June 5th, 2012

I loved you before I knew what it meant and before society hid its meaning behind veils of sexual taboo. Everything you did was so unashamed and wonderful, and through the voice of glowing blue orbs and golden-eyed Martians, you taught me it was okay to be human. I remember your words spoken from my mother’s mouth, and as I read you now I remember summer nights on the waterbed, grasping at understanding and trailing away on a thought about rockets blazing orange trails across a purpling Waukegan sky. I never knew farm-life or religion, but I knew that both could be beautiful and dangerous. I never knew people until you brought them to me in a tin-can soaring through outer and inner spaces alike. The universe is benevolent and not indifferent. You saved me from the bitter atheism of my generation. You saved me from resentment and hostile coffee-shop intellectuality, because now I know how to respect all things, because you showed me the insides of their heads and that they’re only just like me. And I miss you, and I miss knowing that you’re somewhere, but because of you I know that you’re everywhere, and when I tell stories in my head, I’m telling them to you.

On the day that you died, Venus was passing far above the Earth. Perhaps you were caught in its shadow and pulled into orbit on your way up. It may not be Mars, but I’m sure you’ll make do.

Household Tips for the Modern Secret Society Member

Household Tips for the Modern Secret Society Member (Published in Illuminati Press, September 1996 ed., issue no. 1453)

For dull, lusterless wood tables:
1. Remove your robe and stand naked on top of your table.
2. Douse yourself in snake oil and roll around on top of the table. Be sure to cover the entire surface evenly, as any unevenness will result in a patchy end product.
3. Replace robe.
4. If the first coat is drying unevenly, use old or tattered robes to polish the surface of the table while it is still wet.

For Spotty Linoleum Floors:
1. Draw a standard masonic compass in the exact middle of your floor.
2. Sacrifice a small rodent over the center of your compass and smear the blood in each of the four corners of the table. For difficult stains, use a goat or other large mammal. Be sure to save the entrails for future haruspices.
3. Scrub the compass and blood from the table.

For Rusty Appliances:

1. Stand in front of affected appliance.
2. Sing the lyrics to any Lady Gaga song backwards while popping your booty like Rihanna. For water marks, use “Disco Heaven.” For gummy faucets, use “Alejandro.”

Vile Nine Tones

Alright, this is my most recent palindrome, which is more of a palindro-em. I haven’t posted it up before now because I was hoping to make a badly-photoshopped graphic novel out of it, and I had a couple of other people who might make illustrations for it at some point as well, but as that’s coming slow, and it’s finals week, I guess I’ll just post the palindrome by itself. I’m also working on another story, but it might not be up until Christmas break so, for my four or so followers, you know, expect that coming.

The palindro-em might need some background, so here it is: It’s about a group of sailors who wash up on shore and find this mermaid tangled in a fishing net, lying, apparently dead, on the beach. The last people to find her were fishermen who fled once they realized what she was. So, they find her and she wakes up and eats nine of the sailors’ hearts out. Then, she plays a song to seduce the narrator, who is trying to escape, and his shipmates run away while he is entranced and leave him as a sacrifice. She eats his heart out as well. I would go line by line, but it’s probably better for others to derive their own meaning from it.

UPDATE: Here are the slides I have so far. Yes, I know the photoshopping’s terrible. I’m going to say it was a stylistic choice.

Tide-mandated daemon, no mead det ‘ad named it,
Porcelain net-necrop, or centenniale crop,
Stink stang ferrel like killer ref-gnats. Knits
Drowned algae. Sea gladen word…(spoken by a sailor in the graphic, “Mermaid”)

Tide is lapse. Vile nine tones note nine lives, palsied. It
Peels on. “Yield!” I say, as I’d lie. “Y-No…sleep.”
Lire, play al. Peril
Nie. Racem eyes eye me. Care
Not felt. Fade, traitors. Rot. I arte daft, on
Tallats, planets ten alps tall! At
Fin, know elbo’ n gill, in as an ill, ignoble-won knife.

New Palindromes (Also, sexy existential cheese)

Here’s Poli-Sci class. Not been posting lately because I’m channeling my  creative energies towards other things, like remembering to shower and wash my clothes. I agree, it’s lame, but necessary, I assure you. These were up on facebook but I thought I’d post them here all together, too. Plus it makes me feel like I’m doing something and relieves some of the feelings of building hysteria. Yay?

I saw made man, a sorrowed sad, as dew or Rosa, named “am” was I. A palindrome about an android experiencing existential crisis after reading Juliet’s what’s-in-a-name monologue.
Alright, last one. My poli-sci palindrome:
See, for on a bank, nab an oro, fees
Embossed o sad nature-rut, and as odes sob, me
I sit, a nit, in a tisi.
I know tizzy is misspelled, but I don’t even know if it’s a real word, so I’ma count it. It’s about an old man reflecting on the evolution of currency from use of precious metals to today’s economy, and how humbled he feels in the face of the higher-power of society. Also about the fact that the same patterns repeat despite the fact that mankind’s been writing about them for centuries. I’m gonna go sleep and wash my socks.

My palindrome for the election: No, it celestial, U.S. nine-pedi, side, peninsula! It’s election!
About how democracy isn’t governed by divine right, and about how Florida was split 50/50 for a while. Also takes place in alternate-universe where America is actually governed by a secret society of nine-footed tyrants. Yeah…that justifies it.

New Mask-y business and Bad Spanish Poetry

Okay, so the bad Spanish poetry will come later, I have to copy it over from my notebooks and stuff. It’s the culmination of all my one month of Spanish-learnin’s, and some of it is kind of cool. It’s in rhythm and e’rything. Unfortunately, I’ve now lost the ability to phrase things eloquently, and all of my sentence structures sound kind of like they were made by a European frat-boy who never really studied English, but who thought it was kinda hip, so now goes around saying stuff like “Hey, that’s totally sickening, brother.” I think it got pushed out by all the subjuntivo.
In other news, here’s my new mask:
The text is the first few lines of “An Irish Airman Forsees His Death.”

Angels in America Part 2

2. Come closer. I can hear you.
Why do you tremble? Here, let me help you.
You don’t have to be angry. You don’t have to speak loudly. You don’t have to cut corners.
But it helps.

All in line, I’ll help you. Feed me well and I’ll help you.
Everyone deserves the chance to be right.
Tell me your story, I have forever to listen.
You don’t have to speak loudly (Please do speak loudly.)
Hush now, I know darling, life isn’t fair

…but I am.

Angels in America Part 1

Alright, friends. This is the first in my series of angels that I plan to post. Each will have a picture and an accompanying poem, and each will represent an aspect of American society that I think is destructive/needs reform. Try to guess them; I’ll write a poem for you or something if you guess right. Maybe I’ll just give you a high-five. Or a book of patriotic songs for the recorder, smeared with purple hair dye and peanut butter. It increases the value, I swear. I’ve also decided to start posting the original, hand-written drafts of my stuff because I think it’s more intimate that way, and I always like looking at people’s handwriting. Here’s the text anyway, though, in case you can’t read it:

Tell me again why you love me.
I remember a story that used to be told.
There were talking animals and Kings and Queens with names that tasted like caraway spice and sand grit, polishing your teeth as you spoke them.
Most were wicked. Some were not.
I was there, in the story.
I was the story.
And I know it doesn’t seem important now that it’s gone, now that the pages are lost to wet caverns and buried deep beneath the ground, but at the time, it was everything.
And after all, what are we but our stories?
You can persist, you can re-write yourself, you can, you can because you created yourself and CHOSE your own image.
But answer me this:
In whose image am I?

Tell me again why you love me. This time I’ll listen, I swear.
I’ll listen.
I’ll listen.
I’ll listen.

My Mortar Board

Ta-Da! I mostly just wanted to have an excuse to put naked ladies on a hat (it’s art, okay guys? Naked ladies always means art.)
Also, I finished my story for Mr. Schain. More on that soon.

Palindromes for decaf coffee boys and Insomniacs alike.

No sleeping, this instead:

Wed DNA line, lived off o’ devile-nil and dew,
Seeped in seeded sad as Dedee, snide, pees.

It’s a palindr-oem. Dedee is the mother of a woman who has abandoned her impoverished, low-class family for a life as a well-to-do career woman. She never calls, she never writes, but she has come back to town for her sister’s wedding, because her sister is the only family member that she ever really felt a bond with. To spite her daughter and to show her own pride in her own way of life, Dedee pees outside, in full view of the wedding proceedings. Okay, so maybe it becomes less impressive when it requires a paragraph of explanation, but just imagine that there was a situation where this was relevant, and I totally came up with it on the spot. Holy shit, I’m amazing.

So also, last night, we went to BJ’s, because I was feeling like a sugar mama and I wanted to take Katy out someplace fancy (she proceeded to make BJ jokes the entire time, and even thanked our waiter for serving us BJs.) So anyway, I asked for two decaf coffees with whipped cream, and he said it was going to be like ten bucks, so I asked for one instead, and he said his boss was on his ass and that if he caught us sharing he might get the boot. He ended up bringing us two decaf coffees with extra whipped cream and gave us free refills, still only charging us for one. I folded him a crane and wrote him a palindrome:

Named “Decaf,” faced de man.

…I was still kind of proud of its relevance, despite the fact that, to make it make sense, you have to develop a Jamaican accent halfway through.

Only a few weeks left…