TAROT POEM ZERO
PART
MO
UR
NI
NG
I wake up in a state of disgrace and go to the sink to wash my eyelids and socks.
It's a series of disguises that washes over my face with the play of sunlight poking its unwitting head through a song
of filthy branches.
It's either something, or a display. It doesn't matter.
The Valley wakes up empty.
The City wakes up and it is empty.
The Stomach it wakes up and is empty.
The Garden it wakes up and it is empty.
The Town wakes up empty.
The room with the TV and the chair wakes up and it's empty.
Ohio wake's up, it's also empty.
Justin's Coffin wakes up. It's empty too.
And the Store wakes up as empty as the rest.
the wind falls magnets into my hair
the prayers in my chest trading pieces
my Goo Diary Ink running down my fingers
andtil unthen
i thnen have become ssttrreettcchh out out oh over. over the?
[aa ]
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[ nd
night falls out of my bowels like embers falling upward out of a carpetfire
it mutilates my swollen ambivalence
like a restless army of red and yellow arrows that Love You
and i'm whelmed-up with the obnoxity of Definitely Existing
so i creep on out from my body slow and in every direction
watching plans and memories
change places at the edges of my mind
wondering nothing and
in a rainbow-static disarray.
I mutilate my memory of the MOTH, mother of the heart, and forget to send greyscale rainbow tears down my cheeks.
TAROT POEM ZERO
PART V
.1.
my little death sleeps
steps
dyslexic
the
up
i feel scratches at the edge of my window
that almost wake me up.
But let's first go back in time a little
so we can establish the source of these scratches.
2.
We see Adam Bic and the Assassin sitting on a soaking wet sofa in front of Justin's Coffin, trading places in the gathering shadows.
Taking soft sips from their pints like secret sacraments:
in stolen silence.
No sound except the sibilant slur of beer over lips.
and the little clicks their eyes make as they send snakelike glances to
nowhere in particular
their hilariously seemingly-cold eyes poking around at empty cans, smoked cigs, comed-in condoms, broken lightbulbs and other discarded discord that all scream a mute harmony of reflected-fear.
Adam Bic disgusts his fingers around in his pockets for another oily midnight stogie, he doesn't know why or what he's even doing,
lights it up and says
"Fuck, I forgot my tarot."
Assassin doesn't look.
"It doesn't matter. You ready?"
"Yeah, no . . . yeah. totally."
3.
Their minds don't even talk
on the way, in the car
just packed-up dense in rubber numbers
rearranging in a dumb abundance of dances
a Wheel made up of wheels.
Assassin driving, Adam with the briefcase.
Outside my impermanent apartment complex, in the car, they Interface
exchanging their dumb rubber abundances.
The Assassin nods and they get out the car.
My light is off.
stairs.
the
up
time
their
take
They
They stop at the window.
4.
Adam Bic stands at my window and pulls out his cock.
He touches it slowly until it gets hard
and masturbates his way to an orgasm.
Comes all over my damn window.
5.
Adam Bic takes a look at the busted nut on the glass and tries not to think about Ohio.
He adjusts the sunken truss rods in his Stomach
and smears the come across the window into an even smoothness that covers the whole pane.
He opens the briefcase.
He removes a small ball-pean hammer
and lightly taps the glass.
It vanishes.
They look at eachother and giggle with their eyes and quietly clap their hands to themselves and climb on in through the window-frame.
6.
Suddenly I'm not in the Valley.
Your face is rushing from my mind
like water spinning away down a drain.
Because all of a sudden these guys are jumping up and down on my bed screeching like caffeinated toddlers.
They shriek in glee. They call me by my name.
"Wake Up!!" they squeal, bouncing like cartoon alarm clocks.
"Wake UP! We're going the the STORE! Come ON!"
I'm trying so hard not to forget you
watching the dream recede and wanting so much for anything other than that.
I see you spinning away down the drain
and manage to grab just a strand of your hair.
7.
The mealy eyes are watching.
It's a Holy watch they wrap around the City tonight
Just to see the three of us walking down the street.
Bic and the Assassin rambling rubbery numbery things
and me not paying attention, looking at the streets and wondering what I could do on them with my skateboard.
We walk slowly
like Holy men
or Occultists in ritual.
There is no humor or lack of humor in our movements
in what we are doing.
The Store is close. I pluck a strange strand of hair off of my shirt and idly begin to twist it around my finger.
8.
The lights are so bright, I have to take a few seconds to remember who I am again
frantic through my pockets for my amthatiam
until I'm flushed with renewed memories
furnished to fit the Store's fluorescents.
They carefully guide me through the Items That Could Be Possibly Purchased
and extol the virtues of Purchasing Power.
The bright colors on a bag of chips remind me of a certain array of feelings from my early childhood
and I almost let go of the Hair around my finger.
Then my fingers unconsciously draw the strand tight
and for an instant that I immediately forget, I understand Exactly What's Going On.
9.
There is an unused bishop on the board.
It's color changes from red to gold the brown
depending on how the light hits.
The Assassin is handing me items and taking them away with very deliberate timing.
Adam Bic's monologue on the intergalactic import/export of consumer goods is reaching a fever pitch.
He's accelerating to fugue-speed.
Half of my mind is squirming because it feels so hilarious.
The other is vacant and obedient like cattle giving milk.
None of it matters:
I've already been slaughtered.
10.
But the ring around my finger
it stores your floral scent
in a tense that can be neither remembered nor anticipated.
It mutters something from underneath my stomach.
It sends something up from the Underneath.
There is still Time for all of these Things.
There is still a place
a presence
and the different kinds of Grace.
Like lace over mirrors
and holes in the cardboard to make stars
and the embrace of grass
and those ancient Sapien Songs.
There's something in this City Tonight
that doesn't seem to understand itself
going nowhere in particular
and I can feel myself moving under or through or with it.
11.
The City is scratching itself to pieces
under a false and salivy sun
under a watery-architected so-called sky.
We elate in the death as it is the death of everything we are and despise
and gladly sink beneath the earth with its weight
wooed by Gravity's siren song,
rubber numbers gone undone.
We see ourselves free
in all the layers that untie us
in all the hands that rend our skin
to get at our vast and mucousal insides
the insidious hatred of what it is we are
at last put to rest,
Amen.
12.
But this is just a moment
and with a fleetfooted sadness it passes
away into the hills and out of the Valley
to leave us corporeal, back at the Store
with the night howling outside like a hundred-million pent up regrets.
It is a dull, muted despair that the Assassin and Adam Bic pedal.
But they finally finish their manic spree
and, arms and shopping carts fully-laden
rush me to the counter with undisguised joy.
But their faces fall flat when we get there
because behind the counter is none other than Emily Teal.
TAROT POEM ZERO
PART SIX
}{.
Galoshes at the edge of the store
carrying rainsongs across the linoleum tile,
an Alchemist enters, unnoticed.
This Alchemist is made of layers of rainbow scales,
scales of fish, scales of music, scales of balance.
All of a sudden, nobody seems annoyed.
1.
I look up to find myself in the house I spent my early teen years growing up in,
Dreamy memories run down the shaky banister like Tarot Poem Goo poised mid-coagulation,
Assassin chasing me down the stairs with laughing glee.
I look down to find the Assassin's hands wrapped around my own
my own hands wrapped around the butt of his knife
feeding the blade to his chest.
His red blood-legs are running down my arms.
His soul slowly leaks from his body
and stands in the yard in a puddle of hilarious laughter
feeding on my terror
like the termites in the bannister
as with Each Blood his Rise Increase.
2.
"We know what you want to do with the numbers" says the Assassin to Emily Teal as he removes his blade from Adam Bic's now-gushing
ribcage.
(red legs run down the hills of his torso)
Emily teal raises one eyebrow.
"We are Reason in its most-perfected form!"
he screams, thrusting the knife into his own porous chest.
Emily Teal sighs.
I remain glued to my precious state of shock, the forgotten strand digging into my skin.
"EnGyuteh oh FLDYA!"
the assassin gurgles as he crumples onto Adam Bic's bleeding body.
3.
The Alchemists comes up to the counter, stepping over the fresh corpses.
and asks for a pack of cigarettes
and looks at the bodies as Emily Teal rings him up.
"You going to do anything with these two?"
"I donno. I guess throw them out back for the coyotes."
"Mind if I take them?"
"Who the hell are you?"
"My name is Wetness at the Edge of Town. I have a laboratory under a bridge at the City limits."
She looks him up and down again.
"Hi, Wetness at the Edge of Town. I'm Emily Teal. Go ahead, I don't need them."
The Alchemist mutters a thanks and slings a body over each shoulder, pushing the door open with a galoshed foot on the way out.
4.
The ringing of the bell above the door resounds for some time, until it's bounced off every surface.
When it's done, Emily Teal chuckles to and turns to look at me, shivering and clutching a strand of someone's hair around my finger
and says
"have you learned anything?"
∆ cassidy ∆ rios ∆ kane ∆ // person who does different creative-type stuff // editor at mannequin haus // informally educated // freezeframe of being lifted gently from a bog of liquid gum // assembled from specks of ??? found adorning common surfaces // https://www.instagram.com/lvrkwvrk/