Know answers no answers. The thing to remember is that there are no answers waiting for you in death. If you haven’t figured it out by your untimely demise, there’s no explanation waiting, no last minute surprise. No call from the governor, no last minute pardon, just plucked like the rabbit steals cabbage from the garden. I say this as pabst the screen flickers last night…she stumbles in from somewhere and she looks ready to fight. Even as a ghost I feel scairt and confused, as our relations alwis were when she came home with booze. Half empty bottle of sipping whiskey, but she hasn’t been obeying the suggested serving size. She swigs like a giant python swallows its prize, a slow, sinister gorging. She waves off dinner with a sweep of the arm, dishes clatter and spill. My parents gave us those…she pulls up her skirt with one hand in reply. Checkerboard tablecloth twists up around her knees as she kneels on taco shell shards and margarita slush puddles, sneering over her shoulder: you wouldn’t if you could. Goading me, knowing which strings to pluck to haphazardly twang my favourit song. I turnip the volume; blood-rush in my ears.

Our intimacy reveals her latent disappointment; doubt, anger, and regret paint her unusual behavior. It ceases to be a mutual act. The best part isn’t losing yourself down the path of their eyes. She rakes my skin wither nails, stutters nasty names between shudders. She curls up wither back to me when we finish. Breathes quiet. Sleeping quickly, before I can unstick my throat. No questions, no questions. She wouldn’t give me any answers anyhow. I know that much by now.

I've grown tired of lies by the fire
and as the flames have rippled up my
armourish attire
whisper whisper barmy sonnets
like an absinthe drinking choir
to my slowly melting eyeballs
dipped in wax and cleaned with lysol
for your flawless condescention
your sharpened tongue bad attention
force feed me health food lessons of
bad behaviour prevention
til I'm filled with watery doubt retention
you're supposed to be my buddy system
but that's something unmentioned
now I'm drowning in mixed signals and
all of my best intentions
passed out sore neck crooked on the porcelin
I spy your sneakers neath the door
like waves breaking over a dorsal fin
love is the lock and
you
can't
force
your
way
in
but it ain't for lack of tryin.

I'm standing on a platform of strangers in an unfamiliar town watching the train start to pull away from the station with all my friends aboard, shouting bon voyages and hanging out the windows tears fly from faces as the thing picks up speed hankies swiffer back to me a dusk my nose with familiar sense casual conversations and laughter beer sweat and cigaret diner dish and dirty looks shouting smiling kissing crying until their arms are spindly spinarets wavering in heat and then nothing and then the sound of the clacketty clack tracks too is gone down the hole in my head...ALL IS QUIET...The platform is empty now littered with a thousand hundred torn ticket stubs and photos arm in arm bleary eyed good times caught naked in a flashbulb thousand moments in succession likethe click blink click of the shutter eye passing by the station house I notice the a flicker whisper candlelight. The doors are locked and darkness deep but cupping hands to glass eyesquinted within and couldiscern brother sisters and parents aunts uncles and cousins parents parents and godparents all stolid statuesque holding hands eyes closed unstaring swaying not one bit, breathing not one tittle. Startled, I turnt away and came face to face with my onyx skinned complexion reflection in the oily black chassis of a tremendous locomotive. It was too big for the tracks and had swallowed fully half the platofrm whole and silent. With each treackle of blick smoke that bled from the smokestack there was a sensation that the thing itself was breathing, track and rail snapping beneath it like ribs to jack boots.
The photographs and ticket stubs had all become tiny pyres, burning with smogish curls of bitter smoke and ghostly blue flames arranged in an untidy arc leading to the steps to the passenger car that wis shackled to the beast. Those steps were like breathsimple unthinking and as my toes touched the first rung a belch of flame and coalsmoke and the thing lurched forth with sickening speed...In the car it was hush like a fresh snow fall yellow like dawn through sleep crusted eyesoft unfocused the seats were upholstered in cracked leather except for one by the window was done up in my skiin with birthmarks and scars and all. Shuddery stutters uppin dawn my spine. Outside the window countryside puree...but the longer eye stare shapes beggin to drift from the ether...

That very mourning I forgot to smile at the bus driver. The self same driver that keeps me smiling sunny daze when the rainclouds won't stick around. Have you scene commercials for that new sunblock that makes your skin look like different colors? You know, for parents of kids who think sunglasses and melonoma just isn't enough... So I forgot to smile and say g'mourning on my way down the steps. SO WHAT? Is this what I want to think about right now? Is this how I want to spend my afterlife, too? It's alright I didn't flirt with the girl today. It's alright I'll never duet again! She probably never even noticed before and won't miss it now it's gone! Even if jihad, there's still the matter of the girl eyes woke up besides, her taste in my mouth and my teeth marks on her thighs... though her reservation harbor has recently begun docking all sorts of personal attacks upon yours formerly among the living, despising the things that amount to the hill of me, endearments making transformation, more annoying upon reconsideration. Eight o'clock found her lying in the bed rather than join me in the shower our mixed message conversating builds a stunning babbel tower...but her prolonged affiliation and her comfort scented flesh...gussy up her tarnished image, wraps her in my favorit dress gosh the sorry sappy longing -- erection shizoid tongue tourettes all thes ehealthy signs are good to know that ghosts can get depressed...

It doesn't change much, leaving your body behind. At least, it didn't for me. My thoughts still run off with the mouth. My current, more corporeal form remains as much of a mystery as my previous incarnate (like, where did I get this lifetime of scars? Who's genes did I inherit for the way I drink in bars? Which model did I follow to make myself so alone? Which parent should I credit when my voice hits certain tones?). It shore wasn't much moore of a disappoinment than any of the other traditionally ramped up happenstances everybody designates as spectacular...Hey! You're graduating high school! Say goodbye to all you've ever known! Yo! College is over! Time to enter the real world! Oh my gosh! It's love! You gettin married, boy! Whoops! You dead! Hope it was fun n all!
Down below, medics're pushing their way through the crowd now, celebrities with a slippery red carpet, ready to sign their autograph in blood and phlegm, mucas and broken bone shards. It's camera country now and open season t'boot. The self concious fled long ago and now the brazen, the bold and the bawdy pick away at the fleshy copse, filling their mouths with green and off they fly, cackling.
And what was it that led me here? How did my mundane and carefully selcted life options run right into this dead end? The show's just starting to unravel willy-nilly past my very absent eyes this ain't no bargain matinee, it's my life, you realize...
Roald and Kurt, sweaty palms and shit-eat grins pushed me over the window and out the ledge, discarding me callous, like a cat piss stained bedspread. All because I happened by the water cooler at the wrong time. All because I catch a few mumbled words while shifty eyes turnt skyward. I cared not a whit for their middle management mutiny. Not a whimple for their bloodless corporate coup hatching. But these snappy answers are never birthed by their stupid questions. They abort queries and breach birth idiot conclusions before term. They incite metephor medical malpractice like they name drop; oblivious, uncaring, repeatedly and staring...and now I can see their twin egos, bulbous and inflexible like needle suckling weight lifters, inured to criticism, nursing on my murder, feeding on their modest exercise in power. And that's just today. That's just this mourning. There's so much more to remember. So many moore doors on this regret stained memory lane.
As if I even care.
As if it were still my concern...

Suddenly the sidewalk and it all goes to a mess. Passerby rubbernecking, cop shouts windmill long arm laws, children squealing like they untied the gossamer ribbon to a pus filled christmas. All the while my redrum oozes out to meet and greet the crusty shit bird stains, the blackened boot braille gum smear tongue whores, the deformed post cigaret posteriors eking out their last breath lung death. Someone coughs and turns away. A disposable camera snaps self concious. I watch my last few thoughts spiral down the toilet brain drain, down the vertebrae and out into my spine grey slacks, filling them with this mourning's freedom toast and shock & awe bacon. I can see my fourty dollar haircut, stuck up in stikky swedges. My silk tie sports a new pattern, red brown rorshach of my father standing over me, framed in the light of the hallway. Three of my brand new caps and a two grand worth of bridge work litters the cement and the in the sunlight I can already see the yellowish tobacco stains. As if I cared a bit. As if it concerned me anymore.

Wretched scummy bedbugs gnawed at my toenails, themselves overdue for a clipping. Her apartment wist alwis filthy in this manner, esp. the bed. Voices droned on and on about nothing. I had forgotten her taste for bland talk radio. Curtis and Kuby. Rush.Even Imus in the mourning, She said it helped insulate herself against idiocy befour she even stepped foot from the place, which she rarely did ennyhow. Breakfast was in progress -- I could hear dishes breaking, ground beneather bare feet, cereal handfuls crunching happily wither oversized incisors, her bridal white razor blade straight teeth. I thought of the sound of our sex last night and pictured the neighbors cowering in fear, hands shaking so badly they can't even dial nine one one. Then I recall that she has no neighbors and the building is empty for at least two apartments in each direction. I pulled the bloodstaiedn sheets off the bed and ran my hands over my body to see if anything still bled. My tongue probed for chipped or broken teeth, castaways on the pink sea of my gums. There was a wobbly molar and I prodded and poked it. It would later drop unceremoniously into my mushroom and bacon omlette. From the kitchen, which she liked to call her laboratory, there came the sound of dischordant singing. She owned no albums, no cassettes. All of the music she ever herd wast overherd in walking, wafting from open transoms, blaring from boxes and tinnily muffled from headphones beside her on the subway. She sang like an animal and no domestic paperweight do I speak of, but a rapacious jungle denizen, now, a feral and staggeringly beautious creature, she sang withonesty and pain, hunger and love spitting soul from her lips to drib drap and drip down the cracked walls of chipped paint... She was possessed of the ripe, milky white bosoms of robust health and childberth, betwixt or upon which the errant bits of egg and bacon would nestle, seeking, perhaps, the warmth and comfort of the earth mother body which they had not known in their short, suffering lives. I thought to myself 'How alike we are, there dead bits of flesh and mysalf, each being cooked and callously singed for the delight and benefit of others whom I cannot see, flotsam endlessly circling wondering, pondering, seeking in our downward spiraling journey our own taste oflesh, a bit of joy, a moments love....
Breakfast soothed the turgid insides of mine like ambrosia to the troubled mind. Crunchy bacon bits evenly spread within a just crisped egg replete with tender bites of mushroom and slivers of onion. Black Spanish coffee saw to the ceremony and on wenthe pants, up wenthe shades. Light streamed eagerly into the room, trying in vain to cuthrough the smoke of two post fast cigarillos and the heady scent of cannibis. I heard the freezer door seal 'whop' and she spooned a tablespoon full of coconut ice into my cafe sin leche. She sipped and watched me expectantly over the rim of her cup. The sativa bubbled and popped the champagne cork of my right brain and the plots, plans and schemes began to totter pell-mell down the grey lumpy hills of my mind onto the prostrate tongue and outhrew the lips...
What's the skinny she inquired, ast soon ast I parted mine lips to sake unto herr. She suckled one greazy finger and inhaled noisily from her cigaret. Smoke whorled in plumes from her delicate unpierced nostrils. She was devoid of bodily modification, no steel, ink or machine parts, no donor organs, no regenerated body parts. Her mind was clean of the instant learning tools that populated the world educational sys now like tiny diodes lighting up on vast topography of the globe. All knowledge wast her ain, learnt und assimilated through first hand experience. She despised milk and all of its offspring including cheese, curds and whey.

Eyewis lost inner ides, swimming the backstroke inner loverly emerald oculars, lost in the hallways of her dementia turning the corner to face morre corners and all... I had been stuck in thisituation for some time -- since we met athe club two hours hence when she parted the smoke as if it were a curtain and joined me in my booth, crowding my White Russian off the tabletop wither ample rear. She affixed my eyes wither own. She shed nothing, for there was no need. No word uttered by mortal tongue could hope to...to...t
when I came to we were in the thick of it and I mean full throttle -- as my brain struggled to return to capacity I could discern the cacaphony of shrieks and moans utterances and oaths that weaved themselves into the humid air like wishes cast yet ungranted, derelict pennies shine on well's bottom. Something fell into place and I recognized it was her that made the sounds ashe rode me bareback like an indian brave down a rocky canyon bumpabump her fingers tangled tight in my hair and pulling hard til I realized that was hwat made me viddy the stars that danced gaily about my vision. It was my own creaky mattress we danced upon, throttling the life out've the poor thing and soaked threw besideso that it sqooshed and ghasped with each roll of our conjoined hips. And of a sudden eyewis riding the rickety rollar coaster up the ferst incline of the circuit, cottoncandy melting on my tongue and the sugarush expodes behind my eyebals just as we cap the ridge and can see to shining sea the sun tearing through the clouds with golden night light authority and my head has been submerged in molasses that tastes offer and smells offer and it tiwsts itslef in beautiful patterns before my eyes I think eye just bit a piece of my tongue off and my ears are ringing ringing with the vacuum of silense because her mouthas been struck dumb hanging open to evidence a bit of toothy grin and tantilizing pink tongue and a her back arched nipples hard and hips thrusing downward in an almost imperceivable motion like the ebb of the tide and she falls in a slow languishing movement until she lays atop my racked and broken body breathing with slow deep inhalations while I struggle to catch the breath that eludes me..."Not to ruin the moment" I say, realizing even as I do it that I have, "but I -- um -- the" she shakes her head slightly, tickling my chest wither hair. "Wood glue on steel," she says. "My womb is like an elephant's graveyard -- scattered withe bleached white regrets of those that walked proud before me." I hadn't the least inkling of what she wasaying so I let the cool dampness of her body and the soggy squish of the mattress lull me into contented sonombulence...

The doors of the bullet train clamped shut silently, cutting a Venusian brand infant carrier neatly in half. The caretakers, a pair of siamese wolfwomen, shrieked, snarled and spit to no avail as the train pickt up speed and the station lights vanished behind. They smacked several times at the emergency brake, but everyone knows those things are just painted on (except them I guess). The most they succeeded in was scratching the bulletproof polymer windows up pretty good (they can makem bulletproof but not graphittiproof? If you axe me and granted no one has its just another plot to encourage juvenile delinquency so that the little bastard get caught and shipped off to the prison prism to work for minimum slave wage). The crooked, ragged slashes were a welcome change from the dull graphitti names; 'Longdick', 'Peruser', 'Invalid' and 'Yermam'. Those bastards get more collective ups than the Flying Fellinis, who were probably even now performing their deaf defying act of gravity defiance on the massive orbiting Chinese casino and hotel (they don't accpet Chinese national performers due to a union dispute over whether or not the boundries of space constituted a new territory and thus, required a re-negotiaiton of wages, conditions and benefits, as well as whether said benefits extended to non-Terran species should recieve certain benefits due to the fact that they suffer less risk from space station employment). The Fellini's had been caught up in a few technicalities of their own, owing to the fact that their contract specified certain hours that they must perform and time is subjective aboard an orbiting satellite...despite every argument the Fellini's were faced with the binding nature of the agreement (which they should have read more closely) and thus, were forced to begin a strict regimen of amphetamines in order to keep up. So their act is quite impressive, if not somewhat spastic, these days (or nights). The bullet train burst from the tube into daylight and the windows polarized accordingly, mercifully. I cradled my skull and tried not to breath too deep (bit've an allergy where lycanthropes're concerned) -- and these two were most def. very concerned, what witheir toddler snapping his pint sized fangs at passerby in the bygone station stop of Downtown Perilitus. They disembarked athe next -- Perildondatus and I was able to fill my lungs with sweet, recirculated air once more. Just a few more stops and I'd be able to carry my skull around in my head again and not have to cradle the delicate thing like a balsa wood bowling ball everywhere I went. I'd be able t rip the ear plugs out, thet were currently stopping the brain fluids from leaing out my ear canals and I wouldn't have to worry about only effecting gingerly executed turns of the head in any direction. As it was, my brain would slosh noisily about, I'd lose my train of thought and my nose would run with viscous fluids if I ever turned to answer someone calling out for me or something similar. People would inquire what that noise was -- 'Did jew hearit?' they'd shea, cocking their skull shaped heads, the bastards ' like the ocean,' they'd cuntinue. 'It was just my brain,' eye'd be forced to admit. 'Eyewis a half shark man, born in a Wally Durham Lab in East Kuntbington. All cartilage, no bone. I've bin undergoing extensive surgery since birth to replace the stuff with bone, so that I can seek employment above water.' You can imagin what effecthis revelation would have on th conversation. Or mebbe you couldn't. So allow me to enumerate: 'You mean it wasn't the ocean?' They'd say, shicked. 'No, just my brain.' 'Oh, well ...did I menshin my grandaughter was very sick I should really go and visit her in the hospice good day.' After the fifth or sixth time I herd that one I decided that either people found not having a skull of your very own was either repugnant or the next generation of children were all crippled by degenerative dieseases. And if the former was true, well than mebe I should stop being so polite to everyone who wouldn't afford me the respect everyoe deserves, just for my lack of marrow having structural aids. Mebbe I should start telling them how I felt about their awful stenches and their terrible manners and double standards and hypocrisies. Mebbe I should really get in their faces about it. Maybe even back it up with a ittle force. I may not have a complete skeleton just yet but I do have THREE ROWS OF RAZOR SHARP TEETH FATHERFUKKER. How you like me now??? So I went out and did a little research into the youth gen and their respective medical conditions...
and all you down the nose at those without bones sisterfuckers GOT LUCKY.