St. Valentine’s Day Massacre Issue | ‘09 #1-2

Smoke Signals
COMMUNICATIONS

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Mike …

The mag is lookin’ good, real good. Glad to see you up and runnin’, where-to-for and why, who knows? As for me, I’m down with pneumonia, spinal stenosis, and prostate cancer, but that said, thank ‘god’ I have my health.

Rudy

Editor’s note:

Obviously no time to punt now, Coach.

Mike:

You think anybody out there can tell me what this dream means?

One day, every girl I’ve ever slept with showed up on my lawn.  They started to arrive in the morning, parking their cars and bikes across the street, and then in my neighbor’s driveway, and finally, in the road itself.  It took them all day to assemble.  They took taxis and carted carfulls from the airport.  I watched them through the blinds.  They didn’t seem interested in approaching the house; they spent all day mingling, trampling my bushes and claiming small plots, like a flock of geese.  In the afternoon a catering service arrived, and they chatted in small groups, sipping cocktails.

When night came, dozens of tents sprouted, and they felled a small tree and made a campfire.  I could hear them throughout the evening, a low murmur of pleasant conversation and shrieks of sudden laughter.  My neighbors called, complaining of the noise and the fact that the group had stolen several sets of lawn furniture.  I told them I didn’t have anything to do with it, that they should go over themselves.  The streetlights blinked once, twice, and then began to glow, and through my window I saw my neighbors make their way over, and after a few minutes, accept hotdogs or swigs from brown-bagged bottles.   Most went home and stopped calling; others spent the night there, laughing and swapping stories.  Someone pulled out an acoustic guitar.

For three days I kept my blinds closed and didn’t leave the house.  They were content to stay where they were, and I didn’t want to interrupt whatever they were planning; I paced my hallways and thought of a thousand small guilty things.  I rationed my food and smoked in the bathroom.

On the second night there was a small series of taps at my bedroom window.  Curious, I slid it open, and waited.  There are night bugs in the suburbs, but what few find a place to live between the asphalt and chlorinated pools were inaudible below the murmur of my new guests.

A voice came from the dark opening in my window, hesitant and small.  “I’m sorry,” it said.  “Do you need any food?”

I waited.  I asked, “why is everyone here,” and immediately dreaded the answer.  I heard her creep away, and sat there for a while in the cool breeze from the opening.

I slept fitfully.  I could have cleaned but I didn’t.  I surfed the internet and looked through old family photo albums.  I ate cereal three times a day and played chess against myself, losing every time.

I watched the girls on my lawn and tried to decipher through their body language which one had approached my window.  A shuffling of the feet, an unfolding of the arms, a glance towards the sky.  A sign that read, “I forgive him, even though no one else does.”

I tried to explain what was going on to the colony of ants that had been living in my kitchen.

“You’ve been good to us,” they buzzed.  “You’ve fed us well and respected our colony.”

“Also I’ve never had an anteater for a pet,” I added, not amusing them.

“Regardless,” they said (they all spoke in unison, their tiny voices sounding like thousands of ball bearings dropping into a punch bowl), “we’ll miss you if they decide to execute you.”

Finally, a select group approached the porch and rang my doorbell.  In anticipation I had worn a suit and black tie.  It felt like an execution, the air electric and all my ex-lovers on the lawn.  They held a document I had seen them collaboratively edit during their stay on a small computer workstation they had hooked up to a generator.

“We have come to a decision,” they read.  “Factions within the group argue strongly for castration, death, dismemberment, encasing your body in bronze for defacement, and forgiveness.  In the end, however, none of these verdicts gained the consent of the majority.”

I held my breath.  A horse nickered.  I wondered how they had gotten in touch with her.

“We also considered torturing those among our number who have forgiven you, while you watched, rooted to the ground in terror.”  What a bunch of Solomons.

They siphoned all the gas from the generator.  Red gas cans appeared from backpacks and luggage, and after packing up, they doused my lawn in kerosene.  Several passed out from the fumes.  I waited on my porch, woozy and apprehensive.  One by one they left, by car, by bike.  A bus arrived.  The last one gave a derisive wave and dropped a match from the window of her taxi, and there was no more oxygen in the air. I hoped they all felt better about everything.

Kenton

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Editor’s note:

Maybe it means that you’re asking yourself, “Who’s going to get me (with their double edged sword of love-hate)?” But let’s hear what the pros out there have to say about it.

In the meantime, if any of you hotshots are interested in the film rights to K’s dream, contact Smoke Signals.

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So what’s happening?

Re-fi’d the house and included taxes and insurance in the payments, paid off the car and the second mortgage, and I’m paying about $175/month less than at the start of the year. We also owe about a third of what the place is worth on the tax rolls, or a fifth the price people want to give for the place, even after all the shit hit the fan. God bless you Bernie Madoff!

My current contract should hold until next fall and I’m closing in on that monthly SS check. Who would have thought that being an obnoxious late period Kerouac could be such a path to success and prosperity?

I recently picked a fight with the local NPR affiliate after the fucks ran an ad on craigslist for scripts for a lame radio show that combines the worst of SNL, Prairie Home Companion, and Dr. Phil. I was inspired by Jules Pfeiffer’s Little Murders and just had to keep picking on the scabs until I received a desperate e-mail from one of the principal’s encouraging me to get help before she contacted the authorities. I responded of course by saying I was the authorities and copied every law enforcement agency in the Northwest. It’s been nearly three months, and beyond the occasional surveillance van parked down near the sewage outflow I haven’t heard another peep, although I continue to send ugly e-mails to everyone connected with OPB telling them to eat Sarah Palin’s snapper.

I find it amazing that this nation of miserable fucks will spend billions to bomb civilian targets all around the globe just to show who’s boss but the same assholes can’t capture Osama bin Laden, a name I made up and have been using on the Internet for 20 years.

I understand that during one of the Guantanamo riots, the detainees pulled a Trumbo/Kubrick and all started shouting: “I am Osama bin Laden.”

The sun is out. The sky is blue.

It’s time to work in the garden.

TTYL

Dick Nada

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Hey Smoke bros,

Saw my rich Uncle Max over the helladays.
Cheap wealthy 75 year-old widower
has this 20 something drop dead blond nymph
hanging on his arm.
I ask him; Max, you old devil,
how the hell you find such a gorgeous young girlfriend?
She’s not my girlfriend. We got married last night.
Married? How did you do it.
Easy. I lied about my age.
What? Max- you told her you were 50?
Of course not. I told her I was 90.

Captain J Sapir

Editor’s Note:

At least Uncle Max can remember the right lie. Thanks to the new Obama trickle down of truth, for the first time in our lifetime we have a chance to permanently eradicate the age of dumbass and pandering to the lowest common denominator that has ruled American life for more years than I can remember, even though I’m sure your Uncle Whatshisname can.

Speaking of memory, which I think I was, check out this article by Fred Whatshisface at: http://www.psychotherapynetworker.org/magazine/currentissue/540-the-non-remebrance-of-things-past    It sums the whole thing up better than I can.

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Hi Mike - I am once again testing the worthless fucking e-mail links on this site (which in general DO NOT WORK, and you should probably kill your fucking service provider, if you really care about anything, although don’t let that influence your decision to terminate anyone), and I stopped and read buk’s typer-message about trying to be too much like him, and that made me think about KV’s Howard W. Campbell (and other characters) whose basic admonition to the “real” world was to be careful about what you pretend to be, which, for most people, is what they are.

I have never wanted to be anything. I have been hundreds of things. If I live long enough, say as long as Buk or KV, I may end up being thousands of things, none of which are important to me, although one of the enduring things I’ve experienced during my ludicrous lifetime is this: my humorously dismal existence proves that human life and its quest for meaning means doodly-squat, which ensures me an opportunity to become immortal. After all, I have published freely as Osama bin Laden, Timothy McVeigh, Beulah Omar, and hundreds of other imaginary enemies of so-called civilization without consequence, while deeply committed poopadoodlists (think al Franqen and Move On) have experienced terrible hardships (which I don’t sympathize with, by the way, although I do heartedly endorse and support their continued wastage of time and effort because otherwise they’d be fucking with me) in life and meaning on the human level, that in my mind, all Buk was saying is the same shit Polonius told Hamlet before he got nailed in the arras.

If there is one thing that Bukowski ever wrote that is purely beautiful and indisputable, it is this:

humanity
you never had it
from the
beginning

And that’s the word, as Stephen Colbert might have said, if I didn’t say it first.

I can’t wait until this Obamination legalizes psychedelics. I can’t take this meaningless reality anymore. Oh, fuck. Yes I can. Yes I did. Yes I ever shall.

Why the fuck don’t you have Henry Rollins contributing? What the hell is your problem?

Disquieting mimes don’t really give a phuck. BTW, phuck has been censored on several of my pay per view posts. Ain’t that America, something to see. Little pink houses where we can pee.

Dr. Faustroll
Swinging for the benches

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Editor’s Note:

No doubt about it, this Feb 14th may finally have been the long awaited dawning of the Age of Aquarius, but in its present form this is the closing “act of Quality Lit” as T. Southern use to call it. We need to come up with another handle for quality writing or some crank Emperor’s-New-Asshole like Malcolm Gladwell is going to do it for us. And if me, you, any of us want to make a living writing Quality Lit that doesn’t constantly have to blow the LCD to get read, I propose we call this new writing “speculation”, not “spec”.  Spec’s too close to the obvious Hollywood hogshit “spec script” that describes the writer’s own (unpaid for) ideas in their story as opposed to the studios’ usual pounding of square blocks into the round holes of marketing surveys that always tell them blood and guts sells. Pure speculative writing, on the other hand, is meant to be a betting proposition because the writer is speculating on what happens to a certain character or characters in a certain situation at a certain time and place, that may or may not pertain to Captain Sully landing his plane in the East River, or what happens to one of those potential victims (not heroes!) that go down in the drink with the plane, but haven’t learned to swim yet (heart warming, shit, no?). Or even better yet, once the old noodle starts boiling in the brain pan, how about this herd of Canadian geese heading south for the winter because the head Gander Gordo’s got the hot-cha-chas for this beautiful Wild Goose who may or may not be waiting for his horny ass south of the border. If we’re looking at Gordo closely we all think we know he can’t get his mind off her ’cause to him “she’s better’n’ butter from a duck” — then WHAP! The stupid pud puller flies straight as an Arrow into the propeller – WHAP again!.  On second (or is that third) thought, if you were a betting reader, you have to ask yourself, who’s to say it was an accident? Certainly not the on the job Morally Correct New York Post. They know the odds are 2-1 that Gordo the Gander has read in Page Six that Ms. Butter–from-a-duck is dumping him for smarmy billionaire Porky Pearlman — Now that’s not a love story Gordo wants to speculate on, not a love story he wants to participate in, so very deliberately he eyes the prop of the oncoming plane, and slowly he turns his internal radar, then flap by flap, inch by inch, he draws closer to the spot where his baby will never dump on him again – WHAP!  Wanna bet that’s not the poor blue-blue Gander’s point of view - whoo-hoo? ? ?  Or would you rather PICK the New York Post’s headline for Gordo’s suicide?  If you’ve got the urge to get in on the action, you may be part of the future of Quality Lit’s new gaming manifestation.  Not just interactive for the sake of interactive, but a living breathing betting crap table of the soul that makes you think again, makes you care again, because you finally have a stake in how the story turns out again. . . Unlike the unscrupulous hustles of the stock market, Quality Lit will always have a WARNING giving you the odds on every story you decide to bet on, which basically will say, Just remember, lit buffs, “blood & guts sells.”

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I’m listening to Absolutely Free on my new iPod Classic.

Boing. There is no time to lick the stamps and paste them in.

The indian of the group, Jimmy Carl Black, died recently.

The song that just started is The Accident by Phillip Glass.

The world is out of balance.

One of those qatsi things.

Considering that the next song will be by Counting Crows.

What will it take to fix things that doesn’t involve a nuclear exchange between India and Pakistan?

I will say that this little machine has me once again listening to music and spoken language, which makes me last longer than I would otherwise. Not that’s a good thing for other folks. I live in Oregon. In Oregon, the longer you live, the more insanity you embrace. Where I live, if you don’t pay attention when you’re out walking, you can die of exposure. Writers so infrequently have the opportunity to die of exposure.

Bruce Springsteen just popped into my ears singing about somewhere across the border.

I write more than 10 hours every day, most of it for pay.

Bukowski just showed up from 70 minutes in Hell. The spike was not through his head.

It’s amazing what you can find on iTunes.

You know what’s coming next? Sarah McLaughlin singing Adia. I know I let everyone down. I was supposed to fly this planet into the sun, but here we are.

We are not born innocent and we get worse.

I see that Laura and Fubar are looking for someplace overlooking the grassy knoll for their retirement.

If we had an effective intelligence agency, they could probably track those scumbuckets down and string them up by their heels like the eyeties did with Pound’s hero.

I have no heroes.

There are no heroes.

Even the janitors are fuck ups.

I have just listened to five different versions of Adia. They are all pretty. They get boring. I’m about to forward to Adidas in Heat by Adrian Belew.

Have a good day.

Osama bin pissing on Bush’s legacy

Incredible. I just randomly clicked forward and got Paul Simon doing Adios Hermanos. Life is like that. I love those tight vocals.

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ED NOTE:      Yeah well, as long as your putting stuff on your IPod you might want to support the Clinically Brilliant for a change:
http://www.mikandgilles.com/index.php?a=article&articleID=6

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Oh Moosick Muse,
Golden man, Brother out Law,
A poem for you!!
I hope this finds you well and prosperous.. at least in your heart!

Oh Moose of Antlers
proud and free
come, run in the wind
my heart-ponds  pout in  incessant pools of longing
for what could be and I ZZ..
ZZZZZ, bee, buzz
moose and bee and the century of us, centering in cyberspace, yawning in computer daze, overload of media buzzz,
dripping, drooling,politicians impolitely rob our hearts and  tell us to mind our F.B.I.’s
A.B.C.’s, C.B.S.’s snickering snakes, snickering SNICKER BARS
boosting our sugar intake..
Hey, let’s just go around the corner, to the local dive, diner or perhaps- Alices’s Restaurant and have not only a greek coffee& ouzo but a double capuccino, an express yourself-oh! ????
I miss you soul mate of the mine (D) mind your manners and do well in school, better yet life!! L’Chaim! Rejoice!!!
That is a command!!
When death browses, Sit Shiva
and Shiva disguises himself in the guise of a deer, a  gigantic guyser spewing granola,, a wise guy..
That is what becomes of ya, when you walk all the way from the great arch in Greenwich village after  seeing the Chassidom dance jubilantly in circles , leaping life, end of strife, walk with me brother, respect our mother, quelling on Simchat Torah & man, you tell me to meet you at the oyster Bar on 42nd street and i do.. You order Oysters and i tremble before God in perplexity.. Yet i remember, I grew up in Oyster Bay without any religion, except hiding  yet being proud of being culturally Jewish & atheist to boot.. In 3rd grade RoseEllen  Stalone, (who’s father opened up Pig & Whistle on the Beach in Bayville) took my hand and begged me to ask Mrs. Fritz, our teacher on  lunch duty, MRS. Fritz, is there not God?? Yes, Mrs. Fritz is emphatic there is and  she said with her eyes  to me a young one who had crossed the line to damnation you’re a crazy way out there infidel if you ever dream otherwise.. Oh no. i’m in trouble, Big Trouble..
No body knows the trouble I’ve seen
noboby knows the trouble you’ve seen
Nobody knows but Jesus..
I wish you all a merry top of the morning.. May the leprauchans rule!!
lord love and duck and she’ll coming ’round the mountain when she comes!!!

Written on April 27th, 2008
After an incredible Bill Lauf concert in Milton Hall
Wish ya could a been there!
Milton, CT. U.S.A.
Planet Earth
Universe
Love, Leaps, Lizards, Lesbians, Lollipops
Parades and Tarantula Tangos
No Toes
Here Goes
Lator Alligator
I love you
Yeah, Yeah, Yeah
Les
P.S. I miss you Are you O.K.
Go on I sold my house .com
we’re on it as of 24 hours ago Swimming in Real Estate reel Estate
you better come up & visit before the history of 22 years of my house & longest life abode erodes,implodes, is taken away from my heart & body space forever
Come up for God’s sake it’s a train ride to wasaic
I’ll feed ya

Chicken soup with Matzo Balls. What could be so bad? Nanny would be proud-Nu?
Come meet the Boys on their turf where it’s comfortable & spring
The’yre a handful but they’re incredible, Experience  them yourself@@ their reading,Arieh on a 2/3rd grade level reading the 4 questions from the Haggadah Danny dancin’ Rocky Robin

LOVE Ya Michael
P.S. E- mail me your phone & address again so I can enter Cyberspace Correctly
LES

Thinking of Chris a lot
Kisses in Paris
Puppets in Parks
I’m losing Sleep & have a horde of kids to entertain & feed manyana
but I owed you overtime
Love & communication
Over & out
Sweet Dreams
No Hot Flashes
PEACE

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Hi Mike,

Happy M-L-K Day !

Tis’ Nice that inauguration is EXACTLY 1 day after MLK day.
Never forget ;   will  “we”        ?     ?
/
While “researching”, I have not read book but only just discovered this, and (chose to), skim Amazon for its “reviews”; it reminded me of your screenplay
(shamefully I say..again, shamefully I have that left with all-my-precious items secured in my storage, miles away!)   that  screenplay..of yours THAT  is… so magical   ((( ..&..)) … intentionally.. Hyper-Visual, &   (thrice’… moreover) intently psychically 3-dimensional, , (I was reading as I was clearly) slowly….driven into the higher-mmasochism of poetics,
a near “school of Metaphysical” total immersion of dream-world, so
poetic that I (..absolutely taken over by its force’ zes) set… it down to…day-dream every three pages minimum  (..never happened before so astutely as equally acutely) and sighed in a serenading joyous epiphany, private, alone, a peak of piqued fleeting plume of safe bubble where all silence took over me, took completely over me, then attempted…to resume in a bolting deliberate re-focus only to again crumble into the shepherded-magnanimity of your clarity of imagery - so that I again soared into skyward drifts of cloud-banks awash and reposing every millisecond in a fully composed moon-beamed grace of ancient night-blue Royalty all lush blue mind midnight in utter quiet, passing all imagined forgotten Greek, Hindu,
and Roman pantheons of G*ds, into Their astrology then pow-pow-blitzkrieg raised while razed into a “Mike Magical Castle Inner-World” so replete & so “aware” that I had entered into a precious new
“mythology” of Golden and yours, yet twinkling in a chasm of delightful wantonness as a “Child” I was, gleaning, and seeing all of the “my world” in “newness” - Mike, do you remember what I am talking about ??  -  Your “bizarre” screenplay. –

Editor’s Note:

Virtually Reality (On The Coast Of Nebraska) is the script you’re talking about. What’s so bizarre about the end of the world?  It ends, or will end, for each and every one of us at some point.
Here’s a LINK for an excerpt from the novel of the same name: http://www.eyeofthemind.org/golden.htm )

I was, then as now, all sober while reading, years ago, your work, in the passenger seat in a time twisted sleeve of surprises so juiced by its details of liberation, light, and life bearing wonderment !

I felt as though I was “passing” an “occult” or “secret society” formality of very HUSHED “initiation” then being “lead” into the sanctuary to the private realm of insight, initiation training, and had the “gift” of then being able to “view” the sealed parchments and trunks of jewels, and power keys to the inner-sanctum of the Ordering of the Planetary Peoples, through the secret passage passing the chamber of security, and saying the illusory prayers of highest guarded. reverences, then….bore upon the…sealed pocket of the labyrinth, to the the crest of the seal within, to the hearth of ruby and turquoise and burgundy and gold to that wateriness to the most-hidden-seal…; where I became enveloped as too lost, as too found, into the sealed “commitment”, gazed, clasped, grasped, heard, unsealed. Then, sealed again promptly.         :
/
Your prose in that screenplay ever delicately stretched the foundation at the periphery at the duel periphery, both simultaneously, as the ground beneath quaked, I shuddered in a ancient knowingness.  Your prose:
/
Sealed..into a cloistered inner-faith monastic jungle, your creation Mike Golden, you.. created, left me page after-page wanting more but challenged by my own “biological-functioning” ; on a beam.. in the dark bejeweled wing..outside.. of a space-ship, noticing the talisman or is it a shadow of a talisman, a savior or a Rabbi or a Wise Shepard on the wing, or a mere planet twinkling as we arched and turned, by this delusive hope I saw the saucers or sunlight if I could only get but alas I was “stuck” on the “wing” or is it a hearkening of the light on the other side of the space-craft, wandering how to get back but no door ?  ?  ?

then again “sighed” in a organic near orgy of giddy awestruck sensibilities, blustery, giggled roisterous, drunken at the watery fountain as I…..breathed a peppery reed a freshened breath so deep of angelic wind, a gratitude that supplicated all angst into embers of warmth, to a…need for deeper air and lung, each lunged..to gain a groundedness… but alas I… drifted, too enamored yet woven intertwined inside by my own “responses” with poetic aspiration and asphyxiation of elation on par with a mesmerizing euphoria, blinded in vision, weightless like a flying-puppy inside your web, a umbilical chord of Harmony strewn as mother-light to nurture my return, that I cannot tonight adequately  re-describe.  Save for the specific-memory of the fog floating off of the casket out in the above water over the air, over the shallow sea shore water the casket floated in to the strong armed men’s purposeful stride, as it is carried out… over the water, bulky, bulky, bulky coffin, a.. carriage afloat on air, if that is not merely my
imagination running away with me, for the sublime and and a Kafka darkness imbued realism kicked me up into a typical Golden-Mysticism,
all in the… 1ST  twenty-five pages.
/
Frankie  E

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Ed Note: You always were a minimalist.

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