In front of the shopping cart
under the bridge
a small, hand-painted sign sits:

1502 west 4th

"Dear Bum.
Things here are great. Suzi is graduating next fall and John is the captain of his football team. Henry's business dealings are turning up roses and next payday we're going to a grocery store to gorge until we vomit. Wish you were here."

Magnanimous men take seize of the grain in my skull.
Even the Divine is dull
To the Mortal who will not See Death as being Holy Deed.
(Nothing really matters to the mind of who is most.)
So, carry on, carry on, carry ever on and on,
For the World has wish more likely that the wind in which

it rides,

Thus the reply:

"To whom it may concern,

your attention is noted but ultimately entropy. Much as the envelope served quite well to boil my morning tea, your letter is in front of me. I am in the largest room in the world and soon it will be behind me. Warn John not to catch any venereal diseases (a risk of professional atheletes you must surmise) and give Henry my love. Come visit the dump sometime, it is truly beautiful at this time of the year."

the faces of people like us.

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* We will deduct the equivalent of the GST from your total purchase price. Unfortunately, the GST offer excludes Cosmetics and Fragrances, Bath & Body, shoes by cK Calvin Klein, DKNY, Nine West, Enzo Angioni, Easy Spirit, Via Spiga, Stuart Weitzman, Calvin Klein & DKYN Handbags, Estate jewellery, Watches by Swatch, Gucci, Yves Saint Laurent & Calvin Klein, sale- and clearance-priced Prestige watches, sale- and clearance-priced Fine Jewellery, jewellery by DuNouveau, Memoire Paris, Diamond Essence and the Royal Canadian Mint, Roots merchandise, regular-priced Women's Designer Fashions (consisting of sportswear, denim fashions and bridge classes 359/118/654), Women's Claudel sleepwear, loungewear and robes, DKNY hosiery, $14.99 3 packs pantyhose, Men's regular priced Designer Fashions (consisting of sportswear, denim, tailored clothing, shirts, ties, underwear and accessories), Calvin Klein apparel & underwear, Hugo Boss underwear, Children's Tommy Hilfiger and Calvin Klein apparel, Sunglass Hut, Mont Blanc pens, sale-priced bedding & bath, housewares, regular-priced major appliances, vacuums, home comfort appliances, microwaves, Maytag appliances & Viking appliances, sale- and clearance-priced home merchandise (furniture, area rugs, outdoor furniture and accessories, BBQ's, sale-priced Home merchandise (consisting of Ralph Lauren / Polo bedding & towels, Liz Claiborne bedding & towels, Charisma bedding & towels, Royal Velvet towels), sale- and clearance-priced small electrics and personal care appliances, microwave appliances, Panasonic GAOO TVs, BBQs, Maytag appliances, pre-recorded video & audio tapes, CDs and film, greeting cards, Eaton Beauty Dolls, Beanie Babies, Lalique, Disney Classic Collection, Seagull Pewter, Swarovski, Lladro, Nao, Fine Bone China, Eaton Gift Certificates, Eaton Restaurants, concessions & serivices, Warehouse Stores & Clearance Centres except for Factory Outlet.

    Though most people envision them as noble predators of the air, the majestic eagle is, among with other notable food chain termini such as lions and tyrannosaurus rexes, a scavenger at heart, not deigning to dirty a refined talon on the hunt but preferring to sate itself on dead or dying meat prepared by some other agent of death - wolves, congenital bad karma, divine retribution, disease or doctors.

    Among monkeys and other simians there is a reflex to experience stark terror - the kind that closes your throat with a heartbeat and elicits screaming, howling noises truly suitable only for the lower primates - upon a few stimuli from our evolutionary past. Children will consistently rate snakes and spiders Least-Favored-Animal status in any zoo as a throwback to a fear to those animals on the savannah which would kill a large animal with an unnoticed bite without the need or even capability of consuming its prey. With age and experience many of us come to terms with sharing the Earth with those with eight legs and those with none, though we may float our tolerance in a boiling bath of a certain quantity of squeam. One shape which strikes hysteria into the hearts of all mothers and children alike, however, is the silhouette of a raptor's body eclipsing the sun, its feathered wingspan blocking the light in a shadow the shape of a rapidly-descending crucifix of avian appetite. This impulse of catastrophe goes further back than from man to ape, but verily from dirt to divine. We remember, in our heart of hearts, that birds are of the realm of sky-gods, retributive avatars of stern, cruel gods with unpronounceable (unspeakable? unnameable!) names, and that though we may feel charitable in sharing the fires with those less fortunate than us, come lunchtime it might as well be our eternal livers in the eyes of the punctual peregrine, perennially prepared for its feast of foie gras.

...

    We named him Prometheus, Fire-Bearer, every time he entered the complex. It didn't matter that it wasn't his name (inevitably, Fate failed to be so literal) or that we would only be applying it for a few days; the moniker stuck. Upon entrance he would be concerned with a number of things - his accommodations (spare but adequate, as with the rest of us), his newfound inmates, and his conditions first physical, material (fingering the stitches nervously, as he always did, pondering scars which would never find time to arrive) and finally, ultimately (or were all other considerations merely aspects of this one?) spiritual. Was his spirit in good shape? Had he spoiled his Grace by allowing the removal of the large fatty lump from his abdomen? If his conditions worsened (if! if! of course, they never got the enlightening benefit of the empirical play both put on and witnessed by all of us, never realizing their walk-on roles) and (God forbid) death result, would ascension follow, to Heaven or Purgatory or some place better (read: less squalid) than here, this cesspool we called a place of God and defecated in nonetheless - or would his fate be determined by the floating liver, freed from his body and living on in a jar of nutritive solution a few thin walls' separation distance, bearing intense scrutiny. Would his Eternal Reward be co-opted by a forever as a disassociated phantom, doomed to haunt the crossroads where his hypothetically holy organ had parted ways from him?

    It is true that his concerns tended to get more base as the day went on. This was viewed as some of the incarcerated as evidence of the liver's intrinsic link to the soul, as the chronological distance from its excision drove Prometheus' mental state further and further towards the banal, the base - but a much more scientific reasoning proposed by those of us who somehow managed to ignore the man's growing torment (and who somehow became a majority, growing complacent to his endless deaths) was his own growing realization that the discomfort he was experiencing was not going to get any less as time went on, and like mad butter all concerns for the future melted away, leaving a gleaming core of fear for the present - concern not where he go when he dies but merely if he die, and later, that he die, and soon.

    We learned to measure these men as a sunset - high noon at arrival, and as the hours passed his complexion would darken and turn ever more jaundiced, as a flower losing moisture, as the moon passing behind a viscous mass of rich, frothy pollution or red, foaming tuberculotic sputum, as a man dying. His first meal would be sat at with great gusto, but by sundown he would be lying, enfeebled, on his hard mat and by daybreak the following morning the transition from mat to gurney would be complete - it was not unusual for his frame to be nothing but that, the picture pilfered, the contents snicker-snackered off to somewhere where they could warrant more appreciation than this abuse. There were a few hardy souls, giants among men who could tolerate the ravages for two days, occasionally three, but these men died alone and without sympathy, unlike the more typical one-nighters, as few among us could stomach the prolonged throes these stamina-cursed men would be put through, crying out to our Father above for the weakness to slip out without the Armageddon tearing through their guts, the Wormwood setting in their belly and turning one-third of the contents bitter. The fast dyers would die surrounded by friends but no one would talk to a man who had the audacity to live more than a day without a liver. These walking contradictions would retreat to their spare and spartan chambers and eke out the remaining hours in solitude - none of us would visit them, and sometimes we would only learn of his death (a terrible tension being lifted from our otherwise equitably-stressed existence) by the subsequent arrival of his replacement, Prometheus, the following morning.

    I move my lips, and though no words emerge, still do I lie. The psychopomps, escorts to the world of the dead, would always be near. In fact, often it seemed these doctor-priests accompanied the man's progress completely from beginning to end, and beyond. One imagined that the gap between death and interment was sufficient for a final evaluation of the meat the scientists had obtained - proportions, causes of death and of course the ultimate indiscernible spiritual value of such a mass of dead man. With a meat thermometer still sticking out of him he'd be weighed against the Feather of Truth, but the information never trickled back down to us as to the fate of his ka. I mix and confuddle my mythologies here, but assuredly everlasting flame is no more absurd an eternity than a monstrous Devourer composed of equal parts lion, crocodile and hippopotamus, seized with an abject appetite for souls of all flavours and especially those disdainful of the appropriate rituals.

    Doubtless the presence of the psychopomps was somewhat of a subconscious reassurance to him, that his spiritual condition not be entirely neglected in his inevitable lack of concern for anything beyond the palpable thickening of his blood, and surely none of us would sleep if not for the morphine they slipped him at Communion, consumption of the flesh, blood and pharmaceuticals of Christ - not enough to sedate, but sufficient for a numbing purpose, that he experience a somewhat premature separation from his earthly meat, where he can retain his perceiving faculties, he can still bear witness to his own destruction but not shake the nagging fear of disassociation from the lump of flesh surrounding him rapidly losing all resemblance as it darkened and erupted in sores and bruises to anything he might recognize as a body belonging to him, let alone as a lump of clay belonging to someone else and only on loan. At times it seems he was aware of his position only in a sense of drowning in a mass of someone else's meat, in a cage of bones and veins wrapped in skin with no lid or opening through which to escape - consciousness neglecting the egresses nature provides all of us via the nose, mouth, rectum or navel. I always considered my soul's escape to be best accomplished in the forms of words, verbal communication, where my ideas could escape my frame and fill those of others. These men, however, dwelled entirely on transference of something apparently less concrete and physical than words and concepts. Their escape wanted to transcend the passage of air through the lips or of an image from a sheet of paper through the eyes - rather to enact a magic act, slipping from a padlocked and welded box "now-you-don't-see-it, now-you-still-don't"-style. Ladies and gentlemen, you may note I have no soul in my hat, no soul in my wand, and no soul up my sleeves...

    What the purpose was of exposing the man to our company none of us could surmise. He didn't benefit from the surroundings as we nearly universally shunned him, perhaps occasionally extending a sympathetic gesture to one who looked least deserving of the grisly end awaiting him but in these new surroundings he was wary, and though signs of generosity were rare, when they were extended it served to tip the man off that not everything was as right as it seemed, that these were not actions of charity but of premature consolation. As a reminder to us that death was all around us and eternal his presence was superfluous, all of us already suffering from various maladies as results of our incomplete conditions. It certainly indicated the ubiquity of God only in the sense of that most stern and cruel interpretation of the deity - the Abraham-doctors would lead Prometheus up the hill daily, but nothing was swapped at the last minute - no mutton, bleats of the benign Lamb of God shrieking in ecstasy as it spurted great gobs of animal sacrifice all over the operating room table, sexual gratification to an S&M sexless Something Above, a cosmic cum-shot. The great Clockmaker may have created something marvelous when he set the universe in motion, but that this endless procession of meaningless men waking up with one foot in the grave could be called a ritual in his name nearly constituted proof of his non-existence.

    Of course, my views are fairly radical. In my old life, back when I had a real name, back when my name was applied to parts of my body and not vice-versa, I was known to be an agitator, sugar in the gas tank of society. Not content with the questions left unanswered by both religion and science I demanded replies, I led masses of thousands to shout questions at the sky and the Computer-box, replies consisting only of silence and baffled errors of syntax. My voice triggered riots, orgies of nihilism where the two things that purportedly give our existence meaning, alternately choosing faith or proof as your dogma, were summarily rejected, vandalized, destroyed, or worst of all, ignored. If you pull the plug to an automated prayer machine society stops functioning, the populace crippled by the guilty realization not that they have to live with the ramifications of their actions, but that they might have to actually worse - after-live - with those same ramifications.

I long for those rocks,
   the same ones I took for
 granted

     such
        a
    short
        time
      ago

dreams are like vipers
   never letting go

searched for pomegranite freedom
  saw god in an ashtray

"Will I see her again?"

 forget dreaming
 
 
 

(note.. pomegranite is the intended spelling)

i've changed my name again,
or perhaps you haven't noticed?
yes, another tattoo to mark the years
we have to have something to count them by after all

i stole another number from the gas station price-listing thing
it's a 4
i never much cared for 4, but i thought it would please rosemont
  and after all, i have almost 20 3s already

i feel like dancing, but don't i always?
it's not strange to be in love with...
 wrong word choice
         obsessed with someone
62 years and 348 days older than oneself is it?
i'm still contemplating whether 150$ is too much to spend
for 53 pages, four illustrations, a reproduction, a signature
 and a number 20 or 100 more than what would signify perfection

oh well

    in the sky i
    wonder why

         see you in
         aurora
         meet you in
         aurora

to the snow where rainbows go
ice flows and the sun he knows
and when the sun is gone the moon she rises high
i can feel you now, feel your light

    in the sky i
    wonder why

         see you in
         aurora
         meet you in
         aurora

(bridge)

red
green
purple
blue
i'm going up there
to be with you

    in the sky
    i know why

         see you in
         aurora
         meet you in
         aurora
 

words & music
by gordon breckenridge

   I had a pretty full bar, I was missing a couple of things like my Pernod and creme de cassis, but it didn't really matter that much - half a fifth of Black Velvet and things manage to turn out alright, you know? It was slow and I shook out a double bunch of daquiris and then a manhattan. I didn't have any syrup, so I had to shake those daquiris long and hard to get them to mix right. At least no one had asked for blender drinks yet, and all of the cocktails I'd passed around so far had met with rave reviews.

   I was smoking a La Finca, a cazadore with a nice natural wrapper. They're from Nicaragua, and I'd aged them about a year. Not bad for less than a dollar a stick. Smoke hung low in the room, yellowed by the light above.

   She sat back in the chair, blowing little ovals of smoke into the light. Dressed in a black slipdress, she smoked Dunhills through an ebony holder. A series of intricate scars decorated her arms, which were especially prominent due to the lack of sleeves. Both her eyes and skin had a sparkle that could cut you dead or make your soul free. She was very selective with her looks.

   I blew smoke out in rings, across the bar, and motioned for Derek to deal. We were playing smokehouse rummy, and he had beat me three rounds out of four. He was young, younger than we were, and I wouldn't serve him anything but a sloe gin fizz every half hour. I didn't want to be responsible for that. Myself, I'd been drinking since six and hadn't felt a one. I had eaten and felt well, the towel over my shoulder smelling like Amaretto and triple sec.

   "Two words come to mind," I said to Derek. He looked up.

   "What's that?"

   I leaned back, spewed some more smoke, took a sip from my martini, and sighed. "Cleeeeeaaan livin'."

   He laughed, and we went back to playing cards, celebrating our vices for the first time that month.

    a vampire's canines
    immeasurably sweet moment of contact

    blinding flashes of
    enlightenment haunt
    & sustain me

    I like sunlight
    it reminds me of the overpowering
    warmth & comfort a ground zero would bring.

.                                                    .