* * *

Blackened teeth jut from her damp, grey face, almost perpendicular. Limp flesh draped atop her old skull, describe every crevice

and so I said, that's not a zombie, that's my wife!


So, I was in bed with my wife the other night, and she was reading a book

She says to me, she says, do you like Francis Bacon?

and so I said, I didn't know there was such a thing, but I sure like Canadian's Bacon!

then I says, this is true, I says to her, what're you gonna wear for Halloween, honey? Something sexy, I hope, like a girdle?

and so she said, get this, she's as sharp as a tack, she says, darling, I wish you woulda worn a condom, 'cause I sure as hell didn't mean to marry you!


all I see are stars ever since I cut off my nose

I like to go to the nasothek and try those noses on

I took a nose off the shelf to keep for myself


and now no one knows the old one's gone



to the nasothek I go alone
since I haven't a nose of my own
so I stole from the shelf
a nice nose for myself
and noticed I reek of B.O.


I met a man with a Hitler mustache of black nose hairs. He was blonde and his eyes were blue. We pretended to sell each other knives. They could cut through pennies. We sold knives to everyone we knew. I even let a man with a Hitler mustache of black nose hairs sell a knife to the love of my life. I was just following orders.

It was a mistake. Everyone killed each other. Everyone I ever knew, stabbed to death by everyone I ever knew. But not a man with a Hitler mustache of black nose hairs. He caught a garbage barge to Argentina after a knock at the door. I heard he wears his sun-bleached nose hairs longer these days. All I have are halved pennies anymore.

what am i even doing with my life right now? in this country? the bed springs jut into my ribs and i have to fast for the hospital so where can i even situate myself temporally, like actually?


Christopher Columbus was a lusterless son, a fair-weather friend, and a bad boy, but he was a good Christian. He treasured interracial porn and God was pleased. So pleased was God that He decided Columbus should be compensated like a common prostitute.

One night, an angel appeared to Columbus while he masturbated. The angel supplied smut that aroused him and pills that sustained his erection indefinitely. Unable to leave his houseboat because of his upright and locked position, Columbus was fired from his job. He became severely melancholic and began abusing mercury.

Need I remind you, dear reader? God isn’t always there when you call, but he’s always on time. When Columbus was tackled by a drug dog shortly after overdosing at the shipyard, God granted him retractable spikes capable of annihilating any opponent.

Slaughtering the drug dog, the military, and their American Indian allies, Columbus suddenly found himself without peer. However, his body rapidly deteriorated because of the constant grind of spike against flesh and bone. Aging faster than a certain large spotted cat, Columbus was declared legally dead by a jury of his peers after a month in hospice.


God, unwilling to take back the retractable spikes, resolved to send Columbus back in time. Columbus vanished from his deathbed and rematerialized in prehistoric America. But our hero wasn’t alone. He had a new baby brother. A baby pet brother turkey. Columbus named the humanoid turkey thing Thanksgiving and knelt in reverence.

“God is good,” he said. “Let’s go home and nuke some pizza poppers, kiddo.”

Columbus and Thanksgiving walked to Jersey Shore, the last place Columbus had parked the Mayflower in his futuristic past life. But houseboats didn’t exist yet. When Columbus arrived, he discovered a vast, untouched coastline of incomparable beauty, but not his Acer Aspire 1, 15.6" HD, Intel Celeron N4000, 4GB DDR4, 64GB eMMC, Windows 10 in S mode, A115-31-C23T. He wept into his erection and screamed at the sky.

“Thanks for nothing, asshole!”

But God couldn’t hear him because there’s no sound in outer space. No sound except the hair metal in God’s holy AirPods. God was seventeen again and he could fucking drum like no other. He wasn’t going to listen to some scold in the junk drawer. No, he smacked his sixteen year old fuck buddy’s ass and the blue sky shattered, blinding Columbus.

Columbus sat down and listened to the waves. But Thanksgiving kept pecking at the sand. Columbus tried to take a nap, but he didn’t have eyelids anymore. He twiddled his thumbs and remembered that turkey makes you sleepy.

Columbus called to his baby pet turkey brother, who stupidly gobbled into his arms. Columbus chomped into his face.

“Don’t cry, Thanksgiving. You’re making eye boogers.”


So what, she said
At least I ain't got feet for eyes
dummy
heh
this is all some play so it's okay

right?

When I was 16 I bought a 1991 Chevy truck which leaked coolant into the passenger footboard, which I used to drive way down into the country to smoke weed and watch live recordings of Ray Wylie Hubbard and his sad hippie guitar sounds.

My daddy was a preacher in a JC Penney suit, and he had banned sad hippie guitar sounds, and weed, and cold beer from a cooler. He'd get up on Sunday and walk the pews and sweat all over his JC Penney suit telling people they were gonna die without Jesus.

But the Jesus I knew had working mans hands and liked getting drunk with fishermen, so I figured rock and roll might have the answers to the feeling of the stars pressing against me from the silent black sky.

Fuck, I was high, and I was out of beer. The stars, still screaming, pressed their weight upon me and shrunk my face. Goddamn I gotta get back to the trailer.

I slapped that old girl into drive and my tires dug into the clay and my truck lurched me homeward. But I had forgotten that daddy liked to stay up late and watch How Its Made in his brown LA-Z boy recliner. I'm fucked.

All I could think about driving home was my daddy and his polyester skin. The man read Zig Zigler books because he wanted to be a bigtime real estate agent, but he was supposed to be shepherding the church. Maybe the preaching was a fucking control thing, like Russian Roulette.

Fuck, I gotta get home but the stars are still screaming; "There's something 'bout a cowboy in a hand knit scarf that will always be cooler than me.

Home puzzles me. I look up and it is like looking down a well and it feels really really fucking good. My home has a table and a chair and hair that isn't mine whisked into corners I'll never near. My father ate the same meal for twelve years after my mother passed. He never surprised himself. I don't have that problem. I look up at the night above me and I'll believe anything.