links open windows




falls the shadow

by TRUE

late at nite, when everyone else has gone to bed, i get so tired i fall into these little reveries that are like five second films, humming in my ears as they spin on their silver projector wheels.

everything is slow, warm...

i float outside my body and press myself against the pane of glass that seperates me from the world--and there i fester, like a fat winter fly caught in the never-never land between windows.

what happens to a dream deferred?

i wake up with a start, my heart hiccups and i can see and hear and im awake.

again.



Where Shall We Have Lunch Today?

by fitzcarraldo

oh, i dunno...



Where can i go when i have a cold, and i still want to feel like a star...



Well, the answer, darling, is simple!



Meet me at the Sars Bar, the Sars Bar...ohhhhhh yeah, baby...

Is not "sneezeguard" one of the most truly EXCELLENT words in the whole of English?



xo


p.s. for those of you who need a little more MEAT:

the hun brings the beef.






Time to Find Me.

by TRUE



i see the faces and patterns in brick facades and patches of lawn... in my headphones is the sound of now-or-never...

dear party people,

im hyped but not amped: the moment has come and i can either accept it and my place within a certain context, or else let it pass, tracing an invisible sword over my head like the tip of an airplane wing cutting across a city skyline.

little wing, that's me...

i feel it happening though. despite myself or because of myself... the torn things have grown together. a new fabric has been created from the spaces in between.

The World Wide Web--a Grecian blue sky/screen and a grove of trees: the branches are draped with bits of white ribbons, upon which stories are written.


Real life is a waking dream.

Real life is our playground:

someday we'll be dead and buried

and no one will know how we smelled

or the sound of our laughter.

they won't know how we felt when

we read the headlines that became

the bullet pts of history.



they wont know how candy tasted to us or how the nano-second of blackness between commercials gave one a fleeting feeling of freedom or how it was that the phone was something that kept interrupting,

...and when it didn't then you sat waiting for it to ring.


they wont know how nasty starbucks tastes cuz starbucks will taste good to them.


they wont understand why we didn't do it while we had a chance.




2

philosophers.


...meanwhile, down in the subway...



Initiation

by TRUE



im sittin here, watchin the wind blast the snow back and forth. the windows shake, my hand looks like an inanimate thing made of ivory as it holds a cigarette. my wrists are so small. i'm so small...my memories span a pathetic circumference, they lie there, shrivelled and tugged apart by pitch black ants.

the moments of my life are like grains of rice lining the gutter of a church parking lot.



just before i started high school my family moved us to a predominantly filipino neighborhood. by sophmore year i had been accepted, to the point where i called my new friends' mothers "aunty" and their fathers "uncle". pretty soon i was going to baptisms and the graduation parties of obscure cousins in jersey city and celebratory trips down to AC, where the parents would be swiftly sucked through the vortex of the blackjack table leaving us kids on our own to linger (which is to say, shoplifting cassette tapes and tank tops) in the mall across from caesars and then to prowl the boardwalk at midnight, mixing (which is to say, drinking cans of beer and smoking drugs) among its strange lights and noise and degenerates. by winter of tenth grade i was teaching myself to smoke cigarettes and drink like a champ. i listened to the smiths and depeche mode and public enemy on a taped together walkman and i unceremoniously replaced all candy and cookie intake with cigarettes, which ironically helped slim me down and get me in shape as an athelete, to the point where the following year i'd actually be considered by several colleges, despite that i smoked a pack and a half a day.



there was an incident that gave me some capital: a friend of mine loaned his nissan sentra to a mid-level filipino dealer for a pick-up. when the car came back, a day later than it was supposed to, i slid into the back and found a brick of hash stowed in the back seat. i calmly slipped it in my pants and prayed no one in the crowded car would smell it. when i got dropped off i immediately called the dealer. needless to say, he was psyched.

me and my boys owe you one, he said, in that slow, stoned intonation that all the gang related 'flips' spoke in.

he gave me a phone number.

i'm ferreal bout dis, he said.

his eyes were brown and orange, like a tiger's.

k. i said, and folded up the number and put it in my chain wallet...

he drove me home in his jeep grand cherokee, silently sharing a white owl blunt with me while we listened to a tribe called quest.

when we pulled up at my door he leaned over quickly to kiss me, but i laughed and pushed him away.

i went inside and kept my head down during a nice quiet dinner with my nice, white family. then i went upstairs and fell into a reverie while the sky glowed a metallic yellow over the telephone wires.



that was a time not unlike the time i find myself in now, in which many possible ways of being present themselves to me...a time in which it almost seems possible to have it all...that life might indeed turn out to be one, neverending celebratory song, if not for the slight note of discord or the occasional slip into a minor key that tells me that despite all my charmed good fate, it will eventually be necessary that i make a decision...

...i am only one person, after all.




a boy--a white boy from crosstown--started coming to my yard, late at night...calling up to me, just like in the movies. he had a pair of thick, geeky glasses that he sometimes wore and other times didnt, and he rode a big, funny-looking blue bike that had a basket and everything. he wore secondhand clothes and tied elaborate scarves around his neck and read books all the time. he was also a gifted pianist who had won many awards thoughout the state. i'd soon learn that he could have competed on the national level if not for his insanely paranoid catholic father, who would not allow him to hit the road for fear of "evil influences" contaminating his son.

the rumors were that he was gay, and that he was the boyfriend of a small, skinny boy in our school who never spoke or was spoken to and was known simply as the fag with the crazy artist sister who had green hair and tons of noserings before anyone else.

curious as i was, i thought it bad form to bring it up...the rumour and whatever possible truth there might have been to it. i thought this piano playing boy was very sweet, and sexy with his morrissey hair and his strong arms, and it wasn't long before we were kissing and making out, pressed up against each other for a few minutes in his bedroom or out by my garage, or in the back of his father's car, which he stole in the middle of the night and drove over to see me in without a license or any apparent fear for his well being, as getting caught would have guaranteed a beating from his father in the basement with the pipe.

we read oscar wilde and talked about music and feminism and eastern philosophy...meeting two or three or four times a week in this secret, late nite way, dealing, each time, with the fear of getting caught and severely punished. while my parents had never hit me, they wouldn't have been pleased with the idea of their 15 yr old daughter making out in a parked car on the corner at 3AM.

one night, when i was about to go down on him and said something about how it was the first time for both of us, he corrected me and told me that the rumors were true.

but only twice, he said. then he said the boy's name.

we only did it twice and never anything again.

i nodded and thought about it. i found it difficult to imagine his dick in this kid's mouth, but that's what had happened, and there was no getting around it.

did you like it? i asked.

he told me he had, but that he'd had him stop before he came.

i remember that was the first time i'd heard him use that word, and it turned me on to hear it.



he told me that he and the boy still talked on the phone nearly everyday and that although it was purely platonic, he was pretty sure that the boy still had feelings for him.

i think he's really gay, the piano player said, sadly.

hmmm, i said.

there was more: the fag friend was apparently getting the stuffing beat out of him on the daily by a homophobic wrestling player.

that meathead, i said, when he told me the name. it didn't surprise me that he would pull shit like that.

let me see what i can do, i said, smoothing the hair on his forehead.

what do you mean? he asked.

what can u do?

i dont know. we'll see, i said, loving the sound of mystery in my voice.

so i took out the piece of paper from my wallet and called the number, which turned out to be a pager. i punched in a string of numbers that was listed in careful script beneath the number. about ten minutes later, the phone rang. on the other end a drowsy, and genderless voice asked me to explain the sit-u-a-SHUN as 'zact-ly as i could...which i did, pausing from time to time to ask whether my interviewer could hear me over the sound of their chewing...

ah, yep, yep. donna WOR-RY. it's pork rinds. aiiiiiight? gotta get my food-on. aiiiight!

then he or she muttered chilllll fer a sec and abruptly hung up on me.

an hour later the person called back with the time and place where i was going to be picked up by "my ride."

wtf? i asked, making sure my androgynous friend could hear me exhaling my smoke.

why do i have to be there? i asked.

it was explained to me that that was how they rode. in order to make absolutely motherfuckin sure they got the right dude.

cuz u know, all y'all white people look alike, the person on the phone said, before crunching down on a final pork rind and hanging up.

the evening we went to the meathead's house is like a dream to me.



i was smoking a joint in the parking lot of the silver diner when they pulled up in the white audi i had been told to be on the lookout for.

they were two enormous filipino guys--the driver, who had an elaborate pile of black curls on top of his head, who i thought i'd seen before, and a beefy, fidgety guy in the passenger seat, who appeared to be bald beneath his black skully. he spoke with a nasal drone and had a blunt sticking out behind his ear.

they didn't introduce themselves to me and seemed to take little interest in my presence, which was fine by me.

i watched the trees and the yellow window squares fly by in bright smears. up above, the first stars flickered through a thick pink cloud of pollution.

i lit a cigarette and exhaled the smoke between my knees.

this will be over quickly, i told myself, and concentrated on conjuring up the face of the piano player boy.

when we got to the house the beefy guy got out of the car and walked over to the jeep in the driveway. he started tugging on the door like a madman, until the alarm went off.

within seconds, the front door to the house flew open and the meathead came stumbling out.

we knew he was home alone, as another car had been here twenty minutes earlier, and had watched his parents leave together in one of their cars.

...the beefy guy was waiting in the shadows by the front steps.

he hooked his arm around meathead's neck and dragged him back into the house.

c'mon, the curly haired driver said as he threw open his door and jumped out.

c'mon! he shouted over the din of the alarm, and against all my better instincts i ran inside the house with him, breathing in deep the strange sanitized scents of other people's lives, overwhelmed by the lights and shadows and pictures on the wall and grandfather clock in the foyer and enormous white refrigerator in the bright white kitchen

the curly-haired driver held my shoulders while we stood on the black and white tiles and watched the beefy guy literally kick the shit out of the meathead, who screamed in agony at first but then turned eerily quiet. ok, ok, that's enough, i heard myself saying, but my voice was little more than a whisper, as i stared down at the pink and white face on the floor. his eyes were closed. the lids looked black. the blood was running out of his nose in long strings.

stop, i said, in something that managed to be a voice...

but they didn't stop. they beat him into a bloody, whimpering pulp in a matter of minutes.

see what happens, the beefy one said, when u fuck with the wrong people?

he could have been talking to me. my legs were shaking when we ran back out the front door...



the jeep alarm was still going like crazy.

that was stupid that you did that, the curly haired driver said to his partner.

shut the fuck up, the beefy guy said, as he ignored the shotgun seat and climbed into the back with me.

we took off and headed for the highway.

the beefy guy sat close to me. i could smell his cologne and the smell of his cigarettes. he exuded a strange sense of calm that was almost palpable.

so, he said, you feel all good now that you helped out that faggot? you did yr good deed for the day or some kinda shit?

he lit a newport with a match and glared at me, while he waited for me to answer

i was speechless.

c'mere, he said, pulling off his skully to reveal a nearly bald head.

he reached for me and before i could protest he pulled me sideways onto his lap.

c'mere, he said again, although i was already as close as i could get.

i looked at his face, at his broken nose and scarred brow.

the car surged forward, and i was pressed against his crotch, which was already getting hard.

it seems like we're gonna make it, he whispered to me.

the streetlights flashed over us like a strobe light.

i found myself rubbing his head.

yr like a baby deer, i said, laughing in disbelief.

never would i have imagined that someone like him would be so soft.







stoned.








Justify My Thug (after Jay-Z)

by sterling



goddamn.

it’s the four winters after mix, right here.

four winters after Brooklyn. four winters after the towers. four winters after that monkey first took power…

(and now he’s back again)

four winters after i got sober. a whole college-time worth of being straight, which is funny because i never went to college.

what does it mean to me—this passage of time between the fucked-up me and the not fucked-up me?

the world, motherfucker.

it means the world to me.

it’s the difference between playing myself and playing the hand i’ve been dealt…

it’s the difference between being led and being the leader…

im standing on the bridge with my hood pulled over my eyes

i smell like women and marijuana

even though i don’t smoke.

I’ve got my celly and the city and the sunrise

lemme justify my thug on this one right here…


watch me glide down the hall with my boys in tow

watch me rock n’ roll to a hip hop beat

lurchin like the lurch i am. with my hands curled into fists in my pockets

my fake ass fingers hard like rocks

do yourself a favor, and don’t take the punch just because im a girl

because im going to hit you with everything i’ve got

and more importantly

with everything i DON’T.

all the emptiness and the yearning and the fear of loss

the spots i got where you can plug in

where you can tell me everything

cuz i aint never gonna tell anyone

(and i never will)

ah…i know i got you thinking bout all the things i said

i know i’ve got you thinking bout all the things we did.

the way i took you and then you took me…

yeah, I bitch about being so many girls’ first

but deep down it’s an honor to have been given

a version of their virginity

for me to hold their hand and smooth their hair

for them to look at me like im daddy…



(how you do it)

you stay movin, thru the jungle

you keep your eye on the prize

the green or whatever it’s gonna take

TRUE will be the voice

i’ll be the motion

she’ll make the rhymes

while i mix our communal mind

with beats from another universe

so we can put our heads together

(you, me, us)

start a new country…and justify my thug.



good morning, beautiful

by TRUE

the darkest hour is just before the dawn. i’m waiting for the light. waiting on it like it’s the fix of all fixes, waiting wide-eyed and thin-lipped and scared shitless, waiting hour after hour, and just when i think i can’t take it and that my heart’s gonna stop and i’m gonna die, i hear the grinding screech of the garbage truck, out there a couple blocks away, like an old familiar tv show theme song starting in the background: everything’s gonna be alright, everything’s gonna be alright, and next i hear their voices, calling out to one another in garbage speak. thx guys, i say, a single tear of relief rolling down my cheek, corny as fuck as the sky turns from dark purple to light purple to pink.


unrat

raymi




Slow Learner

by TRUE



i've got all these ideas--i've got all these ideas that im tryin to get out as fast as i can but the ideas are like white caps on black waves, just a flash and then they're gone...and i feel slow and tired, like that story u told us about going fishing with a bunch of guy-guys after drinking all nite and gittin no sleep and then heading out to sea, at first feeling vaguely romantic about the cold and the darkness but then the sun came out and the guy-guys started throwing chum over the side and setting up the lines and u felt sick from the heat and the smell of the bait and the sway of the boat. everywhere u looked were slippery guts. u rested yr head on yr arms and got a sunburn on one side of yr face. finally, after zero action on the lines, yrs got a tug, and for the next two hours u wrestled with the line and the thing at the end of it that had much more invested in the outcome of the battle than u, but still u struggled stubbornly on...wondering why u continued to care as the work got harder and harder and u were sweating and wanting to puke but in the end u managed to pull the enormous dark shape of the fish out of the water and hoist it aboard where one of the guy-guys took it upon himself to grab hold of the beast, take out a gun and unceremoniously bust a pill in its lid...smearing its perfectly evolved head across the deck and ensuring that the prize u fought so hard for could never be mounted and admired...

that's what writing is like for me: each word is a fish and the guy-guy with the gun is time.




brooklynzon


whitey





i want a casket made out of pop music and i want it painted black.

by TRUE

it might seem like im so out of touch and like i dont give a fuck, but really im right there with you guys...you cyberspace people.

whatever happens directly to one person happens indirectly to everyone else.

in my dreams about the waves i am standing on the beach and the sky is just like the sky in a super 8 flick.

sometimes there are gulls overhead

sometimes my shoulder hurts like it does in real life

(like it does online?)



tintin. sterling has her hair like that, btw.



timdot.



tim-like.



timtam.



meningitis


by TRUE

i like when u take it out.


by TRUE

Lookin at my hands today

Looked to me like they're made of ivory.

Had a funny call today.

Someone died and someone married...

You know it seems to be my fancy

To make it with Frank and Nancy,

(when)

Over the bridge we go

Lookin for love.

Over the bridge we go

Lookin for love...


--"New Age", The Velvet Underground




...but what i also meant to say in the last post--just give. k? give. give and give and give and give and give and give and give and never stop and u can never go wrong and i promise we'll change the world.






humpmonster.




jesus christ had an anti-theft device on his MIND.

by TRUE




i think i've been getting mad traffic off this pic. since i don't have a sitemeter, there's no way to know fer sure, but lil blog babies from all over the world have been dropping me lines telling me how much they liked it and asking how i did it and if it was photoshopped, etc, etc. well, i gotta confess...it's not my pic. sterling posted it on mrtt and included the link to the website hamandcheez, where it came from. i don't know anything about it, but my guess is that it was not photoshopped...u could prolly make something like this by cutting out a pattern of holes in a piece of black construction paper and sticking the little xmas lights in them. but be careful-- fuckin around with arts and crafts can take up a lot of valuable time that u could otherwise be wasting...

it's much faster to rip shit off, cut and paste style.

like the overly repetitious, drug-addled choruses to random sixties songs:

jesus is just alright by me

jesus is just alright.

jesus is just alright by me

jesus is just alright...


cuz u know what...he IS alright by me. jesus. as a dude...the jewish dionysius, half-man, half-amazin--public enemy number ONE with his dreads and his chilled-out demeanor and his bad-ass pierced wrists. he didn't sit with the conservative religious jerks who wagged their horny fingers at everyone else and fronted like their shit didn't stink...nah. jesus was fer reals. he hung with the hookers and the tax collectors and the three time losers and when he rolled up to the spot he came CORRECT with the wine, the fish, the multi-grain bread...jesus was bout it. he and his gang of friendless wanderers traveled the countryside, telling whoever would listen about the power of love...real, unselfish love, the kind u give without expecting any back...and by "not expecting" jesus meant REALLY not expecting, i.e., not just TELLING yrself not to expect anything back. same with charity...don't give yr time or yr money if yr secretly hoping to get that "im a good person" buzz off it. cuz yr never really good. even in yr good moments, all the dirty deeds u did are piled around u like empty album covers that u can no longer find the records for.

jesus was not a christian. the dude im talkin bout had nothin whatsoever to do with that religion shit.

that's just one more thing they pinned on him, after the fact.

i'll tell ya somethin: sometimes i try to pray to jesus. i'm never sure what i should say, though. i hardly feel like i'm in a position to ask for anything--it's kinda like what would happen to me back in the day, when i used to play ouija board. once i'd finally convinced someone to get into the closet with me and sit cross legged and CONCENTRATE i'd discover that i didn't have a thought in my head about what i should ask and i'd instead spend my time fidgeting around and staring at the other person and inspecting my nails and the shape of my thighs as i sat indian style.

sometimes i'll try to pray, get distracted and ferget all about it.

then i find myself apologizing, which is pretty lame, if you think about it.

apologizing to god. ha.

so mostly i just ask for help, over and over...

not for anything specific, just help, in general.

lots of it.

like, you know, a double shot.

to-go.


(thank-u, drive-thru!)


amen.





by sterling



i really like this guy's style...the way he mixes hip-hop symbols with fantasy and pop culture references. he inserts himself into each of his pieces as the red outlined smiley face.



the markers and colored pencils make me think of handheld digital video cameras...

i'm drawn to art like this that feels shaky, yet driven...sophisticated in theory, yet with a gritty...and mistakeprone vibe--

but without the actual mistakes--

just like blogs.

just like me.

you see i'm the type of person who clumsily knocks something over only to make a graceful dive and catch it in the nick of time. im wearing my glove again and a lot of band aids, all over my body, just to show you how vulnerable i am. i play the Casanova and i play the fool. i dream that i'm the ACID ZAR and then i wake up stone cold sober.

i have a limp and so i walk with a swagger.

im light with the words and heavy in the eyes.

years of narcotic abuse ensures that the left side of my brain doesn't always know what the right side is doing.

(if i ran a red hot wire down the middle of your head you might know what i mean)

at any minute it's like, i could be wrong, i could be right

(i could be black, i could be white)

but in my heart everything makes perfect sense...

in my heart i never mean to hurt anyone...in my heart i find the time to change the sheets for the next girl, another friend who's come over to my bed to forget about the killer waves and the president and the homeless people covered in blue tarp on the church steps. she's kissing the bruises on my knees, causing her own legs to hang off the bottom of the bed, where she nearly knocks over my TV with the DVD player stacked precariously on top.

"shit, sorry," she says.

"don't worry about it, " i tell her. "i was better off when i didn't have a TV."

"oh, yeah? then why'd you buy a new one?"

"I didn't," i say... "someone gave it to me."

"wow," she says, "for xmas?"

"no, it was before that..." i say, my face reddening as i realize i haven't called the girl who brought it by.

"it was for...no reason, just one of those things," i say.

"hmmm, i see," she says, playfully suspicious as she pulls herself up to my chest. she separates my hands that are folded there and gently tugs at the glove covering the right one.

"what are you doing," i say.

"i want to see your scars," she says.

i help her with the snap.

she stares at my naked hand with the kind of profound interest I usually only get from doctors. then she gently runs her fingers over my slender wrist, then the back of hand, making small concentric circles that slowly dip lower and lower towards the knuckles...

the room is quiet. down on the street two dogs are fighting like they're going to tear each other apart.

finally, her fingers brush gently over the stumps.

i jerk my hand back.

"what is it?" she says, her voice filled with alarm.

"does it hurt to touch?"

"no," i say, tilting my head to make my bangs fall and cover my eyes.

"it tickles."






bicyclemark





have u ever been rattled?

by TRUE



rattled by the rush?

you know when you've got yr head hanging one way, to-ta-lly goin with the high-speed flow of things and then the roller coaster jerks suddenly, snappin you and yr neck in the other direction and leavin you wondering how you could have ever let yrself get comfortable in the first place...

(not on a thing as hard and fast as this...)

like in the beginning when we were in bed and you told me that you had googled my handle and found my sites...all the air sucked backwards out of me...i lay there going ahhh, ummm, unable to extract any words from the tiny pinpoint of my sex and surprise shrunken consciousness.

i peered out at the world through a tiny peephole like i'd just taken a big huff of amyl nitrate...

you were like the hull of a nearby ship thru the dark waves...

the things i'd written flashed through my mind in freeze-framed, cinematic, cinemascope, poster-size representations of all my worst traits and tendencies.

"that's not me, you know, it's fiction...that stuff, those people i made up..."

"hmmm, some of them aren't very nice," you said.

"i know," i said, gripping my head and looking up at the ceiling, crazily scanning all my thousands of words, desperately trying to bring up anything in there that could have hurt you.

in that moment i felt like i could have deleted the whole, sick mess.

you tried to reassure me that it was OK, that u hadn't told me to upset me, merely to be honest during a moment of intimacy, when it felt as though such things should be said.

"i know, OK," i said, trying to stop the spinning.

"i'm really not like that," i said, "i mean, i used to be some of those things, and well, i don't know...but i'm making a lot of it up, you've gotta know that!"

"hey," you said, "i know."

"those pictures of you are great!" you said.

"oh, fuck!" i said, and started to hide in the sheets but you took my face in yr hands and looked into my eyes.

"hey...i know the difference between you and yr personas...do you hear me? i know you. i know you."

i saw myself floating as a speck in yr big, brown eyes.

(set adrift on memory bliss)

"i know you," you said again, "i know the real you...the you i knew before i saw yr blogs...ok?"

you kissed my cheeks and held me tight.

"yr just smarter than i thought, that's all," you said, laughing.














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