You're Going to Die, vol. 4

You’re Going to Die

YOU’RE GOING TO DIE

YOU’RE GOING TO DIE

4 Organized by Ned Buskirk Assembled by Raquel Kalil

Collected Literature San Francisco 2012-2013

CONTENTS

What’s New Pussycat? ...Mari Naomi...3 ghost stories after hp mendoza ...Sam Sax...8 Little Sister ...Dunce Apprentice...10 Your Lonely Only Child ...James Zealous...12 Singing ...Kaylo Griot...16 I Missed The Train Today ...Jason Whitacre...18 Bears and Menstruation II ...Donald Budge...20 Pete’s Trip to the Emergency Room after eating a Strong Pot Brownie ...Donald Budge...21 Latency ...Ben Tyler Elliot...22 we can die alone together ...Dan Jacobson...27 skin-to-skin ...Rusty Rebar...33

What’s New, Pussycat?

Mari Naomi

I first met Herbert at the movie theater where I worked when I was seventeen. He was friends with my coworker, Paul, and he’d come in and we’d all shoot the shit for hours. We’d watch the Simpsons on the little TV in the office, smoke endless cigarettes, and snack on disgusting, stale, bottomless popcorn, debating the meaning of Jane’s Addiction lyrics and whether or not spirituality was a pile of horseshit. Paul was the spiritual one, all about Karma and reincarnation. He showed us illustrations from a ratty old book, of the sun’s energy entering a man through his penis, and I laughed like a teenage boy.

“There’s nothing waiting for us after we die,” I said. “Just blackness and void.”

“Well, as long as we have a pretty view while we’re still here,” said Herb, staring pointedly at me. I laughed and looked away uncomfortably. I thought he was kind of a dork.

A few years later, in the mid-nineties, I rode a small pink scooter and I worked at a bank around the corner from the old movie theater. Herbert had a goatee now and rode around on a BMW motorcycle, clad in black leather, head-to-toe. Despite the accoutrements, he still came off as kind of a dork. He had developed this annoying habit of greeting me saying, “What’s new, Pussycat?” I didn’t know how to respond to such a sexist salutation, so I diffused my discomfort the only way I could think: I sang back to him Tom Jones-style: “Whoa-whoa-whoa.” This kind of became our thing.

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One day, I walked into the print shop where he worked.

“What’s new, Pussycat?” said Herb.

“Whoa-whoa-whoa,” I said. This was getting old.

I had a freshly-typed manuscript in my hand, and grand aspirations—I’d written a novel, and I was determined to find an agent, become a best-selling writer, and leave my stupid job at the bank behind.

“When you make it big, don’t forget us little people okay?” Herb said.

When I came in later to pick up my copies, he winked and told me they were on the house.

Eventually, at a tiki party in Herb’s parents’ basement, I drunkenly told him how I felt. “You know, you’ve got to stop with the pussycat thing. It’s degrading!” I said. His face darkened with hurt. He apologized and said, “I get nervous talking to girls sometimes.”

I felt like a dick. He wasn’t such a bad guy, he was just struggling like everybody else.

Herb got weird as the night progressed, saying stuff like, “You’ve got a path—you’ve got a future! I don’t have a future.”

“You’re what, twenty-five?” I said. “You’ve got nothing BUT future ahead of you.”

“Things will be just fine,” I said. “You’ll see.”

Maybe a month later, I ran into my old coworker, Paul, in a crowded, smoky bar on Haight Street. He was sitting with some guys in a little booth at the back of the room. Empty shot glasses littered their table and made it sparkle, and a heavy silence hung over them, a black hole of sound in an otherwise cacophonous scene. They all seemed to be growing goatees.

“What’s with the face fuzz?” I asked.

“It’s a tribute to Herb,” said Paul. “Herbert’s dead.”

Paul told me that Herb had been planning elaborate suicides for years, but every time he’d try to go through with it, one of his friends would track him down and drag him back home. Paul said one time, he rode all the way to Montana, to Custer’s Last Stand, with no helmet on to stop him. Herbert’s friends had always managed to save him. Well, until now. This time, he managed to put on his best suit. He wrote some letters. He paid for his cremation in advance. How thoughtful, right? He planned on jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge, but it had been raining for days, and it must have been too windy. So instead, he just walked into the bay.

I’ve heard that drowning is one of the better ways to die. Your body goes into shock, and after the initial pain and panic, it mellows out. It’s like you’re back in the womb, a nice full circle.

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I didn’t realize that would be the last time I’d run into Paul. Had I known, I wouldn’t have excused myself from the conversation so quickly. I would’ve asked him more follow-up questions like: What happened at Custer’s Last Stand? Did Herbert come home willingly, or did you have to drag him away? How would you even do that with a guy on a motorcycle? Why didn’t you get him help?

Why didn’t I try to get him help when he told me he had no future? Perhaps I should’ve seen it coming, but at twenty-one, I was too green to know the difference between a cry for help and a dark, confusing joke with no punch line.

I think of Herbert, out in the freezing cold bay, water up to his knees. I wonder which direction he was facing—San Francisco or Marin—before he submerged and crawled back in the womb. I like to think he was facing the city, that the last thing he saw was a pretty view.

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ghost stories

after hp mendoza

Sam Sax

this house, i know. i know this house. strip the bedposts of their varnish strip the floors of it’s carpet strip the walls of it’s paint. i’d know it still. watch the furniture’s wood knees bend and scamper down the front steps into the open mouths of moving vans. hear the silverware rage in it’s drawer. the shutters clacking their teeth outside the boarded shut window. still, i know it. families pour through this place as though it were a storm drain. they barely scrape their nails down the metal. they sleep, they work, they cry out to god in my bedroom, on my steps, inside my shower. i remember being a stain on the kitchen floor. i remember being wet and mopped by shadows. i remember being so careful picking the upholstery then watching my blood fan out across the fabrics. i’ve become this linoleum, the eggs shivering in their caskets, the breathing floors, the hungry cabinets.

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there’ve been seven major extinction events in this planet’s history, what’s a hundred years of sorrow and rattling windows? what’s a soul but a collection of rage unspooling? what’s a ghost but a love story burned into a building’s spine? this is the reason i keep dragging myself up and down these stairs. why i scare the dog. why i swallow all the lights. imagine my hands full of blood, adorned in rings. imagine a throat made of meat that vibrates when it speaks. i am a ghost i am a ghost i am a ghost

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Little Sister Dunce Apprentince

[some skeletons stay n the closet some things we take from the cradle to the grave] and little sister, you will be young forever. little sister, when you had finished, how did your creation look?

Did it swing and sway like an empty pendulum? telling you, “it is time.�? did you think about your father and how his hands fit into all the wrong places. did you blame yourself? did you know that your sister forgave him for the same sins? but she does not forgive herself for letting it happen to you...

She dressed you.

A mournful mortician, no make up, no dresses, or silver rings of sunlight, she buried you in your street clothes. because she would rather you be comfortable, than be some illusion of post-mortem beauty. she believed that’s half of what killed you in the first place... be glad you have such a strong sister strong enough to hold back your mothers right arm, when she tried to go with you, throw her body in the grave when they lowered you, into that pit, and on her left, was the man responsible for your death.

They said you would not want this to be sorrowful. you always wanted everyone to simply be happy. so, that night we had a celebration of our life.

In the mist of our drying tears, there were many stories of you. and one of them was whispered to me, sitting on a bedside.

I was told there was a little girl, who lived in a big house, with a big family, with one big secret... but all this little girl wanted was some time with her big sister... so she built a big pendulum, placed it in her closet, with her skeletons. her pendulum cradling her, swaying her to sleep until she became weightless. her body, another skeleton, in the closet

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Your Lonely Only Child James Zealous

The brain’s been acting like an only child a long time For a long time, brain’s been making imaginary friends Alone In its room A very cluttered room what is consciousness but its content - right?- a bunch of voices in a room A very cluttered room It isn’t actually alone Brain has an older brother Older Old The oldest living non-thing in existence It is ... All That Is ...

And brian wants to be its older brother - not be like - BE

So brain arrogantly imitates while it does not actually listen to older brother This creates conflict The two are in conflict This is not a power struggle, however For older brother Is passive Subtle Present, yet subtle As subtle as it is tenacious Oh, yes - older brother’s always there Looking Not acting Or, its acting is its looking Or sometimes its even speaking 13

And we call this inspiration Or divine illumination Or you tell me what you call this So brain acts as though it is that which is looking - trying to convince - who? That it is, indeed, that which is looking The brain’s actually a bystander A wannabe

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Silently, desperately, lovingly, and no-so-silently Mouthing the words of the great performer, that is, older brother Older brother performing the divine dance that is self awareness That is your awareness That is ... the Real You ...

And now, having said all this Having said, too much, really Please excuse me I must go now I must clean my room

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Singing Kaylo Griot

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satellites shut down postal service discontinued public transportation halted machine quiet as a hum would you be with the one who knows you love them it isn’t true that the day of the apocalypse or armageddon or the rapture or whatever will kill us tomorrow is coming there or not ready or can’t say can always hear the never-ending echoes asking yourself, did you keep asking, you ask yourself did you keep the blues like black bears snatch meal from rivers faster than fishermen spear weapon/ idol/ instrument/ tool did you keep the blues in fine tune may be crazy, not myself but blood bleeds through like light we’re gonna die like all things do that should think death is coming that’s all, should think that’s all that’s coming/ there’s more it’s not as complicated as simply webs of matrices awaiting

chisel sharp mind to crack open the digits have the light pour confounded as is frozen in that bottle shattered still not melted still not let, silent train whistle scheduled echoes and you keep asking when it will end/ well, the blues keep building like a pyramid could crumble or crash inaudibly just so low, just wait the sound will the sound will come higher you will know then/ be ready for beyond beyond the supreme sound is coming confounding as cold shards picked from palms always needed to say/ to pull/ to let the light through

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I Missed The Train Today Jason Whitacre

I missed the train today.

I missed the train to Tripoli in tattered clothes With a girl crafted of curtains and driven on rails with salt water nails by the soft glow of a night sky conductor roaring ahead towards a shift switch sunrise.

I’ve missed trains before.

Missed the melting of hot rails congealing with the coast line creating a place where the sun vaporizes plant life with holy fire.

I’ve always hated the heat in California.

It sits inside your skin for days spreading patience across vast valleys.

Such strenuous circumstance stresses a need for cold solitary places far away far away from the sun.

We can dance on exoplanets for days in the chilled exotic rain But we must exit alone, we can not by train.

We must earn our ticket to bliss.

Fight until we bleed with our hearts not our fists

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and dive head first into the dimming horizon.

We’ll arrive on rails made from starlight, pretend the darkness is not the crippling night, and gain our pass to Paradise through the Port of Parasites where we feed ravenously on paltry discontent, pushing forward to a quiet death so we may awaken, illuminated to the morning light.

There is no safe passage over the sea.

No steel ship to ferry our dreams to the far away shores of the deadly serene.

Our path to redemption has been held by haggard hands hanging loosely from train engines taught to destroy all the lies ahead.

Barreling through walls brick after iron filled brick, inching across each massive land, racing through each patch of barren space.

So space is where we’re wandering, but not what we’re asking for.

To the brim we have filled each pore, becoming burdensome stones, sinking swiftly through layers of subway systems, hurling ourselves as deep as we can until we reach the bottom and meet each other there.

But I haven’t arrived there just yet.

You See, I Missed The Train Today.

As I Am Sure I Will Again.

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Bears and Menstruation II Donald Budge

I heard that bears are attracted to the scent of blood.

So one day, A pack of grizzlies comes across a group of women camping Whose periods have synced up.

The bears eat everyone there.

Except for one, Who survives, And forever thinks she wasn’t pretty enough to be eaten.

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Pete’s Trip to the Emergency Room after Eating a Strong Pot Brownie Donald Budge

In the taxi I hold your trembling hand.

You tell me you died twice And saw God. When I ask you what god looks like.

You say, “Beethoven was right.”

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Latency Ben Tyler Elliot

How long is it, do you think, before an absence seems a death?

And what about the other way around?

I don’t know my extended family, but when I was little, the closest thing I had to an uncle was a man who at sixteen was imprisoned, by seventeen was running that prison, and at around eighteen was unleashed upon the world to become addicted to most everything a person can find a way to get addicted to. Heroin. Cocaine. Alcohol. Cigarettes. Coffee. Gambling.

Prostitutes. The list, it does go on.

This is a man who himself grew up to ride a Harley and wear a cut for the Hessians. And if you’re not familiar, roundabout the time of his involvement, the Hessians were probably the only biker gang in Southern California that the Hell’s Angels steered clear of. And he wasn’t a mechanic for them, no. He collected debt. He collected it in dollars, and he collected it in other ways.

He met my father when he was up here for a stretch, when he rode up to the factory my dad was running, knocked on his office door and said Whoever’s running your security here—I’m better.

And my dad took one look at him and said Yeah, I bet you’re right. Job’s yours on two conditions: You’re here on time and you’re here sober. There are no warnings, there are no second chances—that said, I don’t give a shit what you do off the clock.

Welcome aboard.

He said Thank you.

And let me tell you, that factory ran like a machine.

They became fast friends, my dad and him, and the three of us would go fishing, and when we went fishing they’d talk politics, and classics, and philosophy and life because this was the thing about him—that despite the six-six, two-sixty frame carved up by bad tattoos and boiled leather, he wore beneath that leather a skin of pride, of honor, of joy in the juxtaposition between the way he was perceived and what he really was, which was brilliant.

Which was kind. Which was fair. I mean, this is a man who’d break you if you needed breaking, yes, but if you came at him correct? If you gave him the benefit of the doubt and listened to him speak? Dude’s a teddy bear and there’s nothing he wouldn’t do for you.

That said, he did have his problems off the clock.

My father and I, we developed something of a tradition wherein every time we’d have to go bail him out of jail, the three of us would go out for pancakes after. Sorta became something to look forward to.

And then there was the day that my father and I were knocking and knocking and knocking on his apartment door, so hard and so long until my father put his elbow through a window and lifted me in to undo the latch, and inside we found him on the couch, and my dad said It’s okay, Ben, it’s okay. Just jump up and down on his chest and try to wake him up while Daddy calls the doctors. He took some bad medicine and he’s very sleepy.

And I still remember when the call came. When he called my dad and said Dan, listen man, the brass called me back down so I’m leaving. Goodbye.

That was 1992.

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In 1992 my father started filling a hole. The nebulous nature of his friend’s absence—of the never-knowing and the not-hearing, it formed in him an abscess, a void that he tried to cover and fill and cover and fill, longer and longer, more and more without ever knowing he was doing so. Not directly. Not until 2009, anyway.

2009, when he ran into one of his guys from the factory and he asked after his friend: Hey how’s he been, what’s he been up to?

And Factory says to him, Oh. I guess you never heard. Yeah, so, some years back they found him in an alley. They made him kneel before they did it, though, and they left him in his colors and they left him with his keys, so. I guess you could say they gave it to him clean.

And then I go back, right? I go back over the too-many years of my father’s fantasizing and remembering and laughing—.

And then I sit with the fact that my father hasn’t spoken his name since 2009.

I sit and I think about that.

I think about that often.

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I think, you know. You know, they say the sun—.

They say that if the sun just ceased to exist, just was here and then was gone, just evanesced from this plane in a blink, that all of the planets would carry on orbiting, being, conversing with the sun until the light died upon them.

How Mercury would go blind in exactly one hundred ninetythree seconds, and on that mark its four-and-a-half billion-year gyre would become a vector, and how exactly two minutes fortyeight after Mercury, Venus would find itself on its own lonely and uncharted trajectory, forever launched and linear away from that moment that the darkness came. How on Earth the light would last for eight minutes nineteen seconds from when death began its throttle across that empty sea.

Eight minutes, nineteen.

For four hundred ninety-nine seconds, the sun would keep shining upon us and we would have no way of knowing that it was already over—that the first two of the family were already leaving and we would soon be falling to line and falling away, and in the minutes and hours to follow, every other body would exhale in ever-distal turn to slouch off alone into the black, each being fated then to float, forever apart, in the dark.

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we can die alone together Dan Jacobson

we can die alone together you and i locked in an embrace that would make angels cry in anguished envy so heartbroken they remembered who they were eons ago when they walked upon this mortal coil turning their heads and backs to us as the world comes crashing to a screeching halt the sulfur and smoke made them simmer

like bulls on the charge the cerulean blue of the oceans ablaze now a towering wave of rusty nails ebbing back and surging forward our senses obsessed with each other lips pressed and arms held tight our skin blistering moment by moment our flesh combining and fusing together the love, raw emotion so intangibly tangible cutting to the quick and burrowing

down to the marrow our last thoughts of how beautiful our skulls look underneath our faces as the maelstrom takes us from the world takes the world from us our silhouettes scorched in the earth forever like a memory treasured more than gold and god’s good graces 27

yet time goes on and on our amorous ideals start yielding to annoyances and idiosyncrasies a runaway train of growing regret like grey hairs multiply after finding the first one bad habits breeding like rabbits that never stop fucking you start choking on my forlorn sighs i keep drowning in your crocodile tears we can sense that we’re dying a death that’s anything but beautiful it’s prolonged and suffering

a cancer ignored. your mind made up but smile anyway hold hands and pretend it’s all fine smiling with no teeth showing to keep the screaming from ruining this that the other and I ignore that sinking feeling the voices pleading in my head to rip the blinders off and know what we both know

that it’s all over now

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no fairy tale stories of how we met to regale our children already named but doomed to never see the light of day just smile and nod like a dog silently loving and loyal wagging its tail at its owner as it’s taken

to the vet to be put to sleep then when the denial is damaged dented and done and dying together becomes as morbid as it sounded to strangers those early fantasies pervert to torture leaving me pacing the floors at the witching hours sick and desperate with the image of you fulfilling our dreams with drink and drunks wallowing like pigs in the muck rolling around with not a damn care who or where your lips north or south touch until there is nothing left to do but protect what waning strength and sanity remains and picture you

(you yes there you are)

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bathed in the sunlight of the morning after pinned underneath a stench so foul it curdles your stomach lining and your gagging and heaving struggling to breathe as clarity slowly arrives like the fog burned away by daybreak the horror in your eyes as a stinking toothless Shane MacGowan covered with stale vomit and the leftover cologne of wet dogs and overflowing ashtrays a pot pourri of whiskey and bile returns your red eyed gaze with a morning lullaby AHGWANTHENLUV GIZZAKISSWHEREITCOUNTSLUVTHEN GOMAKEYURSELFUSEFULANDFRYUPMEEGGSB’FORAHPUT MEFISTTHROUGHYASKULLTHENLASS

before leaning over you with the romantic gaze of a rapist

tongue plunging into the deepest trenches of your throat swatting away the horseflies

intent on nestling in the warm wet

putrescence of his mouth until his affections perfectly perfectly compliment yours as a frothy purge of thick sickness floods your mouth like the ninth ward when tthe levees broke BLAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRAARRRRRGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

yet even that soused delinquent writes poetry and he’s published and famous the fucker so much for passive revenge so much for emotional investment so let those angels in our delusional dreams light our fantasies on fire they can bow their heads and grace us with their hellbound hallelujahs and turn out the light on our tomorrows and if i die alone well at least that trumps a lifetime with you my sweetheart my soulmate mirage

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skin-to-skin Rusty Rebar

even before birth we know touch -- our earliest home a darkened womb tasting of love plus -- as infants everyone wants to hold us our first awareness of self close & pleasurable skin-to-skin then -- poof we get big & many find as children intimacy dries up blows away until adolescence at which point -- starved to enjoy another body have another enjoy ours we go nuts & soon grow out of that too often enough & not until we turn old & saggy our brief gift obvious do we sigh & stumble happy to settle on what we’re missing

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