Lullaby.

Now then, child: Pull up the covers & close your eyes & I’ll sing you a sweet little sleep song. Lie back – relax – breathe in – breathe out, and it goes like this, you see.

Lie back… Relax… Breathe in… Breathe out… And it goes… Like this… You’ll see:

You see, it’s not The End when the lights go out, when the Darkness comes, you see? Tho to all the world your breath has fled, YOU do not cease to be. Tho you do not speak & you do not smile & you miss that planned appointment. Still you hear their voices, share their cries, as the priest soaks you in ointment.

Hehe… Shh! No no, child. No, no. It’s okay. It’s alright. Don’t stir, don’t fuss. Now we’re nearly to the crux of my tale!

Now then, where was I? Ah yes, that’s right, & it goes like this, you see… Lie back… Relax… Breathe in… Breathe out… And it goes… Like this… You see:

& you’re still just you when they bury you & they cover you in mud. & you see it! hear it! smell it all! tho they drained you of your blood.

& your soft parts harden & your hards get soft & you take on purplish hue. But you hear the drums & the stone man comes & he steals what’s best of you. Yes you hear the drums & the stone man comes & he steals what’s best of you.

Your skin sloughs off, your bones break down, & the worms come in to chew. Then the roots grow up, come out your eyes so they block out most your view. What’s left to see’s so bad by then, you’re thankful when they do!

Putrescence! Putrescence! That trusty state that comes & claims us all. Turns all what was your brains to pus, then bugs swarm in to crawl. 4 years of Latin that you took when you were but a boy? It’s in some maggot’s stomach - Now, who’ll eat all your Tolstoy?

& doodlebugs hurry down thru the parts that did hold all your fears. & flowers grow up thru your ribs & beetles lap your tears. & then someday, your mind will fade, but that will still take years. Cos YOU stay there when out of air, your Mind just clicks & clears.

& um, well... The song goes on like this for quite a while, child, w/ corporeal breakdown & generalized rot. But then it gets kinda ugly in the verse comes next, so I’m skipping to the end, you see.

& it's ugly 'round the middle of the verse comes next, so I’m skipping to the end, you see.

To where the girls skip double dutch on top the grave where the flowers grow that ate ya. & they sing a song ‘bout what went wrong & what it was unmade ya.

They go:

Time will tell
If your ratty old Hell
Is the hole where the gal’s
Gonna send you

But you’d better not cry
Cos you’re sure to die
& the gal w/ the mask’s
Gonna end you!

(& faster:)

Time goes tick-tock
Bones rap knock knock
Late to call the doc-doc
The Grok! It’s the Grok!

Time goes tick-tock
Bones rap knock knock
Late to call the doc-doc
The Grok! It’s the Grok!

The Grok! It's the Grok! It's the Grok!

Alright, child, that’s it for now. Nighty night.

Sweet dreams & kisses…

The harvest.

Good news.

This kid shows up on my doorstep the other day, fingertipping the doorbell pathologically like he’s just discovered the clitoris or something. & what the clitoris is is… Well, we’ll go into that later, maybe. I tend to go off track & we’re pressed for time. Go ask your mum about it.

But this kid on my doorstep… Yeah.

He looks like a good kid: white teeth, shined shoes, cuff links, no visible tattoos, the whole nine yards. Daddy would approve, you know? & sure it’s like 8:30 on a Sunday morning, but this is 1 wholesome, all-American kid, I'm telling ya, & I’m the 1 who stays out too late on Saturday nights.

Unless… Maybe the kid is another one of those crackheads I keep hearing about. Could be he hasn’t even been to bed yet!

But then again, I keep seeing those shoes. Those shoes have not been out all night, no ways.

So I look @ him expectantly, waiting for whatever happens next. Surprise me, baby.

//Good morning!\\ he inaccurately snorts, just alluva sudden. & I gotta tell you, he’s really not off to a winning start. & //have you heard about Jesus Christ?\\

Have I what?

//Jesus Christ, you say?\\ I say, //No, what is that? Never heard of that. Must be new, or else someone’s keeping a tight lid on it. Low profile kinda thing.\\

I look around all conspirator-like & I say, //Thanks for the heads up. Don’t worry: I’ll keep my eyes peeled, & I’ll make a full report if I hear anything.\\

Then I close the door & go back to bed.

Just another ranting crackhead waking me up on a Sunday morning? Or is it something more?

There's just no way to know for certain. So if you hear any more about this whole //Jesus Christ\\ thingamabob, you should probably contact the Sunday doorbell kid right away. It might allow him to sleep in for a change.

Fear.

Hang on Saint Christopher.

Mumsa, what can I say?

After all this time, what good could it possibly do?

I am a sorry one – this much is by now beyond all dispute.

But more than the rest,

the thing that makes me most sorry

is that I didn’t just let you have

your old Saint Christopher…

Mumsa was an excellent Catholic.

Very excellent, very Catholic.

Carried rosary beads around with her like folks today’ll carry cell phones

(& praying while driving is as dangerous as drunken wheelies)

That woman went to church constantly, for all of the appropriate

Holy Days of Obligation.

She believed in the power of the holy and unbroken hymen of the Blesséd Mother.

& most of all, Mumsa believed in the power that came

from prayer

especially when those prayers were directed

at or around one Saint Christopher

who would intercede on her behalf

any ole time of day or night.

She kept a relic around her neck

purporting to be the toe of Saint Christopher hisself-

the big toe of his left foot, to be precise.

There was even a little snag of nail on there.

& she’d wear this thing on a string

around her neck

& rub it furiously while she’d pray

when she was having any one of the daily problems that come along in life…

Oh! How Mumsa swore by that toe!

You remember when Aunt Maxine got her skin cancer that summer

& then somehow seemed to get over it overnight?

That was Christopher!

When Cousin Audrey got knocked up by that Negro kid

but lo & behold the half-breed was born dead,

thus saving Audrey (& the whole family) from a life of pain & shame?

Christopher again, obviously!

But me? Moi’?

Ungrateful & blasphemous cur that I am

- or was, at any rate –

I couldn’t just let it be

I had to kill what meant the most

to those who loved me

I was 16,

& I felt slighted @ some petty trifle

Could be that Mumsa wouldn’t let me go to a party,

Who knows what it was?

(& what could it possibly matter now?)

But I struck back with all that I had
I said, //Saint Chris never was!
Even the Pope says so!\\
Then I went to the shelf
& took out the World Book Encyclopedia
which knew everything there was to know

I showed her:

since 1969:

No Chris.

Ergo, no Chris’ toe.

Why,

Mumsa’s eyes…

they faded right then & there.

She took that toe

which had gotten a little green, frankly

& a little worn out from all

that rubbing & all that praying & so forth

She took that toe & gave it

one last,

long stare,

and she

- //EWWWW!\\ -

dropped it.

Oh Mumsa,

why couldn’t I just have let you

have your dear Saint Christopher?

Who's afraid of the sun?

& few people realize how the Moon is made of pure dry ice. & those in the know by & large choose not to talk about it, for all the obvious occultic reasons, I suppose. But you, you’re one of my friends & I know you are not the sort to just… run out willy nilly & do something stupid w/ your inside information, like… You wouldn’t, say, post it up on a roadside billboard for all to see, or announce it in the new Christina Aguilera pop video clip you’re directing… You wouldn’t go mine the Moon to fill 4th of July beer cooler orders for a quick buck…

I trust you, you see, & I want those I trust always to be in the know.

So… the Moon is made of pure dry ice & few people realize that, you dig? Except now we’ve come ‘round to the May portion of our program & the Sun is winning & it punishes the Moon for January. & it punishes all those of us who worshipped the Moon back then when it was running the show & all those of us who made blood sacrifices to what we now know is an enormous chunk of ice careening @ potentially catastrophic speeds across the surface of this flat & hollow earth we cling to, you & I.

& the Sun, it beats the shit out of us in a sort of divine solar retribution, lashes us until we’re all just simmering in our own excretions. & then Aunt Maxine goes out to move the garden hose & starts melting @ her edges.

Only the garden hose is melting too, so the edges of what is Aunt Maxine & the edges of the aforementioned & now legendary garden hose get kind of blended together like a stir fry where even the noodles wind up tasting like onions so it’s no use whatever to pick the damn things out before eating. It’s just too late.

Aunt Maxine returns inside the house as an Aunt Maxine/garden hose hybrid & her feet look like the doormat so we can almost make out //God Bless This Mess\\ across the tops of her toes. & her hands look like the electric bill she was attempting to retrieve from the mail box when the Sun got her, so we’re going to have to pull off her perforated ring finger to send in with the check so the power doesn’t get cut.

& now we have to remind her not to sit on the chaise lounge because she’s watering the entire living room w/ these 12 rotating streams of water that the neighbor kids are screeching & leaping through with glee in their brightly colored bathing suits.

& Uncle Irwin, he’s fed up w/ the shenanigans so he’s loading his shot gun & he’ll take pot shots @ the arrogant & unrepentant Helios up in his tower, because we’re not going to be able to wait it out ‘til October to venture outside for more whiskey & tampons.

Ah... nothing more than May in Texas. Again.

Fetuses! Stillborns! Cast-Offs!

In the old days,
my sisters & I
(& there were many of us) (more than you could count on all your clubbed fingers & all your hammer toes) (tho the # varied some w/ the season & sometimes I believe there to have been a fake an interloper a cuckoo - or maybe 3 - amongst us at any given time)

my sisters & I,
we would wait
& we’d be very quiet
w/ our ears peeled for the clop-clop-clop
& for the call we’d come to know so well.

The man in the black carriage
coming on down the alley.

Shouting,
//Fetuses! Stillborns! Cast-offs!
$5 per! $5 per!\\

In the old days,
$5 was a lot of money, you see
& it would have been maybe a week & a ½
since any of us had ate a full meal
or been able to afford fresh porn
or Windex.

But even a cockroach can live for months just on the glue on the back of a postage stamp.

So we’d eat our glue
& we’d bide our time
& we’d wait for Amnio Baba to return
coming on down the alley.
In the old days.

//Fetuses! Stillborns! Cast-offs!\\
//Fetuses! Stillborns! Cast-offs!\\

In the old days,
my sisters & I
we’d squeal & we’d run,
our hearts all a’pitter patter,
dreaming of what we’d buy w/ that $5
or if it had been an exceptionally
hella strange quarter
maybe $10.

Selling to Amnio Baba
our latest abortions
maybe still twitching
or maybe already drifting
in formaldehyde.

It varied a lot.

Sometimes a sister
would get impatient
would get greedy,
jump the gun,
& try to pawn off an embryo
hardly more than a blastocyst, really.

But Amnio Baba was no fool.
Amnio Baba, he knew.
He’d been at this game for years by then.

& even his horse would turn up its nose at such fare.

& Amnio Baba would take a gander
@ this simple collection of cells
posing as a fetus
& then Amnio Baba would shout:

//What is it that you take me for, you thieving pre-teen fraud?
& how dare you run out here
& try to pass off this…
this zygotic monstrosity
as a fetus!!
Why, I have ½ a mind to skip this house entirely
next go-round!\\

//& then you & all your bloody sisters
can go & try
to sell off your oozing miscarriages
to some hackneyed carnie somewhere
@ maybe ½ the price & twice the bother.
I warn you, girl: I have done it before.\\

Then he’d spit
& give the errant (maybe) sister in question 50 cents for the embryo anyway.

But still…

That night we’d eat well
& go to sleep w/ our bellies full
of potato salad instead of babies
for a change.

In the old days,
it never occurred to us
while pocketing all those $5 bills
to ever even wonder
let alone to ask
Amnio Baba
where it was he rolled off to
in his black horse-drawn carriage
w/ all those withered abortions.