10-1 In Reader's Park

In my rookie year, 3 months in, I got doored on School Street. I was dispatched out of the Option office at 36 Bromfield; the job was a 44 School to 294 Wash— no shit, two blocks, literally around the corner. Traffic was tight and flowing, with every parking space filled. It wasn't a commercial zone back then, it was metered parking. The car was an older BMW, and the door just cleared my front wheel as it swung open. I went up and over through the window, and landed with the showering glass on my back on the other side. The whole thing was a mess, and I still have a piece of glass in my head for it, but this is really just the background for this other story I wanted to tell...

When I was working for Presto doing airline ticket runs, it was in the same office that Option had vacated at 36 Bromfield. Dispatch was in the front room, and we would hang out in the back between runs. I think everyone smoked in this office; we definitely blew bones in the stairwell. It was usually Spencer— when Minuteman closed their office down the hall of 36, he bought their list and ran Go-Go, and did the best art in the third floor bathroom— and Paul Tree from Think Tree, and I. Every once in while Billy Wig from Hell Toupee would be special guest star riding for Spence.

I think Paul worked for Central. They were a driver-based company from out of town, and he had never met them. He was their only biker, and they had an ever-present walker named Nancy. Nancy looked like an aged hippy, dressed in well-worn coats and crocheted hats, was always over-dressed for the weather but was always there regardless of what it was doing. She was a fixture and a curiosity.

The story I got from Paul went something like this; Nancy lived with a Central driver named Shanti in a trailer somewhere. I heard that he didn't pay taxes and didn't use banks, like he had all his money in cash in mason jars somewhere, and was pretty vocal about his politics. Mid-'90s 'off the grid' type. I knew of Shanti and didn't really care for him, he'd occasionally try to muscle-in on some courier related event, and his mannerisms were really off-putting.

So anyway, this is a few years later from that dooring as a rookie, and I'm going down School, I forget where to, but traffic's rolling, and I see Shanti, cracking the door of his parked shit-filled shitbox looking to the back up the hill. We met eyes, he saw me coming,.. and he still opened his door. The door hit my right hand, I knew immediately it was cracked somehow, but not how bad. I wasn't knocked down, I had strangely suspected he would fuck me, adjusted foot down, and dismounted.

I was totally astonished he had done it, but felt some personal blame for even trusting him. He looked, he was a driver, he knew the risks as much as I. I mean he fucking looked, as a driver should reflexively, and still did it. Maybe I'm giving the world too much credit to think a person wouldn't do that; show some consideration and then consider otherwise. But this person was Shanti.

The arguing started and moved over the curb and into the park. I don't know what stupid stuff was said, I just remember him with his greasy, ill-fitting glasses, and puffy, blue down jacket that just added to his bulk. He had a Jerry Brown pin on his jacket, and I saw this as a clear omen I was going to get nowhere with this entire incident.

I remember him saying shit like, "I thought you could make it," and this excused his failed attempt at judging if he should fling his door open into moving traffic.

When I said my hand was likely broken— I've had enough broken ones to know— he say, "You can't sue me; I don't have insurance." I was just amazed at his lack of any kind understanding, any kind of empathy, or desire to make it right. I was so stunned, I couldn't be pissed off. We knew each other, traveled in the same circle, he was a Jerry Brown supporter, and so,.. what the fuck?

This kind of back-and-forth went on for a short minute, and suddenly there's this big, curvy hippy girl stepping up. She's kind of cute though, really should've been wearing a bra, and starts chicken-necking. "Yo! Dude! I saw the whole thing! I'll show up in court and be a witness! Let's sue him!" She's super animated and jiggling and putting on that act traveler kids have.

I make an effort to calm her down enough to get back at getting no where with Shanti, and I get hit in my upper left arm from my blind-side. I turn and this really old Beacon Hill-type guy in too much tweed has just hit me with his cane and is shaking it the air at me, and yells with spittle flying, "You rotten bastard on a bike! You got what you deserved!"

I just looked at the old man with his cane and rumpled tweed, then the hippy chick and her boobs, then Shanti squinting through his glasses. I became calm and clear-headed and entirely understood what was going on and what I had to do. 

"All you people are so fucked up," I said as I rode away to make my next drop.

Beautiful silence

Editor's note: This is a traditional minimalist shake-n-bake hill-stomp number usually played with a 10-key concertina and a Roland MC-303. It was reportedly heard during a recent visit to a rustic laboratory while traveling through the Appalachia when the researcher happened to come across this porch performance.

Beautiful silence
How i miss you
Now that you
Are gone

Left me here
All alone
With my mind
And this song

Beautiful silence
Before you were broken
It was like that moment
When the day broke in
And she banished blessed dawn
But it was always that moment
the whole day long

Beautiful silence
How i miss you
Now that you
Are gone

Never leave me here
Again alone
With my mind
For this long

Recently Uncovered Revolutionary War Document Featured In An Omnific Anthology— M'Lady's Secret Service

Taking Liberties: A Yankee Doodle Dandy Erotic Anthology

A recent contribution to Comin' Up Holdin' Darts by the grand-daughter of Vivian Rider called M'Lady's Secret Service has been published in an anthology put out by Omnific Publishing. Pick it up before the King suppresses it for sedition...

Route Seventy-three; 'Meet me at da Dunkins'

there's this couple
who ride my bus
they look like
they're serious pillheads
opiates and benzos
they are probably
much older then they look
but they've been together
a long time
you can tell
because they
look so much alike
they have the same expression
all the time
their faces are
deeply creased and
chaotic dashed lines
mar everywhere else
the skin looks like
it is about to slide
off their skulls
their eyelids hang
like thick heavy awnings
i've never seen
their eyes open
just squinting enough
to scratch tickets
or screw with an old phone
their mouths share
the same grim frown
i've never seen
if they have teeth but
they have too much cheek
it hangs loose on the sides
while their neck skin
is shrinkwrapped
under their jaws
they have the same
nasal raspy whine
but his is a tone
or two lower
they always wear shapeless
boston sports fan
activewear
and faded baggy unisex jeans
their slouching posture
makes their bodies look like
they are about to
slide off their Selves
so much do they look alike
they both wear a lot of
cheap yellow gold
he has big ink blots for tattoos
the high-dollar tickets
they scratch
have odds of 1 : 8.33
for even money
[i looked it up]
they mumble to themselves
or each other
while they scratch them
their phone conversations
are insane
like today it was only her
i sat two seats away
she fiddled with an
old junk phone
it rang and she answered it
hello
hello
hello
hello
each time her tone was
more confused and irritated
a question to the void
i wondered how it
would be to
live like that
two stops before
the train station
she made a call
every thing she said
was a loud confused question
lynn
hello
lynn
i'm almost dere
where d'ya
where d'ya wanna ta meet me
i'm on da bus
almost ta hahvahd
da seventie-tree
at da station
what
what
yur goin in an out
yur goin
i'm almost at da tunnel
where
where
mmm
ah
da dunkins
da dunkins
mmm
by da trains
da dunkins by da trains
downstayahs
okay
i'll be dere
da dunkins by da trains
a few min
i'm going down da tunnel now
i'll be right dere
yeh
bye
yeh
oink-ok
bye
when i got off the bus
i had to get away from her
as fast as i could
while waiting to pay my fare
in the station by the trains
i looked over at the dunkins
lynn was there
dirty blond hair
pulled back
in a tight ponytail
with matching grey
baggy sweatpants and shirt
and immaculate white sneakers

Maturation of Wine || Trans. by L.S. Todt:

Trans. by L.S. Todt:

Note to the Editors. While at the farmsale of a local vintner, I came across a small and curious volume in a box of old books. The entire book was in Old French, with the above title. The first part was a botanical guide to different types of grapes for wine, and the second was concerned with the process of blending and ageing them. The third seemed to be a fragment of a novel entitled "Imperator Du Vin." I believe this translation would be of interest to your readers.

It is with great sorrow and desolation that I, Tria Oculo, scribe to my Liege, tell of His last days. It was my news of the bearded Nazarene that had stricken him with that perpetual ennui of the day after. It was I who provoked in Him, The Deep Sounder, the desire to return to Thebes. I have forsaken my own savoir and Gentle Master.

He who saved me, a Sacred Virgin of Naxos, from the invading Herculi. Those infidels who violated me, rendering mute and deaf. It was Bacchus, the Careless Lord, whom I saved and committed to another realm

Since the massacre of his followers and Constantine’s conversion of the Empire to the Christ, we had taken refuge the deserted estate of a bankrupt vintner in Illyricum. That land, as much of the Empire had ceased to be fertile. The numbers of my Lord's worshiper's had dwindled, it was only a few who declared their devotion, and still it was only convenient for them to do so.

There was Debacchus, that whimpering simp of ill-prudus, who was the ungrateful son of my Liege and an acolyte of Medea. He whom the Father of Liberty did take charge over to avoid suit of paternity and palimony from the causidicus. Those are dark days when a God can be sued.

And Sardia Licentia, whom Sapho's high priestess did lure down from the Caucus range with a trail of oysters and mussels, to a boat filled with lobsters and crabs and, set sail for Lesbos. There she was drafted into service, and achieved the rank of Sergeant-at-Arms. However having hunted all the stags and trapped all the ganders of that isle she fell victim to Diana's jealousy, and she was forced to wander as the eternal huntress. Having been intrigued with the strength and fierceness of the Bacchanals, particularly my Liege’s own aunts, she was mercenaried as His protector.

By far His Most Fidelus was Bababalouk, the Great Dark Giant of Tremendous Girth, the former Emperor of Sudan, who was enslaved by the Perses and made a eunuch for their petty harems. Meus Rex did find him in the woods, having escaped and suffering fron several wounds in the belly from their scimitars. The oil that oozed from his avulsions was tapped into our empty lamps, which lit the many nights he was nursed to health with grapes and olives. Bababalouk’s devotion never wavered and for this Bacchus frequently restored him to his former virilitas.

The Maenads, those most mysterious of spirits, are those who always accompany and herald Him. Some say they are simulacra of the nurses of Jove's Most Pious Bastard, to others they are his incarnated aunts, the daughters of Cadmus. It is they who shine in the drunken maid's eye. Their form is ever shifting, their number unknown, both befit their fancy. Sometimes they are swarm of thighs and breasts, of carameled hair, kohled eyelids, and hungry mouths. Other times, as then upon our departure from that refuge in the hills, they took the shape of five Egyptian slave girls with tibae and sistrum, accompanied by a peacock and his hen who with their music they incited into a mating dance.

Bacchus' litter was supported by a company of statues of soldiers from the court of Pluto, who in flesh were victims of the Gorgon's, gaze. They had been reanimated for divine attention, and many were missing noses, heads or arms lost in faithful service.

We had journeyed far in the Dalmatian Mountains. into the glowing hills of Uranium, whose realm was governed by Regina Cerratonium. She was a barren queen who desired a great son to rule over her decrepit kingdom. All the young men had expired from exhaustion from her wanton, yet futile desire. Those that were virile enough to survive the crush of her great thighs, had paid for their efforts of spilling their seed into her broken womb with their heads. Her court now depleted, she took audience only with the vermin that proliferated in great abundance. She greatly admired these rats, for their ability to reproduce, and hoped vainly that their fertility would somehow relieve her of her great desire.

She never left her bed, a great walled eiderdown sunken in the middle of her chambers, and let these rodents scurry freely about in her presence. She cooed to them and spoke soft and lovingly, declaring them her children.

Sister Autumnal by Charlotte Praecox Regina

Sister Autumnal by Charlotte Praecox Regina

Sister Autumnal
you of equal night
how you blush
in the weary hour
of fading & lighted touches
which push us beneath
quilted bed clothes
embroidered
with emblazoned
Maples & Elms
with lips stained
by Blackberries,
your nape
smells of greened Apples
you bring me deeper
to embrace
this dark & great slumber

Rich October Burn

rich October burn,
where the Sun plays
across the face like
a lover's smile
upon parting.
I turn and hold the
door from closing
and kiss her as it's ajar.
I touch her crotch
and she laughs and
leans on the door
harder which closes
yielding to my too
gentle pressure.
door latch,
and down the stairs,
my heart bounces
and out onto the street.

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A Day In the Half-life

To the reader: A special agent to a federal bureau, left this file at the apartment of an avid fan, who then submitted it to us, with you in mind.

He was ideology and I was methodology.  

This is hardly a confessional. It is not a rail or rant. Neither William Chadwick nor I are weird beardos hunkered down in the woods. Nor are we gun-toting white power right-wingers. This is to prove how our project failed due to the very elements we were compelled to eradicate; the sedentary incompetence that has infected this country.

I arrived at Logan Airport in Boston late, due to fog, one morning last September. My only luggage was carry-on, a briefcase containing a neutron bomb that would wipe out the Greater Boston Area up to the Raytheon plant in Wilmington. I wasn’t nervous about the time, once I made the drop I had to catch a flight to St Martin by 3:30. At 5:30, in rush hour traffic, atonement would be made.

Chadwick and I went to MIT together & graduated in 1949, both with Master’s degrees in physics. He was the beautiful bastard, and I the awkward Wunderkind. He was the idea man, and I the one who made the ideas real. He got the gorgeous women, and I got their frumpy friends. He was ideology and I was methodology.

We were in school during the war. Chadwick’s father, who was inspirational to us both, sympathized with the Fascists in the face of the Communist agenda in America. The Cold War reinforced this sentiment in our minds; there was none of our hearts involved. It was this patriarch who made me aware that the underclasses must be put down and their proliferation halted.

I took a cab from the airport and had driver, a Caribbean, drop me off at Harrison and Stuart, in the middle of Chinatown, in what’s referred to as the Combat Zone. I wanted to soak up the filth, and clear my mind before the big event. I started walking west, toward the Back Bay, where the drop zone was.

At the New England Medical Center, I passed mothers holding bald children whose pallor was green. I grinned, thinking, “Soon your cancer will be burned out.”

The two of us built bombs in California. We always worked for the government, in some capacity, up until the eighties. Because of cutbacks, I then began to do consultations for nuclear medicine. The crowning moment in my career was a speech delivered to the American Oncological Society.

“Individuals are the rebel cells. Affecting all others. They metastasize against society.” With this future credo already entrenched, business was good through the sixties. As the decade closed, the sympathies toward a Free Burn Society improved. The big guns wavered from outward to in.

From Rutherford’s early experiments to Cockcroft’s and Wilson’s, the mission was clear: to accelerate the human race to a singular and pure destiny. But these men of the highest ideals, only thinking in platitudes amongst the clouds, had no awareness of the glutting masses, which labored, but prevented this flight from even beginning.

Chadwick and I were the medium through which these lofty dreams were to be made real, or at least truly begun.

But indeed, today it had begun.

“Though even as a body fights a foreign infection from without, how does one amass an army to fight against those most lethal to the self, the enemy within, soldiers from the order of their own?

“Nothing is more dangerous or crippling than a revolution from inside the home ranks. But occupation need not be taken battle by battle. But, by the displacement of sheer numbers using up too many resources.

“Case in point, the supposed invasion of barbarian hordes. The Eastern and Northern Europeans tribes’ progress into the Mediterranean region was recorded by those whose land was taken up by the uncivilized brutes. These brutes, however, had no written language to record their own migrations. Thus the record is one-sided.

“They chose to have only an oral history, not for lack of advancement, but for higher ideals. The barbarians chose not to develop a written language, because in their own thinking, that would lead to a sedentary populace, which leads to kings and tyranny.

As we are earthbound by the laws of physics, without
these laws we would have no hope of ever lifting off it.

“They chose personal freedom over civil order, a choice that still divides this world today. And the hardest choice for any man.

“Order cannot be seen as unhealthy or unfree. As we are earthbound by the laws of physics, without these laws we would have no hope of ever lifting off it. As a body becomes more complex, more order must be enforced, or the system comes in conflict, and a fugue ensues resulting in cannibalism of the self.”

I walked swiftly over the Harrison Street Bridge, spanning across the expressway. The wind was cutting. Passing the Boston Herald, I thought of how the paper declined into a mere tabloid, yet tried to maintain its status quo, working-class roots. Its lies were thinner than its third page. The liberalist Globe wasn’t much better.

The area was desolate now. Some rummies collected like trash in the wind. In an alcove, one pushed another while the others yelled. He reeled around, drunken, urinating and stumbling. Barely breaking his fall, he leaned on the trunk of a car, urine still cascading onto the middle of the sidewalk. The scent of his sick, fetid water knifed along with the wind.

I made my way onto Appleton Street, and took a left onto Clarendon, and soon was in the now eclectic South End neighborhood.

Three fourteen year olds offered, mostly jokingly, to sell me heroin and then threatened to “kick the shit out of me.” A bug-eyed woman, face speckled with sores, said she’d “suck me for a rock.” The fact that I, a 73 year-old scientist, could be a part of their universe seemed to their bleary perceptions, perfectly normal.

Two men window shopped, oohing at a feathered dress, and then looked on into a shop that body pierced. They held hands, and as I walked by, one reflexively and openly stroked the other’s buttocks.

Two blocks down Columbus, I hooked a right onto Exeter, for a short walk to the Back Bay. The drop zone, the Prudential Building, had been bobbing and weaving across the rooftops.

To Be Holding the Eye

To the reader: A federal coroner was in town for the weekend recently. She was caught short with a steep bar tab. The editors were only too happy to help out, and received this manuscript as a token of gratitude.

In terror I... beheld the living machines
of my mates standing before me.

In 1954 there was an atomic test that was part of Castle Project. It was a 13.5 megaton device called Yankee Shot, and was discharged somewhere in the Pacific Proving Ground. That it happened, of course, is of some importance, but for the sake of my story it is but one brief shining silent instant.

I was a Radio Engineer for the Navy. We were to witness the blast topside, standing at attention, with a hand covering our eyes, in some grim salute. At the time of the blast, for a frightful moment I could see not only the bones in my hands, but the network of nerves and blood coursing through it. In terror I dropped it from my face, and beheld the living machines of my mates standing before me.

I was dispatched to one of the decommissioned vessels that had remained afloat, to test the electronic equipment. This test was intended to be done on merely a pass-or-fail basis, the idea was to get in and then get out fast before things got too hot.

My preliminary testing showed that most of the gear's internal resistance had dropped to zero. This, of course, was impossible, but even my meters were cased in lead, so I trusted the reading.

I decided to extend my stay to pursue this theory, as I was bucking for a commission and transfer. In the middle of my testing, I heard a squad hit the deck hard, and quickly descend the stairs.

"Jumpin' Jay-hoo Mister! Ain't your brain getting too hot down here?" It was Commodore Bracken, an egghead, and some MPs.

"Sir, no sir. I was running some tests on the suspected zero internal resistance of the radio equipment, sir."

"Well sir, you can suspect your ass is going to experience some zero internal resistance with my boot if it doesn't get topside stat."

"No, let him speak." The egghead hissed like a goose in his white protective gear. He was the only one of us decked out for the holiday. As Bracken glared at him, the ever helpful MPs roughed me up the steps.

Anyway, after getting out of a failed career in the Navy, I wound up repairing appliances for some slave-driving company in Poughkeepsie. I had some innate knowledge in the field of fixing washing machines, refrigerators, and dishwashers. I'd just look them over, make some polite chit-chat, and be outdoors, fending off the appreciative thanks of bored homemakers.

Some portion of the good sense of duty that I had managed to glean from the Navy kept me pretty square until about the summer of '66.

I was at some place on Lawndale, which was inhabited by the wife of some pawn-broker, by the look of all the gold dripping off her. She answered the door draped the doily from the end-table, and was smoking a 120mm cigarette whose last half was stained red with lipstick.

I was hungry and grumpy in the humid afternoon, with donuts and coffee straining in my abdominal cavity. I was going to play this one.

"Howdy, ma'm."

Disinterest.

"Mighty hot today."

Apathy.

"What's the problem?" Entering the kitchen, I saw it was the fridge and only a fuse at that.

"Fridge." She said, squinting through cobalt eye-shadow. "Want a drink?" She was a bit puckered.

"That would be mighty kind of you." I palmed a 600 amp cartridge in one hand. Pulling out the appliance out a few inches, I popped the dead fuse out, and slipped in the new one. It hummed alive.

"Yay..." she intoned flatly, handing me a Bloody Mary. "My husband...," she said the word with disdain, "...will be very happy. Cheapprick!"

She trotted back to the counter, boozy on high heels, and put her big ass up on top of it. She fished out another cigarette while giving me a kind of "get to work" look.

"Will your husband be home soon to thank me?" My professional pride was hurt. I stood and began unzipping my coveralls, which were older than me, and stank of sewage.

She stuck most of the butt down her throat and sucked hard. The pigments in her heavily painted face irradiated, glowing under the sudden flush of blood in her heat.

"He told me to thank you myself."

Peckman's Model

to the reader: Following is a copy of the transcript from a recent police interrogation. It fell out of the pocket of a local detective who was taking a cab ride home to his wife, after a long night on the town. The cabbie was nice enough to send it our way. The questions have been edited out.

I first met Richard Peckman when we were bike couriers. We called him Peck, Heck, Hecky, Pecky. Called him Pecker behind his back. We called him Heck after Richard Hell, because he was such a dark son-of-a-bitch sometimes.

He had gotten a Multi-Media Art degree, and worked as a messenger while getting a Master's in some sort of Bio-chemical Engineering thing. He did it pretty slow, it took him a long time. We were pretty good friends for a time, but then he met Molly. Molly Sindretta. With an “S”, I think.

He had just graduated, and he was acting like some golden boy. He was high out of his tree. We had done some partying while he was in school, but this was like all-natural, through the roof. I don't blame him, we lived like dirty dogs for years, we were always filthy then. (Laughter) Yeah, thanks pork-pie.

I was there when they met, him and Molly, that was a wild night. I was there with some other people, the place was packed. I don't know, some summer... I don't know which year, I was hammered.

Peck comes down to bitch someone out, I forget who or why. Had a shot, did his bitching, and went off to the back of the bar, by himself and nursed a beer. I had seen Molly earlier, across the way, sitting like the ice princess she is, or was. I couldn't get anything going with her, never could on the other times I'd seen her there.

I see her look at Peck though, and he catches it, and goes limp like a goose with a rung neck. I see him rolling gears in his head, like he's trying to work up to chatting her, like he always had to. He makes like he's going to, but I know he's just going to get another shot. She wags and curls a finger, and points to the seat next to her, and like a fool, he sits down. He never stopped doing whatever that itchy finger required.

Anyway I start seeing him rarely, if ever, and he's always got some big ideas, real hare-brained stuff. She's got a Fine Arts degree and they do some joint art projects, or some such thing, together. I never understood the stuff, it was way over my head.

They get this gallery going down on Pittsburgh Street. Yeah, where you busted up the party tonight, where you busted me. That was the chick’s pot, not mine… The bassist from the punk band… I thought I'd get lucky, I don't know… What’s the matter with her?... You don’t know that!...

Anyway, they hook some freaky patron, some French faggot, and get offered some wacky gig in Paris. The get married before they go, kind of elope. Too good to be true? That's right, her hooks were in him so hard, so quick.

Next time I see him in is in the bar… Yeah, the same one… Well I guess you'll always know where to find me then… To let you know that that cheap tie doesn't go with that even cheaper suit.

I see him in the bar and he looks worked… Not more than a year-and-a-half ago. Molly's left him and he's not too clear on why. He looks like hell, like he's taken it real hard. And he admits it too, "but not to worry" because he's got some big stuff rolling. I don't hear from him for a long time.

I was down on Pittsburgh awhile ago… Like six months ago… Making a drop at some photographer's place in that same building… Yeah, that's him… Yeah, in Peck's building.

I see Peck's name on the mailbox, so I drop in on him, ring his bell. And he looks worse than when I last saw him…

Invocation of an One-legged Afghani Bike Messenger Too High to Get Home

I humbly implore thee Persian overseer
Máh, twister of months,
Why are you so to our dear cousin Luna?
You encourage her to fullness
And drop her like a coin into darkness.
You are obviously an angel for no man
Would wax a woman so, to let
Her wane alone in the night.
Don't you know how many, commands,
Curses, contracts, cocks & cunts have 
Been mouthed in supplication, in her presence,
In her honor, in her dull and unwinking glory?
I ask then sir, please take a gentle hand to my fair mistress,
And turn her to a whole form to shine
Through the gauzy night, and lay bare
The flesh of the Earth, so I may travel
Safely to my pallet beneath a window into
which her arms do fall and lick.