RICHIE - CHAPTER SEVEN (Twitter Novel / Keitai Shosetsu)

-well what immediately
springs to mind is why are we
on the roof–

richie looks up at the sky
-receptions better besides its
cooler up here you think–
and i go

-its definitely colder- and he
makes a retardy face -har dee
fuckin har- bends over the
speaker

attaching wires in the back i
look up -its nice to be able to
check out all the stars-

richie stands up -yeah itd be
even clearer if we could get
rid of those- points to the arc
lights in the quad

then makes a gun with his
thumb and index finger and
shoots them out with a
-blaow-

i start shivering -okay so
again were up here because-
wait for him to fill in the
blank and he smiles

-were gonna look for the
mysteries that still exist
somewhere out there on the
airwaves- and taps the radio
receiver with his foot

-why bother doing all this we
already get satellite radio in
all the dorm rooms- and
richie goes -i dont

-mainly because it sucks and
its totally pre-programmed
and predictable and sterile
and theres no mystery about
it at all

-besides which- he makes a
disgusted face -i had to get
you away from that g5
bullshit- turns to me

-what was that anyway have
you had enough bitch- he
says it shaking his head -did
you think that was cool dee
dee-

i look at my sneakers -it was
just idk something i said-
and he goes on -do you think
theyre gonna like you now-

laughs -let you play their
reindeer games- and im just
-whatever richie- and i
gesture to the receiver
-where did you

-even find this thing- and he
rocks back on his heels -it
was in with a bunch of stuff
from science class storage-

i go -they keep that over
here- and hes -mm-hm you
just need to know where to
look- and hunkers down

starts fiddling with the dials
-so what did you do break
in- and hes all -of course-

-why you couldve gotten
busted for nothing- and he
looks over his shoulder at me
-didnt you ever see a locked
door and want to know

-what was inside what kind
of secrets it kept inside- and
im all -um no not at all-
and he turns back to the radio

-well thats where you and i
differ locked doors are like
a personal affront to me- a
loud squawk comes out the
speakers

richie leans in begins making
minute shifts to the dial -here
we go- and after a moment

a mans voice emerges from
the speaker deep and
resonant and authoritative

-one-zero-zero-three-seven-
and the slight echo on the
voice intensifies on –seven-
and then it goes on

-eight-two-four-four-zero-
and richie stands up and
smiles at me and im like

-what what is it- and he goes
like gleefully -i dont know
no idea spies aliens a
weather report couldnt tell
you

-you hear that echo thats like
deeper when he says –seven-
and i listen again and go
-yeah- and he goes -yeah

-no idea what that is none is
it a recording accident or to
stress the –seven- in the
series to whoevers listening
and probably writing it down

-i dont know this goes on for
hours almost every night its
a mystery all right- and i just
look at him like -wow

-if thats really all we came up
here for- and he looks down
at the radio disappointed
-well that really should be
enough dee dee

-but ill see what else i can
find to entertain you- and
hunkers down in front of the
dial and starts moving it back
and forth

and for the most part its like
creepy christian broadcasting
or sports talk but then he
finds something else melting
into big band jazz but it
eventually

resolves itself into a girl
singing and playing a fuzz-
tone guitar and i lean in -is
this like a real station-

and he shushes me listening
intently and she keeps
singing -here in surf city life
is hard no god or
government to bring me
down

-mister president yr bionics
dont work no more i can no
longer see through yr hollow
plastic eye- and the guitar
gets louder but then

it gets overridden by the big
band music which comes
blaring in super loud and im
like -get her back get her
back- and richie

immediately drops to his
knees and starts moving the
dial back and forth but after a
couple of minutes sits back in
defeat -yup we lost it

-too bad too that was a good
song- and im like -what was
it called- and he looks at me
like im an idiot -dee dee

-i have no idea i was hearing
it for the first time too- and i
just shrug -those lyrics were
crazy i wanted to look them
up

-see if she was saying what i
thought she was saying- and
richie just smiles at me
-youll never know- and i just
shrug again and he

drops back down in front of
the receiver -im gonna
switch to am sometimes i
have some luck at the far
ends of the dial-

and he starts playing with the
dial again and except for the
tinny high end buzz its
basically the same stuff

guys talking about sports or
jesus and old swing music
that my grandparents would
put on sometimes

but then richie finds this guy
speaking spanish in a really
smarmy voice and he turns
up the volume

and goes -the spanish
stations are pretty cool you
can hear some weird things
on here sometimes- and
settles back to listen

so i sit back too and theres
some pretty basic salsa stuff
that doesnt do anything for
me and a bunch of ads

all in spanish and the smarmy
guy comes back on and im
about to ask richie to keep
looking when theres this

crazy blast of mariachi horns
and it resolves into a big
stomping beat and some
distorted flamenco guitars
and richie goes –aha- and

turns it up and it becomes
like an old 80s rap song but
with the crazy guitars and
horns and the words are all

in spanish of course except
for the occasional rhyme in
english like –motorola- and
–pepsi cola-

and richie jumps up and starts
stomping around the roof all
stiff legged like a
frankenstein monster and i
laugh

and i get up to watch him and
the mix breaks down into the
flamenco guitar acoustic this
time and the spanish guys
are

rapping the same thing in
spanish over and over again
as it builds up and builds up
and then theres this crazy
blast of mariachi horns

and richie points at me and
screams –dee dee- just as the
beat comes slamming back
and i just spaz out into this
ridiculous rave dance

and richie is like
goosestepping all around me
in a circle and i start laughing
and he laughs too and then
suddenly it screeches to a halt

and richie goes –well that
was awesome- but i shush
him and run over to the
speaker to listen because the
smarmy guy is talking again

and im squatting waiting for
like the band name or the
song title but i cant sort
anything out and then the
salsa starts up again

and i sit back like -shit- and
richies all -what- and i go –i
wanted to find out the name
of that song so i could maybe

-find the mp3 somewhere and
uh you know- and richies
smiling like -what- and i go
–so i could post it on my
blog-

and richie laughs -youve got
a blog- and im all -yeah-
and he goes -sweet cant wait
to read it- and i just sigh and
he walks over and says

-dee dee if you found that
song youd just post it on yr
blog or stick it on yr ipod or
whatever and in a week

-youd be as bored with it as
you are with every other
goddamn song in the world-
and i look up at him and he
smiles

i shake my head and laugh
then he hugs himself and
shivers -jesus what are we
doing up here its fucking
freezing-

DAISY HAYES

for Rebecca


DAISY HAYES, I think about her, I think about her all the time, I think about that one spring when I knew her. Daisy Hayes and what she meant: everytime I think of her I think of the air, thick with pollen, thick with birds and bees and the sun, no hiding from it ever, shining down covering everything, breathing in the sun, the air thick and golden with it. And Daisy Hayes there, spinning with the wash in the backyard, me peering over the picketfence at her, her spinning, smiling, whiteflowered dress about her, whirling. Me thinking I was shouting, “Hey Daisy!” but never really but just standing in service, watching the whirl, Daisy dancing the bloomers like a partner, Daisy blooming all over the yard, me standing hoe in hand, breathing her sweet atmosphere.

*

DO YOU KNOW, do you know how it is when a bumblebee, so striped and fat with pollen coming off its little legs like dust, a trail behind it in the air, it can barely fly it’s so stuffed fat with substance? And so fat, so slow, you wonder how something that slow can stay airborne, how it can defy gravity with a belly so huge? And so absolutely universally obese and lethargic and pollen-drunk and bumble bumble bumble that it actually slows time, it makes everything around it just as slow, time crawls in the same intoxication? That was afternoons with Daisy Hayes, endless drooping dripping honey afternoons, on and on and on and on.

*

I REMEMBER, I, one afternoon, I stared at her bared shoulder for an entire hour. She was darning socks and her flowerdress had slipped down over her one shoulder and Daisy never noticed but continued as this miracle was revealed to me. I stared at it then, greedily I must admit, the secrets being unfolded before me I drank as deep as I could. The auburn curve of it, the contrast between her skin and the brightwhite flowerdress, as it curved up and into the crux and absolute heaven of her soft brown throat, so much more so for the shoulder, so much context to place heaven, to plot its definitive location. She looked up then, and before I looked away in shyness I saw that her expression was neither accusation nor invitation, but a question: “Is this it? Is this what we do?”

*

AND WHO WAS Anastasia, Anastasia O. Loveless, how was she to Daisy, what did she mean? Where Daisy was outside, Anastasia was forever in, never to enter into the sun’s backyard for fear of melanoma, an inside full of mothballs and dust, a thin air filled with damp and piercing like a cold, a shelf full of medicines, bones full of ache, a headfull of sawdust, a heartfull of blame was Anastasia O. Loveless. Daisy’s sickly aunt, sent for Daisy for household help, for cook, for cleaner, for page-turner floor-washer shelf-duster. For companion in the bitter small hours when thoughts of those who had left the sinking ship filled her tired mind, and she took it out on Daisy, so young where she was old, so free where she was chained, and of course Daisy took it because there wasn’t a corpuscle of resentment in her beautiful veins. And every time that ancient hag would screech “Daisy!”, making her name a curse where no curses should ever have been audible, Daisy would simply look at the ground, the honey pouring out of her, readying herself for the passage into the dank grayness that was the Loveless house; and I would stand sentient, stationary watching and wishing Anastasia hell for what she took from Daisy everytime she said her name.

*

BUT STILL, I feel I owe Anastasia something as she allowed me to bask in Daisy’s warmth for an entire springtime, she allowed me license to discover what youth really was, to find how “girl” is pronounced through adolescence to rest in the ear like a butterfly and move on through autumn sadness to winter want. When the seasons changed Daisy moved on, but not without first changing me forever, no without first striking me with a great flowered hammer that pressed into an undying deifined line of pretty that will not erase no matter how much adulthood I wash it with. I remember the smudge on her cheek planting tulip bulbs, I remember her hopping from shadow to shadow trying laughing not to step on the sunshine that was her anyway, I remember the flowering trees raining for her forever, I remember, I remember, I remember.

*

I REMEMBER a day it rained, harder than it ever has then or since and she was inside all day, it rained all the darker and harder for that and Daisy stared out the window out up into the sky the entire day. I watched her through my window, her watching the sky and almost crying, breathing that sickroom smell and missing the sun and I was jealous of it, her other lover, touched her more than I did, it did. Daisy sad and held fast by Anastasia all day long, held fast by thin medicine air and mothball dust, wishing for her savior beyond the clouds that would only return tomorrow, oh Daisy the only thing I liked at all about that day was I had you all to my greedy self, no bright and shining suitor to share you with then, you sad and lonely when we were finally alone, oh Daisy didn’t you know how long I’d waited, only to despair for what the sun was in you already I could never take away, to make you mine would only be to make you less, oh Daisy, you were taken from me long ago, long ago.

*

BUT NOW, this had gotten too down, too dour, far too much for Daisy Hayes or something in her memory as if that didn’t make her dust as it is. Daisy not dust but a river, not stopped by time but here and then over but replenished, falling over itself in a rush of daisies, in time that is thirteen, in love that is beginning, in morning sunshine gleam which is birth. Is there one dip to a customer? I don’t think so but wonder if the time spent there is ever the same, if returning is more pain than pleasure. It doesn’t matter, blooming on, the whiteflowered dress hanging in Salvation Army shop windows waiting, whispering on spring wind to hurry! hurry!

*

I REMEMBER the end or what became the end, just another beginning anyway, when I finally touched her and what that meant. I heard it from inside even, Anastasia screaming at her and Daisy politely apologizing for some imaginary misdeed and I came out the screendoor just in time to see Daisy bang out and run to the picketfence, crying. Anastasia didn’t follow; outside, you see, the enemy. Daisy crying at the fence, her tears almost falling in my yard, I didn’t know what to do had been waiting to speak for so long but when she was there all the gambits in the world melted into stupid. I ignored the sun and walked to her, crying, her forearms against the pickets pressing v’s into her soft flesh. I walked closer, close, I was going to say, “What’s wrong?” or “Why are you crying?” but Daisy too too smart for that and when I was close enough just grabbed my shirt and pulled into me tears all on my chest and I nothing but instinct put my hands softly to her hair and shoulder and held her, she crying softer now and I not even thinking about miracle but just holding her and then she slowly raising her face and tearstained and so beautiful and I didn’t know my lips were on hers, so soft, until Anastasia scraped the sky with “Daisy!” so loud we stopped and she looked once and ran to the house. When I think of it now it’s sad the last time I heard her name it was Anastasia’s curse, but sadder still the one time I held her it was over the picketfence, arms held too high to avoid the sharpness low enough for adults, all too soon to become for us as well.

*

WHEN SHE LEFT it was loaded into a stationwagon and then gone, no window-fingers pressed to pledge love, no long lasting looks back, Daisy stock still straightforward and I just watched from the front screendoor this time, minor change in locales. I began to wonder if it had been at all, maybe just some dream in sun-drunken back yard reverie, but the scowl on Anastasia to me was verification enough. I watched them pull away and let it slam shut and ran through to the back yard there with the sun, us both gazing over the fence, trying to prove her existence by feeling the void, watching the wind touching the places where she once was. Through the grass and saying she walked here, through the garden and saying she knelt here, through the clothes on the line and saying she danced here. The sun and me, holding hands and stranded, waiting for everything to begin breathing again.

GUN CRAZY (Part Twenty-Seven)

- blank -
jammed between channels
white static noise


NO MORE: words, war, bullets, blood, sister, captor, codes, codices, enemies, lines, fortress, radio, Rimbaud, angels, heroes, agents, decoders, demands, translators, transmitters, nations, generations, translations, transcending, transmission, mission


NO MORE: win
NO MORE: lose
NO MORE: gun
NO MORE: crazy

GUN CRAZY (Part Twenty-Six)

Trans/mission
Big T, small m
all agents - all in
listen to the Translator
"the mission Transported
the mission Transcended
you memorized your scales
just to Forget
your sister's been taken
your pride is awakened
your work has been stolen
'How can this be?'
Your true purpose unearthed
Your cover exposed

listen, listen
destroy all missions"

GUN CRAZY (Part Twenty-Five)

Or maybe this:


please forgive my sieve

the only things it filters out
are pop culture pap
and the dealings of saints and angels



Or maybe it said
something else

GUN CRAZY (Part Twenty-Four)

Or maybe this:


Set your heart on stun
Set my mind at ease

Stun Me

Stun me crazy

GUN CRAZY (Part Twenty-Three)

From the radio's soothing green glow

comes a Trans/mission

a dream from my sister
copied down in code*

untraceable
untranslatable

(get out your decoder rings)

maybe it said:

Flowing from a thousand wounds
In a thousand different languages
Can you decode the secret blood?
Has the DNA wrapped around your own?

an ancient code in a chemical hand

the work it does is silent
what we do is secret

GUN CRAZY (Part Twenty-Two)

Amnesty International
could you please send many
finger-printy
hand-written letters
full of pleas for freedom
and civil rights
to my sister's captors
so that my girlfriend and I
can rest easy
in the assurance
that all diplomatic avenues
were exhausted
before we
went to the fortress
where my sister was kept
and razed it the fuck to the ground.

GUN CRAZY (Part Twenty-One)

...

My sister's in prison

The savior has risen

The cow jumped over the moon

She sent me a letter

Just last Tuesday

Written upon a balloon

It said:

...

JASON, DON'T YOU WORRY

THE ANGELS HAVE COME TO

SOOTHE MY BROW

THEY BRING WATER AND WINE

WE HAVE A HELLUVA TIME

WE DANCE THE CELLBLOCK DOWN TO THE GROUND

-DON'T WORRY- -I LOVE YOU-

P.S. THE ANGELS GIVE YOU YOUR PROPS

...

(angel sez

-naw man, i ain't seen her in weeks

no one gets in there

no one-)

...

GUN CRAZY (Part Twenty)

You called me up again tonight
You were bitching on my telephone
You started whining about my sister
and all the awful shit that she has done
I believe that you were drinking
as you defended your position
You fed me one line with both hands
and then You fed me religion


(But I've seen you Beautiful

I've seen you on television
I spoke with your Fan Club
Your president's bitter

I called at the Telethon
I phoned my donation
I consulted your agent
He gave me a quote
Your prices are much too high
Your priests were always much too high
I could never touch them)

GUN CRAZY (Part Nineteen)

no matter what they say
my infatuation is not with death


I am heartsick with the beauty of aim
I am filled with joy at the process of loading
I am awed by the idea of gun-metal grey
O see my reflection in the gleam of steel
I am entranced by the order of cartridges
I am stymied by the efficiency of bullets
I am sick on the aphrodisiac of propulsion
I salivate for the taste of ozone
I am moved by the act of armor-piercing
I am brought to tears by flight
I am reborn by release


I want to control the loss of control
I want to pull the trigger