"Wrote Cole," Cole wrote...

...and wrote and wrote and wrote and wrote and wrote and wrote and wrote and wrote and wrote and wrote and wrote and wrote and wrote and wrote and faded and faded and faded and drank and snorted and freebased and wrote and wrote and wrote and wrote and wrote...

[wrotecole]

Inherit

The elders of my family, run hag-

gard by their respective lots in life,

made strong (?) or stark by careful

pessimism; they stretch out the used condom,

full of cum and pregnant with meaning

they say: "at least-- at least,

you know it was protected."

Yeah, I think, and it winks a

reflection of the gross overhead lights

at me. Or maybe just the once.

"Well," they talk again. "One time.

Perhaps.

Let's go."

A moving truck made huge by

the distant vanishing point of ex-

pectation reached out infinitely

past our driveway. It stood next to the

broken promise that he wouldn't be

home for this. "You'd break that

promise too, except you don't even

like yourself." My sister tries then to back

over him, and she is burdened with

her own laughter, even long after

the cops arrived. He'd called

the problem with youth is ignorance

the same way the problem with falling

is gravity. Even worth it, you don't know

until afterward, when you're embarrassed

by even discussion of the damn thing

is there even a lesson in that?

Where the hell was your mother to

tell you it's all right,

no one's really happy.

At least, you know

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in the end.

[wrotecole]

tamre

             the tame r was s cared ocne

csared of theh young felins b

   ut thire oldness has dulle d tehm

         l i k e strop star ving nkives

 when a clown satrts to rinklew

then teh makeu p gets t rick y it s li

ke painting a riverbe d that ha s re

cently dierd

and th ekids thy dont lik eit

allthese walkingdroughtjesters

who al l the fac epain t and

gagwigs could nt trick us a-

live

 its that tame r the one

ws ttut utt in g at linos h e

reclines as in respoe in h i s hospital b ed

    he s scratchin g his nose now as he s

ta res at the doorw ay and leans nwo he

  s l e a n i ng  that door it s a drian

  it is pulling his corr the brokenglue stic

  tac k that has kep t him a liv e

it’s the thngi that you hav e aftr yu for

g et the sum of your parts

    and bled at the erstraints as he sgihed

 sur

e theres the crow dsand sure lghits

and it pulled at his elbows li

ke his children once migh t ifthey

like d him thye don tnow they don

tnowforcretain

not sinccethose ol dnights he spent

under thetent

 to impress is a backwords

  it doesnt quit cover it

        its mor elike com- or conpress

         or just presspress o r

                                                    crushed.

    oh they fetl it

the chil dren of thisman

the weight of his feline s teh

gravitys pu s  h of the fur on their snki

      this old                                      dying

ta mer in his platsic tube chains

[wrotecole]

Cross Country

Maybe there’s something worse—I wouldn’t

know, I’ve only seen as much as you can

from the back seat of a car no one drives

at night or during peak traffic hours because

the hollow seats are full of drugs and this

is a secret, invaluable to the driver and

by maybe extension, me, because though I

only see the unhurried roads of the day lit city and

only know they petty agonies of neurotic preparedness

I get to sample the sat-upon bounty when-

soever we get the opportunity to stop

at a gaping and low-cost motel.

But I’d met a man there in the hall on my way

to getting ice and we both were nude and

giggled, high, because to get caught being

naked is only okay if your catcher’s naked, too.

His penis twitched and I saw its shadow move

across the pattern of a fish on the carpet where

dipped in the mouth and out again, I laughed

much harder at this than even at seeing him

naked and then we fucked right there

in that utility room with the ice maker palms

wet against the filthy walls they smudged

their shapes into the grime and once we’d

done a thing or two and gathered ice into our

tiny, plastic buckets we walked opposite ways

down the hallway, him back to his dealer

and I back to mine. I didn’t look back

nor did I remember him until later, a week

maybe two, and only when Dealer brought

it up, laughing with a mutual friend,

about how I’d once left to get ice while naked

only to come back wearing then a smile

and I would say of all the burns and

cuts and scrapes and names and failures

and yearning, unfulfilled desires I’ve fostered there

in the placid back sear of that hollow car

this was worse; forgetting the hands up on the

wall or the ice or the nude laughter in

the light of the vending machines to

be reminded by accident of him as the careful driver

tells our private anecdote through the stalwart gaps

in his plated teeth, to remember that I’d

left hilarity and love in that shitty utility

room of that shitty motel my humanity

traded for ice.

[wrotecole]

Conversation between Bellerophon and bar patron

Do I drink too much? (asks the same man, the one with the sponge lips, misunderstanding something B has said) / No, that’s not what I asked— / What is slurp “too much” exactly / That’s not what I asked you, I asked— / Slurp I don’t know! How’s that for an answer? / ...I guess that’s fine / Damn right it is. You know what I did when the other kids chased me? / I don’t know. Why were they chasing you? / Me and Jimmy Spitz weren’t careful. Got caught slurp kissing, grade 10 / Oh no / It was the 70s, the rough 70s / Oh no! / They sent Jimmy to boarding school / A gay one? / What no this wasn’t a porn it was my life / Sorry. So just “away” then / Yeah. / Not you though. / Parents would have had to acknowledge it happened first / Youth is like molasses, you stick in it / Damn slurp right I had to slurp stay / But they chased you / Fucking hounded me down the street / And you ran where? / To the slurp bar! / At sixteen? / The only shelter from bashers is the slurp / The bars. /Slurp nod slurp

[wrotecole]

[wrotecole]

Bellerophon Excerpt

Bellerophon sat smiling as he watched a drag queen in an acid green, flowing dress with breast panels that met at the navel hand out flyers for a cover charge sex party to benefit AIDS. A mom with a double wide stroller sees the nun, her mouth drops open and she runs over like someone told her the stroller was going to explode. She takes a flyer “it’s early this year!” The drag queen smiles yellow teeth through her thick, white face power and says “the space wasn’t available for the last week of the month, we had to move it up.” She smiles sweetly at him and says thanks, in that way where the thanks is octaves above your normal speech, and then she walked back to the stroller of waving toddlers.

How’d you get this job / A pronounced interest in all my older sisters’ clothing that went unfed until I was much older / No seriously do you work for a non-profit? Doing drag? / Yeah is that so hard to believe / Well no I guess not around here / Yeah it truly is a city of miracles. Do you have money, kid? It’s for a good cause / No I tend to trade on my charm (B takes a flyer) / Oh and what’s the exchange rate on that nowadays / Not so low! A dimple gets me a cup of coffee / That’s not so bad, depending on which dimple you mean / Is everything about sex with you non-profit people / Well no, it’s about getting people involved / (B shakes his head) Sex isn’t very good at that. Take it from me.

[wrotecole]

Texts from Proetus to Iobates - an Epistle

hey / hey / wut up / nuthin much what about u / not too gr8, this dude just totally hit on anteia / brake his face dude! / i want to but he’s a guest / oh balls, str8 shit. speakin of guests you going to jim’s party on friday / ya but listen / listen wut / listen to me. I’m going to send this guy to u. u take care of him kapeesh? / fuck u so u don’t have to kill a bro but i do? / look she’s ur daughter, u gonna let a guy just get away with that / she's ur wife / ya but my hands are tied! it might be worse than i have said / lemme think, dude, this is heavy / not as heavy as shell be if he got her pergnant / dude fuck u don’t say that shit to me / sorry it might happen tho / don’t let a bastard son be born of my house dude / i can try to keep it from happening but u have to take care of this bellerophon fuck!!! / ok. i’ve got an idea, send him over / kewl / no not ‘kewl’ none of this is ‘kewl’ / well u no wut i mean / give him pot to bring over this has got me spinnin wheels

[wrotecole]

[wrotecole]

THE PHILOSOPHERS WERE WRONG. There is no “too much hair product.” I know this because with the amount of product on my head I am arguably more chemical than author and yet somehow, standing here at this evening's bus stop, as the sun vomits pink over the piss-soaked asphalt, I know loneliness like the drowned know salt: it is colloidal in the hateful, pink air.

[wrotecole]

cities change

cities change I’m told I don’t know I’ve seen them stay they stay the same the buildings though I guess they do they change they change like minds or guard I see it now they’re different now on the fronts they must mustn’t they I think of things that never change the wind, the rain, the sadness that beats on my brow it comes with rain not of the rain, behind it then like darkness hides behind all mass this dark it’s not a metaphor it’s science: sadness, do you know it’s pulled and flows with gravity you see it there, behind all things it shivers slight when things collide when buildings change, it changes us

[wrotecole]

Tics

There’s no music in neurosis. The creaking jaw, the sliding teeth the rush of blood all through the ears: unpleasant, acidic trickles. Psychosis, though, is cool as shit if you get the chance, you should try it. Your mind picks your senses apart and eats them each, one at a time, like a sandwich it wanted to last. The feeling of gray matter blooming, like a mushroom cloud, like genitalia, like a fresh crop of warts.

[wrotecole]

Another Hand

I have another hand that reaches up out of my belly. Not that it’s a hand growing on the surface of my torso, it’s a hand, on an arm, in my stomach, that to use I have to force outward so it bursts through several layers of tissue and into the air. The only thing I do with it—or, I guess, the only thing I’ve tried to do with it—is to have it explode out (quick like tearing off a bandaid) then crawl arachnid-like up my body. The nails dig in to gain purchase, because it’s slick with stomach acid and gore at this point in the exercise, so it leaves tracks of little scarlet half moons as it pulls itself up my ribcage, then scaling my neck, then sidling up to my face, where it holds either side in a death grip with a pinkie and a thumb then puts the pointer over my lips like “shh” and with the middle finger slowly, slowly strokes the bridge of my nose.

[wrotecole]

Beauty on the train

I wonder if the young realize exactly how beautiful they are. I certainly did, but I was hardly young for my youth. I had been lost too long in labyrinthine horrors walls made of reflective surfaces and the outlines of other people’s backs.

An insecure brightness, that’s almost what it is. The skin, the eyes even his dark hair is bright like ground coffee or tilled soil or baking extracts in the spoon.

Is he holding himself at angles on purpose? Neck leaned forward just to tilt the head back looking at everyone oblong might be a good way to remain safely unengaged.

I wonder how many times he will catch me staring before he lets his discomfort show. I keep staring off sideways at the horribly stained, empty seats beside him like I’ve really devoted myself to figuring out what makes that exact kind of fibrous asterisk blotchy pattern on whatever shitty fabric the state uses to upholster these seats. The surroundings are the rub the trick he’s dropped against. Plastic and carpet the colors of poverty, of industry, of sad capitalism.

We caught each other’s eyes. He’s even younger than I thought. You know you’re old when you start saying things the older men you slept with always said when you were young.

“I can’t tell anyone's age anymore, you all look like babies to me.” Yeah, to you Grandpa. Your failing eyes and lack of cultural awareness really make you bad at this guessing game, not to mention the sex that we’d just had where I generously let you do all of the work.

Was it Plato was he the one who thought that everything had its perfect form, out there in the aether, a table that was The Table, a can of beans to be strived for, one Socket Wrench to rule them all.

Another thing I didn’t think I believed until after I’d stopped believing it I thought perfect forms were bull shit What the fuck was perfect anyway? Don’t sit me down and tell me that Plato whose legacy’s dick you desperately suck this thinker beyong the pale of thinkers believed in his heart of hearts that there was a spiritual embodiment of the perfect fucking pair of tweezers. Fuck that. Whose world is that. Whose world has a pair of perfect ghost tweezers that exist just so that all the other tweezers know to feel bullshit about themselves.

Oh, but as with so many other things I thought I hated I absolutely lived this idea. When I came off of that first, amazing run that first month, or two, or three, or impossibly six, the months you spend killing your brother the months before God finds out about it the months before anyone even had decided you thought murder was even fucking wrong before the bad stuff had been so declared, I’m saying. Before that. I thought I was it.

My skin would slurp itself tight against protuberant muscle and bone and sinew like a vacuum sealed bag around a chicken cooked sous vide and before the wasting showed and before the teeth disintegrated and before my eyes rolled out of the heavily bagged sockets like sour balls out of an objecting mouth: before any of that happened. I thought I was it. The perfect one. The spiritual form of a twink undone.

[wrotecole]

Trusting Games

You do not seem to understand I did not play these games no no dark woods for me, not then you see I did not close my eyes and count to ten and hope that you would not pick your boogers from your noses to stick them in my counting mouth.

I did not play such trusting games the ones you played at night, in dark I never played like that you see so see you must now stop this please. My hands they've had to cup my eyes to keep your blindfold off of me so still I can't see you at all to know if you have picked your nose despite the squall my terror makes I hear you start, you're counting down.

So now I cannot see at last you’ve won against me though I tried now I can hear you counting down and you somehow seem to think this is funny, finger in your nose, I hear joy behind the numbers they screech an echo off the trees I can clearly hear your smiling while my skin ignites like paper and casts a light for none to see.

[wrotecole]

Fleshage

I see you as

an assemblage of body parts.

Morse code in meat.

Leg, leg, head,

Arm.

Heart.

[wrotecole]

Object Study: Popcorn Bowl

            We had very few traditions in my family, as I seemed to have come along after the great need for family togetherness was felt, but one thing we did have was Friday night movie rentals.  This was all done ritualistically; because why not.  If it’s the one thing you do together, it has to seem as powerful and potent as possible, and having untenable traditions surrounding the event lent it the credibility it needed to keep going for as many years as it did.  Apart from the video we rented (arrived at uneasily, often requiring the intervention of the clerk at the rental place’s intervention if my brother or I tried to slip something too adult past our father’s half-attentive nose), this required two things:  the popcorn blanket and the popcorn bowl.

            The blanket itself wasn’t terribly memorable.  Blue, fuzzy, comfortable enough; edged in a really silky sort of fabric I couldn’t identify then and I don’t know the name of now.  It fell to scraps eventually and had to be replaced.  But the other artifact was always the same: the popcorn bowl.

            We had any number of large bowls that were size-appropriate for an entire popped bag of popcorn.  But this one was the only one of its kind in our cupboards: it was a metal bowl covered with enamel.  The only way you could tell it was a metal core and not made of porcelain was because there were chips in the bottom of the bowl, little spots where the enamel had flecked away to reveal the molten, dull grey metal underneath.

            This was a bowl with secrets.  And I appreciated those, even at age five.

            I had always liked the taste of metal, and salts, and the alkaline.  I chewed the erasers out of the metal holding them to the pencil, and I secretly delighted in the taste of my braces when they were new.  There was a spot on the railing at the top of the stairs, right around calf-level for an adult, that was missing paint.  I’d latch onto that part of the railing, clamping down with all four hundred of my nubbly baby teeth, and suck the black paint off of it for the sweet tang of the metal.  Even if the popcorn didn’t taste actually metallic after having been in the bowl, I could salt it all to hell and look at the exposed metal and feel satisfied as though it had.

            It wasn’t until I was older, a teenager, that I understood how old the bowl really was.  I learned about its history the same way I learned about everything at that age in my tight-lipped family: through overheard bits of conversation.  The bowl had been a popcorn bowl in prior generations; it had been taken by my parents from my grandparents years before I was even born.  My aunt had seen it out on the counter when everyone had come over to our house for my father’s intervention and commented on it, amazed it still existed.  It was the only time she had been to our house that I could remember, it was the only thing she had commented on in it.

            “This is where that old popcorn bowl of Mom’s went?” she said, breathy with wonder.  I hadn’t liked the fact that this bowl had been the popcorn bowl of another family, of another set of people, even if they were related to me.

            When I saw the movie Shindler’s List, it was the first time I saw other dishware like the bowl.  I saw the Jews in the factory working to stamp out the metal and dip it in the porcelain.  I got that taste in the back of my mouth, back where my molars are, of metal and possibly lead-based paint and of over-salted popcorn.  I also got hungry—a feeling I was generally ashamed of having during a Holocaust movie. 

[wrotecole]

The End of Things?

The dangling hook that had snagged us both jerked without warning, leaving a red fog and us, faces torn at the seams and floating slowly, assuredly away from each other. The surge of the water argued into my back and molded around the sides of my ribcage as you grew darker and smaller. The current against our backs tugged at our arms so that they stretched straight out in front of us. It looked like we werereaching desperately, hysterically trying to reach out and grasp each other so that we wouldn't fade away to black points in the distance. Like we couldn't bear to lose each other--that is what it looked like. But it wasn't. It was just the water.