Art

Jet Set Half-Fuck-Flicks Circa 19-6 – Adam Johnson

dating tips from the barfly in williamsburg

so i’ll tell you all about my friend he was all giggly for this one cat with a most delicate carbon footprint, you see couldn’t get him off his mind he started to hustle for sand dollars makes sense etc. that’s not writing that’s typing, the old jealousy game, he had a friend who he ran with who was pre-med at one point but now he’s buried in the florida keys…

well anyway the cat with the carbon footprint had quite the estate out on long island and always tipped in hundreds you see, he had a carbon offset paid for with money he made on rock the vote etc. but more on that later etc.

my friend had a scare, a run in, but the new jon was just joking with a fake gun and handed out blow and dollars like they grew on trees and they had a nice back rub and such on top of some art supplies etc.

better than the last one. all he ever did was sit around and catch up on texts while surrounded by boxes of books enough to drive you mad and fishing line tangled it’s not the holidays so death in orgasm, dig.

but sometimes he comes around these parts, he has a patron in central park west you see, most confidential from a big bank who broke the da vinci code for who wore it best he had a system etc. so anyway they have their gin martinis and look out at the city for a spell then he’s off back to brooklyn to make the scene after getting his daddy all tied up in knots.

entre nous pet ya gotta have a little floozie next to your home base like me not a serious flame but maybe just a dancing bear with a champagne habit and maybe he likes museums and us weekly like mine etc.

breaking up is hard to do that’s why i recommend a text only short and sweet but something with style dig you gotta execute it like it’s your own and even if your daddy gets hot about it you gotta be through if you’re through and it’s not cologne after a while, it’s just bug spray and you move on ya gotta etc. sure i’ll have another though i’m a sensitive cat the men’s room is a single, 50 me on venmo and i’ll meet you in there in ten gotta smoke first you’re pretty let’s fall in love let’s hit my place i’ll make tequilas with apple juice what’s the matter oh you have a flip phone, well i’m done for the night i don’t really need the 50 anyway, here’s to unrequited love now back to my grindr and old stephin merritt tracks in crown heights kidding about the last part don’t be so serious pet hell awaits etc.

 

the summer of sam VHS codpiece

 

my first ryan phillippe VHS codpiece.  bought new from an ad on craigslist. a smooth meet-up in a walmart parking lot in some traditional ‘scape, see.

clearly a homemade piece, as the VHS film roll that formed the waistband was all inferior and the fucking like. beneath the microscope i could clearly make out scenes from the summer of sam. no doubt a little prank by the maker of said codpiece.

but it’s okay and all. not like i need an original ryan made up in the VHS style, &c. (though i no doubt will find one some day some where). so back to my little apologue, &c.

i got home and went back to craigslist. the lost and found section. and sure enough someone’s posted about their missing summer of sam VHS movie stolen through a basement window. a little rambler night job. and poof, i clicks two tings three.  ting ting ree – glass taps, gunshots.

you see, i put two and two: the missing SOS film, the codpiece supra that i bought, without a verified claim and such. but do you think i sang a song? hell no. i’m strutting city-wide in my fake ass ryan phillippe VHS codpiece. ain’t no microscopes nearest dearest. and that’s that, &c.

or so i thought, viz. i assumed, &c.

you see about two weeks distant the purchase i gets to reckoning of a certain characterological development.  some kind of flim flam urge to murder, like the kind that X wrote about in his great book Y.  i was typing “papa johns near me” into my iphone 3 when i hears a gunshot in my brainpan – something futuristic, inexplicable.  so i’ll try to explicate the non-ex, dig me?

it was as though the still frames from the summer of sam codpiece were releasing a kind of gas that sounded like a sight unseen, something phantasmal, like legs underwater bent contrariwise that conspire to kill.

you see the sam codpiece was convincing me to a murder – there, plainly stated in the king’s.  it crept up on me of an evening when i was out strutting in my glazed pumps and the knock-off cod (still representing it as an original ryan too all and sundry of course).  and the worst of it was a kind of beckoning for a stranger murder in the style of sam, 44 and all.

well i didn’t want to end up in the clink, nor on the wrong side of the law in any respect, and most certainly did not want to stripped of my most glorious reputation among the lanes.  but by the same token, i didn’t want to give up za new purchase – don’t linger on that za.  i couldn’t part with the codpiece, something spiritual and such, plus considerations for my own purse.

i decided to meet with a lawyer, the one i found on a bench.  someone had sharpied a swastika on his forehead, but i didn’t hold it against him, see.  a lawyer can’t be at every bench at once even if they be cap’ble of shaking a mean calf.

his name was mr. kaye swiss, and we met at his office in the mall of america.  strange lawyer no doubt – he was exquisitely dressed in clothes still holding tags and lavishly groomed in the style of The Buckle, which store was next to his little mall office.  in the course of our little half-hour he devoured no fewer than 20 jolly ranchers, which he placed in his mouth with hands revealing gunpowder stippling and his whole office redolent of 1996, so i knew he was a legit counselor with a most up-and-up racket practice.  he told me that for five grand he could advise me not to kill anyone.  i paid the five and he gave the advice.  he said he liked spaces with an open concept and HGTV. then he laughed like the devil himself.

but the cod was too strong, and mr. swiss could not be with me at all times (though he did offer such for an hourly rate).  back in my little borough i was growing most trigger ready and such, i was not dissimilar in a certain quality to the little blackguard berkowitz.

i had to act.  it was me or the codpiece.  i grabbed a bowie knife and went for the film roll around my waste – be gone ye treacherous knock-off cod! i declared, but mostly subtly so as not to arouse suspicion in my villainous neighbor tenants.  they’d seen me all wrapped up in film enough, &c.

but damn me if the film wouldn’t split – so i decided to try and hang myself from it in order to break it.  but that didn’t work and i almost killed myself (something that last year would have been most enervating anent my soul and such when the non-schism of pain and suffering was running rampant all whoops and jingles).

so in the end i decided on an old story.  the cod had won and i’d kill the lawyer. that’s it.  it’s a classic case of one-dimensional non-chess.  so obviously i was still donning the SOS codpiece and i made myself all dark and spectral through black reebok gear all nondescript and such and made my way to the mall.  i saw the lawyer (kaye as you know him) get into his car in the ramp on the hawaiian level and i cut the lights and followed like a nice little bat with craven designs and an ace-of-bass toyota rattling, well so i followed him to his little stead, dig.

parked down the block a ways.  spent some time in his backyard watching him watch cruel intentions through the window.  the irony of this moment nearly causing me to faint, as this all started with my living-wish to get my hands on yeah you know it.  then the house goes black and i am about to embark upon my burglarious campaign when wouldn’t you know it but i see the fucking lawyer on his back deck with a blow dart gun and ping ting, there’s a dart in me and the lights went out in the grass.

plied with sizz water, i awake in a crematorium of sorts, the kind kept by vampire lawyers who keep scandal sheets and suck on ranchers. kaye swiss gave me a whole spiel about his special brethren of the craft, the k swiss kids, his buick riviera schemes, the LOL girls and their lite brite hell scenes, it’s all been told before.  and so he asks me for some final words.  i ask him to just cut off the damn tape and free me from this goddamned film strip.  he pulls out a most special incisors – a hedge trimmer with a dome piece bust that resembles freddie prinze jr. and i know the jig is up.  the tape is cut, and the dagger goes in right at the moment that kaye whispers to me “death in orgasm, dig?”

 

Prometheus Larson

i gin three
then wagon nights, clean as a whistle sharp
seven days on, tho ain’t no Sunday thinker
i ain’t the friendliest clerk of the courts
but also ain’t the worsted see
john ramsey down in mississippi
where i’s about to lay, soft and the like

but for now swacked
don’t get no ideas in your sugar head
though loaves await the summer sunshine
sweet as honey, tom says
in his wonderbread accent, touch of the midwest
though he does suck up to
and he does have his airs
he ain’t all bad though
he is a coffee-and-cake type

all the jawbones quickie to make noise
puffed up out all proper dimensions and the like
from nothing, from hunger
web vibrations from bigshots and
those small friars in juniper juice
all saddling the donkey all uncommon like
racked sleuth cocksuckers and falsies
calling for helio-suicides and such
cept some of em sincere, destitute, longing, lovely

hang on residue, pushed, pasted
a few more long days, long nights, morning beats
gif undergrads on their assembly-line
rankled with fever like Foley Square agents
typing, mincing, frolicking, sputtering tweet cripples,
crumpled over, hunched, dying
sending foes and selves to
marble orchards, virtual-like

retro looking it like a shooting gallery
infused with a killer-diller dropped in middle
kicking up a fuss…
saturday nights, baked beans, and some lunch counter uses
dust settles, flicker screens
murdering thumb sickness
long hours dreary and such
and end all, all-in-all palaver, beat red,
white, black, grays, and ape shit crazies

larson awakes
he ain’t been awake in forever, like Rip
catches breath, farts, creeps
screens in, lays low
sees an awful cyber mess
what did i miss says larson

 

 

 

apres nous, le deluge

(to my wife)

 

you hate me because i’m six-one even

though i identify as insane and i have a

range rover from 1996 that i roll in with

Kaye Swiss, you see he is a monster in

the courtroom but a most sympathetic

aesthete and boulevardier, when we 

roll two deep through the drive-thru he

pretends like he doesn’t want any

sauces with his nuggets, detached, but i know he’s 

a fucking lunatic for honey mustard

cause yeah he’s like my one true love but

i’d never tell him that cause he’d call me 

queer and burry me shallow 

someplace quiet you see so it’s best

we stay on the platonic you see all 

superficial and the like with our death row 

records and werner herzog love fests

 

 

Introducing Kaye Swiss, Esq.

 

there is a certain touch-free men’s room hand dryer (a mouthful, that)

but there is such a hand dryer you see

on the ground floor of the mall of america

that

when whispered to in a voice most like 1996

will spring to life…

and out comes Kaye Swiss, Esq., at your service

like an animatronic at first but he sheds

his carapace and the real soft skin is revealed, dig

he is the only lawyer with an office in the mega mall you see

he is most delicate at the first meeting

but he files suits after midnight with hammer

and tongs from his lair by The Buckle etc.

he is on permanent retainer by the k swiss boys

and their femme fatale counterparts

oh yeah you said it

the bubblicious girls with their lol spells

and their Lite Brite hell scenes

he takes payments in cash or by payment in

marlboro ultralights by the carton or the pack

depending on the number of hours billed etc. and he

will work for free for anyone who drops the name Q

so anyway Kaye is busy enough to leave

himself drink at the end of the day and he is mostly

on the plaintiffs side etc. he was voted one of the 

top l00 lawyers in Nickelodeon Universe most

specialized process and such with an interesting face

on account of a little scar from the time he fell

through glass etc. and he has a little twitch in his eyes

when he hits a fourth glass of wine etc.

well anyway like i was saying in his office

he keeps a copy of the devil’s dictionary, hair gel,

old powerballs, a dish of green apple jolly ranchers,

a pinup of polly shore, a jumanji boardgame, and a little crack pipe

that he has dubbed “excalibur” so he is in on

the mall scene, dig

his breath smells like gunpowder, for which he

takes a women’s multi vite, cause he says

it does the trick etc.

but he’s a sad case he lives by the bierce code that

says simply that pleasure is the least hateful form

of dejection you see, and he views the whole earth

through blue glasses and shin plaster, so he’s a

melancholy JD suffering from ennui most indubitably on

his escalator rides in the mall while clutching at his

little orange julius and brandy mix and waiting for the

phone to ring with business as the earth continues

to turn etc. he’s a special brethren from a tier four school, dig

one time before the horrors of the law profession back

when he was young and svelte he thought he discovered a

new plant genus all elegant and the like but he

was wrong etc. so he got a job blowing glass etc. but that

didn’t work out either so he ended up a fatalist or

that’s what he called it etc. and went into the law etc.

and that’s not the least of it, see

because in his office non-hours he can be

found with a 50-percent share

of a little funeral home racket

he sleeps in a most expensive pall

between his mall office brandy hours

his most lucrative case:

a slip-and-fall by some rich white wigger in airwalks

with a pac sun bag

who tumbled down an escalator

a spilled orange julius near the top, see

the spilled julius smelled also of brandy

but no one saw Kaye dump the drink,

even though it happ’n’d in front of 100 k swiss kids

with frosted tips

so Kaye made off with around a hundo, see

a pretrial settlement that he celebrated

with a seafood sub and a bordeaux from

god knows when

 

 

julian barnes

 

i read some if his stuff

it was good

it was english

he won a man booker prize

for a bad novel

but he wrote great novels too

flaubert’s parrot for example

one of his books was about

his walking around in graveyards

thinking about death

writing about it

nothing to be frightened of

he said

he said you have to write

like your parents are dead

so here i am

thinking about writing

but not writing…

drinking my own kool aid…

scratching mons pubis…

a woman walks by

pale

skin

infinitely pale…

the sound of pumps in an alley…

japanese letter magnets on a refrigerator…

a chicken strip basket

from an old DQ…

hockey warehouses…

tube socks/tanned male legs…

the state fair boys

with their ejaculation circuits…

sears magazines…

placing bets…

ripping off chromies…

and hood ornaments…

rehabbed junkies making it

behind the BK…

scoring…

a two-for-one pack of kool

cigarettes stolen from a gas station

somewhere…

a roll of carpet half submerged

in [a] urban lake…

crumpled scratch-offs

in the pockets of crumpled suits…

poser freaks with white money…

middle state meth avatars…

locked in trailers…

others locked in skyways…

all through winter…

then summer…

dead carp…

used textbooks…

bicycle addicts…

nalgene bears with tats and antics…

blockbuster fiends…

hot nights…

a violent freshman…

long hot days in the house

of a single mom…

a split level beneath a water tower…

ashtrays littered with ends…

dust everywhere…

a garage brawl in the night…

someone knocks out the single mom…

the yellow pigment that

tarries on a bruise…

the neighbor girl from a century ago…

the neighbor girl from hell…

her lunatic brother talking about

a murder that went cold…

schwag weed in a sandwich bag…

someone back from juvie…

the crane game in a perkins

lobby circa ’96…

floods of indulgences…

i think i’m psychotic…

i think i am…

i can’t make money…

i can’t be healthy…

i think books ruined my life…

i think my friends

are trying to kill me…

if i die i die…

it’s beautiful…

blah blah blah blah blah