs get stuck inside his cock as it closes up. He says he likes this song and takes it back to the start, turning it up. I lie there listening to it, watching him smoke a cigarette and stare out the window. He lives next to a quarry and there’s nothing around for miles. The song makes me think of liquid sex. Mercurial forms running together. I look down at my genitals, shriveling up into the patch of pubic hair I forgot to trim. He asks me if I want to stay around and watch a DVD. He got Clone Wars on bootleg. I tell him I need to get back to work. He notices me lying there, the sheen of his sperm still covering my chest. Sorry, he says, and tosses me a wet rag. He smokes another cigarette and I get dressed. When we first started meeting up we talked about him fucking me. But we never tried it. Now we just know to stay on the outside of each other. As I walk to the door, the song still playing from his room, I lean in and kiss his lips. Weird, he says, and my heart doesn’t miss. I drive home anxious to wash the dog smell of the wet rag from my skin.

The Spray

Wolverine Bailey has prepared to take it to the streets of NYC with paint and paste. Here are some practice runs with a spray can.

Kala by M.I.A.

When I’m driving around in my car and I’m listening to Kala two things about it strike me. The first is that its gangsta. I’m not talking about chinchilla coat wearing, drinking Courvoisier out of a pimp cup gangsta. Or driving around shooting each other in the balls gangsta. I’m talking about the type of gangsta where you turn that shit up and all of a sudden you’re throwing gang signs and yelling things like “Killer Bees” at random pedestrians. M.I.A. is gangsta at a time when self-proclaimed Tony Montanas are opening jewelry boxes and rapping over the green sleeves shit that comes out. Their video clips still look like Goodfellas, but musically, what did they sample: No Surprises? (Though, admittedly, No Surprises is pretty gangsta). The other thing you need to know about Kala is that it’s heavy, in a time when what passes for heavy is a sorry state of affairs. You know those bands, where it looks like Queer Eye paid a visit to Middle Earth and they sing about some dead chick named Lacretia and play solos that make you wanna stick your hand in the air and shout “By the power of Greyskull!” M.I.A.’s idea of heavy is taking a really heavy thing and hitting it against another really heavy thing. Or taking a hundred really heavy things and hitting them against a hundred other really heavy things. Boyz sounds like a million children flooding the streets of every city in the world and being cleansed with the rain like some William Blake shit. And Bird Flu is the heaviest song since B-tuned guitars and Brazillian percussion made sweet sweet love in Roots Bloody Roots. M.IA.’s idea of heavy isn’t sitting in the corner of a shopping centre and brooding on the unfulfilled promise of armpit hair. It’s the heaviness we hear when every foot on a busy street falls into lockstep; when the leviathans that bleed through our countries start to roar; when the war machines roll on and leave nothing behind them but the finest black sand. Are people really serious when they complain that she’s glorifying violence? Ooh, there are terrorist imperatives that underscore her lyrics and they’re a threat to Western values. What, drawn and talk of peace? And then there’s people criticising her uninflected tone, accusing her of lazy rapping. What, do you think she’s gone all around the world, cooked up these smoking beats, and then thought: I can’t be assed with vocals? I’ll just knock out any old rubbish then I can kick back with a spliff? Listen to her. This is what it sounds like. We walk the streets. We perceive the cracks on the pavement, the garbled static on the radio, and perhaps, if we’re lucky, the sun in the sky. And we move inside this kaleidoscope of swirling noise and junk with an endless and serene ambivalence. Her cut up lyrics are like the thoughts that besiege us every moment of every day. Collages made from pieces of everything, nothing, anything. All connected by the rules of anaphora. This is modern life. Props to M.I.A. for showing it in all its chaotic splendour.

W.B.