APALEENA4

In tha ninth canticle uv Dante’s hell, Dis, oar tha Devil, stands ovarabuv souls stukfast in tha ice, thair eyes frozen shut frum thair unrepentant teers. Virgil an Dante clime thair whey up tha Devil’s bode an cum out at tha base uv mownt purgatore. Beatrice aweights Dante’s arrivel on tha top of mownt paradisio, whair tha two will unite an live in peece an harmone for tha rest uv thair mortil lives. An tha crows cawcawcawing; an tha blind man with tha whitestik an tha grey beerd slashing his whey throo tha traffic an up onta tha curb whair he werks his whey doown tha sidewak spitting obsenitees at no one in partikular. Mi sweet Dulcinea throo whoos eyes I see tha beute uv tha cuntreside an tha splendor uv tha oshunsdeep.
"For the love of Christ Almighty," sayd Humbert, "things just don’t appear to be getting any clearer for the three of you. Its usually at this point, this juncture in the conversation, that I try to infuse the dialogue with a bit of levity. Well, that doesn’t seem to be working; in fact, I’d say its having the opposite effect: its pushed you all into a state of mute idiocy, its coloured the rouge in your cheeks with a pasty, yellow jaundice that seems to be in some violation of the Geneva Convention." Humbert cleerd his throoat and continued. "And, might I be so bold as to add: there seems to be a pox or a malnutrition of the brain at work here. Dull. That’s the word I’m looking for: dull and offensive. Dull and repetitious. Dull and boring." Mulli gain reeched for tha little dug, wove his fingrs aroound it’s nek, an tried to strangle tha poour littl creetur. Befour he coould shake tha living hell out of it, Murphy jumpt frum his seet, and, pushing heevile agenst Mulli gain’s bak, managed ta loosen his grip frum aroound tha dug’s throot. "For the love of God," cryed Murphy. "The man is definitly insane." He pulld tha dug by it’s hindlegs an dragged it acrost tha floor. Tha dug, it’s eyes red with feer, pushed it’s arsebottum agenst tha throorug in tha middle uv tha reum, an expelled a snoutful uv baconrindair.
An tha goreholes an tha stoones shuttight his eyes frum seeing past his own nose beyawnd this an that an hav cawse for concern wen tha moarning lite flushes tha ski an azyour bloo. An she had a tendence to put needulls in her rms. In the crook uv her lbo just below tha bicept whair tha skin an tissu is tessellated an chikenscratchd with trakmarks; whair tha bloodeed scimshaw an brewsing damages tha integrete uv tha rm itself. What mure can one say? An tha tat-tat-tat; tha crowcalls an tha medo in fullbloom on a laze Saturday afternewn. An Apaleena wild an feral laynaboout on tha sende shyourline with a barrowfull uv apples and cuntful uv plums. Scritch-scratch; tha eenie little sqwerl berying nuts in tha softmudde grund. Murphy an Mulli gain upan aboout on a sunbleecht morning on a winde wetherd day. Young Werther: gunshout woound ta tha hede. Picasso: paynting brush up tha bifirkashun. What mure can one say? Eye am tha living proof uv it all; eye’m tha rejoinder an tha grammeruv itall. Noonevr anuther like tha lest one. That one came too damnd close ta finishing us alloff: had me by tha nek, a garritting and a twisting an tha thums pressed like knots ita meye throoat.
Her mowth lookd like it had been torn inta her face; a rent, a pulpe redmass uv tissu and teeth correcting tha ovarbite uv her jaw. Lips brewzed an scard; no reum for a passhunate kiss; a tongu set cruked in tha dorm uv her mouth, tha rezult uv a violent union uv bone an teeth that had left her disfigyourd an hungre. A crewd manner uv things this fractyourd youth decries. A poor an lonele lifestile that nevr quite manages ta be a life atall. An tha oringe fitcaps an tha rubberhose that mends togethar tha last oppertoonite ta get evrthing rite as rain. Thair is no compromize: its all or nothing. Thair is no sommer rain: its all or evrething. Adinfinitum. For tha luv uv God, no nevr agen; nevr.
Humbert’s wife an chilldren wair killd in a fier that levelld tha hoouse and burnt until tha ski ternd blak. His wife tryd ta gather up tha chilldren an wrap them in a blankit, but tha smooke an flames wair too powerful an tha three uv them wair burnt beyoond rekognishun. Humbert blamed himself for thair deaths, an nevar quite rekoverd frum it; he wuz a skellitell reminder that God oftin looses trak uv those he luvs. Five yeers had passd, an Humbert wuz stil consumed with greef. He took to tha bottle like a drownding man; he drank until tha pain wuz managable; he drank to forget an to remembr that he had no control ovar that past, and nothing to look forwerd ta in tha future. Humbert left tha villedge he wuz born in, an set out for tha mountins that scuplpted tha forest abuv tha skiline. In tha wintr, humbert livd in tha moouth uv a cave whair he had fashund a tarplolin with lengths uv greenwood an securd tha leeside with cedarbows. He trapt what little food he reqwired, an ate berreers an variade mushreums that gruw in abundence on tha darkwet forest floor. Wen he had okashun to, he would kill a wild pig an slawter it with a makeshift knife that he had constructed outuv slate an bone.
He mayor maynot be awere that this is tha lest chence he’ll evr have for cumming to sum cunclushun aboout whatevr it is he happins ta be involvd in at tha momint: this time an in this order uv things so randum an fleeting. An a rashun uv hope in a hopeless werld. An Humbert at peece with himself; beeing awere that tha next time could be tha vere last. Tha next remembr that may spell tha last memoree uv itall. Pigsnout an hedecheeze an tha werm treckle duwn yer throoat tha seems ta cleer awey tha rasping an strep. An ewe move in tha shadoos uv tha nite, hunting for apray tha eludes it’s predature. An ewe give it one lest chance befour tha air thikens an yer lungs swell up like a corpse blooated with sowerdeath. An for tha Lord Allmitee, this has ta be tha lest of it; thairs nomure time left ta get tha cipher rite; nomure reum fer anuthar misstake. Thair is no othar chance; no othar weyout.
Humbert constructd a dam across tha mouth uv tha river with straw an fallen trees an raspberrethorns an sutured it alltogethar with mud an clay. He drew his watr frum tha resevoir that built up naturalle behind tha dam. Tha watr wuz cool an cleer an Humbert weighed his steps carefulle wen crossing tha shorestep aroound tha dam. He had once fallen beeside tha resevoir an lay faceduwn in tha mud that curried tha groound whair a bruwnrabbit took to drink. On okashun Humbert wood take a bath in tha resevoir, rubbing his bode raw with sand an lindinbows; scraping cleen his face with his knife an stiking twigs inta tha conch uv his ears ta cleen outthe wax. Tha grait stand uv cedars and pine, uv basswood an birch; tha larch and tha hardwoods like maple an oak that canopeed tha forest an keptin tha cool morning air trapt beneeth it’s foliage. Nowair is thair anewair wair ewe can simple fall outuv tha werld an land sumwair othr tha wair ewe r.
Tha werld is a radum series uv reoccuring events. Tha werld is all percepshun an imagining. Tha werld, as we know it, is a simple proposishun that belays tha fundamentells uv hier mathamatics. Thair is no logical truth: evrthing is conjecture; nothing is real. Our percepshun uv tha werld is what we extend inta infinit space. Thair r no questyouns, onle halftruths. Humbert lives in a werld bereft uv simbolick realite. He is a simple extenshun uv a possibilite that may or may not be undarstood in spaceshall or temporal terms. Wittgenstein wood be proud. Russell wood be his ewesual petulant self. Alfred North Whitehead wood, no doubt, see Wittgenstein’s proposishuns as rot and Russells analytik posturing as mathamatically unsound. Ryle wood dispell tha noshun uv tha ‘ghost in tha machine’, and Strawson wood, without reservashuns, talk aboout tha possibilite uv a purele auditore metafisical universe.
Incrypted in tha toom uv tha bode; life’s lest rale agenst death. Tha sik an befould; tha destitoot an tha irrashunal Wenevr thair rizes a threat in tha moorning ski, thair will appeer a portend that will cleense awey tha mukansewer uv this werld. A talisman, uvsorts; a new beginning. Tha olid stench uv rotting carryon; tha stark remindr that life, itself, is limited ta one anuthar breath: nothing as curius as a startld look or a johndace smile on a sorroridden face. Joyce: wombfruit. Molly Bloom. Talmud an Bible: tha blind leeding tha blind. Religun fer tha masses; inta this sic soul a breath uv life; inta this twisted mind a prattle uv thout. Ad infinitum. (Bak flattened agenst metal tabull; stem uv tha needull sharp in tha rm; a cathitor that burns an pisses; noman’s land.) Pleese Father, mi soul ta take; deliver us frum eville, for Thine is tha Kingdum, forevr an evr. Amen.
Apaleena nevr had ane parents. She wuz an orfin frum tha start; a bundle uv waxcloth an tenshun; her tinee bode curld up inta a clove; her smal blooeyes brite an seerching. Those who had been her parints, the muther that conceeved her and tha fathur that conceeved with her muther, had left her on tha footstep uv a cottege in tha sprucewoods that ran across frum tha rill an up along tha sande rivur bank that separated tha pastyourland frum tha trees. She remembrs a small dog with a chayn aroound it’s nek pulling at tha corner uv her blanket, its yello teeth white with slaver, it’s eyes blak as nite an crossed inta tha mass uv it’s hede. She remembrs two bodes, a man and a womuns; tha man picking her up an cradling her in the basket uv his strong rms. She can think bak ta tha smell uv tha man an womun, tha oder uv glands an sweat glistening undar thair rmpits; tha camafore an cinamun, tha sweetness uv flowrs an tha hardstench uv bodes aftir werk. Apaleena, tho an orfin, had a man and a womun that took her in as thair own; thay fed her frum a goats teat an rubbed smooth oils and powdrs inta her skin. Thay stayed by her wen she cryd at nite an comfurted her wen tha thundar an wind pounded up agenst tha sides uv tha cottige like angre ghosts cum to reclaim what wuz ritefulle thairs. She had lived with this cupal until she wuz fifteen, than moved on in seerch uv her birth parints, an tha reesuns why they had left her on that footstep that dey fifteen yeers ago. She wuz drivin by an obsession that forced her ta continu her seerch long aftar tha scent had faded. In an along this and then, Apaleena felt tha urge ta travel, an in doing so, to see whatever she could uv tha werld. She went in seerch uv answers, not sure uv what she’d find; not certain that she wanted what she’d find, and unsure if thair actuale wuz anething out thair; a part uv her, a peece uv tha puzzle that had becum her life. It wuz eight yeers later, after crossing tha bredth an depth uv a werld she had onle red about in books, that she settled in ta tha cottige in tha forest with Mulli gain and Murphy an a blak an brouwn dog with a ropecoil tail an an appetite for bacunrind an sausage fat.
Apaleena had takn a vow uv uncleensliness an stopped warshing her hair when she wuz 23 years old. It curld an raked aroound tha crown uv her hede; it whorled an crenolated, like crumpld paper; it stuk outat angles to her forehede an tangled beneeth her collarbone; her hair wuz a thing initself; a separate entite, uv sorts. Apaleena’s furst menstrashun wuz hard an unyeelding; clots uv blood formed on tha fine hairs of her thighs, her vagina lips felt bitten an stung; and thair wuz a bitter, acrid taste in her mouth, like metal. ( I saw Lolita on tha bus agen todey. Her rms wair cleen uv tracmarks an tha brewsing that generalle appeerd on tha crook uv her elbo an rm had faded ta a soft bloo. She nevr once looked in mi direcshun; her eyes wair fixd on tha bak uv tha hede uv tha purson in front uv her, who had on a crepepaper hat, resting agents what looked like an ear shorn frum its pulpit. I haven’t thout much aboout her in tha last little while, mi mind has been on othr things: on Humbert and Apaleena; Mulli gain and Murphy; on tha lack uv perspakuite that seems ta foster tha images in mi thouts.) Apaleena felt tha chill uv womanhood when she wuz 12 years-old. The woman and tha man that had taken her in as thair own, ministerd to her needs an supplied her with what little support they wair able to marshal between themselves. The woman, upon discuvering that Apaleena had started her period, warshed her skirt an underclothes in vinager an hung them in tha bakshed whair she an the man kept thair chikens an a three-legged dog with pitchblak eyes an a trunkated blak tail that seemed ta be in constant activite.
Mulli gain movd towerds tha windo and opind tha latch; a swell uv werm afternoon air cut across tha reum an up agenst tha wall by tha shavinmirrer an out tha othur windo behind tha sink an toylet. Evereone but Milli gain, who wuz busee looking out tha windo, wair looking ovar abuv thair hedes at a line uv ants that had werked thair wey up along tha wall an onto tha ceeling. One uv tha ants cut ta tha left uv tha line an wuz werking it’s wey doown tha wall by tha sink. "They must certainly be army ants," sayd Murphy. "Why army ants?" askd Apaleena. "Because their walking in a straight line, one after the other." Mulli gain, having rotated his bode aroound ta face tha othars, sayd, "How tha hell do you know that their army ants?" Murphy rubbed tha callus uv his hand across his face, and smyled. "I just know. That’s all." Apaleena, feeling tha need ta make sense uv it all, added, "They’re fighting ants, you can tell from the way they all line up in a row and march along one behind the other." Humbert let out a snort uv air an smyled. He ran his thum along tha ridge uv his lower lip, whair a string uv spittle had attachd itself to tha whiskers on his chin, an rose slowle frum his chair. "Those, ladies and gentlemen, are worker ants, not army ants." "What’s tha difference," inquird Murphy. Humbert gestikulated with his right hand, tha clew uv his fingers twisted with reumatizm, an sayd, "Worker ants follow each other in a straight line, the variance of which never reconfigures, unless there is a atmospheric change which requires of the ants that they swing to one side-be that the left or the right, from front to back-and, in doing so, reacclimatize themselves to the change in atmospheric pressure." Humbert pawsed ta collect his breath, an continud. "I suggest that you all, and you too mister," he sayd, poynting directle at Mulli gain, "get your collective acts together and fix something for dinner." "But what about the army ants?" askd Murphy. "The army ant," Humbert sayd, "parades in a four-deep line, the last ant making sure that they don’t get attack from the flank, and the two ants at the front, checking the terrain for spider’s webs and snake holes, and, by this manner, they march from one local to another relatively free of physical conflict and environmental disturbances." "Oh, I see now," sayd Apaleena. "They’re different in that they are the same except that you know the difference and we don’t." "Correct," roard Humbert. "Now get to work and cook us some dinner." "
"Maybe the dogs got ants," sayd Mulli gain smugle. "I wonder," Murphy sayd, "if ants have skin…" "Or fur." interuptd Apaleena. "No not never fur," replyd Murphy. "We’re talking about insects here." "Whats the difference between an army ant and a worker ant?" inquird Apaleena. "They’re both ants-from the ants family, I suppose." Sayd Murphy. "How in heaven would a dog get ants?" askd Apaleena. "Maybe they crawl up their tails and into their arse." Offerd Murphy. "I guess that could, in deed, happen." Sayd Apaleena. "Very often I wonder whether or not if I had a dog, much like your dog, if it would have worms, too." "Maybe all dogs have worms at sometime or the other in their lives." Sayd Murphy. Mulli gain took two long strides frum tha windo an stopped in frunt uv Murphy. "That’s it-all fucking dog-talk has got to stop." Here Mulli gain slapt his grate boot agenst tha floorbooard. "Absolutely none. Understand?" At this Murphy cowerd an moved ovar to tha chair beside his bed, wair he fiddled with a pakage uv matches an finalle, aftar several attempts, managed ta lite a cigarette.
I had tha dreem agen lest nite. She’s pulling at me trying ta get me inta tha reum with her; I fight bak an manage ta run inta tha kitchen wair I fall ta tha hard linoleum floor an my hede begins ta spin an I feel like vomiting because I have drank too much an am experiancing nawsea but tha fact remains that she’s also drunk an wants me ta make luv ta here regardless uv how I feel aboout her or tha idea uv having sex with my mothar. I then find miself in a crowded bar with an old highskool friend who is lounging on tha sofa that surroounds a short-legged table, than in cums a luver frum my past who drew orgasims outa me that made mi stomak muscles spasm an my legs cramp an burn with pleasure. Orelsex kept me frum moving too far awey frum tha nest; it consumd me and became a necisary part uv mi sexeual needs: I fell victum ta its muse.
Helluv atime we had wen we tried ta put it ta him; he cursed an hollerd like a wild animel; he bled frum tha belle an thair wuz a look in his eyes that seemd ta see right past us inta tha field beyond an behind us whair thair wuz a womin milking a cow with her teeth an her child, in swaddling cloth, laying aside her an she spat tha milk frum her mouth inta tha child’s mouth that made a suckling noise an it’s tinee nose seemd ta curlup with pleesure. She askd me ta frunt her fifty dollars sew that she could purchase an eightball an put a stop ta tha aching in her belle. An thain an thair I knew, for certain, that thair wuz no possible wey I could say no ta her; she wuz mi muse and eye needed her mure than eye wuz willing ta admit. I oftin thout uv her aftar we parted; I rememberd tha starch uv her hair aftar a shower an tha wey she carryed herself wen she wanted ta look important an serius. I rememberd tha coldbloo stones uv her eyes and the wey she cooed wenevr I stroked her hair. I remember a lot uv things that seem importint now but didn’t wen they wair part uv mi life. An they sewd shut tha goreholes uv his eyes an peeld tha skin offuv his nose an hammerd nails inta his feet. Humbert wurryed aboout what wood happen if he wuz recognized bi sumone an they wentoff an called on tha constabulare. He knew that as long as he stayed with Mulli gain an Murphy, hidden far awey frum tha curius eyes uv tha villagars, he wood be in no danger uv beeing found out. He had plans for Apaleena; patterns that wood soon emerge wen tha nites got colder an tha days shorter. He had a plan for all three uv them, including tha dog.
Tha closure uv nite; tha sweet opiate uv desire drawn inta tha milk uv human kindness whair it is spild on tha floor uv this eerth like so much watr frum tha troff. Yer barking up tha wreng tree; tha fuckers gut werms uv serts that’ll be tha deeth uv it wen it’s tyme cums; whitch it will, by God-jest mark mi werds, it well. An that fucker Mulli gain an that idiut Murphy, between tha two uv ‘em thairs but onebrain, an it nevr seems ta be werking up ta task. Apaleena: now thairs a prize if eye’ve evr seen tha like uv one. A wemun with a geed dose uv tranquillite an a barralful uv pride. Fuck tha lot uv ‘em! Fucking ungraitful basterds. An me putting down fer postairite tha stery uv thair live’s without once batting an eye ovar it. Sunsuvabitches woodn’t rekognize a fucking genius even if he wair rite thafuck up thair arseholes an senging a lollebuy. No not nevr.
"Well that goes to figure," sad Murphy. "You always seem to think you have the right answer. With you its not this or that, but that and this. Its beginning to bother me some; I’ve got opinions, too." "No you don’t," chimnd Mulli gain. "You’ve never had a goddam opinion in your entire fucking life." Mulli gain pawsed, collectd his thouts an contiud. "And furthermore, who in the name of Christ almighty are you to tell me that I have a problem? How can an idiot tell the difference between a problem and a hypothesis? Answer me that, if you can." Apaleena shook her hede an began to whistle; a nasal cacaphone that seemd ta reech frum sumwhair deep in her throoat. "Stop that fucking whistling," growld Mulli gain. "Why does she have to stop?" askd Murphy. "Because I said so," answerd Mulli gain. "You’re not the boss here, you know. There is no boss, no one in charge of this whole damn mess." "What mess?" askd Mulli gain. "I don’t see any mess here." Murphy swollowd deliburatele an clenchd his fists until tha knukles turnd white and chalke. "It was you that said we had to get rid of the dog." "That’s correct," relyd Mulli gain. "It certainly was me." "Well the dog then…" "You mean your dog," Mulli gain interuptd. "My dog, then," sayd Murphy. "Its leaving shit stains all over the house. Wouldn’t you call that a mess?" Mulli gain smyled an tiltd his hede ta one side, "Its only a mess if its my mess, which it isn’t." Humbert, who had been sitting behind Mulli gain an Murphy watching tha whole oredeel, cleerd his throoat an sterted ta bark like a hound. He yelpd an a line uv spit spun a web frum his moouth an attachd itself ta tha coller uv his shert that garrited tha loose flesh aroound his nek an left him looking like he could loose conshusness at ane minite.

APALEENA3

In an aroound this tyme thair appeered on tha stark whorizen a moon tha coler uv claughted blood. Wenever tha moon changd coler frum oringe to a plumberrie red, oar wen it seemd to be too highup in tha evening skie, it usuelly meant that sumthing extraordinery was aboot to happen. To Mulli gain and Murphy, this was a sure sine that Humbert wuz on his wey into town. Humbert wuz a threefoottawl dwarf with scaley skin and a face that preceeded him into this werld; a face tern an twisted, a face warren raw frum yeers of abuse an xposeure to inclimate weather. Humbert wuz a tightrope walker by traide, and a jugglr by avocation. Tha evening air wuz thik as crème; a bottlefli buzzd roound Humbert’s hede as he made his whey up tha black rood an in through tha backfield fense stile that separatd Murphy and Mulli gain’s properte frum tha one next to it. He carreed with him a canvass napsac an a woodburl stik that he keept knocking at tha grund ahede uv him as his eyes were milke with cataracs. Tha stars cutdimonds in tha blaksheet uv nite; a cornfli swifted around tha bakdoor lite and alit on a bundle uv splitwood whair Murphy kept his muckingboots.
Humbert huntchd his shooulders an let tha canvass napsac fall free to tha groound. It fell with a tumble an jigged round his boots; it strummed against his ankles an crouchd inbeatween his bowed nees; it trundled into the mukanmire uv tha mudde blak rooad that stretchd beyond an behind Murphy an Mulli gain’s modest cottage. He stabbed his woodburl stik into a moound uv wet hay an pushed it roound like a butterchurn. A circle uv milkflies darted aroound Humbert’s xposed hede an fell silentle into tha rush uv nite air. Tha last tyme Humbert jurneed inta town wuz tha summer that Murphy and Mulli gain slawterd a heffer an cooked it ovar an unsanetary woodcook fire that smoked four days after. In tha warmsummer twhylite exploshuns of broownsmoke curld an dissapated inta tha thikvale uv nite. That nite Humbert had eaten tha entyre leftflank uv tha cow an a ringortoo uv its hardwhite tale. Later that nite he fell asleep in tha corncrib an dreamt he wuz tha tzar uv Rusha.
"I’d like to visit over there in Iberia," xclaimd Apaleena. "In Iberia?" Mulli gian sayd. "What in the hell is there for you to see in fucking Iberia?" "Lots of different things I suppose," sayd Apaleena. "In Iberia?" Mulli gain barkd. "No one in their right mind goes to visit in fucking Iberia." "I suppose some do," sayd Murphy. "after all, it is a place where one can go visit there if one wanted." "I suppose that’s the case," Apaleena added. "If you really want to go over some place and visit it, you’re more than welcome to do so." "But certainly not in Iberia," chimd Mulli gain. "Does anyone even know where in the hell Iberia is?" he askd. "I would suppose its somewhere over there," Apaleena sayd, pointing to tha north wall. "Some place in Europe, I would suppose," Murphy xclaimd. "What the hell do you know about Europe and geography?" Mulli gain chimd. "Well, I do know that Europe is over there," he pointed, gesturing at the north wall. "And where is that?" Mulli gain askd. Apaleena strung her hair ovar her left sholder an wrinkld her tinee nose. "I can’t imagine why it wouldn’t be there," she sayd, again pointing at that wall. "Over theres a fucking wall," Mulli gain barkd. "Not a fucking country." "It could be a country," Apaleena aswerd. "Where?" Mulli gain sayd, throwing his hands ovar his hede. "Where in the name of God is over there?" Murphy clackt his teeth against tha roof uv his mouth, and lite up a cigarette. "Why can’t it be over there?" sayd Murphy. "Its plain to me that beyond that wall there may in fact be a place called Iberia where, if one chooses, one can go for a little visit of some sorts." "Why not?" sayd Apallena. "Europe’s a big place, I suppose." Murphy added. "Biggest country in the whole wide world," Apaleena sayd. Mulli gain, trying ta gain his composhur, sat doown in his chare by tha warmth uv that pigbellied stove. "Europe isn’t a fucking country, you idiots. It’s a fucking continent." "Where is it?" Apaleena askd. "Its over there," Mulli gain sayd, pointing at tha north wall. "Somewhere the hell over there."
Thair came a pownding at tha bootroom door that seemd ta shake tha house frum its foundashun. Mulli gain, in fullstride, bolted to tha windo an pushd up tha copperpennie latch that releesed tha windo frum its mooring. "Who the fucks there?" screetchd Mulli gain, his hands clutching tha windoframe. When thair wuz no answer, he stuck his hede outuv tha windosill an lookd back and fore scanning tha backyard four intruders. Once again he hollard, "Who the fucks there?" and pulld his rms in against his sides. Murphy, bisee attending to his teeth, which wair flat in tha palm uv his hand and not looking too cleen, whistld at Mulli gain to draw his attention. "What?" Mulli gain roard. "Might be someone we know." Murphy sayd. "Maybe someone from Europe," Apaleena offerd. Humbert apeerd frum behind a sumac tree with his woodburl stik held hi ovarabuv his hede. Mulli gain smyled an threw his rms inta tha air; he wuz happe to see it wuz ownly Humbert making nooise in tha muckeyard behind tha hoouse an not sum unwellcum interlopr. Humbert had been throowing clumps uv eerth at tha bootroom door frum behind tha sumac; he wanted to sirprise Mulli gain an Murphy, as it wuz his nature to do. "All or nothing?" hollerd Mulli gain. "Nothing, of course," answerd Humbert. "All I need in this life is a good strong back and a philosophy that takes into account the drudgery and misery of existence." "Who’s on top?" askd Mulli gain. "Why the God of plenty," Humbert sayd. "Always has been and always will be, ad infinitum." Humbert walked twowards tha bootroom door an pushd his woodburl stik inta tha softmudde groound. " Platetectonics, my good man…nothing simpler, nothing more confusing." "Whats that?" Hollerd Mulli gain. "The metaphysics of it all," sayd Humbert. "Its nothing more, nor nothing less, than the ontological caterwail that lays in wait for you to make that one fatal mistake." Mulli gain moshuned with a nod of his hede for Humbert to enter threw tha bootroom door. Humbert’s voyce traild off as he neerd tha cottage. "With the Jesuits its either all or nothing. There is no middle ground for them; no half way or inbetween."
Humbert climbd tha delapadated stares up ta tha heevewooden door at tha top uv tha narro hall. He cot his breth, an pushd hard on tha doorplane. The door swung opined an he wuz meet by Murphy smyling with onle haf his teeth in; the bottum set of dentures whair balancd nimble atop his hede while he welcomed Humbert inta tha attic with a wave uv his hand. "Come on right in," he sayd, his teeth hanging precariously frum tha dullcurve uv his forehede. Humbert stept ovar tha transum, which had fallenloose uv tha doorhede, an dropt his napsac onto tha floor. "Is the Catholic church your brother?" askd Humbert. All three, Mulli gain, Murphy and Apaleena, stood silentle "For if he is not, you are in for one hell of a lot of pain and misery." Mulli gian, pondering what Humbert had sayd, cleerd his throat, and sayd, "Scotch: neet or with ice?" Apaleena stood straitup an padded doown her skurt with tha sculls uv her hands. "Humbert gave her tha oneovar, and smyled; tha creese in his forhede cutting at a riteangle to tha prow uv his hede. "Shall we transubstantiate?" askd Humbert, his eyes lingering on Apaleena. "We can transfornicate for all I care," sayd Mruphy. "What is it we should be doing?" inqwired Mulli gain. "Your head seems a little too big for your head," sayd Apaleena, looking directle at Humbert’s grait mottled nose. Flusterd, Apaleena added, "Your body; I meant your head appears to be too big for your body, not your head too big for your head." "That would be absurd," sayd Murphy. "Who ever heard of such a thing: a head being too big for a head." "They cancel each other out," sayd Mulli gain. "Like geometry," added Murphy. Humbert ran his muckcaked hand across his face an stampd once on tha floor with his grateboot. "That’ll be enough," he sayd, his voiyce straining an octav or two.
As a mattr uv fact, I do see threw tha wermmilke vale uv Humgert’s diseese. A man, perhaps a monstr, he cums an goes with the risin moon and falls silent at tha cusp uv dawn. A creeture uv tha nitetyme who’s ownlee companune is tha cold breeth uv nite; a monstr, I say; a creetur that lives off tha missfortune uv others. I suspeck that Humbert will secum to a horribal deeth: perhaps threw no mind uv his own, he will fallquickle into that scrum uv life; he will fallpray to tha rivin sum ov allmen: he will burnalive in tha flames uv hell, whair noman is evereman. An tha crows cawcawcawen; an tha yello moon hung in sum tern effigee to a past longago; an tha murder uv nite, defrayd for yet anoother timeanplace. Tha payne begins in tha throot an werks its wey doown inta tha maw uv tha gullet; it ravashes an turnicates; it strangles an garretts; it pulls ewe deeperstill inta tha coldscreem of nite. Thair is terror; be sirtan uv that: it cums in mane disgeyeses. As is oftin tha case with life, one does not know what one is upagainst until it is toolate. Tha dwarf Humbert is not what he apeers to be; he is sumthing far moor dangerus an eville than ane oneman can ever imagin. Tha passing summer whain he had feested an drank himself into a blackdreem in tha feelds behind Mulli gain an Murphy’s modest cottage, Humbert had just arrived frum tha north whair he had weighlayd a traviller an his wife an children an murderd them just for tha sport uv it: he had cut up tha husband so bad that his neck fellopen to his chest; as for tha wife an children, he flayd them an burnt thair pink skin in tha redcoals uv his cooksfire. Thair wuz talk uv mutilashun an cannabulizm in tha streets uv tha tine village whair tha famile were frum. Thair wuz feer an discumfort amung tha peeple who lived along tha narro road that separatd them frum tha addjoining town. Thair wuz sumthing eville about; sumthing that lookd upon humanlife as if it were a diseese to be riddin uv.
An a manslife can be meesurd by tha degree to which he makes good in this werld. It is upta evryman ta pull tha weeloflife toanfro; for evryman to feel tha heet an tha pressure of this werld. An a mensmeesure is in watt he does for othrs; how he aides tha sik and dfowled, how he feels throo tha mucknmire uve this werld with his hends, an pulls free tha less fortunate, tha dformd, tha wastd an week frum tha braggert womb that cloys tha nite. Humbert is nay such a men. Humbert’s sikness has rearrengd tha wey he perceeves tha werld of men; it has takn awaey his eyes, an in thair place, put roounds uv stoone an sewn tha goreholes shut tight for eternete.
Apaleena finishd tha last uv her whisky an placd tha mug upnext to tha mantle by tha pigbellied stove. Mulli gan, his cheeks bersting with pressure, let go with a chortld laff an slappd his gratefeet agenst tha macintosh an plankfloor. Murphy swallowd a ball uv scotch whisky an ran his tongue across tha plumstoone gout uv his lips. "If theres one thing I know for certain," sayd Murphy "its that fire and water don’t mix. "What in the hell is that supposed to mean?" interuptd Mulli gain. "Like things aren’t confusing enough in this world without you adding to the fucking mess." "Well I don’t know, " sayd Apaleena, "some things just don’t make much sense in this world of ours." "The world," yelld Mulli gain, "what the fuck do you know about the world and its problems?" Murphy shiftd his wait an rubbd tha crest uv his hede with tha bakuv his hand. "She probably knows more about the world than you do," Murphy sayd. "This is the person, might I remind you, that thought that Europe was over there," sayd Mulli gain, poynting at the north wall of the attic. Humbert lowerd his hede, an with sum effert, cleerd his throoat. "Please, ladies and gentlemen, enough. The three of you are all wrong; there is no confusion, if you really take a good long look at things; and furthermore, there is no way on God’s earth that you three could possibly have the wherewithal and intelligence to get at the answer even if you had two brains a piece." Tha timbr beems ovarabuv Humberts’s hede began ta grown an creek; tha mortar an burlap shims in between tha timbrs cricketted, an tha wood sounded like it wuz aboout ta rend in half an collapse inta tha floor.
"It would take no time at all for this whole fucking edifice to fall crumbling to the ground" Sayd Humbert. "I really don’t understand how you can live in such a hovel; it’s a wonder you all haven’t died of tetanus or fallen ill from the malodorous stench of this, what do you call it? quaint cottage." Humbert moshund with his hand at tha timbrs ovarabuv thair hedes an mayd note of tha creeking an growning sounds that wair eminating frum tha cedars. Mulli gain squinted his eyes an than opind them full. He took in tha siroounding space that filled tha attic, an smild like a child. "I rather like it here," Sayd Mulli gain. "So do I," added Murphy. "Its homey, if anything else. It’s a homestead; a bedstead; a transubstantiationstead." Laffed Murphy. "Its whair we happen to live and feel comfortable," Mulli gain sayd, his hands stalked awkwerdle abuv his hede. "I rather like here too," Apaleena sayd, tha roounds uv her cheeks pushing up agenst tha whitesculpt uv her face. Humbert took his woodburl stik an slamd it inta that floorbooards next ta Mulli gain’s foot. "You three are irascible, "he sayd. "You’re like a trio of savants with the exception that you have no talent for anything at all except making things seem dull and improbable." Apaleena edged her way behind Humbert an sat doown in tha chair besyde tha pigbellied stove. She fingrd a curd uv thik hair an spun her othr hand aroound a thread that had cum loose frum tha rm uv tha chair. Mulli gain askd Apaleena if she needed a freshningup an offerd ta poour two more fingrs uv scotch inta her cup. She moshund with a nod uv her hede that Mulli gain could put tha cup on tha floor besyde her foot. Murphy pressd his tongue agenst tha bak uv his frunt teeth, an mumbld sumthing incoherant to himself. Humbert had takn refhuge on tha chair next ta tha shaven mirrer an wuz bisee running calculashuns throo his hede; calculashuns that wair meent to eese tha thrashing in his mind an redeuce tha buzzing in his ears. Tha eenie dug wuz curld up on tha macintoshanplank floor dreeming whatevr it is eenie dugs dreem. Thair wuz a momint uv absolut siolence, aftrwich Mulli gain slappd a flie that had landed on tha bridge uv his grate nose an bloo out a rush uv peatmaltd air.
Whorecorpses littar tha soulange street. Thay collapse an foldin on themselves; capteurd in a satyre uv themselves, thay fallhede first inta tha cold blakcur uv nite. Humbert, cold an peecefuless, sits like a gargoil in tha swanneck bend uv tha chair, his long unkempt fingers druming tha sideboord. Rake an tine teeth cleeted in a purchase uv tissu an fat; a warm scree uv blood cottdribbling down tha angle uv her face. Anuther whorecorpse left fettid an rotting in anuther solikethaother street. Murphy stoodup, rearrangd tha creese in his trowsers, and shunted across tha ruem. He reeched for a cup in tha well uv tha cownterboord, an filled it with water; a thik scum uv oil floating on top like menstrul blood.
Humbert spoke: "When and if ever you three decide its time to do something with your live’s, don’t bother coming to me for advice. I have none." Apaleena knelt on tha hardwood floor an scrapd an ant off tha ball uv her knee. "I’d like to fly a kite," she sayd. "What I really would like to do, if it were at all possible," she pawsd an sat doown in her chair again, "I’d like to fly a big colourful kite and feel tha string unwrap frum the handle and just let it fly higher and higher, until you could’t see it behind the clouds." "That’s just wonderful," sayd Murphy. "I could actually see that happening, " he sayd. "I could see you flying a big kite in a fierce windstorm with the ball of string reeling off the handle and you singing with delight; perhaps you’d hit an airplane or perhaps a cloud in the blue sky. I could see that happening…to you. I could" Mulli gain relite tha nubend uv his cigare an drank greedile frum his cup uv malt whiske. Tha air wuz thik with smoke an you couldn’t see out that windo whair tha ski had changd frum bloo to a crimsun oringe. "One day when this world of ours finally gets the cipher right, we’ll all, every last one of us, learn what it is we’re doing in this God forsaken place." With that Humbert raized his cup an saluted at tha wall ovarby tha shavin mirrer. Apaleena brushd a poke uv hair frum her eyes an smiled like a cat. "Whens that?" she askd. "Whenever the cipher gets answered," replyd Humbert. "Ya, but whens that going to be?" Murphy sayd. "Whenever!" Mulli gain hollard. "Whenever." "You could even fly a kite in Europe," offerd Murphy. "If you wanted to." "You could go fly the fucking kite through the fucking wall, over there, if you wanted to," sayd Mulli gain. "Enough!" yelld Humbert. "Enough of your caterwauling. Your making my head throb with all this nonsense." Mulli gain sat bak doown in his chair and chewd on tha tipend uv his cigar, a threed uv spittle webbing its whey across tha nob uv his chin. Tha eenie little dug had fownd a rashun uv baconrind underneeth tha kitchin table an scrapt at it with tha abrasure uv its tongue befor swallowing it doown with one petulant gulp.
Humbert whisprd sumthing ta himself an eesed bak inta tha spine uv tha chair. Tha chair creekd an then settled in agenst Humbert’s bowd back; a skein uv evening sun cutting across his lowerd hede whiar it picked up motes uv dust that swirld aroound in tha still air like mischeevious children. Apaleena swung her left leg ovar tha rm uv tha chair an placed her right leg crisscrossed ovar tha left one; thair wuz a houndstooth pattern uv linin underneeth her skert that seemd to blend in with tha plumberre stain uv her thighs. Tha sun wuz almost set an thair wuz a coolevening breeze cutting inthroo tha windo whair Murphy sat contimplating the upperhalf uv his dentures. "That’s just fine: I can accept that," mumbld Murphy. "What was that?" askd Mulli gain. "Nothing at all that you’d be interested in," answerd Murphy. "Nothing at all, at all."

APALEENA2

Inna tween a ard plase an a roc. Leev tha ennie dug to hiself; it don’t meen ane harm. Sure its gota case uv tha wurms, butt that isnt necessarily it’s faut; it mayhav gut them frum tha terribl food ewe been feed en him; e mite a gut them frum that oile watar ya put innits bool; or per haps, frum tha way ewe been smok en like hell those them littl cigarellos ewe lik somuch. Now just leeve tha poor bastard a lone. Mulli gain put his hans ovarabuv is hede an let ot a long yawn. "I’m telling you, Murphy, the fucking dogs going to make us all sick; its going to infect the whole fucking attic and we’re going to get sick as hell." Mulli gian lit anuthar nubend uv a blak cigare. "Tell you what," he intond, "if that sonofabitch things still rubbing its ass along the floor in the morning, its out the fucking door with it. No questions asked." Murphy pushd tha tops uv is denturs up against tha roov uv his mout again, an let his rite arm fall flat at his side lik a stauk a soft rhubarb.
An wee'v all bean threw this afore; when tha earth was warmen up aftor tha last eyece age. Thair wus liddle einee dugs run en roond the wurld looken four a place ta take a crap; thair wus werms and other parasites that inhabitated the earth long afore man came inta tha picktur. Thiss wuz that time wen tha dinosars were dyen out an thair wuz a bundance of watr an vegitabls fur evryone ta eat. It waz a time uv prosparity and everywiar ewe looked thair wuz a pac or moor a liddle dugs shit en all ovr tha place. Sum uv em cooldnt evn make it to a save plac to hav a crap and ended up lett en tha shit and piss run doown tha inside uv thair legs. It wuz a aweful mess, it wuz. "What ever you do," Murphy said, " don’t go doing anything rash and unusual until I get a chance to take the dog to the vet." "The vet," Mulli gain grumbld, "the fucking things past seeing a vet; look at the poor son of a bitch, he can hardly stand on his four fucking legs without hunching over and falling ass over tea kettle snout first into the floor. No, a vet bills the last thing we fucking need." Mulli gain snubd oot tha endbutt uv his last cigare and exhald a plume uv bloo smoke ovarabuv his hede. Murphy pulld on a pear uv bloo trowsrs an buttondup tha flie.
Giv tha dug a vagabone. Don’t jus stair at it; giv it a vagabone. Ethair wey, ewe hav ta do sumthing: tha poor eenie dug’s gott a flamen arsewhole. If tha werms don’t get em, tha fuckn air certenly will. Awl that cigare smoke an ash an tha like’ll shur as hell giv tha poor liddle fucker a smashn hedache. Thain watt do ewe hav? A poor eenie liddle redarsewhold dug wit a bed coff.
Apaleena nevr coms her hair. She doesn’t even own a brush. She sits allbyherloneself on a bench by tha broown dirte watr. Even tho she nevronce seemd to fix up her hair or even wash her face, she stil remaind beutifal to me. I remembr tha softtalc uv her skin an tha bloostones uv her eyes. I remembr tha warm smel uv her breath an tha whey her nos turnd up at thaend when evr she smild. Apaleena nevr once usd a kneedol in her arm: she didn’t hav to: she wuz alweys happy an singen and lauffen at tha birds in tha trees as they built thair nests of string an straw an Apaleena wood sing so lowd that my ears wood bleed. Wot hav we hear? A eenie liddle dug with a soor throut an a beutifal angle wit hair as yello as corn silk. Murphy slipt his foot inta his shoo and rapped tha laces ‘round his ankl. He followd that wit tha othr foot an smild contentedle. "There better not be any dirt on those shoes," Mulli gain said. "I just can’t abide with dirty shoes and a dog with a skin problem." "He doesn’t even have a skin problem," Murphy replied. "It’s a consumption problem." Its it’s fucking arsehole," Mulli gain answered. "Definitely not a skin problem." "No, never," said Murphy. "Do dog’s even have fucking skin?" Mulli gain asked. "Of course they do," replied Murphy. "Every living thing has some skin." "I guess you might call it biological," Mulli gain added. "Certainly not a skin problem or consumption." Said Murphy. "Certainly not." Mulli gain intond.
Fat wail stumak full uv spurm. Wee curlequ hedes wit strans uv goldn hair. Apaleena’s chearful smile an tha wey her fingrs nit themselvs together like a tapastree; a garland uv hope an joy. Fat wail stumak curdling spurm wayside unnder tha salte moon. Apaleena catwalkin acrisscross tha opend feeld. Belleeful uv it; like ripe cheeze fermeantin in tha pokett uv yer gutts. Acoarse dugs hav skin: what wair ewe think in? All aneemils hav gott skin; it’s a part uv beein an aneemil, haven skin an moles an werts.
An sutch. Warm milkee wombfruit; tha soft crown uv her niple. Tha milk cums strait upfrum tha grund when tha cows dye fallin arseovr tail. Thay deposit it unnderneath tha furrows an hayleeves an neer tha openfields wair tha seeds uv mirth aspleen tha air. "What’ll Apaleena have to say about it?" Mulli gain said. "Its not hers to speak about," Murphy anserd. "But she always has something to say about everything." Mulli gain added. "Its because of her hair," Murphy ejaculatd. "Not just her hair," interjectd Mulli gain. "She’s got quite the handsome face on her, I’d say." "I’d say so also," Murphy said. "Certainly as beautiful a face as I’ve ever had the like to see." "Like a movie picture actress," Mulli gain, intond. "Not that many good looking women around here; at least not any you be wanting to have more than anything to do with, at least." Murphy pushd his thum against tha roof uv his mouth an clackt his tongue against his cheek. "I guess will just have to wait and see," Mulli gain said. "We’ll see," Murphy added, tha clikclak uv his teeth hard against his tongue.
Apaleena collektdid apples at tha side uv tha road. She mulld them up in the barrow of her skirt, hundreds at a thyme, tha sweet smell uv apple butter thik in tha mornin air, catchen tha river mist ovrabuv tha thorne wheal, and sold them four a dime a peece. In allother weather, she whor a beeded vestjakett wit a woolen collur ternd up to her ears. Her medusa’shair stuk up at angles to her fourhed, like a whorl uv spun bleeched heather caught in a storm.
The howse Murphy an Mulli gan lived in wuz maid uv moretar and feeld stone; tha craks an holes were skirtd with clumps uv wet sod; tha roof wuz constructd from two foot wide Douglas Fir redwood trees witch set tha howse at an angle to tha sirounding cottagry. They rentd tha grund flore to Apaleena, an themselves lived in the secund floor attic ovrabuv that workman’s shed at tha bak uv tha howse besode tha vegitabl gardin that nevr producd a single vegitabl or flowr. Murphy an Mulli gan shard one big rhomboid-shapd reum an set eech othrs beds at oposit ends facing tha huge burrwood door that opend to tha starecase. In tha wintr it wuz too coled, an in tha summr it wuz too hot; thair wuz no othr wey to regulate tha heeting an cooling system that invaginatd tha entire howse than buy opening an closing that low windew that ovrlookd tha front uv tha properte; an, wen it got too cool, theyd wrap themselves in blankets and sit by tha pigbellied blak stove that sat up on sevral bricks beeside tha shavn mirrer next to tha toylet.
When Apaleena wuz a yung girl, she ewesd ta swim in tha rivr that ran alongside tha copse whair Mulli gain an Murphy, on Sondays, wood watch tha cuws looing an eat raremeet sandwitches with fiery horseradish an onion. They alwayswood shair a bottl uv malt wiskey that made tha insydes uv thair mouths burn like lyesoap an thair eyes turn upagainst thair lids at tha glair uv tha fatyello son. Apallena wood dri herselv off with a small white towel an rub tha bottums uv her feet with sand to keep them frum getting too soft. Then she wood lay flat on tha grasse embankmint, her hair fannd out like a halo aroond her hede, an stare childlike at tha bloo ski full uv milke white cloods.
In tha dreem Apaleena is crowchd underneath a Lindin tree insert ing bruised plums inta tha mouth uv her vagina; the fruit is hard an unyeelding, streching tha soft membrane uv her vulva. She closes her bloostone eyes an humz a lilt ing childish song that her granfathr had taut her whain she wuz a litle girl uv five or six. Murphy and Mulli gain, thair glasstoone hedes fulluv riot an enve, wair no whair to bea seen in her dreeme werld. Apaeleena had bean living on tha grund floore uv Murphy an Mulli gains howse four tha past fiveorso yeers. She wuz a most welcumd guest. Whain she felt upta it, shed clime up to tha attic and sing them a merre litle sung that maid them happe oar sad, depend ing on whitchevr song she decided to sing. Murphy and Mulli gain wood sit upstrait in thair respectife chairs an pretend ta sing aloong with Appaloosa, who, knowing bettr, wood let them enjoy thair litle game uv fun.
A turkwoise ski at dawn; cloods puffe an gray like blooted sheep Tha last reminants uv a jaundace yello moon hung like sum tired travellr in tha crouwded skiscape; a eyecing uv whorefrost on tha tenshuned branches uv tha trees. Apaleena ‘s legs scabberd an raw; a treakle uv sticke plumjuice running duwn tha insides uv her thighs an on to tha sculpt uv her foot. "What about it?" Murphy askd. "What about what? Mulli gain anserd. "What about the dog?" "What about the fucking dog?" Mulli gain said, his nosetrills flaring. "I couldn’t give a good shit about the mangy thing. As far as I’m concerned, you can keep it on your side of the room, under your fucking bed, for all I care." Murphy touchd tha tips uv his fingrs togethr, and cleard his throat. "We’re keeping the dog,"he said, with a tone uv athoarity. "Its not my dog," Mulli gain rumbld. "Its not our fucking dog, now is it?" Mulli gain drew his thum across his lips and smild broadle. "Its your fucking dog, so keep it on your side of the fucking room." The dug, sensing that he wuz bein talkd aboot, waggd his bonee tale an went ovar to sit beside Murphy. Murphy patted him on tha hede and whisperd, "Its okay; he won’t bother you any more. I promise." The dug, doown on his haunches, drew its ass aloong tha carpet leeven a streek uv brown in it’s wake. "Son of a bitch," yelled Mulli gain. "Son of a fucking bitch!"
An anagram alie that confuses tha hell outa evryone an all that have reeson to disagree. Apaleena Bloom dale an heather. I remane in tha closhur uv tha fourest. Apallena remanes in tha closhur uv tha heather an dale. In tha metropolis thair is no closhure; no nevr wuz. No closhur. Tha stoones whair alabasterd an lyme. Tha sculpture wuz uv a tinee man with an enormious hede; sumone’s fader, perhaps, oar an effedgy to sumone loong gone an bureed. In sumtyme ago, what whair thout ta bea dinasores whair actuale gargantuin dugs with ropecoil tales an coalmirth eyes. Tha sculpture representd man’s viktory ovar tha dugs; it wuz man’s whey uv overcumen tha beest within evere man; tha uberman. . Tha eturnal reocurance . Tha transmografacation uv tha numen that evere man an evere woman knows ta be tha truth an nothin but alie. Its allwheys bean Apaleena; four as loong as eye can remembr. She haz allwheys bean in meye dreems an pert uv meye life. Apaleena in repose. Apaleena tha wait uv meye hart. Apaleena four whoom tha werld is a place uv wondr an misstere. Apaleena Bloom.
Apaleena werked her whey up tha stares to Mulli gain an Murphy’s attic. Tha stares were creeke an loose, tha nails cutrough an sharp; she carefule stepped aroond tha bannister, witch lay ubstructing tha final step, and nocked quickle on tha greatwood door. Mulli gain opend tha door an welcumed Apaleena with a broodeared smile. "Come in," he said. "Please come in." Mulli gain’s lip curled like a prepuce; tha corner uv his mouth meeting with tha cut uv his teeth making a perfect creese uv skin against bone.
Murphy stood up an smiled, a crenolated whorl uv hair fighting four space on his tinee roound hede. "Its always a pleasure to see you," Murphy chimed. He motioned with his hand four her to take a chair by tha pigbellied stove. Apaleena skipped across tha carpet an sat on tha woodiron chair that Mulli gain had won one nite play ing cards with sum Swedes frum tha lowlands. "Hows the apple trade?" Murphy asked. Apaleena opened her mouth an laid her tonge against tha ridge uv her teeth. "Wonderful," she answered. "Just wonderful." "And you," she said. "What about your….what ever it is you do; are you doing well?" Apaleena crossed her arms on her chest an smiled polightly. Murphy rejoined with a smile uv his own an said, "What is it we do?" Mulli gain picked up tha frade thread uv tha conversashun an said, "Some thing to do with wood. We do things with great long pieces of wood." "Wood; yes, now I remember, we do things with wood," Murphy added.
Mulli gain stroad casuele across tha room an satduwn on tha othr chair next to tha pigbellied stove; he extinguished tha cigarend he was cheewing on, and tossed it into tha mouth uv tha stove, whair it curld up intwo a fetal posishun and turnd into grayash. "Would you like something to drink?" Murphy askd. "Perhaps a scotch whisky or a saucer and cup of tea, or whatever it is you generally drink this time of the day?" Apaleena opined an closed her eye’s quikle, thain stared duwn at tha dug curld up like a sleep ing child at Murphy’s feat. "Why not?" Apaleena said. "I’ll certainly have a scotch whisky if you don’t mind." She ran her loong thin fingrs threw a patch uv unruelle hair, and smiled. An airant coil uv hair twistd into tha nuckles uv her hand as she tryd ta free her fingrs frum thair strumming. Murphy crossed ovar to tha bruwnwood cabnet that sat across frum tha kitchin windo, an retreeved a greenbottle uv whisky. He uncorkd tha bottle an pored two fingers uv whisky into a bruwnresin mug staind with tea. He again crossed ovar tha rume, handed tha cup ta Apaleena, who sat uprite, her legs crisscrossed and twisted around each othr, her one foot flat against her stockendcaff, tha other loose at tha ankle, an smiled a toothsum smile. "Ice?" Mulli gain askd. Apaleena lookd duwn at tha bruwnstaind mug cupt in her hand and aswerd, "No ice; I’m just right, thank you." Tha ittie bruwn dug lifted it’s raggad ears an stuk it’s nose hi intwo tha air; it sat thair weiting four sumone or sumthing ta move; weiting four a bone or ablackbread biscut. Apaleena smiled an uncrisscrossdt than recrisscrossdt her legs; this tyme plac en tha left one ovar her rite ankle, an tha rite one curld upundar her left caff.

APALEENA

She had a tendence ta put needulls in her rms. Eye once found her upside doown in the bathrum with a trickle of bloud on the curveed junchture of her lbo right on the crook of her rm. Then thair waz the thym that eye found her with the needull still in her rm, and a creese on her face like a crumbpld blanket. In the branches of the trees she saw angles flutterin in the leaves like dansers in her mind. She once fell inta the peano sew hard that she cut a rent in her hede that turned crabapple red; a fissure of tern skin hung like a peece uv blooded meet frum her fourhed ovarabuv her eyes.
Weenie bairns wit curlyq air and russett n cherre cheeks. And a look on thair faces that wuz so com forten an maid me feelso happe and so glad th at I had the opertunety to play wit ‘em wen they wus little bairns wit curlyq air and redrussett cheeks. There wuz no thing greater in the werld thain be in a eenielittle bab e wit yer hole life afront uv you. No thing greater at ouwl. In as much as I no, Ino vere little. I no watt day it is in this place of dreems, this vail of teers; this werld of dispear. No more needulls with the oringe caps; no more fall en down wit your hede bet ween yer nees. Ewe’ve got a chanse. Ewe eenielittle babe with yer hole life afront uv ewe. Thinc uv the bairns; think of the son and the cloods; think of the beautefil musicq that fills tha roound black hole uv nite.
Wee liv inna werld uv wun der. A werld ripe four the picken; a werld fula hope and luv; a werld rife wit oppor tunitees. An now you smel it. Its parta yer vere bein. It’s the filosofic remin der that we liv in a werld of colure and lite. It’s the ontolog icl wairwithall that keeps you up at nite; the fear and shivren that makes yoar sleep fitful and uneezy. Nothen else matters: yer in it fer the longhaul, thers no escapen it; not now, not ever: yer caught inaside the belle uv the beast we call rea son: yoar ded on yer feet; yer a memore of a past that’s long gone. What is this filosofe, this ration of life?
An the fealds of weat an the crows that r a caw-cawen, an that miserable pour bastard Van Gough shooten imself in the liver. An the beutifel colers; the yelos and the browns; an the crows a caw-cawen in the sheeths of weat and the son so brileant that you canever catch yer breath fer loosen the damn hole fuckaloor of itall. Yer Beckett wen on wit it; fot the good fite ta the end. Died with a rinkled phace and iron gray hair that seemed to sprout from the top of his hede. So long to Godot; to Murfy and Malone; an a good riddens to the lotaya. Shot in the liver; poor sonuvabitch. No even a prostitute to see ‘em off; not even a one to say godbye well miss ya sum day. Never a one at all. Pour bastard; paynt all o ver the place, like hede been fistfyten wit tha devil ‘imself. Itsa wunder itself that we keep go en on: keep oot of tha rein; stae clear a tha grayderk cloods and the hoarythundar clash-clash en aboot. Maybea sure that yoar feet er on tha grund and yoar whistle in the hi; neverno’ever look bak dun the rood, leeve it foar good, step ‘roond the feotalmess in the crook of the tree, oar it l bit ewe rite in the ass, it will. Bite ewe rite in the arse.
An thair waz the scrimshaw on her rms: on tha junk teur whair the skin foulds ‘roond the bend of tha lbow. Whair the bloo and yelo trakscars cursed her vairy bein. An as I remembr, thair waz sum cakedri blood on her shertsleev and the yelo tuben that hung ded frum her fingers. Thair waz the bottol caps and the oringe caps and the bendt spoon wit tha sootblack tarn ish frum the heet as it waz. An tha veins in her rms were ded up and bureed; like a peece a string on the cleft uv a hook. An thair was a jondass yelo moon and stars that hung like dedmen in the ski. An I remembr that colddark nite and tha shivren and the ache, and tha pain and tha suffren that cutdeep inta mi throat so I could nt speek a werd. An foar the love of God, let this bea the last tyme; let this bea a leson to us all.
An tha hoarfrost inna trees; the coldwet four est floor an the air asthik as curdldcreem. An the thot that sumwair thair waz sumkinda answer foar itall, sum raisinde etre, asit were. An I remembr the soft touch uv her skin and tha warmth uv her breath agenst my face; an I remembr tha wey she smiyeld wen eye kissd her on tha hed; an tha wey she lookd at me with those blooer thain bloo eyes; an tha smel uv her hair and tha thaut that eye waz lost ina dreem; sumwair in an othr werld wair evrething is brite an starre an werm. Tha midsumr nite air waz thik wit flies; oar sew I remembr.
Colepitchdark an tha tarre smel uv tha trees that r bleeded like thayd bean cutwide opin by sum invisibl force, wair the faires an the angels dancd; an tha feel en that sumthing strange waz aboot to ‘appen, sumthing that wood change meye life foarever. Eye felt sic to meye stomak, like eye waz feel en tha tyme I drank althat malt whisky with that fello down from tha wey. Eye felt cold an misrabl; meye fingrs wair stiff as twigs; an thair waz this feel en that eye jest couldni quite put a fingr on. Thees r tha things that only happen wen yer feel en vulnerable and week frum too much uv everything. An cerabus, is throt cutraw, baen like thairl be no morrow; never atall. An ewe figur thair kant be muck tyme left befour hell freezes ovr an yoar teeth start to clatter. No tyme atal. Theez r tha dreems that spell tha horrer uv nite.
If an thain we can cumoutuv this mess, if God allmite can resqu us, thain eye’m sure that we can get along well on hour own. Its that qeeze feel en that cumsovar ewe in circum stances like this, that reele make ewe oneder what else can go rong in yer life ane more likele thain before the fuck en mess came a long. An in tha dark mud of nite, eye can see tha litening fill en up tha ski wit that fiers of hell. Dante wasn’t far off whain he found man in tha shadow uvn a woods; a poet, noless, whos journe waz to fine out what this horrable life in hell, this burn en fissure of roc and stone, relly waz allaboot. An in tha end, whain tha spirits uv that undarwerld hav swollod ewe like so much blod and dust, thair wont be an other chanc to get things rite this tyme. In tha four est, whair tha tree of life bleeds its soul, tha spirit uv the king dom wil fall frum man’s reech four evr.
Steakly plump Buck Mulli gain stood at that windo peeren inta his save en mirror."Who is this…this face; nonever mine." He sayd. "The eyes, the nose, the cheeks and the brow and the perennium between the nose and the upper lip. Who is this man, this steady, steady man?" he sayd, with a toutch of bewilderment. The son mov ed out frum behine the gray cloods and fell onta the cheere, cheere brige of Mulli gain’s grait nose. A mootled seegul floo inta tha stagnent brown air; like a paper kite or a blok uv wood stain ed threw with tobbacco juce. "This certainly can’t be happening to me," he barralld, "I must be having a dream or a hallucination, or something else out of the ordinary." Mulli gain ran his soupe hand acrost his face and playcd the razor on tha windo ledge. He lookd out tha windo and ran his fingers threw tha briar and brambl of his gray hair. "There something strange and out of the ordinary at work here….maybe it’s the devil himself, come to collect me for all the sins I have done in the name of God. Like Faust, perhaps, but without….without what?" At this, Mulli gain paced quicly to the water phacet and pored a glas uv water inta a resine, brown cup wit craks and tha handl all but miss en. "Piece of shit." He rumbld. "What, for the love of God, do I pretend to know about masterpieces and Goethe and the like? Nothing, I assure you. Not a goddam thing ever at all."
"The dog’s got worms." Murphy said frum beneeth the bet linin; his teenytiny hed stiken out uv tha covars. "Seems that dog’s always got worms." Replied Mulli gain. "We should put it out of it’s misery," "You mean kill it?" sayd Murphy. "Cut it up and feed it to the fishes." Mulli gain sayd, a smile cuming acrost his phace like a quartr moon. Murphy rustld unda tha covars, "We surely can’t kill," he sayd. "Why the fuck not?" sayd Mulli gain. "Damn things always getting in the way; and the fucking stench, you’d think it never took a shit, but to save it all up and let in rot." "Well theres a difference," Murphy sayd, pullen the bet linin off frum aroond him and letin it fall like a coild snake to tha floor. "No there isn’t," Mulli gain replied. "Yea, whatever," Murphy sayd, his teenytiny hede held gentle in that cup uv his hands. Tha dog ran it’s ass acrost tha floor, leev en a broown stain whair it had bean. "Look at the fucking thing," Mulli gain roared, "Its leaving shit all over the place. Ugly fucking mutt." Murphy satup on tha ege uv that bed an reech ed for his cigarets, whitch wair on that smal nitetabl next to his teeth.
An whatov tha dog? It’s a creetur uv God, is it knot? It’s a livin thing and has tha breath of life init. You can a go kill en one uv God’s creeturs witout upturnen tha balanc uv things. All uv us, animels an humans, we all hav ta stik agether and ride out tha storm. All aboot us thairs tha screem en uv tha torment ed and the weep en uv tha clowns; thairs tha factere whair tha sik r hidd en away like so much garbage an waste; thairs tha songs uv tha childrain; thairs tha honee yelo moon in a skie red as blod; thair wuz nevr a begin en an thair’ll never be an end. That’s all thair is: noth en butt tha fires uv hell, an tha cry en uv tha burnd and deformd. God hav merce on us all.
Mulli gain reechd inta his pokit an retreevd tha endnub uv a blak cigare. He struk a wood en match on tha belly uv tha stove, and ignit ed tha nubend uv tha cigare wit tha crookd flame. He then tossd tha match, stil afire, onta tha floor an rubd it inna tha wood like a bug. "That fucking dog has got to go," he sayd, exhalling a moutful a bloo smoke. "I can’t stand to look at the fucking thing." Murphy snubd out tha end uv his cigaret again st tha nitetabl, an turnd ta face Mulli gain. "You just can’t kill it," he sayd, his teeth flat in tha pam uv his han. "It wouldn’t be right." "Right my ass," Mulli gain rumbld. "We’d be better off without the bloody thing, then maybe I could get some work done around here." Murphy slid his teeth up be tween his lips, an with his tongue, pressd them against tha roov uv his mout whair thae stuk like wet porrige.

UNCLEOEDIPUS

(July 29. 05)
Once, perhaps a second time, I sprayed FDS beneath the coves of my arms believing, as I did, that it was Arid or Ban or some such respirant. Since that time I have cropped two most propitious labium in the breech and socket of my arms, a most unpropitious advent and folly. It is forecasted to rain scats and hogs today, so I best carry along my yellow hied rain slicker and a redoubling of shod and shoe. A boll amusement is foredooming, as I can feel the curd and fallow eking beyond the rectory of my ass. I best attend to its voiding and get on with the dray and livery. Recall the Czaress cunt who hoisted equine and ramrod from joist and bracket, advent to a good hard fucking and a last expulsion of worldly air. Rasputin had a hard outcropping on the skulk of his cock, to advent cervix and coital excoriation. Gods forbid that I should have such luck, or a well-appointed ramrod and opportune. Gods’ folly to you all, and then some.
(July 30. 05)
Off to Rasputinville by railhead and unending seam to see sister, brother-in-law, Charlotte, Andrew, Michael and the other familial so-and-so’s.

(Aug 2. 05)
I have made it back unscathed and remindful of my manners. Things weren’t as bad as I had projected them to be, or, for that matter, nearly as unfamilial as I had envisioned (unconscious or not); such is the matter of immateriality. I removed my beard of twenty-odd years this evening revealing the pink underbelly cached underneath. It will take some time to become familiar with the newness of my face and the sidelong glances that it will doubtfully encourage. Twenty-odd years of scrub, recently grayed and whitened, is more than one man need harry. Time for bed and unsweetened drachmas, gods’ witlessness of course. Harry a moment too soon, or too late, as the state of affairs may be. Slat and pinioned to the bedpost and stead.
(Aug 02. 05)
I am so far beyond consolation, if I were to mashie my tongue, (tarried) the pain would be a welcomed reprieve from the frustration of a most mercenary poverty. Depressions are for ruts and panhandles, not mindfulness and good humors. Black marrow sieving through joint and lifeblood, Aristotelian bad manners, nothing neither more nor less. As I said in starting this Cretans messiness, philosophy has been the ruin of my life, conscious or not. When will the reprieve, reprieve? Fucking soon and the better for it.
(Aug 03. 05)
Each new day is a repetition of that which preceded it, a reusing abject fear of repeating the same merciless uselessness over and over again. Staving off the phantoms and ghostbodies, each with their own casting and trebuchet: catapulting an already exhausted ‘me’ into pure abject entropy. Anxieties prevail, regardless of my protestations or medicate interventions, as they invent the impossible, that which seems never to reach a level beyond drowning. A lurid cacophony: no, more so a Murielle cacophony: more so, so. So I hear nothing at all, whatsoever. Except this vexatious rushing in and out of whiteness, of noise and of nettles and brambles and whatnot’s and whatever you may have. Or not, I suppose. Or never was or may or could ever be. Such is my life; a never-ending morass of this and that and that and this and neigh reason or rhyme to the whole fucking shebang. None whatsoever. These vexations, these irritants, this fucking smoldering cigarette signaling the end of all ends and beginnings to all ends ad fucking infinitum and more so. No end(s) in sight, nor a beginning to an end.
I sell things, whatever I have and some things I don’t. I sell records, phonograph records, thirty-three’s and forty-five’s. I sell compact discs and DVDs, even though I haven’t the machinery to play them on I bought them just the same then sold them. I sell books, not good ones, like Borges or Mahfouz, but rat-eared ones that I will surely never find the time nor patience to read regardless of whether they have been well-received by critics or the literati.
I have sold books that I would rather have kept as they had great personal meaning to me, yet due to economics I was forced to sell just the same. I thought, albeit for a brief and fleeting moment, of selling my Octavio Paz books on poetry and literature, but cooler heads prevailed, as I have two such heads, and I re-shelved them next to they’re brethren and Nobel cousins. I am thinking, yes so I am, of selling my bicycle; the very one I bought some eleven years ago when I was much younger and more physically enthusiastic. I seldom ride it, nor care to, as it seldom seems to take me where I want to go and when it does, not quickly enough, so selling it off will be of no great consequence, neither physically or emotionally. I would sell my soul if I had one, which I don’t, or seem to care whether I do or not. I would sell it to the Pope or a Cardinal if they saw fit to remit me with a box of thin wafers and a tankard of Christ’s blood. I would sell your soul were you to have one in working order, or one that existed at all. I would not, however, sell Octavio Paz’s books or Borges, Mahfouz, Beckett, Joyce or Houllebecq. I would rather sell my soul, if I had one, which I don’t, than these prized possessions.
Souls, so I have come to learn, are disposable; great works of literature and art are not. I would sell my toenails, though my dear sister tells me that I clip them too short and should be more rigorous and careful with my pedicure. The same, so I have learned, is true of my fingernails, which are cut quick to the pink, no half moons or crescents to encourage dirt and a buildup of unsavory scrapings.
Anything exterior to my body is suspect, and as such, to be avoided and deloused. Henry Miller brought that to my attention at the beginning of Capricorn, or was it Cancer. It was such a long time ago, too long, perhaps, so my recalling is lousy at best. I would sell a handgun or an epee had I either, which I do not, nor have ever felt the need or desire to have. I will try to determine what next to sell or pawn, as the vagrants refer to it, and get on with the remainder of the day.

In the camps
It was not uncommon
To incur a phlegmon

Which had to be incised
From the skink of the leg bone
So deep had it burrowed

And infested

That no ferric or compress
Of either Lye
Or iodine

Could scour free the stink
That opened into
The tissues and marrow

Of the leg

I would sell my leg, either one, if I felt it would minimize the pain and anguish of someone who had neither leg nor choice of leg. As I am soon to have my shoulder rasped and remolded, I may be in need of one, a shoulder, not a leg, myself. I have two well-appointed legs, each with it’s own foot, ankle, instep, sole and arch. It is important that one differentiate between a sole, which is attached to the nether of a foot, which is attached to a leg, and a soul, which is neither nor exists at all, to the best of my knowledge, which is scanty and agnostic at best.
Another day drawn screaming to a close, such is living, so it seems. My computer is fucked, more so, quite fucked. It makes an arrears of noises and bolos, many of which sound more like a drowning corpse gasping one last rail of air before a watery internment, than a Turing machine. Headgear (Martin, dearest Martin, SS and 3rdR) was right, perhaps not; but then again no one ever is right, or wrong, for that matter. All is conjecture and ill manners, never a ratio-eccentricity beyond reproof or worth the bother of counting or recounting. No even I, a turmeric savant, would give it the bother or wherewithal. My mouse is in arrears, quite so in fact. The good bashing I gave it must have loosened up the thingamajig, more so, fucked it beyond repair. I will ferret out the old one and see if I can make do, if not, fuck it, I will not give it a second thought and be done with the damnable cunt. Time to retire and sleep the sleep of the somnolent and bandy-legged. Such is my Sodom and Lot in life; savant or not, such is such, or so I have come to learn. Gods’night and all clear.

(Aug 05. 05)
I am back fetching ads, which are then copied onto reams of whitest white paper, then inputted into a Turing machine, then Xeroxed onto sheaths of newsprint, and finally bundled in hastily baled bales. Such is my rot in life. For the time being, time, as you know, having very little to do with anything other than rotting and decomposition, I will fetch and parry and keep my mouth shut. As if I was to open it (agape) I would no doubt incur a most pernicious lashing from pirates and cutthroats, cunts the lot of ‘em. Now James, even though he was patched of eye and stigmatic, was not nor ever a simpering ass-Fuqua, far from it. But as I say nothing, or very little, what I say is of little import. I am a common man, not a man of commonalties or bad manners. At least to the best of my knowledge, which is negligible at best. Gods’night cunts and cutthroats, and my your ass cinch up into the hunch of your shoulders.
Its is three thirty Amerindian on a Saturday morning, yet I am still up and skulking in the rumor of my thoughts, as one with too few or too many is inclined to do. OCD advents such thoughtlessness, even when thinking, or cognition, as the mind-origamists are prone to intenerating, is of no purpose, rhyme or reasonableness. Then again (anon) what has reasonableness got to do with anything, or nothing, for that matter (mutter)? I dare say I, of all persons, would know, or, for that matter, care to know. Perhaps I will tenant sleep and be done with this unreasonable nonsense. But perhaps not, or never. One more 100% pure tobacco cigarette handcrafted by the Seneca Cayuga Tribe and off to sleep, for the time being, time, of course, having very little to do with anything, especially sleep. Gods’night again you lousy cunts.
(Aug 06. 05)
Today will be a day devoted to staving, in whichever and whatever forms it should take. Staving, as you know, is unlike slaving, though etiologically similar in appearances and concord. (Not the grape, but the appearance and simulacra of a grape). A bitter bright morning sky drowning in it’s own misgivings and bad manners. Who gives a Lord’s fuck, certain not I, as I have staving and trounces to attend to, not word-smiting and bad mannerisms. Those we will leave to the feint of faint, and those with lactose red scabs on the portals of their lips. Slaking cunts the lot of ‘em.
(Aug 07. 05)
A Talmud white sky, nary a cloud or pox in sight, gods’ be thanked and all cleared. I, as is the case, have arisen from a middling sleep, eyes two crust holes scarping the chasm of my nose. As for my hearing, I will leave that to Odysseus, lashed and tethered to masthead, deafened with paraffin, tallow and apiaries’ wax.

I neither pull up nor gasp
(for air)
As drowning is more forgiving

When pockets are weighed down with stones
Not gods
(or tomfoolery)

A mouthful of Liffey and brown frothing Guinness, a rasher of skillet-fried kidney (or sweetbreads) then a busted nose and a sharp stick stuck in the eye. Fucking glory be told, I am not as mindful of my manners as would first appear, more, for that matter, as free of tomfoolery as I would like. I must get on with the day, what little is salvageable or worth the bother, and see what I can make of myself, or not, I suppose.
Or not, I supposed, as I accomplished nothing more than onersim, laundry and a worsening of bad manners. Clods’ night and all clear, as its time for sleep, jimmy legging and Ratman’s dreams. I should be so lucky, as in his dreams and rebuses I would at least find comfort, good manners and cheese.
(Aug 10. 05)
Twelve years today I awoke from unsettled dreams on a hospital bed in the detoxification Centro on Brier Street. I was one day free of alcohol. Now I am many days free though hobbled and unsettled in many other ways. If Kafka had been an alcoholic and not a tubercular Oedipus, he’d have certainly been my mentor and almsman. As he was not, to the best of my and Max Brood’s knowledge, I am simply a aberration to an otherwise romantic notion of literary alcoholic Fiefdom. So be it, so.
(Aug 11. 05)
A skunk hole of a day, trouble footed and not worth the bother or care. I will see what is to been seen and watched and get on with the day, bothersome or not, and tend to what is to be tended and conceived of.
(Aug 13. 05)
This is a no man’s land, a scullery of miss-thoughts and tired notions.
(Aug 15. 05)
I should be abed pluming my way to a late sleep. But as I am not, but rather sit here writing this dross and fecal, I see no reason to hurry into the nightmare of reason that Kafka dreaded each and every waking moment. How to avoid the dread, a question I ask myself all too often, sadly enough. Sleep is useless, as it encourages dreaming which encourages hatreds and misjudgments. Hatreds I could do with, misjudgments I cannot. To misjudge is to miscue, and to miscue is to encourage dread and more dread, and dreadfulness curries neither favor nor alms. Now you see the predicament, a no man’s land of bad judgments and miscues. I have had enough; I haven’t had anything at all. Time for bed and a reprieve from it all. Fuck you and the horse you roan in on. I’ve had more than enough for one day, more than more. Good night you dreadful cunt dreadfulness.

CRISPIN et SCAPIN

(July 24. 05)
Any quandaries or queries I have bandied concerning poverty have been squashed; I am that of which and whom I speak. This cannot go on, though it will regardless of my protestations and illusions of grandeur and success. I am by no means successful; in fact, I am a sad pathetic bastard. More so, a fine to middling example of an overly romanticize attachment to childish wishing, an Oedipal stick stuck in the orbital I. I have become that which I have tirelessly tried to out-step my entire sad pathetic life. One-step too many steps too slow behind the ass-end of it. Fucking fuck, to hell with it all, and then some.
It has been some time (two months to be precise, which I seldom am) since I last wrote anything fragmented, this hacking shite and bother. Fucking missed it I did, with a passion generally reserved for theist, zealots and false profiteers. Good hard fuck in the ass-end’ll put a stop to that, so the backside Fuqua’s claim, Foucault being a fine example of Sodom’s gammons run riot and chive. Fucking contagion’s, every damn one a ‘em.
I spent four glorious hours sequestered in Gitano Park last night. I was there to assist Julie as she took photographs of the moon and night sky. What a fucking extraordinary world it is when not being rape, plundered and sodomized by every Tom Dick and cunt with a dime store novel for a fucking brain. Mentation is highly overrated, especially in those incognizant of dullard’s IQs’. I sorely missed the overuse of Italics and bad spelling, the slate and marrow of a most syphilitic and unpardonable agnosticism. By agnostic I mean fathomless, not tarred and feathered. We must leave the gods’ splitting to those accrued with whistle, switch and barnyard yawl. Onward and upward, as the salivationists are opt to infant. I much prefer a Faulknerian drawl or a sharpie in the fucking eye. Juan de Fussier the lot of ‘em, fucking sackcloth and bad manners. Day one of the day after day one, ass-fucking infinitum, thank gods and mortar. Good night and look sharp.
There’s no such thing as a good night. All nights (and days for that matter) are a matter of contention and argument. I, for one, conjecture nothing whatsoever; conjecture’s not being well suited to the faint of heart or those with limited IQ’s. Quoins, after all, are for scullery whores and sore losers, not Macaws and early risers, the two, more often than not, synonymous and bedridden with an accruement of aches, pains and general Malays. Fucking time for bed and jimmying about beneath soft linens and harsh invectives. Gods’ nod off to you and yours, lousy cunts the lot of you.
(July 25. 05)
The Father, the Son, and the Oedipal Ghost; what more can one say or not. I not, I fear. Gods’ morning and barrow skirts, today is the first dray of the mess of your rife. So Seth the Lord all right ‘e: a roan gray horse of a day, or some such Lilliputian nonsense in excursus glorious. I have risen from the dread, that is all that matters, given the vagaries and disjunction of it all. Enough with Italics: time to find grammar, balance and syntactical aplomb.
I saw Doctor Rajiv Prihar this afternoon at the Broadview Clinic just off of Caroling and whatever. I am to have my ball and joist re-hinged and mortared October 7th, 2005. There is extensive damage to the rotator cuff, two of the three tendons torn to smithereens, and severe osteoarthritis in the juncture and socket. The surgical procedure will take two and one half-hours, then four to six weeks in a sling and arrow, then four to six months thereafter of psychotherapy. Am I prepared? What is there to be prepared for? I will be unconscious, that joyous ambient womb-like non-state, so what if anything could be more pleasuring and good riddance than that? A bandy-legged whore with strawberry lips and a full tether of summer wheat yellow hair I suppose. But I suppose not, as is the case sadly enough.
(July 26. 05)
I attended what’s referred to as an info session at the Conroy and Walky-talky social services Fiefdom this morning. I was awarded a visitor’s stick on to identify me as a poor sod without a pot to matriculate in. Such is my Sodom and Lot in life. I was given the French version of a document, one that was to be signed-off on by the supervising almsman, whom happened to be almswoman with white tennis shorts and equal socking. I am glasnost that is over and dunning with, for the time being at least. Fucking poverty and sleet gray weather, enough to send one up and over the balustrade, or scarping Cornice and Ionic; Presbyterian cunts; stale crackers and vintners stamping’s, fucking ingratiating so-and-so’s. Not for the soft of heart or yammering of spirit, so Seth the Orb Almighty. Gods’ fearing and good night, and may your feet hit the floor beneath the slats of your bed. Silly fucking cunts. I have lost what tenuous hold I held on reality. I am mortally fucked. My good for nothing mouse has taken on a life of it’s own. Fucking rat bastard. I have had more than enough of it all, all things and no things, nothing I suppose. I have had enough of nothing. Time for sleep and enuresis soiled into ulna submission, as would be the case. If not, if the case, who gives a damnable fuck? I, certainly not, I. I assure you that, if nothing more: gods’ night and all. Silly no good for nothing mousy fucking cunts.
(July 27. 05)
I will slay the rain if it. As one, or many can see, I have given in to the no-nothingness of it all, and as such am nothing no. An Egyptian gray necrotic sky, whacks of it like mill-seeds. I must courier a stamped and imprinted document to the Floyd and Marrow office of poverty acquittal and shame. I abhor public transit, and then some. Miscreants and hobos, so-and-sos, hat brims crooked to pulpit and joist. Such is my Gomorra in life such as it is. Silly fucking life, always shimming the life right out of you, such is such I suppose.
I have but two things to say: Hieronymus and Loam. Suffice it to say I have nothing further to say, so I say, saying so. All else is dross and bad manners. Clever poets beware, the past will catch up with you and chomp a divot from the wattle of your ass, so Seth the Lord of the Manner and rime. Oedipal Jihad, nothing less will suffice. Query that you rheumy-eyed fucks. Time to board bus and tram and get on with what must be got on with before a murder of boy scouts scourge a divot from the loom of my ass. Such is life, I suppose.
I recoil from life as from a bee sting, febrile, aching, eyes swollen slits, the toxins and whatnot’s coruscating through vein and pulmonary. The edema is next, colicky and bad mannered, like a skater kid with dreads and bad skin shunting the rail with hands clasped like mantises, eyes beading the line of most resistance. Fucking whatnot’s and whatever’s, when if ever will this dreadfulness find crueler waters? I will not give up, I will, I must, I will go on. I must I will. Far worse things have befallen me, so I have that to fall back on, memories and rebuses being what they are or appear to be I suppose. There is no line of least resistance, all lines create their own set of rules, each with a resistance allied within it as part of the cause and effect, the raison de ether so to speak.
They say Strindberg was mad, I say he was far from mad but angry or upset. Any critic worth their mage would know the difference. Madness, or dementia praecox, is not for the faint of heart or spirit, as it tends to draw out the best in one not the worst, as many would have us believe, wrongly of course. Madness is a form of communication, not a lack thereof. Madness informs; never does it delimit or corral. Madness is the penultimate panacea, the curative for a lousy too sensitive mien. The madman, or woman, creates an inner world that cooperates with their outer reality, a Kafkaesque burrow, or warren, a door out but never back in. Into what, you might query. Into a social morale of inhibitors and bad manners, a catchall where every movement, every off kilter thought, is remonstrated and cast into a Dantean penal colony. Social conformity is inscribed on the backs of dissenters, not on the backs of sycophants and the well mannered, for which good grades and accolades are the be all and end all of social compliance. Strindberg had a welted and whored back from repeatedly being forced, through poverty and genius, to submit to the ideology of the non-dissenters. Such is the misery of madness: poverty, unwillingness and bad manners. The world is littered with canonical debris, the excrescence of bad liars and petty thieves.
Mildew has taken habit in the cross-hatching of my nose, the bridge of which is red sullied and moue: unseemly mold and hatchlings, the yolk and albumin of my indelicate life. The Druids had it right. Big fucking rocks in a circle, lord and rector dancing like fools, Wriggle’s prepuces, gum chewing for the faint of heart and foolscap. Double your pleasure, double you’re fun. Fucking jackasses. Strindberg married thrice, I but never. Madness evokes marriage, or is it the other whey round, evokes marriage madness. Who’s to say or not? I know nothing, nothing know I. This penurious colony will spell the fucking end of me of that I am unreasonably sure. Surety is a causality I can ill-afford, so to Blazes with it. I am the canonical debris, not they or it.

The frontal lobe
Which determines mood
And cantor

Should be scrapped
And abraded

A rug hook or railhead
Jimmied between eye
And brow

Tends to elicit
An awful yipping

And a clenching
Of teeth

A mastoid
Or wen
May take hold

In the crook
Of the jaw

Just beneath the ear

But this
So I’ve been told

Can be prevented
If a caulking of lye
Or Absinthe

Is applied to the railhead
Or hook

In advent
Of the lesion

Thus staving off
Any yipping

Or clenching
Of teeth

If I don’t find employment and soon I will surly die a most horrible death. No advent or chocolate calendars, doors that flip open to reveal the transubstantiation tenanted inside, a bitter reminder of life’s insidious exhortations. Staving has become second nature, a first principle: a fucking axiom for the faint of feint. I am tired, more so exhausted, more so than tired, exhausted of faith, hope and charily. I am the reminder that all things seek their end, more so, that which proceeds the praxis’s of the end. I am the end, the praxis that precedes the end. I predate the praxis and the ends, the be all and end all of praxis’s, proceeds’ and faith. I am faithless. I am the faith that precedes faithlessness. I am that which proceeds faith, faithless faith. I am nothing more than that, nothing more than the faithless faith in praxis. Tamp that in your meerschaum and smote it.
Sleep does not come easy these nights. My mind inveigles the simplest of thoughts, thoughts thought in the abattoir of somnobolism. This slaughterhouse of words: an unbroken antecedent chain of skeletal chattering. Ortho-poetics: bone against bone, joint against joint, socket against socket. It’s fucking murderous so it is. No praxis here, just teeth chattering and tongue lolling. Tomorrow is today, ad infinitum. Nietzsche was right; the eternal return is upon us no bones about it.
(July 28. 05)
Morning’s inglorious ascension: in-excesses whoreus. I have arisen, though refrain from ascensions or declensions. I am far too faint hearted for such ups and downs. My poverty relief alms are ready to be picked up and accounted for, spoken for might be a more apt rejoinder. I speak for no one, not even myself. Fucking Italics, bone against bone, return upon return. My dearest sister and her family arrive in Fiefdom today from across parry and mount. I will greet them at the Arco portal bearing best wishes, embraces and kind manners. As my dear father and dearer mother will be there in toto, I need mind my manners and crouch my invective tongue, lolling as it does on the scrape of indiscretions.

A sclerotic mind
Inhibits the simplest

Of calculus’s

Simple subtractions
Out of’s and minuses

(Godel’s wristwatch)

An uneasy tightness
In the topknot

Of my skull

One more day in declension of that which preceded it. One more lick at the can. The impetigo is back with a fury know only to Lowry, Artaud and Kant (or Kanto, as he is referred to in impolite social gatherings). I am neither hymn nor reason but more so lesion frontal and stern. Such is my mien in life, impetigo notwithstanding.
An unkempt and laxly shepherded sheep is at peril of developing scrapie, a most invective hoof and marrow disease. (More so, n. a fatal, degenerative nervous disease of sheep and goats). Perhaps I am a sheep, more so a goat: perhaps a goat-sheep with in-cloven hooves and narwhale’s pike. Perhaps I am nothing at all, but furies and phantoms and nonsensical illusions of grandeur and bad manners. Perhaps more so more, perhaps not. Time to advent the day. As advents and monk’swool require sheepliness and good manners of the ill tempered and faint of heart. Such is I as is I. Cruel summer solstice, a beggar’s ass clutching reason and hastily flung alms; Almsman; all men, advent or not. Notwithstanding not standing legs cleaved in like hocks, awaiting the arterial letting and arching swing: slaughter-yard transubstantiation in excelsior inglorious.

A murder of dogs
Pillared against the scup

Of my knee

A Lamarckian naiveté
Or Darwin’s miscreants

Or just plain dogs
Licking salt and mage

From the gruel of my face

Tomorrow (being today as it is well past the meridian) I will see what monies I have loused in my waif’s account. If the powers that be have seen fit to garnish my savings, which are paltry at best, I will start a ruckus and yawl vexation in the cones and struts of their ears. I will have none of that, or this, for that matter. One fecal step off kilter and I’ll raze the house to the fucking ground mark my words, or not. Time to ensconce in soft linens and flax pillows. Night is upon me, black as jujubes and soft licorice.
(July 29. 05)
A Marcela gray morning sky, scoundrels of it. I sit in the reuse of my thoughts, thinking things unlikely and bad mannered. As doctor McAllen is on folly days I haven’t a divan to couch my blathering on, nor, for that matter, an outlet for my unconscious. Upon his Nietzschean return I will inundate him with a Kotex of scarab thoughts and well made up dreams which will no doubt make the transition back far less awkward and ill-humored.

COMPOSITION in BLUE,GREY and PINK

(May 9. 05)
Daylight saving saves nothing; I much prefer the dark or the caramel yellow crepuscular of dawn fading to a bright sunny day. Saving light is like saving spit on the ball of one’s tongue, after a short while it sups back down your throat and gullets in the scrum of your stomach where it eels and wriggles like a fucking devilfish on PCP. Give me gum-rotting pitch-blackness, not bird twilling bright hoary sunlight. I have said enough; I have yet to speak at all. Another day spent punching finger-nebs into numbered ruts, not a fucking joyous occasion by any stretch of the imagination. Tomorrow’s another day, I suppose, one fraught with dial tones and slammed down receivers. Gods’ night to you all, fucking lousy cunts the lot of you.
(May 10. 05)
Flax, like devils-wings curry the branches of the tree outside my bedroom window. Another day has risen, whether I like it or not.
(May 11. 05)
Such a mercenary wind tearing leaf and julep from branch and tether. What little budding and leafing nature has mustered and willed to life, will be mercilessly ripped from mooring and skive. No titlarks or grouse; wings like devils cutting clods of air into ribbons and shreds, just a scold of bad weather and rickets. Fucking ever-shifting incontinent weather, never a moment’s reprieve from rain terrors and bad manners. Fuck it, I’m off to bed. This fucking glacial temperature will certainly spell the end of me, weather I like it or not. My gallows-plants, hung in some strange effigy to nature’s indifference to man and beast, may not make it through the night unscathed. Fucking devil-wind and ice whores. I’ll need an extra plying of blankets, perhaps socks and gaiters, to keep my own self from slipping into a hypothermic continence. Fucking varicose and red blisters. Gods’ night and all clear.
(May 12. 05)
Today I will eat a cormorant with apple-sculls and ginger stropped from Eurasian hides. The buds and leaves have been slain by a merciless mercenary wind. Fucking Mother Nature and bad manners. Brown stains and withering, two things I most certainly could do without.
I am home, where that is I am not entirely sure. Cold feet and ice-clips, toes blackened with windburn and diesel. I know better than to wear my flip-flops when the centigrade is lowing, yet still do regardless of the greater matter or consequence. Such is such, I suppose, lousy toe corns and Braille feet. Tomorrow I will check the temperature on the all-day weather channel before heading out and make certain that my feet are adequately shod and tethered. One more variegation of foot and heel and I’ll surely need to have a chiropodist scrap and chip the Braille from the skips of my feet. Pumice stone is good for that, or so I recall being told, by whom, as always, is of little importance. Perhaps it was a beggar or an almsman, or a denticulate whore with tiny misshapen feet of her own. One can never be sure, feet being all that separates us from the furnaces of hell. Kiln burns and chaffing, feet marbled and singed like alligator hide. No two ways about it, feet are a fucking curse, the stalwarts of a healthy jaunt and canter. I’d rather have mine sawn off and pegs jimmied into rail and bone, at least that way I could hop and skip in circles like a fucking dervish on PCP and be done with it once and for all. Kafka had no feet, sad fucking bastard. Max Brod sawed them off when he was sleeping under his bed, and sold them to Heidegger so that he could wear Jewish woolen socks without his feet going shibboleth and Etruscan blue. Hanna would scrub and lick the clods of skin from between the nubs of his toes, all the while humming an orthodox cantor under the silk of her breath. (Lest she be kilned and limed and thrown arms akimbo into a deep, roiling pit). Orthodox or not, the end result is always the same, wormy skin and dirt gritted teeth, that is, of course, if you have any left in the skip of your jaw.

She clapped her tongue
Against the roof of my mouth
Scrapping the spice

From the Braille
Of my tongue

Lamb’s tongue oxtail soup
One man’s ravenous lusting
Another’s cruel oxen fate

Lips skilled at alchemy
And milling flood water
From oxbow plank and rill

A fate worse than oxen
Hacked shoulder to breast
Knee cups slackening

Under joist and mallet
Cumin-black tongue
Spiced with ox-brine

Forgive me for I know not what I do. Sad pathetic cunt, no penitence or bread ends for you. Never one to mince and monger, so you said, fat bastard lying through the rills of your teeth, tell the truth for once and see where it gets you. Nowhere probably, but better than a hobnailed to the fucking jawbone or a sharp stick to the eye. Gods know you haven’t a pot to piss in, so what have you got to loose, nothing that’s what, not a fucking thing. Good night Kafka you footless bastard, and as for you, Martin, keep your socks tucked into your Teutonic jackbooted shins. This isn’t a journal it’s a mercenary infernal. Cumin-black perhaps, ox-brine and mallet tongue.
(May 16. 05)
Fucking merciless mercy never they’re when you need her. Cup rings and coffee grout, life’s simple pleasures. Black as the Ace of Spondees. I have acquired, through no will of my own, a cold and a sour throat, from too much grout and Gauloises one might conjecture. If not, there is no reason or rhythm to the whole shebang. None whatsoever at all. What in the name of lexicography is a fucking Spondee? (Anyhow).
(May 22. 05)
I’m dating a model, but she only fucks black chicks. (Bill Whitten, Grand Mal). Fucking rain blasting the trowel-edge off a moonless May rain soaked fucking day. Simpering fool ditch the cunt and hand fuck yourself into a Mezmer’s coma. No Freudian recanting or thumb sucking, just a little heave ho, a wee bit of the in and out, the root-cause of all modern sexual dysfunction, so the Hives and Shears say. Fucking cunts the lot of ‘em. Time for bedsores and dilly-dallying, two things I fancy, yet with due diligence try to keep at a manageable distance from the scone of my afthead, silly fucking bugger that I am: all clear and gods’ night to you all, silly fucking cunts the lot of you. But then again who am I to speak, silly bugger that I am? Don’t slam the god-forsaken door on your way out, I beg of you please. Fancy that, a door without a jamb or a fucking screen, strange world we live in, that it is.
(May 23. 05)
What day is it? Who the flack cures? Not I, I can assure you that. If I were a bird (which I am not) I would peck my own eyes out with the neb of my bonny. Cursed rain, like a motherraper at oedipal confession. I, however, confess nothing, the scurvy bit that I am. Put that in you’re fucking pip and smote it. Wind jibs aft and fore, no rust for the warty and lye. Time for a bowel of coffee and a jib of smoke and proper. Fucking Italics will spell the cursed end of me of that I am reasonably certain. My parents eat scamps and the whitest white fish skins, with slurps of apple crisp wine and ample amounts of Scotches and Nordic Vodkas. I, having scorned my liver one too many times, choose not to mitigate the problem, staying clear of such toxins and milled grapes. A hog’s pox of gray clouds, silver fish and carrion, maggots and septic nonsense, not a clear blue morning sky by any stretch of the imagination. Scream-of-conscious, such as Joyce and his brooding brethren angered the literati with, with poxes and skillet-stuck kidneys stropped to iron and castings. Fucking morons, not a piss to pot in. I, whomever, have no such lick in angering or fucking, just a constant nagging malaise that sods the bejeezus out of me. So be it, be it so I suppose. One too many oedipal sticks to the eye for one man to muster and patience in this lifetime or the next, sods willing. Crackling heels and toe-clods, two things I could certainly do without in any fucking lifetime or the next. I am an optimistic fatalist, not a positive negativist. Tamp that in your pip and smoke it. Scalawags and labium Majorca, two things I could do more with, fucking misanthrope that I am. Time to leave the sanctum of my home and have the wind-skips crop and Braille the soft tissues of my mien. Like it or not, such is such. I am a murderous sot, sodomizer of proper grammar, syntax and semantic no-nonsense. So be it, so fuck off the lot of you and don’t slam the fucking door on your way out, fucking cunts the lot.
(May 24. 05)
A man once told me (who he is, is of little importance, all men are the same in the end) that the sky would cave into the earth before the next millennium. Being the savant that I am, and not a good one at that, who was I to disagree or conjecture? Who was I, am I, to even think the thought, the mere thought that I might have an opinion or an unmitigated notion of anything whatsoever? That stands to reason, as unreasonable as it may seem. The man, like all men in the end, is now dead, a corpse filtering worms and dirt. Who has the last laugh now, I say, he or I? Fucking cunt, who has the last titter now? Some savant I am; more of a fucking Einstein than a gibbering rasher by any stretch of the imagination I’d say. Fucking sorry state of affairs, never a fucking dimwitted so-and-so when you need one, just another ass-fucking such and such with crooked teeth and an ass’ jaw for a fucking brain.
(May 25. 05)
Gad morning yeah bunch of fucking cunts. Perfume and talc your nethermost, as today’s going be a windy roan one that it is. Alimentary canals, rush of pomes and pony’ hooves clip-clapping like devil’s rakes in a wind stern. Hold aft and fore, today’s going be a brisk fuck of a day, no light’s saving time or solstice, just a rim run shod and rummy. Term for a shower and some lavations and dower ablutions. Nary a titlark mincing leaves and pips in the grave’s branches outside my bedroom window, nary a one, that is. Out and about, time for my own mincing and plopping through hell and dale.
Stone fucking deafness will misspell the end of me of that I am reasonably certain, or as certain as can be. Staple and boot-knob, the pestle and mortise of my middle ear are none too spongy or earthen. Some say, the ear, nostril and esophageal spelunker, that the hinge and jamb are crony and hard pressed to create a vibration in the trumpet of my ear thingamajig. That being said, I haven’t heard a damnable thing, not a titan or a lark. This cursed thing-a-ring of soft tissue and muck rime, like crenellates of rills’ scrotum tuned through the cropping of my cornice and tympani. Cursed Mason’s deafening, not a likable J&B in the lot of ‘em.