For the laughing Fat man

Despite your best efforts, your skin will sag loose
Hang from the bottom of your arms
As molecules of dust swirl in the light
Stabbing through the kitchen window
Despite your best efforts you will not
Be unburdened of your flesh
As the purple lotus advances toward heaven
One eye down toward the afterbirth puddle

Despite your best efforts the sun remains
Unconcerned, making time as gravity
Unwinds the screws of your joints and
Loosens taunt nerves

Until like a sail being deprived of wind
We go falling falling into the rushing current
Of nothingness

and all is as it should be

Lamb of moloch

Lamb of Moloch

It had been raining for five days but the work went on, continually. Day and night. Two shifts 12 hours each. It was called a “shut down”. That’s when a big petroleum processing plant shuts down completely for maintenance. The longer the plant is off- line the more money is lost. Hundreds of thousands of dollars a day. So the bosses push to get it done. Everybody works 7 days a week, 12 hours a day.

A petroleum plant is a mass of gauges, pipes, heaters, coolers, valves, and dials. A knot of metal twisting stories high, called stacks. In the rain the “stacks” were surrounded by giant sheets of plastic, hung from wires and tied off to the scaffolding that surrounded the stacks. The wind was so high the rain still blew in. The sheets caught the wind like sails, and ripped. They popped and whistled. Everything in the stack was dripping wet. Guys had to climb up the “racks” or scaffolding--into the great tangle of pipes to do the work. In the rain and dark this was a terrible work. They were often nearly soaked before they even got to the place in the pipes they had to work. Lights shined harsh florescent light from the ground on the outside, but in the middle it didn’t help. Inside the stack small lights were hung at various points, but it was still too dark. Shadows hid everything because everything was a tangle of pipe. It was squirming through the entrails of a robot monster.

The guys wore harnesses and lanyards. They hooked their lanyards to the racks and climbed up. They called it “tying off”. But it was hard maneuvering through the tangle, even without lines to get hooked on gauges and tied up in. So guys often “flew” up. They climbed without tying off because it was quicker and easier. There were safety guys who were supposed to watch everything, but they often looked the other way because the job had to get done for anyone—including them—to get paid.
Most of the guys were x-cons. They had shaved heads and tattoos. The tattoos that made it obvious where they had been to anyone with an eye to see. It was absolutely the best job any con could get. When they all showed up at starting time they were loaded into a bus at the gate and the buss drove back to the stacks. They called the buss the “Grey Bird”, same as they do in jail. They had a ruff sense of humor, much like that in jail, and they cliqued up the same as they would in jail. The cliques followed roughly racial lines. There was some mixing, but not too much. Guys always jostled for position in the little hierarchies that were constantly being erected and challenged. Like in Jail one was either a shark or a fish. Also like jail there was a constant threat of violence. Fights often broke out but were quickly stopped. Confrontation was usually over petty grievances, and tended to be settled just as quick.

Adam considered it all slave mentality. He didn’t much talk to any of the guys. He kept to him-self. He had a plan. The plan was to make enough money to pay for a few semesters of school and quit as soon as he could. Most of the guys left him alone. He seemed to them not very sociable, or scared, or both. He was no threat and stayed out of the little rivalries so he was not given much mind one way or the other. When he did talk to the other workers he bitched about working conditions. Sometimes they seemed responsive, sometimes they just replied that they were glad to have a job, and to not let the foreman hear them talking that uppity shit.

One night the crew leader, tried to get under his skin. He kept sending him to get Benntol Karitine. BK was a solvent that the men used to melt the adhesive that was left on the pipe when the insulation was stripped off. It was one of the nastiest jobs, and the most dangerous because it involved a lot of climbing up and down the stacks. There was a large tank of the stuff on the ground near the stack. Adam would have to climb down with a five gallon bucket, fill it up by siphoning the BK from the tank, and tie the bucket to a line that was brought up to the top. If the bucket got hung up it was his job to un-lodge it.

At the bottom a guy was standing watching Adam climb down.

Why you let him do you like that AD, tell him to send someone else.

Adam took off his helmet and wiped his fore head on his sleeve. Fuck em, I’m gonna quit at the end of the week anyhow, I made enough to go back to school. This job is easy because every time I come down I rest. They don’t say much if I take my time.

AD listen, it’s all about respect you got to let guys know they can’t fuck with you like that. You shouldn’t have to come down every time. Its considered bitch work, you should be patin by now. Yous a painter by trade ant you.

Respect? Adam looked at him with amusement. I get paid the same weather I’m haulin BK or paintin. I don’t care what that chicken shit crew leader thinks of me. He gets paid as much as we do, they choose another one each night. They do that to make some guys think they are better than the rest. But truth is they ant no better than dog shit, just like the rest of us is treated like dog shit. l If you guys were smarter you’d demand to lay out while its ranin. Nobody should have to work in the damn pouring rain, but instead your too busy knocking dicks like you was in jail. Ya’ll should get it together and stop givein each other such a hard time. You should learn how to give the bosses a hard time instead.

I’m gonna be a boss sometime soon. That’s why you gotta get the good jobs not the shit jobs. It shows you can move up, take on more responsibility. One day i'll be manegemnt.

Adam laughed. It’s all the same. All jobs are the same out here if you are working in the stacks. You get paid the same and the conditions are the same and the hours are the same and the risks are the same. IF your not sittin your fat ass in the office then your out here with the rest of us dogs, and if your out here its all the same.

Adam tied off the bucket and started back up the stack. Half way up he got tangled up in his line. He could barely move enough to un-hook him-self. It was hard to see. The easiest thing to do was just un-hook, free himself from the tangle of lanyard, and tie off again. It was hard to move but much easier not being tied up to a scaffold. He went to unhook himself. Just as he did his foot slipped.
There was a large open spot just behind him. He fell into the hole backwards. His hard hat came off as he fell and he hit his head on a pipe. The lanyard lines trailed up as he fell like impotent wings.

The guy below watched blankly as he fell.

His broken body stretched across a gauge near the bottom of the stack, head dripping blood. The blood fell on the pipes, dripped slowly down and puddled on the concrete.

The lights smoked as the rain pelted them. The blood was absorbed into the concrete, or washed away by the rain.

fir dan decon

For Dan the con

Towers towards what end like
Moths think up!
Street-light moon sonatas
Little fuzzy bug stanzas like cups up

Whole opened like sewers belching filth lift lit
lard the lurd been good
Cheep thirst after Christ

but

That day
the sky cracked open with a terrible roar
a slit behind the clouds!
Roses beyond the stars opened for her
and Mary was assumed
a virgin
too pure for death

The small café in the Barns and Noble was filled with people, but that didn’t matter to the old man. He sat with his wife and granddaughter. Since the couple belonged to the Church of the Apostolic Christ his wife wore a long skirt that looked to be cut out of a bed sheet. She had long thick white hair which was tied up in a bun on top of her head. The little ankle that showed was sheathed in very thick skin toned stockings. She was reading “God’s Plan For the Nation”.
Her granddaughter, 12, sat next to her. She was looking over a Goosebumps volume. She wore blue jeans and a tee-shirt tucked in. It read “Hot Hearts Bible Camp”.

The old man sat in between his granddaughter and his wife. No one talked. He wore jeans and a polo style shirt tucked in. His belly hung bloated and obscene over his belt. The shirt was streaked to capacity. His bulbous breasts hung down similar to a woman’s. His navel was a crater. He sat reading Pent House letters. Every so often he would look up and his eyes would follow a young girl walk by. After some time it became apparent that he had grown an erection. It looked like a stuffed slug hidden in his crotch. He would shift his position to better accommodate it. His breathing became heavy and none among his clan talked

When someone complained the barista finally came up to him and asked him to please leave. He got up laboriously, grunting, and walked toward the bathroom. The two other kept reading as if nothing had happened, never looked up.

move along

Street lights sparkling amid the broken glass. An empty lot. The bag man knows the weather. One leg gone in Vet Nam. Who cares, get along get along. Bags hanging off his weel chair, can’t stand to piss so pisses anyhow. Pants stained a million times over. Who care who cares get along now. Nothing to see. Sleeps under the light so he can see to fish through his pack. A few solitary pleasures, cheap wine, roll a cigerett. Sometimes another will walk up on him, share a pull of the bottle. Mostly not. Gone to the food bank. Gone to the salvation army. Who cares who cares move along.

Everybody gotta be some place not him. Every body gotta be some thing. Not him. Every body gotta point to prove. Not him. Bag men make no points. Look at him like an animal. Walk faster when he goes to ask for something. Its his own fault. This America. Everybody get shine in America. Everybody get something in America. Can be president. Can be big time movie star. Can be published intellectual. Can be millionaire zen master. In America. Move along. We all got things to be.

In the End: Part 1.1

In those days death stalked the earth unabated. After the bombs came the plague. It roamed from the skeletal cities to the scorched countryside, casting death like dice among the living. The dead were burnt in great pits in an attempt to stop the spread of the infection. They burnt day and night. Their light reflected from the low cloud sheath that blanketed the earth, bathing the night in orange translucence.


In those days the sick fell dead in waves. The infection would spread through populations multiplying exponentially, then recede for a time. Whene it appeared to be passing, it would swing its scythe again killing by the thousands. By the end of the war most of the cities were totally empty. Those that remained in them formed loose fraternities and tribes. They marked themselves by various means. The ones that the plague didn’t take held on like refugees in a dying world.

In those days it became clear that a few were immune to the sickness. It was not clear how infection spread, weather through blood, or water, or air. But if some people got sick, showed all the signs of death, but recovered, they never feel ill again.

In the beginning the National Guard tried to prevent looting and stop the spread of disorder and infection. The government tried to hang on to a bankrupt system long after it became apparent that it was all falling apart. And yet all the federal ministries finally succumbed to the plague. When most of the people who were in charge of governance died, and the administrative chain broke down, the ones that were left took their remaining wealth and drifted away. There were bomb shelters scattered across the continent, some still sealed perhaps. Most of the top officials tried holding up in secret bunkers in the D.C. area,or at the state capitals but when the plague infected them the residents either died, or left. One could come upon tunnels leading to the opened shelters, secret passage ways under government buildings or in the subways. All the ones that opened to the outside world were ether looted and abandoned or occupied by tribes.


Aron's mother set up a shop in the third floor of an old apartment store in what remained of Beaumont, Texas. Aron and his brother, along with some hired guns, would travel to Houston to loot and trade, bring the goods back, and barter with them. Everyone his immediate family save Aron's dad had survived the plague. Some would count them lucky.

Long before the bombs his uncle suspected a war. He bought land and built a large compound, complete with a bunker 15 feet down. He had co-owned a construction company. He figured out how out build an underground shelter via the internet, retired at 45, and did it.

Aron had no way of knowing how long they stayed in the bunker after the bombing stopped. He had heard that some of the big cities on the East coast were hit by nuclear missiles, but he had no way of knowing. Mostly it had been conventional bombs, which can do almost as much damage if they fall in sufficient numbers. But the war was over fairly quickly. Once the plague set in and spread across the continent, there were not enough people left to fight or command it. The governments quickly fell apart, and the solders deserted. The Bolivarian forces tried to occupy some cities but they died too quickly to get a foot hold. The plague had stopped the bombing, not a peace settlement; it was a much more efficient means of killing.

By the time the Duhon’s emerged most of the soldiers were dead or gone. There was no chain of command, so most of them hunkered down, joined a tribe, and tried to get by the best they could. There was no shortage of food and supplies. All the electricity stopped, but people had gas generators, and there was gas to freeze food and run other electrical gadgets . There was plenty of canned and otherwise preserved goods. When tribes fought they did so over fuel and weapons, or good land on which to settle, or machine parts, or the like. Some areas were safer than others, and one had to travel with armed.

Chad lived in the remains of the Lamar University Library. It was relatively well preserved because it was built like a fortress. A 5 story red brick, concrete and cinder block building with one 5 inch strip of reinforced glass running up each side for windows. They were set about 3 inches into the brick. The university was not bombed for whatever reason, only the nearby petrol plants. The library was basically one big monolith with a few windows. Chad had been a professor and when the bombing started and he held up in the library one day during an air raid, and decided that he would stay. He too was spared by the plague. The neighborhood surrounding the University was almost totally abandoned before long. He would loot the houses in the days following the bombing and help dispose of the dead, carrying them to the pits. People would feed him for his assistance. There was enough dead that he kept busy by day. AS people wandered off or died the surrounding area became slowly deserted and Chad took to growing vegetables in the old soccer field. He shot whatever he could, squirles, rats, possums, birds, ate vegetables and whatever he could loot.

Story 1

Adam would always go see him on the pretense of playing with his kids. But he didn’t much like the kids. They were dirty faced little urchins. When he walked up to the trailer they were always sitting in the dirt. Looking up with idiot eyes. Drooling. Matted hair stuck to their dirty faces. The yard was a riot of broken parts. Machines in various states of disrepair. Cars. Dishwashers. A pile of plastic trash that was meant to be burnt but never was.

Dwain lived in a beaten trailer on an asphalt road. Adam lived up the hill. Adam would go to him, and just walk in the house. He would often be sitting at the table, drinking, smoking. Downturned eyes. Flies buzzing. The kitchen vomiting the stench of the rotting food that had long since clogged up the sink. Adam would just pull up a chair and sit down, and Dwain would start talking. He talked of two things only. His ex-wife and the kids. He had been a truck driver when they were married. He was gone for long stretches of time. He was a convict so he said that was the best he could do. His uncle owned the trucking company so he was thankful to have that.
In those days, he said, they fought all the time. He would come home and they would fuck first and fight not long afterwards. She wanted him to be in town. She was lonely. Plus raising kids was no easy chore. But he couldn’t find a job in town. Especially in Woodville, a tiny hamlet carved out of the Big Thicket. There wasn’t much work around. Most folks in town worked at the saw mill, but they would not hire him on account of his record.

Well, it got worse and worse. He started smoking speed to keep him up on long hauls. When he came home he was tweeked, strung out, could hardly get it up. So the sex stopped, and she thought he had been fucking lot lizards, so he was worn out. But it was the speed. The shit clogs up the veins down there he complained.

Adam would just sit a listen. He liked the smell of the whiskey and cigarettes. Sometimes his oldest daughter would be around. Adam liked her too. She was always dressed skimpily. Even at 11 Adam knew what the status was.

He would always complain that she was like her mother. “Girls only dress like that for one reason” he said, “and it ant cuse its hot. You see these little hoocies in that shit in the winter time. They want to get nailed. That’s the long and the short of it. Not long after she got pregnant and she never came around.”

In the fall Adam came was coming home from school and saw as the police and the ambulance their. The cops were standing around with the paramedics Adam ran down to the corner as fast as he could when the bus dropped him off. Dwain had took a handful of Vacitin, chased it with a bottle of whiskey, and died in his sleep.