Deep Tissue Magazine #17 1

Deep Tissue Magazine Number 17

2014 Deep Tissue Magazine

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Production Junction By Chad Repko

what's your malfunction why you rushin' for men to miss their children's smile in place of time-clocks and ironed buttoned shirts for women to count numbers chasing paper in tight black skirts inside, feeding a belly that's never full the mother or the father too tired to bother all for the God's of production taller buildings and tax deductions for plastic things and clever stuff or at least until our spinning rock had enough we indoctrinate our children's future

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into this wide slave state but no matter how fast we chase that fat stack wallet could never replace the touch of another soul and as we waste and sit down at another glory hole life continues through windows of a cheap rent corporate view or a factory crew to make shampoo out of bamboo we adhere so we don't have to think and die and scrape by to that flickering little screen this isn't life as I've seen we should be able to brave the storm and live our own fable

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our own production junction without this 9 to 5 feeling of insane malfunction

Chad Repko 2014

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Versus, or The Last War By Chad Repko

I say, let's get on with it speed up the process on this highway we're moving towards Gather everyone up in one final gaping blood-thirsty jaunt for right-ness

The Christians vs the Scientists The Democrats vs Republicans The gays vs the straights The blacks vs the whites The men vs the women the poor vs the rich cage match gauntlet style not that I wish violence but let's end this

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piss and shit we've been carrying for centuries now the suits vs the hippies suburbs vs the cities preachers vs gurus vs gypsies all gasping for a piece of consciousness to be right for power and justification meditation vs medication crowds vs isolation your color saturation choking fight, fight, fight Sunni vs Shia north vs south Korea constipation vs diarrhea Finish IT

marching to the drums of hate exceptional-ism cultural prisons Righteousness

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Justification bashing skulls on the pavement to stay true to the ancient just so we can enjoy our own enslavement

the tarot cards vs the Namaste speakers the Tim Leary's vs Castaneda seekers the geeks vs sports freaks the earthlings vs the aliens the cops vs the crowd the cheerleader vs jock the hip hop vs rock the pussy vs the cock we've all tasted that electric shock How dare we pretend to know what this ALL is about as we spin around a nuclear explosion curiously in space interlaced with EVERYTHING else that has always been in the first place

Let's end this

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bickering with a sweep of the knees to get rid of the bad blood A flood! or barbed wire falls count anywhere grudge match to get rid of the ignorant self-serving flagship program waste and while the rest of us watch the debacle of non-compassion on ESPN 3 with commercials from Pepsi the cars vs the trees how free would we be the player vs the referee if we just.... would love and have a hug war the tear stained shoulder love gripped in infinity with Molotov cocktails our very own Black and White Norman Rockwell

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I say let's do this not for hate but to get it out of the way dawn a new fucking day without headaches and peeping traffic a new demographic So our Children So my child does not have to grow up in a shitty ignorant misogynistic identity mind-fuck war-torn decaying body slump fest angry world so they can love.... Chad Repko 2014

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To This End By William Teague

He plucked his eye out to allow his thoughts to flow out and onto the page. The pain allowed him intense focus. Of course he could write. This was a trait, being of Celtic blood. Voices spoke to him like a device and he recorded them. He considered himself likened to a tailor or cobbler. No different - only in the pocket; his pockets were lighter and so were his debts. He always made a distinction between a starving artist and a hungry one. He was once told of his great gift and he countered, saying, that it was a curse and not to employ it was the sin. Primordial voices compete for his attention. Sometimes he chooses the loudest and sometimes the softest depending on his mood, which was vast and varied. Like his moods his thoughts were the movement of a river always in flux, always moving. But on rare occasions he could be of singular thought. It was these times that that one thought could be good or it could be evil. Both of equal power to create or destroy. The creative, is Zen like focus, able to describe beauty. The destructive so horrible it has been known to destroy the reader. It's always that way; people fear the shadow's they themselves cast. Still there's always hope, it grows in the corners like mold. And sometimes prolific like moss on the north of trees and rocks that pop their heads out in a brook. Sometimes like the pungent aroma of the pine tar docks. And then there's the voices that have been silenced either by violence or by their own inability to speak. These are the voices that are missed as well as forgotten, dissolved within the lingering mist whose wounds finally heal when there are no longer witnesses. And to this end; is time. William Edward Teague, (c) 2013

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And the Wind Chases By William Teague

What are those memories that come to me like bits & pieces of broken glass? Distant friends who are gone now remain immortal like initials carved into a tree. And the leaves follow teardrops as they fall. Time never heals wounds it forgets them. Forgets them when there are no longer survivors. When the names and dates worn and grinded by time, fall off their stones. It's life then, that holds you hostage. Where is this - Leaves of Grass but temporally under my footsteps? The stones hold their secrets too; eventually they wither and fade to sand. Still there is no blame, shouting like an adolescent, "I never asked to be born." As truth seeks our understanding, holding us responsible for our ignorance. Even the very strongest of our kind are weaklings. And the wind chases us onward and homeward. William Edward Teague, (c) 2013

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Beloved Dead By William Teague

Deeply sleeping and dreamed - I saw all the dead; the familiar and unfamiliar. And held within their expressions was joy projected I Am. I wondered; what of this - I Am. And their answer in unison was - God. Not, so much spoken but felt. Perhaps this was the answer to all my questions; the ultimate and united oneness of it all. They, the beloved dead; none were in hierarchy to the other. Everything and everyone were in complete harmony and perfection. Theyve all returned to what they are; what we are - but may not know in this state amongst the living. There were no boundaries, no confines, as if released unto their own true selves, their own true nature; God. Not a separate singular god, but rather a universal oneness God, a God within all things and non-things. Not necessarily a religious God and not a dismissal of a religious God. It all made sense to me now. Some understanding of death now dwelled within; of their dreadful ways of dying - of leaving and that of their peaceful ways as well. I could rest now and no longer had I felt foul with my failings. I could move on to whole new levels. For years prior, I had lost any faith I may have had. It seemed dismal and stupid, faith - it had no fact or reason. My rejection borne of pain and suffering along with anger had dissolved all that. A lack of understanding had me in the grips of decay. To finally once again feel hope. New beginnings of faith may be allowed to bloom again. I would Be, along with them, and along with us all, I Am.

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An acceptance of all things and beings had overcome me. And of these all; one constant remains which permeate and that is love. And to know this is to offer love, for we are all beloved dead. William Edward Teague, 2012

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Everything Goes Here By William Teague

come out of the darkness of your secret rooms you artists, minstrels, writers, freaks. everything goes here. this bundle of weird misfits of joy; that I am a part of. wonderful singing and dancing in my head. these whirling dervishes, how they spin their tales, in front of friends and strangers; we are all strangers

wise women disguised in lovely young, too - young " for - me - succulent bodies. beautiful eyes that lie and mouths that suck me in. they whet my appetite for more. pretending not to comprehend the vastness that is the universe and all its secrets. however; all knowing are these nymphs, speaking in tongues that i should not understand.

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i dont belong here; but i do. i am comfortable here. I am anonymous here. incognito! blending in the background among the paintings and books. an invisible voyeur. my purpose to observe, absorb and document.

social dysfunction no longer irritates me, it amuses me; now. eating soup coffee and pie. the chair that supports my ass, the table that holds my elbow is mine, i own it. i deserve it, i keep it.

as the poets with beards spew; vomiting their anguish, their hunger, their frustrations and love.

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coming to grips with who they are, who i am, who we are. who are we? chasing our tales through the cycles of life never fully understanding. never satisfied. fighting to the death to prove our point; never really knowing what that is. whats the point?

but the women know. they know. theyve always known. why wont they tell us? perhaps they do.

caution to the young beards. the illusion of time travels faster than light. so burn.

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keep. keep and burn. keep burning. burn your bridges. burn your maps that lead to nowhere.

beards we, search for causes to lean on in order to rebel against ourselves. to find purpose and meanings through the lines of our own dying; our own demise and as for we, the stronger sex, spent and weary, chasing our tails only to find our way back to their arms again, and again; hungry angry lonely and tired searching for shelter and rest, back to the womb. William Edward Teague, January 2013

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Fucking Solstice By Marci Payne

they have on display a feather from an angel shot down above grace lord park well after the cherry blossoms ceased to perform their civic duty (memories trip over shoelaces and call it dance) and to think that up to this point (she pivots more gracefully than even she had expected) that i had always loved museums (the lamb cries

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newborn mayhem its hind legs tied lifted) they say it happened sometime in the early sixties but i doubt all of it certain that angels are best killed in books no one reads (the shears make a confident hum as they approach the soft underbelly) you know (she releases the lamb) this is the best part of spring

four is for birth

when rituals are forsaken

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we become amorphous at best at worst parabolic clichs pinned to a mobile above an ancient infants crib (native arrogance exposes itself as rueful laughter in her extremities the parts that show or might inadvertently be displayed amidst other contradictions) everything so easily discarded this generation quid pro quo-ing its way through a spiritual bargain basement of biblical proportion satori and a pair of chucks for under thirty dollars i wonder (she breathes deeply less concerned with exhaling the inevitable loss for words perched along with four crows on the ridge-line of

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the green house facing her) i wonder if any other species makes nearly such a mess (knowing the answer) as if i have any answers as if i know any of the questions as if any of this truly matters (she steps aside from the open window allowing him to see the four birds take flight in four different directions) you cant reduce the microscopic nor can one aggrandize the insidious neo-epileptic parasites leeching their vision from a host culture that doesnt exist (he knows better than to speak and has sworn off the liquor leaving little option but to relive the little play seen that morning)

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one whose intention is to invalidate the individual the single celled critter slide covered swimming mistaking the light from the mirror for something real (she closes the blind and walks into the bath running the shower hot) and all this could have been avoided this morning had there been just a little bit of sunshine (the door closes splashing sounds a soft low voice singing a soft low song)

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Song for Tesla By Marci Payne

the choices are limited remain intoxicated with life or take the cure and become sane (she loves the contrast and patterns the chaos of the leafless branches the order of the horizontal slats her chair long turned facing it all the children painting sunday morning circles in the parking lot in front of the barbers door the dog walkers some happy some not so happy) hi my name is irrelevant and i see entirely too much . hi irrelevant .

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it all fell apart when the walls i stopped seeing began not to exist everything that had been protected and propped up succumbed to inevitable gravity (in the oak near the tan house there are several clusters of dried leaves hanging on at first thought isolationist then second held captive then last simply fated she sips her coffee and stifles a laugh eyes closing heart swallowing a deep breath and then the rationalization that even fated they have each other) and all these traps which we dig the cavernous intention -oh take me whole(sung) it certainly does not matter not this not any of it the

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mire of nothing we bathe in wash each others backs with coarse cloths and swear that it is satin (three crows sit on the pole with the transformer all facing east the light breeze welcomed the cars slip past the pot hole fixed she feels the flesh knitting the slight tingle replacing discomfort) we wash ourselves with sack never mind other hands and let reason run out with the bath water supplanted with the image of bipedal lunar beavers who have mastered the use of fire the use of fire the canadian always cringed when i mentioned fire and i would always laugh (she laughs) i have always held fast to the

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notion that no one ever was too short to be able to see the moon (she looks about the room and certain faces stand out) and i am certainly no exception

72 inches below grade By Marci Payne

(gloves removed gathered in the grasp the bluish-white fingers trying to forget to hold on to focus on the paling train window strobing past the blood no longer making the arduous trip to her extremities and back) i remember a picture of a bird faded ink brown open window perched each line curve-perfect so well lit

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so flush with the tuscans identity and my tears the beauty releases fantasmic engrams cauldren bubbling becoming the head water of the nile giving life taking life all waterlilies and crocodilians we are floating (pages flip in a magazine she left in pittsburgh while the regular noise the otherwise the rhythm of the rail iron spliced clicking shaking the universe so sweetly calms her) it doesnt matter (she leans her head against the glass) there are several nevers on my list of things which should be omitted should be engraved in stone in a

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forgotten place to be willing again where it is new fallen soft and quiet floats over the noise from the street mostly clear now that the sun has decided to shine at least for a little while

thrombosis blue its different you know playing small rooms in red states on nights when death is palpable to this day whenever i see a dumpster i am truly grateful to the creator (her eyes roll and she balks at the consideration of faith)

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that i am not bleeding on the ground next to it (frantically she rifles thru her purse her thoughts the last decade in which she is certain must be hidden at least one clean tissue) i make a lousy atheist but i made an even worse adherent walking the dogma in the park sundays and hitting all of the cues dead on but i confess i do miss the parasol (hands collapse on a lap which was never soft never yielding folding their intention to search further

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in an imperceptible flourish) soon all of it will fade the music just disappears and the house lights come up revealing the disappointment the seats stained with bodily fluids the saints at the ready with the buckets and brooms of absolution (all of the air leaves her and the cold becomes apparent)

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How the mooning lovers pile up By Chris Nelles

how the mooning lovers pile up! machetes swing, the righteous sing while reaping heads like sugar cane. the sun, the astral plane, a bending ray for moonbeams,

while the blood of man congeals a harvest age of holocausts in modern drag, post modern apathy, conspiring again against a G-d of skin and creams, the madding mob emerging from the rat arenas, ready for reaction, thoughtless slaying for the sake of nonsense riddles, senseless games, infernos unforeseen.

the treason of the poets breaks asunder intellect, scatters cursed seed from the hard pack, stony willing pony tricks for bread and circus brakes. and all is speed, unbraking gasoline, combustible illusion,

while i slate my head in rock mines not my own, and cringe beneath a foreign sign, that 'work makes free', makes one's utility utility to utilize utility, until the set-up dawns demoralized in light so bright,

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a riven neon mercury runs rampant as a river redder than the reddest sin of scarlet letters.

i sleep the sleep awake, and sleeping wake to days i couldn't see but yesterday; the sad pathetic, pounding verse like dread, like semen spilled upon a ground gone fallow, spurned by G-d and eve.

and daggers ping, and eye phones ear flung ring, and addresses kick out and sting now everything, while no one cares for her inevitable extinction, exiled from man's plot, his garden treachery unearthed, infernal note of soporific frenzy he calls love, or suicide, or anything their husband satan might affix.

he sings his silliness, his fate, his soul mate burning on a crossed stave nero kissed, but reconstructs from texts his loaded blasphemy of charcoal pits and pricks.

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Click Clack of Cell & Fruit By Carolyn Srygley-Moore

moving, weaving, through your body

(threads click clack of cell & fruit) i find seeds

at core, like seeds of the apple or pomegranate, almost

inedible as eyes. the iris opens, flutters like a rose.

i am uncertain: a novel song begins. disappointment sprouts

falling, falling, a fallen state: how is it

we turn upon one another, except that the redemption

promised is another, less tangible, result?

consequence is consequence. the room we are taking back

is haunted by the living, one who left

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detergent capable of cleansing nothing behind

on the bathroom cornice. i am no architect: lust

is no architecture. or is it? who wrote, first, "the body

electric"? not that anorexic in the nursing home.

we have each other. we know each other.

we swim through river & sea, we dredge swamp

& Dutch-named kills. what hangs on the wall

in our home is the simulacrum of the jailed heart, that is

not jailed. the warden clanks, click clack.

i see a shadow at the door. it is departing.

the ghost has eaten its fill.

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An Early Morning Dream By Martin Freebase

Inside your pocket you carry a picture of the grand conspiracy. You never let it see the light of day. You stood upon the stoop and gave a speech about the death instincts of man, about this hallucination we all share concerning our desire for self-destruction. You are breaking ground for the new anarchy. We live with dead suns inside of us. I took you to the doctor and he fixed you up. Dr. Loophole threw a flaming comet across the horizon and jumped up on the examining table and did a dance. He is standing on the threshold of a new era, culture jamming. He devours while he is devoured himself and there is more rain, more relics, and more progress. He has staged some amusing riots and has pulled off some interesting sances, but he is still a fraud and a thief. He is building an ark in his backyard in anticipation of the coming apocalypse. He acts upon his beliefs regardless of their consequences. I see the end approaching, but it is not an ending it is a new beginning. We are hungry for the marvelous. We are patriots of the east side barbershop. The world outside of these streets only exists as an idea. We would walk to the graveyard to arrange the tombstones, putting the unordered lives into a final order. The old man was a preacher. He was the closest thing I ever came to god. When he looked at me I could see he had a confidence in me that I didnt deserve. When I stood upon the altar, the world disappeared and time stood still. I was born on the east side streets and lived on the east side streets. My home was in the dirty part of town. We awoke every day to the stink of slaughtered hogs. My father loaded meat into trucks all day. We would wander the streets all day and I have wandered the world all my life. I am the happiest when I am

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moving down the highway in an automobile, breathing in the subgenieus. The hum of the tires on the pavement is a sweet sound to my ears. I couldnt get out of Waterloo fast enough, pulling up nine cities as the miles went past. Sailing up the river and going mad. The atrocities pile up to heaven. The evidence keeps growing and more and more people begin to understand. Once there was nothing and now there is everything. You pull your heroes out of your pocket and set them on the sidewalk, Napoleon, Marx, and Capone. You share them with the ignoble bastards. You share the glory and the hurtful truths. When it got dark, they led us to paths untold. They showed us the magic gate to the magical theater. We didnt notice that the streets were so ugly and so dirty. There were the bars and fast women. No one would throw dirt in their eyes on a Sunday morning when god was a storybook character. The older boys would gather in their clubhouse and drink beer until the sun would go down. We played basketball at the schoolyard and football and wiffle ball in Pop Bottle Petes backyard. I remember experiencing victory and defeat. We occupied ourselves as best we could, not know where it was we were going. I remember the red glow of the furnace and the men with shovels who fed the fires that devoured the wooden coffins. No one asked any questions back then. We all pretended as if we understood. But there was confusion on our faces. It was a confusion you couldnt buy at the Franklin Store. We would buy baseball cards and not really know why. We sold our souls to Rocky and Bullwinkle. We worshiped underdog. We watched Dirty Harry kill all the bad guys and still the streets werent safe. Weapon is trading one stripe for another. She collects them like scars on her body. We are trying to find our way back to each other. She says keep making noise boys. Weapon is searching for our common ancestry. She searched for the place where we crossed the grassland steppes of Beringia into America, carrying only that which we could carry. Her roads had been

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widened more than once. She is defined by her simple roundness, with crooked hips and the vanity of the weak. Weapon says that she is going to leave Waterloo and move to a sweetie-pie town someday. She says that Waterloo reminds her of how poor she is. She says that when I smile at her, I make her feel naked, inarticulate, and powdery. She occasionally felt gypped as all women do from time to time. It is in the nature of their being to feel that somehow they are constantly at the short end of the stick, as if nature herself has cheated them in some universal joke. That life was somehow an imitation of a real life that someone else was living in her stead. As if she had been replaced as a child by someone else who was reaping the rewards that were due her. Weapon had this sense of entitlement that she did not earn, but that she felt was owed to her just for being a female. It is important to realize that we cant live others lives; we have to learn to live our own with all of its struggles and surprises. Just before the war, light bulbs with gasoline, essential music, assembly line mundane lifts and pulls. Disgusted with the sanctuary, the tea leaves philosophy, napkins. You translate life, a little drop at a time, from your medicine bottle. A natural artist, boy, man, sinking in quicksand-shudder, horror, and time is on my side. Believe in ghosts, trolls, monsters, and illumination. There is no ultimate goal, no ultimate truth, no utopia. You can have your objectivity, glass windows broken by baseballs, cutting grass, a tree dying alone. Wanting the other people to tell you, the sum total makes up the spirit, it represents nothing definite, everything is changing. This is a place for experiments. Bleeding out into the ribs, observing the primitive, climbing over the fence, sucking the blood and dreaming psychedelic dreams, cobbled up by the seraphs, can you believe?

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We welded all the thumbs together. I counted 23 in total. You kept beating me over the head with hope signs. We cheered as they crashed the rocket into the moon, reverberating. Suicide hipsters with burdened minds, trying to lick the cream off of the likeable skyscrapers blow these showers of stigmata. The lightning screams about the pretentions of the day as it tries to make another dollar. My body of pride with the red sex, purple haze, and loyal denizens recreates the universe. Where is your madrigal Christ? Feel the wild burden of pain as it shoots down your spine. This pain is mine, all mine-true rage. Death is not nameless, it has a name. I wait for the sharp dogs to hunt you down. This pitiful body of death, searching eyes of the ghetto flower, a slow slide into oblivion, killing the mastermind of the ghost oil reaching into the depths as the infidel policy of the joker man and you jump out of the box. The horizontal blue urges us on, hope is diving. We swarm the decay and make it our own. We give new names to the decay. Skulls, cones, and radios that reflect the revolution, tumbled horizons with an empty hook, the flesh has eyes and whiskers. I touch you with my neon fingers, Can you feel me? She has good luck, a lighter and a case for her cigarettes. She is banking on her ability to manipulate forever. Weapon is an entrepreneur; she makes a profit where no one else can. She used to take up the collection at the first church of Tim; she made sure that she pocketed a couple of dollars every now and then. Weapon went to school with Tonya and learned how to fold napkins into the shapes of cute little animals. For a school trip, they went to India and learned how to pee in a hole in the field. The tour guide would take a shovel out of the back of the bus and dig a three foot deep hole in a farm field for the girls to pee in. Weapon one day wants to start a war, she knows that one can get filthy stinking rich during war time. She has studied all the robber barons and has given her allegiance to the war

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machine. She is not a housewife, she is running for congress. Weapon is teaching Worm how to speak in tongues. Worm wants to be possessed by a demon, he wants to grow corn in straight rows, he wants to count the kernels on each ear. Worm hopes to someday meet the jolly green giant. Worm is reading one of Archimboldis books, the one with giants and a sea emotion between the characters. Worm hopes to meet Archimboldi someday, but the author disappeared in Mexico long ago. The authorities speculate that he could be a victim of the drug cartels war on industrial downsizing. Weapon secretly wishes that Worm was David Bowie singing on a television Christmas show. We made an iron girl, but she was not the savior of the people. When Worm asked her about her mother, she had a minor meltdown. We had to rewire her circuits and provide her with greater insulation. Pop Bottle Pete suggested that we provide her with a cover story about a mother that she never really had, a mother that was now retired and living in southern Florida wrestling alligators. Weapons mother was a traveling evangelist going from church to church trying to save the souls of meager individuals who had nothing better to do than spend their lives on their knees. She could sprout up the gospel from any dumb hillbilly pulpit; she could call down fire from heaven and destroy the boring along with their monkeys. Weapons mother wore an eye patch over her left eye from an injury she suffered in the Great War between Retail Sales and Luxury Items. She also did a small stint in the War of Aluminum Siding. Proctor and Gamble still may have a thirty year old bounty on her head. Weapons mother spews farcical farm vomit every chance she can get, in between her ablutions and bible reading. She tells her people how they can remain separate but equal with the world. At the end of her church service she lines the people up and blows them over with her breath. I never had that much blow.

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Weapon could shrink herself into the size of a dot as she chewed on the silence. She could never lose her witchiness, a cheerful surge to her utterances. She was living a famine in the midst of plenty. She is fighting for her right to a piece of bread, starving for all of her traditions. Now she has become sympathetic and charitable even, wanting to heal those who have been marked for death. We destroy our power to love. Her famine goes to the roots. I take my shovel and dig deep into her ground. I look around for the source of her disease. We expect nothing from god. Weapon lays down her life. She runs with the herd and dies with the herd. It is all really natural. She has become the animal that is in us all. She convinces others to rally behind a cause, a belief, an idea. She lives in the swarm of her fine principles. It is her principles that put the taste of death in her mouth. She kills them off one by one. The dead are helpless against her. She satisfies her need to kill. She is becoming more civilized. As the civilization in her grows, she becomes more efficient at the kill. Weapon retrieves the primitive, anarchic instincts which have been sacrificed for the illusion of this world. She is throwing sticks of dynamite at the crowd. With each explosion, the crowd gets bigger. She is not going to trade her life for the anonymity of purpose. She will not fail in living her own life. Her fight is for life and to have it more abundantly. She wields her sword as she strikes down her enemy. The struggle must be taken to the streets. The struggle must take place every day. The struggle must take place inside of you and outside of you. The struggle starts with you. I am looking for something that no savior or prophet can give me. I need no leader and I need no god. I am sufficient in and of myself. I am larger than my physical body. I am stronger than my mind. I can work miracles. I have enough faith in myself to make myself heard. My words are loaded with dynamite. My words destroy the walls of illusion. My words destroy the lies of this world. I

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reach up inside of my enemies and pull out their intestines. I have laid myself out wide open. I have learned all the strategies of the world, how the deals are made in the back alleys. I bide my time looking for the right opening and then I let them have it with all of my might. I am against your revolution because what we need is evolution. Humanity needs to evolve into a higher order being. With a revolution, we only replace one group of oppressors with another. I cant ask you questions about the past anymore because you are gone. You were always so much better at remembering the past than I. You didnt inspire fear, you inspired love. There was a joy in living that cannot be duplicated. When we try to make something that is true and lasting, we discover that which is artificial. The artificial consumes us, devours us, detonates us, it deviates us, determinates us, and makes us its slave. I remember Worm standing in the middle of the street with his pants around his ankles as he jacked-off in front of everybody. He was a victim of a struggle which takes place in the theater of his mind. He had purchased his ticket for entry, but was denied entrance. Worm wants a faithful creature that he can subdue without drugs and magick. He looks for her on the internet. He hopes that he can have her shipped to his front door. Worm didnt understand the cold-bloodedness that politics required. Still he would breathe in the toxic fumes of the clouds and think that everything is all good. He would fight with the stray dogs for the scraps of meat that the butcher would throw out into the street. He is as naked as a savage howling at the moon. Worm needs the earth like we need the sky. Weapon was the one that convinced us to move to the dark side of the moon. Worm was planning on going to go to school there studying geography or philosophy. Worm built a deprivation chamber in the basement of an old house we rented. We would smoke pot and then float in the darkness. Worm was keeping a journal of the thoughts that came to him

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in the chamber. In the garage he would hang balls on different lengths of string and would kick and hit them in a pseudo-karate workout. One evening over white wine, Weapon told Worm and me about her experiences in the army. I always listened to her very intently. I cherished every word that came from her mouth. Her words could paint a picture in my mind that no one else could. She was studying lesbian pornography and planned to make a documentary about it. That night I lost her somewhere on the hill between the pizza place and the Chinese restaurant. I guess she wandered for days before she found her way home. She was living with a sociology professor who was getting a divorce. They ate vegetables together and practiced white magic. After a year, the professor left Weapon for some whore in Cincinnati. Weapon later in life moved in with David the Bell Weather and they had three kids together. David still claims that one of them is mine. As I kept driving Weapon began to incorporate a magical vocabulary into her speech as she talked about the signs in the sky and what they meant to her and I. She was detailing her higher knowledge of the astral Arcanum when a tire went flat. I sent up smoke signals to Black Elk to send help. I fished a couple of cold beers out of the cooler and we waited for the rescue party. We painted messages on the rocks. We sold bracelets to tourists as they drove by in their ramblers. We set up a tent and watched the stars pass by us. Weapon was counting all of the falling stars. Weapon contemplated about all the meaningless questions. The mere mechanical process of touching her buttons sharpens my thoughts. There is something going on between me and her body. In a way, her body acts as a stimulus, it is a cooperative thing. I dont pretend to understand it. We are working in an uncomfortable position. Weapon says that the discomfort helps.

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We have both accepted the fact of our demonic natures. We are always in trouble, with our relationships, with work, with our friends. At times, it seems as if everything is spinning uncontrollably off the face of the earth. Weapon thinks its bad to think. She is not very good at thinking. She operates from some deep seated place that is inside of her, I guess it may be called intuition. She guides her steps by the winds of fate and doesnt stop to ask why. She is a creature of action, of movement. She is constantly moving at the speed of light. It is impossible for me to keep up with her. She knows what she wants to do, but she doesnt spend time thinking about how to do it, she does it. If it is not perfect, she doesnt let that bother her. Weapon says that life is not perfect. We use our antennas to hook ourselves up to the currents of the moment. We ride upon the winds of the times. We are intermediaries attaching ourselves to the ghosts and the gods. They whisper sweet nothings into our ears and we have enough good sense to write it down. Weapon has loaded my gun. There was a smile upon her face. A cruel smile is the only one she knows. There was a seasoned quality to her hands as she worked the mechanism. We were somewhere on the edge of a cornfield near Jesup, Iowa, the drugs were beginning to take hold. I told Weapon that I was feeling a little light headed and asked her if she felt like driving. She looked at me and opens her moth real wide, impossibly wide and there was this silence that seemed like an eternity. Then came this roar, it came out of her mouth, but its source was far away. It was a roar that might exist in the center of a black hole, as everything gets compacting into one another. Weapon had taken her shirt off and was pouring sangria on her chest. Damn it is hot, she says and asks me why Im staring at her. Weapon was looking for a play on words, something she could tell the gardener. She always upsets my calculations. She questions the sincerity of my heart, asking me if I truly love

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her. I tell her that I love her more than I ever thought I could love someone. We deal entirely with disintegration, severing the nerve ends, opening up the capillaries, necrophilia, and fetishism. We walked into the furnace like devils and hell did not spit us out. You lit up your pipe of opium and rubbed up against my leg like a cat. I am reading an article about a poet. I like how at the end they drag his soul through the mud. The writer reminds us that the genius was a sick and perverted fuck. I guess the article wasnt about the poet but about the writer. You gave off some existential threat as you blew opium smoke rings into the air. There is always more reality than our stomachs can digest. All this talk of the enemys infiltration spun circles around your head, a world of endless dirt that always needs to be swept under a rug is never comforting for you. At times, you could be all leg bristle with your complicated lips. The anatomy of where hips and thighs come together, magnified, stretched and out of focus, and the hungry mouth from another world, they all come together in you as if sealed together in Reynolds wrap. You stand outside the American hotel handing out coupons. I remember the wino didnt want to be considered a beat poet. He wants to die in Weapons hair before he discovers that he is all alone. We sat around and talked about all the ugly things in life. The news man doesnt have a theme song, but he looks like he wants one. She had little titties and large hips. His wife found him in bed, dead with a heart attack. All his juices were drained out of him. The poor little girl couldnt get out from under him. We thought he was a man, but he was only a muffin, as we stopped listening to his prolific promises. We shelled peas under a hot sun and drank jack and lemonade. Weapon said a prayer for the growing season, we all said amen. Weapons prayers are always like the words of an angry man, seething with the knowledge that redemption has been lost. She laid there for four hours before his wife came

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home from work. She said that he had great hands like a god. He made her feel so close to the dirt, so much more than one dimensional. We call the killers beautiful. It happens all the time. There is no need to be afraid. The things of the world pour through Weapon. She feels immobilized and drugged. She spits so the seeds of death will grow as she takes another swig of coca cola. Weapon was working hard at establishing her innocence. She considered me her oppressor. I would shake her books and count the money that would fall on the floor. She had never seen mountains until I took for a drive to see Mona Lisa. She begged me to stop the car so she could get out and take a good look at them. She was upset when I told her there was no film in the camera, this was before digital cameras. We stopped at a trout fishing spot and had lunch. I read to her a couple of poems from Richard Brautigan as she fidgeted on the blanket. She wanted me to write down all the names of my hookers. She wanted to sew their names into a quilt just like her grandmother did with her grandchildren. Weapon found it hard to sleep. In the morning she would be attacking the shore of the small little beach head. She knew that some of them would be dead, that not every girl would make it back alive. Weapon was lying flat on her bunk with her eyes closed. She kept telling herself that she would be one of the unlucky ones. She prayed to every god she could think of and to some that she was sure she had made up. Weapon figured that any god fake or real was just as good as any in a tight situation like this. Weapon was thinking about hard things like if they would be shipping her body home. She wondered if Worm would remember what her pussy felt like. Weapon told lies to all the other girls about how pretty they were or how one had the grace of a movie star or the voice of a goddess. The lies, for Weapon always revealed the pattern.

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It was the pattern that she put her trust in. The lies were only the vehicle for revealing the pattern. Weapon says that the pattern is everywhere. I have been talking to Weapon about your mental asphyxiation as you were squatting in the ashes. The words seemed a bit harsh and false as they came out of your mouth. You threw them against the stone walls and down from the tall white steeples. We turned the bright eyes of the pigs as we watched Archie Bunker and grew the anger in our veins. Worm said that you were too young for an under shave and hair dip dyed in bright colors. Still you could tickle his fancy with too much hair spray and a bad angle. Worm was a sucker for Japanese Haiku. You are more than a face, more than an earlobe. Worm looks out his window and watches murder, knee deep in the blood of the innocents. He writes love poems all day and dedicates them to Weapon. He tells her that he dies in her arms every day. He is reading her lips, very carefully, hoping to understand the pauses and the miscues. Worm has told Weapon all about the little voices in his head. How they speak to him in the middle of the night when no one else is around. Weapon still thinks she can afford the luxury of changing Worms mind. Weapon would picture his mind as a large waxy machine that stamped children into raspberry cookies. He was a light that showed all the secrets in the cave of her being. He was a wizard of theft and transformation as he spoke of love and the true beating sounds of his heart. Worm is afraid that the truth will get out. He covers Weapon in headlines. He sees monsters behind all of the trees. He wants to change the plugs in his pickup truck, but he cant remember the Fibonacci sequence. He moves in and out of the land of the giant hamburgers. He is talking to a white frosted wedding cake, asking it if in knows the way to the nearest bus stop. He has all of his papers in order, just in case the police stop him and ask. But, they never have and most likely never will. He was telling the wedding cake about geothermal energy and asking women walking their dogs if they would be interested in helping

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him dig the shaft. He only talked to women with dogs. He considers all the dogs on the planet to be like lead soldiers on the planet Venus. He watched as the wedding cake crouched as if to be fucked from behind. The wedding cake had glassy blood-shot eyes. We watched as Worm poked and licked the wedding cake.

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Deep Tissue Magazine Issue 17, 2014 On Blogger You can read past issues on Blogger. http://deeptissue2.blogspot.com/

On Facebook Like the magazine on facebook. https://www.facebook.com/DeepTissueMagazine

Contact If you have any questions, you can contact me at the address below: Martin_freebase@yahoo.com

Call for Submissions

Deep Tissue Magazine, a creative arts magazine that promotes the efforts of poetry writers around the world is looking for poetry submissions for the next issue of Deep Tissue Magazine. Send no more than five poems in the body of an e-mail to: Martin_freebase@yahoo.com

Be sure to put the word submission in the subject line of the e-mail.