Quarantine

I just wrote this short story.

The world has gone crazy. Even inside his own isolation and silence the world now heaped another silence on him.

He thought he now knew she was in love with Nick because she saw her painting, and he knew her work so well he thought the new lover was the bat and that's why she made every line one her best ever. 

But he wanted to know for sure. He'd spent months asking no one, being told nothing. He was like a leper. No one knew him anymore. They pitied him, but they would not help him.

He wanted to know so badly was it really all over forever. If he could just hear her acknowledge that she was in love he could move on. He had mostly moved on, anyway, the first few months doing everything to get back to her. But she never looked. Then he got a chance to see her briefly and lost his composure. 

Is there any chance, he thought. He'd come through some hells, but knew also he'd put her through some hells and could see why she deserved a happiness away from him. Still he wanted to ask for that last chance, but knew love is love, and if she was in love there was nothing left to do but wish her the best.

He had only been with her for over a decade and that hadn't changed. When he was told it was time to move on he literally couldn't even think of anyone else. 

She looked radiant. Strong. Her work was thriving. Everyone loved her. But most of all, he loved her, too. Always had. 

He would give her everything he had left in his heart and soul. He saw some things clearly he had not before. 

But he had come far enough to know there really was no chance, and was willing to accept that. He just hadn't heard for sure. 

He couldn't say he loved her or was so sorry any more than he already had. All he could ever do was let her know he tried to change the things that had gone wrong, and did his best. He only remembered the good that had happened, and was in anguish that he had the love of his life beside him and pushed her away.

If she was happy he wanted her to be happy. Letting him know she was would be a merciful act that would give him peace, not anxiety, and help him move on.

I love you. Always.

But What They Do Isn't Outsider Poetry

I love it that Outsider Poetry Magazine is number three in the search rankings for Outsider Poetry. For many years an outfit named Sister Outsider had the whole page to themselves because they were named Sister Outsider, and the next word in the description was "poetry," but they had nothing to do with Outsider Poetry, don't write Outsider Poetry, don't perform, publish, or endorse it.

We do.

They do lovely work, but what they do isn't Outsider Poetry. 

We released a book this week. I'm not going to talk about the book because it just makes me angry, but it's always an exciting week when you release a new book. In the past few years I've become even more fond of rleasing other peoples' books. It's become a good time for me because I have a partner in jenny who is designing the books, and a great crew of craftspeople making books out of unusual materials like mahagony, leather, and tempered glass. 

I mean it's really amazing the quality and uniqueness of what we're making, and heartbreaking that I can't even get one in 5,000 people to stumble over at an event like City Market and put their cheap beer down to pick one up. I feel like I've let that author, the book designer, and the crafters down. That was my part of the show and I booted it. 

So, here I am on Sunday afternoon shirtless, sweating it out while Jenny takes the kids to see Parliament Funkadelic at Taste of Chicago so I can try and promote the book, and all I can do is fail then get angry about it. If I were there and 50,000 people walked by I'd still fail in drawing attention to a book with a tempered, etched glass cover, lush, gorgeous illustrations, a great story, and mahogony back cover stamped with a gold-leafed Koa tree. Oh, leather bound on glass. I'm real good at this.

Not.

But they are, and deserved a better outcome than this. 

You can check it out here if you want The Koa Tree (the book for sale here is the paperback version, bit the glass cover, but let me know if you want to buy one)

You Don't Want Carpet, You Want An Area Rug

I remember the movie Punchline, which featured several comics of the day, and a young Tom Hanks falling for an older Sally Fields. 

Nothing about that movie has anything to do with what I'm about to say except Taylor Negron is in the movie, and during his routine he does an impersonation of a Persian rug dealer who says "You don't want carpet, you want an area rug." 

Back to that later. The night Taylor Neron died we were ironically just listening to one of his routines about visiting his uncle who was in Three Dog Night, and how it wasn't unusual for Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, or any other rock star of the day to be present at his uncle's house. A few moments after listening to the routine I learned he had passed that evening.

This is a painting my partner Jenny did for a show we have coming up at the end of June called the Come and Go Motel Show. It's obviously the carpet Danny rides his big wheel on in the classic Stephen King horror movie "The Shining." 

The Shining Carpet by Jenny Mathews

I've seen people say everything in the movie is some sort of secret message, and that even the carpet is a design that is there to tell us the moon landing was a hoax or some other conspiracy theory. I don't know about any of that. 

I'm just trying promote this show and my partner's work on the first really hot day of the year here in Northern Illinois. I put my air conditioner in and used bungee cord to hold it in place, then an old electric blanket as insulation. It must look like someone really trashy lives in my apartment, and I suppose that's the case. 

Can't really promote this blog or post it anywhere that people will see it, so I'll stop now. You can like Zombie Logic Press on Facebook if you want, but I know you won't so I'm going to go do something else, maybe watch Portnoy's Complaint. 

Business Is Business

I was talking on Facebook messnger with my friend Tim Stotz a few days ago, and he was inviting me to a local cafe just to hang out, shoot the breeze, and pretend like were working on something, and all of a sudden this poem flashed into my head, which isn't much a big deal, except that hasn't happened to me in over a year, so I rushed to write it down.

Business Is Business

she says andrew jackson
was a murderer 
and a lousy president,
and aside from that he looked funny,
but not funny enough to 
stop her from
blowing me for
two lousy presidents

I'm organizing a poetry reading on June 15th with the themes of capitalism/consumerism, and in our Tal' Dorei Dungeons and Dragons campaign prostitution is taking on a huge role. I suppose all those components coalesced to make this the first poem that popped into my mind in a year.

Who dares question the muse. Take what you're given, and be thankful you got anything at all, I guess. 

Now I'm dead tired.

The Baddest Poet In the World

Zombie Logic Press is located exactly in the geographical center of  Rockford, Illinois: America's 3rd Most Dangerous City. Furthermore, within that dystopian wasteland, Zombie Logic Press anchors the 5th most dangerous neighborhood in America, which I believe entitles me to make the claim that I am the most dangerous poet in America.

Every one of my grade school teachers seemed to agree. 

Each one of my grade school teachers in succession made very great efforts to convince me poetry was the type of thing that gets a small boy into trouble and leads to a life of depraved indifference to societal standards. They sure were right about that. I should have listened. But I had the poetry bug bad. To their credit, they warned me. 

I was a pretty shady character back in those days, and if they hadn't made such an effort to deter me from the path of goodness, truth, and creativity, there's no telling what type of destruction I might have unleashed on an unsuspecting world. Glad they stopped me. But if they hadn't I soon learned countless others were willing to take their place. Drill instructors, professors, bosses, editors, whoever felt they might have a penile insufficiency or a vaginal surplus. They wanted me to know poetry simply wasn't going to fly, not on their watch. 

My first book was published when I was still a teenager. Many people were furious, mostly because they hadn't published a book and they didn't think I should have, either. The only place you can buy this is at Google, because it sold out over twenty years ago. Every subsequent book I have published at Zombie Logic Press, until Iced Cream, was modeled after this one, largely because it's the only way I knew how to do it.

For some reason, I decided to come back from San Diego, one of the most beautiful cities in the world, to Rockford, one of the ugliest. I spent a few years letting other people pay for me to go to college, where I maintained a 4.0 and won a bunch of scholarships I didn't need because everything was already being paid for. Once again it was re-affirmed to me that being good, working harder, and outperforming other people was irrelevant on this planet. Then, mysteriously, at age 30, my life began. I remember the moment clearly. I had just re-read Richard III, and like a lazer beam boring into my amygdala it became clear to me being a good guy was for chumps. I published my second book that year.

Detached Retinas. Go ahead and be a dear and buy that here. This is a compilation of poems I wrote while in college. They tend towards the surreal and innocuous. Some are even slightly romantic and nice. Mostly people didn't like it. I can really relate to their feelings. It's the last gasp of any true romance or naivete that I might have had in this life, or ever will have again. In that sense it's the only book I have written I can pick up and enjoy reading. I wouldn't but if I did. Then I started my fifteen year career working in bars and restaurants. Which led to my third book.

Flesh Wounds. I'm making the picture bigger because I have a lot more to say about this. Be a voyeuristic lech and buy this here. These are the sordid tales of the time I spent working in dive bars, strip clubs, dance clubs, sports bars, fine dining, and the most scumbag ridden location of them all... the country club. Fast money, fast chicks, drugs, violence. I got paid to do the things most people dream about. And I was good at it. At first. Actually, I was still good at it later, too, especially when me and my brother owned our own bar, Castaways, but that long, drawn out perversion of the senses might open the doors to wisdom, but once wisdom is acquired it's time to move on.

I started writing Submerged Structure on the porch of my brother's house on a yellow legal pad one summer when I was between gigs. The one at the fireman bar and the dance club, if I remember correctly. I wanted to just strip down the whole writing experience and write for the same of the image. I've never been a big believer in adjectives or jamming a line full of figures of speech. It's a fun book with a lot of silliness to it. You can buy that here. The title refers to my lifelong battle with Schizoid Personality Disorder. How the hell do you bartend with a disorder like that, it has been asked. Drugs and booze were always my answer. 

That's how I ended up becoming the most dangerous poet in America. 

I have largely abandoned the poetry writing game now because I said pretty much everything I have to say, and now i have set my sites on publishing far better writers than myself. The first book I did was a real lolapalooza.

Iced Cream by Jesus Abraham Correa. Go ahead and buy it on the margin at the right.

Whatever Happened To Old What's His Name?

Thomas L. Vaultonburg is a poet familiar to many in the literaru inner circle. His first book, Concave Buddha, won many awards, including the prestigious Strahd von Zarovich First Book Award, and his follow up, Detached Retinas, published seven years later by Zombie Logic Press heralded in the age of self-publishing that millions and millions of writers have since emulated. But then Vaultonburg disappeared. 

What happened to the promising young poet many were calling the next Bukowski?

I don't know.

Maybe he got a job. Maybe he just didn't anything left to say. 

Or maybe he was writing the entire time. On packing slips in the warehouses he was working in, and on cocktail napkins at the bras he was drinking in. Maybe those poems went into a book titled Flesh Wounds.

Buy Flesh Wounds 

   Collected 

   Say something interesting. 
   Come to our dinner party 
   And insult our queer friends. 
   Please stay in our basement 
   And pee in our sink. 

   You’re our very first poet. 
   We were hoping for PP 
   But we heard some nice 
   Things about you, too. 

   Say something outrageous. 
   Eat light bulbs and peanut 
   Butter and be feral and 
   Nasty and awful to us. 

   You’re a real poet. 

   Come out on the town with us 
   And cause a scene. 
   Drink enough for us all 
   And go to jail for us all. 

   Please get us some 
   Good drugs. Don’t forget 
   To write nice things 
   About us. 

   You don’t mind, 
   Do you? 

Maybe he eventually got sick of having all that fun and became a family man who wears khakis and listens to yacht rock. Maybe some of the younger people he plays Dungeons and Dragons with on Tuesday nights tried to convince him that Nickleback is dad rock and he just bit his tongue and let them keep talking. Maybe poetry just isn't that important to him anymore. Does he even have a book left in him? I don't know. 

Buy Submerged Structure 

Same Shit, Different Day 

On Anderson Cooper 
360 last night 
Dr. Gupta recommended 
A regular inspection 
Of stool samples to 
Ensure proper digestion 
And absorption of 
Objects intended for 
Nourishment. 

Later that evening 
I read in Wolfram 
Van Punkblausen's tome 
Might and Magic if I 
Wrote the names of 
My enemies on paper, 
Smeared them in shit 
And blood, then 
Swallowed it, I'd 
Absorb their souls... 

So I did. 

Next evening at work 
When Mean-Eyed Joe 
From Human Resources 

Invoked the 
Bumper sticker classic 
"Same shit different day" 

We were finally on equal
Intellectual footing.

"You got that right, man,
I laughed,
Feeling more regular
Already.


   

This Minotaur Invaded My Homeland

My friend plays a minotaur in our Planescape Tuesdays Dungeons and Dragons night. We started our campaign in Krynn, and in that world the minotaurs have taken over Sylvanesti, the ancestral home of the elves. I play Bloodrut, a Sylvanesti elf.

Fortunately we left Krynn several weeks ago for Sigil, then were booted out by The Lady of Pain into the outer planes. 

This morning I heard loud raps on the front door, knocks I quickly realized only come from police officers. Turns out the snow plow had literally plowed into our car this morning, even though it was parked on the correct side of the street. I suppose if we'd been parked on the other side we would have been ticketed. 

Last night we went to a restaurant named Social, which seemed ironic because the entire staff was slightly anti-social, and everyone there seemed pretty snooty. I had a bourbon old fashioned because I saw Don Draper make one for Conrad Hilton on Mad Men. Then I had a cappuciono. I reallt wanted to get home to start season six of Mad Men, but we got home late.

Then a city plow ran into our car.

Then I wrote this blog about the minotaurs who stole my homeland.