Sweet Corny Love Song

This just did not make sense. Not that he was overly fond of making sense but it was a humor jumping-off place, a slant of horizontal rubber bending that gravity-wise was impossible. He enjoyed that kind of joking around, sometimes growing, stretching beyond what was considered even awe-inspiring. He would always take the joke past the point of suffocating for breaths. If you gotta die why not die laughing? What was the deal anyway? That is where we're all headed . . . and I've already been there and back.

He walked over to his cd player. Yeah, a little music can calm this. He did like a calm reflection mixed in with his evening tea. The hundred or so cd's were stacked against the shelf, not in any order that any stranger could perceive. Yeah, he knew where all his loves were. Who can sing to me now? A sad love song? . . . driving anger? . . . a hopeful yearning? . . . oh, the list is not too varied when it comes to human expression. He tossed the cd's aside and an old tape . . . a cassette . . . dazzled him because of its ability to speak without electricity. He tossed it from hand to hand. Nervous fear hit his stomach like just before giving a big rap to the usual sleeping public. The public! All those faces looking toward him . . . for what? What do they want? It could be defined by what he could give them. How do you feed the anorexic? They will only puke it out later. The feast always wasted. The fear hit his genitals and it gave him a hard-on. The sensation of sloshed, blood-red water suspended from a painter's brush turned his brow into deep crevices. "Yeah, I know," he screamed out loud. The tape fell from his hands. He thought that he might pass out. Instead, ropes of hardened white mucus gagged him. He reached into his throat and pulled on the hardened mass of thousands-of-days-old snot. The hardened crap piled up into an amazing mound and still he was pulling it out from his throat. Images of women gagging on semen to please their lovers' desire sang their song to him. Days and days passed and the puking did not stop. He wondered if he would have any substance, any fleshiness to him when it was over. I thought I had laughed at death before. But what is this? Am I just a garbage bag for the possessed?

There was an incessant knocking at his door. Boom and a tap in 3/4 time. "Go away, go away! Don't you see I've had enough? Leave me be!" he shouted through his grasping for breathing and yanking of the mass. He certainly did not want to see anybody in this condition. The house was in a stench. To be a proper host at this time was beyond his defense. Painted tears were all he could cry and it gave him no relief. This will never be finished.

The mound of snot turned into a city . . . and the people began to move there with their two perfect children. Sundays were picnic perfect. It was the perfect city and you had to be really white to live there. I mean really, really white! Everything was in order and in their worship they swallowed the puke that never ran out and believed they were the holy ones . . . and it was all his pain. They made icons of it. The new gold. It made the California rush look like a scooter race in the grand prix. His body was wearing away and they glorified the sacrifice. No visiting hours were allowed. They had photographs above the mantle—not of him, but of the white phlegm designed in a vague likeness of him, accentuated by a cosmetic mold that gave him a sad, compassionate above-the-heap acceptance. His eyes were neither blue, his blood was red and his ancestry was a mixed bag of Asian and African. Maybe the only really white thing about him was his snot. That's pretty cool because it never ran out.

He was lonely, tired of being worshipped for his bodily waste. I don't even know what this shit is and why it's happening to me. I just wish it would end and those white guys find some other guy to bless their fanatical nerve endings.

Three beats to each measure. Father, son and the holy ghost. There's that knocking again. The loneliness surrounded him with more of himself which now only appeared to be a skeleton and mountains of hardened snot.

Sing a hymn

Sing a hymn to me

you gotta make it in 3/4 time.

Hallelujah? Hallelujah!

He was past sex mastery and performance. He wanted someone to hold his hand, wipe his brow . . . to see the stench for what it was . . . to make everything so sweet again . . . so ordinary like a tickle and a licking of lips. Like a stupid, sad old love song; sung in full soprano: "I can't live without your love." Although he was worshipped no one ever sang their heart out to him, just to his puke.

Father, son and holy ghost and you know what the ghost is! The possessed was once his game.

She sang such sweet songs to me in that old country style. She was a little backwards, coming from the country—the bright abode—and didn't protect herself from the dangers of the city. I remember when she first sang to me. It was pitiful, sweet and funny. She was so off-key and so obviously in love with me. I played along with her. We had some good laughs but she was kind of old-fashioned . . . her hickness . . . her stubbornness . . . she was intense . . . and her songs of love—off key as they always were, well, they were from the old tradition. Whatever happened to her? I could go for one of those corny songs now. I'm tired of gagging in 3/4 time. Oh, she needed such looking after. I gave her a ring once in a while. She would start up with those corny love songs, and then there were the paintings I never sat for. Amateurism reproductions from the master photographer. It cost me some good bucks. I kind of felt sorry for her. She was kinda stuck on me. She wasn't even pretty but there was a quiet craziness about her—the way she stuck to the old tradition . . . Yeah, I looked after her. I think we were friends. I didn't see her much . . . we lost contact.

Baby, don't you know you gotta friend?

Ain't it good to know you gotta friend?

Sing a hymn to me

Sing a hymn in 3/4 time

Moons passed by his window within the rhythm of his womb. The gagging swallowed him. He treated it like a hairdo that was always needing adjustment from the hurricane winds that disheveled his prepared performance. The public never saw him anymore. He passed unnoticed through contemporary America. He didn't worry about hiding the evidence of his absorbing madness—the white folks carried it off in barrels full and worshipped it in the white city of fantasy. "Yeah, that's really nice! Have a good day!"

He left his home and a private detective agency called HE LIVES FOR OUR SINS followed him from a distance, not actually wanting to see the stench before it hardened. The smell was quite pungent: a mixture of old farts, cider vinegar and broccoli. They walkie-talkied ahead and some Mexican women shoveled the gag material into waste baskets which was pasteurized, treated with du-pont chemicals for life and then shipped to the white city. The Mexican women were paid the minimum wage and that was always behind the inflation rate. They thought it was a shitty job but it kept the streets clean. They never knew what happened to the snot. My guess is they wouldn't be surprised that the white folks had created a religion around it.

He became an accepted oddity, thought of as a harmless lunatic. He couldn't get out any clear sentences because of the gagging. After a few years passed he actually ran out of the hardened mucus but he was so used to gagging that he didn't even know he could stop. He had grown accustomed to his handicap and to his new lifestyle. HE LIVES FOR OUR SINS quit following him. Lab scientists figured out how to duplicate the stuff and you could order it from any religious drugstore for a more than modest price. It was the staff of life . . . like bread . . . ya know.

He wandered in his mind a lot. He wasn't really sure he had one. He perceived it as white people's thoughts. He couldn't shake the sitcoms and preferred the commercials. There was one commercial he particularly liked. It was of a woman dressed in ethnic Polish costume. She was really vital, kicking up her heels like in the old tradition. It was the dance that got to him. He didn't even notice that the commercial was for his waste product. All in all it was a better life than he previously had. No one bothered him. He met some kind people from time to time, women who felt sorry for him and took him in for a bowl of soup. He downed it quickly before the gagging began.

Jasmine, a ninety-seven-year-old woman with no teeth, fixed her specialty for him . . . a bowl of beet soup. He didn't really like the soup but her company was extraordinary. She wandered a lot and never left home. She would call him her Prince Charming and kiss him right on the lips and take no notice of his gagging. She had great fantasies to divulge. They were long and winded and never, never boring. His favorite one was her life as an African Queen. He didn't think that any of the story was historically correct—well, for one thing the African queen grew up in Brooklyn. The gist of the story was the queen had ten sons and was pining away for a daughter . . . a daughter to whom she could pass on her most treasured secrets.

It wasn't til the final waning of the last moon—the planets were all conjunct in Taurus—did she perform the magic ceremony that helped her conceive without a man . . . so she thought. Actually one of her sons had raped her when he saw she was out of her mind, a state caused by ingesting huge amounts of the rippon weed. The rippon weed was a tricky combination of a fertility drug (which she had proven beyond a shadow of doubt she didn't need . . . although she was a little below normal average in her tribe for baby production) and an hallucinogenic. This hallucinogenic is different from the modern stuff, like LSD . . . the rippon always produced a kind of hallocorty experience. The taker, ingestee, could call the GREAT SPIRIT to her and the Spirit would appear in any desired form. Jasmine's plan was two-fold . . . she stuffed large amounts of the drug into her, hoping the Great Spirit would let her call on Her in two separate forms . . . that of a young, blacker-than-night, well-hung stud (the king was sagging these days) and the Goddess of Repulsion, of De-tractiveness. After her son had his way with her (of course she had mistaken him for one of the forms of the Great Spirit . . . mothers always do that with their sons up to this very day . . . even in cities in the South and Midwest) the ugly Goddess appeared to her and she made her request on bended knee in a strong quaking voice. Complimenting the Goddess, Jasmine said, "Oh, Great One, you are supremely ugly! Please grant me a wish. I have worshipped you my whole life and know of your true power. You are so ugly that you have never been desired by a man or god and that has freed you to accomplish extraordinary deeds. For me it is too late. I was cursed with being the most attractive woman in my tribe. I have lived a life of breeding, being revered for my tits and ass and not my passion, power and notable deeds. Are women only goods? Why do men worship that white fluid that comes squirting forth from their dicks? Why do they call it giving head? Is that where they think? Oh, Great Ugly One I have always wanted to be like you . . . to think with the powers of the Heart. Instead I am a silly woman, put on a stupid pedestal and fearing for my old age when my looks fade . . . and I am exhausted by hanging my vision onto my genitals, onto his genitals. Please hear my plea . . . grant me a daughter—a real ugly one that no man could desire—and give her these gifts . . . that of courage and honesty . . . she will need them to follow the passion of the power of her Heart.

The Goddess was struck by the queen's request, but why should she give her such important gifts? What had the queen given to her to prove that she deserved such a remarkable daughter? "Listen, I'm in a good mood today. I feel sorry for you and you have a certain quality, but you were always too scared to do anything but follow the rules. But I'm liking you . . . I will give you everything that you have asked—a most remarkable, infinitely ugly daughter—but you must move to Brooklyn and raise her there.

Where in the hell is Brooklyn? Jasmine wondered.

"It's in the New York state of mind. If your daughter grows up there she can fulfill her great destiny and, oh, one thing more, if you come across a lunatic wandering around gagging in a most unpleasant manner give him a bowl of soup and tell him this story. Maybe he'll figure it out and find your daughter."

Jasmine fed him another bowl of soup. He dumped it into the sink when she wasn't looking.

"Hey, prince? Want some bagels to go with the soup?" The gagging started up again but he managed a polite refusal and asked whatever happened to her daughter.

Jasmine rubbed her head and tried to sneak another kiss in. "Let's see. I'm forgetting things these days . . . Who did you ask about? . . . oh yeah, my daughter, Catherine . . . she was a gorgeous little thing with a tiny waist . . . and beautiful round lips. I couldn't keep the guys away from her. She married a rich guy and they had a really ugly daughter. It was really a source of embarrassment to Catherine and her husband. They consulted quite a few plastic surgeons and—as money-hungry as they are—they said it was hopeless. Katie wasn't strong on looks except in the negative end of the scale, but she was bright and passionate about life. I think she ran away from home when she was seventeen, looking for adventure and something that had meaning for her. If I can figure this right she is about thirty or so. She changed her name several times. Keeps moving, I hear, after she stirs up some trouble. I don't know what kind though. Maybe . . . nah, I might have this wrong . . . naw, naw, I got it right . . . Katie loved music and was in a rock 'n' roll band. Traveled, toured around the world.

"So, prince, want to stay the night? It looks like rain."

The gagging kicked in, a major scene. He turned blue, black and yellow and swooned into 3/4 beats. The hymns chorused through his bones. The knocking again. Oh, what he would give for a true corny love song. The tape buzzed in his brain. He was in the mood and felt the urge. He put his dick into the old woman and she was content that such a nice young man desired her (he was pushing forty). He tried to imagine her as a queen, as the most beautiful woman in her tribe. He had those kind of fantastic powers. She was old and kinda crazy but kind-hearted. An old-fashioned woman from the old tradition. He wondered what his mother would be like, look like, if she hadn't died in her late forties.

He felt a little peace. He was still dreaming in sitcoms. He also dreamed of his old life . . . when he had money, respectability and turned on women with his amazing feats of power. He did not miss that life. It was too full of purpose and intent. He was still coming down from the possession of it. He also felt a terror. It made his armpits spread and radiate waves of cell-to-cell anxiety. There was a change in him, this fear was different. It was the fear of realizing a desire, a truer purpose. His wandering would take form and deliberation now. He would find Katie.