6/27/06

Banking on Death

I’ve got two grams of heroin in a vault
comfortable margin for overdose
button-pushing bunkerboys
have the skeleton key to my
non-recreational stash.

It’s the end-times checkout junket
the only power I’ve got
I’m not interested in wars
for water, oil, or atmosphere.

I could deaden my empathy and strive to survive
it’s neat to eat wheat, it’s gnarly to eat barley
but I’d rather kill my body than my soul
or my circumstantial enemy, after me and my family
for what he doesn’t have, what I was born surrounded by
mountains, water, infrastructure, province of empire
can’t bear nobility’s pretense inheritance, sacred geography
must be free of egomaniacle sophistry.

Let my friends fight for the fatherland
when push comes to shove, they’re assets
and artists are useless in war
can’t fortify the beaches with words
or mine the mountains with music.

In the instant of survival or death
I’d fire back but
I’m hoping not to be caught off guard
and suckered into long-term investment
what is the return, survival?
A currency seeming so stable in luxury.

6/24/06

Pronouns

I don't go for cheap associations in the dynamics of theatrics.

Deadening and Dullening isn't conscious even if capitalized.

Sometimes sarcastic echoes can only express the beholdable binary bit of data you're flailing to grab hold of.

You never step in the same river twice.

Telescope - de-telescope.

Don't believe anything I say, there's no point.

6/22/06

the rattle of loose screws

On the shore, slammed to the sand with the nature of the valley
at Lake’s eye view i felt the reality of what they metaphysically mutter "sacred"
in times of fingerpointing dissociation from the feeling of
ground-down granite under their shoes, wind ripping at their shirts
grass talk conferring colour in the floodwade of tributary
glacial weight and veins of rain evaporating like innervessels on vitalgressions
through the heartbeat cycle of human hertz, wave form white caps
on the frothy edge of the over-arching-organism, quiet
undeliberate breath decaying in flowers of filth
with every exhale, what magic really is, alone in the
coliseum of undeniable sensation

but the chainsaws reminded me of the realities
that i also can't deny when i seek comfort
in the circus wonderbread electric msg
and my divorce from society in the routine i can get away with
in this slice of life i've scavenged for myself like a scaredy little rodent
backed into the corner of a plastic-patched condominium
with these distracted tenants who haven't paid their rent
who are consuming like there's no tomorrow
cause there's probably no tomorrow, since oil is order
and chaos is death for the majority
so we stuff ourselves with the snacks they sell down the road
still reasonably priced

and i still won't kill for my food

someone owns a piece of everything
it's business, you know what would happen if they threw the guns away?
capitalism is more civilized
except when it's not


*


He was a drug buddy for a while
that's how we got together, mutual interest in mind-manifesting
or just plain old-fashioned getting high
drinking, drugs, art, philosophy
whisky mystics and men

then
i learned the natural progression of paranoid paradigm

he sprung a leak
he's leaking springs
his brain's a broken toy

he can't be my friend anymore because i’m trying to convince him
his perception is bogus, he's taking on a solution of toxified sludgewater
infected with some synthetic parasite the conspiracy dumped in our lake
dwindling thimble full of ecology brought to us by Larame Cigarettes
as Groham's billboard reminds us

nancy drew figured me out
i'll apologize to him about working for
The International Campaign to Defame the Only Human that Exists
of which I'm a high ranking member
having worked undercover two years
slowly gaining his confidence, buying him tickets to raves
tempting him with my hot horny girlfriend, collaborating musically
only to use the information i've slowly acquired about him
to mess with his mind by saying things that sound like innocent conversation
but are diabolically tailored to trigger his deep-seated anxieties
because the world is fundamentally a malevolent place
and rich powerful men want him to suffer for their amusement
he's the chosen victim of the universe's glistening steel mindgrinder
and i'm the sharp edge of one of its teeth

i'll apologize about that
right after he apologizes to me for being part of an illuminati plot
to get me to burn my brain out on ecstasy
don't think i don't know, agent Orr
that you were the mastermind behind
somehow tricking me into buying those pills
all those times, the author of my ills, i blame you
even though this exact same pattern has repeated itself
with five or six different people in three different cities
it’s the world that’s wrong, not myself! ha!

now i'm part of his "campaign"
i won't call it a campaign, i'll call it a "conspiracy"
to sever his terminology, the word that give it the fingerprint veracity
to make it go down easy, sanction his psychosis

suddenly
i'm the dark matter in his nightmare universe
was i paid off by another member of the conspiracy
or have i been in on it all along
planning my chess moves from a Vancouver penthouse
with my laptop, using my network of operatives
to swoop down on him in Nelson, placing agents
on every streetcorner for strategically-timed comments
that can't really be heard at that range
but could theoretically be about him, and therefore must
malevolently be, must be the "kootenay phase"
of Operation Enduring Defamation and
when we're done, his character
will be flatter than fallujah! chortle chortle chortle!

he's flattered we've wasted so many resources on him
he loves his solipsistic self-righteous sob story

too much coke?
too much acid?
too many beatings?

his trauma is real
his delusions are not
he told me the fact that i was making rational arguments was evidence
of my involvement in the conspiracy
it betrays my intent to manipulate him
i wonder what i can say that won't be evidence
should i make irrational arguments?
then i'd be playing on his eccentric thought patterns for real

he’s waiting for a letter to explain it all
he’s sure one day he’ll see the twisted tell-all faces
in his father’s fractals
it gives a structure to the universe
something that explains his pain
he’s not gonna give it up
over the trivial matter of
our two years of friendship
and my insistence that i’m innocent

quite a bind
makes me want to go back to the lake
tune out the chainsaws
and forget about people
and how they cut themselves
and how they cut themselves off from me

i thought i was weird, fucked up, paranoid, neurotic
and then i actually got to know other people
like my fucking friends
now i think i’m alright.

6/20/06

Hands Off

Red Ferrari Marty, living in L.A.
bumps another line to get through the day
- MC Lars

I’m sitting on a picnic table at Lakeside. Hot day, cool breeze. Shade. Beautiful. Feeling sick. Hungover. Hands shaking. Wondering if writing makes it worse. If writing makes me feel the sickness, or deal with it through feeling.

I’m walking past the beach people, dragging behind me iron chains of debauchee burnout, dead weight of zombified neurons just alive enough to give me lumbering chase through the torus cave in my head, bloody warren memory burrows. I’m recalling everything I gregariously said to people last night on my pubcrawl in the most negative light devisable. I decide that the most healing thing to do is to withdraw. My dendrites have stopped yearning for an expressive human face that looks back at me. My nervous system no longer craves the touch of another.

I got on the drink and hyper happiness. Now I’ve had my fill. No dignity made it past the state boundaries. I’m remembering the joys of being anti-social – and yet out in society. Being there, but gone. Unavailable to the crowds. Standoffish. Taking in the rhythms of the beach people like a stealth bird, humming melodies to myself. The beach people, the park people. My anti-social impulse still competes with my dick that makes me a shifty eyed creep, stealing a peripheral glance at achingly beautiful others walking past me, the gorgeous girl I’m ostensibly cut off from at every level.

Sometimes it’s better to fantasize than etch a ridiculous agenda into reality and watch erosion wear it down. There’s the rub.

6/18/06

Eriatarka (my Mars Volta Cover)

This is my favourite song by my favourite band. It's the song that inspired me to sing. I had to cover it.

Listen

The original is guitar based. My version is for piano, bass, and drums. Voice is me. The piano transcription is my own. Drums and bass were transcribed mostly by myself, with some help from midis I found online. All instruments are synthetic. Sequencing and recording were done with Cakewalk and Soundforge.

I interpret this song as being about an artist in a drug-induced coma and his loved ones on the outside contemplating the morals of drawing comfort from machine-assisted existence. What is life and death about, really? Maybe the answer's in the House of Eriatarka.




Lyrics:

and there are those who
haven't found the speaking so wrong
is it wrong
of pavlov lore
they ran rampant through the floors
is this wrong
feels so wrong
happened on a respirator
in the basements
are they gone are they gone
stung the slang of a gallows bird
rationed a dead letter pure

trackmarked amoeba lands craft
cartwheel of scratches
dress the tapeworm as pet
tentacles smirk please
flinched the cacooned meat
infra-recon forgets

and there are those who find
comfort in the breathing
wrong
is it wrong
it houses the watchful eyes
they're panting in a pattern in droves
is it gone
happened on a respirator
in the basement
is this wrong
can’t be wrong
stung the slang of a gallows bird
sanctioned this dead letter pure

trackmarked amoeba lands craft
cartwheel of scratches
dress the tape worm as pets
tentacles smirk please
flinch the cacooned meat
infra-recon forgets

evaporated the fur
because it covers them
if you only knew the plans they had for us

they used to have pulses in them
but impulses made them strong

trackmarked amoeba lands craft
cartwheel of scratches
dress the tapeworm as pets
tentacles smirk please
flinch the cacooned meat
infra-reco forgets
gotta be a way
of getting out
are you just growing old
trackmarked amoeba lands craft
cartwheel of scratches
dress the tapeworm as pets

6/15/06

keeping the peace

good show tonight
they're playing the coma theme

he sings of his overdosed friends
malt liquor forms of tasty riffs
spacey sounds, overproduced and unreal
springing sonically from the base
of a vomit-stained windpipe
dilated death on an artist’s
enameled-tin studio floor
concrete cadaver omega over 'n done with
artist fuck, faggoting off under that
bastard butcher's knife, splaying
blissful entrails, flailing
for void knows what

drug addiction is war
for the bourgeois boy with a chip on his shoulder

the drama, the death, but better
than war
not self-sacrifice
but self-immolating profligate vice, full on, full bore

non serviam
chromatic melodies
army of one
chemical weapons
lost in lyrics
evil drug metaphor
for mephistopheles

worked for burroughs
worked for thompson
worked for

blank
boy/girl
negative nutrients
fossilized psychosis
they didn't make
it so they lie
between the masons
and the mayor

crack house / packed house

rock 'n roll detour on the short
road to death

so you're a cock-rocking man
and you served your time in hell
paid your dues
good for you
hi-five
now
let's keep the peace
why don't we?

and pass me the syringe,
I want me a hit
of that ritalin/oxycontin cocktail
you've got going there

war is so worn

6/10/06

age of gods, age of heroes, and age of humans

Viconian Thunder Number Three:

Now be aisy, good Mr Finnimore, sir. And take your laysure like a god on pension. A universal theme. I'm not on pension yet. Paying CPP. And if I'm being universal here, I feel as old as the universe. And yet, I feel as if I was born yesterday. My homeworld. It's this world. Alien and alluring as hell. Heavenly. Eternally.

Mick and Nick. Forgot about them. One day I'll have to write THE novel. Really work on it.

I have my own private primary duality which i relate to everything. As sedation takes its toll.

"We are so much the victims of abstraction that with the Earth in flames we can barely rouse ourselves to wander across the room and look at the thermostat." - McKenna

6/09/06

The Gravy Railcart

Let Walmart destroy my home like a Vogon constructor fleet. Here there be dragons. Here there be drugs. Here there be apathy, in excess of Health Canada’s limits. I could almost go anti-hippie. No, I couldn’t. But there’s not much attaching me to my town anymore. It’s never good to become dependant on one or two people for your social life, people that inevitably disappoint. I need new friends. New taverns. But I also need new associations. A new life. Maybe I’ll start by cutting my hair.

I’d quit my job right now and move to Kansas to live with Desiree, but I’m clinging to the stability of my paycheck. Finding employment, for Hippie Craque, was like finding Atlantis. Still is. Which is why it seems a miraculous fluke that I found the modest market niche I currently tolerate. I’m horrified at the notion of throwing that away and having to look again. Another Atlantis? Two in one lifetime?

No, better to go with the bird in the hand. Better to stay on the gravy train. Well, the gravy railcart. The gruelcart. Not as grueling as those poor saps who work full days. I wouldn’t become one of them if I could help it. I’d pick fruit in Midwest American orchards with my fellow illegal immigrants, mostly Mexicans, but I’d only do it five hours a day. Because I value free time over money.

No, I’m not a workaholic and I’m proud of that. You can call it my Canadian values, or maybe, deep down, genetically, my flaccid eurocommie ethos. I should have been a Greek philosopher fag. I kicked work before I was born, I’m off the stuff. I’d rather walk. My name is Hippie Craque, and I’m a walkaholic. Sure, come after me, drag me back to your concentration camps so you can put me to work mining Antarctica where my only pleasure will be getting loaded from the recycled piss of Argentinian shamans drunk on fermented Penguin stew. But you’ll have to catch me first. I should warn you, I’m a racewalking champion. I can do 50k standing on my custom-designed head. I got a trophy from Videlectix!

By the way, I stubbed my toe at the Bakery yesterday, so naturally my life is in shambles. A shambles? Or shambles? Regardless, I’m continuing, valiantly, to inform you of my travails. So I’m taking this opportunity to request donations. I just – sniff – don’t think I can keep writing the commentary you so enjoy here without immediate financial reward. Cash, credit, gold bullion, silver pinecones, Reichmarks, Nolan Ryan rookie cards, and sexual favors are all accepted. Which is why you’ll find a Paypal button up my pretentious fucking ass. Let’s see if we can raise $50 000 by the end of July. All donors will receive a signed copy of a rare lost chapter from “Original Sin” where Jamie snaps out of her Long Island hallucination to realize she’s Christ dying on the cross, and an exclusive Hippie Craque tote bag.

Goddamn those donation-seeking blogwhores annoy me. Stop threatening me with the sharp end of your faux-charity freelance and get a column in a New York culture rag already. Everyone else has.

The Twin Gears of Cringe and Cling

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