November 30th, 2009 by Hoopleton

He saw her across the room and immediately forgot what it was that brought him there. In that moment she became the reason. Fate had engineered it. Forced it. And he was powerless against it.

She moved slowly through the crowd. Her eyes scanning the faces of the men sitting about the tables. Cigarette smoke caressing her bare shoulders. The orange light of the candles accentuating the slight curve of her neck.

He didn’t rise out of his seat. He couldn’t. He only watched her. Waiting, perhaps, for the moment that her eyes finally settled upon his.

Not once before had he felt anything like this. So much pain and pleasure. Anxiety. The self confidence that had always carried him drained away. Would she notice him? Would she approve of him?

There was no music anymore. No chatter. No sound at all. Just her moving through the crowd. And him, surrounded by darkness, hoping that she would just look at him.

So much was against him. Age was destroying him. Fear had paralyzed him. He was flawed. Had no great accomplishments. No means. He was a cynic. A drunk, twenty pounds too heavy who rejected everything good that ever came to him. He’d screw this up too if given the chance. But in the brief time before then there would be passion and meaning and truth. She might save him.

He finally stood. Eyes still fixed on her and somehow found himself walking toward her.

What would he say? What could he say?

Nothing mattered. Only this. Or so he told himself. Over and over with each step. Only this. Only this. Only this.

And then as he got to her, close enough to touch her, taste her, she looked up straight into his eyes.

He opened his mouth. Searching for the words. Any words. But then he stopped, frozen, as she put her hand on his arm, her fingers tightening around his bicep. And she smiled. Broadly. Sincerely. Full of joy.

Or so he imagined it. But he didn’t rise out of his seat. He couldn’t. He only watched her. As she made her way through the crowd.

November 27th, 2009 by Hoopleton

November 26th, 2009 by Hoopleton

Every good democracy begins with the genocide of an indigenous people, but the truly successful democracies then prop up the victims as macabre mascots of brotherhood in a celebration of their destruction. This is perhaps why Thanksgiving is the quintessential American holiday, in which Native Indians are depicted for all eternity as prominent guests in what would effectively be their last meal.

It’s a Norman Rockwell painting. The illusion of idealism drowning in layer upon layer of contradiction and repression. The notion of family unity sharing equal breath with consumerism and gluttony at a time of economic despair and unnecessary warfare.

What is it exactly that we’re thankful for? As a nation? As a people?

We living in the United States, despite the corruption and incompetence of our leaders, do prosper (though many of us don’t). We count among the wealthiest populations on Earth (yet many of us starve). Despite the shit we ingest and the chaos that is our healthcare system we enjoy decently long lives (and among the worst quality of life). We are wasteful because we can afford to be (and waste more than anyone else on Earth). We gorge ourselves because we enjoy surplus in most everything we have (though future generations will just have to do without).

Individually most of us are loved (though we barely know what love is). Most of us enjoy some level of security (though homicide and violence are continually on the rise). Most of us are content, if at least some of the time (anti-depressants are easily accessible afterall). We enjoy our freedoms (unless you’re gay, illegal or someone we just don’t like). We enjoy the prospect for opportunity (socialism for the upper class).

But is all that enough? Can one live mostly on consolation? Is it not our right to demand better? Is it not our right to call this holiday what it really is? A sham. An act of self-delusion.

As the issues of climate change and the uncertainty of the American empire’s fidelity come to the boiling point, are we, the beneficiaries of genocide, too sitting down for our last meal? There’s a poetic symmetry in the idea that I love. But of course it is the duty of an artist to put a stick in the eye and smear the walls sour. Here we are, back at the Norman Rockwell painting, I suppose.

November 26th, 2009 by Hoopleton

By William S. Burroughs

For John Dillinger
In hope he is still alive

Thanks for the wild turkey and the Passenger Pigeons, destined to be shit out through wholesome American guts —

thanks for a Continent to despoil and poison —

thanks for Indians to provide a modicum of challenge and danger —

thanks for vast herds of bison to kill and skin, leaving the carcass to rot —

thanks for bounties on wolves and coyotes —

thanks for the AMERICAN DREAM to vulgarize and falsify until the bare lies shine through —

thanks for the KKK, for nigger-killing lawmen feeling their notches, for decent church-going women with their mean, pinched, bitter, evil faces —

thanks for “Kill a Queer for Christ” stickers —

thanks for laboratory AIDS —

thanks for Prohibition and the War Against Drugs —

thanks for a country where nobody is allowed to mind his own business —

thanks for a nation of finks — yes,

thanks for all the memories… all right, let’s see your arms… you always were a headache and you always were a bore —

thanks for the last and greatest betrayal of the last and greatest of human dreams.

November 25th, 2009 by Hoopleton

November 24th, 2009 by Hoopleton

The opening is always the same, but what after that? The evening turns to black stone, God’s hammer chips at the sky, forming stars. And beyond that all I can hear is the old professor in my head telling me to stop where I am. Rain forming at the window glass and cold air rising from off the pavement. It’s always this way, he says.

I want you to listen to me. There’s a way out. Just beyond the streetlamps there’s a field, and beyond that flat open country that goes all the way to the horizon. I know it seems hard. I know it’s demoralizing. I know there are murderers on the way. But I want you to listen to me and go. March. Walk straight away without any hesitation. I want you to go. It’s the only way.

Sure enough as God pounds at the heavens you can make it. And there beyond the farms you too can make a fresh start. You can build new cities. New histories. You can rewrite time itself.

I didn’t tell you this tonight but as I was walking home I saw you years from now. You were bent over the ground, black soil in your hands. There were streaks of grey in your hair. Wrinkles in your face. I nearly broke down at the sight of it. I couldn’t describe what I felt, but it was something bordering joy. There’s a future far from what I’ve always dreamt.

It’s the old professor again, grey hair, grey beard, who tells me that beyond the light pollution there are only nuclear furnaces and chaos. Anarchy weaving its way between spirals. There’s only loneliness in the black. Cold and without sound, he says. This time I’d rather believe in the dreams I’ve had. You with clumps of earth stuck to your fingers. Decades gone by.

I imagine flocks of angels building the superstructure. I imagine flashes of lightening connecting like the neurons of some dying brain. Fires that not even Heaven could escape. The whole hoop of the world covered in red sand and bleached bone. Mercury forming at the window glass and hot air rising from off the pavement.

The old professor says that I’m delusional. He says that in the absence of light only darkness prevails. That darkness is death. And yet I can see your future better than I can see my own. Stars and the full tilt of the galaxy. Order born of chaos.

Right belief, aspiration, speech, meditation, clarity, vision, all these things I see. I am free because I have no desire for anything. Pure in my corruption. Perfect and eternal.

Of course I also see your point. The opening is always the same.

November 23rd, 2009 by Hoopleton

November 22nd, 2009 by Hoopleton

Once there were no buildings here but marshes that rode high into the plains and north from there the forests. Dark and green and teeming with life that had no words for the mechanizations of the human world. No words at all. Though there was language. A soundless rumble that shimmered up through the bedrock and poured like rainwater from out of the tops of trees.

War was unknown then. As was genocide. As were crimes against humanity. People brought those things with them when they put plow to field and believed for the first time in ownership. Tribes became kingdoms. Kingdoms became empires. Empires became nations. And they invented words with which to corrupt the language of the world. Words when used unleashed horrors. Armies of jackhammers tearing right into the flesh of it.

Now there was just rubble and thirty thousand corpses decomposing amid the ruins. What better testament to God? Perhaps flocks of angels dropping down from heaven with their throats cut but certainly nothing better.

They were words that got us here.

This was only partially on his mind as he sat in the back of his jeep, the whole frame unable to keep from gyrating, spitting steal shards as it were. At that moment he was watching a child that stood just off the road. The boy, because it was a boy, waved to him. His hand disfigured to a claw. Three fingers missing. A brown rag upon his head. He was standing on a milk crate or something like it. Piles of rounded charred stone lay piled around him.

As the jeep came closer, bouncing as it did, his eyes became wide as though he’d never seen an American before. Of course he had seen an American before. Jesus Christ more than he ever thought was possible. It was a momentary slip up. His eyes glazed over again as soon as the jeep passed. He kept on waving though. The two remaining fingers on his hand looking as though they were about ready to fall off.

Don’t feel too special, the driver said. That little shit waves to every car that comes down the line.

Very well. Before there was rubble there were buildings here. Old and full of memory. They were words that knocked them down. Rolled them flat and pounded them into thick layers of ash. Thirty thousand corpses buried in the ruins. Only a deafening silence prevails.

November 21st, 2009 by Hoopleton

November 17th, 2009 by Hoopleton

Sarah Palin wrote a memoir. I think it’s best we accept the fact and move on.

A blog is no place to ridicule people. It’s not a place to point out obvious flaws and shortcomings. Sarah Palin may appear to be an idiot. Some may go as far as to assume she’s illiterate. She doesn’t strike one as a “reader,” they may say. How does someone who’s illiterate write an autobiography?

Sarah Palin is not illiterate. Besides she had help. She had a ghostwriter. However the publisher informs us that she was very involved. Of course she’d be involved, it’s a memoir. Duh.

The title of the “autobiography” is Going Rogue. I do not plan to elude to the obvious pornographic double meanings of the phrase. I will not drag this blog into the gutter. I will not sling filth over the internet. In the same vein please do not expect any tangent dealing with the very many hugely popular x-rated films inspired by the former Alaskan governor, nor any mention of Levi Johnston’s (the nineteen-year-old father to Sarah Palin’s grandson Tripp) upcoming Playgirl photo spread. I will not mention any of these things because Sarah Palin is a serious, respectful person deserving of our respect.

Sarah Palin is not a breathing, walking, talking punchline.

Sarah Palin is not some high and mighty, elitist, intellectual, tax and spend, inside the beltway politico. She’s just like us! She’s Jane-sixpack. She’s a hockeymom. She may not know how to find Iraq on a map. She may not who the President of [fill in the blank] is, but she’s good God-fearing people.

We all know Katie Couric is most likely an embittered old shrew, a soulless cog in the vast liberal media conspiracy. We all know that the McCain campaign was out to derail their own nominee from the start. That the Republican Party forced her to wear expensive designer clothes. She didn’t enjoy any of it. She didn’t ask for any of it. It’s not as though she gained personally or politically from it. She would’ve made it on the cover of Newsweek all by herself. Darn right!

Sarah Palin is not a colossal hypocrite. She doesn’t even know the meaning of the word. I refuse to add the word “literally” to the end of the previous sentence. I refuse to comment on her apparent utter lack of experience, intelligence, empathy or forward thinking. She doesn’t buy into any of that Stalinist labeling anyway.

I will not comment on Sarah Palin in this blog. I’m not a hatchet man and this is not the forum for slander, finger pointing, name calling or settling personal scores, that’s what a memoir is for.