horror vacui

whiskey-slick wide-bloomed lips

[whiskeyslick]

Bob Hicok - Full Flight

Full Flight

BOB HICOK

I'm in a plane that will not be flown into a building. It's a SAAB 340, seats 40, has two engines with propellers is why I think of beanies, those hats that would spin a young head into the clouds. The plane is red and loud inside like it must be loud in the heart, red like fire and fire engines and the woman two seats up and to the right resembles one of the widows I saw on TV after the Towers came down. It's her hair that I recognize, the fecundity of it and the color and its obedience to an ideal, the shape it was asked several hours ago to hold and has held, a kind of wave that begins at the forehead and repeats with slight variations all the way to the tips, as if she were water and a pebble had been continuously dropped into the mouth of her existence. We are eighteen thousand feet over America. People are typing at their laps, blowing across the fog of coffee, sleeping with their heads on the windows, on the pattern of green fields and brown fields, streams and gas stations and swimming pools, blue dots of aquamarine that suggest we've domesticated the mirage. We had to kill someone, I believe, when the metal bones burned and the top fell through the bottom and a cloud made of dust and memos and skin muscled across Manhattan. I remember feeling I could finally touch a rifle, that some murders are an illumination of ethics, that they act as a word, a motion the brain requires for which there is no syllable, no breath. The moment the planes had stopped, when we were afraid of the sky, there was a pause when we could have been perfectly American, could have spent infinity dollars and thrown a million bodies at finding the few, lasering our revenge into a kind of love, the blood-hunger kept exact and more convincing for its precision, an expression of our belief that proximity is never the measure of guilt. We've lived in the sky again for some years and today on my lap these pictures from Iraq, naked bodies stacked into a pyramid of ha-ha and the articles about broomsticks up the ass and the limbs of children turned into stubble, we are punch-drunk and getting even with the sand, with the map, with oil, with ourselves I think listening to the guys behind me. There's a problem in Alpena with an inventory control system, some switches are being counted twice, switches for what I don't know— switches of humor, of faith—but the men are musical in their jargon, both likely born in New Delhi and probably Americans now, which is what the flesh of this country has been, a grafted pulse, an inventory of the world, and just as the idea of embrace moves chemically into my blood, and I'm warmed as if I've just taken a drink, a voice announces we've begun our descent, and then I sense the falling.

[whiskeyslick]

Wislawa Szymborska - Photograph from September 11

Photograph from September 11

Wislawa Szymborska

They jumped from the burning floors— one, two, a few more, higher, lower. The photograph halted them in life, and now keeps them above the earth toward the earth. Each is still complete, with a particular face and blood well hidden. There’s enough time for hair to come loose, for keys and coins to fall from pockets. They’re still within the air’s reach, within the compass of places that have just now opened. I can do only two things for them— describe this flight and not add a last line. They jumped from the burning floors— one, two, a few more, higher, lower. The photograph halted them in life, and now keeps them above the earth toward the earth. Each is still complete, with a particular face and blood well hidden. There’s enough time for hair to come loose, for keys and coins to fall from pockets. They’re still within the air’s reach, within the compass of places that have just now opened. I can do only two things for them— describe this flight and not add a last line.

[whiskeyslick]

[whiskeyslick]

Anne Baring - Kosovo Easter 1999

Warning: graphic images of rape and atrocity. Kosovo Easter 1999 Anne Baring Listen to the Good News, they said… Then, over the mountain pass, deep in snow, we watched those who had lost all except life stumble towards hope, carrying infants, dragging children, old people wrapped in plastic like loaves of bread, so they could be pulled more easily over the icy surface. A woman tall and cragged as an oak leads a line of survivors. Some can walk no further in the heavy snow and die where they fall. A young girl holds her mother in her arms as life ebbs from her body. This time we saw the face of barbarism. This time we saw them: people like us, in clothes like ours, arriving in shock, avoiding the mined land, trudging the last miles along the rail track to the frontier; faces contorted with grief, women, men, children weeping uncontrollably, having lost everything save each other. Day after day we saw a human flood pouring across frontiers: lines of wagons, carts, tractors, trailers, a horse, a donkey; the old in wheelbarrows, and people walking, walking, soaked in icy rain through days and nights of anguish, carrying the old and young so dear to them. We saw bewildered people forced onto trains trying to hold families together, women giving birth alone driven trembling with their new-born into the maw of that suffocating mass. Helplessly we wept with them, seared by their suffering, longing to help, to put our arms around them, comfort, warm them; but we could only send money, food, love, and hope that they would reach shelter from that relentless rain. There was no time to gather children gone to play with friends, no time to warn others, no time to feed the animals, milk the cows, or say goodbye to the dear land, home for centuries. There was no time to gather provisions for the journey: milk for babies, food for toddlers, shoes, nappies, warm clothing. Women made knife-sharp choices - what to take, what to leave - choices to make the difference between life and death for those too young to know what was happening. Women who had seen husbands, sons, fathers shot before their eyes, kneeling, hands clasped behind heads, knowing they had only seconds to remember everything they loved, to treasure the precious life that would soon, so soon seep into the ground. Listen to the Good News, they said… Can this be happening still? This time we saw the face of barbarism. Men obeying orders. They took the young girls away out of the cars, out of the trailers. Everyone knew what would happen. Girls too young to imagine the coming thrusts tearing their soft skin, the rank smell of masked men crazed with blood lust, and hatred for the innocent girl, mother of tomorrow's enemy. Some they shot, some returned to the convoy hours or days after the rape. How could they hope to find their families, comfort for soul and body in that mêlée of desperate humanity? What solace could they find among people for whom rape is defilement, a shame to be hidden? How could this further pain be endured by those who had already known annihilation? If I had seen my daughter taken, her still fragile body shrinking with fear, her eyes pleading for help I could not give, my heart flayed by feeling, my scream would sound through centuries. Even now I hear it torn from my gut for those young lives blighted by the encounter with beasts. Century by century men have tracked each other through greening forests blessed with birdsong. Intent on killing, could they see or hear the marvel? Could they stop in wonder at the sound? How does a man become a predator, able to kill, rape, mutilate? Surely it is time to ask. Surely it is time to enquire. Surely it is time to search for answers. All this has happened so many times before. Is it the old herd instinct that binds together the men of a tribe? Is it the territorial instinct that attacks the stranger? Is it the memory of the primordial clan bonded together in the hunt? Is it the warrior ethos passed from father to son? Or the secret vengeance of mothers who have lost their sons? Is it the brutality endured by children who grow up to brutalise others, avenging impotence with omnipotence? Or is it the hatred nurtured by priests who, century by century, have called in God's name for the extermination of those they demonised, anathematised, banished from the circle of God's love? "Malignant Aggression" Fromm called it. Malignant is a strong word, an appropriate word for the kind of barbarism we have seen and heard. Men are trained to obey orders reflexively, without thinking. Obedience to tribal leaders, military leaders, religious leaders, has conditioned them to obey the call to kill, fearing shame, rejection, numbed to the pain of the other. "To be a man I have to kill. To be a patriot I have to kill. I wear a mask to inspire terror. I wear a mask to hide from myself. I do not know that I am mad. My orders are to kill, rape, destroy: My orders are to kill because the others are a different race. My orders are to kill because the others profess a different belief. My orders are to kill because the others are the enemy. Killing is easy - as easy as saying 'Good Morning'." What does it feel like to be this man? Does he ever ask himself: "What am I doing as I raise my gun to murder my brother? What am I doing as I violate and mutilate his body? What am I doing as I force my body into the violently trembling body of his wife or his daughter? What am I doing as I kick the head of a decapitated man around the yard of his home while his children vomit? What am I doing as I shoot the young child at his grandfather's knee? What am I doing as I slowly sever the ear of my brother and throw it to a dog to eat? What am I doing as I destroy his home? What am I doing as I rob him of all he has left? What am I doing as I tear him from all he holds dear? What am I doing as I allow hatred to corrode my soul?" I cannot escape the guilt of what I have done. I have obeyed orders; I have lost my soul." And what of the men who shrink from barbarity yet must kill or be killed for that is the law of the tribe? And what of the conscripts, who cannot endure the killing? And deserters on trial for their lives, they cannot forget the eyes of those they murdered, pleading for life; the rigid bodies of girls taken away to be raped, homes burnt to bone, orphaned children screaming for fathers, mothers; the eyes of the dying, the eyes of those who, like themselves, knew fear for the first time. And what of the mothers who see the life they have loved and nourished and cherished through hours, days, years of growth destroyed in a second by a bullet, a knife, a bomb? For nothing. Can this be happening still? In the camps thousands crowd together in the mud, the faecal stench, struggling for a patch of earth, a tent, water, blankets to survive the freezing night. Mothers searching, searching for a child lost on the journey who sobs somewhere, lost, alone. Some children cannot speak of what they have witnessed. They draw pictures to tell the story of what they have learned from us who, in spite of saviours, religions, belief in redemption, higher standards of living, endlessly re-enact the habits of the past. We have taught them hatred, cruelty, fear. A father asks his son what he will do when he meets the enemy. The boy, loving his father, hesitates, uncertain. He cannot imagine the answer expected: "You will kill him." That is the legacy of father to son in a warrior culture: the soul's innocence and trust raped by indoctrination. Why is this happening still? And the bombs rained down night after night upon the "enemy": the "intelligent" missiles aimed to destroy the infrastructure of the military machine, hurled from planes painted with images of scythe-wielding death and the word "Apocalypse". How appropriate that word. Missiles tipped with depleted uranium, radioactive ceramic designed to bring slow death years later; Missiles targeting oil refineries, bridges, communications. "You cannot have war without casualties." Immaculate objective words - remote from the experience of being in the path of a missile: a lion leaping upon you, no time to prepare for extinction. We cannot yet see our shadow. We cannot yet see that the continued invention of ever more terrible weapons perpetuates war. We cannot yet see that the proliferation of demonic agents of death ultimately invites our own destruction. The people of the world ache for deliverance from belligerent, psychopathic leaders, from servitude to the ancient belief that there are only two alternatives: power or powerlessness; victory, defeat. And the dead? Prisoners between dimensions the dead ache for release from the cycle of vengeance so they do not have to return to ancestral soil to repeat the bloody pattern of sacrifice, the hatred between peoples who could have been reconciled centuries ago, but for their leaders, but for their priests, but for their inability to renounce the evil of killing the other who is also the brother. Listen to the Good News, they said… How foolish we are to believe that we are redeemed. Surely we must accomplish our own redemption by renouncing the illusion that some of us are closer to God than others. Surely we must redeem Christ from the crucifixion continually re-enacted in the rape of our sister, the murder of our brother, before we speak of redemption, before we speak of the Good News, before we, the dead, can hope for resurrection. [No Easter Cease-fire In Kosovo, April 09, 1999]

[whiskeyslick]

Reporter via telegram: 'HOW OLD CARY GRANT?'

Cary Grant's reply: 'OLD CARY GRANT FINE. HOW YOU?'

[talkgentlytome]

“I did this all for you / من این کار را برای شما انجام دادم“ ( “Circumstance”, 2011)

[kittychan-sings-enka]

presented without commentary or apology

[tariqah]

Why OP

[adulthoodisokay]

slam that fucking unmute button

[danielledreamsthedayaway]

🙌💛🙆

[danasn0wc4t]

“I know I’ve heard this before. Is this from an anime or someth-OH FUCK!”

[stevethompson-art]

Princess mega post! I absolutely had a blast creating this artwork for the Disney Designer Collection - Premiere Series. Now that the madness has passed, who was your favorite?

[whiskeyslick]

Stephen Scaer - Shoals

Shoals The screeching oak planks and the sudden shock announce the gale has pushed them too far east, trapping the whaler on a hidden rock – the broken molar of a howling beast. She’s listing port. He knows what he should do: furl sails and cut the masts before she tips, supply and board the boats. Then what? The crew awaits the first command from his pursed lips. At best they’ll reach Tahiti. Odds are narrow they’ll find it, though. He braces for the worst: short straws, scraped femurs cracked to suck the marrow, exposure, madness, all-consuming thirst, until their blood congeals and sets them free. He grasps the rail and stares into the sea. Stephen Scaer

[whiskeyslick]

Bolton Hall - Labor and Capital Are One

Labor and Capital Are One “Times are hard,” said the Picked Chicken. “Why,” said the Rat, “this is an era of prosperity; see how I have feathered my nest.” “But,” said the Picked Chicken, “you have gotten my feathers.” “You must not think,” said the Rat, “that because I get more comfort you get poorer.” “But,” said the Chicken, “you produce no feathers, and I keep none—” “If you would use your teeth”—interrupted the Rat. “If—” said the Picked Chicken. “You could lay—” “I—” said the Picked Chicken. “— up as much as I do,” concluded the Rat. “Excuse me for living,” said the Picked Chicken, “but—” “Without consumers like me,” said the Rat, “there would be no demand for the feathers which you produce.” “I shall vote for a change,” said the Picked Chicken. “Only those who have feathers should have the Privilege of voting,” remarked the Rat. Bolton Hall

[whiskeyslick]

Bob Hicok - Small Measures

Small Measures

Bob Hicok

I went home and climbed back into my mother. Origami was involved, I was a crane for the first time in my life, but my older brother was already there, claiming dibs. In the desert of her womb, he was dressed as Peter O’Toole dressed as Laurence of Arabia admiring his robes in the mirror of his knife. I left with an understanding of why I failed the essay portion of my sex-ed final. The question was, is your mother’s vagina an escape hatch, to which I replied yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes, since it was an essay question. When I pointed out to my teacher, who was also the football, wrestling, debate, intravenous drug use, and jai alai coach, that this was a yes or no question, not an essay question, he made me do three hundred thousand squat thrusts, I finished when I was thirty nine. My mother used to kiss my forehead as I left my school, put her mouth to my ear and whisper, you can never go home again. Every day the lock was changed, or she had moved to another state, or there was a different little boy in my room, his chakras more clearly aligned than mine. Still, when things get bad, as these clouds tell me they’ve gotten now, these clouds of puss and anthrax, these gray sacks of dumbbells, this lament whipped into a paste and smeared across our tiny window onto the universe, I think of myself inside her, no job, no lovers, no waist line, no fault line no noise but the oompa of her heart, and feel the tiniest bit better, like .0001 percent better, maybe a tenth of that, maybe a tenth of a tenth of that, which is still, as they say, something. 

[whiskeyslick]

Bob Hicok - Duke

Duke

BOB HICOK

He was hit back of the head for a haul of $15, a Diner’s Club Card and picture of his daughter in a helmet on a horse tethered to a pole that centered its revolving universe. Pacing the halls, he’d ask for a blow job he didn’t want. The ward’s new visitors didn’t know this request was all the injury had left him to say, and would be shamed or pissed, a few hitting him as he stood with his mouth slightly open and large frame leaning in. His wife divorced him for good and blameless reasons. He would not be coming home to share his thoughts on film and weather, or remembering her any longer than it took to leave a room. He liked ham. Kept newspapers in drawers and under his bed, each unread page hand-pressed flat. And when it snowed he leaned into one of the sealed, unbreakable windows, a cheek to the cool glass as he held his fingers over his mouth and moaned low and constant like the sound of a boat on the far side of a lake. When he died they cut him open to see how his habits had been rewired and so tightly looped. Having known him they were afraid of what can happen when you cross the lot to the office or pull up to a light and thump the wheel as you might any hour. If you stare at the dyed and beautiful cross sections of a brain, it’s natural to wonder how we extract the taste of coffee or sense of a note accurately found and held on an oboe from this bramble. On Duke’s slides they circled the regions of blight which explain why almost all behavior we recognize as human was lost, but not why a man who’d curl into a ball like a caterpillar when barely touched, could only ask for sex, for intimacy, for the very thing he could least accept and lived twelve years without, no embrace or caress, no kiss on the lips before sleep, until he died in the lounge looking out on winter sky that seemed eager to snow all day but didn’t.

[whiskeyslick]

Edgar E. Guest - It's September

It's September

Edgar A. Guest

It's September, and the orchards are afire with red and gold, And the nights with dew are heavy, and the morning's sharp with cold; Now the garden's at its gayest with the salvia blazing red And the good old-fashioned asters laughing at us from their bed; Once again in shoes and stockings are the children's little feet, And the dog now does his snoozing on the bright side of the street. It's September, and the cornstalks are as high as they will go, And the red cheeks of the apples everywhere begin to show; Now the supper's scarcely over ere the darkness settles down And the moon looms big and yellow at the edges of the town; Oh, it's good to see the children, when their little prayers are said, Duck beneath the patchwork covers when they tumble into bed. It's September, and a calmness and a sweetness seem to fall Over everything that's living, just as though it hears the call Of Old Winter, trudging slowly, with his pack of ice and snow, In the distance over yonder, and it somehow seems as though Every tiny little blossom wants to look its very best When the frost shall bite its petals and it droops away to rest. It's September!  It's the fullness and the ripeness of the year; All the work of earth is finished, or the final tasks are near, But there is no doleful wailing; every living thing that grows, For the end that is approaching wears the finest garb it knows. And I pray that I may proudly hold my head high up and smile When I come to my September in the golden afterwhile.

[whiskeyslick]

Dorothy Parker - The Little Old Lady in Lavender Silk

The Little Old Lady in Lavender Silk by Dorothy Parker

I was seventy-seven, come August, I shall shortly be losing my bloom; I've experienced zephyr and raw gust And (symbolical) flood and simoom. When you come to this time of abatement, To this passing from Summer to Fall, It is manners to issue a statement As to what you got out of it all. So I'll say, though reflection unnerves me And pronouncements I dodge as I can, That I think (if my memory serves me) There was nothing more fun than a man! In my youth, when the crescent was too wan To embarrass with beams from above, By the aid of some local Don Juan I fell into the habit of love. And I learned how to kiss and be merry- an Education left better unsung. My neglect of the waters Pierian Was a scandal, when Grandma was young. Though the shabby unbalanced the splendid, And the bitter outmeasured the sweet, I should certainly do as I then did, Were I given the chance to repeat. For contrition is hollow and wraithful, And regret is no part of my plan, And I think (if my memory's faithful) There was nothing more fun than a man!

[whiskeyslick]

Clive James - Thoughts on Feeling Carbon-Dated

Thoughts on Feeling Carbon-Dated No moons are left to see the other side of. Curved surfaces betray once secret centres. Those plagues were measles the Egyptians died of. A certain note of disillusion enters. Were Empson starting now, no doubt exists That now no doubt exists about space-time’s Impetuosity, his pithy gists Would still stun, but no more so than his rhymes. Physics has dished its prefix meta. Science, First having put black shoes and a blue suit on, Controls the world’s supply of mental giants. A Goethe now would lack words to loathe Newton. It’s forty years since James Joyce named the quark. Now nobody’s nonplussed to hear light rays Get sucked down holes so fast they show up dark. Nor would the converse of that news amaze. It all gets out of reach as it grows clear. What we once failed to grasp but still were thrilled with Left us for someone else, from whom we hear Assurances about the awe they’re filled with. One night in Cambridge Empson read to us. He offered us some crisps and seemed delighted So many young should still want to discuss Why science once got laymen so excited. By Clive James

[whiskeyslick]

Bob Hicok - Her my body

Her my body

BOB HICOK

The dog licks my hand as I worry   about the left nipple   of the woman in the bathroom. She is drying her hair, the woman whose left nipple is sore.   We looked this evening   for diagonal cuts or discoloration or bite marks from small insects that may be in our bed. It is a good bed, a faithful bed.   A bed that won’t be hurt   by the consideration we gave   to the possibility of small   though disproportionately strong insects in our bed. The blow-dryer sounds like a jet   taking off. The first time I flew to Brussels, people began   the journey happy but ended   with drool on their shirts. She is drying her hair though she has never been to Brussels.   Drying her hair though she could be petting a dog.   Drying her hair while having red thoughts about what the pain in her nipple means. I would not dry my hair in such a moment but I am bald. The body of the woman   has many ways to cease being the body of the woman. I have one way   to be happy and she is that way. I would like to fly with her to Brussels.   We would not be put off by the drool.   This is what happens when people sleep.   We would buy postcards of the little boy   who saved Brussels when he peed on a fire.   We would be romantic in public places. For the moment these desires can best be furthered   by petting a dog. I’m also working on this theory.   That sometimes a part of the body just hurts. That the purpose of prayer is to make the part of the body   that sometimes just hurts   the little toe or appendix. Something vestigial or redundant.   Something that can be jettisoned.   I have no reason to use the word cancer while petting a dog. Here is a piece of a second   during which a jet is not flying   nor is it on the ground. I’m working on a theory   that no one can die inside that piece of a second. If you are comforted by this thought you are welcome   to keep it.

[whiskeyslick]

Joseph P. Wood - Sheep

Sheep When the first plane hit the tower, a good friend, in lower Manhattan, was jerking off in a janitor’s closet. He lived for indiscretion the way the saints diligently lived for God, but unlike them, never got nailed for it: after almost impaling himself on a broom, my friend stumbled out onto the first floor, got the gist, & walked thirty blocks back to Queens, watching people disperse like ants whose hole was trodden. A fleet of priests marched toward from where he came— my friend would deduce the next day— to administer Last Rites. Seeing these men’s solemn faces was nothing short of believing that each priest lugged a given borough’s sins like a pyramid of corpses in a 15th century oxcart. A former Medieval Studies student at Yale, my friend had loved to ramble about how Europe was founded on glumness, its defining height was that of a rat. A child might see one in a cobblestone alley, & that was enough for the imp to pitchfork his own lemon-sized heart. “Meanwhile,” my friend would say while guffawing & rubbing his hands over some imaginary flame, “his parents were giving the time to some wheat-fed farmhand, blue buboes on their inner thighs…” I can’t tell you what became of my friend. For awhile, he joked about how affordable Battery Park would become, & then moved west & into a different person with a wife & responsibilities. Sometimes his cocky, sidelong grin comes to me like a lighthouse beyond my sleep— I startle awake & know what a dark, dark world we have made for ourselves. By Joseph P. Wood