commune

he was chewing the fiction, breaking it down into smaller pieces so he could swallow it. he’d choked on larger stories before and he hated it. gagging and retching as some metaphor came gushing out, hitting the floor, half-digested. at the time they’d recommended a diet of haiku – something lighter on the stomach, but he refused to compromise on what he ingested.
his skin patterned up as the data was displaced there, waiting for processing by the backbrain shunt he’d had wired in yesterday. he hadn’t tried the autopilot function yet but it was an attractive feature which allowed the mind to game while the body was directed on a command string through fourspace.
he touched her fingertips which were pointing upwards to signify readiness for outside input and he watched a cascade shiver of scattered poetry move through her hair. he hadn’t realised she’d had the medusa stranding worked in already. she’d had the stone glare added last week which allowed her to freeze information surfaces until she was ready to read them. she was still kind of hooked to sequential processing and hadn’t been won over to the idea of parallel processing; she said that having it analysed and filed independent of conscious process made her feel slightly out of body and that she didn’t find it pleasant. it’s true there were some small number of people who suffered dysmorphia because of the protocol and she hadn’t got rid of that fear yet.
he was lost in the data-shuffle of her. she smiled as if in dreamsleep. all around them worlds realigned themselves in the data repositories that were the communal group.

or net – cold man

high noon, stoned immaculate, jim morrison masturbation moment. he’s stood there with a shotgun aimed at a melon shouting jackson pollock’s name to the four corners of the room.
‘i was born under a ceiling decorated with picasso’s guernica, you understand?’
‘i was squatted out in the gutter of a slaughterhouse.’
’same difference.’
‘we found our aesthetics early, eh?’
’sure, sink to the bottom, rise to the top; all to do with the roughage.’
she is dressed in a dress that she fashioned from the cut up pages of time magazine; her most beautiful extremeties released from the caging of traditional clothing.
‘i sweat and have something to read later,’ shes says, distractedly, one finger engaged in the preliminary circling motions of a session of manual stimulation.
a camera shoots. polaroid instant and a dead image drops to the floor. the child with the safety scissors runs into the room, picks it up and cuts the face out.
‘not real; not reel,’ it cries, de-sexed in its innocence – free of the strictures of common society.
he puffs away on his joint while staring at a captain beefheart caricature of the great god Zappa.
‘there is an Ornette moment coming.’
‘how do you sense it?’
‘my antennae are twitching.’
‘i see them.’
‘take a kirlian.’
‘of course.’
a small black hole forms in the centre of the room which is blanketed in theoretical particles; they step through the breach in normal physics and enter a jazz moment. the universe begins.

know time

er, ya know, some things don’t make sense, like when matter cooled down and condensed into different forms did time do the same thing? ah mean, we’re always talking about time as if it were this big old uniform thing and yet there is this persistent idea of relativity, so uh, if it’s like not behaving the same way under different conditions, is it not possible that it’s like, uh, not the same thing?
cool hours sipped at in afternoon seclusion with smooth tableau of womanskin beneath fingertips and he is singing a subtle melody as restless fingers trouble his flies and extract his throbbing penis.
hot stale hours of airconditioned failure hell crowd out the next day and he sticks to his shirt as prayers for a cool breeze escape his lips and die.
next day is consideration of the trap – and the taffy minutes stretch and distend out of recognisable shape as he remembers that soft cool skin and an afternoon of energetic fucking where reckoning of time mattered not.
a fly is sat in his tear-duct drinking. a red river whose wellspring is his crushed forehead explores the contours of his cheekbone. it was a lunchtime get away; a planned exit from office boredom: it had ended in automobile punctuation. time is confused and moves around at speed for certain durations and then slows down as mortality presses in and around the smashed shape of his outline.
how does time react? is different time gathering here? he feels like an experiment. he ceases to feel. no time.

scream in

the yawning horror comes in the babydream dawn where breasts extrude human filth and the monsters grow fat on the codified obscenities of farmed abortions.
she screams but she is alone in a room decorated with meat, painted with human fat. gravewax tallows, hands of glory lit and burning. all these atrocity bodies are the given flesh of the unspoken yesterday as it crawls its way out of shallow graves to claim the innocence of today. thin veneer, blistering paintwork, it all goes down under slash and burn farming methods.
joy division choirs; new order orchestras. come and get your tattoos and drum out the underpinning rhythm of deathcamp century. there are prayers of denial here in the holocaust antechamber. devils in the green room with fake grails and corrupted peace and the stink of all of that fakery masquerading as concern.
crossroads, cross swords, and burning crosses, as the grand dragon pulls itself up through mountains of faeces sculpted into the visage of every single face that every masked an emptiness claiming to be a big idea.
there are photographers lined up and they are taking pictures for the rubbernecker children of spectacle attention spans. it suppurates, it bursts, and we all go down screaming.

headfurst

ah, my headfuzz sputters. packed in the matter of self. innards spooling out tickertape loose to bundle and wrap around crap-full skull of empty. we stutter to break the hold of syntax, semiotics and grammar.

there is a tapeworm in the dictionary recording every word that we look up so it may construct arguments from the ghosts of our stupidity. cupidity – oh, arrow love, and point the way as the neon fractures in spitting sparks of bulbs dropped in water to kill the wet amphibian dream drying out in death.

i kind of sort of maybe understand that something i thought i had a handle on only opens from the inside out.

there are butterflies zipping themselves up in suitcase cocoons to unpack their caterpillar dreams into eternal postulates of youth forever after captured. all the vampires held in amber and strung along the ribbon spines which click in the breeze of hookah smoke at the lewis carroll beatification talks.

i am asking someone who once seemed to know something but now professes to know nothing what exactly is the difference between denial of the non-specific and admission of the general? is there not a cancelling out of the significance in the no-man’s land of no definition?

we set off fireworks and in the condensing moment of a single bang which hearkens to the big bang we see a possible fourth dimensional rift open and espy a way into the data-strewn algorithm that is babel.

in the beginning was one big long primal scream that when downloaded and unzipped proved to be merely a dirty joke passed between demigods in the back of the class.

you are tuning out my headfuzz. picking up on some loose harmony and tightening it until the ripe skull bursts and coconut milk or seminal flood erupts outwards, lands, pools and becomes the ivory tusks of ganesh, destroyer of obstacles. this is the key.

between the pages

he opens the draw and he takes out the bible that seems to come with all these hotel rooms and he flicks through the pages – more often than not someone has left something marking a passage in there. sometimes, if he’s lucky, someone will have left a piece of their own wisdom … a haiku, a poem, some social commentary. it was like a private network of communication that he had plugged into.
there had been some back and forth throughout the years – as with his discovery of the first piece of writing, the first reply he received was unexpected; a total pleasure; a new sun in the sky. he was lucky because he passed through the same places regularly, although sometimes he would mix it up and try out a new place just in case there was something he was missing. so there was still a certain amount of serendipity at play when he found the words.
he had always wanted people to think of him as a poet, a man of letters, but most people just thought of him as a travelling salesman – which was fien in some respects (it was a respectable occupation) but it didn’t speak of who he was; didn’t speak of his soul. so when he heard the first whispers on the road about a mysterious poet who left his work in motel bibles his heart leapt. it sank a little after that initial elation though, because didn’t this change everything?
it became apparent after a while that someone was following him – had heard whispers about what was going on, and had decided to write a story on it for their magazine.
some of the purists – those early people in on the whole idea, did not like the idea that their unique means of communication had been hacked by an outsider; but in a flurry of heated arguments that stretched across the country, stretched across the months, many pointed out that this person in search of the poet had discovered him in as natural a way as any of them had.
many felt that this spelt the end though; that the system would be perverted for other uses; would be misunderstood and abused by those who did not see the value in it.
the chase for him continued amidst collapse, amidst a civil war of words. a slow unfolding detonation of anger. it was suggested that the hunter and the poet meet – that if the chase stopped, if it stopped being a story, then attention would turn away. he didn’t want to do it though – if he sacrificed his anonymity to save everyone else then he would have to stop doing it, wouldn’t he? if he gave himself up then he gave up his writing – he had never been able to do it in any other way; there hadn’t been the inspiration or the audience. if he didn’t give it up, then what then? he would be responsible for killing something beautiful. he left a time and a place between the pages of a particularly battered copy of the new testament at the Terminus Motel – a meeting for two weeks time, when he would be swinging back through. he had no doubts that the person would be there.
she was young, punky looking, a cross between courtney love and siouxsie sioux. he walked towards her, noticed he do the body check, sneer slightly, and turn away.
‘You’re waiting for me, I think.’
‘Nuh-huh.’
‘Between the pages?’
‘What’s that?’
‘The motel bible poet, i think that’s what they’re calling me, no?’
‘You’re not what I was expecting.’
‘You either. Do you understand what you’ve been doing to the network by chasing me? Do you get what you’ve done to me by calling me out?’
‘Not sure what you mean.’
‘You’ve killed something.’
‘Hmm, well, I saw a story – something my readers will want to read about. You know it might actually help you. I know there might be some publishers knocking on your door when the article comes out. Might want a bit of a makeover though – although what you look like now makes it perversely more interesting.’
‘Thanks.’
‘Look, I want you to be a part of this article. Since I handed the proposal in to my editor I have to write it, and I’d rather you had some input, instead of me just churning out any old crap that springs to mind, or that I get second hand off of whoever I find that’s willing to talk, and they’re out there, believe me.’
he decided she was right – get himself on the record; try and make amends for whatever part he had in the transformation of the scene. the article was friendly – she’d really done her research. he still checked the bibles when he stayed at certain places but he didn’t write anything for them anymore.
he reached up and pulled down the latest collection of Bukowski poems, held it by the spine and shook: a small piece of folded paper dropped at his feet. this scene was slightly different – people would leave instructions as to what the next book should be that you would deposit your reply in. the book was generally to be regarded as some kind of prompt as to what the reader might like to read. he read about a first love lost, a drink problem, and the book he was to leave his reply in was Klingsor’s Last Summer. he smiled – no one knew him here, he could write again.

capture

a light conversation of rain; it’s unwanted. he was sitting outside turning himself into a photograph – an idea developing slowly. he’d been struck by the angles of the docks the last time he had sat out there, how the change of perspective played with composition; worked a totally different effect.
he lit up; half a cigarette he’d been saving: savouring. had he been close to a choice to stop smoking again? maybe. it was stupid, he knew, but there was a certain romance to the whole act, and he’d been suckered in by those old black and white films, where the thin ribbons of grey appeared as unspooling thoughts from the head of some troubled PI or some French intellectual type.
the wind was picking up, making the waves choppy – he watched the horizon break up in the scattered light of distant storm and calm, and wondered distractedly whether he should get up and go inside. he wished he had his camera with him – his idea was changing.
she’d be back soon; he’d use her eyes – try and see what she saw. he often grew tired of the way that he looked at the world: so studied; so informed by aesthetic considerations, by various branches of philosophy; she was raw, untutored … and that sometimes translated to him as more real.
a fancy caught him up – that he was a kite; dragged out and over that body of water. he was benjamin franklin’s kite, or some replica of it, key and all, and as if his daydream drew it down, lightning struck the water about four feet in front of him.
how often did that happen? he wasn’t sure. a couple of fish leapt and flopped back under the slate mirror, birds evacuated the sky, the rain got heavier. well, he thought, much as i like this and what it does to my surroundings, i don’t want a cold – better go inside.
next time he would take his camera; he knew what he was looking for now … would know it when he saw it. would capture it.

Cockroach 3

I had no need of tracking when it came to Hale – for a man who spent most of his life tracking people and working up timetables from patterns of behaviour he was not very good at keeping an irregular schedule in place for himself. That was one of the things we had always been taught – the whole idea that variety was the spice of life was a philosophy to die for as far as we were concerned. Hale had grown old and lazy quickly – how this flabby-minded motherfucker had got the drop on me I would never know; it had to mean that the others were way fucking better than he was and their over-compensation dragged up his batting average and made it look good.
The fact that I knew when and where to find this man meant that he had not changed things up in a long time. If they had run a spot check on him his ass would have been canned straight away. He was the weak link in the chain and in our line of work you didn’t brook no entry point by which people could infiltrate your network.
The laziness spoke of arrogance, so I kind of knew that he wouldn’t be expecting anyone to have the balls to try and attack him on his own turf – here he was thinking that he was safe and sound and free to do whatever the fuck he wanted. I stepped out of the shadows and I let him get a good look at me. Now a headless attacker would more than shock most people, would put them seriously on the back foot – but he was in a different line of work and had seen plenty of shit weirder than that. No, the thing that shocked him was he instantly knew who I was and that meant no good news for him.
He lunged at me, I grabbed his arm, pulled him off balance, tripped him, and was on top of him before he could barely form a thought. I pummelled at him, felt his ribs crack under the force of my blows, watched his face swell and burst. But I had to hold back, had to get him out of sight and try and pump him for information before I disposed of him.
Now, I know what you’re thinking – how in the hell does a headless guy interrogate someone for information? Well, the whole deal with the modifications that were made to me is that this whole situation was an eventuality that they planned for, so there were devices in me for just such an occurrence. A vocal processor facing front, towards the enemy, just like a mine – yes, I know your mind went there, so why not use it?
I have never had a problem asking difficult questions and I have always had a certain finesse when it came to extracting information from reluctant subjects. Hale wasn’t reluctant, but I pretended that he was – he had gone soft in the middle but I just made out like he was a hard nut to crack and kept going long after the questions had borne all the fruit they were going to bear. After a while with him there were no more questions and all I was working on were answers; answers to the questions that were my family’s dead bodies.
I am hoping that it takes as little time as this to take the rest of this organisation apart and I hope that I derive as much pleasure from weighing out the justice as I am here. Pulled fingernails, gouged eyes, slices of tongue, pulled teeth, sliced extremities all spiced with screams that an uneducated man might not expect from a trained soldier. All men scream when it comes down to it – when a professional gets to work there isn’t any place for a person to hide themselves, and I am a professional.

Cameraman 3

Click click click – outer perimeter motion detectors trigger rapidfire cameras, feeds push the images through smart refinement software and then they are shunted into image mapping programs, and from there into facial recognition. The machinery has to be there and working fast because what if he were to be asleep when someone tried to attack him, such as now?
The storm shutters had dropped as soon as the security system was awoken so no one outside would be able to see the flashing lights and the soundproofing contained the sound of the alarm.
Strunk was pissed – this shit happening a day after an availability broadcast meant that some fucker was not happy with the idea of paying for what he had. The silver lining was that it meant what he had was valuable. Still, not only was someone willing to launch an offensive against him, but they had used hired help and given out his location. Shit, he did a double-take – they had given out his location. Who the fuck had his location?
He was lucky because his data-uplink to a remote location had been completed ten minutes earlier. He pressed the blaze erase button that was rigged to all of his equipment; climbed into his portable rig and dropped out through one-time tunnel which was set to collapse as soon as he had exited it in a covered location two miles from this, his major base of operations.
He had places everywhere – someone in his line of work needed a string of safehouses because it was their business to piss people off and reap the rewards from that. He’d  have to be patient though – he wanted to make sure that he wasn’t followed because someone already knew way too much. When you are in the business of selling information you are even more guarded about your own – and you are better equipped than most to keep a tight lockdown on what gets out there.
He immediately suspected Harcut, but while Harcut wasn’t the bumbling oaf that most people pictured him as being, there was an element of luck to his current position, and the fact that he had enough muscle to back up his greed. Harcut had smarts but he couldn’t really be said to be possessed of brains and he was most definitely no kind of genius or anything.
By the end of the night he would be relocated and he would be back online. He had business to do – guaranteed money coming in. He needed to be able to pay now for the investigation he was going to have to do into who had double-crossed him.
He shot out into the warehouse, daylight exploding around him. This place had it’s own sealed system and would have told him if it wasn’t safe to use. He’d wait here a little while and then he would be on his way – never to come back to this place that had been home for so long.

Played Your Eyes 5: Lobby

Banks sat there in the lobby of the Hilton hotel, slouched in his chair, looking like a drunk that had stumbled in and taken up residence there instead of some doorway purely by chance. Asa had worked hard to try and get him to smarten himself up, but he was actively resistant towards any imposition of order.
Asa was trying to smooth over relations with the ARMY representative who was understandably not impressed. The guy had expressed an interest in walking up to Banks and shooting him in the head and it had taken a lot to talk him down.
‘What is this shit, Ms. Blumen? Granted, at the moment we need a representative of the established press to get our message out there and calm down the country, but looking at him, i have to ask, are we really that desperate? What the fuck is he supposed to be?’
‘He’s a world class reporter – he is used to reporting on war zones. He has lots of experience.’
‘Pull the other one – it has bells on it. He’s washed up – anyone can see it. Can he even string a sentence together?’
‘Oh, yes, he’s quite verbally dexterous.’
‘Christ, do I have a choice?’
‘I’m sure Mr Hent will find him admirably suited to the task.’
‘Ms. Blumen, no offence, but given how strongly you’re defending someone who looks like they have  a whole raft of problems that makes it a miracle they are still here, one has to wonder if you’re just being paid really well, or if maybe you’re on something even better than he is.’
‘Blumen! – Blumen! Can you come over here for a second? I am being hassled by some grubby little oik who claims to be working for this establishment. All I did was ask the stupid fucker for a drink and he starts trying to push me out the door. Blumen – sort this out or I’ll have your job!’
‘Ms. Blumen, I wonder, do you understand how delicate matters are at the moment? Do you believe that our efforts to stabilise the country are going to be helped any by having this drunken buffoon interviewing a representative of our cause? It shows that we are willing to accept your establishment’s insults and that we do not take ourselves seriously, and nothing could be further from the truth. If you were confronted by a situation such as this, what would you do?’
‘Mr Shirk, I can assure you, no matter how bad he looks, when you put him in front of a camera he will perform perfectly. He was apparently always like this before a show and no one ever suspected who saw him on TV.’
‘Apparently? Meaning you’ve not exactly seen this miraculous change occur? Tell, me Ms. Blumen, as a journalist, how reliable is hearsay? Are you really willing to gamble your future on this man?’
‘I don’t have a choice.’
‘Maybe. But we do.’
‘Do you? Aren’t we really in the same boat? Look, if Mr Hent does the interview and it goes wrong and he wants to shoot Banks through the head then who is really going to complain? I’ll be ruined and won’t have anything to lose. The interview can be effectively buried – no one loses.’
‘Hmm, a strangely persuasive argument, even if aall this jumping through hoops is not something I would ever haave wanted to be doing.’
‘One does what one must.’
‘Yes, of course. And I think you need to go and deal with your charge.’
‘Yeah, maybe you’re right.’