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Christmas:
by Delphine Lecompte
i don't feel sorry for myself,so what if there is a
retarded flemish cook drivelling on my minge,it could
always be worse,he could have been a
kinky flemish fishmonger,he could have been a
spiteful busker who used to be my father for three
years,i'm so fed up with kinky flemish
fishmongers,ever since i started writing about
gutting codlings i've fucked about three
kinky flemish fishmongers a day,or maybe the
fucking came before the writing , i can't remember;
ghastly bedroom: prickly blood- stained rugs, a lamp
in the shape of a voracious buzzard,soft porn mags
on his night table,rodent porn flicks and dodgy pills
under his bed,lots of arctic cubs on the wall,some of
them lying on their mothers' back,some of them with
speech bubbles that say banal vulgar things like
"happy birthday" and "missing you", i can't think of
anyone who'd miss this retard, it's not just that he is
minging and blubbers the whole bleeding time, it's
his relentless inane monologue: the self-pity, the
recession,the price of baking powder,the crap jokes
about unfortunate frogs, the emotional blackmail, the
self-pity, i know i already said that, but it's so
ubiquitous, i know that's a big word,
and it doesn't even fit his constant whingeing
moaning sobbing that's far more repellent than his
festering genitals,what i mean is that i want to
obliterate the retard and all his sorry crippled flemish
pleas and complaints, when i say "obliterate" i mean
slit his throat very very slowly and watch him choke
on his blood and watch that self-obsessed injured
look disappear forever; i push the retard off my body
and tell him that i need to use the bathroom, i go
inside his mother's bedroom,she's sitting on a chair
by the window, leafing through an art book, we stare
at a painting of a distorted vicar who's arsefucking a
distorted rentboy, and then look out the window, cos
there are shrieks and thuds coming from the street,
it sounds like a car crash,but it's only a ball game, i'm
a bit disappointed;we down a few shots of this yellow
elixir that will cure us of the skin cancer we don't
have and that tastes of ginger and cheap german
cognac, i'm telling his mother about my sheffielder
angel, about all his ambiguous morals and all his
stuck-up scottish middle class vixens who've never
sucked a retarded flemish cook's cock for money,
and fondled his mother as well, i guess i'm moaning,
it doesn't matter, she doesn't understand english
anyway, not my english at any rate, i wolf down her
pudding and stale biscuits, there's a pocket of piss
attached to her waist and tubes coming out of her
nostrils and right temple, she's wearing a plastic
bracelet like new-borns wear, there's a chip in her
left foot that monitors her alcohol abuse and the
leaps her bowels and heart make, i fondle her saggy
tits for a while and let her finger me, i down another
shot of her elixir and then go back to her retarded
son; the retarded flemish cook lies curled up on the
bed, he's clutching my knickers and mumbling
half-hearted death threats, i straddle him, kiss his
moist cock and ask him if we can go to the park;
we're walking to the park, the retard's clutching my
sleeve and drivelling down my neck; we're eating
french
fries and smoked mackerels on a piss-soaked
bench, i throw my sneakers at a skylark who's
singing a bit too smugly, the retard takes my hand
and presses it against his wet face, i try to crush it
but this repulsive bone structure isn't as frail as i
thought, there's no one in the park, bar a few minging
russian hobos, but they're all trapped in their
deliriums and spite and therefore can't see us, so i
unzip the retard's pants and suck his cock for a
while,i retrieve my sneakers from the
shrubs,straighten my skirt and ask the
retarded flemish cook if we can go to the beach, but
the retard wants to sit on my face instead and tell my
minge how unjustly his social workers
and whores treat his heart and cock respectively.
we still celebrate christmas,
so fuck you
my sheffielder angel is eating mussels on his smug
leather couch, he's invited the illiterate rentboy and
me to his place for christmas, yet
there is no christmas tree and no fake snow,and no
fake goodwill,and no fake generosity on his part,nor
are there any christmas lights,no wee
jesus, not even a wee ass, there's not even
christmas on the labels of his many whisky
bottles; we might as well have stayed in our
junkie-infested bedsit where at least we're allowed
to sing jingle bells without some fucking dour
insensitive sheffielder cunt telling us to shut it in his
posh sheffielder middle class accent, if he thinks
he's gonna spoil our christmas with his
unrelenting dourness he's got another think
coming,cos i'm taking christopher to a seedy
sheffielder karaoke bar,and there'll be lots of
tacky christmas going on in there,it'll be so tacky that
we'll probably be embarrassed about having spent
christmas there when we sober up,but we
have to get out of here, cos i can't stand the sight of
this conceited yuppie cunt who didn't get us a
christmas present,he would not even accept
ours!! and ours is a free blowjob and a stuffed seal
that we made ourselves!!, we'll give it to someone
else then, the blowjob that is, cos i ripped the seal
apart in a fit of desperation, but that sheffielder cunt
wasn't impressed with my
desperation,he said he's seen better,oh aye,that'll be
right, fuck him,we don't need him,all he does is scold
and spurn us,but not in a fatherly way,oh no;i hope
those mussels are poisonous,i hope they're still alive
and that they swim to his bowels and wolf them
down,and if he had a heart i
would hope they'd swim to his wee wretched heart
and wolf it down; i hope he downs a bottle of that
anti-christmas brandy and chokes on the nails that
i've quite maliciously dropped in all his bottles of
anti-christmas brandy,so many bottles, so many
nails,i even had to go to a sheffielder
DIY store, i even took the illiterate rentboy with me,he
was chuckling the whole time,cos the saws and
hammers reminded him of cocks,and afterwards we
drank cider in a posh sheffielder bar and christopher
was still sniggering and
some hard yuppie cunt thought christopher was
laughing at him and he came over to us and tried to
pick a fight, but i told him i'd cut off his balls
and feed them to my boa constrictor if he should lay
one finger on my sweet rentboy who wasn't even
laughing at the hard yuppie cunt,who's not hard at all
then if he's afraid of a skinny minging orphan
girl;sheffield is full of pedantic middle class cunts
who take themselves too seriously and don't care
much for christmas; christopher is sniggering cos
there's a piss-soaked hobo
in the park who looks a bit like jarvis cocker if jarvis
was an obese wino,and he's got his scruffy hands
wrapped around his cock and he's
sleeping like that,and oh isn't that just the most
hilarious sight ever,daft rentboy;we're drinking a
bottle of martini,cos it's vile and sugary,and cos
there are jolly christmas scenes on the label:
sleighs,snow,a kinky santa,the lot,there are even
kids playing in the snow,isn't it a bit weird to have
wee kids on a bottle of martini?,i bet their parents
are incestuous swines,it's not their fault,i feel a bit
sorry for these wee badly drawn kids on this
overpriced bottle of martini,i also feel a bit sorry for
myself cos i'm having to spend christmas on a
piss-soaked bench in a hostile sheffielder park with
an illiterate rentboy who's compulsively
guffawing next to me,guffawing at hard crack-
starved junkies cos "they stagger so funnily"
guffawing at hard glue-sniffing rumanian orphan
boys cos when they call me a bitch it sounds like
"beach",they don't call the rentboy anything cos they
think he's mad;guffawing at the wee blue frozen cock
of the piss-soaked hobo who looks nothing like jarvis
cocker,but admittedly looks quite laughable,if i had a
cock i wouldn't want to freeze to death like
that,maybe we should wake him up before his cock
falls off;we go over
to the hobo and we cautiously pat him on the
back,and when he doesn't move we pat a little
harder,until he falls face down on the cold sheffielder
ground,he falls with his hands still around his wee
blue cock,he's dead, do you reckon we should bury
him?,the rentboy doesn't feel like digging a hole for
some anonymous piss-soaked hobo who was
minging and perverted anyway; so we leave the
frozen hobo and roam the cruel sheffielder
streets,we guffaw at the lack of christmas and
generosity,and at all these ugly whores who have to
sell their wretched genitals on christmas eve,and at
all these spiteful winos who have to shout abuse at
random strangers cos they've no friends left to
shout abuse at; all the christmas we need is right
here on our bottle of brandy, and if we should run out
of christmas brandy we can always spraypaint badly
drawn asses and wee jesuses on all these smug
immaculate sheffielder walls.
those milk bottles aren't neatly
stacked!!
my sheffielder angel is listening to copulating
whales,he's bought this whole batch of copulating
mammals albums in the supermarket where i work
actually,they don't arouse him though,them cds,he
finds them "soothing",would you just listen,you
bloody unimaginative middle class cunt: track
one:wee dolphins are being arsefucked by their
relatives,track two:
they're being harpooned,track three: clubbed, track
four: tangled in nets,choking,struggling,
shrieking,belching etc etc,these tracks sound
like death throes to me,i don't find them soothing, i
find them depressing and arousing, but mostly
arousing,i'm straddling that dour sheffielder
middle class cunt but he's cupping his cock with his
hands and spitting in my face like the sad uptight
yuppie cunt that he is,we used to have so much sex
all the time but now that he's selling so many
spreadsheets all he wants to do in his precious
spare time is watching golf,stuffing his face with
seafood and listening to danish lounge or randy sea
cows,and if he does lick minge
it has to be mancunian and middle class and
smelling of mediterranean herbs,he's such a bloody
hippy,he's reading me his cheesy poem for the
umpteenth time,he's only written one poem and it's
crap,and he compulsively
recites it on buses and in launderettes,and the
poem's about smoking so much spliff you think
you're in the provence and surrounded by friends,
despite being trapped in a bleak northern coastal
town surrounded by minging russian hobos and fat
flemish pervs,and i've smoked spliff,i've even
smoked crack,but the north sea never seemed
mediterranean to me,but that's cos i never wanted
the bitch to be mediterranean to me,or to anyone
else for that matter,i like her grim and bleak and
polluted and gull-infested,so i suggest
we go visit her,despise her,pollute her some
more,and my sheffielder angel thinks that's a great
idea,we're driving to a wee coastal town that has no
name cos it's inhabited by twenty kinky
fishermen,and no government official
ever returned from there,so they stopped sending
them,i've fucked them fishermen, of course i
have,they were lousy fucks,and i told them so;my
sheffielder angel rolls his eyes every time i touch his
crotch,but not in ecstasy,he says: "can't you play
with yourself instead of harassing me,i
nearly hit that welsh sheep!?!",and i can,play with
myself,i'm unzipping my blue jeans and rubbing my
pink knickers,and my pink minge,groaning and
belching like those sea mammals on his cd this
morning,but it didn't arouse him then,and it doesn't
arouse him now,it's bloody depressing to be stark
naked in front of a cold-blooded geezer who looks at
your minge as if it's a picture of his father,i zip up my
pants and put my oasis t-shirt back on,if he recites
that bloody poem one more time i'm gonna bludgeon
him to death
with this brick that christopher gave meyesterday
and that i've put in my left shoe, why did he give me a
brick?,i wondered about that as well, maybe
it's his crippled roundabout rentboy way of asking
me to bludgeon him to death, but i won't,cos i love the
illiterate rentboy and i need him to catch
butterflies for me and chase away retarded flemish
cooks and comb my hair when i hate myself too
much to comb it myself;we're sitting on the wet
sand,he's finally letting me suck his wee black
cock,he scolds me for grabbing it too ferociously,he
scolds me for biting his wee black
balls,he scolds me for fingering myself whilst
sucking his cock,he scolds me for writing fucked-up
stories in the sand whilst tenderly licking his
calves,he scolds me for stroking a stray dog whilst
spanking his flabby middle
class buttocks,and then the scolding stops and his
spunk soils the sand and my blue jeans,he rolls his
eyes in ecstasy and falls asleep,i straddle him and
try to get a cum out of his sleeping body,i hump his
left thigh until
my cunt bleeds and the tide is closing in on us,but i'm
not any closer to my cum,that's ok,i'll just punch
myself in the face instead,i punch myself
in the nose until my nose bleeds and the north sea
wakes up that dour sheffielder middle class twat,he
throws up water and mussels,cos that's
what he had for dinner;we put on our wet clothes and
get back in the car,my sheffielder angel's driving me
to the seedy arcade that reeks of cold
french fries and cheap aftershave,cos that's where i
want to spend the night,and
maybe rub myself against a minging russian hobo
and use his lice-infested groin as a pillow;i get out of
the car and spit at that sheffielder cunt's
posh vehicle until it's out of spitting range;i enter the
seedy arcade,rub myself against a minging russian
hobo who's got a ladybird tattooed on
his left testicle,and use his lice-infested groin as a
pillow.
have i done enough penance?
the merry-go-round is still smouldering, christopher
and i tried to burn it down last night,but those bloody
fibre mammals just wouldn't catch fire,so we had to
content ourselves with melting away their ears and
eyes,it took me five lighters and ten hours to melt
away the ear of this fibre rabbit that's
dressed like a school boy and smiles like a perverted
priest,i didn't think i'd feel this guilty about it,i didn't
think there'd be wee girls
sobbing by the smouldering merry-go-round,i didn't
think it'd be in the local paper,i didn't think this
wretched coastal town would give a fuck;i enter the
fish shop opposite the smouldering
merry-go-round,the owner is filleting slabs of
salmon,i sit myself on his blood-soaked work table
and caress the perfectly pink slices,there are many
posters of north sea fish on the
walls,squeezed in between a ghastly bass and an old
gruff-looking trout is a picture of a
sultry topless flemish girl,the colour of her nipples is
a completely different pink from these slices,but just
as beautiful,i wish i knew her,i'd
buy her smiths albums and fondle those gorgeous
tits for hours on end,mind,the picture's slightly
crumpled and faded,she could be forty
by now,even fifty,i still want to know her and buy her
smiths albums and lick her cunt for hours on end,yet
another pink,i'm sure it's gorgeous;the
fish shop owner is gutting cods in the sink,i ask him
if i can gut one too,he gives me a wee codling and a
long thin knife,i cut its wee sparkling
belly,its guts splash on the floor,i cut out its eyes and
put them in my cigar-box,the codling slips out of my
hands and falls in the trout reservoir,the trouts all
swim as far away as possible from the dead codling
and throw accusatory glares at me,meanwhile the
fish shop owner is
taping the claws of south-american lobsters and
whistling a beatles song, i fish the codling out of the
trout reservoir,i try to stroke the trout to comfort
them, but they gracefully dodge my hands and i give
up,i dry the codling
with a fluffy light blue towel,i didn't think i'd feel this
guilty about having gutted a codling,as a penance i
shall now suck the fish shop owner's cock, i go over
to the fish shop owner who's now chopping up a
gigantic silvery haddock, i slip under his grey
blood-soaked apron,unzip his pants and pull out his
ghastly boner,it has none of the sparkle and poetry of
that dead
haddock up there,i suck it ferociously nevertheless,i
swallow his spawn and
kiss his stark white thighs, his warm blood-soaked
apron is making me
drowsy,i clutch his right calf and close my eyes,i'm
thinking: i tried to burn down a merry-go-round and i
gutted a codling,i'm a criminal,i need to do more
penance;i'm also thinking: this will make a great story
tomorrow;as a penance i shall now kiss the fish shop
owner's flabby stark white buttocks,but then the fish
shop owner hitches up his apron and asks if i fancy
gutting another codling?,i run out of the fish shop and
watch the smouldering merry-go-round,i try to
comfort the wee sobbing girls but they all run away
and hide inside their fathers' coats;i take the bus to
wee andy's street,no one wants to sit next to me,they
must know then that it was me who tried to burn
down the merry-go-round,word gets around in a
wretched coastal town,gets around all too
quickly,people are throwing accusatory
glares at me,much more accusatory than the glares
those silly trouts threw at me,when i get off the bus
all the old flemish bitches hiss at me and call me
names i don't understand,but i know that they're not
flattering;i knock on wee andy's window,when he
opens the door i burst out in tears,after i've
thoroughly washed my hands wee andy strokes my
hair and comforts me,i tell
him that i've gutted a gorgeous codling,i don't tell him
about the merry-go-round,i show him the codling's
eyes in my cigar-box,i tell him
that i've sucked the fish shop owner's cock as a
penance of sorts,but i still feel guilty,and i ask wee
andy to think up another penance,wee andy
says that i don't need to do penance,it was only a
codling and i didn't even kill it,and then he adds: but
the malicious cunt who tried to burn down the
merry-go-round he has a whole lot of penance to do.
most incestuous swines are
we're fucking under a pock-marked moon,if my
hands weren't tied,i could reach out and touch it,if i
wasn't gagged,i could shout in awe and tell him
that this is the exact same moon christopher and i
watched two weeks ago,we were shattered and
frozen when it disappeared behind the church and
was replaced by a bleak churlish morning sun;the
cunt who's fucking me used to
be my maths teacher,we fucked in his musty
classroom during the breaks,this was ideal for
me,cos i hated the other kids,they were always much
bigger and richer,i hated the maths teacher as
well,but at least he wouldn't hit me or
rape me behind the bike shed;i bumped into him in
the shopping centre,he scoffed at my dirty clothes
and said that i've put on weight and that
there's a yellow sheen on my face and teeth,and that
i'm basically minging and too old,but he bought me a
stella nonetheless,we drank it by the
artificial goldfish-infested pond,gigantic goldfish that
i've watched grown and fed dog biscuits and
sometimes even talked to,though they couldn't
possibly have heard me with all that water between
us,which is just as well,cos i just moaned an awful
lot about that sheffielder middle class cunt who
adopted me on christmas day but spurned me on
boxing day for the
bee stung lips and tanned tits of a gorgeous
mancunian vixen who has stars tattooed all over her
minge and carribean sunsets painted on her
fingernails,i kissed those sunsets but i never got to
the stars,and sometimes i even sobbed in their wee
artificial pond,but those cold-blooded
goldfish never leaped out of the water to comfort
me;after another stella that we drank in the glass
elevator he bought me new clothes,that's why
i look like a whore,he also took me to a
hairdresser's,the flemish bitch smelled nice but cut it
too short,she massaged my scalp whilst chatting up
my ex-maths teacher,i dozed off and dreamt about
christopher,he wasn't a whore in my dream;and then
we took the bus to thispark,when the sun finally
disappeared behind the abattoir he tied my hands
together with the rope that he still keeps in his
briefcase,i didn't struggle cos i wasn't really
scared,but now i wish i had cos i'm bored and i want
to throw rocks at
smug swans instead,or read my new russian novel
on a deserted platform,wee andy gave me that
russian novel,he said that it will make me want to
change my ways;if i wasn't gagged i could tell my
ex-maths teacher that there's
someone approaching us,i try to tell him by pointing
my groin at the approaching stranger,but he thinks
that i want him inside me again,it's
not a stranger,it's christopher,he's looking
bemused,my ex-maths teacher crumples inside me
and is glaring at the illiterate rentboy,he unties and
ungags me and walks away,we scoff at the
retreating perv and admire the
pock-marked moon,the rentboy says that his father
was an astronaut but that he got lost in space,he
was an incestuous astronaut though,so good
riddance we say;we're combing the piss-soaked
alleys,christopher's pockets are
bulging with pebbles and bits of leaflets and laces
and used condoms,anything that isn't sharp or rusty
he stuffs into his pockets,i find a decapitated stuffed
rabbit,it's stuffed with soft white wads,i use the
headless rabbit as a glove,when we're tired of
combing the piss-soaked alleys and seedy arcades
we sit ourselves against the spiky gates of the
nuthouse,the pockets of christopher's blue jeans
burst when he sits himself,i give him the headless
rabbit and suggest we liberate a few
nutters,but christopher wants to watch the sun come
up on a deserted platform instead;my russian novel
is still lying inside the disused
telephone booth in the station,we sit ourselves on a
deserted platform and i read christopher the first
paragraphs of the novel,we laugh at so much
indulgence and i throw the novel in front of a
high-speed train that's heading for paris,the next
passenger-train stops at our platform and
five drowsy yuppie cunts get off,we laugh at so much
drowsiness and scrounge a tenner off a miserable
skinny middle class twat,we follow him around for a
while until he turns around and shouts some vile
flemish abuse at us;we buy
a bottle of cheap french rum and wait on the rim of
the sand-box for some perv to chat us up,wee andy
enters the park,i try to ignore him,but
it's hard cos he's sweet and asking many
questions,he's asking me if the russian
novel appeals to me,i tell him that it appeals to me
but that i'm not gonna change my ways cos that'd be
unfair towards christopher;we down the
cheap french rum in silence,the rentboy sniggers
every time the wind rustles the plastic bags that are
littered all over the sand-box,and he sniggers
every time some belligerent magpie bullies a
sparrow;wee andy gets bored of us soon enough,he
gets up and walks away,we scoff at the retreating
middle class twat and snigger cos his new shoes
squeak like angry squirrels.
david bowie doesn't like
tropical fish
he's got tropical fish that look like miniature
dolphins,and lots of other tropical fish that i can't
see,cos they're hiding behind rocks and in the
sand,he says that when tropical fish are randy they
get really aggressive and throw rocks at their own
reflection until the aquarium falls apart
and then they choke to death on the floor,but they
hump the couch first;maybe they're suicidal rather
than randy?,but the perv says that it boils
down to the same: every week he has to buy a new
aquarium and new fish;i was stacking mustard jars
at the supermarket,that's how i met him,he said he
liked the mustard stains on my apron,and he asked if
he could smear my cunt
with mustard and let his english setter lick it off after
my shift,and i said yes,even though i thought it was a
little vulgar of him to ask me such
a thing,and i don't think english setters like
mustard,and if i hadn't been so randy i'd have said
no;i'm no longer randy,his fish are staring at
my tits,they don't look randy either,when the perv
goes to the kitchen to fetch a bottle of wine i put my
head in the aquarium and it's nice to feel
all those wee tropical fish brush my cheeks,the
water tastes of watered down whisky and of the
swimming pool where the illiterate rentboy and i
sometimes play dead and get chatted up by sleazy
lifeguards,how funny that most
lifeguards should be merciless rapists after their
shifts;the perv grabs my wet hair, pushes me onto
the couch and arsefucks me,when he cums i throw
up,mostly water from his wretched aquarium that's
filled with suicidal
fish,and if they're so fucking tropical then why are
they so ghastly coloured?,and if they're so fucking
randy then why didn't they hump my
face?,stuff your fish,i'm out of here,i get dressed and
leave his apartment,it's raining outside,which is just
as well,i go back to the supermarket and put my
smudged apron back on and resume stacking
mustard jars,but my ladder is wet and slippery,and
so are the jars,i break 356 jars
and cut my hands when i try to clean them up,the
mustard is stinging my bleeding palms,the
treacherous union geezers don't sympathise with me
at all,they say that a good employee continues
stacking mustard jars no matter how many
glass-splinters and demanding customers try to
undermine her,fuck that,i want to lick my wounds in
some perv-infested park;i'm picking
glass-splinters out of my palms in a perv-infested
park,there's a perv sitting next to me,he says i can
use his cum to disinfect my wounds,but
i think it'll only make them fester,no offence;i'm
telling the perv about the self-destructive tropical fish
and the randy lifeguards and the sanctimonious
union geezers,and i didn't know until today that
people who have tropical fish and two joy division
albums could be that kinky and
abusive,and i didn't know until last week that
lifeguards could be so malicious and spiteful,the perv
tells me to shut my gob and give him
head under the oak tree where wee andy sometimes
reads me his cripple poems
about russian prostitutes and flemish
taxidermists,though i'm pretty sure
that he doesn't know a single russian prostitute and
he only knows two taxidermists,and they're not
flemish;i give the perv head under the oak
tree where i was once raped by a bald french nutter
with skin cancer,i felt so miserable the next day i hid
myself from all those accusatory glances in a
catholic church,but there were more accusatory
glances there,and the dour priest said that it's
impossible for a slapper to get raped,and he raped
me once more;there's a nasty rash on his cock,his
cum tastes of too many other cums,and i throw up on
his repulsive hairy belly,i run out of the park and into
the library where i'm hoping to find wee andy,but
instead i bump into a perverted librarian,he wants to
fuck me,but not between all these dodgy french
crime novels,he drags me inside a murky pantry
that's stuffed with worm-infested books,he doesn't
mind that my skirt's puke-stained,he doesn't
mind that my palms are bleeding either,so i give him
head between all these decaying books,i suck his
cock for hours on end,my palms stop
bleeding,the librarian cums on my eyeballs,he
shrugs,zips up his pants and leaves;wee andy is
reading a smug middle class paper in the reading
room,he doesn't seem to notice that i'm suffering
and that there's spunk caked around my eyes,it's
nice all the same to sit next to him and watch him
read an article on albanian prostitutes.
brief bio: my full name's
Delphine Lecompte,i'm 23 (born 22nd
january 1981),i was born in london,i lived there for a
few years with my grandparents,was sent to france
to live with my father (to lille,my
father's french) when i was six,i ran away to belgium
to live with a moody flemish
singer/songwriter when i was thirteen,i stack milk
bottles for a living,before them milk bottles i was a
hooker.
NUMBER OF CONJECTURES ON
WHERE WE ARE by Duane Locke
Started out as if there were a fixed destination
And a fixed star to guide navigation,
The map supplied, freely given, actually was
A map of another location,
Some place where I have never been, never seen.
There were no witness to the terrain actual existence,
But there was much coercion to use this map as a guide
Although the names on the streets did not correspond
To the street I was on, and the streets that I had passed.
I ask a bystander, a believer, he only said, “Yes.
Have faith.” The answers he gave to my questions
Did not result from the questions I asked.
I repeated my questions, word for word, hoping
To be understood. He repeated his answers word for word.
I tried for the third time, and the same thing happened
For the third time. He was very friendly, not in the least,
annoyed.
This man who wore a bowler hat,
A black suit, looked like a man
In a painting by Magritte seemed
To me to be one of the naïve and innocence,
For he thought we had communicated
With clarity and comprehension.
He was completely unaware
Of the postmodern truism:
That one engaged in discourse
Can never know what the other means.
People often say something different
From what they appear to be saying.
It is all due to the autonomy of the signifier,
And the signified is always provisional.
This naïve and innocent man in a bowler hat
Did not know
There is no natural link between
Signifier and signified.
I was walking down a street where everyone waved,
The bottom part
Of their face, the area beneath the lip, suggested
What is designated in popular parlance as “a smile.”
Yet, I knew no one,
Had never seen any of these people before this stroll.
The passers-by waved and disappeared.
I wanted to again stop someone and ask, “Where am I?,”
But knew there could be no real communication
Between two people.
Behind a low cement fence was a mausoleum.
The building of marble once had a prominent place
In a cemetery, but the cemetery
Had been relocated and only the mausoleum remained
From what had been a magnificent cemetery.
Its window were stained glass, outlined by dark metal
Were the white fleece of prancing, joyous lambs.
It was a scene whose perception brought
A feeling of order and peace.
Those who passed the mausoleum never looked
At the depictions on stained glass,
For the concepts in their minds blinded them
To the leaps of lambs.
The passers-by wondered if the dead
Were still in the mausoleum.
Were there skulls and bones on the shelves.
“ONCE PAST, WE CANNOT BRING
BACK THE QUALITY OF THE
FEELING AS IT WAS,”-C. S. PEIRCE.
In some book with pictures, I saw an etching
Of Descartes
And Descartes had one foot, shod
With a seventeenth-century sandal,
A black geometrically harmonious buckle,
On the open page
Of a very large book, the print indecipherable.
As I looked at this man who enjoyed staying
In bed until noon and thinking,
I wondered where was his other foot.
Was it shod, bare, or covered with a
Seventeenth-century stocking. Could it possible
That it was amputated.
Could Descartes have had some sort of accident
That was kept secret.
Some inner compulsion, something incomprehensible
To me, perhaps something mystical, occult, or absurd
Determined at this temporal moment that I make a list.
Now if my list is to be au courant, it must
Not be necessarily knowable, definitely not pre-determined,
No totalizing vision, but fragmentary. There
Should be a hint that representation is being questioned..
I made a list of what I need and then went to a Wal Mart:
A pillow case of a faint color with an indefinable final goal,
An oil lamp not mediated by prior knowledge,
A cousin whose end cannot be known,
A copper pot with an infinite number of new problems,
A garlic clove with a nostalgia for certainties,
A strand of Slavic Teutonic blonde hair with a local narrative.
Returning from Wal Mart, I resumed my interrupted thinking--
Where is the bare foot?
All of a sudden, a miraculous illumination, I saw this bare foot
As my bare foot.
It was my bare foot that was the object (consider this archaic
word
And empty concept sous rature) that I was trying to find.
Was my bare foot in Italy?
Was my bare foot in Rome?
Was my bare foot at Santa Maria della Victoria?
Was my bare standing before
Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s The Estasy of Saint Teresa?
The harmony of my mood vanished, I became agitated,
Fearful. I started to mumble. I wished I was hidden
In an attic. I looked for windows. I felt stunned.
I was terrified.
I was tossed up and down in the whirlpools
Of the folds of Saint Teresa’s gown.
I wanted to wave goodbye to Saint Teresa,
But I had no hands. I was only a bare foot.
I remembered Hamlet, so my bare foot yelled,
“Give me some light.”
What caused my panic was that I was being watched,
Being watched by a gallery of Bernini’s patrons
Sculptured on the wall. This rich connoisseurs
Could see the ugly toenail on my big toe.
I rushed to open the blinds of my room,
But the blinds were already open.
From the revelation I knew
That the way I could overcome
The hegemony
And the hierarchy
That harassed
My bare foot
Was to make
Another list.
So I started
Another list.
ALL DISCOURSE IS
SELF-REFERENTIAL
Among the inquisitors, their tonsures,
Their twitching white beards,
Wrinkled faces,
Lips of a tightly pressed together pale
Coral,
Their cell phones, their laptops
Dark ultramarine decorated with
Cerulean rococo stems and cerulean rococo leaves,
We sensed our position in this crowd,
Anticipated harm.
We were cognizant
There was no
Objective standard of judgment,
No absolute way of measuring and evaluating.
We knew
Their responses to us was preformed
By the community to which they belonged.
These inquisitions were puppets
Echoing a puppet master that not one
Of the inquisitions knew or even had
Any intimate contact.
Their judgment was decided before they
Examined us.
Their examination was slipshod, obtuse.
We were even called by the wrong names.
The crowd went into the other room
Where there were over-stuffed, leather-covered chairs,
And brandy was being served.
We did not know how long it would be
Before a verdict was brought in.
We knew we were transgressive
And had traduced tradition,
We had eschewed the concept
Of unified selves and universalistic vocabularies.
We expected the worst.
Also, neither one of us owned an automobile.
We never brought gas,
We were certain to be declared guilty.
She did not even own a television set,
Never listened
To new reports that were spreading fear
Over the nation.
She was certain to be extremely tortured.
We heard that drawing and quartering
Were being reconstituted.
Also, we knew burning at the stake
Was being revived.
Many who were declared “terrorists”
By the inquisitors
Had already been burned at the stake.
Their ashes were on sale.
We both were in extreme terror.
We suffered immensely.
I could see her beautiful
Slavic-Teutonic blonde body
Being drawn and quartered,
Or those lovely breasts
Sizzling at the stake.
I wanted to recant,
I wanted to scream
That I did not believe
Any thing Lacan,
Derrida, or Kristeva said.
She had already fainted from fear.
I had never suffered so much
In my entire life.
I wanted to recant,
Tell someone, tell anybody
That I did not eschew
Totalizing concepts
And grand narratives.
I believed in closure,
Not the open-ended.
I wanted everyone to know
That I had never
Written a word,
Crossed it out, and
Then printed the word
And its deletion,
Although I knew I had.
Finally, the inquisitors
Staggered out of the summit meeting.
All were quasi-drunk.
I asked one what was the decision.
He said “Guilty.”
I asked him, what was to
Be the punishment, and when.
He said, “Burning at the stake.
The punishment has already
Taken place. You can buy
A souvenir of ashes down
In the lobby.”
He asked me my name.
I told him. He said,
“I’ll never heard of you,”
And staggered away.
After a precise application and manipulation
Of liquid chemicals
In a bottle embossed in uplifted glass
With designation
Of the ounces in the segmented section,
She brushed
Her occidental eyes to be oriental.
She had wrapped a gray transparent, fireproof
Paper over the pink-colored light bulbs screwed
Into the lamp so her skin would have
An oriental tonality as she scruntized her
Transformed features in a small hand mirror
That framed a silver circle whose backside
Was a mixture of the baroque and rococo,
Fat cherubs tossing what looked like lassoes
Of elegant, exquisite, simulated leaves.
Surrounding her were pots of midget bamboo.
Now she had transformed her quotidian identity,
Overcome the belief in the “I,” discarded
The lie of there being a fixed human nature,
She was ready to write poetry.
A bark from a burning bush. A fog, but no
Dog.
A frog, a jogger, but no dog. Only, a bark.
The fountain spray due
To a crack in the foundation, the spray
Came from the sewer,
Not from nipples, the nipples of Venus.
A bark, no dog,
A spray of water, but no Venus.
I expected a Taoist to step through bamboo,
Touch the bark,
Touch the spray,
Touch me.
A dog, a white dog with black arabesques
As spots
Spaced over his white body
As if painted by Seurat,
Would appear and bark.
Venus in the flesh,
Venus, naked,
Would appear,
There would be sea foam on her blonde, braided hair,
Seaweed between her delicate toes.
I would stand upright, resembling an oriental, naked Venus.
But this Taoist never came,
The Taoist never showed up.
Biographical Note:
Duane Locke, Doctor of Philosophy, English Renaissance
literature, Professor Emeritus of the Humanities was Poet in
Residence at the University of Tampa for over 20 years.
Has had over 5,000 poems published. As of December, 2004
5,382 poems published.
Over 2,000 were published in print magazines, such as
American Poetry Review, Nation, and Bitter Oleander. In
September 1999, he became a cyber poet, added over 3,000
poems published in E zines.
Is the author of 14 print books of poetry, and four E books, the
latest of which is OBSERVATIONS published by Poetic
Inhalations.
He is also a painter, photographer, and model.
His old biographical notes, published many times, are now
obsolete. The notes stated that he lived in an old decaying
house in the sunny Tampa slums, populated largely by drug
dealers and the homeless.
The house was condemned by the city of Tampa inspectors,
and after his living at this location for fifty years, he was forced
to leave within six days. The forced move was due to the fall of
the bungalow in his large back yard.
The bungalow contained a priceless literary scholarly library
which is now under debris. An army of inspectors descended
and decided he could no longer live in his home, so Duane
Locke left Tampa to relocate in Lakeland, Florida. He lives by a
lake with swans and many wild birds. The fall was a “Fortunate
Fall,” for he now lives in a more desirable and pleasant location
at Lake Morton Plaza. The only disadvantage is that he can find
no trash to photograph, no broken beer bottles on sidewalk, no
litter as it was in Tampa
by Shane Allison
I was so fat in this picture
The flip flops hurt between my toes
I hated that yellow shirt.
I loved those shorts at the time.
Now I hate those shorts.
I’ve lost weight since then.
It was so hot that day.
I don’t know what kind of flowers those were.
Look how big my thighs are.
See how flat my feet are?
Today I would never wear open-toe sandals
My sister was so young then
We were so close.
I was protective of her.
I’m holding film in my hand.
There weren’t any pockets on those shorts.
The buttons on the shirt were rubber.
My hair was growing back.
I can’t believe how big I was.
I couldn’t wear cool clothes like other teenagers.
I would have done anything for penny loafers.
Acid-wash jeans from the Big and Tall store.
Look at my arms, just look at them.
I hated my arms.
I must have been fifteen, then.
Must have been the early nineties.
Our clothes don’t look dated.
This was before a perm took out my sister’s hair.
It was before the summer vacations ended
And all the trouble began.
I Saw Your Boyfriend Staring at Me
I saw your boyfriend staring at me
from across the room
At the poetry reading
When you kissed him on the cheek.
He was watching me from across the room
Of candlelit tables
As you kissed him on the cheek
over dimly-lit lights
of candle-lit tables.
He left you cold and coverless
over dimly-lit lights
in the king sized bed
where you were left cold and coverless
as he snuck, four in the morning
out of your Westside apartment
past the cat and wicker furniture
at four in the morning
Digging through the pockets of his jeans for the keys
Thrown over wicker furniture.
He’s not who you think
digging through the pockets of his jeans for keys.
Your man thinks of me.
He’s not who you think
as you kiss him on the cheek.
he looks at me
during the poetry reading
as he kisses you on the cheek.
We made plans to meet later at my place
After the reading,
While you went to check your make-up.
We’re going to have dinner at my place.
He’s going to leave you for sure.
This is Where Frank O' Hara Lives
Walk past Metro Drugs where
The items are drastically reduced.
The place of big savings, special offers.
Break past the well-dressed old ladies,
A woman with her baby wrapped in her arms.
Veer off the sidewalk, past a parking meter to avoid
Running into a herd of hot guys.
One of them is wearing the shoes I want.
Move past a woman digging for change to
Save her Dodge Shadow from getting towed.
So excited. Going as fast as my Reeboks will take me.
Almost stepped in dog shit.
Almost kicked over a coffee cup
of change belonging to some homeless guy.
Walk past Gotham Bar & Grill,
The bored employee in the
Box office of Cinema Village.
A few more steps. I'm getting warmer.
Can smell the ground beef from Big Enchilada.
There goes 12th Street Books.
Better slow down, don't want to miss it.
There's the tiger-print lined journal I've been
looking for.
Today's special is Mixed Bean Soup
And Fresh Fried Squid.
Frank's place should be right around this corner.
Here it is.
He's sandwiched between a restaurant that serves
The best Japanese noodles;
A place that sells Cuisinart kitchen appliances.
That must be the window he sits in composing verse.
He's got a great view of a Fed-Ex truck.
Leaning against the Civic E-X, its tinted windows,
I'm dying to meet him.
But he's probably busy
Doing laundry or watching his favorite soap.
I wish he could come out and play.
We could sit in Union Square and watch all the cute
guys walk by while we
Eat hot knish and drink cold sodas.
They’re Coming To Get You
There’s no hiding behind walls
No crawling on your hands and knees
Ducking flashlights peering through
The sliding glass door.
You can’t keep sheriffs behind padlocked fences
with guns loaded, cocked and pointed to your head.
They twirl handcuffs around their fingers like
hula-hoops,
waving night sticks in Saturday night fever.
It’s only a matter of time.
That cop said, I’m gonna get ‘em one way
Or the other, if I have to hunt him down.
You’ll be in an 8x10 cell by the end of this week
Eating jail-issued dinners,
wearing those ugly, plastic sandals,
Become a seven numbered prison bitch
for the courts. I’d rather die than go back to jail,
He says crying in the living room.
Ma will wait by the phone for your collect calls.
What will be your promise this time?
Lord how I’m gonna pay these bills, Mama asks
as she paces the kitchen floor,
snot trickling out of her nose,
her eyes red and puffy.
I can’t take this; I’m going back to New York.
Hiding is futile.
Car chases will never do.
They got four warrants and U.S. Marshals
Out on u. Sent to the door.
Tell ‘em I ain’t home.
Have the balls to answer their calls.
I’m done lyin’, through denyin’.
They’re gonna bust up this family
with their razorblade suspicions.
Wake up the whole neighborhood
with sirens of emergency.
They gonna put you under the jail this time.
I just know it.
Bio: Shane Allison has had poems published in
numerous e-zines and hardcopy magazines. His chapbook
"BlackFag" is out from Future Tense Books. He lives in Florida.
© 2004, Thinley Tharchen
His mind, like
A gentle mist
Hangs softly
As flames consume
The flesh upon the pyre.
His mind, like
Nowness, which is
The very pulse of Time,
The very expanse of Space,
Knows no age,
Knows no bounds
And knows no Death.
"Hello ,my name is Thinley and currently am a
mangement executive working in the power sector.
I greatly admire the poetic styles of T S Eliot and W
B Yeats. Perhaps the classical and the romantic
sensibilty can achieve a perfect synthesis. Well like
all foolish dreamers i aspire to write such poetry
some day. But as of now the
www.writingforum.com showcases my limited
collection.
appears courtesy of Yul Tolbert.
All rights reserved.
