L. Andrew Cooper's Blog, page 12

April 11: Morning Risers, Fashionable Ladies, Sky Eyes, More

Barry lost friends with his grating warning:

“There’s no reason to rise in the morning.”

Nobody listened except for the sun,

Which packed its bags and declared itself done—

“I’ve spent my last day bound up in scorning.”

 

Barry brought darkness, resentment churning,

Predators hunting with no sun burning.

He counted each battle the sunless won.

Barry lost friends.

 

In blackest space the world kept on turning,

And to survive, people were not learning,

So Barry said one more thing that would stun:

“I give myself if there’s light for someone.”

None gave him love for the sun returning:

Barry lost friends.

 

I know a trend that gauche trendy folk buck,

Which won’t surprise as gauche trendy folk suck;

If you like ladies, well, hon, you’re in luck,

For true ladies fashioned don’t give a fuck.

 

You try to vex them—you grab; they parry.

You won’t perplex them, subtle as a truck.

Fall at their feet and beg them to marry,

But true ladies fashioned don’t give a fuck.

 

You want to trick them, to subdue their minds,

To show the world you are more than a cuck.

A man such as you in short order finds

That true ladies fashioned don’t give a fuck.

 

In wowing costume or in mere plain dress,

High-fashioned ladies show weak men their mess.

 

The eyes in the sky, they’ll be you and I:

Satellites, satellites, circling high,

Mouths in clouds beneath them, breathing in air—

No, you can’t see them—feel that they are there,

Waiting to lick, lap folks up like a fly.

 

What don’t they see, opened so wide to pry

In lives below, where they struggle and try

To make fools care—they could be anywhere—

The eyes in the sky?

 

Under their gaze you’ve got no alibi,

Only excuses resigned with a sigh.

The eyes above you all know what is fair,

And their angry beams are enough to scare

Everyone, everywhere until they die.

The eyes in the sky!

 

Highway Pile-Up

 

Reflections on the asphalt burn

White car white car white car

Rearranged

The curl of the hood

The point of the trunk

The ground glass firmament

Road layer car layer fire layer smoke layer

Black white orange black

Firm broken feeding free

The curl of the smoke

The point of the flame

Bends of metal twist firm

Broken glass on the ground

Reflecting black firmament

Emptied windows frame fire

Black layers framed fire framed layers black

White cars bends of metal

Carcasses ground firmament

The curl the point

Rearranged to burn

April 10: Captives, Doorways, Smart Reading, and so on

A charming man, slick blue sedan, could lure

A simple lad—drunken fun had—on tour

Of empty streets—journeys complete—with weed—

He’d get me high—the blues would die—we’d part—

All was spinning—his strange grinning—my heart

Knew far too late, obvious fate, his need…

 

The bottom of stairs, I awoke in need

Of any attention, help I could lure,

But when the door opened, I heard my heart

Gasp—someone new joined me on my cold tour,

This abandoned basement, the hostage part

In some show, but was he some poisoned weed

 

With his forehead painted with letters, “WEED,”

He was labeled as what I’d said I’d need,

And I wondered if we played the same part,

And if he, my age, had bit the same lure,

And if I were his trial on his tour,

So I felt my forehead and stilled my heart.

 

The sticky letters there answered my heart—

Perhaps we were both here to kill, to weed

Each other, to create a grisly tour

For our captor’s sick self-indulgent need

That led him to create a young man’s lure,

Wind us with fear to tear ourselves apart.

 

I resolved then not to play such a part

And offered the new lad my hand and heart,

But I guess he thought it some kind of lure—

He pulled himself back like a kind of weed.

I tried to explain, “Oh no, you don’t need—”

Then in the corner, the end of the tour.

 

I hunt for more, on the floor, for the tour—

Our captor for rapture had placed a part

For each to teach of his own burning need

To survive, stay alive, protect his heart—

The parts were starts, spades to dig up a weed—

One alone could crack bone—that was the lure.

 

I ended the tour. I took up the lure.

I played the part, and I dug up the weed.

Free, I need to hide the truth in my heart.

 

You’ll never get through; you must go around.

This door never opens. It’s firm as ground.

You thought it would give access to living

Life with endless loving and forgiving,

But look at the doorframe—so solid and sound.

 

What do you do with a door that you’ve found

Leads you nowhere, leaving you where you’re bound

To feel you’re stuck, the whole world believing

You’ll never get through?

 

You are in the place where future’s unwound.

For your efforts you will at last be crowned.

Piles of dunce hats you are receiving

As you bought doorways and their deceiving:

You dreamt of fleeing, but your flight was downed.

You’ll never get through.

 

[image error]

Educated readers wait for what’s good.

They show their breeding with their discernment.

They won’t read ’til someone says what they should.

They need help knowing what a word’s turn meant.

 

I love New York and some tastes that it makes,

But it’s not the end-all of existence.

On its ego some should put on the brakes;

Other cities should show more persistence.

 

Most snobs don’t merit the snot that they sling,

As ideas in their heads all come from outside.

Push them, discover they know not a thing,

And they are likely to slink, run, and hide.

 

Yes, there’s a moral: think for yourself,

Oh yes, and add all my books to your shelf.

 

He and she in marital ecstasy

Went for a swim in water super-clean.

They emerged together wet and smiley.

 

They were a match, souls in complicity

With the stars and all else that can mean,

He and she in marital ecstasy.

 

They crossed the threshold after toast and tea

To do in private things some thought obscene.

They emerged together wet and smiley.

 

A home together was then meant to be

Someplace where their true love could be well-seen.

He and she in marital ecstasy

 

Knew love worked best observationally,

Each took paint color—yellow, blue make green—

They emerged together wet and smiley—

 

Icons for faces, grins for folks to see,

Yellow her, blue him, jealous green between,

He and she in marital ecstasy—

They emerged together wet and smiley.

 

What did you see with eyes opened so wide

You might have let ghosts, eye phantoms, inside?

You took care not to drop your teddy bear,

Which could fend off things in the dark that scare—

Things that saw you and didn’t need to hide.

 

When you first saw it you gasped, and you cried,

But to call for help then your tongue seemed tied.

What is the horror of the whole affair—

What did you see?

 

Looks haunted like yours could not have just lied:

You saw something nasty; it terrified.

Regale us with details; tell it with flair.

Realize this: we must know what was there!

You have no choice, boy, so you’d best confide:

WHAT DID YOU SEE?

 

Crackle and crackle, let them dismiss you:

Bags of bones and glass make no sure demands.

Crackle and crackle, recall soft tissue:

Jags of bones and glass can cut their sweet hands.

 

Be brave to be broken without remorse—

Be labile with labels—no to normal—

Be forward physically first, of course—

Some bites and kicks, a scratch—nothing formal.

 

Insanity’s insight inside a cell:

In as much I’m here, I’m doing quite well.

If in ignominy inheres a hell

In here I smear each name I can still spell.

 

Crackle and crackle, I could just kiss you:

Crackle and crackle, they’ll never miss you.

 

[image error]

We fell behind fences and feigned real fun.

A roller coaster held us still, in place,

On the wrong side once the war had begun.

 

In queue for hours, we watched machines run

As if each free fall differed, case by case.

We fell behind fences and feigned real fun,

 

As feigning pleasure was how it was done;

If you don’t like it you have to save face.

On the wrong side once the war had begun,

 

We followed the rules, or we lost the sun.

To dislike the coaster would be disgrace!

We fell behind fences and feigned real fun,

 

And that was living life under the gun,

Fenced off from the rest of the human race,

On the wrong side once the war had begun.

 

This ride’s a metaphor, has to be one,

Our deaths repeated, broadcast across space:

We fell behind fences and feigned real fun,

On the wrong side once the war had begun.

 

[image error]

Anxiety monster Irv is uncouth.

He drills one into oneself, like a bore.

Irv’s anxious taunts play footsies with the truth

And treat the neuter real like a dumb whore.

 

His many fingers include one for trust.

When he presses the spot, it sends out shocks.

The pressure he builds will threaten to bust

Any human bond secured by faith’s locks.

 

Irv’s really best at insecurity.

He burrows down into every weakness,

Encouraging one to hide and to flee

Everyone, everything, the world, bleakness.

 

Irv loses battles and sometimes retreats;

Irv always returns and always repeats.

 

[image error]

Sonnets versus kittens’ pics—yes, I lost!

But if I’d won, what would have been the cost?

Folks would have lost a moment of sweet pleasure

They needed in a rare spot of leisure—

Think of the horrid line I might have crossed!

 

Wait! There are some to count. All is not lost.

Many would like to see some kittens bossed,

Get those tyrants schooled, measure for measure,

Sonnets versus kittens!

 

Most would still greet dusty sonnets with frost.

Reminders of high school tend to exhaust.

That’s stupid, clearly—we must reassure

Sonnets can catch anything you treasure—

How brightly would you like your name embossed?

Sonnets versus kittens!

 

“Shape upon shape, I see animal, man—

They’re in collusion; I catch what I can

Of their conspiracy, their watching eyes—

These ghostly figures the living despise.

I’m on the verge of learning their foul plan.”

 

“Shapes in the carpet, under the divan,

Supporting chairs, not some new human ban—

I fear our friend sees things, you realize—

Shape upon shape.”

 

“Know they are watching, spread out in a fan,

Know they are heeding you, clocking your span,

They draw conclusions—oh yes, they surmise—

About who you are, who lives, and who dies—

You say I see things? They haunt your whole clan,

Shape upon shape.”

April 8: Sneaky Snakes, Shipwrecks, Wicked Workbenches, More…? (with guest James Chakan!)

She’ll not see me coming. I’m on the take.

I’m slick as silver, the real scale—not fake.

She chatters away in a stupid shirt

That bares her arms, which I’m longing to hurt—

This is my nature. I’m the Super-Snake.

 

She would see me, and she would surely quake

If she’d half a brain and weren’t such a flake—

Yes, I am sneaky and fierce in concert!

She’ll not see me coming.

 

I’d swallow her whole, but she’s big as cake

At a wedding where folks like her would bake

At 350—for taste, a venom spurt

Would really make them a lovely dessert—

I’m dreaming of a wedding for my sake!

She’ll not see me coming.

 

We’ve taken on water, taken on years;

The weight of centuries contains a flow.

We’ve faced our own slaughter, faced our worst fears:

The weight moves onward with nowhere to go.

 

We traveled eons through one landless night,

Where light meant nothing amidst the long drift.

We started to sink when land was in sight

Because the weight on us we’d never lift.

 

We looked aloft with deep resignation

At what to some would seem like salvation

But to us was the last indignation

In our terms swimming through Earth’s rotation.

 

As we drowned and knew heaven wasn’t near,

We couldn’t fathom who’d held life so dear.

 

My workbench and all its entertainment—

A man takes satisfaction in labor.

I worry such pleasure needs containment.

 

The work enables me to maintain rent;

I’m not the type to accept a favor.

My workbench and all its entertainment

 

Will not allow tasks to be in vain sent,

As I will complete work that I savor!

I worry such pleasure needs containment.

 

My side work may seem more than just plain bent;

I do indulge in some odd behavior.

My work bench and all its entertainment

 

Includes trials in torture sustainment,

In which I play both devil and savior:

I worry such pleasure needs containment.

 

If you stand for my trials’ arraignment

Know you’re in good hands that always gave more.

My work bench and all its entertainment:

I worry such pleasure needs containment!

 

Bill the white rat has a secret to tell;

It could disturb the whole global order.

He has discerned with his keen sense of smell

Infinite ways around every border.

 

Nothing you want out cannot get right in.

Negative, negative: trouble doubled

As you sealed cracks with multiplication

That left your walls naked, short and rubbled.

 

Master of disaster, Bill the rat’s fat,

Pudgier, yes, but faster than a cat.

If he gets your pure ones, well then—that’s that!

Bill, mighty Bill, makes your mores go splat.

 

Bring all your best habits—he’s got the keys!

But please remember: he favors fine cheese.

April 7: Poisoned Trees, Fiery Death, Dragon Brains, etc.

We don’t know yet how many fools we’ll see

Eating the fruit from the old poisoned tree.

They say when it’s ripe it’s soft and juicy

And gives you the world in your hands for free.

 

We’ve seen troops tromp over children to eat

Fruit that trumps morals with essence too sweet

To resist once you’re with the elite,

And if you eat once, you’d rather repeat!

 

Would I be wrong to take some real delight

To see these fruit fuckers begin to fight

The effects of sweetness that isn’t right—

Dropped to their knees, poisoned, too late contrite?

 

I know I’ll be judged for wishing them dead,

But each put the poison inside his head.

 

So let it all burn so that they will learn—

They have no chance for redemption to earn.

The flames will consume every darkened room

Where they spent hours planning frozen doom,

Blind to what would come—too cold to discern.

 

Fire fails to discriminate: flames turn,

And they eliminate people who yearn

For lives free from the weavings on plotters’ loom,

So let it all burn…

 

I know for innocence some hearts will churn;

Alas, innocence is not flame’s concern.

We can’t mourn everyone inside flame’s tomb.

Flame won’t stop for mercy and then resume.

When it’s time for fire we must be stern,

So let it all burn.

 

I once drew maps for Dungeons and Dragons,

Trapped mazes with rooms for monsters galore.

Now a mind-lapse, and I fall off wagons:

Mazes and monsters are apt metaphor.

 

I’ve used some poems to map out my mind,

As if its principles I could predict—

I think a brain scan, a true one, would find

The mazes and rooms all lead to conflict.

 

The mind is a dungeon—that one is old—

But how to slay dragons, I’ve not been told.

I’ll buy magic weapons where drugs are sold

And gladly collect hard-earned dragon gold!

 

Here there be dragons, old maps used to say—

Big fucking lizards always in my way.

 

Hurl words like lightning, and heal them with shock.

Frankenstein’s Creature needs to be alive.

Make your prose sizzle, and make poems rock.

 

Big bolts from black clouds will not please the flock,

But bigger is better, and you’d best strive:

Hurl words like lightning, and heal them with shock.

 

Their wounds are deep, as they took a hard knock

When they learned love was a thing to contrive—

Make your prose sizzle, and make poems rock,

 

Because all feeling is fast losing stock,

Making all complacent, one with the hive.

Hurl words like lightning, and heal them with shock!

 

Some people are pushing the doomsday clock,

Believing end-times are their times to thrive.

Make your prose sizzle, and make poems rock,

 

Or you step in a cage and turn the lock.

If you pedal soft you just peddle jive.

Hurl words like lightning, and heal them with shock:

Make your prose sizzle, and make poems rock!

 

The river’s forever. So is the bridge.

I thought I was crossing. Now I’m stranded.

I think I see land there over the ridge.

I’ll never make it. Hope has disbanded.

 

The water beneath me whispers my name.

It knows I won’t listen. It tried before.

Water’s temptation is too trite and tame.

Its gentle voice is easy to ignore.

 

I’ll die on these stones, up here in the sun,

To mock the promise of safe connection,

Halfway away from where I had begun

But never close to landing affection.

 

I can’t imagine who built this long path—

I add my steps and expire from math.

 

As vulnerable as Marion Crane

I shower and go a little insane,

Wander with water, thinking of the past.

I wash automatically. Showers last

Until my sense of self goes down the drain.

 

However could washing cause so much pain?

There must be some causal root to explain,

Some point in childhood when the die were cast

As vulnerable.

 

It’s as if water stirs an inner stain

That I can’t reach however hard I strain.

It reaches to me and grabs me quite fast,

Forces out all else with a steamy blast,

And wreaks blister havoc upon my brain

As vulnerable.

 

Dmitri, come meet me: you’re astonished!

The horrors you’ve seen in this life are tough.

If you unseat me, I’ll be admonished,

Justly because I’ve succumbed to your stuff.

 

You can’t help your confused disposition,

Hanging around with visions of fire.

Big-eyed distress sends men on a mission—

Men like us who wear business attire.

 

You take it off, the confusion and shirt

For me and all who hear your anxious cry.

You show us all right where you feel the hurt

And make us promise to teach you to fly.

 

Desire and fear travel hand in hand:

Do you disagree or do you demand?

 

We are many, and we will never die,

A frozen army with a heatless sun.

You cannot count us. Do not even try.

 

In the headless woods no animals lie,

But the restless winds get to have their fun.

We are many, and we will never die.

 

In places for mortals we would be shy,

But in our own realm we bow to no one.

You cannot count us. Do not even try.

 

This place would be Hell if we cared to fry,

Or cared at all for what someone had done.

We are many, and we will never die,

 

And we are above what mortals decry.

We embody their fake God’s negation.

You cannot count us. Do not even try,

 

Or you might rip out your brain through your eye—

It would make no difference. No one won.

We are many, and we will never die.

You cannot count us. Do not even try.

April 6: Stairs, Taped Lips, Other Tortures and Torturers

I’m sorry I told you to climb the stairs,

As if they led to sophistication:

They lift you to platforms where no one cares.

 

When young we’re climbers, happy hopping hares,

Impregnable to most perturbation.

I’m sorry I told you to climb the stairs,

 

As near the top, you were caught unawares

By views majestic, God’s visitation—

They lift you to platforms where no one cares,

 

But recall those glimpses, those eye affairs

That to ascend make folk keep their station.

I’m sorry I told you to climb the stairs,

 

Which made me complicit and made me theirs,

Those who take pain and go on vacation.

They lift you to platforms where no one cares.

 

You reach the top step, and everyone stares.

They laugh to see your crushed expectation.

I’m sorry I told you to climb the stairs;

They lift you to platforms where no one cares.

 

Tape up those lips, boy—you’ve said far too much.

You’re too hot to listen, too cold to touch.

We can’t even take your poison in sips

Or anything else from your mouth that drips.

You’d kill the mood in a youth rabbit’s hutch.

 

You go on about politics and such.

Who cares about which party rules the Dutch?

Newspaper’s best feature is that it rips:

Tape up those lips.

 

We think your vitriol is a mere crutch.

You like to have a debate you can clutch

So when the old record of your life skips

You can complain with your hands on your hips

The jump was symptom of a greater botch.

Tape up those lips.

 

Some cold instruments, they like to squeeze you;

Some hot instruments, they thrive to tease you;

Some sharp instruments, they would disease you;

All these instruments mean to displease you.

 

I’ve been cut open while I was asleep.

I saw little knives that made the cuts deep.

Technically, I saw all but didn’t keep

Memories of visits in my gut-heap.

 

Torture and medicine, lots of fine lines—

Time is the best of them, as it defines

Methods as monstrous or the best of finds,

And both work best when used by masterminds.

 

Let’s put this clamp onto someone’s digits.

I must find medicine’s outer limits.

 

When your skin crawls, but that’s not yet it quite—

You’ll mistake a shadow for them at night—

You know how it feels, and it isn’t right,

Tickling legs, millions, even in daylight.

 

When experiencing formication

You’d best seek quickest stabilization,

For if the sensation has duration

It can lead to bad self-mutilation.

 

Then again, ants as hallucination

Aren’t the worst possible degradation.

They could be of the flatworm persuasion—

Perhaps you’ll pray for an ant invasion!

 

At least an ant isn’t a contagion

And works in ways that earn admiration.

 

The glass has frozen my face in a shout,

I see reflections, comic, distorted.

I’ve got blood on my hands—I can’t get out.

 

I’ve screamed for help—I hope help is about—

I hope somehow my screams get reported.

The glass has frozen my face in a shout.

 

A-plus for survival; I’m glad to tout

That with self-help skills I wasn’t shorted.

I’ve got blood on my hands—I can’t get out.

 

This glass exit, secure, lovely for clout

Shows me my face as escape’s aborted.

The glass has frozen my face in a shout,

 

Except it’s bending, rolling, stern and stout,

Aghast as if blood I’d sought and courted.

I’ve got blood on my hands—I can’t get out.

 

Maybe the glass is here for me to flout

This blood’s not mine, and it won’t be sorted.

The glass has frozen my face in a shout.

I’ve got blood on my hands—I can’t get out.

 

He’s rolling on in, taking the wide road,

Bringing damp dark to those foolish who owed

And didn’t know that he slips in the cracks,

In neglected places, your slightest lacks,

With help from seeds you didn’t know you sowed.

 

He colludes with nature, the mother-load?

He’s one of her freaks, a vague mist-borne toad,

Who gets mixed up with places filled with quacks—

He’s rolling on in?

 

Make light if you dare: he follows a code.

You may find yourself lost in his abode,

Knowing you can’t take a breath or relax,

Checking each shoulder for his next attacks,

As no one escapes once he’s in his mode:

He’s rolling on in.

 

Will someone please tell me whom I should thank

For the lovely view I have from this tank?

I have to admit the water is cold

And suffocation has gotten quite old,

But my eyes stay open to sights top-rank!

 

I’m not really sure what it was I drank—

At first I thought of it all as a prank—

But then they stripped me—it was rather bold—

Will someone please tell me?

 

The strange irony that should turn your crank

Is I’m not sure if I’m dead. I just sank.

I need air real soon, or truth is all told,

But should I struggle, or am I annulled?

I’ve got so much more for the question bank.

Will someone please tell me?

 

I’ve been in prisons, and I’ve been in halls.

Fear is not finite: infinity calls.

When prison’s empty and the halls lack walls,

You go on forever ’til your heart stalls.

 

Fear’s hall leads nowhere; it goes for hours.

It sucks energy with magic powers

And includes ladders so you climb towers

Full of more hallways: each one devours.

 

Everything shines in here. Everything’s bright.

Everything promises endings with light.

Everything covers the hall’s appetite,

The fact it imprisons you with no fight.

 

Nothing looks real here, and nothing may be.

The hall of terror is nothing you’d see.

Leon Wordcaper Got Out

My site, long neglected, has been co-opted for use by Leon Wordcaper, who lives in, well, a confined space that’s none of your business. You can read what he has to say about me and my ideas here: http://landrewcooper.com/wordcaper/

Notes on Manic-Depressive Illness, 2e, by Goodwin & Jamison

Volume 1. New York: Oxford UP. 2007.

 

p. xix “Manic-depressive illness magnifies common human experiences to larger-than life proportions.” [Living large. Yay.]

xix “manic-depressive illness is the most common cause of suicide.” [Ergo, I think people who bully the mentally ill are attempting murder.]

xxiii “The high mortality associated with this illness cannot be overemphasized.” [So will you assholes stop acting like it’s no big deal?]

xxiii “The age-old link between ‘madness’ and creativity has been studied with increasingly sophisticated methods in recent years. Research has demonstrated that it is not schizophrenia but manic-depressive illness, especially its bipolar forms, that is more often associated with creative accomplishment.” [Normal brains produce normal thoughts, which are advantageous in… some… situations.]

3 “Aristotle, who differed with the Hippocratic writers by seeing the heart rather than the brain as the dysfunctional organ in melancholy, introduced the notion of a ‘predisposition’ to melancholy.” [Hey, you mean it’s not just a phase?]

4 “Deliberations on the relationship between melancholia and mania date back at least to the first century BC…” [Looks like it’s not just trendy after all!]

5 “The period that followed was, in retrospect, a dark age, when mental illness was generally attributed to either magic or sin or possession by the devil.” [Maybe the horror community wants to keep up the stigma to sell books?]

5 “The explicit conception of manic-depressive illness as a single disease entity dates from the mid-nineteenth century.” [oh those clever pathologizing Victorians]

12 “Current data indicate that manic-depressive spectrum conditions… may be found in 5 – 8 percent of the population” [never said I was a unique snowflake, asshole]

15 “significantly more manic-like symptoms in their bipolar depressed patients–especially irritability, racing thoughts, and distractibility–than in unipolar patients.” [bipolar depression borrows some of the crazy from our other pole]

15 “bipolar-II depressed patients have been noted to have less stability and uniformity of symptoms across episodes than unipolar patients” [my bipolar depression is different from regular-brand depression]

21 “…within the broadly conceived cyclothymic temperamental domain there are ‘dark’ and ‘sunny’ types. Although family history for bipolar disorder is equally high in both groups, in clinical practice bipolar-II associated with the darker core cyclothymic temperament is more likely to be diagnosed as a personality disorder.” [I come from a Southern Gothic family]

30 “Despite the shortcomings of language and the highly personalized vocabulary often used by patients in describing their manic-depressive illness, certain words, phrases, and metaphors are chosen time and again, forming a common matrix of experiences. Often these images center on nature, weather, the day-night cycle, and the seasons; often, too, they convey unpredictability, periodicity, violence, tempestuousness, or a bleak dearth of feelings. Religious themes and mystical experiences pervade the language, conveying an extraordinary degree and type of experience–beyond control, comprehension, or adequate description.” [Me & Virginia Woolf!]

31 “As we shall see, ‘pure’ affective states are rare: mania is often complicated by depressive symptoms, and conversely, depression, especially the bipolar form, usually is accompanied by at least one or more symptoms of mania… far from being a ‘bipolar’ disorder, with the assumption of clinically opposite states, the illness is characterized by co-occurrence of manic and depressive symptoms more often than not.” [so please no more Jekyll/Hyde jokes, which is a misreading of the novel anyway]

 

Wording with Thorns

Only the fiction of my horror stories is exaggerated. The supernatural is mostly metaphor and code. The horror is real.

A lot of people—especially people with majority privilege—like to complain about political correctness. Think about this. Think about lying in your loved one’s arms at home at night, sleeping soundly. You wake up because so many arms have grabbed you that you can’t move. You get one more glimpse of your lover—you know instantly that she or he is going to be dead soon. Next, you’re tied to a stake, and bundles of burning sticks are being thrown at your feet just often enough to keep the agony high. These bundles are called “faggots.” You’re called a faggot, too, because your life is worth no more than tinder because of those you love. Watching you die is someone’s entertainment.

If you think you have a right to complain about political correctness, and you have a shred of decency, you may not realize that there’s no exaggeration in the previous paragraph. More often than not in the name of Jesus Christ, people brutally and LEGALLY murdered their neighbors who expressed same-sex attraction from medieval times through the Holocaust (we wore pink triangles in the concentration camps, lest you forget). In the year 2016, homosexuality is still punishable by death in the Muslim world, not just in Iran (where the method of choice is live burial, like in the Edgar Allan Poe stories), but in nations the U.S. calls allies.

After the U.S. stopped putting homosexuals in prison, it still locked us up in mental institutions, using electro-shock and other methods to “cure” us that would likely be considered violations of the 8th Amendment and the Geneva Convention (remember American Horror Story: Asylum?). True story: homosexuality was officially considered a mental illness in the U.S. until the 1970s, and a lot of people in the U.S. still act like it is. Read the news about which minorities are a plague this week. When people treat you like you’re an illness, they want to cure you. What do people do with illnesses? Eliminate them. Hitler had a final solution. Do you?

The world really is that bad. So when you worry about political correctness as a Great Satan, I think you’re missing the forest for the trees. If you want to complain about idiots who try to use political correctness as an excuse to censor art, please be my guest. I gladly say fuck those motherfuckers: I hope their intestines spontaneously explode from their bodies and form a slide for them to ride straight to hell.

I gladly say inappropriate things and create some of the most incorrect characters imaginable in my fiction. Some people who are fighting against political correctness feel that free speech is under threat, and to the extent that they’re right, I’m with them, but political correctness should be about acknowledging the power of language, which is something every good writer (and, in my opinion, good human being) should reckon with. So, fellow language-users, consider these two critical points:

Hate speech is a clear and present danger. If you’re arguing about limits on your free speech, remember that there already is one: you can’t shout “fire” in a crowded theater. Why? Because that’s an instance of speech that threatens the safety of a group of people. Dictionary.com defines hate speech as “speech that attacks, threatens, or insults a person or group on the basis of national origin, ethnicity, color, religion, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, or disability”. “Faggot” devalues the lives of gay people and encourages murders like that famous murder of Matthew Shepard. Likewise—more on this in a moment—when a group of people on Facebook attacked me by using the words “handicapped” and “bipolar” as insults, it clearly fit the definition of hate speech related to disability and therefore did not qualify for protection under the first amendment.
“Use” and “mention” of words are distinct. I have mentioned the word “faggot” many times here. I have referred to its history of hatred, but I have not used that history or used the word to apply to a specific human being. This distinction is subtle and difficult for many people. So is the distinction between in-group use and out-of-group use. Language is about contexts. Political correctness helps people less familiar with contexts to navigate them. Unless you’ve known me for a good long time, you’re better off not using the word “faggot” in my presence. I’m bipolar and I’m gay. A really close friend might call me a crazy fag, but the probability that you’re that person is close to zero.

So I referred to a recent experience with hate speech related to disability. Despite the persistence of ex-gay camps and such that insist on trying to “cure” homosexuality, the mainstream no longer treats it as an illness, which is good, because it seems like a fine thing to me. I can’t say the same about the other stigmatized category I’m in. So people feel much more justified in treating me like I’m an illness to be eliminated. Take your meds. Wipe yourself into an oblivion where you won’t bother us anymore.

When people make fun of us, I really just want to point out to you normals that you’re literally incapable of fathoming how un-fun it is. Unless you have my mental condition, your brain is not equipped to handle what mine processes. I am THAT different from you. But if I say that, people will think it’s some sort of arrogance or exaggeration. But it’s biochemical certainty. Part of what I try to do with my horror fiction is give you people glimpses. Edgar Allan Poe did that, too. Word is he was bipolar, and having read all of his work, I feel fairly confident his diagnoses would have had much in common with mine (never been an alcoholic, though). Lots of you have some hero-worship for him… mine’s a little different. I think he was in my club. Chances are, you’re not. Bipolar pride. Woo-hoo. Now turn down the fucking lights and remember we’re all going to die.

For the last few election cycles, gay people were the favorite category to pick on. This time it’s the mentally ill, as we’re clearly the cause of all the shootings and such (nevermind that all the stats show we’re far more likely to be the victims than the perpetrators of violent crimes, thanks in part due to asshole horror writers who don’t do research). Seems I can’t get a break. Like it or not, the zeitgeist is with me, and I am with you. My recent bouts with illness have left me feeling too in touch with contemporary psych, but a little bit of Freud stands strong: the repressed shall always return…

Which reminds me, when you call something “exemplary,” you mean it stands as an example of your highest values. The person who led the mob that used hate speech against me was called “exemplary” by an organization specifically for his behavior on Facebook, I put myself in reach of this bigot because of his high standing in the organization, yet the organization (which has a sordid history with alleged racists and rapists) refuses to act at all. I suppose I AM crazy to think “sane” people would see that “political correctness” is about decency, and, to quote a popular writer, “We endorse things by our participation in them.” People in the organization are hypocritical enough to dismiss me as too touchy and therefore not worth considering as yet another crazy “victim” of their membership’s hate.

Perhaps decency is just too damned rare. My mania is quixotic.

Leaping Under the Covers of the Peritoneum

Extreme, often intimate stories–horrific, bizarre, scary, offensive, funny, absurd, disturbing, or just plain WTF–in turns or all at the same time–when am I going to produce a by-the-rules book that will lure in readers by targeting their comfort zones with words that don’t explode? Not any time soon…

As I write this post, the first goal of which is to show off amazing cover art by Aaron Drown Design, I am getting ready to travel to Las Vegas for StokerCon, the Horror Writers’ Association’s major convention, where I will see print copies of my new short story collection Peritoneum as well as new editions of Leaping at Thorns and Reel Dark for the first time. (For more about the new Reel Dark, see “REEL DARK in the Spotlight,” and for even more about Peritoneum, see “Inside the Peritoneum.”)

 

As I’ve already posted, Reel Dark has new stories by Michael West and Alexander S. Brown, and since the book’s first edition had very limited exposure, all of it is new to almost everyone, so I’m excited about it. The collection of award-winning authors as well as newer voices spinning tales of movie mayhem is destined to please lovers of dark fiction. Yes, I’ve got a story in it, but unlike the other two books I’m talking about here, this one ain’t about me. I’m showing off a collection of other people’s work, stories and poems I really like, and I’m darned proud of it.

 

Like the new edition of Reel Dark, the second edition of Leaping at Thorns is bigger than the first, with one tale added in each of the three sections. (Unlike Reel Dark, these stories are all me.) To the “Complicity” section I’ve added “Silence,” about a woman who keeps losing people, literally, after she has a surreal experience in an abandoned house. To “Entrapment,” I’ve added “House of Butterflies,” in which flesh does more than crawl–it flies. To “Conspiracy,” I’ve added “Kindertotenlieder,” about a twentieth-century Pied Piper whose storybook vengeance is even more horrific than the worst version you’ve read. With these additions, the book provides an even better view of the self-obliterating drive toward darkness that binds all the stories together. With the stunning new cover and support from Seventh Star Press–and with the first edition’s enthusiastic reviews–I’m looking forward to Leaping at Thorns freaking out a larger audience.

So what, then, of the newest addition to the bunch–the one with the guts on the cover and the hard-to-pronounce title, Peritoneum? It’s a different kind of animal. In a very small circle of friends I’ve been calling it a Winesburg, Ohio on acid, not because it’s about small-town life (although a significant number of stories focuses on a suburban house… especially its basement) but because the stories share characters and inform one another. In fact, although I published a few stories separately, and a few stories only relate to the whole tangentially, I wrote the vast majority of these tales to stand alongside the other tales. That design makes this book very different from Leaping at Thorns, which has some interrelated stories that nevertheless stand alone. In Peritoneum, I hope you’ll enjoy reading stories individually, but you’ll get a lot more out of them if you read them together. The volume starts with “The Family Pet” and “Blood and Feathers” because they introduce elements that run throughout the book, and it ends with “The Birds of St. Francis” and “The Broom Closet Where Everything Dies” because they tie a lot of those elements together.

Don’t let me mislead you. I don’t promise that the stories make sense when you read them all together. Sure, they make more sense. Some of the WTFs in “The Eternal Recurrence of Suburban Abortion” get answered in the next tale, “TR4B,” and even the comical scenario of “DNA” gets backstory work in “The Broom Closet Where Everything Dies.” HOWEVER–my goal is to offer little eddies of revelation in a greater sea of insanity, where sense and reason fail more often than they succeed. Lots of horror stories have endings that explain the horrors and box them away. Many of them are good. Few of them scare me.

What scares me is the breakdown of sense, the failure of perception. As a result, my stories and the perceptions inside of them tend to break down. Sometimes, I couch the breakdown overtly in terms of the supernatural and/or mental illness and/or drugs (especially in “Patrick’s Luck,” “The Road Thief,” “The Long Flight of Charlotte Radcliffe,” and “Door Poison”), and sometimes I just let them unwind by their own devices. My hope is that the stories, while not always conventionally satisfying, will disturb you on some level–move you to feel afraid, amused, bewildered, and so on–and result in entertainment, albeit of a brooding and uncomfortable sort.

Oh, I worry about things. “Blood and Feathers” has two endings, neither of which is a resolution… “Year of the Wolf” pivots around quotes from an obscure World War Two documentary as well as a scientific curiosity… “Juicy the Liar” opens with a line about eating pussy… I thought of “Bubble Girl” as YA until readers started seeing all kinds of crazy sex stuff in it that I thought was buried well under the surface… “The Broom Closet” goes beyond nasty… much could go wrong in the reading of Peritoneum. But without that possibility, I’m not sure it could really go right, either.

Southern Haunts 3: Fantastic Flights, Historic Hurlyburly

Southern Haunts 3: Magick Beneath the Moonlight is a short-fiction anthology that delivers a delectable range of witch-tastic events and images, successfully indulging fantasies of magical power and a fetish for the history of things weird. [For the rest of my review, keep reading, or for an interview with the book’s co-editor Alexander S. Brown, go here.]

Leaving the most familiar questions about whether so-and-so is or isn’t a witch in the background, and saving the typical witch-hunts for Yankee territory, the stories in Southern Haunts 3 presume the existence of magic and focus on the power’s whats and whens. From these whats and whens readers get a sense of a where, the American South, which is both horrific and mystical. As a result, this collection of stories stands apart from typical witch-horror while affirming, in the Southern Gothic tradition, that regular old “realistic” storytelling doesn’t quite get one of the U.S.’s most culturally diverse and historically troubled regions.

While I’m conflating all the mystic goings-on in Southern Haunts 3 as witchery, the collection’s editors and authors are careful to distinguish among types of magic and related spiritual traditions, naming the book’s primary whats distinctly as voodoo, hoodoo, and witchcraft. “The Apartment House,” for instance, provides a series of bizarre and violent tableaux—death by books is my favorite, but a detailed flaying deserves mention—and ties them together with a lesson on the laws for practicing voodoo the right way. In “La Voyante,” a knowing character explains to a writer looking for a new creative outlet that voodoo isn’t the only game in town:

“No, we talkin’ ’bout Hoodoo. Between the ‘hoo’ an’ the ‘voo,’ there’s a worl’ of difference… though we do tend t’ use a bit of both in these parts.”

Often gesturing toward the diasporic and creolized origins of so-called “pagan” spiritualities tied to hoodoo and voodoo, the stories in Southern Haunts 3 provide a nuanced enough view to add an S to the K in the subtitle, making it a less elegant MagickS Beneath the Moonlight (not a suggestion—the actual title is much better!). Indeed, as the main character of “In the Dark” learns, some magic needs to be practiced only in the day, so “moonlight” isn’t even a consistent feature of proper witchery. Magic refuses easy limits, and while it can be as elegant as the kindly title character of “Granny Wise,” it can also be as ugly as characters’ habits in “Dances with Witches.” The collection tells us that all these magics might fit in a book, and they all show up in the South, but they won’t all fit in a proverbial box. The box mentioned in the title “The Priestess’s Trunk,” then, provides an apt metaphor: you might try to contain and understand mystical forces, but magic will always find a way to push beyond easy categories and simple expectations.

Despite the diversity of magical types in Southern Haunts 3, magical power almost always serves one end: payback. While the book draws its power from many veins, it directs that power primarily toward fulfilling fantasies of justice and vengeance (for comments on this focus from one of the book’s editors, see the interview). The first tale, “Granny Wise,” based on a historical figure, sets the mold: a witch serves locals as a healer, but the price of her services includes righting wrongs. In most tales that follow, witchcraft, as a means for payback, either doles out a kind of cosmic justice against evildoers (as, for example, in “Live Big”) or serves as means for a witch to get some vengeance on (as in “Vengeance,” “The Jar,” “Tell Me Where He Lies,” and “Without Xango there is No Oxalla”). The most salient motive for mystical vengeance in Southern Haunts 3 relates to the South’s legacies of racism, slavery, and lynching. In “The Untold Tale of Wiccademous,” searching for the story behind cursed woods leads the would-be storyteller into a cosmic trap forged from these legacies. “Cursed,” set in the 1920s, takes a more direct look at magic providing justice for a lynching that earthly courts would ignore, and “The Shadows” answers a nineteenth-century slave-master’s murder of an innocent man with a curse that takes “life for a life.” While magical means of achieving racial justice help to advance the book’s Southern identity, magic also serves as an equalizer for women who suffer under the arbitrary rule of despicable men. The mystic in “Secrets of the Heart” learns that her husband’s religious hypocrisy too easily stands in the way of his devotion to her, a betrayal she does not suffer lightly; likewise, when a violent husband crosses “The Bone Picker Witch,” he opens the door for some of the book’s nastiest moments. In most cases, mystical vengeance is overwhelming and horrific, but the justification that goes with it makes rooting for magical victory a source of grim pleasure.

While the fantasy of supernatural justice is fun to indulge, it recurs a little too often within the selection of tales, and the stories that rely on it less end up being my favorites in the book. “The Witch of Honey, Kudzu, and Coyotes” shrouds its title figure in mystery, making her more like a force of nature than a person practicing a secret art. Going further with an interest in storytelling that runs through “The Untold Tale of Wiccademous” and several other tales in Southern Haunts 3, “The Witch of Honey, Kudzu, and Coyotes” opens with an interrupted story that persists in the narrator’s imagination “like a hollow, unformed thing” alongside

“a boy missing from everyone’s memory”

Broken stories and memory gaps make magic powerful enough to reshape thought and perception, reweaving reality’s fabric; as a result, this tale can explore fresh and compelling territory. Likewise, “In the Dark” focuses on the perils of exploring the unknown. A bit rambling in structure, this tale brings its unwise protagonist in contact with strange verse, talking birds, and a host of disturbing images—my favorite is a buck with centipedes pouring from its mouth—that again signal a link between magic and distorted perception that can change the rules for what a story can do. Fans of more transgressive and gruesome horror fiction will likely count “In the Dark” and “The Bone Picker Witch” as favorites along with “Docta Bones,” in which the title character inverts Granny Wise’s benevolence by requiring much harsher payment for the gods’ services, and “Dances with Witches,” which places a human appetite for evil in parallel with a bewitched landscape’s. Chilling acts and images become the main products of witchery: questions of justice and the natural order become secondary to experiencing the full horror of the weird.

A volume about magic and the South invites thinking about cultural and regional history, and with stories set in (or focused on rediscovering) the eighteenth, nineteenth, and early twentieth centuries, Southern Haunts 3 does a great job of putting together views of the past (and thus it meets its goals–see the interview). As a Southerner, I wonder about the present. Where is witchcraft in the contemporary South? How do hoodoo and voodoo continue to inform life not just in old New Orleans, but also present-day Atlanta, Richmond, and cities in between with “modern” feels that contrast with the antiquarian interests that dominate this book? The book covers solid ground, but by sticking mainly to historical subjects, it might miss some opportunities for innovation.

The opportunities included, however, add up to a satisfying read. Moody, atmospheric, and drenched in regional detail, Southern Haunts 3 gives readers an entryway to the South’s mystic history, places and times to explore with equal amounts of dread and delight.

Southern Haunts 3: Magick Beneath the Moonlight,

Table of Contents

“Granny Wise,” by H. David Blalock
“Live Big,” by Tom Lucas
“The Priestess’s Trunk,” by C.G. Bush
“The Witch of Honey, Kudzu, and Coyotes,” by Diane Ward
“The Untold Tale of Wiccademous,” by J.L. Mulvihill
“Vengeance,” by Linda DeLeon
“The Jar,” by Robert McGough
“La Voyante,” by Elizabeth Allen
“Cursed,” by Melodie Romeo
“Secrets of the Heart,” by Louise Myers
“Tell Me Where He Lies,” by Greg McWhorter
“Shadows,” by Kalila Smith
“Docta Bones,” by Melissa Robinson
“In the Dark,” by Jonnie Sorrow
“The Apartment House,” by Della West
“Without Xango There is No Oxalla,” by John E. Hesselberg
“The Bone Picker Witch,” by Angela Lucius
“Dances with Witches,” by Alexander S. Brown