Cosmic Trash

All this damned cosmic trash, from here and there, the TV and the radio, from the love of jack-life, killing jack, the way Jack kills himself. I'm not talking suicide. I mean cold blooded murder -- the death that is integral to sublimation. I mean a death that signals progress, the death that occurs when optimism seems stupid, when it means absolutely nothing. If there were jack-love I am sure it would kill Jack – she always does, she always has. And, Jack, perhaps would hate for this pattern to change, it is too beautiful, something to be proud of, awe inspiring -- wanting, but it doesn't seem safe, bright, dark enough. Just a bunch of wind...

There is just too much difference between them. They sat there, apart, babbling, challenging affection. Jack warned her, then apologized, so sorry for his Being, jack- being, not being able to make up his mind, his self-palavering mind.

.moving backwards

You write in your head when you look.
Understood.
But it seems looking is not enough.
Understood.

the variety store pocketbook stained with grape kool-aid
bad rubber check paintings
a phone book

"I'd call you but I'd rather not have to talk to you. I can't afford the charm; I can't afford you period, period(.)."

Mistake.

(left coast) forget the beatnik capital, the dead-dead ways, the circus ring around your neck. How well trained Jack thought he was, he thought she was. This had, has to change.

Mistake.

Jack has written a letter declaring his love because he knows he won't send it. Jack knows it isn't Jack she's leaving -- it's this place, this jack-place... So, it is Jack she's leaving. They both hold grudges -- it makes it easier.

stereotypes | fetishized body parts
the family | superheroes

70:
Three men loiter outside a barbershop. Their faces are hidden but historians wearing suits write their lives. There are uniforms and goals in this story. There's a clown in Jack's bed. A wealthy polygamist (pornographer) enlists women, their lives as yet unwritten (barbary), as subjects (law).

invisibility | silly perversion
hick-life | hick-love

80:
Three women turn their backs to Jack. They are unfit. There's a clown in Jack's bed. jack-sex belongs to the clown because Jack wants these women. They belong together. Jack wrote her body as more than one because there's a clown in his bed.

dishonesty | the idiot
the old school | power/desire

90:
Her smile is weak and there is only conflict. Jack's split so Jack splits for Bakersfield on a bus. There's a clown in his bed. The three women spit in his face.

simulated violence | familiarity
bourgeois journalism | mediation

00:
She's an ape, familiar. The ape woman is dead because her brain is too large, passive. There's a clown in Jack's bed tickling the ape woman. Bonds form so as to guarantee an end.

it's dusk now baby, so put your ear to the ground
listening for parenthetic angels
it only seems like jolly good fun

1. Jack pulls a rabbit out of a hat.
2. The rabbit, he thinks, is rabid because it bites his hand like she always does.
3. He tosses the rabbit out into the audience and it falls in her lap.
4. She brushes it away unaware of the gash it has put in her hand, maybe her face.
5. The blood frightens her and she glares at Jack.
6. Jack attempts to apologize for his mistake, her wounds.
7. She screams she is going to sue, call the cops, buy a gun.
8. She wants Jack dead, to make him pay, so she gives him her phone number.

Jack will not call. The number sits in a small tin box next to his bed, along with the numbers of others who want to kill him. If Jack had rented a different hat none of this would have happened.