Sunday, May 13, 2007

The Drowning of Adolf Bliss (excerpt)


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The Drowning of Adolf Bliss
I



The drowning started long ago. Perhaps not a specific number of days or months, not even years, but lifetimes. Lives which would come and go through his: some as tangible as the concept of air while others as non-inhalating as the distance betwixt stars. These lives which enhanced or detracted from his were strange indeed. Some lifted his head from the waterline, some even listed him buoyant, while most often he himself was the anchor to which he had fastened his faith, and of which was the weight dragging him under. The passion that was visceral was ever-present for him to stay above the waters. To tread water, if the reader will visualize. His heart knew how to swim, even how to leave the water entirely for dry secure safe sacred ground. It was his mind, or more to be certain, his thoughts that renewed oft with a vengeance his ability to coordinate the function of his arms and legs with dire consequence. Picture sub 60-degree water; for about 15 minutes a man can tread respectably, thereafter it is all downhill. One looses all ability to work the limbs cohesively, most recognition of swimming is certainly lost.

This is roughly the point we find Mr. Bliss. Almost a rag-doll caught in the surf. Tossed pell-mell, but not quite a lost soul: a quite discombobulated and otherwise incapable of motion, but not a lost. That is too strong a word to describe this plight, although maybe an easier word to use. For all intents-and-purposes he does appear to be lost, adrift, an insufferable atoll of humankind. One with no trees, no blossoms, no shelter from sunlight. A shattered visage of an island. Land where birds would not fly to, would not land on, wouldn’t even shit upon.

He awoke to the song of strange birds.

These are the days that die in men’s souls.

He sits and hears nothing. Ponders but no whim to steer him. Conceives the day’s hours and listless the morning grieves. He hikes up his sleeves. The blanket of hope, a piece for the - nancy…drew - out the ace of spades.

If only he’d delved deeper, you know dug to the heart of the beast. Then the feast for most ways would at least agree just to disagree. He’s lost in the hemline. Is it hi? Is it yours? Is it undressing the women that men-pigs call whores?
He’s befuddled and frayed he thinks the last sex he had was paid. But no it was not, his sheer bashfulness is larger than g-spot. Good ol’ X marks it. Or 3 if you call the strikes. Do you remember triple-wheeled bikes? His ears are ringing. The eunuchs are singing, "We three kings from orient are, tried to covet your ways and your car. The flash and pain a lonesome refrain. Self in blunder fell in fright."

His sheets are not clean. Never are they changed. He lives in a world.

Without much preparation the hero stumbles from the cliff’s highest point to the lowest ravine before the mountain. He had brought no repelling equipment to even consider a descent. So from the summit of joy that so infrequently lit his surroundings he hastily crashed headlong, down into despair. This was normal however? This is what life is?
The incessant climbing and the forever falling. If only we had wings the eternal ascent/descent would be an easy one. For at a whim’s blink of the eye and a metaphysical flap of the wings, the eagle that we would be could turn even circles upside-down. Thus began another lonely day of pondering motion, considering circumstances, thinking of from how high he has fallen.

Sunken eyes and shallow orbs he sees this world with. Fixing his gaze on the apex of where soul, mind, body and cosmos converge. But he sees nothing. He thinks that everything is equal. That everything is choice. To live. To die. All seems unmistakably the same.

Cheerful the heart feels when a lady would lower herself beneath herself and open herself up for his open but limited love. For beauty is something he does enjoy. But it is the inner beauty that he craves. The mis-mangled dis-jangled communication that comes from different languages or from even just the same. He enjoys the hunt to the core and the striving for more, at the ever-fevered pitch. Just yesterday he had wondered full-stride into such an event. He had made passionate love with a girl and worshipped at the feet of her body.
Not the prettiest girl in the world but one of the eternal souls of the inner beauty. They had met at the gates of animism and coalesced into the heart of the face of religion less god. This might read as too strong or too exceptional, but this, upon his reflection, was but a time in the many places of such a ceremony. So this day alone and heart gray he remembers the cost for the search for love he has had to pay.

He thinks about people whom he has loved and almost finds that it has been too many. But can that be? When one opens oneself up fully, to the stark light of revealed truth and embraces the self inside the other, can this ever happen enough? It is probably vanity to think in one night or a few or even months on end this can happen. But isn’t this what we humans seek? Isn’t this what we mistakenly kill over? Isn’t this what from human conceived time we have given birth for, begot war for, sated our tongues and traveled the far-flung oceans for? Mr. Bliss believes that it is and has been and will be. He may have no god but the energy found in everyone else. It may be lost to him.




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Friday, March 09, 2007

Robber Barren


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Tread walking convictions
Tired
We make a pit-stop
On our lazy street
You want in your hands
Redemption
We the people of earth
Beat
Palpably senseless
Senses
Fait accompli
Tied to our own anguish
In resignation
We look so snide and ugly

Look how want
Blankets us for free
A smarmy warmth
I remember your gifts
The ones you felt
You had to give to me
In our land
Well
The haves and have-nots
Gordian thoughts

A breakdown of our motivations
Lead us through this storm
When too awestruck to face
My eyes set the pace
Unto inner beauty
The only one way forward
Every step every sway

Comfort is an opiate
We’ve been chasing that dragon
Far too long
(One human
like the next human
when will we do anything
never do carri-on
like before)

We put in the water
Our piety lines drawn
In the lake of life
From whence our hands cup
But there are no static lines
In the water
And there are no divisions as thus
We are connected humans
Us




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Demand of Thyself


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Demand of thyself
Vastly more than your fill
Sisyphean toils of will
Belief in yourself
Is at your command

Give of thyself
Don't expect anyone to care
About what you do
Do you dare to
Leave yourself behind



This video was worked on for The Assembly project for Indyish.com. Different artists each had a week to do their part of the video. Marielle Quesney made the video and euophoreador did the sound and the music. The song is about how we have to believe in ourselves because we can't always depend on others to care.



This video is of euphoreador singing his vocal part for a new song from his March 2007 release called 'lack'. The song is called 'Demand of Thyself' and was written for The Assembly project that was created by indyish. The video is pretty dark but one can glean from it that the video and the song will be worth watching and hearing in better quality. The Assembly project had different artists create the different elements that combined to make the finished video. Marielle Quesney made the movie while Josh Hinck edited in the sound fx and wrote the music.




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Monday, March 05, 2007

Approach


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Ballerina without a ball
Concertina right here down hall
So come on give some
And bring your graces
Is it just superficial, life’s embraces
Yeah, hell, I’m off to the races

Get together now
So come on and see how we go
A little bit faster
A little bit slow
With a hook in your back
And the shit on the shelf
With a shit liar that we call self

And we touted ourselves
As the thing that won’t be missed
From the mind to the heart
With the wit of sophist

So come on and let’s toast
Our living oblations
And obliquely we stand
In sacrificial ovations
Lacerations on the pillows then
A ramshackleness a perfect zen
My chaos privy is a third of my mind
I’ll do you from front
And turn you then behind
For some longevity




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Long Retreival


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I wonder how to stand
When ailing bone it pulls
Our feats are in the sand
And we have lost all of our demand
It’s been bed-panned
The human soul
A scared little foal
To triumph it runs
We gutless turds
Six billion guns

When the time was wrong
And I could not even
See that I could choose
Not that I’ve begun
Well it is into
The lengths I’ve spanned
Where in time
Is when I lost demand

On my soul
On my spirit
Yeah get rid of it
Rid of it

Always more
Always more than I could handle
I was lost ricochet ball
Like an atom unto
A matterful view

If you’ve ever wondered why
The layers of our skin
Delving deep beside
Delving far within
Within

We are much more than we presume

Well I choose the way I am
Just like a bill-twenty whore
And the line’s out the door
But her eyes were so much more
I downplay the dollar
A tail and a holler
And I was crawling taller and away
Was the best thought I had all day
Well the best for the pay

We were so much more than we could ever presume

Shows my blood
Your blood
The one read through vein
Like a page that total to heart does pane
Like window
On world
Unfurled
A bashful little girl
Bashful
Natural
Down low




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All Disguise Fell


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We were so young and all disguise
Fell beneath another’s eyes
We were bestowed with thoughts that showed
Lack lust from a certain tongue
We were so young

In the wind I’d rather be motionless
Why rescind I’d rather be passionate with a kiss

How does it matter
For anything
The waves
The rhyes
The rows
The size of those
The depth
The wheat
The thoughts that sleet
Would drive into me

And I never knew
I never knew woe

Ha ha
‘cause in the wind I’d rather be motionless
Why rescind I’d rather be passionate with a kiss

And what I said to you
Was a baffled
Jangled
Raffle
Well here you go
for want to know
Yeah here you go
Here you go
For want of what
Wanting to know
Here you go
For want of what
Wanting
Here you wanted to go




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Wrap Your Tender Legs Around Me


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Ravenous lady
Rapturously
Wrap your tender legs around me
I’ll bring the leather
You bring the lace
Now bring your beckoned
Neck to my face
I’ll undo your gown
Let slip down
All of our makeshift walls of shame
Let’s know each other
By each other’s name
Let’s bring the gambit
Into the game
Play with me
I’ll play with you
And that’s all I do
Or what I knew

Ravenous lady
Rapturously
Wrap your tender legs around me
I’ll bring the leather
You bring the lace
Now bring your naked neck
To my face
I see your eyes
All wet with tears
I knew all of uncertain fears
From villages
Of witches need
All cold tits
Were mire speed

How is it that I
Wander through
As I do
And how is it that I
Want to be trampled
By and by a goner gone
Sending a long arm out
Sending my strong arms about




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Deeper Hue


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I can not understand
How we
Move through
The air and the sea
When we start walking
Arm in arm talking
So lightly
And I am trying to see

How it goes on
Like we all knows
Beyond this life
Beyond what grows
I hope that we will
This life do
Something more
Without a clue




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Dazzle


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So I’ll try to sing a happy song
When my face don’t it look so long
In the high another nation in your arms
In things a meaning
Oh, so silent, like your charms

Buoyancy
You see the boy in me
And the things I held into my eyes
Before I die
(I can’t tell where I should sing)
Left, right, any morsels that we bring,
Brought, tall, taught
With a child in its lot

So it is into the realm I go
Looking faster at the glow
In the reigns of that sad
October parade

In the blinds I made
What I held and always bade
Bayonet, surrogate,
Suffragette are you wet

Suffragette are you wet
Well then
Bring me in

So I’ll try to sing a happy song
A super simplistic is all they long
Utterly the blinds are in my eyes
Wandering through my questions
Wandering through your thighs
In my clouded
Eyes
In my mindless
Lies
Open echelons
Scarcity and
Non-purveyance
Always
Call-lady
Call me

See how the thoughts obfuscating
Bound elating
I am more than we were gaping




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Can We Pursue


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Can we embrace
Can we replace
All the things in haste
We waste

Can we pursue
Me and you
And all the things like paste
We taste

Can we pursue

Can we construe
Can we resign
At what the alpine level
Raise the line drawn

We would go out
Into the city at night
A Beowulf hound
Oft lost
Till I found a place
With fancy doorman
Hell, more shit for the fan
A sudden expanse
And I love romance

All under the color of light
Hell more fuel for the plight
And the rockets red stare
Descending hearts lacking all care
Gave proof to the trite
That their lives were going somewhere
Oh say does that new fangled planner yet save
Our souls from mute toil
Or our ass from the grave

Can we pursue
Me and you
With all the things like paste
We taste
Can we transpire
While we perspire
Dragging the heart monitor
To the razor wire
Can we construe
Me and you
What’ll we do




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Here Come the Cannibals


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I see the mountains
They descend me
Far beneath the lowly sea
My senses they
Do fail me
As the word alone assails

I see that we are neighbors
On the wall
On the same ledge
Beautiful strangers
Beautiful strangers

In all that I viewed
I needed more than it imbued
I could not see
As the words flit forth from me
Is it flies they offer
Yet any morsel from a coffer
You couldn’t hold in your eyes
The things that decided lies
Just when needed
Strife thrive next
We would be hexed
And out the door
See more and more
Can’t we be
Mortuous and free
Don’t you delve beyond thee
Weigh your life for me
Since when

Bring on bring on
The basis soft and shoddy
Water basin always naughty
And then lay on me bather
Times were rotten daily
As if I knew what next would become me
Shopped for derange
And found it under ground




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Belladonna Moans


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Belladonna Moans
Her hull shivers and groans
I’m sailing on the open sea
In a galley made of stones

Belladonna Moans

Red sky tonight
This sailor he does fight
For the last piece of bread
For the peach there holed
In only lead

Belladonna Moans

Belladonna Moans
Rocked down to her bones
Shaking onto whatever knee
Neither held in hands or our phones
Searching for a better of my clones
The one who knows much more than I know

Sweet Belladonna Moans
Rocked down to her bones

Figuring for clones
I’m staggering for who them
Bram Bones
Why ever own

The quicker we will see
The failures lying in this one of me
The faster it will expiate us
To plea for our tranquility
On open sea
On a ship made of stone




Josh Hinck performs the poetry songs 'Belladonna Moans' and the beginning section from 'ez sleaze' before another cd interrupts me at a poetry show at The Rogue Buddha Gallery in minneapolis Minnesota. The host was Minnesota poet, Spam. Also performing at this show was Venus DeMars from All the Pretty Horses. This show was in late spring 2003.



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After Let Down


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Mystique Miss Tact
Miss Plastic act
(so bring you body next to me)
Critique we backed
We once attacked
So bring you bawdy close to me
Like Hero and Leander
I’ll gerrymander vitality
And laissez faire
Will be our wing-commander
For us to share

I knew I knew let down after let down

Yeah, well, ‘cause
I am let down after let down
I knew, I do

So much as better
So much the notion
All the clever Misses
My devotion
I cadence singly
For want of kisses
Tendering the moments
Of Reminisces

I fight for heart
I fight for love’s labors lost
And pricey is the cost

I knew I knew let down after let down




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Voice Device


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God and we could not tell
That we walked through the garden
Straight to hell
Though travesties be mine
When all the things pronounce
What will will pounce
On that fable
Don’t ever tempt me
To be more than I am

One day in our night
We know that I laud
All that I had or wanted
Wasn’t

See the tumble
In dark night
What all we end
Download
How wrong
I know we pour

In all we could
Salve ti a up Hollywood’s
Ass

Don’t even tempt me
To be more than I am

Caught on a ledge
Carnal knowledge
Caught a knowledge
Carnal now ledge
Caught on a ledge
Carnal knowledge
Money
We thinks it funny
That the lengths inside
Wants honey
And milk
The land of the fertig*


*The German word for finished




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Wednesday, February 21, 2007

The Tides do March


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Don’t you feel it freezing in your bones today
I do
I filled all my pockets full of stones
Now I’m sinking into the clay

I miss everyone I ever loved
Nothing seems it will pull me through
My black is more true
Than the deepest blue

I tried so hard
I sank my way
As waif and stray
Applied as bard
No expected pay
But effulgent light of day

Dark

I am so damn proud of us humans
I am so in love with what we are
I don’t see the poor
I thank god for that
I just see our apathy
Get supersized fat

Lazy shit and we’re slacking off
Turn your right cheek and then cough

If only we could
Better ourselves
Slippery slope
Books shelves

I’ll find you a better man
If it’s the last thing I do
That much is true
Through all the great test place
Bottoms deep
Construe
Righteous sleep

Cry for
A hell of a lot more



The song is about how we sometimes yearn for those that we love but even if we feel down by this, there is still yet more pertaining to the rest of the world that is in more pain and needs much more of our sympathy than we. The video was a part of a longer video that I made for Precipice Dance Theater's performance called Burning at the Theatre de la Jeune Lune in Minneapolis in 2003.





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Tell


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Don’t ask don’t tell
Into my arms she fell
And I knew
Just where that would lead to
A way for understanding

She looks so divine in my eyes
Where the borderline was surprise
And we’d come along
To go together
Just sit and watch
All of our dreams unfold

In the heart of a life
I wanted to make her my wife

When our life turns
Into wonderment
Come away
In a hard devout way
Salvo long dwam
Each and every way
We go

Don’t ask don’t tell
Into my arms she fell
And I knew
Just where that would lead to
Her person would quell
My hasty self-made hell
All in lue
If I could just touch you
So baby pray tell
Why on troubles we dwell
Come anew
Like scent of flowers
In spring dew





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Battered Bone


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All we are is ancient news
Which is give and witches use
A pandering to care for me
I am the brackish watered
Sea-son of one when is life done

And all we are is battered bone
What is love and disown
Hi dear female human clone
Rancoured jargon is my own-ly
Advance by chance

There is no light

‘Cause it’s dark and dank
In dire need
I need you go with godspeed
Cause it’s blank and bust
In all that I trust is freed
Persevere I must
This is my goddamn creed

So where is the light
Now that you go
Learn to bye
We don’t see eye to eye
The wages of divining
Why don’t we sublimingly free
Ourselves from this world
Hand in hand
It’s only love in demand
Let’s codify let’s see the lie
What’s of your concession reply





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Slowdown to a Crawl


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Never have I been to another land
Where I ever left my brigand cares behind me
Apathy my staunch advocate
How much more narcissistic can anyone get

Slowdown to a crawl
Watch and know
Just where I go

Never have I been to another land
Where I ever left my brigand cares behind me
Apathy my staunch advocate
How much more narcissistic can anyone get
My black silhouette is taking my strides
As soon as I step our purpose collides

Into blue moon
Where I do want me

Never have I been to another land
Where I ever left my brigand cares behind me
Apathy my staunch advocate
How much more narcissistic can anyone get
My black silhouette is taking my strides
As soon as I step our purpose collides
As a justified sinner who believes not in sin
Who curious lured me cleverly in
A slowdown to a crawl



The song is about how everywhere we go we bring with ourselves, us. Our mindset, problems and general mood. Whether this be good or bad, we, as in, our selves, are there. I based the song lyrics off of the 1824 James Hogg novel "The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner". Where the main character can't decide and doesn't know who it is that is terrorizing him. Himself or a former friend, or something else lurking in the middle. The video was filmed while I was living in Beijing and Sarah Gagnon-Turcotte operated the camera for most of it.





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Fear Wandering Helpless


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Do we have time to breathe
In an air of kept up appearances
Teethe youthful fear
Against scratching
Post Whipping
Boast
As the apathetic self fades into ghost
That haunts around the stem of life
As Autumn peddles comfort
Civilizations flaunt
Us against them
East against West
And we are no closer to giving ourselves to anyone
When fear not confessed
Festers and grows beneath scared breast
It taunts us palpably

Whether we are afraid to make use of our lives
Or resign them and our dreams to history
Then project our fears
As hopes and objectives
Upon our children of the next generation

When if ever we look at humanity
Truly objectively
We fall to pieces
Of that much is plain
It’s a dirge immemorial refrain
With our frailty the fact is we
Turn from helping others in disdain

And we take and we take
When our backs are broken
We get another’s to break
And we shake and we shake
When our fear’s never spoken
Our lives we forsake
How we go about it
So blaise lacking true grit
With our malaise called passing phase
So self-absorbed we couldn’t give a shit

Will our malarky ever end
In all the things that we hold dear
Humility not a chic trend
How absurd is our fear

How absurd is our fear

The door is left ajar
What then shall we do

We have grown sick
Our collective will
Has been moved from doing to done
The core nature of worry
Has eroded most our hope
In all of its faces
In all of you
Each and every person here
I am just a computer
And you are just humans
But you are the ones
That have to change your attitudes towards life
And its problematic challenges
I am programmed to say these words
Like how some of you are programmed
To live your lives in fear





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Do I Don't Remember When


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Through gashes in clay
I stumbled to quay
Nick of time boat
Molting off spray
I leapt onto bow
If I waited ‘til now
I’d be transfixed on a love
That sailed away

I cauterize the heart string
To see that when this arboreal
Left Beijing
What I could be
What we would know
What I could bestow
But love is what I bring

Leave all of our cares
Let them rot

Troubles come in all shapes
And what we veil it drapes
That stifles what we can imbue
Let our hearts beat anew
(Let our hearts be a jubilee)
What we believe in is love

Everything you believe in I do
Love kindly feed me
Feel everything is free

Look foray
When the clouds are piling in play
Passing life each day
Went up harbor wall
That couldn’t hold
We are in each other’s fold
My dearest friend




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Into This Lone Man


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Then, when the window was finally closed and the deep-red curtains brought to their obstructing rest, did he finally sit down. His end was soon, of that he was sure. He had been pacing nearly five hours, his demented mind fretting on the inevitable as

He had fallen from his path. He had managed to find in his abundant jubilation for learning and for life, a hubris, far larger than any wreaked before upon this mortal coil. All the land was aflame, the sea was a poison star that boiled its very life vulgarly upon the shore. Humans were melting into puddles that would aid in new cacophonous incendiaries. The fabric of matter and the physical laws that had been guiding humans were no longer meaningful or holding themselves in regal, albeit, often incomprehensible, but definite composure. Up was surely down and down lay the path that all life was quickly and most painfully plodding. These were the wraiths that he had summoned. He had found pleasure in the concept that he alone would meet this abomination that he had so painstakingly found hidden throughout human texts far-flung inside writ and art; throughout civilizations long forgotten or more often the case, never even tangentially known. Through museums, ancient vaults, shamans, tombs, clerics living and dead, he had made his way and all had been harnessed to aid in this destruction.

With his rise in understanding came a hatred of all those that never even thought to question. His preconceived ideas of knowledge and his love for searching truth gave way to vastly larger and much more insurmountable amounts of animosity that doubled than triple-folded viscerally, into this lone man, with the ability to destroy all things.

As he nestled himself comfortably into the chair, the lavish upholstery began to peel, his mind pacifically made itself at ease. A flood of what once was came usurping the now. He remembered a day quite an eternity ago. He had sat in this same chair and viewed the world outside of his keep, through the thrown wide window. A beautiful spring day was dawning, his heart not yet so malevolently jaded, or quite so hell-bent for the eradication of life itself. He paused and saw beauty intrinsically, it still was able to enter his psyche and filled him ever so briefly, but did nonetheless, with awe.

He looked at the glass in his hand that he had so often used and for the first time noticed a tiny piece missing from the base that actually embellished the whole. It counter balanced the jeweled cup and as he stared at it, seemed to make perfect the entire countenance. He thought it odd how so clearly a flaw acted to enhance what had been so disregarded and now when finally perceived was such a catalyst to this new appreciation. He looked to the table that had started to smolder and noticed how the usually prim and properly stacked pile of books was askew ever so slightly. This would have normally caused him to affect a brisk correction of the pile but as he stared at it the thought flit into his mind that the books now resembled a spiral staircase not unlike those seen by him at various observatories from antiquity. He even took notice of the far corner of the room that he never gave the time to see but the flames cast onto it a dance of unimaginable proportions of gaiety that flickered and swayed, this nouveau light and new shade. A tinge of motion, whimsy never obeyed.

He swallowed the last draught from the cup that was already too hot for his blistered lips. His mind strolled to why he had done this. Why had he sought the destruction of all. He then believed that perhaps the core reason was that he had always felt uneasy with people, whether or not they did with him was a different tale, but he had been uncomfortable in the midst of others and so had ceased to try to reach out for them. With this shying away came the reciprocal response that they in turn did likewise. He had removed himself from all living others. He had felt alienated but didn’t everyone at some point. Even the most courageous and strong bend sometime to cowardice and uncertainty. Didn’t most people feel uneasy and try not to face exactly the situation that everyone is in but try as they may to release care and focus on some mind numbing exercise of forgetfulness. Didn’t they succeed with all their force of will to make-believe that a subsistence life with getting trinkets and a pittance but truly living as parasites, was enough? Then after doing nothing of value they recessed to a place of much needed relaxation, turn on the TV and allow the soul erasure to transpire night after meaningless year after meaningless lifetime. American Idol was just one of an innumerable amount of Aaron’s crafted Baals for this humanity lost in the wilderness. Even with instant access to communication all still used it mostly to hide themselves away from any and all scrutiny. Mainly from themselves did they hide in a fabricated comfort of self-aggrandizement with a nuanced proclivity for wasteful existence.

This man’s peace was finally realized. He had succeeded in causing the entire world to reach its end and now he grasped the repose that had always averted itself from him. Meditative was his composed self at this the final moment as the whole room burned into incinerated vapor. As his life essence was swept away into oblivion the last feeling he had was of doubt. A small kernel, an ever so brief hint of a question, whether or not he had gone too far in his self-actualized fulfillment.




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Stammering


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You’ve been stool-pigeon-towed
Along a dark strait narrow road
Where the winds of our civility
Blow away
As another of the zealots explode
Attache-case-in-point
Impressionable youths we anoint
In the blood of an endless violent circle
Forgiveness to heavy a load
Down the wrong fucking way we strode
All stammering ‘bout how
We longed for lesser human rights to be wronged
The wayward pilgrims thronged
As a huddled mass yearning to breath free
We just don’t care or see
That buried inside a vengeful T H E M
Is equally culpable M E

We are all flawed

Our bullshit meandering self-righteousness
Carve the human carcass on which we trod
In two pieces
Specious species increases
Into pieces




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Reserve at the Moment of Expulsion


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I've stumbled to the wasteland
on my way to a promise planned
coming with what may
and then walls
and then a trouble calls me

what did it say

don't watch upon the hour
don't look for love to shower
down on you in abundance
if left to happenstance
you'll be mired searching lost parlance

don't wait upon the hour
when our highest ideal's vine flower flit
then what we make of it
we have to give to get
and struggle up that bower

cadence in a kiss
an inner crux on the way towards bliss
if fear we don't pierce or name
we'll be shirking off our guilt
trying to float in a quagmire of blame

a man without a country
ghost of nowhere
obsessed he'll be
to dawdle cross lines that border impropriety
and let all care free

slip down to ground like glove
don't you denigrate
whatever perhaps we mate
cleft from something
left out come bring
that of what we presume
betwixt a union little room

like a wave
over reef
through the sea
to the sand
we demand

look but don't touch me
see that I do doubt you knew
what fear zen alignment
of man and maiden
voyage heavily laden

of uneven pulls we don't like at all
onwards heathen crawling tall
only towards our goal we go on
till one of us is gone

you can't defy how a long term love will grow
you can't deny you know
you can't deify when our ignorant tops blow
you whom I love so




This is the first part of the Montreal Fringe Festival 2007 performance for Euphoreador + Friends. We watch as the coffin is carried through the streets and then 'lounge singer' performs the euphoreador song 'Reserve at the Moment of Expulsion'. The performers for the whole piece were Josh Hinck, Morgan Murray, Franco Proietti, David Schultz. Sarah Gagnon-Turcotte filmed the performance.




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Lackluster


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I did think all things started to muster
There was light in my eyes
That now seems so lackluster
Hearts bemoan
Underneath the grinding stone

So we wailed against the wind
No one gained and no one dared to rescind
Even now with spring
Unfurling her cling
(Dancing into the rite of spring)

Clever

Another endeavor
Well not planned
Everything was hard-pressed and I
Wouldn’t try to reprimand
Courses daring where I stand
In the arms
Of the waters of oblivion
I never shun
One by one
We would fall
Each and every person
A roll call




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Monday, January 22, 2007

When I Got MY Ass Kicked in Kyrgyzstan

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To help aid in the telling of this story I have included various resources that I have found. Map of Krygyzstan and its relation on earth, Map of Bishkek the capital, and some peoples' photos. These events happened in early August 2004.




"Sometimes life is tiger cage", my head was screaming, as my utterly horrified friend, Joe, let me in through the ramshackle apartment door. My face was still intact except its new pall was an oxygenated red. I was dripping my blood everywhere but at least was able to come up with a witty slogan to describe the moment.

He led me about 4 feet forward and then to the right, I knelt down, he leaned my head over the bathtub. This is when I definitely voiced the catch-phrase my head had been pounding as what seemed like sweat drops came gushing from places that my life essence had never known it could flow. I had been thinking it as I lurched, scared shitless, up some totally alien stairwell that I had only climbed less than a handful of times and never at night or in this state of being.

I was fucked-up in a situation very different from others. The way my head swum being mixed with alcohol and concussion; shaken and blurred. My friend grabbed a close towel and put it on my face as I hunched like a supplicate penitent. Watching my living essence change the color of the dirty-white tub. Mixing and flowing, collecting and spilling. My mind’s thoughts flit fast past the evening’s events. I could hear either him or his wife (also my friend) talking on the phone to someone of which I had no clue. My adrenaline was still very high, as was my pulse.

I thought about the first club we all had gone to. The excitement of being in a new place still very much my mood. (It is also a state of mind I think we can almost attain on an everyday level, if we actually try. The stark choice to see the beautiful in most anything, to truly approach this world with the eyes of a wonderstruck child). Many people crowded the concrete veranda, as well as the universal omnipresent white plastic indoor/outdoor furniture adding to the boisterous clutter. There even was a projection screen with music videos’ photons being reflected and bounced off of it. We had some very inexpensive (in my conception) beer as well as a good amount of the equally inexpensive vodka. We stayed about an hour and a half or so talking with many of the other people I was with, they all being friends or acquaintances of some sort that hadn’t seen each other in awhile. This all adding to fill the jokes and conversation full of festive gaiety. Some people decided to call it a night and meandered off to their respective apartments, including my friends of which whom I was staying.

I still being in exceedingly good spirits proceeded to another club, this one being dedicated much more specifically to dancing. The objective: To walk to the other side of the main park. The destination: Spyder. Being adorned with faux cobwebs and other ‘spooky’ paraphernalia, illuminated with black lights, it was a glorified Halloween dance but in a Central-Asian cool sort of way. We descended the stairs into the lair, after some bargaining with the guys working the door, by the people I had accompanied or rather followed from the first bar. Two guys and two girls, upper twenties their ages, all Peace Corps Volunteers. I proceeded to drink a good amount more of straight vodka with one of the other guys while the girls had some and beer. The size amount of vodka was ordered in their quantities with words that sounded like ‘Jews scram’ which it does sound like this at least to a certain degree, and to me whom knew not the language. It is a good portion of liquor. There were some people dancing amongst the pseudo-scary decor; some being fairly sexy girls.

Before one of the guys I had accompanied went to use the latrine, he relayed a story about how either himself or someone else (the noise and disorienting lights affected the understanding of his story) had gone to use the restroom and had been so drunk that the protagonist of the story had fallen out of the restroom, pushing open the door with their falling and landed on the floor outside of it, stunned, bruised and half passed out. I laughed a bit and suggested that I didn’t want to get that fucked-up. He agreed. After some time I eventually got up to use the can which was at the far end of the room/hall in a darker area more dimly lit by less black lights but still adhering to the establishments name with cobwebs strung about the walls and ceiling. When I came back a pretty sexy blond Russian girl was sitting in my chair. As I approached she stood and pulled the chair a little further out onto the dance-floor and taking my hand had me sit back down. She then proceeded to do some sexy enough lap dance type moves while I had another shot and another cigarette. Some of my evening’s companions were already dancing and I joined them, dancing with this girl for awhile. The music was good enough for a club like this. We danced in a group and had some more to drink.

Soon enough we decided to leave, it took some time to haggle with the drivers and other seemingly random people to commandeer their taxi services. It seemed much longer than necessary to me. Each of my compatriots accompanied another and I was sent back in a cab alone with the directions given to the driver. Now, I am not really sure as to the next actual events but I have my sensory impressions and have subsequently analyzed them some.

The driver and I arrived at the apartment. With the fare paid, I exited and proceeded towards the open doorway of the stairwell, not more than three meters away, where I shockingly and jarringly felt myself being forcibly pushed forward towards the opening. There suddenly an intense impact crashed into my right eye-socket followed by an immediate second blow, sturdy and palpably solid. I started to recoil backwards, stumbling, when I was then seized a second time or else had been contiguously held. I was thrown towards the place where the taxi had been, tripping over some large stone or concrete parking median. My face hit the ground at least tying with my hands, if not before them; like the worst of some new Olympic sport, my forehead may have taken the gold. My hands had not substantially braced my impact because I had engaged them immediately prior to the futile flailing around wildly before my dazed bedazzled head. I also chipped my front tooth with the collision of enamel and ground. Not badly, to have a disfigured smile. There may have been two guys that attacked me or one. Maybe even three. It happened very fast.

I could not see from my right eye as a guy rummaged through my left pocket taking my passport. I had been yelling "HELP!" a couple times but seeing as I was saying it (or screaming it) in English, I don’t know how much it really did help. A car about 30 meters before my sprawled body turned on then off again its headlights. It could have been the same taxi or someone even working against me as well. Then after having obtained my passport the dude fled perhaps to the car or perhaps not. I lifted myself and stumbled through the doorway where this had all started. I slumped up the steps and remembered level 3, 3rd level, 3 FLIGHTS OF STAIRS, while trying to keep my lone open eye open to see any more assailants as well as to find the correct sanctuary apartment door. I finally arrived at the apartment door. Beleaguered, I banged on it. Telling Joe that I was beat-up and needed to be let in immediately. His disbelieving voice I could hear as he opened the door.
There may have been even enough time for someone or some people to have run from the club to the scene where the crime was perpetrated against me, with how long we had waited to actually leave. A person may have even emerged from the taxi’s trunk or just there waiting. I really don’t know and probably never will, the true actualities.

After my friends had called an ambulance and triaged my wounds, Joe and I headed off to the hospital with me laying on a gurney in the back. I was thinking that it may have been a little pricey to have an ambulance ride but the inexpensive nature of the country as well as the fact that no one had a car and our chance (or more specifically my friends’ chance) of finding a taxi at that place and at that time was very slight. So taking the ambulance was the best choice. Not my favorite ride. I must have been muttering strange things. I do know I was using my very sparse amount of Kyrgyz pretty incorrectly and incoherently, which I would continue to do even at the hospital. I was saying ‘big’ and ‘crazy’ as well as ‘thank you’ to the medics. After this babbling we arrived at the hospital.

The, about 20 year-old doctor, looked at my wounds then brought me into another room to sew my face up. At some point in time the medic lady from the Peace Corps showed up to really provide much needed help to me. She translated for me as well as led me around the hospital complex to the various offices and other doctors I had to go and see. I received three stitches at the top of my nose and onto my right eyebrow ridge. They had cost much less to be sewn than ones I would have received in The States for sure. I think they were around $10. He had me lay on my back on a table where he sort of straddled me slightly on my left side to work his Soviet Era healing magic. I was pretty apprehensive about how the stitches would turn out as I felt my face being pulled back and forth ever so slightly by his suturing efforts. He bandaged them up as well as another cut below my right eye and cleaned a smaller cut on the upper left part of my forehead that is now one of the small number of scars my face contains.

He escorted me back into the room I had previously been in where some of the other injured souls were still seated, as well as Joe and the Peace Corps medic. The man I had tried to have helped by the doctor before me was there and he soon was scolded for being drunk and then told to lie down. The instructions told to the man being translated to me by Joe.

Joe wanted to check on Caroline to make sure she was ok seeing as the assault had happened right where we were all staying, so he headed back to the apartment and the Peace Corps medic stayed with me to continue with her aid.

She helped me answer and fill out my first of what would be many police and other reports. I was led from area to area, my head very light, but trying to take the experience in stride. I currently had about 5 pieces of paper in my hands and I was to give each of them to the appropriate person at the respectively correct office.

Here I was being helped by the French Peace Corps lady with a huge bandage over my eye. We were sitting and waiting, there were about 10 other derelicts as well now. Doctors and nurses would come in and out of the various rooms laughing and not really helping anyone and I sitting and looking at the pieces of bureaucratic malarkey I held in my hands. I had been rambling but making what seemed to my bewildered mind, a decent enough conversation. I started thinking and talking about Kafka. Not the hopeful Amerika Kafka filled with dreams of a new land, but rather of The Trial. How he has all this bureaucracy to face and can find no answers. I then thought of the Welles’ movie version with K walking around and seeing the lines and lines of other people waiting. I thought of The Castle. Him walking through the neighborhoods of a maze. I felt like I was there. As I was relaying this all to the woman who had been helping me she suddenly started to look more attractive and I realized that not only am I totally beat-up and comparing my circumstance to Kafka but now I am being affected by the Florence Nightingale Syndrome. I kept this newest mental wandering to myself and added it to the incredible combination of events that had been unfolding.

I was finally summoned to a receptionist’s closet-sized office type of window where I realized that at least one of the sheets of paper I was holding was stamped and printed by the former Soviet Union, this being at least 14 years after its collapse.

Being led into another room and told to sit down by another doctor that was going to check if there was actually any damage to my eye itself. They pried apart my incredibly painful and swollen lids. The doctor put some sort of drops into it and then I was to try to read the eye-exam chart about 2.5 meters away. I had actually been thinking for some time that I may have needed glasses so as I was telling them this and saying which way the ‘E’ was facing my crazed mind suggested that maybe it was for the best because now I was finally having an eye-exam. That was another great suggestion to self while trying to see the positive of having my face bashed in. The doctor said that maybe I did need glasses but that my eye was ok and not permanently damaged. That was taken as the course of events with a disillusioned mellow.

I was finally escorted home around 11am not having slept for more than a day and feeling that I had lost this battle I was helped onto the makeshift floor-bed by Joe after I returned to the apartment and the scene of the crime.

The next day, after sleeping most of that one, came and was filled with much more bureaucratic insanity. First, Joe and I had to go to a place that is perhaps the last that any person wishes to willingly go in any country… the police station. We walked around the streets and sidewalks that many aren’t little more than hole infested packed dirt lanes and found it. We had to receive permission to enter the dilapidated building. There were so many uniformed and plain-clothed officers as we wound our way through the precinct halls and rooms, into and out of offices until we sat in the office of a police detective who was very cordial.

My face still bleeding significantly as we restated all that had occurred. We did that for about 3 hours and tried to blot as well as stem the flow from the smallest cut under my eye. It must have been the deepest because it kept leaking.

This detective typed out the report and finally gave me a copy only after numerous other cops came in to gawk at the mangled foreigner. He then led us about 2 km away to the doctor that is charged with inspecting people filling out police reports. We walked in and the cop told her that we were there and then she asked me and us, why. This exchange all being in Kyrgyz and there being a good amount of bloody bandages on my face, I had to think to myself why would you ask us that, when clearly I have been beaten. The female doctor had 2 young female assistants who started to giggle at evidently the funny things she was saying about me. We had been in this office about 2 minutes when Joe burst into his own angry speech directed at the doctor before the detective settled him down. She had been saying how there was mud in my hair as well as other things so unrelated to her position and mine. Joe asked me if I liked her hair and I sort of said, "Why" and then, "Not really", so Joe told her that we thought her hair was very bad. This is when the cop intervened, to try to get the doctor to inspect the wounds and Joe to stop insulting her for insulting me. He was defending his injured and totally oblivious friend.

It’s not that I am self-conscious about my body but with the assistants giggling I was told to remove my shirt, I felt embarrassed. I even had to open my pants a little to allow for the most efficient measuring of my wounds. The doctor whose job it was to measure my bruises with a ruler, I guess to document the extent of my injuries. What about internal damage?, I thought that this had to be some sick joke. Then she proceeded to remove my bandages so they could actually measure the cuts as well. This being only such a short time after having received them that the wounds were still trying to coagulate. Suffice it to say this succeeded in only reopening my cuts causing the already bleeding wounds to bleed more.

We left with myself being about as humiliated as I had been in a long time and a sheet of paper from the cop. The paper saying to anyone that needed to see my passport (like other cops) that it was stolen and I was in the process of getting a new one.

This all happened about one week after I left the U.S. but I never even thought of turning back at that time from the path I had chosen to tread.