War Is Language : 101 Short Works (9781937316044) Read online

  60 — Pussy/Deterrent Threat

  Dear Fake Advice Columnist,

  I’m a guy and I’m sort of a pussy. Sometimes I sit around with all my friends and talk about what a bunch of pussies we are. Check this shit out. A girlfriend of one of my buddies was on a train. Right in front of her this old man was severely beaten and mugged. It was crazy. She had to sit there and witness it. Just watch someone get brutalized and robbed. She was really shaken. We tried to make her feel better, help her relax. Just kept talking about how much we would have showed that guy a thing or two. But you know what? Honestly? I’m glad I wasn't there. I probably would have had to do something.

  Dear Pussy/Deterrent Threat,

  It might not have happened if you were there.

  49 — Security/Insecurity

  I had a dominant dependence on several men in a row. What? No. That can’t be right. (Nobody looks good in a thong.) Wait, watch, wild, wonder, world over, skill, better, improve, perform, control, get, do. This is my insecurity: that it is me, that it is not. For forty-two minutes and twenty-eight seconds a man in jeans with his shirt off gets a mechanical lap dance. So hurried; then a woman lies down on a sandy path between green aloe bushes. She’s secluded, ready, wanting. But never secure. There’s nothing to tie her to: no mooring, no cleat, no tree, no bike rack, no fence post, no tow bar. What will hold her weight if a storm comes? She is free in the confidence-shifting sands and wears that brick red nothing. Get mesmerized. Go to Milan with a fresh manicure and pedicure. Do it May 30, 2011; October 8, 2011; February 12, 2011; October 7, 2011; September 6, 2011; March 27, 2011; May 24, 2011; July 17, 2011. Indecision grows more powerful in its acquisition, rationalizing any means necessary as a mode of conquering and ascension. No matter what there is a metallic plastic superhero with disproportionate tits French inhaling in a midnight blue solitude. The ember tip of her cigarette lights the contours of her hand, her cheek, her nose, her breast, her shoulders. She’s been working on her deltoids, her biceps, her triceps, her lats. Devastation ensues. (Address victim/victor, predator/prey, dominance/submission, acceptance/rejection, and the rest of interpretive inflexibility here.) The metallic plastic superhero hunches forward exhausted by exertion against defeat.

  Her back curves slightly, shoulders forward. No one would dare ask: What is she thinking? We’ll never know. The bootleg copy of her adventure is spliced. Her thoughts get lost in translation. Remember those animated teach-kid-a-ma-things, Mr. Men and Little Miss? Like Kool-Aid people. Remember? Well, there they are. Three of them. Blown way out of proportion, climbing over buildings like Godzilla. They stalk through their minimalist city finally ending up between a riverfront and the bay. Blue. Red. Yellow. Primary and smiling.

  Let them fill the sky. Is it an objective goal to have to build something permanent when one is so simply impermanent? Creative destruction is our, “This is how it is. It’s natural. It’s okay.” They can say it with emotional appeal or just statistics, whichever you prefer.

  I get it that we have varied ideas about security and freedom, that we all feel our beliefs should have a revelation. Good. Let them fill the sky. This time it’s a flesh-burst sunset sky, not that cloud cover where the animated shoulds conquer everything. I’m talking about a beach with thirty feet of wet hardpack sands that reflect twilight. I get it. A man, muscular as a matter of course, does footwork there with a soccer ball. He is out of the way of crashing surf. But here's how it is: he is barefoot. There’s no reef, not here. Fingerling distant man-made things reach out from the beach, from the shore, into the destructive breakers to say, “Hey. Slow down, why don’t cha?”

  Silhouettes of five naked women pose in the high grasses. Targets and arrows help direct sunlight and perspective. The purple flowers of wild onions never bend even though these five naked silhouettes are captured dancing: hands on cocked hips, spinning hair, carelessly-tossed arms, a tight ass, a high-heeled foot kicked up, boobs bending forward, chest out, back arched, head up, feet crossed at the ankles, and the last woman bent over grabbing her ankles to prove the point, to make sure it is absolutely clear: there is no limit to the resources we’ll put behind our conviction.

  Repeat after me: Every man is a mother's son. There’s a basset hound in the backseat. Every life is precious. A woman rests against her man. She’s spent, wet, pleasured. Watch her trace the contours of her abs with the stem of a red flower. But when it comes down to it, justice can prevail. And did.

  As topics of conversation go WWII was black-and-white. Like porn and highway budgets. You cannot put people in ovens and call that a country. Satin constricts the cleavage that spills out from under a borrowed fedora. That is unacceptable or fine. But Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq? I don't know. There’s a real discussion there.

  Look. Fuck deliberation and diplomacy. I’m not involved in all that. I’m just talking about something to say over dinner with a couple bottles of wine. Maybe you can beat up on the Kurds, you know, just a little. One pole dancer with fishnet sleeves plays chess with another in a tiger-striped string bikini. Maybe you can bully each other with sectarian strife. What's a lost life here and there? Here’s a sudsy pillow fight to distract you.

  Who needs a conservative backlash? Those girls—all of them, the five naked silhouettes, the pole dancer in the fishnet sleeves, the other one in the tiger-striped string bikini—curl up together, satisfied, asleep. I think we play a lot. All of us have amazingly playful lives. (Of COURSE paintball is awesome, hello! And this is the most awesome ruse squad EVER!! Helicopters?! Um, sign me up. We would TOTALLY kick ass. Anytime. I will go, anytime.)

  For blond curls and bending back over fence rails. She doesn’t have to take off her jelly bracelets. Cubs roll around, squabbling in a meadow so they'll be able to grow up and tear each other to shreds for food, mates, and territory. Focus on the screen: let her come toward you, come down from that height, come toward you, let her come toward you, let her come, let her come toward you, smiling, let her come down, let her come toward you, let her come off the lava rocks and jump down into the sand, let her come toward you.

  So the question is, in our indulgence, in our play, for what are we preparing? What skills and powers are we refining? In what areas are we becoming great?... Read More

  Or don’t. There’s a huge agave plant. We are trained and prepared. Crow wings reflect morning sunlight. But for what? What will the actions of our lives be? Let her come toward you in the sunlight of a soccer ball-bouncing beach. Let her smile, jump, plunge, dive, and surface, crushed. Why? I guess for the party by the pool.

  Get pushed in by the thousands. He’s not the only one. None of us is. You’re not. She’s not. I’m not. Everyone values money for the freedom it represents. Release balloons. Make out. Carry your camera—always carry your camera—wag your ass, bungee jump between the sound stages, kneel down with another shaved girl. There are many other values that we project onto the concept of financial independence. (Isn’t that whole idea passé?) No one has to actually say it in a yellow follow spot that crosses the crowd and makes patterns with the red one: beat, beat, beat, lines of light up and down, back and forth, crossing, uncrossing, lighting faces, bodies, clothes, hats, skin, and abandoning all of it as quickly.

  No one cares. It’s normal. It’s fun. It’s what you do.

  But, this Fake Paintball War might just be the most amazing display of freedom…ever!

  That girl with the great hair wears a watercolored ruffle that obscures and accentuates her tits. I can appreciate that because I have a great respect for my friends who prioritize freedom over security.

  The applications of the balance of Freedom and Security are everywhere. There’s a baby in headphones helping the DJ. It is everything from War to cell phone record Big Brother Surveillance stuff to getting your neighbor to stop letting his dog shit in your yard.

  There’s no pit of vipers under the hood. If you know where you are on the spectrum, then you can start to understand where others are on that same
spectrum.

  Maybe you aren't the guy who wears a rainbow thong to commemorate Stonewall. Maybe that guy prioritizes Freedom just a little bit more than you. Or maybe you aren't the person who could detonate a Claymore mine to protect your rights. Maybe that guy prioritizes Security just a little bit more than you. Or vice versa. How should I know?

  Well, thank God for you both, I say. Because if the Claymore guy is blowing up other people so we can sit around and live in fearful closets, that's no kind of fun. And, if the guy in the rainbow thong doesn't have a trigger-happy bodyguard, well, let's face it, somebody's definitely going to fuck his shit up.

  As an individual and as a nation—what does "what we want" look like? Put on the floppy, pink fur hat as we extrapolate this conceptualization to the enactment of our lives in Isla Mamey. There are ways that we want to exert ourselves in the world. One way is to drape a string of beads, loose, over your belly and let it drape-cross your back.

  17 — Carefully Placed Patterned Pavers

  They were the only two people on an officially-dedicated pedestrian bridge—its plaque still new, telling who the mayor was, who the deciders were, ready to age well in the elements, riveted indestructible bronze to the concrete bridge.

  Who were they? Strangers. A girl and a grifter. There were no handcrafted cocktails. She was doing homework outside. An article sat flapping in her lap. The homeless man just stopped wandering nowhere and asked her, “Are you reading?”

  She looked up at the beard and brown arms, the paper bag and smile. Wind spiked bright with September; what encounter is there, really? She offered a response. Not an answer really, though.

  The green shirt walked on toward sultans and saints, toward re-invented elastic driveway gate Toledo girls rinsed sulfate-free. Toward a castoff mid-weight cotton blend twill reversible two-tone jacket.

  Wabash River water oozed beneath their distancing departure. He had been right to ask. Who could read with so many beautiful distractions—the cicadas, flagpoles, shadows, and breeze?

  She noticed how suddenly he was gone, with the water, and the wind, and the road of hum-cars, which had long since streamed on by.

  50 — Smart/Dumb

  Tip back, pop, inhale acetone until fluttering wings are stilled to rigor. Romantic people—men and women—forced to pretend to be dumber get no happy, furry, Benji chrysalis base camp. Only anesthesia.

  If, when walking home, a reflection accosts you, offer it something sweet. Sunglasses. Posture. A little rouge. Because that shimmering reflecting pool will shore you up and follow you home, riding shadows that at least exist under your sole, if nowhere else. They are waiting to grow more, if only conditions get sunny and slant.

  Fumes suppress neither the will nor the inevitability of a transformation. He looks. Look away. Commute polite within the smell of a creosote hoard’s careful descent with perpetual monotony of never-meetings. Hush, girl. Flip-flop. Flip-flop. Betray quiet general blessings. Soap up silent curses of an entire demographic segment of your own neighborhood’s residential population. Stay with them and come down temporary railway construction stairs together. They are a sector of society swarming home from work. There is no each other suffering an internal combustion in one of those hopefully deniable hearts. Do not think: And still my life is a slow revolution on melting kite-type days.

  How? Monies get paid for lemonade frozen slush, small grains of sand falling out of suits; assess this as some good enough. Fine. Don’t fight it, the setting of the mold, a demur, resignation of disposable ego. (The facades and fronts and lies go here.) Reality screams itself undone, “Real it, why?” Be cause. And knowing that, don’t ever ask forgiveness.

  So then turn slightly with the whirled, turn toward another shiny surface and smile. Keep your chin down for the photo. Get more highlights. Give up your mind. It has no cultural currency—certainly not any bearing on the mating game—where bullfighters reign supreme. Power through the takedown. Naps, etcetera, and rain. Days later find the moment past exactly where pink blown-foam ridges came down railway construction stairs—hot flip-flopping, pulling up an unfelt tarry print, this impression of the melt, the material structure, adhesive, and the poor recanted light.

  51 — Subjective/Objective

  An eye found heaven in humidity's weight pressed, foiled, startled even, by an almost forward motion. Dissection? Of what? Sailing tea pots sink halfway down into illustrated oceanic pages with soldiers and animated dump trucks, happy, broad-smiled, big-eyed, and American (Right to work! Right to life!) But you have not replied. Sauna surfers cut through mock waves of a comic book culture bored of asserting: I am not a communist or an intellectual. Books don’t just write themselves. Here is evisceration, and here is black wax. This sheer will arises out of recanting and weakness. No rebuttal? Fine. Look here, though! No, Look! What about these: plastic, permissive, permutation, permeable, perhaps, all pliable, all the acceptable ply would except you. So there must be another objective reason that can liberate us from all this yammering subjectivity. Don’t talk to me about any individual’s perceived illusion. Who would assert some thermodynamic principle about what fluid kinetic model bears meaning? Silly. Arrangement creates meaning. What else would? Someone has to be to blame. Of course there’s an author. So. Shut up. Don’t talk to me about alternatives. Gimme another dissecting tray. Bring enough pins to hold back the skin. The objective point of view has nothing to do with two generations of Martin on the beach with a Mobius strip, a twist in a strip of paper held out in a young man’s hand to a child unsure. Perceive this: the real thing and the impossible concept fused—resolved by being undeniable. Don’t forfeit your witness of a stillicide. Don’t stand up just to unbutton a dress. Don’t give momentary dollars and leashes to red-haired mange beard beggars. Don’t forget birthdays and specificity or graves. Don’t maul or maraud or madden or crowd. Don’t you dare. But damn. Oh, hello, Virginia's Septemberish brambling ocean masted day. How did you manage to camouflage these ships, barques, and liners?

  7 — Commuted Fantasy

  Some woman thought: That man really isn’t anything to look at on his riding mower. Not good-looking. But. Don’t tempt me while I drive past this hillside lawn being mown on a diagonal. I'm liable to grab the edger and pitch in. It’d be downright adulterous.

  52 — Tangible/Intangible

  I have fallen down into my pulse. Twice. Aunt Ginerva never knew. She stood unbuttoning her blouse on the other side of the wall I painted battleship gray. Still I heard her sigh through the panels from the other side of the family. Even though the paint was wet, I leaned my forehead against the wall. Burdened, I sat down, turning, on the low wooden stepladder, felt the wet smear drying, forced myself to rub the paint away. In front of me the bramble filled with motion: sparrows and wind. I stepped forward, pruned my way into all the consumer culture shit of greenery with paint-splattered tennis shoes filling up sandy-soled. This is. It didn’t seem like it. Not enough like the blue moons over Meigs Field where those wide pupils in black-eyed Susans stood shedding their hot-wilt petals near the green goldenrod readying itself between seasoned runways overcome under displaced skylines attuned to how all the self-actualization of objective correlatives fuel futility class strife in the name of upward mobility. What to do? Dunno. Bare skin. Eyes have looked me over but not like yours, love. Please. Don’t. Wait. Dammit, sometimes on Easter Sunday in a little town where skies pressed down against the river-eroding backyard and gave up against ground-up loam, my father wore a burgundy beret and taught me how to drive a stick. Where are you going? Come back. Listen. My father wore that same burgundy beret in a little town that wait-watched the corn and ostentatious soybeans. Even so things of value have shifted back to the intangible. Haven’t they? It is hard to hold anything memorable but your hand, Dead Daddy. Here in some store you never knew about, I’m holding a hexagonal jar of Tupelo honey. If I hold it hard enough the glass might cave in, waxen, or it might shatter, and honey-stick drip-slow to thick shards and dr
op bloody honey down.

  94 — Stalker

  Dear Fake Advice Columnist,

  I live in Chattanooga, Tennessee. I was thinking about coming to see you so I could track you down, look in your windows, and maybe freak you out when you’re on your way to the mailbox or something.

  Dear Stalker,

  That is amazing! I was just thinking that I could really use a semi-nefarious form of validation. I live in Chicago. I’m not sure if you’ll fly or drive. But I figure if you really want to intimidate me with your voyeurism, you’ll have a car for all the surveillance equipment. The drive is beautiful this time of year. It’s almost a straight shot. Just go towards Nashville and then take I-65 North until it almost ends at the toll road (that’s 90.) Drive west towards Chicago. It’ll cost you about 5 dollars but saves a hellish hour of unnerving traffic. Take the Stony Island exit north to Lake Shore Drive. Trace the eastern perimeter of Chicago as far as Belmont. Park your car wherever you end up. Don’t drive further than two blocks in any direction after you exit. Put your hazards on. Set up your tripod. You’ll find plenty of places to mount your 64-bit compatible, remote internet monitoring, weather resistant (IP66), 40-foot night vision, IR cut filter (day/night), remote connect H.264 compression-capable cameras. You’re always welcome!