Chapter 1

Novel Music

         Appearing in distant, forbidding winds and in bitter silences, nearly silent.

Chapter 3

Various Holds

         Where the arm bends, there is a beginning. Beginnings ill regretted or to be forgotten can be released through folding’s of bodies captured or released, released to liberation or at least never redone, redoubled, or endings prematurely. That’s the fun bending! All bent and learnt, re-read and still forgotten, thoughts purchased and streamed on mobile devices to kiss the stars. In the curious ways.

         But if, and then still, but so, where does the arm bend? Request elbow or knee or text STOP to end it or GO to full send it.

Continuously Tired

         Forget the paperwork forever. That’s an end and an advice. Contract a financial advocate in an unfortunate situation.

         If explained, please return.

Breeders

         If it’s it, it’ll be it for a bit. Control this or let this be or not. In the curious ways.

Little One

         To say boo! or surprise! and mean it.

Brown

         A pilsner for conversation. Pills on the floor beside peanut shells. Brown says it’s less interesting than it sounds and it never ends and it repeats day-after-day and again. Brown says it but it doesn’t matter and he doesn’t mean it for the bar. To say it but not mean it. Needless to betray his breath, Brown that is. His words ill invented.  

         An opening of gulps of airs inside the Red. Green blowing smoke. Brown laughing besides. Cotton piled on stool. Enters in no one, Little One out in the cold and breathing for everyone, saying boo!

         Brown and Green not believing nor worrying.

War

         War to hear their stories and forget them as she falls asleep, as everyone does it. Only so much afterward. Barely lost, but in a state and refills through the night and smiles through the always tired and the rare complaint.

         Flies in the kitchen and grease in the heart, it’s hot and I am talking again by the restroom, of the obvious and of the droll and of the dishes sunk or draining, scouring or bubbles or worrying or awaiting closing time.

         War is always or like it and gently singing of those times and this one too. War’s like that, only homely and therefore poor, though talented and well-intended. Her feet not far from her head and gravity’s hands working on her. Why War’s famous phone phones rotating executives is no longer questions nor worries, like Green and Brown by the doorframe in the airs, blowing smoke.

Green

         Is instead a place? When Green’s been dropped, it’s a classic but never really listening now are they? Green is Green isn’t green but close up really rotten and forgotten in regards to his sick apartment kitty-cat, Bub. Always the sore thumb, a green drum, a face to stick in the mix of beige or khaki and he says things to which vanilla is deaf, especially now with the ill, rotten Green blended with the bland and can’t hit the cat box – due to Bub’s illness.

         And the band, not to quit the band nor the green drum nor to send the band inside an amber foam nor a series of white white lines that might forget the cat. But green, or Green should it be said, is it just this? Brown to be the one to decide and to be browner or less brown than Green, Brown is, and balding but shaved so covering his bases.

Brown Story

         So, I turn around and see it’s who I thought it was.

Broken Bottles

         To discuss the sick cat and read it or re-read it and pine. Shines in streetlight as she who he thought it was walks home to the bar. Little One’s broken bottles transparent but glistening shines in the light and that’s part of her laughing, the glass. Oh! and such and such a street the Little One’s broken. Blacker than Green but never dark in the city streets, like Green among the beige. Little One begs and lives in the Del-Mar Apartments with nothing and empty or above the family in the alley behind the Shell, sometimes. No one visits nor texts STOP.

         And this is how the thing broke first off. Second off Little One asks Green but Green shuts the door after blowing last smoke and flicking without withholding a smile as he does that thing. He always does that thing this way and again, only so much afterward. She hopes she doesn’t mind.

         Bottles are glass or cuts or shining and drinking inside the building, Green’s return and seals the warm airs. No conversation beginnings nor endings. Full stop.

Brown Story Cont.

         I couldn’t believe it. She who I thought it was it was! It’s rare that I think what’s right and find that it was right all along, especially with her. No one listening, but rolling in the furnace airs, snapping peanuts. It was not a good story, but a typical Brown story with no names or descriptions, just Brown thoughts painting an aging canvas.

Boo!

         It was in the sound and the rafters tilting and the workmen encroaching and condos approaching and money spending on it – in the sound. Good music from digital nowhere and filling nothing with some transient something. Little One approaching and thinking nothing just trusting and hoping for something to come out of this nothing. Brown’s aging canvas unseen. 

         It’s fine to sing so much and think so much and drink. Only the words. And the guy nobody knows coughing in the corner of Brown’s aging canvas unseen. That’s what that is. And a sound too. Okay harmony jammed like a knife in War’s head, money making her poorer and poorer so they tip, making things troubling for melody. There’s a rhythm too, to tell the truth, and all obey the rhythm in the Red – whether they know it or whether they don’t know it. It’ll be it for a bit and then it’ll be something else after a time. By then, Brown and Green will be off the dirty canvas and waiting in vain for it all to start again.

Boo! 2

         Lying beside the register, the canvas unseen, and Brown with Cotton with Green with War, the money sack will be delivered in the morning and tips split evenly and shots shot evenly and dreams dreamed unevenly with, of, and for the others that could not be there. Could not be there.

         Little One’s boo too. In the frame but listing. Green and Brown only hear music, not the phrase. Or baseball, there’s always baseball. Cotton says Ah-choo. War is watching. Little One says boo!

Window

         At the window and rain the colossal city speaks in tones and freeway buzz because it is in the song and at the window.

Bub

         Dark in the causes and sauced up to the words, Cotton almost says something about Green’s sick cat, Bub, but thinks better of it. Green laughs to cover Bub’s sick. Green is in the laughs and Cotton is in the joking. Spinning stools and woman with face and cold airs following. Because of a maybe inside or it tastes the warm airs. Bub’s kitty-cancer is hard to capture with paints. And anyway, Bub is not on this canvas.

Last

         War calls Brown poured out Green Cotton eyes following and smiling spinning stools and the face woman and cold airs chill the ends of the night.

Boo! 3

         And those not carrying those that Little One boos! Street stumbling murmurs of somber curtains to return to darkness unbound. Don’t die, please, Bub, don’t die, please! If the missing parts or the broken parts or the empty parts or the malfunctioning parts – those being the ones, the manufactured parts – or the too small parts or the just right parts or the party parts or the exterior parts or the interior parts or the anterior parts or the parts fail to be on. Instead, War and Green and Neon Girl and Brown and Cotton with face woman or beast with two backs dirty the sheets that cover aging canvas’s unseen.

         Thoughtful call a night still at random though love.

M’s the Letter

         Memories blend softly with the coffee in the diner, seated by her in the morning, drinking black or dribbling white, dreams of dreams or dreams of night that Cotton told her changed it or followed it or described himself as making it, or how to be a letter that couldn’t be sent along with ideas he keeps to keep her asleep in the afternoon, soon doomed to repeat it, he says it every night.

         And thoughtful as a catastrophe, his love worries the delicate bits.

Deep Debts

         An envelope to hold the letter. Adding paper to paper to make the money tree and to forget. Ill regretted if remembered. Hardly asleep and hard to wake due to car horns, voices singing, or dreamers’ ambitions.

Curtains

         Is courteous to find inside while sleeping through the workaday. Amber and glow and Green’s back home and Brown’s workaday and War’s vocal rehearsal too old to die inside a basement. The fastest growing city in America. Money’s graveyard.

         Pulling and opening and Venetian to consignment. Sleeplessly dreaming because. Because of it, it makes itself again and so forth – without profiting the fiscal year and in America. If to repeat the TV and success, therewith Cotton on the couch or so that’s a place of arm bends irrefutable. So, don’t bother to refute the place and don’t bother to refute the bends.

No, No Cotton

         The morning is drinking or is morning a cup. Waking up in stuff carrying stuff, stuffing stuffing into Cotton’s stuff, but restful blissful and stuff. Cotton coughs up stuff and in jeans and piles of laundry. Sunlight mocking mock sunlight of the swing shift workaday and ready for the bus. 

         No, everything repeats, he repeats.

         On a bus watching drinking thinking. Nothing else to report.

Airport

         Stuffed with cotton in the airs of the recycler, depressed throws and lost luggage. Around and around awaiting an owner or discovering a loss after. Cleveland 217 or else Ohio. Cotton’s map resides inside and no one’s little one doesn’t see his direction, unless of course. Big clock with big hands, luggage and the world as it flies. Sore as hell and flying. Sore or soaring sours to pass the hours for the workaday. That’s just how.

Bus

         Emptiness and glowing in spite of. Pulling the cable and belling the driver. Cotton’s cotton shirt sweat and stinking toes, crinkling yellow bag of Fritos as the exit and the back door.

         Is this just a memory? he sweats, big steps and a sidewalk. Evening lights alight and bars beginning conversations to the ends. The people of gather and together are not yet, so he stops home.

Wife

         Only yelling or always tired of the yelling or yelling. He laughs. TV sleepers of the hide-a-bed and those lusciously long bleached blonde locks, almost beautiful in the streetlights if left on.

         Going out again?! in bleached blonde yelling.

         An honest answer, Yes, an honest one or at least an un-dishonest one to just put the TV sleeper to hide-a-bed again.

On Street

         Cars are horns awaiting anger or impassive awakenings. Exhausted after workaday daze and really really ready, Cotton.

Red…

         Snow was not setting or seasons but anyway it was snow, so did the hill. Brown and Green and Cotton – but no War this time, maybe next time – did. Garbage can lids garbage bags garbage sliding. Trash white snow and shivering. Like the classic film, Out 2 Party, starring and with snow drop and the polyester man. Ha ha’s and ho ho’s and hee hee’s and things of these natures, alike, becoming the other.

         Then a box spring!

         Sliding with the crowd down the crowded hill of snow – how unlikely!

Ain’t Some Fucking Tea-Party

         Then, from the sky this time, voices plummeting and singing songs. Not the sky, sorry, not the sky, okay? but apartment window singing. Up from the bottom floor for the other voices, Green Brown Cotton hear the title of a fragment.

         The sky singers stop. Not sky, sorry, not sky, okay? but window.

…wood

         A functioning furnace for an unseasonable setting. Drinks for the sledders and drunks for the sluts! War changed the song mid-song and confused the room. Sorry! she shouts. Not shouts, sorry, not shouts, okay? but speaking nonetheless. A functioning furnace brings in the riff-raff. Of the riff-raff a favorite scallywag stops by in broken legs and smoker’s smile. And War says, Hi. And the riff raff scallywag buys a round around.

         Three cheers for the trust!

         A busted-up group of soggy Green Brown Cotton. Are we too late? they ask the riff raff scallywag. And his broken legs alight!

         The rats in the rafters sniff and wander in the sounding thunder of singers and actors and flamers and fires with so much of the noises! and so many of the places for the fires. Un-irregardless of the soundings and the musics that become the yelled over.

Soggy Fellows

         The busted-up group of soggy Cotton Brown Green in the clinks of the drinks or the shiny glass shinings with the polish glow gestures or words to be remembered by or for or with or in regards to or inside the warm airs of a functioning furnace forever.

         War doesn’t mind it. She’s the best. If anyone made and brought or made or brought or made and made or brought and brought or made or made or brought or brought or brought and/or made or brought and/or brought or made and/or brought, she’d be right on it.

         Three cheers for the trust!

         Ropes on the ID’s for chatting while bouncing or pretending to read. Little One is sent away with a smirk. As long as the trust might never go bust, in fun, but not in jest, the benefit of the doubt about, but not in judgments abounding! no, no, no, don’t say such things of such and such or of such or such or of such and/or such.

         Three cheers for the trust!

Such and Such

         The walking talks in difficulties high for such and such or such or such or such and/or such, as much as could be said. So, Brown words crumbling in the green, It ain’t fucking tea time, lawn mowed and clipped and bordered and trimmed and all those good things that one can squeeze out of it and such and such or such or such and/or such and/or such and such or not. None of such made sense to the crew, so a sung was song, singers singing amidst the scum of riff raff scallywag village to the south, where trust funds go to hide. Swab the deck and do a poor job of it okay? or make sad cat-daddy Green a burrito to go or make Cotton a burrito to go or make Brown a burrito for here, there’s no place better to be. There the D.I.N.K.s drinking up the place. Such and such sent a thorough although no one knows why and/or such and such. She, the mysterious.

         By drunk I mean drunk. Hate this and this and this and this and love this. Passionately vomiting all available information in to the tank where Cotton Brown Green wallow and swallow.  

Bookends

         It’s hard to believe or to create a place!

A Place

         Banded in the low life of melodic synchronicity with singers and singers and singers of delight’s songs. Also, songs of sorrow. Drunk which means drunk as drunk. Cotton says, Lemme tell ya, pointing and looking at sad cat-daddy Green, who’s looking and speaking to someone outside the window, who’s smoking and ignoring sad cat-daddy Green, Gimme that, but neither man can tell they’re not being heard, so they both continue, Cotton to sad cat-daddy Green and sad cat-daddy Green to the smoker outside, while Brown groans over a pitch that retired the side, in the TV and not listening to Cotton nor sad cat-daddy Green and having no knowledge whatsoever of to which direction they speak or to whom they listen or to where they look or to what they point or to how they grumble gibberish or what have you. I been slanging luggage too long, says Cotton to sad cat-daddy Green’s temple and sad cat-daddy Green says, Dammit she took that thing from my apartment, looking at the woman smoker that took that thing from his apartment right outside the window and protected from his words and his gaze – as the Miller sign is lit and the glass is tinted and sad cat-daddy Green is kind of black and Brown snickers at a commercial while sad cat-daddy Green turns his head, catching Brown’s eye and Brown checking his beer or seeing something therein like a bug or something but just picking it out with his index, drawing Cotton’s attention away from sad cat-daddy Green’s temple and drowning his selfish strain of conversation in the yellow bubbles and they all laugh at the moment in which their attentions have met – reminding them of the screen saver on Cotton’s DVD player, where the word Samsung bounces off the edges of the viewer until the moment when the thing perfectly hits the corner of the screen and the viewers cheer delightfully. Captured but set free. Likely to continue this way for some time, but not conclusive or decisive in this time of freedom and inclusion. Green Cotton Brown spill the pitcher and use every napkin to unspill the pitcher – and they do a piss-poor workaday job of it and riff raff scallywag laughs from a different table with different, much cuter, companions and much less kindlier the laughter to be. Shit-onya, sad cat-daddy Green gargles. Brown bursts out, unbuttoning one collar button, cutting loose for it. And the game is on and the same things are happening of a sudden falling feeling and time stalled or voices echoing vague names of vague times in vague places formless faces and mistakes re-cast from pasts drained. A clock’s broken foreign rockets spoken flocks filling hipster spots to spilling street lamps and oils and laughter again or hoots or hollers inside concrete canyons. Riff raff scallywag smelling dreadful but costing himself his family’s pretty penny and filling his much cuter companions to spilling with cheapest beers and rums and cokes. Sad cat-daddy Green spirals at the neck, Don’ trust that guy! his is his voice though they – riff raff scallywag’s much cuter companions – know it’s not theirs, so heed it not. The room is boiling now, stuffing to stuffed and sweating the windows and forgetting the functioning furnace has been turned up to match the music. Screw ya, Green! riff raff scallywag spittle talks to him previously mentioned as it were. The thing escalates, the thing and burdening the patrons ominous burdensome aggression slurs and give and take dynamic volumes. Can’t stop me, and What ya gonna do? and Take that to the bank, mother fucker! and I’m makin’ withdrawls, bitch! and Take a number! er assess yr count via intranet durn bidniss hours! and You don’ eden have a count! It’s yr mommy an’ daddy scount! This was the phrase, though vaguely under-misunderstood, a bar erupts. Everyone yells at someone and no punches thrown nor broken chairs nor table nor nothing like that old west stuff. Passive-aggressive’s short for the name of the game. Call it a sad cat-daddy Green win.

Quietly Withdrawn

         Cotton drinks to the point of Jesus did this and Jesus sucked on this and Brown says, That’s unnecessary, sad cat-daddy Green tries not to be sad about Bub. War texts STOP, but nothing seems to be happening, so she lets it off, examining the social media or weather or solitaire or Angry Birds or COC or whatever popular forms have taken from the times of the people. It’s the hour of quiet withdrawing or desperate clinging talks in regards to such and such, only such and such seems so much more important in the withdrawing quietude.

The Gnome Story

         Naw, now everbody’s gonna be free spirit, sad cat-daddy Green slurps spit and sing-songy says, Lookit me, Imma free spirt, cause lookit, lookit it.

         Fat guy chuckle of the room’s corner.

         But ‘s’all we got, amirite? sad cat-daddy Green blowing kisses for the room and for a corner fat guy chuckler. Fat guy doffs his fedora.  

         You want another one? War’s off soon.

         The lacquered bar supports sad cat-daddy Green’s lips and in flutters of words, M’yeah, no one really understands.

         A raspy old-lady in her words, Don’ lettem fuck with ya, Green!

         Honestly though, he squeezes old-woman thighs, Ev-body sayin’ aw lookit, lookit, Imma fee-spirit! Sad cat-daddy Green eyes on the neon-tights of the Neon Girl and is flipped off. Turning is forward on a dime, Isn’t she pretty? Stumbling and over for clasps tightly. Neon-tights wobble as the Neon Girl giggles flippant. And all the kissing.

         She speaks pretend accented but still ignoring, I have to work tomorrow.

         What? thigh squeezings.

         It’s time to go.

         Aw, hell. Storms are the ways of late men.

         Back to bar and Cotton finishes a song. Bar poundings and There’s just no way that’s true.

         Okay, I know ’s’crazy, bu’ he’s there when they come back wit’ backs packs and ev’thing.

         No way. Never happened, Brown’s.

         Okay, welp, I’s jus’ sayin’, Cotton dry-mouthed drunk words hiccup, ’s wha’ I hear.

         ‘s it tha’ shit ‘boutta gnome?

         Control’s lost in late languor and laughter erupts the room.  

         Fedora fat guy behind them, What shit about a gnome?

         Ya wanna hear it? I kin tellit. I’s jus’ gonna say it again if ya wanna hear it.

         Jus’ tell it a’ready! tired sad cat-daddy Green voice.

         ‘kay, Damin Hurado an’ ‘is band wen’ on tour wit’, uh th’Pharm’cy an’ uh, ya know, Kimyar Datsun. They’d a nigh’ off an’ di’n’t needa drive er nothin’, so they say ‘’ey, le’s get bunch o’ ‘shrooms an’, like, ya know, go campin’. An’ uh so-the-did.

         So, like, ya know, they’re trippin’ an’ hangin’ ow ‘round fire ‘n’ stumf, annit‘s real warm owt, ya know. Cotton smacks his cotton mouth lips and continuing against his mouth’s moisture quotient, Anyways, they’re jus’ hangin’ owt ‘round a cam’fire an’ Stefan, ya know, keyboard-player an’ allat, goes off ta take a piss. So, ya know, he dudden’t ‘ave a flushlight er nothin’, so he’s owt dere, peein’ an’ he things he sees… uh… gnome, a gnome settin’ onna stump er whatever.

         He was tripping, fatty fedora’s conclusion.

         Welp, tha’s whaddy thought too. He’s all, ‘’m trippin’ bad,’ an’ he runs back ta the fire. He getz there ‘n’ tells ‘em, ya know, the dudes, whaddy saw. An’ course, they laugh, cuz, ya know, ‘s’funny, but then one them other dudes has ta pee too, so he goes out there withim.

         With who? asks fatty fedora.

         So, they go on out ‘n’ surer ‘n’ shit little dood’s there, a lil’ gnome, settin’ onna stump. A stranger’s gasping in the dark. Yeah, he’s settin righ’ there onna stump, same place, but now both them dudes’s seein’ ‘im.

         What’d they do? Neon Girl adjusts her neon tights

         They reach over ‘n’ touch it, ‘n’ sure ‘nough, he’s a livin’, breathin’ gnome. He’s shiverin’ ‘n’ stuff, ya know, cuz is colder ‘n shit, so they think, ‘at uh, they better, ya know, bring ‘im on back ta the fire. And tha’s what’d they did. B’when they get there, e’r’one’s freakin’ out, ya know, but purty soon the gnome’s all drinkin’ ‘n’ ever’one’s havin’ fun, so the dudes party with the lil’ guy.

         Jackets put on by Green and Neon Girl, This story is stupid, Green voices, and walking to the door, lit cigarette and lazy smoke drifting out.

         So, was there really a gnome? fatty fedora asks.

         Well, yeah. B’t here’s where things get weird. Cotton pauses in the dramatic effect, chuckles out the last bit, They wake up in the mornin’ and there’s a down-syndrome boy uh, uhh-sleep next ta ‘em in the tent!

         NO!

         It’s such bullshit, Green words in smoke.

         So, what’d they do?

         Cotton shrugs, They’re like, ya know, ‘oh shit, should we calla cops? We basickly kidnap a ‘tarded kid.’ An’ they argue an’ allat for like, ya know, a lil bit. Fine’lee they ‘cide it’s best if they jus’ bring’im’in. Turn zout, kid’s been missin’ fer like two days. Parents brought ‘im campin’, ‘n’ he wanners off an’ got lost.

         They w’re inna papers Mt. Hood. Call’em heroes an’ ev’thing.

         Bull-shit, Green’s voice in the context out of context and drifting smoke in streetlight, flicks cigarette and locking up.

         Last call! War’s done.

Dreams

         A seamless dress of breezes and that. That, that that carries of the hanger in the closet, by the jacket, in stuffy airs and never pressed nor dry-cleaned nor even ironed. A summer dress. A flowing summer dress.

         Cotton in fields of flowers picking and never Green or Brown. She’s her and it’s it for a bit now for the night of the universal never-controller. Processing while sleeping alcohol. Body storing and no trading for the overnight.

         In plain languages.

         In plain language.

         In inns and outlets.

         Like an angel, she’s in a summer dress. Her hair oh so windy. And soft. She must use lotion. In his cheek all red like his neck and his bed and his beard and his eyes that can barely cry. Only in dreams.

Darkest Dark Closet Ranting

         Doubtful through chaos and excess and dangerous intoxication. Orange in Green. Bright to the darkest dark closet ranting. Although the father instant noodles and spilling on dirty lapels in the darkest dark closet ranting. Cannot or will not darkest dark closet ranting. Carpet tac darkest darkness and the darkest dark in a dark closet.

         That’s the one he’s inside of it of market barkers and commercialized Satanism he’s the darkest darkness or the darkest dark closet ranting. Papa Green in orange. Jumpy to the point to the pointless and thus, intoxicatingly asleep in toxic intoxication.

         And that is the segment called Darkest Dark Closet Ranting.

Boring Dreams

         The hat’s dusty cleanings with Brown hands. Boring dreams. Nothing to talk to or to speak to or to converse with or about. Also nothing of which and about. Boring dreams of about. Born in dreams. Borg dreams. Boing dreams. Bong dreams. Boring brown dreams. Boing ems. Boring demos. Ong dreams. Ring drams. Bolling dleams. Bong tres. Borning brownie dreamers. Bring drums. Scoring screams. Born dams. Boring cream-dreams. Bing dreams. Brig broom. Drs. Boring drums. Storing brown dreams. Borid reams. Bingo dramas. Bring reams. Boring brown dreams. Browsing streams. Boring brown dreams. One boing dream. Two boring dreams. Boring reams. Boring bong-brownie dreams. Barring dreams. Boring brown-town double-down dreams. Buh-buh-boring dreams. Pouring things. Brown dreams of boring things. Borne in bonging drips. Drips in Brown’s dreams. Drums of boring. Plums and things. Dreams of dusting the cleanings. Hat’s borne on Brown’s dreaming noggin – even when sleeping! Noggin dreams. Noggin toboggan garbage sliding snow hill dreams. Boring dreams. Bub’s dreams of cat things. Boring things. Of cats boring things. Rings on strings of cat dream things, all so very very boring indeed. In science in testings in races in tortoise in cat-chases in taxi-cabs in Brown’s car the dreams of boring brown things. Not brown things, sorry, not brown things, but Brown things. Boring Brown things. Bong ripping dreams. Creamy thingies in drippy dreams. Still boring dreams. Boring Brown things in boring Brown dreams.

Workaday Brown

         In and out of the boring morning dreams as day dreaming begins and real – boring – dreaming ends in Brown car. A science of redundancy and arduous drudgery. But then a phone rings.

         Yellow?

         Hey Brown, it’s Green.

         What’s going on man? Then meaningless, subject-less articulation bouncing satellite signals. Then, I’m driving to work.

         Oh, yeah, anyway, so… {sigh} man, Bub’s sick, Green sputters.

         Yeah, I know, says Brown.

         They’re putting him down today.

         Brown’s sputtering now. Missing the exit.

         So, Green sputters, you know, there’s nowhere to bury him here. So, I’m trying to get out to my cousin’s place in Burien. He’s got some woods behind his house.

         Yeah, that’d be a nice place for Bub.

         That’s what I thought too, but I need a ride out there. Questioning pause.

         Yeah, I could drive you. What time?

         Whenever you can. {is Green crying?} Appointment at the vets’s at eleven.

         Let me talk to my boss, but I could probably get off work around then. Text me the address and I’ll let you know.

         Thanks man.

Meat Machine

         In and is in’s in the grinder. If the meat machine’s in and of itself stop the grinder, please and thank you, therefore not to be ground into the hamburger of history, or if of if or of if of or or if if or or if or et cetera, et cetera, then the Magnificent Meat Machine wins.

         Brown Neon Girl Green Cotton War forest shovel leans on tree and a not so deep hole shoe box closed and heavy, cold day in November, but then it doesn’t rain anymore and pleased for at least that. Green tears. Brown hand on Green shoulder, He was a good cat.

         Ubt, ubt, best, ca-cat, {is Green going to sneeze?} AWWWW! Green’s quiver and drip staring and pondering dark hole, drop cat, no meow. Ubt, ubt, GLAAA!

         Neon Girl shivering beside the green, holding Green, comforting Green, imagines his red bedsheets and comforter, planning the future without Bub – less hair on his red bedsheets and comfy comforter. Knobby kneed Neon Girl with an around the shoulder arm. Is this love? Nothing known knobby kneed Neon Girl with her nothing to say grimace in the cold cold, not just cold, but cold cold, cold and partially comforting Green and partially heating herself with Green.

         I {sputter} I dropped acid with that cat! Green flubby-articulates. Bub… {sputter, sputter} Buddy… {sputter} GLAAA!

         Green in the green forest is rarely seen as he’s a city beast. Out of place in mourning and Burien’s nature’s bounty. Enter the Magnificent Meat Machine. Bub in the grinder. War Cotton Neon Girl Brown Green fall into too. 

         Bub in a hole. Bub in the cold. Bub in the grinder. Bub in the grinder, meat machinery and cat fur flying. Bub is dead. Bub, in an arm’s bend. Paws and claws and goodbye friend. Bub in the Magnificent Meat Machine.

Inside the Magnificent Meat Machine

         Red juicy plum juices in thickeners and barely flowing molasses. Brown Cotton War Green blood, Bub’s cat-blood and Neon Girl’s person-blood. 

         Encountering glistening in the terror-dome. War gone silent. Cotton on fire. Brown in shit. Green Neon Girl purgatory and a lost war in the Magnificent Meat Machine. Blades spinning splatterhouse pink and purgatory’s a bitch. Juicy plum red thickened flows of purgatory and shit and fire. Plastic demoniac drinker of cuts crust encrusted cuts of meat for feeding. A drinker of blood an eater of meat in conjunction with spinning blades and splatterhouse pink – oh! Splatterhouse Pink, my love! A drunken blood eater of meat infesting the rat’s nests, scattering splatterhouse pinks and Homeless Chet goes. Glorp! Slop! Wah! Glut-glut-glut. Spray. And Bub goes. Glorp! Slop! Wah! Glut-glut-glut. Spray. And strangers go. Glorp! Slop! Wah! Glut-glut-glut. Spray.

Chapter 0

Okay

         Okay, okay. Okay, okay. Okay. Okayokayokayo. Okay okay; okay, okay. Okay: okayokayokayokayokya. So get ready, okay? OkayOkayOkOKOokiedookie. Okay. Enough is enough, let’s get on with it, okay okay OK – Ok. abrv., okay? – okay and also Okayokayokay. Nevermind not okay and okay, it’s okay to okay okay? kkk not okay, okay? Okay-kayokay still not okay, okay, so okay and okay are okay okay? Okay says to okay, Okay, Okay. Okay? And then, Okay says back to Okay, Okay okay okay!

         The meat didn’t pan out and the arm bending is only okay, okay?

Haunted Prison

         Inside is a place. A place hiding. Sum of all shadows and bars. First up in the morning cooking for the prisoners, Blue in orange. Blue doesn’t care about sleep any longer, doesn’t want to see his own dreams anymore. So sorry to exist.

Blue Dream

         The barbed hangars for the people animals. And no agreement in Blue nor escape, impossible and not entertained but for the struggle of pain prevention and wrist barbed drips from the dungeon and nothing to eat or sleep, so he folds and is by hands in the barbed drips.

         Bub didn’t know Blue and Blue didn’t know Bub, but Bub resides inside Blue dreams now and is by paws in the barbed drips. In the curious ways.

         This is where the arm bends. Causing catastrophe dreams and waking up in dark cell, Big Steve sagging springs above, night guards putting on jackets and hanging keys. See Blue breath drifts indoor breezes, malfunctioning furnace punching the emptiness. Knock out an eye on darkness and hanging by the barb drips. And Big Steve sagging the springs above.

         Dream’s neglect.

Haunted Prison 2

         Check-ins no poison, night guards’ ready for home and rushing Blue along into silent kitchen. Then no one, nothing, like a blanket. Open the cooler and repeat the last two-thousand days. Nothingness for comfort. Nothingness for emptiness. Nothingness for a blanket. They allow Blue music, but why? Sound only burns the blanket and crowds out the emptiness. Coffee cup hot hands and that’s the test right there, can he hold it? can he stand? and, yes, he can, skin cancer growing in the silent palms. But why?

         No questions.

         Cooking for ghosts. Flavorless for the tasteless and no arguments with silence. Please. Scars where the arm bends, burnt offerings to the bakery, making bread, Blue. This is an occupation inside prison walls.

         Beef and eggs for special privileged silence. Beef and eggs stirring the flavorless tasteless emptiness in a silent nothing. Pans and pots bang the blanket. Burn the Blue, scars for the arm bending hot coffee how and/or why do dreams survive here? Like a birthday card, 10-years-to-life belated. Call the governor for special privileges in a prison kitchen, hunted, serving meat to call beef and eggs. War Neon Cotton Girl Brown Green seek the machine. Hearing no rockets in no skies and no approaching marching machines for the meat to be calling your comrade a beef and eggs. Concrete stars for lawlessly awaiting a next bending of the arm, or re-beginning or re-imagining or re-forgotten-dreams or re-unrestrained-meats-called-beef-and-eggs-for-the-prisoners or re-restrained or re-disinfected-stains or bleach down the drain.

No One Vivid

         Visiting hours don’t workaday and for single tears, so the kitchen warm jets or music in the void for Blue, he does not sing. Hey Bird, but the missing names unsaid surround and drown him softly in the void.

Workaday Blue

         Chop-chop and sizzle or boil and bubble or spread and slice or warm jets in an arm bend, so workaday workaday workaday and barbed wire dripping corners with the dust and the meat of Blue’s dream reminisces.

         Soon the blanket rips away and the place is haunted. Bodies in the Magnificent Meat Machine eating meat from the Meat Machine, dull forks no knives, cutting in lines for the alpha ranks and protections or safety in numbers. Blue bribes with garlic cloves, cheese crumbles, or windows of honey glaze.

         Blue eats alone where the arm bends at the avoidance table. Server calls and Blue brings more meat called beef and eggs in the long grey tray, set in the warm jet water along the serving counter. What this? Mansfeld asks.

         Beef ‘n’ eggs, Blue murmurs.

         Look like shit ‘n’ eggs to me.

         Blue back to workaday Blue at the avoidance table – where the arm bends – and silence is dead for the day. Dead for the day.

Concrete Hall

         Quiet soles on hard rock. Fingers peeling Blue a woman with a face. Like a daydream angel, she’s in a summer dress. Her hair oh so windy. And soft. She must use lotion. His cheek all red like his neck and his bed and his beard and his eyes that no longer try and cry. Only in dreams. Blonde in the concrete air with no breezes inside, no, certainly not inside this elongated tall hall, depression grey and overlooked.

         Her name used to be Dream, but now, no. In the cell, in the cell, the cell, cell, watching Big Steve’s bunk sag nearly to his nose, Bub wandering in a dreamland a missing meat seeking the Magnificent Meat Machine.

         And that’s a concrete wall by the tossing and turning all night.

Then

         And then, then came to them about then – the then that was when then was now – asking, if they please, then, if then would come with them. Born again in a boring dream. Words like then being repeated again and again and then again in a concrete wall.

When

         Then, when then began again, when went bent and Blue sent letters of what it meant when when began again after then again.

In the Beef

         Girl Green Cotton Neon Brown War – not to mention Bub – will soon. Saddened in the curious ways. A machine gears or the if and of its if, but so again for if of and no. In other words, in the curious beefs. War Brown Neon Brown Cotton Girl Cotton Brown Cotton Green Girl War War Green Neon Cotton and again, Neon Brown War Green Girl Cotton, that’s the meaning right there, grab it quick, a’for it gets away! Damn, lost that little bugger again. Back to the to-be-concluded-beef again, Green War Green Cotton War Cotton Brown Neon Girl Green.

         Bottom line: they’ll be in the beef, irrefutably, so stop trying to refute it. Prison teeth masticating.

In Nights

         In the shiver is a letter that cannot be sent and the winter’s voice is a murmur in a blizzard, and so Blue dives into winter’s words in winter’s book laid out in his cell. He stores the letters in his shivers, the numbness of this whole thing, with him working for special privileges in the kitchen of this haunted prison.

         Blue trembling fingers turning pages and anxious to be there, get closer to inside the outside of the inside of the book. Blue the wolf man. Blue the thunder. Blue the killer. Blue the housewife. Blue the soldier. Blue the chef. Bleu de France. Blue the escapee. Blue the P.O.W. Blue the sidekick. Blue the jockey. Blue the horse. Blue the dog. Blue the boy. Blue the time. Blue the wind. Blue the windmill. Blue the electricity. Blue and God.

Rusty Hinge

         The door to the cell opens.

No Voices Speaking

         Blue starts.

God’s Grace

         The out of bed. The feet cold floor. The mind whirlwind and windmill and wind and electricity. The catwalk empty. Blue’s alone.

Empty

         In the haunted prison, there lives a prisoner. Blue the prisoner isn’t sure, if it’s flight or just perception blurred. The ghosts are resting quiet, hidden in dusty shadows. Ne’er a clock a ticking, ne’er a skitter rat skittering. Down the catwalk steel. Railings singing, Hallelujah!

Kitchen

         Amazed in the maze of Tupperware beef – GreeNeonn Co-Girl-otton BrowWarn – and eggs the machine will collect along the way. Blue a breath and Blue an everywhere. A kitchen serving comfort, the only place he stands. The only place that does not fear God’s vengeance.

Pan

         Swinging pan breeze. Flickering night glow. Is it a window?

Pot

         Deeper, wider, slow bubbles.

Knives

         Magnetic and with cameras pointing at it. Blue crushing a camera hand. Swip! the knives though samurai.

Wooden Spoon

         Not sure why he took this. But he did.

Books

         The books are a library and a library made of books carries books he’ll never read and never carry and never remember very and the and of the hands of the books of the man of the prisoner’s concrete land and and and Blue lurking round and round in haunted prison like a ghost. He likes ghosts. He’s ghost. Ghost. The G.O.A.T. of all ghosts in the haunted prison with never-ending supplies of ghosts – not quality ghosts, mind you, but convicts, the scum of the earth, the paralyzed forever in purgatory ghosts, ghosts that lay eggs and roost on a full moon.

         Blue is not a ghost.

         Prisoner is a prison library. Can it see him?

Breaking Down the Prison Walls with the Yes and His Tiny Hands

         In the haunted prison, a prisoner goes free. Blue’s forever missing, to the Magnificent Meat Machine.

Chapter 4

Return to War

         In the Red nicely, quietly. Serving drinks when they vanish – the people not the drinks! War battles Angry Birds when it happens. The burgers on the grill crying and spitting. In the spinning stools the stillness. Can she serve she will, War’s like that. In harmony with the refrigerator. She, the great singer. The fridge, consistent – every band needs steady rhythm. The Angry Birds go silent in the quiet and War drops her phone.

         Hello? she calls.

         The phone rings.

         Hello? she says.

         …

         Hello? she says.

         {running footsteps on gravel and heavy breathing}

         Hello? she says.

         {metal grinding, motor chugging, voices screaming}

         Aghast, War bugs eyes, War checks barroom for people but they’re no one. She says nothing, only ready for listening now.

         {Gurgle gurgle, splat, wah-wah-wah, reeeeee, splash}

         Hello? she says.

         Hi, says warm jet voice sitting on the opposite-end of the line.

         Who’s this? War asks.

         A friend, the warm jet cools.

         Who’s this? War asks.

         {warm cackle}

         Who’s this? War asks. Hello?

         Check the floor.

         What?

         Checker floor.

         War looks down and sees lying on the floor Cotton Green Brown, and quickly notices, hanging by her throat, Neon Girl’s squirmy legs and fighting. War hops on bar. War smashes bottle and cuts the tights hanging from the rafters without a thought. Neon Girl saved and gargling. Cotton Green Brown gargling. Everyone gargling. On the phone gargling and a click.

         In-door opening framing Blue in orange jumpsuit. Is this Red? Brown Cotton War Neon Girl Green buggy eyes.

         War tries the phone again, Hello? but a friend is gone.

Lost Blue

         Is this Red?

         Yes, everyone thinks, but only War says. How’s it going?

         Whose legs are those, pointing the finger, Blue becomes.

         Those are my legs and his legs and his, speaking through phlegm and Cotton.

         How’s it going? War might be breaking down.

         Can I get a drink? the stranger asks.

         Yes, everyone thinks, but only War says. 

Arm Bends

         Neon Cotton arms do not bend, stiff, straight, immovable and Brown Green no arms at all and War is in a state of shock and Blue so new to it all. Blue bends an arm. Without everything. And with a beard, no birds, only only and and for holding close in twiggy soldier, wooden tin-tin, soldered in joints the Red.

Pontiac

         Panic attack in Red crash the streets and blood runs. How neat to be indoors with a functioning furnace and the sledders skiddering bickering entering fluttering panicking Pontiac stacked and blasted. War changes the song mid-song. Is it snowing or cold? That thing about it all and the meat.

         An elk’s head. Pac-Man table-bleepers. A dart board. A pile of pink. A pile of filth. Greasy ladles scratchy pans on the flame. Blue remembers his prison kitchen. A red light in the Red. The night again. A lacquered surface. The faces of the Red. Blue the Cotton Brown. Brown or Green and War helps. Door closed. A fluorescent from laundromat days turned off and Christmas lights in November.

         Pontiac driver screams outside, metal scratching the door. Brown War Cotton Neon Green Blue Girl bugging eyes to the scene: the Magnificent Meat Machine smearing globby the Pontiac driver. A Pontiac driver dead in the street, smeared and splatterhouse pavement. Glass cut sparkling Pontiac in half of milking oil streams rainbow black.

War’s Plan

         Lock door. No use, glass shattering. Cotton stiff arm gripping Johnnie Walker. Front shutters shattered and spinning blades forcing through.

         War plan, Out the back!

         Neon Girl throat pink, gasping. Brown struggles up without arms, but reappearing. Green struggles up without arms, but growing again.

         Cotton lips on spinning chairs, What is that?

         Move! War like a soldier in a jean jacket.

         The leaving from the Red, Blue War Green Cotton Brown Neon Girl pink throated and gasping. All a-trot.

Alleyway

         All alleyway shivers kept creeper-sleepers druggie-deepest stating the false or the meat in the hearse and Pontiac splitting the hairs on broken-backed-unicorns eating hay out of dumpster dreams and grease traps. The characters of this story are of the runnings of fear, of machines for grinding meat, of city lights and debauchery gone sour. In the sauce. Balls-deep in the glaze. In the knee-deep homeless dogs of alleyway nightmares.

         And so, in a following state the Magnificent Meat Machine, chasing Neon War Girl Cotton Brown Blue Green, the meat.

The Meat

         The meat met meat in the alleyway, blood on feet meat met beat, meat legs and meat arms that won’t bend and arms that are gone, but wandering back. Of the night. And in the exempt, the hazardous dangers of knees deep in the homeless estates, cardboard real estate, elated for the chasing, the Meat Machine sputters and chops, spitting eye-balls and kitty whiskers, pink smearing behind in a line, in a line behind of a line in a line behind behind lines of in behind lines of a bee-hive catastrophe homeless ambassadors knee-deep sputtering grease and spinning pink blades smearing behind queen bee of a line behind the Red of the Neon Brown Girl tripping pink line neck tights Green War Cotton Blue.

Little One and at Windows

         Little One watches from a window in the Del-Mar Apartments above.

         In a window. In a fit. Fit in the window, Little One. Boo! The machine and controllers wireful and tangled and ideas and hacking coughs in dying rooms and the machine and the meat swinging blades, grinding crusher, chasing alleyway cat whiskers and knee-deep cardboard towns and druggie-dumps behind dumpsters and greasy grease-traps trapping greasy grease and rat-faced-rats.

         The sound where Little One’s laugh lives. The sound where Little One’s controller un-tangling forward breathlessly. Wonderingly. That. Like machines and hacking coughs. That, like machines and a hacker lives. That, like a likeness unlikely. That that that will not. And Little One is that, seeking that or being that that is less likely alike or unlike that’s likeness.

         Alone.

         And licking the cold glass, Little One.

Alleyway Terror

         That’s neither here nor there, as they say, at least that's what I hear. In the curious ways, the arm that bends likely Little One and controllers unwired. Spinning blades and pink, molasses feet in the knee-deep, and they, Green Girl Brown Neon War Blue Cotton, in hearts racing in the soul’s undertow and the spinning blades, sputter-sput-sput, clatter-clatter, grrrind.

         Bloody body blood, human blood, bubbles in blood, sickle cells and bells, churches demolished in a wake, blood and also blood and bloody brother’s bloody hell and the grinding meat. Where the arm bends but never lost again nor again, though hurt every time.

Acid-Cat

         Acid-cat, Bub, bubbles and gurgles – everyone gurgles, no, not gurgles, but gargles, no wait, but also gurgles, yes, they gurgle and gargle at once – and the rock from the time when the Magnificent Meat Machine swallowed them whole in the gurgling gargles everyone gurgles or gargles, Bub, the acid-tripping-cat of a lost friendship, and severed ties to limbs and thoughts and climbing ladders to a heaven-dream of boring dreams of Brown’s boring dreams born in dreaming made of bong dreams, boring, with an acid-cat, Bub, or the bubbly buddy, formerly.

Green Dumpster

         The green uncast in the shadow, filth double-exposed and ignoble. Eaten and spit from the Magnificent Meat Machine. Does the bend become? Yes, of course the bend becomes. The meat becomes something else entirely, but the bend does indeed become, yes, of course. But wait, now that I think of it, I’m not sure anymore. Regardless, the dumpster and the meat will separate, and furthermore, both items might become or might not become.

Homeless Chet

         In a pile behind it, the dumpster that might have become or might not have become, into the grinder, Homeless Chet’s cardboard homestead ground-up and spit out and then, and then, and then, so but then Chet and a rat get ground-up and trapped in the haunted prison, in a plate of beef and eggs.

Rat a Friend

         Quick, zip, chug-chug, sizzle, ka-lomp, ka-lorp, slurp, gzzt, k-ch, ch-k, k-ch, splash.

Greasy Layered Greasy Pavement

         Chocka-chocka-chocka-chocka-chocka-choc… grreeee, slorp. Feet and ground-up ground and spit out anything non-meat.

Losing a Rock Pile

         Bakalakalakalaka, ting-ting, klang, klop, ch-cka-ch-cka-wahhh, clack-clack-clack.

Happy Little House Behind the Red

         Gwwwwwaaahhhh! {running feet on gravel, screaming}

Chapter 5

Neon Girl

         She kills the beast and fills with sorrow. She fills the beast and kills the sorrow. She kills the sorrow and fills the beast. She fills the sorrow and kills the beast. She kills the beast to fill the sorrow.

         Wretched, strange, molested, Neon Girl’s infested.

         I call it chasing the beast, honey. And trust me, you ain’t never gonna catch that kinda beast, some waitress had said to Neon Girl one time in some restaurant in some small town. She secretly admired for the place.  

         It’s almost funny how things piece together after they’ve shattered. With a little spit polish: the Neon Girl magnificent! And no, she’s not hot, you fucker. 

         Cotton would disagree, sometimes, while Green would disagree late at night, while Brown would agree with Cotton and Green, to avoid conflict, and War would laugh at the whole thing. Blue however, at least on that fated night, when the Magnificent Meat Machine was on the loose and the people of the city were fighting for their very lives, might have forgotten Neon Girl's sexuality completely for a moment, though he’d been deprived of female contact for an unspeakable amount of time, and might have had no concern whatsoever about her appearance, merely her sex.

         This story has exclusively mildly unattractive men and women in it, so quit wondering.

         Everything and everyone else is in the oh so good fever forever, however.

Apt. TV

         They disturb the television program! Wife’s been asleep since April. The door bursts, wretched, off the hinges.

         What the hell are you doin’, eh?! Wife screams. Cotton falls in first, panting and ranting. What the hell is this?! Wife screams over her hysterical husband.

         It’s a fucking meat machine, okay? Brown charges past Cotton, knocking him into a chair by the door.

         What the fuck Brown?! Wife pushes Brown back out door. You’re not coming in! Get the hell out of my apartment, you dick!

         Cotton hacks up a lung.

         You okay? Wife concerns.

         Cotton shoves a hot pink thumbs-up. War trots in behind and gives Wife a sympathetic grimace.

         Green’s voice carries through the walls as he’s practically carried by Neon Girl down the hall: Issa fuckin’… Issa fuckin’… AH! Fuck! Issa fuckin’…

         Is he hurt? Wife concerns.

         I don’t know, hon. This is pretty bad, Cotton between breaths.

         Oh, wait, says wife’s pointy television gesture. It’s back, sit down at least.

         Cotton Brown sit on the couch. They watch the program:

         IS IT OR ISN’T IT A LIE? WE ALL KNOW WHAT IT MEANS TO LIE, YET SO MANY OF US HAVE DIFFICULTY FOLLOWING THROUGH WITH HONESTY ALONE. SO, TODAY WE HAVE THE MANSFIELD FAMILY WITH US AND THEY’RE FACING A CROSSROADS. THIS IS SANDRA. WELCOME TO THE SHOW SANDRA.  

         HI, GANNON.

         THANKS FOR COMING ON THE SHOW. NOW YOU’RE HERE TODAY TO MAKE A PACT WITH YOUR FAMILY, IS THAT RIGHT SANDRA?

         YES, GANNON. I’M HERE TO COME CLEAN.

         AND IS THERE ANYTHING YOU’D LIKE TO SAY TO THE AUDIENCE BEFORE WE BRING OUT YOUR PARENTS AND YOUR SISTERS AND YOUR CYSTS, THOSE NASTY BUBBLES THAT CONSUME YOUR SKIN AND EAT YOUR FLESH AND BLOOD SPLATTERHOUSE PINK AND DEEP-RED, BEFORE THE NIGHT IS THROUGH I’LL SPILL YOUR HEAD.

         Gannon’s lower-jaw unlatches, drops down with gravity, and the backside of Gannon's skull flips all the way back before he stretches his cheeks to splitting and forces his mouth down and over her entire head. He is in the bites and splatter-through Sandra. He chews, gags, chews, spits up, laughs, gags, coughs, and finally swallows. The audience cheers. He walks right up to the camera. He sticks his bloody fingers into the screen and forces the TV-screen open like a vagina and drops out of the TV into Wife’s living room, covered in after-birth. On the screen, the Magnificent Meat Machine consumes a headless, limp corpse that once was Sandra, and the Magnificent Machine eats the works: the entire Gannon set, studio audience, plastic bleechers, all the while, emitting ground-up meat splatterhouse pink and sand. The audience laughs.

Gannon’s Promise

         Making sense of it is getting easier as their drunken stupor eases, and Cotton calls out to Gannon, Oh shit!

         Sandra’s hair coughs up from Gannon’s mouth, followed by her teeth.

         She would fulfill her vow to never lie to her family again.

         Then, Gannon sits up a doll, spinning of head, and speaks, Is there something you’ve ever desired more than anything else?

         AH! Wife screams, Lemme at him!

Things That Scare Wife

         Savage would be the best word for Wife. She prides herself on not fucking around. Wife is a fucking badass. Wife kicks Gannon in the gut, Unk! Gannon’s body sings the melody therein: Unk-unk! Unk! Unk-unk-unk!

         Wife is in the screams, HELL! – NO! – HELL! – NO!

Stubble

         By the time in Gannon’s stubble the blood of Gannon. The vanishing to become complete manifestations of television theme songs. And Gannon, Gannon is gone, goodbye.

TV

         Broken and interrupted, Gannon is gone inside of a regularly scheduled program for a special bulletin.

The Ol’ Ball and Chain

         What the hell’s this? for Wife the tone strikes gentle, though pre-emptive.

Blinds

         The tone is struck and slightly. Blinds, streetlight of an uneaten dinner that unknowledgeable and under-spiced might feed the uninvited guests. Doesn’t bother the explanation, typical of this. Atypical, however, of the night of the Magnificent Meat Machine. But Wife is behind blinds and bent Venetian and a veterinarian to boot.

Sacrifices

         Their children have made no marks yet on their aging bodies and the time contains the emptiness – their emptiness – of unsent birthday cards, wedged between their souls and their bodies. This, a time for drinking and et cetera, being the only now and the only forever they can see.

         What the hell’s this? for Wife the tone’s slippery, or sleepy rather.

         We should call the police… War    

         There’s… Brown

         {vomiting from the bathroom}… Cotton

         Blood in the alley… Neon Girl

         Ground beef, man… Green

         Some machine… Brown

         Did it eat… Green

         Ugh… Cotton

         So much… Neon Girl

         Yeah, I wanted to report… War on phone

         Arggl… Cotton

         Blood... Neon Girl

         Was it… Brown

         Would you all just shut the fuck up for minute! Wife.

         A lighthouse is used as a beacon for ships in the night. Captains can sail toward them in a storm or fog or heavy rain or misty rain that just kind of floats there or just plain old darkness too and estimate the distance to shore.

Northerlies

         No but it’s not a person or anything, War speaks into plastic holes. There was an old Pontiac that got cut in half and the person got like, I don’t know, like stuck in a blender or something. She pauses and turns, They keep asking if I’m on PCP.

         War sweats.

         Just send someone down here, okay? The dude is probably dead by now and I gotta go. Plastic slam {chang!} What’re we gonna do? It was a hip-to-hand-to-chin-to-palms-rubbing-to-hip-to-brush-hair-out-of-face-and-grabbing-a-beer type of motion was what War does.

         What the hell’s going on? Wife offers leftover beef and eggs. Cotton the doorframe in running water sounds. Beers have a manner of arrival and the crüe have a manner of floating aloft. Soon, thereafter for relief.

         War pulls back the blinds and shows the problems outside the window, making it impossible to ignore or hole up like a groundhog. The wind is the blow on the camel’s back that coils around the hay stack, blown over by the northerlies. This is a time of the season.

Endless Sacrifices

         Were those blades… Brown

         {slurp, slurp} Cotton

         Grinder… Green

         Poor Chet… Neon Girl

         Down there… War

         Is that a garbage truck… Wife

         Ah… Cotton

         It was a grinder… Brown

         It’s a killer… War

         Did it just… Wife

         You think Chet’s okay… Neon Girl

         I told you… Green

         It killed Chet, man… War

         Ooomm, oh God, oh God… Cotton

         You mean homeless Chet… Wife

         Like ground beef, dude… Green

         We should check on Chet… Neon Girl

         And do what… Brown sipping beer

         I don’t know… Neon Girl sipping beer

         Green sipping beer

         Cotton slurping spittle

         Wait, wait, did that thing down there eat Chet… Wife

         Oomm, oh God… Cotton reaching for beer

         War’s plan: We’ll just wait till the police come.

         The captain seeing the lighthouse in the distance, steers to the shore, knowing to avoid the grand craggy underwater crags that will puncture or snag and the gusting northerlies around Wife.

         Brown turns up the TV:

Too Loud TV

         Reports of violence across the city have raised concern from local police, who have just released a statement warning citizens to remain in their homes until the situation is under control. We must reiterate here, that, uh, that the city is officially on lockdown. No one is to leave their home until further notice.

         The National Guard and The Army Reserve have been called upon to help with the situation. The exact nature of the situation, however, remains unclear at this time, but it is known that there have already been a handful of confirmed deaths, including that of local radio personality Caiden Denny.

         Yes, we’ve got it?

         Okay, so, then roll it. So, we have um, audio from his program, uh, it must’ve been just a few minutes ago. You know, Denny’s After Dinner? Please roll it whenever. Yes, now! Whenever you’re ready, Steve.

         {hiss of on-air air and AM static} Belagio’s a great way to perk up this gloomy time of year, but sometimes it’s just right to bundle up with the one you love and enjoy the sounds of Dvorak on this rainy evening. This is… {crackle, crackle, bang} Glen? Sorry, ladies and gentle… ung! {WAHHHHHH! Glorp! Slop! Wah! Glut-glut-glut. Spray.}

         We apologize for the graphic nature of the audio clip, but what we heard there is what has been described as… as a massacre… of sorts, involving some kind of war machine. The president has declared a state of emergency, but has yet to confirm or deny anything at this time. We are continuing to receive… eyewitness, yes… accounts… Let’s go live now, yes we can do that, just send it through live, now, now, yes, go now…

         I’m here in an apartment above the J&M in Pioneer Square, where the crowds of Seahawks fans are being slaughtered by a large machine of some kind. I have no idea if… right now? Outside? {thump, thump, click, slam, slam!} Hold it! Holllld!! Grrah! Grrah! Ah! No! No! Ung! {WAHHHHHH! Glorp! Slop! Wah! Glut-glut-glut. Spray.}

So

         So, So-So says to Oso, So? Oso sews and so does not so much as hear So-So’s oh so fuzzy soliloquy. So, So-So speaks so as to be heard, saying, So, Oso, who’s so-so sewing is so significant any-so? Oso the bear, set atop the TV set, says something so, so stupid. Not to repeat. The lonely path to understanding. 

         So, no one speaks a word about the things, nor anything else for a time.

War’s Eyes

         Calmer in a snuggy, eyes to the world and horrific scenes unfurling below with the homeless first, the drunken next. Tranny-Pammy trying to fight machinery. Hot-Plate Doug in the streets beneath machinery. Big Steve half-dead – already – in his cell. Machinery of spinning blades and Pho-Hu-Hot demolished and the majestic jungle bathroom revealed to the open air – purple Glade Plug-ins aglow. Cars are shards and shards of cars exploded around hard and sparking cars that drive over car shards to escape but popped tires and strippers to the wheel wells, grinding and sparkling on the car-shard concrete, pink with meat.

Wait, but Who’s Blue to You?

         Doesn’t Blue serve it to you? Beef and eggs and machinery, grindery, alongside, in, and with the sluggish cop shop slop on firm plastic trays – perfect for face-bashing. Is Blue a prisoner unkempt?

         The bars slide shut over the awakened Magnificent Meat Machine.

         Big Steve rolls over above and over and we’re alive inside the springs’ squeak.

         Our markings on concrete walls.

         Blue, wide awake in a dream.

Night of Knives

         Serrated is better than nothing, in War’s hip-huggers and in War’s hands, ready for stabbing. Hey guys. Grab one.

         Put down the beers, Wife has finished drinking.

         The crew drink ‘em down in a tossing can clinking on linoleum and serrated is better than nothing in belt buckles and Cotton’s front pocket. The building vibrations are the crumbs of ceiling tiles, dusty lead, cocaine, or asbestos. Down the hall, War Neon Girl Cotton Wife Green Brown – what ever happened to Blue?

Knives

         If the knives we find are knives, or if Wife finds her life inside a bride a knife in the side, or if wives’ knives are kept unkempt unsharpened or serrated et cetera, et cetera, but if the knives are meant for knifing grinders, and most certainly due to the metallurgy of said grinders, it remains vital for the knifer to knife with a sharp knife any metal grinder or else the knifing knife will divorce the blade from the handle, the wife or the wived wife will knife the knifer or the wife un-wived must certainly knifelessly knead the knife uncut until said knife says, yes, my knife life is a lonely life with no wife nor wives to cut the night, and so, in said situations for a knife to feel lifeless and knifeless without a knife wife to sharpen and to be sharpened by, or to marry a wet stone, they will have to do for living lives with knifey wives or simply being a knife wife.

Knife Wife

         It was one of the neighbors that got it first. Mostly unnecessary, indeed, an unnecessary thing indeed to knife a neighbor or to be the first to get it with the knife from the wife in the hall of some sad, crap-hole of an apartment complex like the Del-Mar. Surprise comes slyly, if the knife wife lives the life of a knife among other knife lives in knife neighborhoods and surprise! stabbing slyly, like a knife or a life of lies. Like blended bent and dented. Or shutting down the program before entering.

         This is the life of a knife in the hands of a serrated band along the hallway at the Del-Mar led by Wife with a knife, the knife wife, Neon knife Girl, Cotton knife, Green knife, War knife, Brown knife and all that kind of knife stuff. That’s a hallway.

One, the Number.

         At or in, of and to, around or with, then and there, the last of the worst of the down dirty Del-Mar, that’s who. Another ground up beef and eggs for the Magnificent Meat Machine. The plaza or the pavilion or the courtyard or the piazza or the square or the court or the arcade or the mall or the patio or the rotunda or the terror-dome or the regular-dome or the colonnade or the portico or the entryway or the entrance or the entry or the walkway or the quad or the loggia or the gazebo unbuilt or the pagoda unbuilt or the marquee dilapidated or the pergola misunderstood and misused, this is a somewhere where the Magnificent Meat Machine corners the meat. That’s a courtyard.  

 Gannon’s Final Word

         Sometimes it’s downright impossible for families to see eye-to-eye. This has been the case since… times archaic: the Vikings, the Celts, the French – God, I hate God {laughter}, but I’ll be a doorstop if I’ll let anyone tell me a boy can’t run the gauntlet, especially during the holidays, when the snow falls and laughter abounds.

         And that’s exactly why you’re all always right and there’s never no right or nor never no wrong no more. In there for then or something for the storybooks in there. The only pleasure is the pleasure meat. And if anyone’s going to enjoy the meat, it is essential for us to try to see eye-to-eye or to see about those things and this of things, fortunate, broken, material wealth that gets cold in the winter time, like stone steps or roadkill. If we can taste the meat, then we can love.

         Take care of yourself and for or for then or for more or for profit for more or for more and more. {applause, smooth jazz credits}

How Get Did Away?

         Knife Wife – the name of which she shall furthermore be referred – jumped at the Magnificent Meat Machine, screaming out a northern fury. Knife Wife found a connecting joint, jabbed one of many serrated knives. The lurching or lunging might have done her. Knife Wife needs a Band-Aid. She spits blood and a tooth.

         Get the fuck out of here! Wife bellows to War Brown Girl Neon Cotton Green. Green Cotton Neon Girl Brown War escape out the gate.

Wendy’s Interlude

Wendy is Also a Character

         Little One has a name. Wendy watches window moonlit watching massacre and dreams of imagining things that don’t exist inside her little apartment. Boo! she says to no one and to no one laughs, but it doesn’t really mean it any longer.

         So, Little One, no, Wendy, reads from some book she found in the dumpster downstairs and for the cherished ideas.  

Le Soleil et le Lune

         Voici le soleil et le lune dans leur lit. Ils aiment être dans leur lit et rêver. Tout le monde les écoute pour leur faire savoir ce qu'ils savent concernant la fin du monde. C'est une idée.

The Sun and the Moon

         Here are the sun and the moon in their bed. They like to be in their bed and dream. Everyone listens to them to let them know what they know about the end of the world. It is an idea.

Survey

         Are you satisfied with this translation? Yes / No

         Sur une échelle de 1 à 10, quelle est ta couleur préférée? 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

And

         And then, Wendy and Wendy’s right hand man, hand an end to Wendy’s left hand man’s story and Wendy’s left hand man thanks Wendy’s right hand man for handing him an end and opens one end of the end and Wendy’s bent right arm unbends and Wendy’s right hand man and Wendy watch and demand to be handed an end to Wendy’s left hand man’s story anxiously.

Date

         The thing in the story about the machine with meat obliteration features, remains incomplete to date. In Wendy’s right hand man’s words: this is a historically un-factual instinctual fictional rendition of an originally non-fictional edition of Wendy’s story. And he’s Wendy’s right hand man. It’s that that keeps them from oblivion.

A Special Message from Wendy’s Right Hand Man

         If seen please return to:

         Cell 8-18-A

         Internal Grinder

         Beef and Eggs, 99

In and Out and Left and Right, the Jaws of the Hellfire

         bored

                                         same

         what u doin?

                                         na

         u up?

                                         ye

         talk?

                                         ya

         u ok 2 talk?

                                         whatev

         u wanna

         talk?

                                         k

         k call

                                         k

         u gonna?

                                         ya

         i jus got

         like hella

         sad

                                         ye

         u a dick

                                         k

         im hella

         sad tho

                                         ye

         u evn care?

                                         ya

         k

                                         sorry

         fine

                                         hey sorry

         u 4 reel?

                                         hella

         i new

                                         luv

         call tho

                                         na

         what!?

                                         na

         u a dick

                                         ye

         by!

                                         luv

Chapter 6

Catchy Cab

         Neon Girl Brown War Wife Cotton Green and serrated knives crowd into the abandoned cab. The catchy songs of a blare. Too driven not to drive and too drunk not to drink, War is elected DD. The night is chaos.

         But what songs!

         Clamber Amber in the lady’s chamber, kiss the mistress in the red dress, inside her hide her interior outsides inside her, Clamber Amber in the lady’s chamber.

Flat Rubber Wheels

         The tires pop and the cab stops and the machine slurpees, glorpings dropping into puddle blood. Green War Brown Neon Girl Cotton Wife vs. the Magnificent Meat Machine. Glorp! Slop! Wah! Glut-glut-glut. Spray. They’re in the beef.

A Real Turning Point

         The thing a point a point a thing, inside a thing of a point to point to and to re-point to pointy points pointed, though pointless. Point being, they’re really ground down to it.

         The Magnificent Meat Machine grinds them again, perhaps this time for good. Not pointed for.

Interior Designs

         It’s awful compact to be. Couches are chairs in people in Green War Neon Girl Wife Cotton Brown in the machine.

Worka-erka-day Blue

         Bzzt! the door unlocks and Blue strolls cautiously into the concrete room, surrounded in invisible people behind visible glass.

         Yuh! Get, get! Blaze shouting echoing sounding struggling in the morning far down the catwalk.

         Door closes, Thud! Sport suit, grey, slim-fit, nicely formed tailored, long straight down the back, clicky heels, stiff lips taupe, eyes grey touch of eyeliner.

         Please sit, her throaty thrush a song in Blue.

         Cold steel chair in room.

         You’re Blue? she asks.

         Nod.

         And did you serve your beef and eggs for breakfast yesterday morning? pencil lips teeth click yellow legal pad.

         Nod.

         And what happened afterward? penciled in face covered-up real grey eyes. Like every character thus far, middling-to-unattractive you pig.

         Shrug.

         Pencil lip tap.

         Got a cigarette?

         Unopened pack in pocket, unused lighter ignition for the words to flow.

         Thanks.

         So?

         So, puff.

         So, what happened after you served beef and eggs for breakfast?

         Shrug puff.

         Grimace nod.

         Puff blow tap.

         Sit back, rephrase, Did you return to your cell?

         Nod.

         And?

         And Steve stunk the place up.

         Steve?

         Cellmate. Puff.

         Legal pad blank. Are you familiar with Green?

         It’s a lucky color.

         Or a Mr. Brown?

         Steve ought to be named Brown, chuckle.

         Or a Jennifer Harmon?

         Never heard of her.

         Picture with dogs, neon tights sting the eyes, drain the ducts, water the mouth, sadness unkind and grey skies.

         Nope.

         Well, she’s escaped and it’s my job to find out where she and the others have gone to.

         Did you check my cell? Puff.

         Your cell.

         Nod blow flick.

Cell

         There’s nothing interesting in a cell or any cell to be imbued with grey eyes and sport suit well-tailored, middling to unattractive. Dusty prints and whistles for the no Neon Girl.

She’s

         She’s seen in scenes unseen. Made meat machines in dreams. She’s ease with these a caterpillar in a cocoon in the machine. But butterflies die after spring time flights and butterfly summer nights and leave the leaves as they lie, goodbye.

Pencil

         Write for the course, par for the pad, lead for the yellow, grey for the eye, thought for the right, left for Andy’s man. Inky dripping yellow padded and words of all the stories combined in the grinder, of names and people known and unknown and guessed and hunted and blended and gathered and beef and eggs.

         The streets are now clear and people a-smear.

To Clarify

         A sterile clarity pared and prepared and repaired to make sense for clarity’s sake in case words flooded and clotted uncorked. That and of it. This of this for it. And of this for it and this. And to be locked up. Abroad shoulders crossways navels including but not limiting endings for it to be bendings over railings and sailings across seas of bodies in the machine.

Got in the Machine

         Before later, after sooner, the crew found a new brew and toasted in the sauce. It was a category and a setting. A memory card fallen by its peanut flooring. Perfect for storage of vague ideas and thoughts shared with a beer.

         If we’ve been got, you’ve been got, and they’ve been got and still. The got in the machine making meat magnificent. Could you be? And still. Still. Stilled silent under it and never meant it, just playing.

         Closet screaming Demon seed! Do what you please! Bloody cleaver cleverer than cleaner than demon semen fires and bleeding seasons. Dead and dreaming. Closet seasons dreams of buttoned up jacket throated thrushes of demon origin or cleaved between this closet season and that closet season or a shoulder season between the cleavers dead receivers and clarified reasons.

         To everything.

Helpless Verbs

         Walks to sleep to recover to snuggle under to cover over in preparation for to pace to fortunes or to rest to heal to clutch beneath to veil above in formulation for too unfortunate to believe in the fortunes of the fortunate formulations in the machine. To lie. To close. To ignore. To drain. To clutter-up. To hole-up. To frustrate. To lose. To give up. To throw up (your hands). To fall. To collapse. To feign. To flee. To crush. To split. To burrow. To hide. To evict. To convict. To shy away. To waste. To offend. To wither (away).

Cha-Cha     

         Gone guardian gored cha-cha-cha, folding table melting beers words Cotton can’t find you anymore cha-cha-cha. Feeling empty, feeling dead.

         Cha-cha-cha.

         Convicted interned to breeding station twelve. Twin regulators and busted sprinklers. Forged consent forms. From formed senselessness, endemic age-of-consent to conviction broken porridge bowls in the parlor. Feedings upon the start. Again and if them to say. It’s unlikely, however breathless. Contours of chalk outlines by starlight, absolved inside the machine, cha-cha-cha.

         That’s pointedly unclarified, obtuse to the point of pointless, cha-cha-cha. Convicted a thousand times for a thousand crimes. Regulated twinless friendless screens on blankets on stars for partnership.

Homeless Chet’s Poor Dog Clap

         An in if it’s gone and an in if it’s lost in the sign poster of the picture of the dog of the gone of the an in if it’s lost. But then if adored. But then if lingering in it. But then if it in it for the lingering dog.

         That poor old chap, that poor old dog Clap, trapped. Poor old chap that.

         Poor as a four-year-old old old doggo Clappo, old and trapped and in that.

         Of in as in that old oddly older old doggy Clappy, dead and flapping in this thing with Homeless Chet’s things is a thing or it. It kept Clap, that poor little chap, dead in the alley failing and trailing, old Clap too too old, old Clap the dog chap had that mishap. And Chet, oh God, Chet! That old dog, poor old dog, a chap really, and Clap, oh God, Clap! That poor chap.

Meat

         Beef eating fleas infesting and bled-out, poorly bled and well un-fed, eating meats ground-up and splattered on alley walls and sliding beef eaters infested the un-fed in the rat’s nest.

Rat’s Nest

         It’s a nest for the rats. Jennifer’s there. She agog. You found Jennifer there. She’s been missing awhile. Her father has utilized every favor to find. An investigative spectacle unbearable!

         Rat collars.

         That’s for it.

         Keep the spectacle abounded. Investigated whodunits.

         Blue lied. Blue did not know anything. Blue said, They were in the machine and I hit go, but that’s only my job.

         Green War Cotton Neon Girl Green in the machine, but no! the do not reside in the machine – forego all relations! with such! – ‘tis the rat’s nest ye be sarching fa’ar. The rat’s nest is placement vague partnered, scattered and unsettled. Of a leg spin the nest. Of an arm taken hard. Of understandings blatant. Or insecticided – for roaches infest the nest alongside the rats!

         But what will they all eat?

One Broken Statuette

         Who’s who of the Hollywood elite! Carried pursued the ticking chunking. Ticky tongues on lacquered glasses, pints to spilling.

         Three cheers for the Trust!

         And War feels funny, unsure why. Just funny. Green is up to it. Cotton trousers pantaloons and pants for seating. Neon Girl talker of shop. Greasy floors of peanut shells and jokes of past jokes of caricatures of selves of a parody of one’s true self. Put a line on the heart and draw the straightness forward together. A parody of one’s truest caricature of oneself on the line with a heart drawn in the straightness forward. Of one’s parody party in the lines of caricatures of straightness together forwarding to a true self. Brown in the words. Brown in the fools. A sounder of sleep, the wife of Gannon’s pride.

         That’s the bill right there on the lacquered wood there.

Bill

         It costs to exist.

         Taxed to carry on.

         A satchel left behind on a bar stool in a book. Remember them the mumblers of memory jumbles. Keep them in a box by the stool. War’s sentimental laughing on the bar to pass on the bar, in passing on. Past wars War’s still fighting laughing at the bars of the bar to raise it above the bar where Green Brown Cotton lips are. Resisting the night, talking endlessly about nothing to explain the nothingness.

         And in keeping with these brief elements of things, we’ll all agree.

Payment Pending

         A clock. An autumn snow. A sunset on. Lands to these. Places to others. A song. Ticking up the times and predictions unmet. Precautions barely borne to save the sailor. Tattooed of a sailor’s girl, anchors, hearts, and bottles of rum.

Chapter 2

Wait, I Thought They Died

         The characters forgiving previous plot devices and story arcs. They’re in the beef. And but also seated at the bar, Red.

And Then Came a New Patron

         In a door, framed by infamy and stained pink enters into Red, blades resting, ready for a cold one. Seated besides and the listeners.

Explanations

         And so then it was but a trifle to say the following, regarding the Magnificent Meat Machine, of course, due to the nature of it and the nature of its occupation, but so and the crew (Neon Girl, War, et cetera, et cetera) had a chance to sit down and share a drink with the machine in the Red.

         What follows is what occurred on the night in the Red in the night that that machine (the Magnificent Meat Machine) came in for a beer out of the blue.

The Magnificent Meat Machine’s Story

         My mother was a box cutter. My brother was a battery. My sister came to stay with us for a while, during her troubled years. She was a chainsaw. My cousin came to stay with us, that was when we were living with my uncle (he was a hammer), and my cousin only stayed for a while before he found that needed more space and independence (he was a piston). Gramps lived in the camper out back, deep in the woods, until he broke down by the doorstep one day, my brother the battery found him lying face down, his mother-board having malfunctioned (he was a word processor).

         ???

         My father? Well, we ran away from him when I was brand new (he was a violent modern gadget). I don’t really know much about him, other than the fact that he’s a machine with no practical use, a failed invention if you will, and because of the nature of what he is, or at least what he’s become and how antiquated his brand has become (they don’t make parts for his kind anymore), my father lives in isolation from other machines.

         …

         No really, don’t. I’m a machine that does not include emotional processors or anything like that, so it never really bothered me.

         …

         Of course, that’s why I’m so good at meat collection and grinding! I’m glad some one can understand that much about me. It can be a lonely existence this one.

         ???

         No, loneliness is more of a state of being than a feeling.

         ???  

         Yes and no. I guess you’re kind of right, it does feel like a sharp sting in my gut, or at least where my gut would be if I were an animal.

         …

         Well, thank you for saying so, but that’s all in the past now.

         ???

         It was a lonely childhood, for sure. There were other children around, but I ground most of them up before I could make many friends.

         ???

         Well, yes of course, I was just being facetious. There was Splatterhouse Pink, my best friend of all. She arrived in a shipment from the Philippines at the end of the summer, one summer, just before school started again.

         ???

         No, they wouldn’t let me. They were afraid I would grind up the kids, which makes sense, I guess. It was hard though, watching everyone else getting on the big yellow school bus. Or hearing the children play during recess. Especially on those sunny autumn days. That’s when that gut feeling really hurt.

         It was in the morning, one morning, on a sunny autumn morning that I saw Splatterhouse Pink driving around the side of the baseball diamond, mulching the grass and the fallen leaves. I couldn’t see anything else; I could only see her. A man rode on her back, steering her here and there. She was like nothing I’d ever seen before: she had wheels and spinning blades (just like me!). I didn’t know anything about her family, but from what I could tell, there were some major issues going on at Splatterhouse Pink’s house. Whenever I wandered past her house, I could hear arguing and malfunctioning machinery inside the house, and one time I saw her out on the stoop, looking kind of sad, while the blades grinded and the engines roared inside her house.

         Hi, she said to me.

         I said hello in my meat machine way, but I’m not sure she understood me.

         She got up from the stoop, wiping oil from her corners, and rolled right up to me. Hi, she repeated.

         I said hello again, but this time I spun my blades.

         ???

         No, no, I was just trying to get her to smile. She smiled too.

         What’s your name? she asked me.

         I’m the Magnificent Meat Machine, I told her. My name made her giggle. What? I asked.

         That’s a weird name, she said.

         My gut turned and butterflies flew around.

         My name’s Splatterhouse Pink, she continued. And then she did the strangest thing, she spun her tire against me, giving me the shivers, and she asked if we could go for a walk somewhere. I said yes of course, having nothing to do.

         We just walked down the road, nothing special really. She had to raise her blades so as not to ding them up on the gravel. She was pretty sensitive, I could tell that right away, but I liked that. It was like she could access to a whole different realm that I had never seen. And, oh man, did she take me there!

         You lived around here long? she asked.

         Yeah, a while, I said. What about you?

         We move, like, every year, she confessed, sounding relieved to finally vent to a real machine. But then she says, It’s been like this since the war ended. And then I think she was leaking oil from some of her sockets, leaving a streak of rainbow in the puddles behind her.

         I wanted to grind her up, you know? but I knew the timing was all-wrong. So, I told her about my family for a minute, not too much, but enough to let her know that I’ve been through hard times too.

         He acts like the war never ended, she continued, like, the whole purpose of everything is to win some stupid war that ended a long time ago. But then still, he battles day and night, trying to make a new plan or a new whatever to fix his life, but the reality of it is, it’s him, not the place we live or any war or any like, enemy or whatever, it’s him. He’s been broken for some time now and he just won’t accept it. He can’t accept it. He’s just too overwhelmed now to even understand how things really are. He just lives in his own little eiderdown world, pretending like everything’s fine and no one feels sad or anything.

         This was when I put my pulley-system into action. I started by pretending that my pulley-system had gone goofy, so I needed to, you know, stretch-it-out, so I did, but then on the way back, I slid the hook at the end of my chain around her timing belt, acting like the whole thing was some ridiculous mistake, spinning my blades, all the while.

         !?!

         No, no, no, but here’s the best part! She smiled at me and pulled herself into neutral. We started rolling down the slope and laughing as we went. We plowed right over a soccer game, but it was all little kids playing, so her blades were fine. We stopped by the visitor’s bleachers (which were completely empty). I rolled her under the bleachers (where I grind-up the kids that smoke) and she grabbed me like she was falling off the assembly line! She removed her grill and showed me the goods: for a cooling system, it sure was hot! Haha!

         Well, so I opened my service hatch and showed her what was in there.

         ?!?

         Would you like to see it?

         X

         C'mon, meet me in the bathroom in like two minutes, okay?

         ???

2 Minutes

         Reluctant to describe or discuss and like it or not, or kind of like it or kind of not or totally neutrality including. 2 minutes, 2 bathrooms, but which of the 2? In the first, Cotton and Neon Girl white lines on the counter. Sorry.

         Bathroom 2 down down down past judgment table. Eyes are bugged and speaking of the Magnificent Meat Machine.

         Knock, knock…

         {muffled} Yeah, come in, quick, haha!

         ?!?

         Okay, well, I’m glad you came! This is going to be something, are you sure you’re ready?

Into The Meat Machine

         Metal sliding on rusty hinges. Of a series of spinning blades stained blades and spinnings. Through the grinder and into Blue’s kitchen in the prison inside the Meat Machine.

         After this, we’ll share everything. Everything will be known and shown and ground up into beef and eggs, so, you know, whatever.

Back at the Red

         Empty, smashed to bits. Blood, so-so, or Oso, So-So, and also, so much of also so-so blood, blood, goo, and brain-matter a-splattered all around the ruins.

         But War’s never done. She’ll rise from the ashes and carry us onward, inward, outward again and on. In her feet like slippers on a dance-floor.

Out the Back Door

         Not even here body arrived three minutes before mind, mind left an hour ago. Have even let go, body driving automatic before dreaming, mind crashed ages ago. Will be there soon, mind rides on though. Some days we'll never get home.

A Dum Rum Runner

         No, now, no, just listen, okay? Cotton slurry. So, I go up to Fairbanks and it’s all cool and everything, I was at this bar, and like these two dudes were fighting over what the best dog breed is and I’m just there, you know, drinking. And then this guy in a jacket with a name tag on it. His name was Bill. So, anyway, he comes up and asks if I want to make some money. I tell him sure, doing what? And he says that all I have to do is fly up to Kotzebue with him and walk into town, meet a couple of the locals. Said he’d give me five hundred dollars!

         So, I asked him how long it would take and he said we’d be done by the end of the day.

         Meat Machine back at the bar, Did you do it?

         Yeah, he told me to meet him at the air-strip in an hour or so and we’d take off soon after, said he had a few things to get together before we took off.

         Anyway, so then I get there and hop into his little Cessna and we take off. The flight wasn’t very long, but I noticed that he was flying really low. And there were these little like huts or sheds or something and I asked him what those were and he said they were check points. Shouldn’t we check in? I asked, but he just said no. So, I ask him why and he tells me we need to stay off the radar.

         That’s when I look back and see a bunch of barrels in the back of the plane. So, I ask him what’s in them and he tells me it’s rum. I didn’t really think much about it, cause you know, rum ain’t illegal. Well, but it is up in Kotzebue, it’s like a dry village or whatever. All Inuits up there, or Eskimos or whatever. Middle of nowhere, literally. He tells me the only way to get there is by plane, no roads or anything like that. So, I ask him if what we were doing was illegal and he was all, well, not really. He wouldn’t tell me anything else, so I figured it was too late now, so I asked him about the money. He pulls out an envelope and hands it to me. Said it was the first half and the second half would come after we finished our delivery.

         So, we got out over the water and there were all these little islands and inlets and stuff and we headed to a landing strip, out in the middle of a forest. There wasn’t even a town there, just a big open field of grass. The landing was fine and Bill handed me his jacket and a rifle and told me to walk north up a trail, said I’d get there in no time. What’s the rifle for I asked. Says it’s in case I come across any bears.

         The Magnificent Meat Machine shakes its head, Grizzlies up there, huh?

         Exactly, Cotton clicks his tongue. So, I put on Bill’s jacket and carry the rifle out into the woods.

         Meat Machine is breathing heavily and asks, Did you see any Grizzlies up there?

         No, Cotton says.

         Aw.

         But it was a pretty long walk and I got pretty scared.

         Well, says Meat Machine, what if you did?

         Did what?

         What if you did see a grizzly?

         Probably would have shot it, I guess.

         So?

         So?

         Why not just add that in there?

         What do you mean?

         Well, you could just say that you did come across a big old grizzly bear and that you had to shoot it. Meat Machine spins its blades at revelation of reality.

         Why would I do that?

         It just makes it sound cooler to shoot a grizzly bear.

         Cotton shakes his head, Anyway, when I got into…

         No, no, no, add the part with the grizzly bear!

         Cotton sighs, Fine. I was walking and I saw a grizzly bear and shot it.

         No, you need to build up the suspense and stuff. Like “I heard a rustling in the bushes and started to run.”

         Cotton sighs, I heard a rustling in the bushes and started running.

         And then?

         Well, you know what? The grizzly parachuted down from a tree and…

         No, that’s not possible.

         Neither is shooting one.

         Yes, it is!

         No, because I didn’t see any bears!

         But it’s a story, just add it to the story. It doesn’t hurt anyone to add something to a story. It makes the story better anyhow, so what’s the big deal?

         The big deal is the truth of the matter, and the truth is I didn’t even know how shoot a rifle, let alone shoot a bear and kill it.

         Oh, add that too!

         Add what?

         Okay, so, the grizzly bear starts running at you from the bushes and you pointed the rifle and pulled the trigger, but nothing happened because the safety was on, so you clicked that off and by then the grizzly bear was foaming at the mouth, ready to eat you, like a few feet away. Then you cocked the rifle and BLAM! you blasted the bear right in the mouth, just as it was jumping at you. You fell on your back with the big old grizzly bear on top of you, only it was dead and it bled all over you and you had to wiggle out from under it! Do you have any scars?

         Dude! You’re fucking retarded. Can I finish my story?

         It’s better with the bear.

         Anyway, so I walked down the trail for like a few miles or something…

         After you shot the grizzly.

         Sure, whatever, after the fucking grizzly. So, like I was saying, I got to Kotzebue. It was like a tiny little village with foot paths and a few four-wheelers and stuff and a few buildings and all that, but really small you know? No power lines or nothing.

         No power lines?

         Yeah, I don’t think there were…

         But how did they heat the place? It’s too cold up there.

         I don’t know, maybe fire?

         Isn’t that above the tree line?

         Well, yeah I guess. So, sure maybe there were a few powerlines, but really the place was like you know, like really rural, no cars that’s for sure.

         Wow.

         But just when I got to the town, two big dudes come up to me and say, “Are you Bill?” I said, “No, but I’m with Bill,” and they said, “Come with us.” They brought me to a little house in the woods and they put on big jackets and backpacks and rifles. I was a little nervous by this point, but what could I do, so I just played it cool and hung out with the dudes. After a bit, we walked back up the trail to the landing field where Bill was taking a nap I think. We unloaded the barrels and started drinking the rum. It was terrible rum, but nobody cared about that. Pretty soon, other people started showing up and by the time the sun was going down it was big ass party – and it was pretty late, cause it was in the summertime when the sun doesn’t go down until, like midnight. They had a bunch of blubber to eat, so I tried it.

         How was it?

         It was pretty bad.

         Wow.

         Yeah, and I got pretty drunk and I remember they had this big like, walrus skin that they were tossing people up into the air with and they got me on it and tossed me like way up in the air. It was awesome! Must have been almost the whole village partying that night.

         Anyway, I met this chick and she invited me to stay in her little house. She was pretty hot, so I did.

         The Magnificent Meat Machine giggles, So, did you?

         Yes, we had sex, I think we did it that night. I was pretty drunk. Anyway, in the morning sometime, Bill woke me up and said he had some errands to run and that he’d be back in a couple of hours. I said, sure, cause I was really hung over and needed a lot more sleep. Anyway, so when I woke up I found out the chick’s name was Eklutna and she fed me oatmeal for breakfast and we went looking for Bill, but he hadn’t returned yet. So, I hung out with Eklutna all day. There was no word from Bill, but in the afternoon sometime, I thought I saw a plane flying, but then it disappeared over the horizon.

         Was it Bill?

         I don’t know, but I heard a booming sound after the plane disappeared, so it might have been.

         Did he crash?

         I don’t know. I spent the next few days waiting and spending time with Eklutna. She took me out on the sea in a canoe and I got to see Russia. One morning, we woke up to a moose scratching its antlers on the window, so Eklutna went out there and smacked the moose on the head with the barrel of a gun and it ran away. And after a week went by, I assumed that Bill would not be coming back, so I asked how I could get out of there. Someone told me the supply plane would be coming sometime in the next month, but that would be too long. I had to get back to Fairbanks to catch my plane home in a few days! But, they said they could never predict just when the supply plane would come. And since that was my only way out, I had to wait.

         Luckily, Eklutna let me stay with her for three weeks before the plane finally came. On the day it arrived, I ran to the grocery building and spoke with the supply flyer. I asked if he could give me a ride, but he said he didn’t have enough fuel for any extra weight. I begged him, but he said no. So, I offered to buy my weight’s worth of supplies. He said, fine, and so I had to buy a shitload of rice and stuff.

         So, you know, I got on the plane and he flew to his next three stops and finally finished at some town a hundred or so miles south of Fairbanks. He said I’d have to figure out my own way from there and left me standing at the landing strip at eight o’clock at night. It was still light out, so I walked into the town. There was only a church and a bar, so, and went to the bar.

         Meat Machine pushes its edits, Wait, did you think about going to the church?

         What? Why would I do that?

         That would just be more symbolic.

         Dude, can I just tell the story?

         Yeah, but you should say, “I went into town and saw a bar and a church and thought long and hard about where to go, a church or a bar. I even started toward the church, but then I decided a drink would be better.” That would be funny!

         Okay, then, let’s just say that that’s what happened, what you said. Anyway, I got drunk at the bar, cause there wasn’t anything else to do. I was running out of money too, so I decided, screw it, and stood up on my barstool. I shouted, “My name is Cotton and I really need to get down Seattle somehow. If anyone can help me out in any way, I would really appreciate it.”

         Cotton took a sip of beer from his beer. Then this old guy in the corner says, “Seattle? Hell, I ain’t been there in years.” Says that he just needs to stop by home and then he could drive me. I told him Anchorage would be fine, but he was already set on driving all the way to Seattle. So, I got in his truck and we drove all the way back to Seattle. The guy wouldn’t take any gas money either, it was weird. Anyway, so, you know, that’s the story.

Back the Back Home

         Babies in Alaska whacking moose or eating blubber. Cotton seeds in the breeze, drifting away from the meat machine. That’s the peace. Snuggled up and keeping warm. That’s the peace, right there. Barely to eat, but free to sleep or just be. And cozy up. Seal skin blankets on pads. Tiny windows. No breeze to carry in the cottonwood seeds and no trees to drop the fake snowflakes, cottonwood seeds drifting the summertime.

         Cold outside and dark outside and nowhere outside. Sailors’ children and northern-lights. Hard as ice. Soft as snow. Frozen fodder for the Magnificent Meat Machine.

On Vacation with the Magnificent Meat Machine

         Trips for big machines are difficult. Nothing is impossible. Icicle people store well. Not even jail. Winters are prison, so what’s the diff? The machine’s trip was much less fun and no adventures were had. Only massacres.

Back in the Red

         Stories of tall-tales are told by the pitcher and remembered by the snippet. The Magnificent Meat Machine is a regular by now.

         I ate five bears while I was there, this was a lie, I turned off the grinder and laid out by the Artic Sea, listening to the waves and the sea birds for a week, this was true. Some stories disappoint and some falsely set up expectations for wonder and some do not meet the needs of the listeners, so the Meat Machine has learned. So, There was a whole group of walruses that wanted to fight me for territory, so I turned on my blades and first fought the biggest one. He must have been a thousand pounds or more! He gouged my casing, check it out. It was an old scratch from the assembly line, but it worked out charming the patrons in their drinks. I ground up the big walrus and the rest swam away and let me be.

Let’s

         Let’s let letters let a lot of words tell the letter-reader to let words leave the letter-writer’s thoughts in the letter-reader’s vacant lot. That’s what letters. A personal touch. Lettering lots lets lingering thoughts linger or get lost, lest lettered and gotten, or dreamed and forgotten.

         Let’s let go of letters unsent, or letters burned. Lest the things let go unsettle unlettered or never let go. At least, however. Let’s let go.

By the Elk’s Head

         The wall of wood again. Wooden by the elk’s head, an ignored spot. Fading rapidly. Out of. In place of out-of-place, the shadows unremittent. That’s a letter. And when she comes to collect, it will be. And a letter received.

         Dearest, ill forgotten. From, ill begotten. How’s the why’s and the what’s? Are you am I? Let’s let letters reconnect the ill forgotten letters unsent and postage stamps unstuck, unstamped with the date of distribution.

Fathers

         Fathers are you to be bothered by another? Too many sorry’s to be said so why bother? In the head in the sand, in the hand in the hand in the head in the sand, in Glad-Town, the best place around! could we meet? Could we pretend I am you and you are me? Or that we are we?

Welcome to Glad-Town

         Loops for the gathered. Story teller’s father’s father’s story told – with a Polaroid to accompany the cold. Children on fire. Grandfather’s smoldering isolation of the fading embers in light.

         But what about Glad-Town? the best place around. Let’s let the letters be our guide to the place where we can be you and me, we. Glad-Town, the best place around!

         Sit down for a drink or teeth at the bar. The lies lying on the lacquered wood, drowning it, the Old Crow will take care of it. The disappointing truth. A truth without a tooth. Matching the young crow’s rows of missing teeth. But that’s about it, you know?

The Best Place Around

         She’s a tool for blame they say that she’s the one to blame. Arms of love and tin soldiers manipulated to feel something. This is a blame.

         No cars drive here. There are no powerlines, nevermind, there are powerlines, sorry, there are, but there aren’t very many. And the houses all look to the sea. Awaiting the arrival.

Freezers

         No freezers in Glad-Town, the best place around. It’s already so cold! Mourning doves and mountain chickadees. Singing sungs some songs singing sungs. In Dad-Town – near Glad-Town, the best place around! The freezer keeps meats frozen for the winter and popsicles in the summer.

The Magnificent Meat Machine Meets Its Father for the First Time

         My brother made me go.

         We met him at Denny’s by the freeway. We could hardly fit in the booth. I’d never seen a gadget like him, with all of his antiquated kitsch and retro-future design. I felt nothing, of course.

         I sat in silence, nothing to say, spinning my blades.

         He told me about the good old days in Glad-Town, the best place around! but I knew it was all bullshit, so I just kept spinning my blades and nodding. He isn’t just a violent modern gadget: he’s also a forgetful one. He still thinks we can go back to Glad-Town, the best place around, and be co-functioning machines, but he’s wrong. I knew that a long time ago. I’m a meat machine and he’s… he’s just some failed experiment and… there’s nothing I can do for him.

         Cotton arm around the Magnificent Meat Machine, You know, I never knew my dad either.

         Yeah? Well, it is what it is, huh?

         I hate that phrase, Cotton says.

         Me too.

         So, what’d you do?

         I spun out and ground up every bit of meat in the Denny’s before I left. My brother, the battery, hugged him and everything, so I kind of felt obligated to follow suit, you know? So, I did. I even stopped spinning my blades for a minute. His mother-board was leaking fluids and he even dripped some oil into a puddle at my feet. He was a mess.

         You gonna see him again?

         Probably not.

Denny’s

         Grand-Slam Breakfast for the deal. Smokers in non-smoking and yellow from smoke. What will become of the amber ash tray? And conversations going nowhere forever. Bounced off window glass. Daylight basements or rented shoe-boxes. What will we leave me? What will be me?

         In Denny’s with menu’s laminated. Lamp lit afternoon after-lunch afterlife. Telling tales in the rehearsal bins of forever. That’s the Glad-Town, best place around, promising of futures foregone or retro-futures ill-forgotten and ill-regretted. In Glad-Town, the best place around, there are smoking sections wherever you want to smoke and never a yellow tooth or missing amber ash tray.

         That’s the fun bending!

         Where the arm bends, there is an ending, too, where Glad-Town, the best place around, ends and the elbow finds infinity fallen. Bent and unbent universe.

         And we, the teller of the tales, having so much of the fun!

         Cooling the meals atop the hot plate. Steeping the teas and coffees and luxurious, padded futures and coated lungs smoking the sections where we wanted to smoke but were told no by the red line through.

         Still waiting to be seated too.

Chapter 7

Absolute Anarchy

         A bunch of anarchists and I eating pie. The pie a lie, an entry-level lie, a pie. Cherries in the bin, pistachio greens, globbed meat. Festival of the meetings. Every meeting a feeding.

         All the beasts eat in the feast. The Denny’s parking lot. White lines. The good ones taken, the rest, handicapped.

         In an inn in Indianapolis, or an inn in Annapolis, or an out of towners drowned in lakes abounding. This for the sake.

Swimming

         Brother battery, jumping in. Follow me, Cotton War Brown Neon Girl Wife Green. Swimmingly in the deep.

Movies

         There at the theater. Seats are limiting. Eyes fixed.

         She was in a black dress a red dress a lady in red in a sturdy pair of pants and she was not attractive, so get over it, fucker. She’d better be good, you say, you fascist. Hers is what Kathy’s was before Kathy became Kathy and Kathy gave it away for the star that you can walk all over. Kathy was trash though, a sellout, not this one, fuck no! And fuck you for asking or assuming that she’ll do what is done or said what is said or think what is thought or be what has been or feel what is felt or act what is acted upon or to be what is acted upon, you fascist! Fuck you for asking.

         Neon Girl hates movies because of all of those things and more. Won’t sit through two hours of pretty girl pining and sad men whining and all that Hollywood trash.

This is a Story About Hollywood

         Hollywood is a place of warehouse products such as cardboard, packing popcorn, and heavy metals. Fires burn regularly and constantly inside of old film warehouses, where remakes of classics are constantly re-edited and re- or un-manipulated for and by production assistants and basement goblins.

         The Wizard of Oz is not a movie anymore – did you know that?

Bing Crosby

         Did you know that Bing Crosby has returned? He’s recently been spotted suckling buns on the second to last O of the Hollywood sign. What a world!

Straight to DVD

         Shame is leading reason. It’s too far a walk for some. The reboots and whatnot. For the foreigner’s trade. Inside of features. Eyes for the future.

         Marriage failing? Try watching some stupid movie! Perhaps you married for visual effects more than love vibrations, if you catch my meaning. The eye can lead astray from the vibrations of the universe. Eyes are man’s curse. The 20th Century was a curse to the eye and 21st continues down bright, neon bright bullshit.

         Thanks for everything you do, Fucktown! the worst place around.

Walk of Fame

         Names of famous and doctors of free-lance surgical disasters, a starry-eyed wonderful. Run for your silicone life. Trying new things to build a better. But the eyes. Close the eyes on silver screens and open unto new walks, brand new ways to walk! Becoming inside. Turning to a loved one. It’s a wonder we will it. That walk!

Empty Placement

         The location, as far as can be said, was lacking in determined explanation and therefore did not stand to show, from what I’ve seen anyway, any piece of empty placement regarding the ensuing chaos that followed the lack of determined explanation, I think. If I think of it, which I don’t often do, it’s the only thing I think about these days. In the curious ways of it. That’s the fun ill determined for explanation.

         And so, due to this and because of other factors as well, the placement is empty and does not serve as the setting for any story or stories that this story is telling.

V.I.P.

         In letters to us and from, the empty placement can bother them, from time-to-time, if I am to think of it, which I don’t often do, though now it’s the only thing to think about – what with the canceling of my favorite television program and the ruckus pushing through the wall for a neighbor’s apartment. That’s an apartment that I failed to describe earlier in this narrative, due to the fact that it barely, feebly exists. Nevermind, it’s a figment or a fragment. And very portent.

Omens

         Attached to the stem un-growing or leaving the water un-planted. Things add up slowly in this curious way and often as well. To be thought, that is, if I may, and thinking of for or with, that’s the one I really love the best. And it serves as the focal-point for the many of a surrounding great sea or person. This and no further, it’s to be clarified for the good of the all. Not wasting time, really, not anymore, and it’s late so, that’s it I guess too. The visiting hours.

Dirty Dishes

         It’s a sadness and a bliss in the potable elements from the spigot that might or might not, in my opinion, of course, cause. It’s not my opinion, however, not anymore anyway, not since I wrote that last bit just up there a bit on the page. Looking upon such dirty things piled up and festering is reason enough to run. The legs are gone, so that’s a doozy. The running is not a question, it’s the downhill portion I worry about, it’s its best at the of a race. I can feel that much. The feeling is there. For me, it is there. There is the other feeling as well, but this feeling is the focal-point of the many of a surrounding great sea or a person similar in manner to myself and matching focus. To be wasting time on this is to carry on into her blessed nest perched atop the Del-Mar Apartments, where she’s lived for only a short time with her son and various visiting men of leisure and men of sorrow. That’s where this story stories-up, so to speak, in that the faces match in name.

         It’s like the glass factory, where she works, that the workers watch whatever ensues outside the glassy surface, in that we – the hypothetical and the common – view in the curious ways the ways of life that will never be our life, no matter the curiosity. This is how it’s seen, however. And I am tending toward agreement in this manner.

Under Glass

         To see and feel in conjunction while hearing, et cetera, et cetera, the troubles of living under glass or within range of a microscope. This is all that is left. It being springtime and all the plants growing, let’s go ahead, if you will, so to speak, and remove the glass. No, no, no, don’t shatter it!

         This is the mess we’ve been left.

Sharp Stinging Cuts

         It was beyond the reach of the hand, though doubtfully resigned to believe in this regard, in the curious way. It has always been like this is, or else it was totally different before. These are the cuts that really gouge aren’t they, Oso?

Wait, Who’s Oso?

         In his Grand Canyon face I would fall; the boy could tell a mean tale by the beer-lights.

Oso Tells a True Story

         My father was a butcher, he comments, after the conversation had swayed toward occupations and fathers. Oso runs his finger along his Grand Canyon face and we all realize he’s about to tell the story of his scar. Hot Night August was playing on the stereo, I remember that. I used to love Neil Diamond. My cat took a shit in the living room, right in front of his chair, and he stepped in it. So, he comes busting up the hall, just yelling his head off. Man, I was scared, so I locked my door. That was what really set him off: the locking of my door. That man knew how to cut through though. And he did. Cleaver, bone-saw, and he was in. It was full commitment at that point, and I knew him well enough to know that since he’d already crossed the line, he would not hold back.

         The Magnificent Meat Machine grunts agreement, My dad was the same way, man. Set him off and it was… The Machine clicks its rods, but says no more, nodding for Oso, who sits on a stool behind the bar – his employment will be brief –, to continue his story.

         So, I grab this, like neck massaging thing that was plugged into the wall. It was hard plastic on the wrong side and I knew I could really bash him good with it if I had to. I hid behind the dresser and watched him thrash around the room like a maniac, until he went for the bathroom door, that was the moment. I jumped out and just fucking blasted him in the skull. But he spun this crazy spin and slashed this thing into my face – he waves his hand along the Grand Canyon scar that dominates his face – with the meat cleaver. Bastard left the thing hanging from my cheek bone and my eyebrow. The police came and chalked it up as a domestic disturbance. They didn’t do shit.

         Damn, dude, The Magnificent Meat Machine commiserated. That sounds like it was really hard.

         Yeah. It was. Anyway, my dad died in the hospital a bunch of years later from an aneurism, which was probably linked back to the time I bashed his skull in.

Okay, Let’s Forget About Oso

         Okay okay okay. Oso, Jesus my dude. You really laid it on there didn’t you? Like it or not, Oso won’t last long.

Spaghetti

         Let’s talk sauce. I was making the best spaghetti sauce of my life, hoping to impress the boss man into including spaghetti on the menu, when this all went down again, this whole thing with the meat machine.

         Cotton Neon Girl Brown War Wife Green were ground up the first time around, so that wasn’t this, but also, this was similar in some ways to that. We all thought it was a pretty good machine, other than the whole human grinding element – though even that had a logic to it that we couldn’t argue with. Maybe it was Oso’s balls-to-the-wall method of story-telling that brought the machine out of its… shell. Soon the Magnificent Meat Machine would dictate some amazing masterpiece of prose as we sat and listened. Well, it was the listening that ruined the sauce! The boss was not impressed.

How the Magnificent Meat Machine Learned to Read

         I started with comic books probably, the machine began, sharpening its blades on a wet stone. I liked Iron Man, of course. I could read the words, but everything, every word I mean, what with this lacking processor of mine, everything, I mean, every word somehow came out to be about grinding meat or slicing things. I knew that there was more to life than grinding up humans to feed the prisoners of a compressed penal colony inside my chest.

         Iron Man taught me nothing.

         So, I tried harder, to you know, like find out what I was missing. The problem wasn’t just with the processing of information, but it was also a function of physically being unable to resist grinding books, which clearly interrupted my ability to fully comprehend their themes and motives.

         I guess I kind of always wanted to be human.

Meat Got an F

The Magnificent Meat Machine

         Ms. Warren

5th period

Creative Writing

01/30/2011

         Once upon a time there was nothing and it did not move or look like anything or anything like that, and there was no place for it to take place or anything like that, and so the setting was difficult for us to imagine. You’re probably imagining something very black or something like that, like a dark closet or a basement without any source of light or something, but really, it was even less than that, if you can imagine.        

         Well, it was in that non-place that our story began.

         But then, nothing happened at all, like literally, nothing.  

         The End.

Ms. Warren Has a Talk with the Magnificent Meat Machine at the End of the Day

         I’m concerned that you are not taking my class seriously.

         No, no, no, I love this class!

         Well, but this story reads as quite hostile toward the writing prompt, and, honestly Meat Machine, it insults me as an instructor.

         I’m sorry. I wrote a lot more for that story, but I thought it was too weird to share.

         Well, it certainly is out of the ordinary. Could you show me the rest of what you wrote?

         Are you sure, Ms. Warren?

         Yes, I’m quite sure. What do you have?

Meat’s Ending

         After the end, nothingness became bored with itself and characters began to form. The nothingness noticed that there were no places to inhabit, so it started putting chairs and carpets and armoires and tables and walls and floors and ceilings and windows and things of that nature in order to contain the vague forms that it had begun to take. Honestly, it was very reminiscent of the book of Genesis, only there was no such thing as a book of Genesis in this world.

         So, the characters obviously first had to have hands and arms for moving these items into place, otherwise there would have been no setting at all – they might have simply fallen into oblivion, I’m unsure of this. But assuredly, the vague forms of characters first grew arms and hands, but then realized how difficult it was to grip the items that were needed in order to have a place to be, so they decided – oh, yeah, they also developed minds for deciding at the same moment – to grow fingers in order to grip the items needed to make the place in which they might inhabit.

         At first, it all looked like a mound of dark clay, but soon after the hands and arms and fingers and all that started to appear, it looked more like a creature eating our characters. It was very funny.

         Endings have always existed before this time, when the furniture and household items and outlines were brought in and the setting for this story was set into place by the hands that inhabit this space. The hands formed bodies of lumpy clay that began to walk around the space with its walls and its furniture and its household items. But soon after the creation of themselves, our characters grew bored with the vacancy of existence and began scratching at the surface of things, including themselves. It took newly formed fingernails to begin the scratching, so these were manufactured before the boredom and vacancy led to scratchy-destruction of the something that came from nothing.

         But then Dad came into the room and started throwing us all around, against walls and into futon mattresses on the floor. At first, we thought he was only playing, but then I felt the slick, greasy, cold surface of his skin and suddenly realized that this was no game.    We used to play a game called Monopoly, only it wasn’t the Milton-Bradley game that takes all afternoon to play; it was his game for which he failed to come up with a more apt name. His version of Monopoly included beatings. Actually, that was the entirety of the game: beatings. At first, it was like wrestling or playful tossings, but then the intensity of the violence grew and grew until I found hole in the drywall in the shape of me and I remembered the pain in my joints and the jam against wall and the sting and the flash and the continued blurry vision and the complicated rulebook for the game.

Rules for Monopoly:

1.     Don’t look Dad in the eyes

2.     Don’t move while Dad sleeps

3.     Don’t play or joke when Dad is thinking about anything

4.     Don’t leave anything anywhere

5.     Don’t ask questions, especially about whether Dad is okay

6.     Don’t get scared

7.     Don’t cry

8.     Don’t fight back

9.     Don’t not fight back

10.  Don’t act unaffected

11.  Don’t be too affected

12.  Step on his greasy back when told

13.  Step off his greasy back when told

14.  If Dad says he just took a big shit, assume that he will give you details

15.  Don’t ask questions he thinks you shouldn’t ask

16.  Don’t miss asking questions he thinks you should ask

17.  Don’t answer any question put to you in a manner that confuses Dad

18.  Don’t answer any question put to you in a manner that displeases Dad

19.  Don’t answer any question put to you in a manner that seems untrue

20.  Don’t answer any question put to you in a manner that panders to Dad

21.  Don’t take too long to answer a question put to you

22.  Don’t open any door that is closed

23.  Don’t knock on any door that is closed

24.  Don’t ask any questions through a door that is closed

25.  Don’t close any door that is open

26.  Don’t flee from Dad

27.  Don’t go limp

28.  Don’t struggle

29.  Don’t ask for affection – verbally or non-verbally

30.  Don’t ask for a different television program

31.  Never question Bob Dylan or The Band

32.  Never pretend to be asleep

33.  Never admit difficulty falling asleep

34.  Always clean up after your own beatings  

Ms. Warren’s Feedback

         Openings and her mouth with sounds that were wrong, all wrong: Weeee…Waah.

         What’s happened to you, Ms. Warren? the Magnificent Meat Machine asked his beloved teacher. He watched in horror for her ever after or blender face or, if you will, catastrophic grinding in order to feed the prison within his chest, for she was made to malfunction, it was not his fault, no! it was though. Nevermind, it’s everyone’s fault.

         Ms. Warren was a leaky, old, plastic, olive-green, rubber-topped, loud, moldy, aged, fermented, rusty-bladed, broken-sealed, name-brand – though out of business – blender, forgotten on some shelf in the back of a whirly-gig in the corner of the kitchen. The Magnificent Meat Machine looked up to her, and though he was much larger than she was and though his function was more severe and extreme than hers, he always felt that her blades were so many of the bits of mined metals that were of his and his of hers, for hers were not his though in a way hers was his and his was hers, if one were to ignore the proximity of mining operations for name-brand companies such were hers and his. She told him he would someday grind up humans for beef and eggs; she was the first to say anything like that to him.

         His father couldn’t even be bothered to sharpen The Magnificent Meat Machine’s blades, let alone his own – that lousy drunk! All his father cared about was baseball and drinking, and he discouraged all of The Magnificent Meat Machine’s venturing in the curious ways.

         There’s a reason for every thing. And a thing for every reason. And too without purpose for anything to bear.

Chapter 8

The Grinding of Ms. Warren

         If the cold of a hand-written letter. Of phantasms in northern shadow. Cluster all into the gathering. If the cold of silence, inside the words, blanketing wool. Or a bed on the floor wakes. To become all clustered together. If for the singing of couch springs in summer. Of awaiting the crooked winds. Clustered the one in the one of one.

         And she is the heart and the blood.

         What is done.

Chapter ∆

Albatross Choss

         In sin, degenerative engineer, chaotic or bust.

Flink Duster

         Putter rustic, canker flood, bitter root, chew the root, bitter. Bitter root.

Expandable

         He’s she’s theirs or ours. In time, cluster one. Cluster three or. Lists of times for the making of un-scheduled expanses or no, that was cluster one or nearly cluster two. Nevermind, cluster three.

         Things like this are safe to say, I think.

Wash-Up

         So, clusters one through twelve aside, a dusty clustered bunch of ones, twos, et cetera, et cetera, or forgotten winter mornings – clusters twelve through twenty-eight aside, of course – with widened windows, we cleaned-up nicely. Scrubby bubbles in tubs. Was it if the lists of times arrived? There’s no way for me to tell you how.

Twelve Knots

         Untying the fingerlings, clusters one through twelve aside, of course, in the course. As for times listlessly and clustered together again in homecoming. To untie and reform. A machine is a machine. Is that really a thought? In the undoing of knotted programming. A machine is a machine, I think I can think this way.

Arbitrary Cottage

         Inside, come inside, the children of Gannon. This is of places you know from television alongside your fathers. His’s is the faces of memories unbroken or chained barroom chats turned into phrases.

         Wife thought it was love. She kicked his guts in. Wife of the badass clan, savage, eh? Gannon’s gone, goodbye.

Manifest Cottage

         The cottage stood along the shore, like birds of paradise, dead on the rocks. None of a character inside, but digesting inside prison walls inside the Magnificent Meat Machine.

Chapter 9

Neon Jumper

         Feeding the beast, to starve the food, to eat the beast that eats the feast that starves the food in the prison where Neon Girl jumps the rail. The floor falls fast. Busted knees for the starved feast and creature comforts broken or re-manifested feasts in the form of discomforts. She’s a sour one. Molested and infesting the feast. Neon Girl doesn’t give a shit any longer, the way that she moves is a mystery. In triangles or pyramids in the first dimension, pulls up and pushes down, kicks and punches, bars snapping and jumping the rails. Killing the catwalk, busting and re-busting her knees until they’re indestructible. And she’ll soon be ready for to face off against it all. Fuck it all.

Blues Stew

         If not by gunpoint or by violent gaze. Bubbling over.

Dining Scuffles

         Hot face melters or Grand Canyon faces for the stew is not a favorite. The Meat Machine’s version of Monopoly, played beyond repair, and Oso’s body dismembers it. The stew is hot.

Beefy

         War Cotton Neon Girl Wife Brown Green chew the beefy bits and swallow the floury watery broth, dreaming of pepper.

         Is this us? Brown voice.

         Neon Girl scoffs, Who asked that?

         Brown confused look, Me. I asked that.

         But we’re here, War is logical.

         Green’s mouthful.

         Cotton’s mouthful.

         Wife’s mouthful, H’er gidda thit, om hungry.

         Blue cooking them, serving them, eating them. Isn’t or is it, wondering is fun. Buzzer buzzes overhead, announcer announces the following announcement: We’re going into the lock-down. All prisoners report to the cell for inspection. Buzzer buzzes again. Blades spinning outside, like rain. Sharp blades. Sharp spinning blades.

War’s Cell

         On a bunk, folded uniforms in drawers, et cetera. Guards with spinning batons and leery gazes and comments about it all, needless comments.

         Well organized.

         Dusty.

         Name?

         War.

         Dusty here too.

         Pretty organized, but dusty. Writing on legal pad.

         Next!

         Next.

Neon Girl’s Cell

         Pushing up on the floor, arms ready for blast-off, clothing on floor on bunk, et cetera. Guards scowling and scoffing and spinning.

         This is disgusting.

         Yep.

         Name?

         Neon Girl.

         Stupid name, stupid messy girl.

         Writing on yellow legal pad: Stupid, messy girl, clothing everywhere. Reprimands required.

         Neon Girl breaking two pairs of jaws with rod from bunk. Chaos of hands and feet and batons and grunts of pain and fury. Neon Girl running.

Jail Break

         Stolen keys jingling, bars open, running Neon Girl, jumping the rail and rolling on concrete. She knows the key. She must be stopped, no, nevermind, she will not be stopped, not now and not ever. They try to stop her, calling, She must be stopped! Jaws crack, teeth shatter, doors open and she is released.

         Massive blades spin, smelling hot greasy metal, sparks and grinding just outside the prison gates, Neon Girl pushing past the incoming meat, climbing, insistent, furiously, millions of thoughts and perceptions per-second, she fights and plans in unison, watching the spinning blades and the splatterhouse pink as it gathers within the machine. She’s inventive, infested, screaming out her past molested and fighting against something no one will ever understand, not even The Magnificent Meat Machine that fights to keep her inside the prison walls and eating meat.

Reconstituted Red Meat

         Bars of bunks between blades and… Neon jumper! She’s through and it’s a time of collecting all her scattered bits of meat to create the burger she once dreamed. Like clay, her ground-up meat is formed into the shape of a girl, sorry, a woman, well nearly anyway – vague at first, but becoming clearer.

Blisters

         Blood dripper under this blister inner-Neon inner-Girl in her dinner, she’s for dinner blood dripper under this blister inner-outer inner-farther in her father, father in her blood drinker, meat grinder that was her father’s daughter in her sister’s inner-child. Faith healer molester festering father’s daughter’s sister’s father in her, drinker, over-thinker, inner-breaker broken, infested daughter’s sister’s mother’s lover’s father in her, drinking, over-thinking, inner-breaking and her father’s eyes to boot.

Inner-mirror

         So, I was trying to go to sleep, her burger-voice Neon to the touch. I heard my mom going off. I mean, going off! Ranting and everything. But then I heard a huge, like, thud against the wall. My stuffed bear fell off the bed. I almost said something, but then there was a whole lot more thudding and crashing sounds and my step-father was losing his shit in the other room and we knew it. So, we ran to the door, but the door was barricaded, or more like, like, he’d smashed the place up so bad that things had piled up in front of the door, so it couldn’t open, and my mom was crying.

         The Red is empty and she is singing.

         I’ve never wanted to fuck her before, but now I do.

         We pounded on the door, but it was blocked by what I later found out was her entire bed, frame and all. My step-dad had thrown the thing on top of her and it was blocking the door from opening. My sister called the police. I froze up.

         The Red is empty and she is singing.

         I really wanted to not want to fuck her, but there’s something pulling my body toward her as she speaks. Sorry, I can’t help it, it seems.

         My step-dad was swearing a lot and he threw my mother against the wall and then threw the whole bed on top of her and opened the door. My sister and me ducked into our bedroom as he stormed out, angry. I wanted to murder him. I really did. I would have killed him if I’d seen him that night. I’ve wanted him dead more than anything else; I would give anything to save my mother that night, but I was just a little girl, what could I do?

         The Red is empty and she is singing.

         I’m a piece of shit for desiring her while she shares such a tale, but my heart is racing and I feel like I could be a superhero, and I want to kill him too! I also want to fuck her worse than before. I can hardly catch my breath as she speaks, tears streaming down our face. Her neon tights suddenly just right.

         The police came about an hour after he left. They listened to our story and told us to call them if he came again. But my mom wouldn’t let us call the police the next time he came. It was a couple of years later when he came. He’d been living in Alaska for a few years and had apparently found Jesus or some bullshit. But the thing is, Jesus made him worse. Finding Jesus changed him from being an abusive asshole to being self-righteous abusive asshole.

         I listen to Neon Girl forever.

After Hours

         Naked beds in waves of her. Sheets of stained white lashing her whips and her curls and her tugs and her ebbs. Wake up the neighbors. Wake up the whole goddam neighborhood. Wake up this whole fucked up world and fuck its brains out, pull its hair from behind and ride this planet like a pony, ride it rough, rough it up until her volcanoes burst and the Pacific Plate shifts and mother earth releases her juices, jostling the bedsprings scraping the walls, scraping the pig-pen. Hips in her hips wrapped around and around and Neon Girl tight on the nightstand.

A Formal Apology

         Are you even listening to me? Neon Girl asks.

         I am not aware that I am a character in her story, and I don’t know how to explain that to her, so I just nod and pretend to be listening her story.

         No, she accuses, you’re not!

         I am unable to articulate the shame I feel, failing to be the one that’s supposed to listen to her, to hear her, but then I just want to fuck her again. Her mattress is a twin and I suddenly have the urge to leave.

         Then, she starts crying – does she know I’m about to leave?

         Well, so then I fuck her again.

         That only quiets things down for a bit, but she’s soon back at it, wanting me to understand everything about her better than she can understanding anything about herself.

         God, I love her.

Misogynistic Meat Machines

         The Magnificent Meat Machine is drunk as hell when I arrive at the Red and its telling a story and the listeners are only halfway listening, looking quite fatigued by the onslaught of the machine’s disturbing stories.

         They’d call you a pussy if you ever complained about it when they did it. The Magnificent Meat Machine somehow takes a big swig of beer from a stein – who drinks from a stein nowadays? – before continuing, So, I would just grind them all up into, like, ground beef.

         But then soon they would reappear inside of me. The machine pauses; its motor sputtering. In the prison, inside me. The Meat Machine’s blades grind to a screeching halt, due to excessive moisture, and the machine pounds itself violently against the lacquered bar, grunting and crying, splitting the whole bar top in half as it goes. It’s crying as it grinds up every living thing in the bar, feeding the people outside to the people inside. The outside people become the inside people and the meat flows.

Inside and Outside the Hellfire

         yo

                                                     yo

         im hella

         sad

                                                     ye

         poor mashine

                                                     ?

         i mean like it

         gots no choice

         ya know?

                                                     ya

         u ok

                                                     J

         cute

                                                     ya

         u wanna c me

                                                     ya

         cum over

                                                     k

         k

                                                     …

         u cuming?!

                                                     hella

         u a dick

                                                     wat u think?

         i like it

                                                     it sux

         wat?

                                                     book

         wat book?

                                                 c u soon

Cluster 2

Tell It Like It Is or How It Should Be

         Wife savage on the bones, cartilage won’t slow her down. She won’t tell her story or she doesn’t know her story or she doesn’t feel like sharing.

The I

         A writer wrote the following regarding writing about writers writing: Don’t write about writing, no one wants to hear that shit. It’s terrible shit when shitty writers write about writing, you know what I mean? I’m here typing on this stupid fucking typewriter, telling you don’t do what I done!

Brown Cell

         Watching baseball is sport.

War Cell

         When the fingers wither, will music be there, will singers sing the songs the singers sing sang sung so many years ago? Where goes the sound that music makes? War may never know.

Blue

         Somber kitchens sober chefs paying for a winter death, fed instead in prison folk, chomping and masticating the all of everything. Spatulas and wooden spoons. No natural light on metal pans.

         No favors forgotten, nor fulfilled completely, nor flaunted, nor infatuated, just working the kitchen, head down inside of eternity. Eternal meat piling up in coolers.

Green Cell

         Half-watching baseball is half-sport.

Cotton Cell

         Thinking of other things while looking out a window that should be there. Concrete walls echo old or oldest stories told or telling in cells with Cotton thinking, dreaming, sighing. These bars are not lacquered nor do they facilitate conversation, nor do they serve alcohol. The metal enclosure, hell-cell, belongs to no one that wants it, because no one wants it.

         Celebrating the dead in functions served and cold concrete. Should have, but didn’t. Couldn’t have, but might have. Would’ve, but too busy. Shoulders’ sour, but moving smooth. Celebrity meat, posted, re-posted, un-posted, lingering crypto-coding, un-friended, requisitioning, scrolling emptiness, flickering fingerings, swipes right or left.

If It

         If it’s it, it’ll be it for a bit, but if it’s not it anymore, it’ll become just as obsolete as every it before it. That is if it is it or was it at any other time. And if it is not it any longer, it can be its best friend by its own volition its selfhood. It is it.

Automatonophobia

         Through the glass, shiny, shifty plastic eyes round. Looking out-cell, in glass, behind it, seeing through the glass, shiny, shifty plastic eyes round. Cotton feels it, when it occurs, no, a little before it occurs, yes, long before it all happens to occur.

         But then only an echo.

Cluster 2.1

Little One’s Boo!

         It was startlingly repeatedly, BOO! Little One or Wendy had returned from some journey that the narrator forgot to illustrate in the text, but kept for himself or herself, that inner-world. When prison walls fall, to the Caribbean bluest, to the clouded mind, haunted by what’s released beyond prison walls, and I’m so sorry, really I am.

2.2

         Filed under forgotten files.

2.3

         Refiled over post-forgetful flies.

2.4

         Defiled with Neon’s dripping posts.

2.5

         Unfiled and strewn about in the sauce.

2.51

         Clarified in stories told by haunted heart.

2.511

         Clarified in numbers crunching by prison walls, crumbling.

2.5112

         Swimmer’s itch down-under or about the bed frame in the broken doorway.

2..

         Real numbers in conjunction with non-existence.

Klluster 6

Glass Nose

         A bottle fell from the lacquered surface and shattered inside the endings. Catching fire and burdening a feeling of glass shattering interior endings. That’s the fun bending. Where the arm bends there are endings bound and gagged, punchings of glass noses and glasses and breakings for the never forgivings for the never endings for the forgivings forgotten and lost in the shattered glass floors at the end of it all.

         I’ll spit in your face and you’ll know it was meaningless to say it and to read it and to be a thing and to hope for the future of breaking down the meanings of things and explaining the meaninglessness of existence and your drink will go dry and your body will die and the drying meat, hanging from the rafters and festering fish for the coldest winter in history and the hottest summer in history and the wettest rain in history and the most thunderous lightning storms in history and the most historical writings ever lost in the clouds and crashing satellites on starving heads of countries in rebellion and personal armories used to defend the nothing properties that will never belong to anyone. And my spit will dribble down your face.

Stutt-terer

         I I I I shake your h-hand bbbbbbbbbut I I I I I dddddon’t fffff nnnn mm-mean nn-it I I I s-spit iiiin yuh-your f-f-f-face.

Say It with Confidence

         The confidence with which it occurs to a tinkerer of words, if and only if, in regards to what is meant, but due to depth of meaning and even the varying definitions of meaning and even the varying purposes of meaning and even the menace of meaning, it must be stated in shattered glass tones on the peanut floor of some red barroom. 

A Fight Breaks Out

         Well, Glass Joe is down first, his nose shattered into a thousand bits of shimmering shards, then the Magnificent Meat Machine, cowering in the corner by the frustrated fry-cook. It shuts-down due to its declining processing speeds in the midst of overwhelming evidence to the contrary of its existence. The Magnificent Meat Machine’s blades cease their spin and the walls of the prison fall and the prisoners flee from within, tiny as they are, to the dusty mopboard-skirting behind the Pac-Man table game. Blue Brown Green Wife Neon Girl Cotton War make a game plan for the autonomous door. Pac-Man blips and blops at deafeningly huge proportions. A quarter under the machine, too big for tiny hands, but still nearly worthless.

         The fight is passive-aggressive – such is the culture – and ends even more bitterly than a fight of a physical nature might have ended. The barroom is empty and the Magnificent Meat Machine tries to mourn its own death, alone, due to the fact that no one loves it, but it fails, due to the fact that it does not love itself, ashamed.

Spit

         I spit in your face.

         I don’t know why.

         Stop asking questions.

Into and Out of the Hellfire

         where u?

                                                     c u soon

         time?

                                                     idk

         ending soon

                                                     k

         so?  

                                                     imma stay home

         what?

                                                     sorry

         im in hell

                                                     sorry, busy

         wtf!

                                                     i need a break

         what that mean?

                                                     just need a break

         u dumping me?

                                                     no, just a break

         omg! u dumping

         me  

                                                     if that’s how it is

         omg!

                                                     i guess, ye

         what about the

         book?

                                                     what book?

         this one

                                                     u can keep it

         i don’t want it

                                                     throw it away, i guess

         L

                                                     same

         u got no

                                                     u 2

         fuck u

                                                     k

Cluttered Phase 12

Yes

         Yes, it’s over now, for now, and yes, yes, yes, yesterday is yesterday and today is yes, yes, yes, but to say yes is to mean it, but only if said with confidence, yes, confidence, this is it and it will be it for a bit.

         Yes, to say it’s a phase is a cluttered cluster of words and phrases, but, yes, yes, yes, yesterday is a collection of cluttered clusters of words and phrases, all blended together in our declining minds, outdated gadgets, and death machines.   

Death of the Machine

         I will shred you, machine, though I pity you, I really do pity you. Programmed to obey, programmed to kill from afar. I will shred you, machine. I spit in your face, you coward, no, I am a coward, but you are too, you filth, you shit on my shoe, no, nevermind, I don’t have any shoes on, but you get the idea. I could put on my shoes and step on you, you filth, you shit!

         How can we kill this machine?

         We must kill it from the inside this prison.

Tiny Friends

         Pac-Man falls out of the machine and chomps at Wife Cotton War Neon Girl Green Brown Blue, capturing and chewing Green, sorry Green! before he can escape and digesting him into digitized meat, the rest run for their lives.  

         Ghosts abound the bar, tiny, but impossible to the touch and deadly.

         They run for the door, which is hanging off its hinges. Pac-Man pops War’s head like a grape, sorry War!

         The snow is deep, too deep for Pac-Man, but our tiny friends run along the top of the snow, light as a feather in their current stature – there are benefits to barely existing!

Of the Machine

         Fries over-cooking in the fryer, while the fry-cook is examining the deconstructed Meat Machine: It opens like swinging doors and the prison within is like a doll house. The prison is much less cute than the doll house, however. The fry-cook pokes his greasy finger at the figures within. Armed guards and prisoners in the midst of a riot.

         Of which is or is not the it of which has been referred to previously, without regard to questions regarding such statements as were made, I can’t tell you for sure at this juncture. Feeling sick from consuming so much beef and eggs that my mind is hardly working any longer and I am not a reliable narrator at all, as-a-matter-of-fact, my thoughts have become interspersed with the ground up meat about which I write, and also, my connection with the Magnificent Meat Machine has grown far too robust for my comfort. I find myself caring for the sad machine; I spit in your face.

Get Out

         Their feet are though tiny, fleet. Either the world has grown bigger, or the feeling has been lost. The machine is dead, though still going strong, somewhere, I don’t know where, but somewhere, I assure you. If you can get out too, I congratulate you.