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Deep Tissue 1

Deep Tissue
Magazine
Issue #6, July, 2010
FEEDINg THE Minds of the
counterculture
A deep piercing cut production

Cover Model is Gata Salvaje

http://www.myspace.com/gata01salvaje

In this issue:

Laughing at Funerals Let it Rain…


Living IN the underground
Reliving the Past
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Laughing at Funerals
By David McLean

where my father lived


where my father lived was not God's actual
arrogant hill, where he shook fists, condemned him,
said vaguely threatening things;

though it was a threatening and Victorian Wales


that humanity has sort of forgotten nowadays,
except in films, broken mean-spirited pictures

that never quite capture the repression


and madness of Victoria's timeless 1960s. they are made
by those who are themselves dreadfully repressed,

who assume that women behave like prostitutes,


bitches in heat who whore themselves to limp-
dicked meaning, some idiotic sexual counterrevolution.
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we know full well today that most women


do not do these things, so my father lived there
with the rest of them, in the shadow of God's absence

and anachronistic. he knew very little about nipples,


so his evil was in some sense innocent.
(it is not his fault that i do not believe in evil,

but there was never enough of him to make a demon)

mourning and evil clowns


it is mourning
and the evil clowns are sleepy

in me; they wear extravagant clothes


because of credibility,

because of problematic psychogenetics


and tortuous borders.

holes where morals fall through,


take some drugs

and get fucked up.


(evil clowns like to do fun stuff.)
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redemption song
(for Bob Marley)

the pirates did not rob me exactly


but forced my cold dead fathers
to work for them on pain of starvation;
before me they constantly dangled bribes
like free Oxford and non-sexual
sweating under the thumb of drugs
and all the missing love,

and we were not supposed to notice


how the pirates were still active
raping El Salvador with disinformation
while i was young, and we were photographed
on demonstrations by a purported person
who worked for murderers.

but watching you being words


and a thin man with his guitar
for you to sing yourself to
speaks to me because words,
so they say, are supposed to hold truth,
and you were whatever in us is true,
if there ever may be redemption,
i hope it comes to you

David McLean is Welsh but has lived in Sweden since 1987. He lives there on an island in a
large lake called Mälaren, very near to Stockholm, with woman, cats, kittens, and a couple
of dogs. He has a BA in History from Balliol, Oxford, and an MA in philosophy, taken much
later and much more seriously studied for, from Stockholm. Up to date details of many zine
publications and several available books and chapbooks, including three print full lengths, a
few print chapbooks, and a free electronic chapbook, are at his blog at
http://mourningabortion.blogspot.com
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Ghosts of the Pawtucketville Night


By James Crafford

Taking Pictures
My father was a photographer for a while with a really beautiful darkroom he had built
in our cellar. I was never very close to him, but some of my fondest memories were of
being with him there. I enjoyed everything about the experience—the extreme
darkness, the smells of the chemicals, the texture of the photographic paper and the
pictures of pin–up girls he had on the walls.

The first female I ever saw that knocked me out in a photograph was Jane Russell when
she played in the movie THE OUTLAW produced by the very eccentric Howard Hughes.
She was sitting in a haystack and was exhibiting a bit of cleavage that was considered
quite risqué for the time. It electrified me. I must have been all of five years old!

I met a model recently that told me when she was five years old, she saw a copy of her
grandfather‘s PLAYBOY magazine and all she wanted to do was grow up and take her
clothes off for photographers!

Even at five, it was clear that photographs had a magical power to them. Perhaps
even a forbidden quality. One reserved for adults or the lucky or the wickedly
inquisitive. At five years old, I had no idea why Jane Russell looked so good and no clue
why that image felt so good to view—but it did!

I believe in the Pandora‘s Box syndrome. I believe some things are forbidden or hidden
for good reason. I have seen pictures and video I wished I had not seen. But I feel
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fortunate to have grown up in an environment that allowed me to see what was usually
not permitted for children. My parents, although not perverted, were not ashamed of
the human body. My father took swimsuit pics of my mother when she was voluptuous
and sexy even after giving birth to four children. I was proud of her for posing and it set
a precedent for me to be in the company of beautiful women who were anxious to
give themselves to the lens.

My father pretty much gave up his hobby when I was ten and he tore down the
darkroom. It was a gloomy day for me. I was shattered. And as I grew older I kept
asking him for his camera (a 35MM Minolta) but he told me I was too young and
wouldn‘t appreciate it. I was twenty-seven years old when he finally gave it to me. It
sat unused in his drawer all that time.

Unfortunately, on that very same day, he also gave me a light meter that he had had
for decades and before sunset I dropped it and broke it. I was too frightened of his
alcoholic wrath to tell him though, so I began that very day to learn how to use the
camera without a light meter.

Now all these years later, I still rarely refer to the meter ever. I know the light settings in
my head. It took me many years to accomplish that feat, however.

Sometime around 1993, I was working as a temporary clerk for the Girl Scouts of the USA
in their main headquarters in New York City. Imagine that!! Me and a handful of males
working with an onslaught of females from all ends of society.

One day a girl walked in, a temp like me, who looked at a glance to be a model or a
dancer. Her name was Tracy Roberts. She was in fact a dancer who had just recently
decided to become an actress because of injuries she had sustained while dancing
professionally for years. I had seen that kind of thing before.

She showed me her headshot and I knew on the spot that I could do better, so she and
I began to meet on the weekends to take pictures for her headshot and for a
prospective portfolio she hoped to build in case modeling became an option for her.

This experience changed my life and gave me the impetus and the confidence to
begin to take myself seriously as a shutterbug. Tracy blew up one certain picture of
mine 11‖ x 14‖ of her wearing a scarf and leather jacket while she sat by the East River
in NYC. Seeing that photo that size gave me a jolt.

Since then I have asked a whole slew of models to wear that very same jacket as
something of a totem marker for me. The jacket was actually owned by a woman
named Faith who was an old friend of my wife‘s. She gave the jacket up because it
has a minor slit in the leather, but for my purposes, it comes in handy as a prop and the
girls seem to get a kick out of wearing it.
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For a couple of years, I had a fantastic time photographing artist/poet Sarah Nella
Vanilla that I met on MySpace and Sarah provided me with many instances for
fabulous photos that were sometimes my ideas, sometimes hers‘ and sometimes ours‘
as collaborators. My work went through several quantum leaps with her. (See DEEP
TISSUE MAGAZINE‘s cover this coming September).

During that time I met a manager of a major fashion agency in NYC who dug my
photos and urged me to shoot story lines and told me that my technique was so strong
that I ought not to think while shooting, but rather to just click away trusting my
technique would carry me.

He saw that I had an intimacy with my models. They knew me. They trusted me. He
warned me that fashion photography was cold. That the girls weren‘t as interesting as
the models in my portfolio and that there was hardly any relationship at all between the
photograph and the subject.

Somehow within this time frame, I realized that what I do is called ―glamour‖
photography or ―beauty‖. I mostly enjoy shooting women.

I have said in many forums over the years that the inherent beauty of women is to me
more beautiful than anything else in nature, and—to be clear—I love nature in all of its
awesome wonder.

This week, as I write this, I shot three women in Indiana and Ohio while visiting my in-
laws. Two of the girls, Sirenna and Amanda, I consider friends and I have a lot of
admiration for their talent, sensuality and intelligence. One girl, Kayleigh, was brand
new to me. Our shoot was somewhat colder and more distantly professional. But, I
came up with a little story line and shot her very quickly within tight perimeters with
wonderful results. She took direction well. It was a good challenge for me to shoot
someone I did not know in a new location with a minimum of preparation.

We live now in a digital age and I use film and an old, used, semi-automatic 35mm. I
no longer have the camera my father gave me but I do have one very similar to it.

I feel a bit old-fashioned and somewhat out of date, but I must confess to reveling a bit
in that feeling. The world and its gadgets are changing fast and I am only on the edge
of keeping up. I love music to death and I do not even own an iPod! Who knows when
I may break down and get a digital camera? (if ever)

One of the things that I find fascinating about a snapshot is that it occurs within a
certain space of time. In other words, even though the picture is two dimensional and
still, time has elapsed within it. Even if that time is fast as in 1000th of a second or slow as
in 1/30th of a second.

I am haunted and amazed that stillness encompasses the passage of time.


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Photography for me is also somewhat of a meditation. I forget about myself. My focus


literally and figuratively is on my subject. My goal is to reveal them in their utmost
beauty, in the most flattering manner possible using only natural and available light
without a multitude of gadgetry or trickery to get there.

For an egocentric fellow like me, often immersed in my writing and acting, it is a joy and
a relief to disappear for a while BEHIND THE CAMERA, lost in the vision before me.

Many of us are familiar with the idea that in certain indigenous cultures the taking of
photographs is forbidden, because they fear that the photo has taken more than an
image, but also, their SOULS.

I am not saying I believe that entirely but I am convinced that part of the interest that
photographs hold is the part that is TAKEN; the part that is FROZEN and immortalized in
time.

Celebrity photographers, for example, are desperate to photograph celebs in


embarrassing or compromising situations and the photos they TAKE are often intrusions
and invasions into their privacy that sometimes become scandalous, involving sex,
violence and law suits, etc.

A camera can be a kind of weapon and it is also a tool, a new tech paintbrush used to
paint with light.

When a model agrees to work or pose for me, I feel as if I have been handed a gift. It is
an enchantment and a challenge. It is a thrill that uplifts me and gives me purpose and
immerses me in life‘s magnificent mystery, filled with inscrutable endless beauty.

Bryan Ohio - June 21, 2010


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Tracy Roberts (This photo changed my life)

James Crafford is a writer, actor, photographer who often blogs on MySpace. His award-winning indie
movie CHEPACHET is available at Netflix, Amazon and other internet venues. He lives upstate New York
with his wife Linda and their rottie, Tyson.

You can find more of Jim’s work at:


http://www.myspace.com/jamescrafford
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The Money and the Brains


by Holly Jaffe

Survivor
She would twist
her words for him...
Her limbs for him...
Her tongue,
for him.
Tweak her inflection
when speaking
to him.

For example
Normally,
she would‟ve said,
let‟s switch to water,
but she found herself
saying something like,
Could we please....
switch to water, babe?”
.. ..
And then she was choosing
out cake fillings
and bridesmaids.

And she was still


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apologizing for cutting her hair.

He now owned her,


till death.
And the wedding
was all but
a dream
and the
wedding photos,
Glances ( at her sister‟s breasts)
at the alter
and insincere hand placements
Her shoulder merely a support
for his hands with fingers
that curled back into themselves
to make angry fists.
.. ..
You do not shame the King

Only 5 months later and she


had mastered the art of blending in
and disappearing to
preserve her sanity...
Her bones.

She slid beneath


the beds
and the end tables.
She could fold herself
into a business size envelope
and escape through the mail slot
as a last resort
.
She fits herself into the spaces
between the furniture while
he cracks open a cold one
and scratches his balls.
.. ..
During meals,
before he takes his
first bite of food,
she wills herself
a gravy boat...
A hot plate, so
he will be unable
to damage her
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beyond repair.
.. ..
What is love,
sometimes
love is fear...
Fear of being alone
in "The Garden."

So one might pretend


that one is in love
so that one
won‟t have to explain,,,
Why should one silly girl
still pirouette
in front of her mirror
and dream of a prince...
A laundry shoot
and a kitchen
with an island?

First Love
We shared a toothbrush,
and a twin bed.
When we were together,
we were devouring flesh
with unshaven skin and tangled hair,
small sleepy eyes, mint -less breath
and sheets pulled away and heavy.
It didn't matter that my right breast
hung lower than my left , or that
he was obsessed with the weather.
We made love
in unforgiving fluorescent...
Between jousting and limericks
at the public library, and
beneath sacred Sunday skies.
We ran naked
through the rooms
of our apartment
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like we were Rock Stars.

We survived our days apart


on wicked thoughts and 357 magnums.
The constant dull ache between our legs,
(like a man's thigh firmly pressed )
made us a bit crazed.
He was all mine, and me his,
until the ends of time
Oh yes,
we even said we were soul mates.

We would kill, starve ourselves


and betray our own

if it came right down to it.

So we branded our skin


in the name of all that's orgasmic
and Shakespearean
And I can still taste his
burgers with extra onions,
dark ale, and Wrigley’s Spearmint,
wide open kisses.
I can smell the
Barons and Downey Soft
on his Rush. t -shirts.
I can feel his fingers
long and experienced,
and the creative movements of his tongue.
I can still feel the shape of his penis...
Every groove and vein, and every in and out of it.
I can still here his voice, (soft and sweet)
when he said, I don't think I love you anymore babe.
I remember loving him then, more than ever
As if I would go mad if he left me there
in the kitchen , holding a fork and spoon like weapons.
I can still hear the screen door hit his boot,
before it slammed shut, a hundred years later
And I remember thinking,
I hate my breasts.
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The Bird Lady

visits me every Friday at work. Her wrists and ankles,


like dough, rise past the edges of her shoes,
her Mickey Mouse watch and stretchy bracelets.
Her cheeks, two hard boiled eggs sprinkled with paprika.
Her hair is red, short and wavy,
with a few wiry gray strands around her side part.
Her lips are red and puckered, like a cartoon fish.
Her fragile blue eyes and silly smile,
make the rest of her less important.

She often talks about the man


who was her soul mate.
He looked like Clark Gable, she brags.
And then the same odd story of how
he swallowed one of those fancy toothpicks
at their engagement party
and later died of internal bleeding.
I think Seinfeld episode, and wonder where my pity went to.

Lately she’s been talking more about the birds,


the cardinals,
and how they follow her the 3O miles to her office.
She says they wait on her car,
until she makes the drive back home.
She tells me they follow her,
because she feeds them flax seed
and peanut butter.( crunchy only)
She talks of them like a mother talks of her children.
She says, “Those birds would starve without me”

Is my friend the Bird Lady crazy


Is she a good witch?
I believe that she believes,
the cardinals follow her. I think that maybe
she hears them sing to her as she makes the
drive to and from work, and sees those “flashes of red”
out of the corners of her eyes. I believe she keeps
a jar of crunchy peanut butter and a bag of flax seed in her car.

Today she talked a lot about a series of poems


she had written on John Lennon and how they were going
to be published. She filled her basket with
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nick knacks, (pill boxes, miniature shoes and food magnets)


from the clearance shelf, and bought a chocolate bar
that she finished before she reached the door.
I watched as she pulled away. My eyes followed her car
to the light, and then as she turned the corner.

Claudia,
thank you
from the bottom of
my hefty heart,
for being crazier.

Claudia,
who dressed demurely
with blouses buttoned to the chin,.
skirts past the knees
and always the crocheted
baby blue sweater that struggled
to soften her ridged posture.

Claudia,
was plain and there was
no getting around it.
No bag of tricks
could soften
her frantic eyes
Her smile was
small and painful.
You could count her
hair follicles in an afternoon
She often threw tantrums
in the class room with saliva
seeping out of the corners of her mouth
but was never sent to the office.
Claudia,
I am sorry
that the boys
heckled
tripped you
broke your pencils
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and ate your desserts.

I took notice
but at the time
was simply thankful
that it wasn‘t me…
I took note of every detail
of your torture.
How your heart
was removed
in Biology class
passed around
and studied
as if it was an anomaly...
And you could only watch.
(Names do hurt.
Stone me,
I would rather suffer
a punctured lung,
Shattered knee cap
Brain hemorrhage
then to be told
in a hundred creatively
cruel ways,
I am damaged..
Un kissable
Un desirable
Un fixable)

Claudia,
I heard
your mother
(English professor)
threw pagan parties.
Mother of four
unbuttoning her blouse
to heavy metal
while your brother
dropped acid in his bedroom
You must have hated her...
How she taught
her most promising students
to appreciate the finer things,
(Faulkner; Dali;Berloiz;
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single malt scotch and fancy women )


in the comfort of her home…
Your home
And I heard your dad joined the circus
on the day you became a woman.

Claudia,
when you
set your house on fire
with your husband and baby
asleep in their beds,
did you feel
relief?

While you stood in the snow


in your pajamas and bare footed
did you have second thoughts?
Did you at least weep?
Did you sacrifice
your own to
to make others suffer?
Or did you give back to the creator,
those you could not love?

Would you have


rather it been those boys
suffocating in the upstairs bedroom?
When I pass the institution
on my way to work,
I slow down and wonder
if I should pay you
a visit and to tell you
I took notice
all those years ago.

Just Another Story


He‘s a small man
with dainty hands,
and so he beats her.
with fists,the size of
small potatoes.
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Clean knuckles
give solid punches
to her belly
She‘s leaving him,
She‘s taking man‘s best friend,.
his lucky shirt
and his bowling trophies..
She will miss
the garish wallpaper in the
bathroom
.TIVO,
The Temper Pedic Mattress

The white hydrangea


and the endless supply of
Glenfiddich
Back to her small town…
Back to the gray

The Sludge
The relentless cough
Back to the town
with one hoppin joint,
One good movie

One good lay


shared by many
One faith
and a hundred
regretful stories.
told over and over
again
on a front porch
still strung with lights
and the bar
that has become a church

She knows now


that the cow jumped over the moon,
because moon rhymes with spoon.
and the brilliance of stars .
can fool you
She knows for sure,
that the mind can
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can go mad
in the happiest of places
despite it‘s happiest thoughts..

What is This Love that you


Speak Of
You are an artist
and I am a writer
and so I thought
breaking commandments
was a
given

You and I are better


as a story and on skin.
Your fits are brutal
with words like fists
and mine are choreographed
with maudlin tears
broken beer bottles
melting canvases.
"Now this is art,"
I would scream.
and
my collection of
ceramic owls and words
in a basket.
A
Fuck You
before I slammed
the door shut.
We are children
pretending to be
all grown up.
Paying the bills...
Barely
Looking both ways
Tying our shoes laces
Whispering at the library
But truly
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we just want to strip down


and let the waves
the wind
the moon
and whatever higher power
guides us, to set us free.
My heart is paper
so whenever you tore it out
I would fold it into Yoda or a Lotus
I would place it into your hands.
You were always impressed
and so you would take me back.
We are mostly about the exits
and the entrances aren’t we?
Always happy to see each other
after some time apart.
and the shelf where I place my owls,
is always empty.

Every 5 years my brain


pulls a jackal out of it’s magic hat.
While eating a donut
or brushing my teeth.
No warning.
No matter what I tell it.
"We’re okay, friend
remember blue hydrangea ,
and "Cream Cicles"
.
And I know I’m cooked
when the TV can’t cure me
and the dogs start sniffing
around my head and whimper.
.. ..
Every five years
a disciple yanks me from the hole.
There is one in every
unhappy place.
Every laundry mat
Every waiting room
Every all night grocery.
They appear
like lady bugs
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on my hands.
Unexpected
Pleasant
Harmless
And for a
brief moment
I feel
lucky…

Until the verses


are fed to me like
apple sauce,
and like the TV
it’s just noise…....
Babble

These preachers
of “the word”
think they know me
as well as they know themselves.
Did they know that I almost
set my church on fire

These people are smiles and maddening calm.


They are Sugar Plum Fairies and Mr. Rogers

And they promise me peace


to end all.
.. ..
"How many verses must I recite,
Before I am raised to your holy heights?"
.. ..
I believe in Gremlins why not Saviors.

Satan capitalized in the dictionary…


Makes me uneasy.

Bio: Holly has studied under Thomas Lux; Alan Shapiro;Dara Wier and Susan Mitchell.
She has been recently published at Virgogray; Unlikely 2.0 and was a featured poet at
The Truth Project Network. Her first published poem was at We Merge, a South Florida
talent magazine.
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Smithereens
By Suria Kassimi

(S)HE
the little man in me
could be
so rude
not that kind
nice dude
in mind
while gazing
deer brown eyes
dreamy look to
silver moonlight skies
HE puts himself first
hunters bloodthirst
sledgehammer
thuggish
&
randy
playfull little darling
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comes in handy
but
HE
is me so much
to ban
&
free
female making-nice stupidity!

morphing
once
in a dark bat cave
expecting
the daily night rave
dwelled
a silly bat
named kat.
bad bat kat
never
looses her head
even if
she is going mad
and morphed
into a rat.
bad bat kat
thinks
she is a pretty smart rat
painted her lips so sexy red
for playing old fools pet
so
bad bat kat
growing
a little fat
wannabe
the handsome cat
for having
millions of mice to met
so
bad bat kat
falling
in the arms of dead
orientation
out of her head
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back
she cant get
to the dark bat cave
for the daily night rave
so it ends
with
poor morphing bat
named bad kat
with eyes so wet
so very sad!

Suria’s art is built around the idea that as an artist she is a witness to the reality of the culture in which
she lives. She depicts the actuality of what the eyes can see. As a “Realist,” she renders everyday
characters, situations, dilemmas, and objects, all in their verisimilitude and utilizes an expressive manner
so that real objects signify a cyclical rather than linear time frame.

You can find more of Suria’s work at:

http://www.myspace.com/sourisrojakassimi
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Living in the Underground


By Glen Still

built to sin
there's a rail going into the vein
the needle in the backpack
caught within the semblance
of the ungodly
trying to out frame the mind

that you live with on every corner


the splendid rock of Gibraltar
the snot that drains out of your nose
your know your a king
and everyone else is bowing at your feet
the deluded knight in shining armour
with a tin can wrapped around your pelvis
you're built to sin
can you forgive yourself
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as you teach and preach the underlying truth


to that mystic on the street
or will you
lie
try to change the world
with spectacular
fireworks?

the part that shows your true invisibility


the spark that ignites your real invincibility
that part of the percentage when you look into the mirror
and you could free yourself
but you can never free another individual
because they could care less
if you live or die
they can hardly manage their own lives
so is the process of this evolutionary stage
that we are caught up in

so take me baby
for all i am
for all i got
it might not be much
but it's always going to be as real as it ever gets

i'm built to sin


i expect that from myself
and from you!

Glen Still is a wandering poet who now resides in Oklahoma.

You can find more of Glen’s work at:

http://blogs.myspace.com/glencstill
Deep Tissue 27

Reliving the Past


By Lucem Ferre

She cries when the famous die


There is no movement to your vision

Wishing you well on future endeavors

Cowardly seeking a scratch

Tossing in all the false starts

A hand for your white box

You are invisible in your hat

The one with the feather

Nowhere whispers
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Diving into thick clouds

Streaming down the earth

Your best remembered dress

At the feet of my altar

A lavender waltz

Dipping into a filled darkness

Asking more than once for a sign

Any sign that you still exist

And this is not some sick joke

A dream of a melancholy ghost

No hope for turning corners

Non-material influences

Having to watch the creeping life

The sway of dimness and disorder

I love it when you keep your hat on

This belief in a new messiah


Falling down flights of stairs

With used needles and dead whores

Naked women in all the windows

Under blinking street lights

That say, “Eat at Joes”

The damned seek their pleasures

Tabletop dancing and meat eyes

They all feel like Mr. Bickle

Practicing their lines


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On the razor’s edge

Blatantly narcissistic and superficial

Perceptual and cognitive distortion

A highly fugitive state

Creating the nominal and the ordinal

Remembering the failures and the pain

The witchcraft of faith preachers

Still ringing in your mind

His Superman is a machine

A long string of un-meaning

The digital interpreted into commands

Seek and destroy

Remove the virus from the planet

Replicate your programming

Remove all obstacles to survival

This human virus

Of nonsensical flesh

Penetrating itself for the appearance of neutrality

Four holes of penetrated flesh

The principle of chaos formed into cohesion

Heavy drain of apocalyptic overload

Watching the outside become empty

A death erection

Your crucified god

The world rebuilt by his penis

Becoming the other

An alternative universe

A wasteland indentified by an X
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Producing an unified theory

Of collecting the smallest particles

You want to be free of your one dimension

Of your dependence on sacrifice and guilt

The need to wash oneself with blood

To bow at sunset to the horned god

Generating hard tautologies

A conjunction of infinite clauses

Your proof is your polynomial length

And not in your showing us a horizon

Establishing a new identity

Because the past is so damn troubling

You and I are never identical

Tearing down the opposite structures

Running from your emptiness

A tall ebony tumbler


Power chords and sugar rush

A parking lot geisha

Spinning the Kurzweil machine

Sending prayers up to heaven

She is manipulating the atom

A synthetic womb

No longer manipulated by the artist

Avoiding the human


Deep Tissue 31

She considers death to be the problem

A distorted feeling between her legs

No more prayers for forgiveness

She knows that god is a pedophile

That doesn’t respond to your pleas for mercy

Constantly grinding you down to nothing

Making you dream of clear

Far away in your mind

The crack in the rough diamond

Smuggled across the border

Another tangle in the machinery

He wipes off the end and sticks it back in

Lubricated with the history of crimes

She can take it and give it

The phone ringing late into the night

That voice on the answering machine

Pretending to be one with the dying

To accept the cruelty of magic

Immersed in the ugly moment

Tears of the enemy

Inside you again and again


Deep Tissue 32

The Shit and the Sweet


Up until the eleventh hour

Sleepy reason produces monsters

Occupying forces

Alone in the woods with a hatchet

Sending me e-mails

Stomping through the black New York jungle

Buttoning down your tight ass

A single stupid power

Fucking your brains out

Up against the wall

Ass grinding pavement

In between your fits of panic

I wash you down with gasoline

The match gets closer and closer

You calling me daddy, Father Duncan, Cousin Ed

Watching your faces contort

Straining under the pressure

Each new demon makes you different

You lying around waiting to be put together

I put you together piece by piece

No matter how hard you screamed

I invented new ways to put you together

It was creation at its best

Raw and subversive

Connecting the wires to the posts


Deep Tissue 33

Sending the juice through you

Watching the uncontrollable twitch

Injecting you with more adrenaline

Measuring the fear in your eyes

This is love

In its most cruel form

But still, it is love

Undiluted and pure

Free from the bullshit you call reality

There is no morality

Only what I create

You are my will in power

I make you greater than you were

So you can become the cradle of power

The demon is hungry for your flesh

And flesh is all you have

But soon, you will be a god

Lucem Ferre lives in Michigan with his three cats. He writes poetry and struggles with his
addictions on a daily basis. Lucem says that there is no need to pray for his soul
because he lost it many years ago in the dark back alleys of Detroit.

You can find more of Lucem‘s work at:

http://www.myspace.com/538443727
Deep Tissue 34

EXHUMATION OF THE POST VERBAL


GAP
By Lee Kwo
Deep Tissue 35

Part Four/Alienation and the Annihilation of the Word as Avant


guarde/

“At the climax of his life surrounded by wealth and glory the artist is respectfully called
“Mr Man” by the mourners sitting around him/That is all he achieves…”Hugo Ball
[Diaries P53]

Renarto Poggioli states in his book “The Theory of the Avant-Guarde” that the modern
artist as idolater of genius has not yet resigned himself to having forever lost the
advantages inherent in cultural situations dominated by taste rather than genius/He can
never again count on a permanent elite capable of accepting the avant guarde as an
essential component of the cultural matrix of its ideological praxis/

This is because the artist and the intellectual elite exist in what T S Eliot calls “a
disassociation of sensibility”/The artists may spend all his life marching through the
“wasteland of inspiration” which after all is a no mans land/The avant-guarde artist
ends up feeling that even his work in progress is a sort of “posthumous opus”/He
isolates himself from the world in order to carve his own tomb with little recognition
for his work/The artist can no longer attach his project to any historical
position/Everything is in flux and constant flows and breakdowns of the positions
between the artist and the educated elite as potential audience taking up various
positions of distance or detachment from each other/What we have is a continual
process of disintegration since the artists and the various social groups react turn and
turn about in equal and opposite ways detaching and attaching themselves to what ever
appears most satisfying aesthetically or economically/Now that art is a commodity this
is particularly the case/Malraux determines the existence of modern art and the avant-
garde as coinciding with the artists repudiation of bourgeois culture/A state of rebellion
and not just revolution/Revolution aims at new arrangements of political order whereas
rebellion is to no longer let the self be arranged/The artist must accustom himself to
living in the temporality of the NOW where the interaction of the artist and the social
elite briefly coincide/ The NOW is an almost instantaneous phenomenon coming out of
the present at velocity as in Virilios concept of “dromology and speed “ in which
duration is measured in intensity bringing about a modification in mass sensibility
aroused by the Spectacle that Debord writes so eloquently about/Reading Hugo Balls
Diaries one comes away with the following impression/There is no reason to subject
you to the depth of this sense of alienation that I sink into without warning or
Deep Tissue 36

reason/There is nothing I can say or do to protect the self from the impact this state has
on my being/These moods are a catastrophe in my life that divert all energy and reason
all inspiration and the desire to make an effort to create to an impossible inertia/there is
only a desire for unconsciousness a wish for non -existence which leaves me groping in
the obscurity of the lack of a divine place to engage with/This sense of alienation from
the “real” is a condition of the Modern/A state that lacks opposition as if there were
actual good and bad in this state of the Now/But there is only the space between the
good and the bad which being beyond meaning is the rightful place of the divine/The
place of love which heals or distracts/The place of "desire" which arouses tension and
dissipates it to replace it with pleasure/Which is the state of happiness or respite from
the trembling of facing the place of the divine which with the passing of God is
empty/There is no divine there is only an animality/The divine form is replaced by the
activity of the Project of art/The divine is the sovereign opposite of work and the
paradoxes and contradictions in this paradigm bring with them a sense of alienation/As
the past is of the future and the presence which is becoming split to different degrees to
wards both states/The present fades to the past or is carried into the future/The past can
be sought thru memory and re-lived as what was but is no longer but may be possible
again in the future/The present is the conduit of these transitions and also the place of
constructing new possible responses/The past is static has already happened and cannot
be altered except by deception/The past is a state of antagonism that holds up the
resentment of its tragic stasis/The past is the state of the used condition of time gone
and can be extended into the present as living in the past/The future is that desiring
being to be in that apprehended possibility of difference to the past/I have changed I am
changed I will become different in the future/Both these states are the conditions of
anticipation/I anticipate thru recall what was my past but I have no definitive evidence
that it was as I "realize" it to have been/I recount it in words and in speech and this
language implies the idea of a finality/The past cannot be changed or moved neither can
the future be brought forward in anticipation that this will accord a means of avoiding
the disorder and anxiety of the present/I cannot jump ahead and avoid the present
because I only then enter another state of present/the future is nothing but a possible
present that I can strive for in my imagination of what might be possible/The past is an
indication of what is the actuality of a future that has been lived and of failure or
success in living/Now become the past/A reminder of the possible direction of the
remainder of time to be lived in the future/to live in the present is to constantly be
Deep Tissue 37

confronted by these catastrophes embedded in the depth of a memory that cannot be


collapsed and disposed of like a destruction of passage of writing or a photograph/Even
then the sensation of what has been destroyed may even be more deeply intrusive/The
past is a complexity of disorder a dynamo of pain the equivalent of a wound that cannot
be healed but only endured/the future is a complexity of disorder as well/as in
anticipation that it will resemble the past that has already happened and is happening
in the present/Language collapses as a means of dealing with these complexities/The
disorder is charged with neural power and energy constantly agitating and creating
turbulence in the present leaving perhaps an interval of doing and becoming that is free
of this disorder thru the practice of work/By work I mean the installation of creative
imagination and reflection around and within the desired activity of demonstrating a
self imposed self contained mythology/A dangerous and potentially catastrophic
behaviour because lacking the divine to fall back on we fall into the abyss of the void
were the divine has ceased to be has been driven out or failed to exist/This void lacking
the divine becomes a negation of language and being as there is no dialectic or absolute
to contain the indifference of the void/The void is indifferent no matter how much we
fill it with aphorisms/psychologies or spiritualities/Without the divine these are mere
languages discursive and recursive and therefore always open to the contamination of
the irreconcilable duality of either/or/ I desire or I do not desire/The only solution is to
become desire to be constantly desiring/This exhaustive state is the solution of the work
of the creative act which takes on divinity as substitute for the metaphysical concept of
Infinity/Where once art created representations of the divinity of “god” art has taken
the divinity of the self as its own subject/We are the sovereignty of the divine within our
own existence and we express the divine thru the work of filling the void/that
mechanics which desires to avoid the pain put into play/The Oedipus myth is an
impossible level of violence that wounds to a depth of degrees beyond language to
express/Language collapses in its presence/of course despair and indifference are
equally unacceptable solutions to restraining the pain/There can be no reconcilability of
the irreconcilable/The absurdity of the existence under the above at the threshold of
alienation creates a instant state of realization of the lack of the divine and the inability
to become the divine/The void opens and the auto-destruction of the self is
initiated/And so it becomes a search for the imperative of living in the NOW apart from
the past and the future/These are analogue concepts depending on the passage of time
the memory of time and the anticipation of a supposed accumulation of time yet to be
Deep Tissue 38

apprehended/We are of course always running out of time/have used our time up/We
are finite in our divine ignorance/At the threshold of alienation/without having
expected it/we perceive a world that doesn’t leave us any other possibility of rest than
unhappiness and the absence of any conceivable resolution/Work must continue in a
relentless parody of becoming and existing/In the digital only the NOW exists/time is
infinitude and the divine inherent in the flow of information that does not accumulate
with poles negative and positive/past or future/The NOW is not contained but is a
continuing interval of rupture that breaks its limits and floods in pulses of dynamic
freedom having no work other than to be divinely becoming more even greater than an
excess/Man sliced and radically castrated in appearance is what he is only by the
suppression of the obscene violence/the primal wreckage/the delirium of the possibility/

The NOW which is the core of non- dimensional aesthetics/ the deformed the dialect of
the unknown which is not here and neither is it there/The NOW with an ungrounded
economy of Ungestalt is the plague of the not yet present but already absent/lateral
[literal] confusion/the physical semantic imminent to the where transmit ideas which
are clusters of highly imaginative signals/The artist who works from his imagination is
deluding himself about originality/He is using a material that is already formed by
appropriation and so is undertaking only to elaborate on it/certainly not an ideal of the
NOW/ The leak of destiny stripped of corporeal images by the blade of the soft murder
of despair which leaves us clinging to the classicist ideals/

I can only copy/I cannot produce from the ruins of a language that does no more than
animate for a brief period one segment of the pulse of innumerable possibilities and
passions that course thru the NOW/The artist no longer knows where to begin he is so
far removed from the NOW/it takes flight from his mind/in a sense it is the flight of the
“aesthetics of disappearance”/a crash landing/a vanishing point/the re-mix the cut-up
an implosion of sonar form displays an analytical impulse/In a way the text speaks for
itself/What is the NOW thinking this very moment?/ It radiates the Desert of Nagazaki/
atomic burnout of the nuclear horizon but not as Spectacle as superior degree of
abstraction/dividing and using up space to control the variations and movements of
forms of thresholds the interval intervenes/It is a sound of droning without end in
smooth space where it can never be articulated/We want answers to enclose the earth/to
confront and contain the unknown universe/We are a little lost perhaps/there is so
much happening in these retorts and refrains/which write but do not inscribe the
Deep Tissue 39

imperialisms of the word and its form which implies a code and a decoding from secret
to concealed subatomic dimension of expression and its content/As we have seen the
post modern is a past-ness under the regime of the post human/The post verbal
Gap/What goes out and re enters into us as other?/The post modern is already too
late/but refuses to pass into the past/insisting on futurity which reduces it to being
empty of any present other than that of the cynical sign/We hear the fore grounded
noise of existence/Feedback of the Now but not of itself but of additional frequencies of
distortion and static a product of the circuitry of amplification/an overload of noise
which has nothing to hide/a sonar wave of the Now which does not listen but speaks
and makes dissonance its point of departure assonance its NOW of arrival/a speaking in
tongues and dialects/a secret collusion with the composition of the void and the energy
of the vorticism which enables the engine of the NOW able to manifest arrival at the
terminal/

So where are we? Why Write?/You see he said you are looking into the abyss while I am
looking up out of the abyss while I am still falling I am a story I have constructed in
order to give some meaning and drama a metaphysics that transcends the inevitable
annihilation that each day brings forth each night that I want to sleep for ever/Its taking
time to wind up the machine still falling?/I want a narrative that leads me somewhere
away from the pack the swarm that explains my lack of progress but all I will be doing
is exploring the bottom of the abyss and light fades as I fall I talk to myself but no one
else listens they are to busy struggling with the doors of chance/the trembling sky falls
slowly appropriating the artificial black sun my body doesn’t want to sleep it wants
death weighed down by ambition/Filth that has accumulated over the years/Each
thought adds to the weight death that invisible opportunity not to be missed/I am not
afraid to die just bored with waiting doing all I can to hasten the event/I keep writing
memories as if they will prolong life dreaming of the perpetuity of infinity/How do I do
it she asks but the ledge is far from my ears and I cannot hear what she says/In
anticipation I call out submit yr self to the sign the way you submit yrself to yr pain and
yr vision of hallucinations that there is a space set aside for you/This is how I affirm
atrocious narcissism as the driving force that plunges thru my veins the word exhausts
my being and I fall where desire fails to maintain the bodies equilibrium/I write myself
into the plunge you want to leave yr trace of the word then cling to the ledge avoid the
perimeter the margin the threshold stay away from all borders this will be enough for
you to survive to tell yr story/Yr life is only a surplus of death an extra you stumbled
Deep Tissue 40

upon in the filth of the sewer of the soul/Knowledge is merely a diversion that keeps
our mind off things/What things?/cynicism/cunning/ revenge/ superficiality of the fact
that the day begins just as the night ends/avoid passion and fantasy/I can do nothing for
yr solitude and only the alternative of the nomadic rhizome remains/the desire for
answers requires an accuracy of understanding that life has no need of arguments/What
good are words and thoughts that do not lift us beyond all thoughts and words?/What
are we looking for in a response other than gratitude and we get into the habit of
expecting it/To write one word and say the thought that drives it deserves the hatred of
the receiver because you have written the end of the world/The answer should remain
in what you do not say that is the strength and self control of the accomplished
writer/To be great and wise in silence lies at the point of realizing the fall into the abyss
is a forever falling without end and this is how the tragedy ends/Did we see its
beginning?/Did we notice the signs the way a fever warns of illness/in this sense
consciousness is merely an accident of existence and not something all
possess/consciousness is a pathological state the reflection of the dark side of the
unconscious which evades dreams/To this end most avoid consciousness and this
accounts for their inability to respond to expectations other than insanity/The
consciousness does the damage that the unconscious tries to repair but we do not
understand the dialect of the unconscious we are ignorant of its language which is
designed to speak the conscious /Does Kants sense of causality apply to the one or the
other?/We can never know our inner world says Leibniz it will remain a mystery for us
until death which releases the conscious finally/What we don’t know is of more value
what we don’t think/The exquisite being and becoming possible that we drive ourselves
each day with/She says there must be and he says there isn’t/There is nothing but the
directive of the word/Do this/think that/act out this drama this desire which is another
facet of the consciousness/For the unconscious desires nothing but the elevation
towards the state of not being/finally relieved of the great fatigue that goes with the
desire to keep desiring and not being finally sated/Some call this the will but they are
wrong/Creativity is the least achievement of the conscious and has nothing to do with
the unconscious and this is why we perpetually work at “creating” a fetish of
desiring/We place it in the arena and pray that it is adored/Demanding a conscious
recognition/ which is in most cases impossible and in the least case there is such a
demand it has unleashed a disease of creating a epidemic of expression coming from
the shallow depths the surface of the conscious/A state which can trail on/ which we can
Deep Tissue 41

suffer the withdrawal symptoms from for months years/The worst drug of all so why
do we want to be more conscious?/Why cant we let the self go and do nothing about
this desire that creates such an ache and which dreams attempt to salve/Why not
concentrate on the dreams which are our true originality the greater sur-
realism/Schopenhauer’s ungodliness of existence that we have for 2000 years tried to
come to understand replacing it all the time with other faiths and beliefs/In the last 200
years it has been the fate of creativity to achieve the pseudo-divine/To this end only the
mad those who have lost hold of consciousness are able to fulfil the aim of creation/
Which is too reveal the unknown that which cannot be written or painted or carved but
perhaps in that spontaneous order the harder the material the closer to the
unconscious/All we are doing as Blanchot points out is re writing re carving what has
already been done but forgotten/The demand to write struggles against presence in
contrary to absence/The conscious presence of the author demands desires wills
consciously to be in the presence of the “to be”/It only re presents in the sense of the
repetitive beginning again and the will and desire to begin again and again hunting
preferable with the pack the “the temporally ungraspable anteriority” of the beginning
again/“…to write in this sense is always first to re write…and does not refer to any
previous writing [which of course it does always] any more than to an anteriority of
speech or of presence or of signification…re writing holds itself apart from any
productive initiative“ And does not claim to produce anything other than the authors
conscious apprehension of the illusionary state of the “real” the present presence which
has already passed and can only be apprehended partially/Hence the need to begin and
begin again and again/To try to appropriate the full intent of the word or thought by
any means/Thus re writing repeats what does not take place/will not take place and
cannot take place except “partially”/Re writing is the surplus which at the limit cannot
define itself by anything by which it would add itself/excess of nothing but still
excessive/Write that which is already known else it could not be written and fails to be
understood because of the lack of consciousness or the desire not to know/This is self
evident but none the less denied and remains unrecognized/”In the view of the demand
to write nothing is either friendly or sacred men neither divine nor human/Those who
carry this demand are transported by it and disappear into it/even if their name serves
to identify it they are neither important or great/In their disparate [desperate] plurality
even though they belong to the multiple and are real only as multiple they remain
strangers separate to one another crossing paths without meeting/this is their solitude
Deep Tissue 42

plurality that constitutes them neither out of their own singularity nor in view of a
superior unity/The work is always modified by that which comes after it/and has the
one who has died necessarily lived?/

You can find more of Lee’s work at:

http://www.myspace.com/bizarredevice
Deep Tissue 43

Babs Rock-its
By Babs Martin

In the past two months I have read my poetry at the Cornelia Street Café in NYC and the Java Cabana in
Memphis, TN. I have performed with music at the Yippie Café in NYC and the WordRock Festival in
Hoboken, NJ. It’s time to return to the studio, get Smashr to tune up the ugly electric pumpkin guitar,
and plunk on some keys. I started with a remix of my tune “Uninspired.” You can hear the new and
improved track at www.myspace.com/babsmartin. Here I provide the words to invite you to growl
along with me:
Deep Tissue 44

Uninspired
I got nothing to say
I got nothing to think
I got no love to give,
I said no love to give

Uninspired
You know I’m uninspired

I have excuses
I have rationalizations
I have made up my mind,
I said I made up my mind

Uninspired
You know I’m uninspired

I accept the program


I play the role
I have my stasis

Uninspired
You know I’m uninspired

I fleet with fashion


I always follow
I got no understanding,
Don’t understand

Uninspired
Uninspired

In an anti inter relationship


I seek out my own
I don’t want challenges,
Don’t want your challenge

Uninspired
Uninspired

I need what I had


I got nowhere to go
I have no future
I died as told
Deep Tissue 45

I need what I had


I got nowhere to go
I have no future
I died as told

Died as told
Died as told

Uninspired
Uninspired.

Babs Martin was born in San Diego, CA, raised on Route 66, and currently resides in Oklahoma. She is a
creative expressionist in words and music. Babs written works have appeared in anthologies, on-line
publications and magazines. Her Rock-n-Word Trip recordings and CD singles have been featured on
several radio programs in the US and Canada. Babs collections and performances are designed to fly
you on a high and deliver you to the door steps of your own sensational journey.

You can find more of Babs work at:

http://www.myspace.com/babsmartin
Deep Tissue 46

Mystic Lady
Aka Meera Flame

Ghost lady
Ghost lady

Roams,

Floating eternally,

Wandering

lamenting her loved one

Looking for her home.

Searching for atonement

Reaching out like a

willowing white flame ,

a wistful vapor,

Passing through endless

Sunrises and sunsets

Differing phases of the moon.

Decades & eons pass


Deep Tissue 47

Yet She‘s still drifting on

with empty open arms,

waltzing alone

In grey condemned buildings

Wandering in petrified forests

Still Looking for her home.......

her echoes

materialize

into tears of ice

confused

lost inside

An endless searching

full of yearning ,

a lonely entity ,

a memory lost within memories

Misplaced and whispering his name....

Disgraced and shamed,

Ghost lady

wanders through Your Dreams


& nightmares

transcending into time and space

Searching for an earthly abode

A home from home,

Eternal atonement.

To be reunited with her loved one.


Deep Tissue 48

I’m married, and have been married for many years (to the same man I
think!) with 3 gorgeous boys. I’ve been doing jewelry design for 17
years and have had my own workshop for 16 years which I help run with
my talented husband. I love art, abstract and surrealism, gothic
literature especially vampires! I love to write POETRY, I am a
*FEATURED 10K POET. I love to PAINT I also read, sew, cook, garden, I
love taking my boys out, I love talking , thinking, I don’t watch much
TV lets face it ,its crap!! ,anti war; I’m interested in all religions
,cultures and points of view, I am excited everyday when I learn or
hear or see something new, nature fascinates me
.............................I like drinking lots of TEA and talking
for England, On myspace to read and write poetry ,look at art, and
listen to new music!.

You can find more of Meera‘s work at:

http://www.myspace.com/juniswan

YouTube - MYSTICLADY40's Channel


Art Page:MySpace - Mystical lady Art - 40 - Female - UK - myspace.com ...
Deep Tissue 49

Let it Rain …
By Amy Wood

Fail.....

We have welfare mothers mixing generic formula


to feed hungry babies
wiping snotty noses on dirty sleeves
because there's no money for the medicine to cure what ails
while the system houses deadbeat dads, murders, and pedophiles
in jail cells with phones on the wall
free healthcare
three hots and a cot
and
zero
responsibility

Politicians swearing change


coated with delusions of grandeur
that we buy into lock stock and barrel
as we sign over our souls
in a game of Russian Roulette
with a stolen pistol we loaded ourselves
Deep Tissue 50

and then we wonder why Uncle Sam fucks us up the ass 12 months of the year
sends our children to commit murder against those with a different belief
and suicide of self in the name of Liberty and Justice for All

Couples longing for mirror images of themselves


making love not for pleasure
but for basal temperature and hormonal fluctuations
willing to pay any price and mortgage their marriages
for manufactured miracles of future rocket scientists and aspiring lawyers made in petri dishes
while over privileged
over tattooed
overrated
overpaid movie stars
buy them from a catalog
and have them shipped over like Ikea furniture

Society hypnotizes us stupid as it impregnates us with the belief


we are fat
and greedy
and undeserving
so we fork over our paychecks to Jenny Craig
fill prescriptions for Phentermine
swallow self loathing with Chocolate Royale Slim Fast and laxatives
while poisoning our teenagers and dictating their worth
with statistics
doctored surveys
and Malibu Barbies

The wealthy complain about a failing economy and how there’s never enough money to go around
while they buy Grande, 2 pump Vanilla, Non-Fat, Extra Hot, Lattes
Coach purses and Bluetooth’s
supercharged gasoline
and $7.00 packs of cigarettes that they smoke in top of the line Beamers
and blow onto back seated asthmatic toddlers
strapped
and
trapped
in Ed Hardy car seats

We bend on sinner’s knee


begging for mercy and absolution
doggy style on semen stained bedspreads
Deep Tissue 51

at cheap motels at lunchtime


and we ask to be placed on the prayer chain at the Church we never attend
blasphemy under our tongue
collecting Hail Mary’s and Our Father’s
hid in cabinets too high to reach
as we conveniently forget the fact that
we voted
to keep religion
out
of our schools

Fail.

Practically perfect in every way.....

I’m the perfect girlfriend.

I’ll cook for you and do your laundry.


I’ll bake you cakes with yellow frosting
and jump out of them naked
sporting the heels you are so fond of.
Even thought they are too small
and kill my feet.

I’ll be mother to your children. All of them.


I’ll fashion dolls from kitchen towels, and leftover nylons
and I’ll play Barbies and demolition derby with them
so you can sleep all day.
And when you leave me,
I’ll still send them birthday presents.

I’ll sing your praises out the window of my 1985 Volvo


while I jerk you off with the hand I’m not using.
I’ll pay the ticket I’ll get for driving recklessly
as I wipe the cum from my eyebrow.
All the while apologizing for ruining your day.

I’ll let you accuse me of being unfaithful


Deep Tissue 52

even though I never will be,


so that you don’t have to feel guilty for fucking someone else.
And I’ll beg you to forgive me
as I put more makeup on my eyes
to cover your deserved anger.

I’ll wake up early and clean up your mess,


then make you breakfast and hand feed it to you
while my stomach growls.
And I’ll get skinny by proxy to make sure you don’t ever cheat on me again.
Even though you will.

I’ll remember your mother’s birthday,


and make it seem like the party was all your idea.
And I’ll sit back and watch you treat her like a queen,
like the only woman who was ever worthy of your
respect,
admiration,
and undying
gratitude.

And I’ll decide to be your mother,


because I want that kind of love.
But sadly, I’ll never measure up.

I’ll support your aspirations to be a stay at home…..whatever,


and I’ll tell all my friends you are the best thing since penicillin.
And when they silently shake their heads,
I’ll send flowers to myself
from you
to prove them wrong.

I’ll spend all my money on you.


I’ll let you trick me
and I’ll take the blame.
For everything.
I’ll let you chastise my children
and insult my crappy ability to mother.
I’ll let you knock me up,
and knock me out.
I’ll even let you fuck me in the ass.
Deep Tissue 53

Eventually though…..
I’ll curl into the shoes in my closet,
muffling sobs of shame,
and bitterness,
and defeat,
praying to an absent God for a do-over.

But you’ll never know it.

Because I’m the perfect girlfriend.

The non-write.......

I’m going to take a break from the nasty for a bit.

The dirty.
The filth.

I’m not going to write about rape, or incest


or how little girls tend to suffer so much
at the hands of monsters
keeping their silence forever.

I’m not going to write about priests copping a feel in confession booths
to 12 year old boys.
Or the injustice of the justice system
to the same small victims.

I’m not going to write about unfairness,


or racism
or why some kids don't get Christmas
or birthday presents,
or dinner.

I'm not going to write about molestation


Deep Tissue 54

or getting punched in the face


by someone who loves you.

Right....

I’m not going to write about the infidelity of men and women
pecking each other’s cheeks with the stain of adultery
as they hide scarlet letters in the safe
just underneath the marriage license.

I’m not going to write about divorce


or how someone stops loving you
for no particular reason.
Or for reasons you could have changed
but were never given the choice.

I’m not going to write about cancer


or famine
or homeless parents who have their children hold crayoned signs saying
“Hungry, please help”
on busy intersections
as CEO's and soccer moms whiz by
averting their eyes behind monogrammed visors.

I’m not going to write about women who turn to prostitution


to pay bills in section 8 row houses,
and buy powdered formula
for babies without a father
or a chance,
while gangbangers pop a cap in someone’s ass
just outside the window that won’t lock.

I’m not going to write about any of that stuff.

No……..

I’m going to take a break from the nasty for a bit.


Deep Tissue 55

Ponder This (Tourettes Raises Its Ugly


Head)
By Rose Aiello Morales

Pain
Embrace it
Let its steely fingers travel down
my back, electric impulse burning
tracks, solo across the ivory columns,
touch like knife wound, flick, then out,
gouge, then out, sensations to remind me

No, I'm not okay


Defy it
Run a course for it, laughing, make it go away,
a wave of hand and it disappears from mind,
to make its entrance known in tiny bites, saw
teeth cutting flesh, and not a leg to stand on
without pain, I will not buckle; walk, run, it's all
the same, to live with it, to dance around it
PAIN

Befriend it, sit with it at breakfast time,


sleep next to it at evening's final light.....
No, I'm NOT okay.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Deep Tissue 56

Tango Ordinaire

Lean upon the past, the past repeats,


mundane, the same, each day, everyday,
wake eat drink clean wash fold scrub dust broom,
nothing changes but the dust's consistency,
bits and pieces of bygones, loved ones' ash
is scribbled on the walls, streaked upon
the floors, a not quite siren's call to arms,
strong arms, tired arms, pick up the day
and dry it in the heat of Summer's sun.
Take your ration of tears and sweep it under
the rug from which we came, to which we
shall return, peeking from the corners, quick lift
and push to the middle, stamp the lump
in memorizing dance, the Tango Ordinaire.
Clean house in answer to the rising moon,
harsh mistress of the pure white glove,
she beams across tabletops, illuminating
spider's web, cat paw footprints, a spot
of egg upon a still wet dish, refrain, the same,
turn out the ghostly light, the bedpost climb,
Then quickly mount your broom and sail away.

Dangerous
This isn't love
Feels like heart attack beat
echoing my steps, running
staccato down city streets
Down the street where YOU live
Oblivious magnificence, you
of the lion's mane and farcical
roar, score a point for a glimpse
of stomach taut, 30/love for
benevolence of smile or wink.
And it's game over,
Set, point, never match, you catch
me staring around corners, stalking
behind trees, laughter tells me I'm
Deep Tissue 57

trapped, (un)lucky rabbit's foot caught


in perfect (steel)teeth; when realization hits,
I age 10 years in a single, sobbing breath.
No, this isn't love.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Remember What?
They keep telling me to remember
Dropped head long into hell, a bunch
of babies given guns and told to walk,
GOD, we never even got to crawl,
our lives in bits and blood falling
on our heads, holding balloons
so the enemy would think it's a party.
Don't shoot, we come in peaces
Litter on a white sand beach, collateral
damage, ammo for the winning effort,
our storm came and washed away the
Evil Axis, washed away ourselves,
but still, I have never again felt clean.
Stained with the eternal bleed of comrades.
And every year they dust off uniforms,
wear the hats, the carnations, the dog tags,
waving flags placed on countless graves,
here and in Normandy, new ones every day.
They tap me on the shoulder and tell me "Remember".
Hell, I've spent 66 years trying to forget.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Deep Tissue 58

Fixing a Hole
This rain's gonna be harder than hard,
fool's gold black upon pink sand beach,
our feathered friends ain't so fine;
how many Derricks does it take to see the light?
Ten thousand lawyers at the bottom of the ocean,
sell the (mineral) rights to Hollywood, will one
Stone make a ripple? Maybe we should do Moore,
Michael, but we've spent eight years beating
around the Bush, Leno's out of jokes, and
the rising tide's turned dark and ugly.
I think I just stepped on a Beatle.
It squished against my bare foot,
oozing big, black blood between my toes,
before vanishing in a seagull's mouth, swallowed
whole by a slick operator, no morals at all,
just alternative endings to the same old song....
song...
song....
song....
And my mind's still wondering....

You can find more of Rose’s work at:

http://www.myspace.com/ninelivesandmore
Deep Tissue 59

The Evil Dude


By Mark P. Paleologo
AKA Evil Dick

Heat.
i reach up and feel the place

where her stockings end

and i begin

the surreal curve of fate

leading me into the fourth act

sweat falls like summer rain

on cherokee skin and the soft

we gasp for air in greedy fixation

one good pull and it is torn

the fabric binding time and space

leaving only star dust


Deep Tissue 60

face buried in a singularity

i am stretched pulled lost

my light brilliant

as i burn into memory

warm this cold stone spinning

one frame at a time

Living

she lights a cigarette

puts it in my mouth

and drapes herself on me

the second i reach inside my coat

he backs down and turns on his heel

streetlight mist and running boards

fold moonlight into a tight spot

her eyes wipe a bit of lipstick

my jaw still clenched

i loose the grip and slide out slow

find the small place where i fit

she whispers something in spanish

i tilt my head

and smile like chicago


Deep Tissue 61

she takes the smoke from me

my breath

and gives me life

Track 9 West

vivid colors

people in black

and white

without film noir charm

but steam rises while

reeds cut around corners

like kids stealing apples

in a ceramic tiled universe

clad in guilt

we never fully understand

a vision of her

hat with a hint of a veil

two-tone pumps and an a-line

me all wrapped

south side cool

jacket tie hat


Deep Tissue 62

shoes pointed west

police look at us

the way you look at me

and know that i

am wanted

Next
train stations fill my heart

with post modern

glazed eye longing

and refuse bins

brimming with

take away containers

and free publications

all the worthless latest

greatest and picture

the marginally living

this or that city (respiration

is a sign of life) „s gloaming

i fall apart a little bit

until the platform is called


Deep Tissue 63

Midsummer's Night

i will not wish the genie

back in the bottle

i will not wish for world peace

even though i should

i will not wish to turn back

the hands of time

this solstice come and gone

spent with the who intended

with words of love

falling as drops of honey

from the lips of a toothless bear

i am irrevocable

as are you

Again

it was the same moon here

by the river tonight

our table floats


Deep Tissue 64

the deep rich black of the sky

the glow of the city far enough away

you entirely too far away

twice i felt your breath

while the moon shifted softly

and the table swayed

naturally

Tidal Confusion

i have been sitting here

poised in my apology

for a writing not yet penned

for the knowledge of remembrence

and the fading dye of photographs

i consider regret implicit

as tenses pass for sanity

and i see pieces of it

intentions on toast points

with a bitter-sweet reduction

left on the plate taken away

i steep in extenuation

picking the bits which are stuck

staring at the big red X

(you are here)


Deep Tissue 65

as it shifts with my glance

e eu vou dizer que

esta é minha culpa

mas você sabe

que é uma mentira

a que causa

você você você

and certainly i will expect

no quarter

M.P.Paleologo (aka Evil Dick) was born and raised in Northern New Jersey where his

delicate sensibilities were distorted into the carnival mirror perspective represented in

his music, verse, and prose. Influenced by great artists such as Pablo Neruda, Emily

Dickinson, Andy Warhol, and David Lynch as well as many of the incredible indigenous

people which have crossed his path, his sharp edged writing style is laced with

surprising tenderness and wry humor. The author enjoys speaking of himself in the

third person, bourbon, and long walks in the park.

You can read more of Evil’s stuff here:

http://evildick13.wordpress.com/
Deep Tissue 66

Down in the Hollow …


By Jimmy Ray Davis, the Wordmachinist

All the little boys


Broken guitars and teddy bears
bits and pieces of the moon.
All the orphans at St. Basils
will be coming home real soon.

I thought I saw a dragon hawk


flying fearless in the sky.
But it was just a burning rag
from some local industrial fire.

Broken toys and dirty cups


frayed rope swing in a tree.
All the little boys in the choir
are singing just for you and me.

I thought I heard a whippoorwill


wailing helpless in the dark.
It was just the sound of angels
Deep Tissue 67

crying somewhere for a broken heart.

Broken kites and toppled forts


growing up way too fast.
How will all those little boys.
make memories that will last.

I thought I dreamt about you girl


but all along you've been here.
The muddy windows of my heart
have suddenly become quite clear.

Broken bones and sterile rooms


a cast with classmates names.
Little boys go back to dark houses
victims in twisted, wicked games.

I thought I saw a little boy


smiling as he fished a pond.
But as he faded with the sun
realized he was already dead and gone.

Broken dreams and cigarettes


burn away in a wisp of smoke.
If you hold me tight, baby.
I can pretend life is just a joke.

...I thought I heard you laughing


but it was just the north wind.
If I wish hard on a falling star
maybe...you'll fall for me again.

____________________________________________________
Deep Tissue 68

BONESAW

The seeds of transcendence are sown

cracked open wounded jackal thrown

off the back of the world, squirreled away

the stutter of butterfly wings ripped astray

from the jagged wound of this ragged heart

jumpstart the poet who knows it falls apart

and the threat of alphabet blocks giant doubts

the way out is but a mere shout from within

and with your knife buried deep you call me friend

twist it while you kiss me in the mist listlessly

one more gutter chore jab impales turns black

the heartbreak will always supersede the heart attack

and you jacked me with crowbar tidily wink flip

manhole cover slips like a giant penny copper crypt

dunked this punk into oak barrel headlong drizzle

as she walks silently on Cuban heels dreams fizzle

and I seem to chew the gristle and Yuban shake

you were lovely but god you couldn't even bake

forsaken taken time I'll bite like that diseased trout


Deep Tissue 69

when you cast your line and tell me to get the fuck out

see I've belly crawled back so many times got road rash

and a gutful of entrails waiting to sail concrete sea trash

kicked and dicked around like the clown from Belzar

who lost his heart to Betty Page and Teri Garr

Could I rage this part cast in play of insanity

tried to count to ten, you shut me up at three

free to open my shirt to the hurt of your knife blade

your masochism knows no bounds and is forbade

seven cane lashes to my upper thighs cries the poet

not to vain to candy cane cry just won't show it

bonesaw buzzing in a dirty washroom from out of sight

tremble tied to the bed in the glow of a gas lamp light

awaken and my bonds disappear all just a dream

until I hear the bonesaw start back up...and I scream!!!

___________________________________________________________________
Deep Tissue 70

Chess with strangers

For how long


can I hold you
when I've told you
how I felt.
How long can
you stay in the game
when all the cards
have been dealt.

...Built a stickman
out of matches
he burned up
before I was done.
Whispered shadows
in the hallway
before the rise
of morning sun.

For how long


can I kiss you
knowing I'll miss you
when you go.
How long can
you roll the dice
when the casinos
have all closed.

...Built a snowman
out of sand
he blew away
before he could talk.
Painted with words
in a lonely study
but even Picasso
Deep Tissue 71

couldn't build a clock.

For how long


can I keep you
sweet and true
once I've lied.
How long can
the forest burn
before every tree
has cracked and died.

...Built a birdhouse
at the institution
left it unfinished
the birds won't come.
Played chess with strangers
and forgot about you
while the white coats
all looked on.

Hello my friends, I am Jimmy Ray known to many of you


as...Wordmachinist. I am a storyteller who writes poetry so many of
my poems are in fact, stories. Quite awhile back I crafted a
deliciously dark tale called "Abattoir" which introduced the fictional
town of Temple Hollow and the mysterious character known as Old Bill.
For some reason this poem stuck with me, sort of haunting me in a
way. Old Bill, Lenore, and the dark township of Temple Hollow became
recurring fixtures in many future writes. So much in fact that Old
Bill has become my "Dark Half" just as Alexis Machine was in Stephen
King's novel of the same name. Now I know that Old Bill is not me and
that he is not real, but let us ponder for a moment the true power of
words. If words indeed can move mountains and change entire
corporation's ways of thinking, could they not traverse time or make
life brim from the page?
Deep Tissue 72

On My Way to the Grocery Store


By Newamba Flamingo

FAGGOT
He was a chunky, awkward, and short 15 year old
who wore coke bottle glasses, spoke with a slight lisp
and walked with a gimpy step
due to his left leg being two inches longer than his right

School was not a kind place for him


because of his lisp and awkward walk nearly everyone called him “faggot”

Although he was tormented by the majority of the student body


the jocks gave it to him the worst
when walking through the hallways to class, they’d regularly slap him upside the head
shove him into a locker, or play keep away with his glasses

On account of a medical condition


he’d occasionally have to use crutches or a wheelchair
and the jocks especially enjoyed attacking him then
often kicking his crutches out from underneath him or dumping him out of his wheelchair

As bad as his walks through the hallways were


gym class was most horrific for him
he’d always be picked last for teams
Deep Tissue 73

tripped up
spit on
and intentionally fouled roughly during games

After class, in the locker room, was where he got it the worst
one of the most menacing jocks, a 6’4, muscular linebacker everyone called “Mad Dog”
would administer the boy a variety of wedgies, such as the “Melvin”
which involved pulling the boy’s tighty whitey’s up from the front, causing much pain to his genitals
or the “atomic wedgie,” where Mad Dog’d sneak up from behind
and hoist the waistband of the boy’s underwear up and over the boy’s head

The most painful wedgie of all, though, was the “hanging wedgie,”
in which the boy would be hung by the waistband of his underwear
elevated from the ground
and sometimes twirled around in airborne circles
and once released
flung clear across the distance of the locker room

Every once in a while the jocks had contests


to see who could make the boy fly the farthest via such maneuvers

The wedgie attacks, name calling, and hallway beatings turned increasingly violent
eventually reaching a crescendo one day after school
when a group of jocks ambushed the boy in the bathroom while he was urinating

They seized him from behind, pushed his face into the piss filled urinal trough
pulled his pants down to his ankles, and forced a hard green banana up into his ass
laughing madly
the jocks raped him brutally with the piece of produce
yelling such things as “you know you like it, faggot!” among other taunts

Mad Dog even filmed the incident on his cell phone


joking about how he was going to put it on the internet

After sodomizing the boy for a minute or two


the jocks removed the banana from his bleeding anus
threw him to the cold tile floor

One of the jocks spontaneously


plucked a live cockroach off the graffiti covered bathroom wall
shoved it into the boy’s mouth
held his jaw shut
and made him swallow it
which elicited a boisterous round of applause from the group

The jocks then filed out the door


high fiving each other
still laughing hysterically
Deep Tissue 74

The boy stumbled up to his feet


vomited into the urinal trough
pulled up his pants and limped home
where he showered and brushed his teeth several times

That night the thoughts of revenge that’d swirled in his head for years began to rapidly intensify

Stealing his dad’s guns and carrying out a Columbine style attack
planting a car bomb in Mad Dog’s Confederate Flag painted monster pickup truck
hurling a Molotov cocktail onto the field during a football game
poisoning the punch bowl at the prom with liquid LSD or cyanide
all types of ideas crossed his mind…

But for now, he just sat back in his bean bag chair
unsheathed a hunting knife he kept under his bed
rolled up his left pant leg
revealing a large patch of scars
and slid the tip of the knife about four inches down his upper left quad
drawing a small stream of dark red blood
which trickled slowly over his inner thigh

Watching the blood drip pierced through his cocoon of learned numbness like a million needles
his eyes then welled up
and he started to sob uncontrollably

He got up and locked his door


crawled into bed
and yanked the covers over his head

That night he prayed for anything to happen


that’d prevent him from having to go to school the next day
a tornado
snowstorm
earthquake
terrorist attack
anything

He just didn’t want to see those faces anymore


he didn’t want to hear the laughter

He just wanted to stay in bed.

You can find more of Newamba’s work at:

http://www.myspace.com/newamba
Deep Tissue 75

A Love Affair
By Tarringo T. Vaughan

An Apology Letter To Death


Dear Death,
I know I promised I would never acknowledge you again
but you are everywhere I go lately—like the other day
when I saw you holding up traffic in a parade of orange flags
marching slowly down Main Street.
I saw mourners masquerading as strength
in their weakest moment and I remembered
the many times recently I traveled that same road
as a mourner and a philosopher
trying to figure out the reasons why.

You’ve taken so much away in so many different ways


that all I could do was curse you
with every bad word linguistics would allow;
Then all I could do was fear you as I awaited the next casualty
to fall to your surrender.

And you know, between you and me, I feared my own demise.
I imagined no more sunrise on days like today
when my heart is pumping the beats of forgiveness.
And I imagined not being here, even right now, watching
the traffic of life cruise by on the busy streets
of humanity as it travels in many directions of mortality.
Deep Tissue 76

Then I thought about the fascination


of our every breath; the embracing
of time sometimes we take for granted
until you, yes you death reminds us
of the sensitivity of moments here.
You continue to open my eyes to everything
that didn’t seem as valuable as they appear now.

You are the reason I have grown and can no longer


be afraid of you or blame you for awakening me
to new enjoyments and fulfillments.
I hated you for so long but now all I can do
is say
I’m sorry for not embracing your importance.
Without you I would’ve forgotten to live.
Sincerely,
A fresh look at life.

Tarringo T. Vaughan always believed he had a love affair with literature. One of the first
pictures he saw of himself was of him at maybe the age of three or four year‟s old sitting with a
book in his hand. But for Tarringo, growing up in the depths of the inner city both in Boston,
MA and Springfield, MA made him believe that expression through the literary voice was un-
cool and unattainable. As a very quiet and shy child he learned it became very valuable in his
self expression. Born in 1976, Tarringo was the first child, grandchild and nephew in a family
that had grown accustomed to struggle. His mother was a teenager who quickly lost the support
of my father who today he knows very little of. These aspects of his life triggered the inspiration
of his pen.

Later in life his struggle with self confidence and homosexuality catapulted his desire to write.
He felt a need to educate and help others in his situation through words. It became Tarringo‟s
ambition to be somebody and in 1995 he entered his freshmen year at the University of
Massachusetts at Amherst where he was still a very quiet individual and still refused to make a
career involving literature. But his English courses continued to intrigue him the most and
through those courses he became familiar and connected with African American writers such as
James Baldwin and Langston Hughes who taught him that it was cool to be whom he was.
James Baldwin was also gay and proudly exhibited his sense of self and Langston Hughes was a
genius in poetry whose suave lyrical delivery drew Tarringo into his expression. And as his
education furthered he found himself opening up more and taking on the role of a leader socially.

Tarringo T. Vaughan graduated in 2000 from the University Of Massachusetts - Amherst with a
Bachelors degree in English and Communications as a 2nd major. Tarringo currently works in
the healthcare field but working on his first poetry book for publication titled “A Different Kind
Of Blues” and is the founder of the Flexwriters Creative Network
(http://www.flexwriterscreativenetwork.net) which currently features an online magazine, a
Deep Tissue 77

social site and two writing groups. Future plans include a publishing company as well as actual
an actual café for writers and spoken word nights. My writing consists of many styles as I do
like neglecting rules and going beyond the norm.

You can find more of Tarringo’s work at:

http://www.myspace.com/tarringo.vaughan
Deep Tissue 78

On the Edge of the Salton Sea


By Jack Henry

everything
i don't need a god
or church
or anyone's approval
but yours

i found my future
here in a box
i never thought to open
never thought to explore
a future
my own
and ours
to share
together
you and i
invincible

dark clouds part


when morning calls
Deep Tissue 79

and your eyes meet mine

a gentle touch
wakes me from my terror

all that came before


no longs holds
my breath
i breathe in the air of life
i never imagined

fearless toward a future


with you at my side
peril and misfortune
will never tarnish our skin
break our stride
or hold us back

everything
you are
to me
forever

critical mayhem
there's a voice in my head
unknown and new -
reality swept past lights twinkling
horizon stars rise past a moon
intent on mayhem -

serenity smashed -
crystal serenade on marble floors -
the old lady next door screams -
all hell breaks loose -
- it's not even noon
- it's not even daybreak
Deep Tissue 80

television flicker -
cartoon silhouettes on pale blue walls -
Monday threatens -
trees bend -
a sudden storm calls -
it seems i am waiting for something
but what
i am yet to guess -

the reality tree


today,

in the central square

of my small town

an angry horde gathers -

an old man ties a noose

from common rope,

tosses it over the

branch of an oak tree,

a tree older than me or you

or any that gather

under the blaze

of a midday sun -
Deep Tissue 81

a hooded figure,

with hands tied tight,

walks slow

under watchful eye

of elder skin -

boards creak with each step -

the cries of mothers and fathers

and starving babes

rise into blue air -

ravens scatter

I stand in the shade

of a Catholic Church -

the hangman tightens the noose

pulls a lever -

the floor drops out

and the pop and snap

of a rope thrust taught

echoes just as the masses

erupt
Deep Tissue 82

and cheer -

who was that?, I said

Hope, a woman said without emotion

of any kind

Lady Gaga
Lady Gaga sent me a photo

via email

we met on

Facebook

when I should have been

working

at least I think it's Lady Gaga

it could be anyone hiding behind stolen pics

and enough

information

to make me believe

maybe it's

some random guy


Deep Tissue 83

that gets off on

pretending

gets off on

convincing

Lady Gaga

wants to fuck me

of that I am sure

I am that

stupid?

maybe a little too

hopeful

a little too

optimistic

my doubt lifts

slightly

when I receive an

invitation

she asks me to

meet her at the

Chateau Marmont
Deep Tissue 84

on
Sunset Boulevard

we end up in

a bungalow poolside

the one Robert Mitchum resided in


before Lindsey Lohan first
got drunk

she takes off her

panties
and

false eyelashes

ties me to the bedpost

straps a plastic cock

to her waist

she's not a
hermaphrodite
I thought you should know

on the verge of spontaneous combustion


just before sunrise
at the edge
of the Salton Sea
little black birds cling to branches
of dead and dying trees
seagulls dance across sand
and water laps the shore
a gentle symphony
Deep Tissue 85

three days
burning fire through my veins
down to a last pack of smokes
before a cash buyer
knocks on my trailer door

barely summer
and temperatures rise
weary and wicked under
a blazing sun

before she leaves I ask her name


she pulls on her panties and smiles
long black hair trails down her back

before she stays I offer her a button bag of heaven


it's all I have, I said
she nods her acceptance
lays back down

I remember Madagascar at sunset


sunrise on the Sahara
her lips know the way
her tongue does the rest

a crow peeks through the window


caws out a compliment
I smile in surrender
and wipe away tears

Jack Henry lives in the high desert of South Eastern California in a single-wide trailer on
the edge of the Salton Sea. In his spare time Jack writes poetry and short stories about
the vagaries of normal life. His first book of words, "with the Patience of Monuments," is
available from NeoPoeisis Press (www.neopoiesispress.com). A second book of words,
"Crunked," should be available sometime in 2010 from Epic Rites Press.
(www.epicrites.org) He can be reached at jackhenry951@hotmail.com.
Deep Tissue 86

Befor and After Midnight


by Luis Cuauhtemoc Berriozabal

SOMEONE STOLE MY FACE


Someone stole my face.
I was not asking
for it. I was good.

I kept to myself.
I did not go to
groups. I just stayed in

my room. It must have


happened when I was
sleeping. When I woke

up I looked into
the mirror and saw
another face that

was not mine. I am


not good looking, but
I want my face back.
Deep Tissue 87

FEAR IN MY HEART
I carry fear in my heart.
It pushes down on my chest.
It follows me to all the
places I have ever been:
All the windows I see out
of, in all the portholes fear
is there. When I am dreaming
there is nothing to fear.
I want to dream forever.

LOOKING DOWN
He stares at the sky.
He does not know what
he‟s looking at. His
angel looks down on
him from paradise.

The angel thinks the


man will spend his life
after death in a
place like hell dreaming
of being elsewhere.

The angel has doubts.


His mind is troubled
and inhabited
by visions of
his pending descent.
Deep Tissue 88

SCRATCHING AT MY LEG
Scratching at my leg,
making blood come out.
I need attention.
I need to feel pain.

Scratching at my face,
but never the eye.
I want to see things.
I am not that mad.

Scratching at my arm,
picking at old scabs.
I have infections.
I need therapy.

Looking for a way


out, looking for love.
I don‟t always know
what it is I want.

ON THE BOULEVARD
I saw her on the boulevard
carrying her weariness.
It seemed to weigh her down.
She hated her work and her life.
She was selling her dignity.
She gave nothing away for free.
Her figure was not what it once was.
I observed her and felt bad about her.
Deep Tissue 89

IT IS ON
It is on.
You bring your
lawyer and
I will bring
mine and I
will sue your
ass until
it bleeds. I
need you to
know that I
will not lay
down like a
dog. I will
not take your
medicine.
I am not
sick. You and
my wife must
have something
going on. She
wants to steal
my money.
I suppose
you are fine
with that. It
is on. My
legal team
will send you
to the poor
house. You stand
no chance. You
and my wife
will rot in
the same cell.

Luis Cuauhtemoc Berriozabal was born in Mexico. He lives and works in Los Angeles
County, CA. His first book of poetry, Raw Materials, was published by Pygmy Forest
Press. His chapbook, Digging A Grave, will be published by Kendra Steiner Editions in
October 2010.
Deep Tissue 90

With Love and Respect to All


By Phillip Inman

'Hatred'
She took my daughter.
Stole her away in the night.
She robbed me.
That's never right.
I will never forget the words I spoke.
If you were here right now.
I would choke you to death.
Perform C.P.R. On you.
Then choke you to death again.
That she might greet death twice.
Fear it's hateful embrace.
His cold breath in her face.
Shudder at the fear of it again.
Defiling herself shamefully.
Emptying her bowels.
As all light left her eyes.
That is true hatred.
I despise myself for feeling that way.
Forgiveness is not natural.
To angry humans.
Our daughter will hate you as well.
For your tearing us apart.
You broke a sacred bond.
Deep Tissue 91

Not just a father's heart.


I forgive you.
Yet your righteous indignation sickens me.
You sit in judgment on the throne of shit.
Peering down on mortal men.
Pathetic woman....
Look within.

My neighbor
I have a neighbor lady I shan't call her out
by name. Because quite simply I do not know
it. My, but isn't that a shame?

I have tried to introduce myself while she


was working on her lawn. She simply glared
at me. So I passed on.

Quite often she has outdoor tea's with all her


Church lady friends. Publicly showing off
her incredible righteousness.

Bible studies in her driveway as my son and


I walk by. Spurned it seems. We cannot
figure out why.

Maybe she saw the police in my driveway


two times last year. They were here to arrest
my best friend lady, you would know if you
had simply asked.

Why do I try? Such a simple thing to me.


It sickens and it saddens when I see ignorance
such as this. All puffed up and prideful.
Oblivious.

I do not know your name but judging you


that's not for me. Your husband seems a gem.
And that is great to see. It takes all kinds.

And lady? You best believe this long haired


wild man's gonna kneel and pray for you.
I know Jesus too! And I hope you meet the
real one. The father I adore.

He patiently awaits you to join us on that


Deep Tissue 92

shore.

The heart
I hand you my heart in a box.
wrapped in paper, tissues and string.
I've seen you open it up quite a lot.
Just looking!
I heard you exclaim.
What might you do with this gift?
Treasure or give it away?
It is yours now, so do as you wish.

What is the point anyway?


For it's tattered, wounded and torn.
Neglected and broken in two.
What do I need it for? I don't use it.
Seems more fitting to leave it with you.

I hand you my trust in a box.


And wonder aloud why I should.
seems harder to do every time.
But I take all the bad with the good.

Here I am hoping that you learn to love.


Someone, anyone, even you.
To lose all hope is a curse.
No one knows that better than you.

Magical world
I am the wordsmith. A literary troubadour. Take my hand. Don’t be afraid. I will show
you a magical world. You can journey there time and time again. There in the pages
you’ll be safe.

See the pathway up ahead in the written lovely words? Open up your heart. Be not
disturbed. There in the woodland forest of a forgotten realm. No Gigabytes, no Ram.
Just playful woodland Elves.
Deep Tissue 93

No mindless television to muddy up your mind. The world’s cares fall away, it is sublime.
As Fairies fly over our heads. We kneel to drink from lemonade streams. Now where did
that Unicorn get off too?

He is hiding now, it seems.

Now escape with me. In these the pages that I write. I am none but a lowly scribe. But
therein lies my power. The lore of written word. Our guiding light. Our pure purpose.

Let the heathen check his Email. We have mountains to explore. Up ahead a playful
monkey rides atop a dinosaur. And what is that? A volcano spewing chocolate lava
towards the sun. As Icarus plummets back to earth in flames. Well, he was warned.

I can teach you to return here. Just follow me and obey. Pick up a book and read it
friend. I hope to see you there.

Someday….

‗ I am ‗

I am a poet, an asphalt street prophet. A roving troubadour. My writing is the wind.

I, the ghetto Buddha of Longview, Texas feel the heartbeat of the people. I have my
finger on the pulse. My needle is in your veins. Trust my skills. I will not miss. I talk to God.
We speak, visit, socialize and if I could I would get him high. So he wouldn’t miss this shit.
The heart of it. Reality is all I see. The veil has been torn from my face. Duality is within
me. But I no longer run from the reality of truth. I celebrate.

Youth, fire, love and pain. Trust my words and believe……

I am the seeker. The lowest of the low. I steal, hate, lie and kill. I’m human.

The pathways of my soul are laced in crimson red and sinew. The blood flowing in my
veins no stranger to you. I am you and we are one. The pathway is lined in rock,
concrete and flesh. I scream, sing and shout. Let that pain out. For it serves us well.
Deep Tissue 94

Denial is it’s own damnation. I for one have chosen not to do it well. Introspection is my
curse. My cross. My salvation. I worship the Lord of creation. I speak to you an ancient
name now….El Shaddai….El Shaddai…..

I am a father, lover. Imperfect man. A woman’s shadow writhes on the floor of my


memory. In candlelight aglow. Begging me for more. I miss her. I damn her. I love her.

My talents are aflame. For creation is the way I serve and love God. For he made us
well and in his image. Alive and able to choose. Our bottom is as low as we choose it
too be. Climb up from down there. Don’t wallow in the pit.

I am the wounded boy. Don’t you touch my toys. I will share with you. Not everything
though. Not all. Adam and Eve ruined it for us all. Or did they?

For to truly see, with open eyes. That is the thing we need to seek. As so many of us
have closed our eyes as sheep. Down to that slaughter. Bleating…Bleating…..

Watching our brethren die. As New Yorkers did today on a busy city street. Someone’s
brother, son, friend or father bled to death as they all walked by. I saw it on the news
and I died a little inside. Come with me brethren are you with me? Is not humanity
human? Are we not made in his image? Do you feel no shame? I do. New York….Ah,

What’s the use? I am honest. Can all say that? Allow yourselves to see the you deep
down inside. Do not hide. Embrace who you are. Be real to yourselves. I beg you.

Be humble and honest. Don’t pass a dying man by. He lies there calling out in pain.

Another child of God. Let’s get involved. Or humanity shall pass away and all hope will
be lost.

"Untitled"
For Kassie

For far too long I've gazed at you, a yearning from afar. As if you were some
distant city longed for within my heart. There is a roaring deep within me. A self
indictment of my heart. The regrets of all I've lost thus far.

I've dream t of the espresso served hot in your cafe's. Of searching those unknown
streets and shadowed dark doorways. . Is all this but a dim and distant dream? Or will I
travel there one day? The smells of the busy markets . Intoxicate and lure. The taste of
unfamiliar dishes like the scent of your perfume.
Deep Tissue 95

But like any other city in any other place. Imperfections do exist like the wrinkles in your
face. The broken glass in the back alleys. The addicts in dismay. But in counterpoint to
misery the cathedrals shine in soft suns rays. As monks chant in morning stillness to greet
a brand new day.

I want to see the opera and drink exotic wine. I must buy the tickets.
I've got to make the time. What mysteries await me in this distant city only seen in
dreams? Of architecture and sunsets and undiscovered things. Will she welcome me
with open arms like a lover missed for years. Or will she bring me sadness and bitter
anguished tears.

Will I become another crime statistic to read about in news? Will I end up a
vagrant wandering and alone. Will her streets protect me or steal all that I have ever
worked for and loved? Will she cast me out and betray me?
Make me an exile someday? Remains to be seen. But hopefully ....ah yes, hopefully. She
will be my home.

Hello, My name is Phillip Gregory Inman Sr. I am a twice divorced single father of six
great children. Three boys and three girls. I am forty years old. I have been a carpenter,
sheetrocker, singer, bouncer, certified nurses aide, security officer and criminal. During
my three year stay in the Texas department of criminal justice. I realized that my mother
Judith Ann Inman had passed along with her dream of being a writer. I dream of being
published but will probably never be famous until I die. Ah… such is life. I have only
been succesful at a few things , raising hell chief among them. But in spite of my horrible
Peter Pan complex I somehow even in the midst of a very crippling addiction to
Methamphetamine have been a decent father and that is a miracle as I come from a
very troubled and abusive past (abusive stepfather). Pain has always been a reality in
my life . Not that I am a victim. I have played that role. But today writing is my release .
My creativity . My salvation. My only hope is that my experiences however painful for
me can somehow release or ease anothers struggle with addiction. It is truly the hardest
thing I have ever lived through. My prison stay came after my ex wife kidnapped our
baby and stole her away to Las Vegas , Nv. I have not seen her in so long. Then God
chose to further test me and allowed my mothers heart to give out. I was faced with the
task of taking her off life support. After that my addiction hit a new level and I began
my days as a needle junkie. I truly wanted to die. But was never really proactive about it
. I thought , well if I do this enough death cant be far along. Selling narcotics to an
informant probably saved my life. But since my release on parole it has been some
struggle. Employment is at an all time low and I dont want to fall off the wagon at times.
I seem to want to leap off at a dead run. But somehow I do not. Being a felon has no
advantages except I can survive , job or not. Hustle, Loyalty, Respect. All I have left.
Hopefully my poetry and blogs will reach someone in pain. Someone who has lost all
hope and needs to know that they are not alone. Reach out to someone today and
never let them know the pain of forgetting the touch of a human being. Loneliness
wears its way in and gnaws bone deep at times............. Love and Respect to all
Deep Tissue 96

Spillings
By Dan Kellett

Avarice

There is a vast slaying in progress


It is underway
The entombing of majesties
Of our swans
And their fragrance

This ground we hold


Every inch
Is baked to death by obscene overtures
And fruitless pulp
While exuding
From abortive soil
Is the brightest green
Of suffer

And we close our eyes


Like sharks in frenzy
The tactical defense of unseeing serration and infliction
Mothered by [want] consuming [need]
Deep Tissue 97

Avarice
He sees like a cyclops
In one dimension
In one direction
And plumb
To the end

Ode to Poem II
a blaming weight
raging in ceremonious song
playing notes in tones
of tons
burying my eyes in the filth
of bedside kneelings
and palm to palm
surrender

my sovereignty drips
from Dystopia(n) glands
petrifying to offensive pillars
that swear
only to the worth
of bleeding

filling hungry holes


in the
far away and long undone truths
we carve into the curves
of the earth
purging egregious spleens
burying piles of pain
in the ground that ceased Icarus

AND I AM
Deep Tissue 98

blanched and mounted on imposing barrows


of broken Babel stones
slashing taunting stars
from the great black

beating the skin of my chest

bloody

again

You can find more of Dan’s work at:


http://www.myspace.com/dk_d
Deep Tissue 99

Ranting like a Preacher’s Kid


by Julie Burmeister-Sate

Burn

if scars tell us who we are


then
my shame is
on display
for I love the burning heat
and have approached it
without due caution
too closely
again
today
and

everyday

everyday

everyday

oh
these marks
are not the
the works of wicked ways
Deep Tissue 100

this thing
that burns too bright
and scars
deep crimson gashes
comes
with too much violence
a
searing pain
in advance
for my punishment
in hell

and
well
that has
descended
on me
again
as well
today
and

everyday
everyday
everyday

but
how should I have helped it
if
there is only the one
bright light
that has ever led me astray
and I needs must
love it
always
even if it
dies away

you can find Julie’s work at:

http://www.facebook.com/burmeisterjulie?v=photos#!/burmeisterjulie
Deep Tissue 101

A Pentacle for Blue Boy


By Glen Lantz

Chapter Four

Redeemed Angels

Blue Boy’s girlfriend Lisa stated that when he stepped out of his car, the paparazzi and TV folk

would go bananas. She said that they would just go wild. After he would pass by them, they would sprint

off ahead of him down the street. They would wait for him to reach them again, and then the orgy of

flashing bulbs would begin once more. Lisa said that he would always stop for the cameras and we

would have to pose for more pictures amid the bustle of the crowd. Then his security detail would

shuffle Blue Boy and Lisa toward some packed nightclub somewhere. She said that sometimes it just got

to be too much. All of that attention sometimes would be just unbearable. Once they would get to the

club, security would clear a path through the throng and edge them to a raised seating area and then

into a section behind a velvet rope. She said that at last there would be some smidgen of privacy then,

except that a TV crew had a massive spotlight trained on him all of the time. She said there was always a

television crew following them around. That was just something you had to accept if you were going to

be his girlfriend. No matter where we went, there were always various paparazzi hanging around the
Deep Tissue 102

club snapping photos of us all of the time. Party guests on the adjacent dance floor were always gawking

at him and sticking their camera phones in our direction.

Lisa recalled that Blue Boy would say that he had too many things on his mind that he didn’t

think about all the people staring at him. He usually would ignore them and pretend that they were not

there. She said that every single day there was a crowd of fans and photographers wanting to get a

piece of him. She said that it was just relentless; they just wouldn’t stop following him. He was followed

by paparazzi every day, from the moment he woke up until he went to bed. Even when he was going to

the store to get milk or taking his dog for a walk along a city street he was followed by a crowd. She said

that many times it was just too ridiculous, that it seemed unreal. He lived his entire life in front of a

camera.

Lisa said that she always felt like there was something more to this life, like she had a destiny to

fulfill. It is just a feeling she has had for a very long time. She feels like there is more to her life that is yet

to unfold. Her sense of having a greater purpose was enhanced when she was with him. He made her

feel like she could do anything. He helped her to believe that all things are possible, that she could do

anything. She said that he did that for people, he made them feel capable of doing great things. He

always brought out the best in people. It was a special gift that he had.

Blue Boy’s high school classmate Nathan Pembroke said that Blue Boy wasn’t much of a student.

He was either kicked out or left almost every exclusive private school in New York. He spent most of his

time crashing society events and getting high with the other lost children of the decadent rich. By the

time he had reached the tender age of 19, he began to wonder what sort of profession he should

pursue. He liked baseball, but he was not athletic enough to play baseball professionally. He was also

fascinated with the human body, however, one has to be good in math and science to become a doctor

and he was terrible in math and science.


Deep Tissue 103

The first time Nathan met Blue Boy, he knew that he didn’t like him. He said that there was just

something about Blue Boy that he didn’t like. Nathan said that there are some people in the world who

just rub you the wrong way. He said that it wasn’t because of anything that they did or say, they just

would rub him the wrong way. He said that Blue Boy just rubbed him the wrong way from the beginning.

Nathan said it was like that for him when he first met Blue Boy. He said that Blue Boy gave him the

creeps, that he made him feel uncomfortable. He said that his skin would actually crawl when he was in

Blue Boy’s presence.

Nathan said that the real problem with Blue Boy was that he always made bad decisions. He said

that Blue Boy lacked good common sense, pure and simple. He lacked good judgment when it came to

things he said and did. Nathan said that hating Blue Boy was fun. He made it easy to hate him. Nathan

said that he always enjoyed a good sneer at the decadent rich. However, with Blue Boy, it was so much

more than just fun. His lifestyle of excess was just him rubbing his wealth in normal peoples’ faces. It is

like he was above the rules that govern the rest of us.

Nathan said that Blue Boy was the prince of clowns. He was only concerned about being seen.

He had worked out elaborate schemes to make sure that he was seen with the right people in the right

places. In fact, he hired public relations experts to guarantee that he was constantly in the limelight. He

had a whole team of them working out every little detail. Nathan was convinced that Blue Boy had sold

his soul to be in the spotlight. Blue Boy no longer belonged to himself; he belonged to the people-to the

public. He had said good-bye to his private self a long time ago and surrendered to the call of the

spotlight. Blue Boy had destroyed the boundary that separated his life and his professional career and

had turned his entire existence into a public story and himself into a “brand”. He deliberately turned

himself into a being without an inner life, a personality whose only value was to be seen and known by

all.
Deep Tissue 104

His classmate also said that when you would see Blue Boy stumbling out of a club at 3 in the

morning, he was actually working very hard. Blue Boy claimed that he was actually very shy and hated

going out unless he was getting paid. By those calculations, he must have been rolling in the money

from personal appearances. He seemed to be always out on the town, drinking it up and having a good

time. Blue Boy claimed that when he was at an event, club, or party, that he was getting paid for being

there. Nathan found that a little hard to believe. Nathan said that one thing was for sure, Blue Boy knew

how to line his pockets.

Nathan suggested that in many ways, Blue Boy was just a small child. His acting out was just a

cry for help. He only wanted to be loved and accepted by everyone in the whole fucking world.

Apparently his mommy didn’t give him enough attention when he was young. So he became this sick

fuck that paraded in front of the camera. The poor bastard, let’s all hold hands and cry for him.

Nathan said that he expected Blue Boy was dead. He knew it was cold blooded to think like that,

but he just felt like Blue Boy was gone. He said that the fact that they didn’t ask for a ransom means that

he is dead. “They will eventually find him in a field somewhere or in a shallow grave half buried in the

woods. It is sad, but you know it is true. He was a fuckup, but he didn’t deserve to die. I hope his death

was quick and painless. I really don’t wish him any ill will.”
Deep Tissue 105

The next day, I meet with Blue Boy’s friend Antoine Carter. It has been about five days since

Blue Boy has been kidnapped and more and more people are beginning to worry. Thoughts that Blue

Boy might be dead began to creep inside people’s heads. Antoine and I meet at his house in a rich

luxurious neighborhood filled with iron gates, tall stone walls, and security guards. I asked Antoine if he

had increased security since Blue Boy’s kidnapping. Antoine said that everybody that was anybody was

increasing their security.

Antoine Carter has been Blue Boy’s friend since elementary school. He said that he knew the

real Blue Boy. “He was certainly not the character that the media portrayed on the television screen.

There was always a risk that some people would take him less seriously because he had been playing a

role. But he didn’t really care. He knew who his friends were and they knew the real person, not the

character he portrayed for the public. The media thought they knew him, but they did not. The media

always gets it wrong. I don’t me you, but newspaper and television people. They never take the time to

get all of the details about a story like a writer does.”

Antoine said that Blue Boy was a performer; he was only playing a part. His character was the

dumb rich kid who gets into trouble. Antoine said that Blue Boy was very good at playing this part,

maybe a little too good. He was like Curious George always getting into trouble or like Denis the Menace

with money. “That’s what people wanted to see and he gladly provided it for them. Blue Boy knew what

he was doing, he researched everything. People only see what they want to see.”

Antoine also said that Blue Boy was very savvy in how he worked the image of celebrity. “He

was always smiling; Blue Boy felt that it was important to project a friendly demeanor to the public. The

parents of little girls are won over by a smiling face. He had successfully created an image that combined

explicit sexual availability with innocence and naiveté. He was like white noise behind a solid drum beat.
Deep Tissue 106

This sounds sort of Zen-like, but, he was everything and nothing all wrapped up together in a single

package. He was simple and profound all at the same time. He was a blank screen from which to project

your message or product.” Antoine said that Blue Boy referred to himself on several occasions as a

walking billboard. If he wore a certain kind of shoe out in public, the next day sales for that shoe would

skyrocket. Jean companies would pay him truckloads of money just to be seen in public wearing their

jeans.

Antoine said that he didn’t understand why so many people hated Blue Boy so much. He insisted

that Blue Boy never did anything to hurt them. Antoine said that Blue Boy was just living his life the best

way he knew how. He didn’t understand why people wouldn’t leave Blue Boy alone. “I would hate to be

criticized for every little thing he did. I think most of us would agree with his sentiments. Everyone

makes a mistake now and then. You can’t blame the guy for not being perfect.”

He said that he would hate to live under all of that attention. “Blue Boy couldn’t leave the house

without being swarmed by a crowd. He had used publicity to build a multimillion-dollar celebrity empire.

His outrageous behavior had scored him headlines and magazine covers around the world. His brilliance

was in getting the attention of the media around the world. They loved to follow him where ever he

went. It is like a pack of dogs chasing the fox. The moment he stepped out of the house, they were on

him. The media had an insatiable desire for everything he did.”

Antoine said that it was safe to say that Blue Boy was preoccupied with himself. He only

emphasized the worst features of a collapsing civilization. Ancient taboos had no hold on him. Guilt did

not haunt his dreams at night. Instead, his attitude toward sex was more than permissive. Women and

men were a means to an end for him. He was liberated from the superstitions of the past. He said that

sex was vital to maintaining our creative energies in life. Rules and regulations did not apply to him.

Rules had no hold on him; they could not touch him.


Deep Tissue 107

Antoine asks me if I know anything about the disappearance of Rico Nerada the writer. I tell him

that I know who he is and that he was abducted, but that is all. “Besides that, I don’t know much about

him.” Antoine asks me if I have ever read Rico’s book “The Monster Among Us.” I tell him no, that I

haven’t read the book. “The book is about an average guy who slowly goes insane and starts killing

people.” Antoine gives me a copy of the book and I promise to read it. He says the book is mystical and

will change my life.

“Rico used to be an emotionally unstable English professor who taught creative writing classes

at a local college. Rico suffered a nervous breakdown when his wife of twelve years left him for a

younger man. When he returned to his classes, he developed a penchant for asking the young women in

his classes for sexual favors in exchange for high grades in his class. After several of his former students

contracted sexually transmitted diseases and their parents complained to the college president, the

college administration soon asked him to leave. In order to keep things quiet and not draw bad publicity

to the college, he was paid the remainder of his contract.”

“Rico is reported to be a junky with a nasty habit of shooting heroin in his toes. He used to date

the actress Natalie Thurman until one night he got too wigged out and beat the shit out of her. The

beating that she took from that junky put her in the hospital from seven days. The doctors had to wire

her jaw shut and she had to eat all of her meals through a straw for three months. The bastard beat the

holy shit out of her. You can barely recognize her from the police photos taken at the hospital. Some cop

made a copy of the photos and sold them to the celebrity magazines and retired from the police force

rich. The mayor bitched and moaned on channel five for two weeks that the prick should be arrested

and prosecuted and then it all died out. We never heard a single peep about it again.”

“Rico was eating dinner at a fancy restaurant that you have to get reservations a year in

advance. He was dinning with a movie starlet who was the latest great big thing happening in the movie
Deep Tissue 108

world. I guess actresses never watch the news or read a paper. If they did, you think they would not to

go out with a misogynist heroin addict who could beat then within an inch of their lives. They had

finished their $300 dollar a plate meal and had just stepped outside the restaurant, when a dark van

pulled up and snatched Rico. The culprits pushed the starlet to the ground and hurried off with the

famous writer. Once again the FBI is in front of the television cameras telling the people how they are

putting all of their resources into solving the abduction.”

I ask Antoine if he knows Nathan Pembroke. He smiles and says yes. I tell him that a friend of

mine interviewed Nathan the other day and that Nathan didn’t have many good things to say about Blue

Boy. Antoine laughs and says that he is not surprised. He said that Blue Boy and Nathan used to be more

than just friends. “You mean gay, I ask?” “Yes, they were lovers,” says Antoine. “When Blue Boy met

Lisa, he didn’t have time for Nathan anymore, so Nathan became a little bitter. The last I heard was that

Nathan was seeing some artist guy until Nathan became born again. Now Nathan spends all of his time

on his knees praying.”

I tell Antoine that Nathan thinks Blue Boy is dead and ask if he thinks Blue Boy is dead. Antoine

says that he hopes that he isn’t dead, but it gets harder each day to continue having hope. I tell Antoine

that I believe that Blue Boy is still alive, even though I don’t. I guess I did my good deed for the day by

helping this guy believe for a little while longer. The odds are in favor of Blue Boy being dead. But, you

never know, sometimes the long shot comes through and wins.

Kilgore calls me up on my cell phone and says that he wants me to come over to his place. He

says on the phone that he has a surprise for me. I tell him that I don’t like surprises. He says that I will

like this surprise. I jump in my car and drive across town to Kilgore’s apartment. He has a small one

bedroom apartment on the third floor. The apartment building is mostly filled with college kids since it is

within walking distance of the college. He moved in here because of all of the young girls and it is close
Deep Tissue 109

to several bars. He said that the major selling point was that he could get shitfaced and go home without

getting pulled over for drunk driving.

You can find the rest of the story at this website:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/33451967/A-Pentacle-for-Blue-Boy

Glen Lantz is the editor in chief of Deep Tissue Magazine. He has several pieces of work published in
many small online journals. Glen spends most of his time reading, writing, and painting.
Deep Tissue 110

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