White Bear Summer: Departures
Stop acting like this is the end for you
Telling My Dad About Wichita 2020 Bar Talk: It’s where L. Ron Hubbard wrote Dianetics and BTK, Dennis Rader, moonlit as a serial killer. Albert Goldbarth, famous poet, taught at Wichita State, and Allen Ginsburg wrote “Wichita Vortex Sutra” about Michael McClure getting laid in his car parked on the street where Kirstie Alley quarantines. There’s a statue called Keeper of the Plains I’ve never seen. The Shockers football team died in a plane crash in 1970. 2021 Redux: It’s where the Family Dollar got ransacked while I was there. Guy put ketchup, mustard, and batteries in his baggy jeans. Stock’s oft bare. Those items comprise the rarest commodities. The lady cashier had her epiphany as I headed out. I thought she chased me out, but it wasn’t me. “I know what’s in those baggy grey jeans,” she called out, and I was wearing snug black Walmarts from Sheboygan. Guy got in his car silent in his sunglasses as the cashier Snapchat’d his front plate. “Second damned one this fucking week.” It’s where I got in my Volvo and drove, intending to go to CD Tradepost less than two miles from my two-year home. There’s a Subway nextdoor, and I was willing to pay the extra for mozzarella on my toasted meatball. Once around the block, I saw why the pickup truck in front of me drove up Hillside, then came back down the same street in five. “Oh no. Nope.” Cops pointing pistols at a dude on the sidewalk and a lady on the other side by my open window screaming “Tyrese! Get down!” Turned off the loud music out of respect and turned around after the standard five secs of unintentional gawking. What did I expect? Second damned one this fucking week. It’s where, on my commute to Shocker Studios, the record’s three wrecks with traffic-directing bystanders and two oddly-placed vehicles. Who just leaves their SUV in the right turn lane to a marketplace? What’s wrong with the street? What’s wrong with the streets? Nothing’s wrong with the streets. Nothing’s wrong with the air, yet I’ve got students emailing me about passing the fuck out and losing their shit over friends with the sniffs they’re forcing to submit to the test. “False alarm.” If it weren’t, it’d be his duty to become another statistic. Ain’t a sympathetic soul in sight outside my passenger seat. They’re all snitches in service of spreading crashes, crime, cops, and taxes everywhere. Blue Rose, Red Deer, White Bear. *** Only a Spoonful Girl told me “You’re probably dreaming.” So that’s why my dead childhood pet Bungzy turned into a demon, a black, bearded goat with muscular dystrophy and arthritis, hurting with old age and each leg forward after growing out of her cage. It’s like when something dies, it’s transformed. It’s not the same anymore. “You fear this concept so much, you won’t think on it in waking life.” Real horror. That’s why I’m not a good writer. “They found the dog eating cereal with a spoon.” Sometimes I hear the most horrifying things. A man found a missing girl and gave her a happy life. He raised her to love travel, surprise hugs, and pizza pies, and she took a spoonful of his semen every morning. He taught her it was medicine. “I won’t always be here to tell you you’re dreaming.”
My dream girl looked like Alanah Pearce, the internet lady. She got stranded in Australia visiting her family, quarantined for 14 days just to end up shut in. They cut the string on the box, and you’re stuck with Great Satan. We were saying “butt” in each other’s faces and laughing like children, closer each time ‘til we were grinding in our johns. “She dumped her mutilated son on a Lidl checkout conveyor. They found the knife in her purse and snuff pics of the dying kid in texts she sent the father. It’s gonna be another Dark Winter, and you’ll just have to stomach it, little lady. Let’s say you get one White Christmas, a last night on Darillium: someone who likes you. 10 dollarydoos says she prefers abuse and inoculation, giving or taking, just like I decry the Horse Punchers over the Dog Shooters in Australia. No one would ever stand with you. This ain’t FUD. It’s the truth. So alone, fight Baphomet’s threats like you always have. It’s really not that bad. And maybe this’ll be the last.” I pray for a better tomorrow less than I hope it never comes. Hell, I reference God less than I reference Satan. “Whose plan do you think we’re living? And what’ve you been hearing from the Christians? Everything goes away as the nanomachines replicate.” In the morning, I drank Wichita Shit Water, Zoomed naked on my moldy air mattress, and took a shit on Tinder. There’s no telling when you’re in a mental health crisis if all you talk to’s bosses who give you shit and coworkers you give shit. I can’t cite night succubi as sources, but did you hear? Experts now say if you think Christ is imminent, you’ve got long COVID brain shrinkage. I’ll never get sent to the counselor again. I’ll sooner get fired or a bang on the door instead. I got off the shitter and drove to Family Dollar to buy more toilet paper. Outside, it feels as though Bill dimmed the sun a long time ago. They claimed the goo would be grey, but I didn’t think the fall could get any bluer. Everything’s gone away.
*** Have Fun Old Valentine at the open mic, first try since COVID, November cold: You came, you saw, and I died inside. I was sober for some reason tending a table of t-shirts no one bought. You didn’t speak and I cannot, so we sat there, opposite ends of the El Sombrero-looking venue, you, eating deviled chocolate, N95 hanging from your ear, as I ate nothing to keep my stomach pumped for the night’s high and nine beers ‘til enough time had passed where telling the host “We’re done, we’re through” wouldn’t sound all that suspicious for a planned two-hour event. The prior afternoon, I met a new peer of mine. Well, not “new.” She caught me on campus for the first time—I guess life goes on outside North Gentry Drive— and called me “lovely,” “Oscar Wilde.” I could’ve shot myself there and then and fulfilled those thought loops of McNutt, Ronnie and drained qi out on the desk, gall’s meridian path. I’m just glad I washed my hair instead of catching that day’s advisor meeting ‘cause now I’ve a drive worth gas prices.
We traded poems. In hers, she promised to find her Uber driver a husband and take her to China, her homeland, and I realized it’s been a while, a long while, since I’ve done a truly good act. I blamed that on lockdown and my old friends, but I didn’t have to react the way I did. I didn’t have to be abandoned or lose my opportunities to be a kind person, and I know because now every time I dare enter the sixth floor, I see them being fine to each other, conversing in the halls, planning Kirby’s trips and combined vacations. Like nothing ever happened to anyone else. To Hell with myself. "You seem focused on beauty and redemption in an optimistic manner. Where those things aren't present, you confidently say you will find them. That's difficult, but virtuous." I was mesmerized by the fabulous verbal dance and the somber witticism in your poems. Your writing is brilliant. God bless you and your talents! I only sent her old work. Maybe I’m good with misery business. Too bad it’s a net negative. Ronnie McNutt. Never take that fucking medicine. There’s a billion and one ways to get a shotgun in Kansas. Anyways, this is my last semester teaching. I’ve gotta say goodbye to a couple semesterly traditions: a debate about assisted suicide with an article by Terry Pratchett where I inevitably bring up more surefire ways of dying and how those should be on some kind of menu for the olds and weary of life and the tale of Travis the Chimp as relayed by Adam Lanza on a radio show when he was 12-some years old and found the standard child equal in mistreatment to a monkey actor on Xanax in a diaper at the dinner table, 13 years old. I think so. I agree. But maybe I should give a new character a chance for a change. / This Is Not Over, Bears I was a housekeeper at a hotel in the summer of 2018, American in a team of Chinese. We took the bears of kids and tucked them in the sheets. Nobody said we should. We just did, endless, over and over again, as a human coincidence. When the summer ended, we pooled our tips, fake 20s and Jack Chick, and reserved ourselves a room for after this Hellworld.
We are a deeply sick people. We can beg. We can pray. We can vaccinate. But realize this: In the last days, Great Satan will not be spared. For the Australian man who self-immolated, unleashing his little apocalypse: As concealed above the firmament, so below within the man. Fire *** Dream Sweet of Nothing Good Swimming in the swimming pool I’d built with my dad, she’d always have her Pill playing some Christian music on a plastic lawn chair by the ladder out back. If a certain song came on, she’d tell my sister to skip: “Bye Bye Brianna” by Nicole Mullen about somebody dying: a kid with blindness. Subject’d drowned after hearing her hair was kept kempt, her clothing was sound, and she beheld goodness. Mom died before her mother, her brother, her husband, and son, and son, and son, and son, and daughter, and daughter, replacement. Not seeing something don’t mean nobody can see it. These aversions? They only want the evil ones to exist. “Lies is truth and power is purpose. He who loves his life will keep it, but you wouldn’t keep swimming and sank through the surface.” I know my mother didn’t bear the will to keep on living. For her, I live for Three, the Will of tritadualist- en, I dreamt last night of a foreign woman at the foot of my bed asking “What the Hell happened? You screamed out, then passed out until 6 p.m. after breaking your Switch and taking all the DXM.” I have a lot of dreams. I’d’ve kept that one a secret if that woman were my mom, but she wasn’t, she wasn’t, she wasn’t. She wasn’t my mom like she usually is. She was some Chinese bitch. Fuck. *** Signoff (For Christine and Her TV) Is it just me, or is all our righteously-angry media from before the new millennium? 70s, especially. Taxi Driver, Network. They talked like we were inside a burning building and the best we could do was look for someone worth saving. Well, the building’s long since fallen alongside one unrelated, and there are no accidents. Our artists truly believe we deserve this. They can say that upfront in place of politicians. How they only inundate us with anger in favor of the machine is a sign of the worse that came after we all knew things were bad. Worse than bad. Apart from academics, everyone hates what our benefactors feed us, and they’ve finally quit trying to make us think otherwise. The “Good, Actuallys” aren’t sincere. As educators warped schools into prisons for the crime of life, the networks have completed their transformation of entertainment, leisure time, into actual torture. They’ve censored all true indicators of popularity or lack thereof—“thumbs downs,” ratings, discourse— and with journos at their side, the networks 100% decide what is popular media, and they despise us. They rue the days we were born if not out of their chosen breeders’ vaginas. In a world like this, you have to reach out from the rubble and hold on to whatsoever thing you can that has any semblance of good until they pry it out of your cold, dead hands. I say this only because I want you to feel warm, alive for a minute before the next strike. *** To See the Next Part of My Life, Me It’s the morning after Christmas in 2021. I’ve been taking at least one Benadryl every night for insomnia. I flew a plane to my dad’s place shell-shocked by a night I dreamt of half the folks I’ve ever known. The scenarios were primarily mundane slice-of-life like walking to a water slide with the Ghanain girls I took jello shots with in college, but at another dinner with living and dead family, that mundane slice-of-life was interrupted when the lights went out but for a spotlight, into which a rotting female corpse gradually waddled, and her theme song played out of thin air like the trumpets in Revelation: “Here comes Creepy Joan.” I was trapped inside a scene from a movie I knew wouldn’t end well. I ran in place and fought with my sheets. I called out to God: “I need to stop seeing these hideous things.” I’m lying in bed in my stepsister’s room. The guest room’s been occupied, and my stepsister’s stuck with her father somewhere in Illinois. My dad and stepmom are discussing the court proceedings and Lucky Charms for breakfast. I get out of bed. “Has Luke gotten out of bed yet?” my stepmom asks. “He got up to use the bathroom a while ago, but has not since,” says Dad. I try to reach the door to the hallway, but I snap back: I’m still in bed, lying on my back. I can’t move. But I garner the will and strength to overcome and get out of bed again. I snap back, and now there’s a searing pain in my right hand. I keep trying. It’s a struggle every time. It hurts every time. But no matter how many times I get up, I’m still in bed. It’s been an hour, at least. The dream does not end. For three years, I’ve consumed bottles of DXM on a semi-regular basis to complement the alcohol and show me beings from the other side just for assurance that there is another side. There is, and truth is, I’ve let them inside this sacred temple of mine. And whenever this happens, all the shamans and all the Catholics and all the occultists tell you to do the same thing: Give in. I refuse. And I wake up from a life in Hell. And I wake up into a life from Hell. And I wake up from a life in Hell. And I wake up into a life from Hell. And I wake up from a life in Hell. And I wake up into a life from Hell. And I wake up from a life in Hell. And I wake up into a life from Hell. I Need an ending. Someone Help. (At least we managed some good times lying in bed)
*** Before the Fall Open in violent times, I’m inclined to shut down my temple. That doesn’t mean I ain’t fine. I’m not in trouble. Not at all. But Angela’s a young doll, Bratzkin, woman, human, rebel with a soul and cause. I got choked up July 7 while Dad drove me to MKE again like I was doomed to be lost to him as Nae was to me when I served her similar. I said “Dad, protect your children. The ones who’re still children. Everybody’s after them.” I’ve come to bear what will happen and what has happened, but still, I imagine timelines where I could carry out some semblance of loved ones’ final wishes, little relapses. / Last Words to Characters From Seasons Prior I’d finally get you your license, and after the test, I’d present you a white bear with a felt red heart and a button in his hand It’d come from my black shirt, sewn into his fur I’d accept your request, and I’d cut off my hair I’d do anything you ask If you came back to Kansas, I’d buy you a beer I’d buy you a mattress, and you could stay here The offer’d always stand airing out on the table in front of my bed right next to the nightstand right next to my head (I’d still owe you one last ride) because she cooked for us the day that she died / After My father’s house is at war with another for the soul of my stepsister. The living room was decimated by my brother in autistic rage. He must have been so deliberate. He tore all the cushions out the couches, leaving only hard places. Dad doesn’t go in there anymore. He says the garage bar’s become his home since the other is no longer at peace. To you, Lord, my real Father, I am sorry. When Satan said “Jump,” I jumped. When Satan said “Drink,” I drank from his cup and pissed in it after. I wish I could say I’d never confuse a devil’s words for Yours again, but in all likelihood, I would. I can’t live with that. I don’t wish death on cops and presidents. I wish they would repent. But some days, it feels as though we’ve finally invented permanent ways to loose a soul. Nikola Tesla. And artists, not scientists, used to propose a solution to the hedgehog’s dilemma: Other people will give you Hell, but some might not— not Heaven, just not—and that makes the scars accumulated worth it. I believed. I thought being allowed to speak candidly with a single person would get me through this. I’ll say it once more to the One I owe most: I was wrong. They just wanted us to smile while serving a machine that cries in computer speech as it churns our bodies into Soylent Green. It’s taken my right arm, and I must reach out. The only thing I know is I’m going to where Mom is now. “Pretty girl, milking a cow”