Illustration by Jannat (@resplndentangel).

Hey Siri, Take a Screenshot

“damnant quod non intelligunt; the visible human project is
run by invisible men in cloaks, ‘amicus humani generis’”

sunset clouds spread out like tiger stripes,
wired stereo earbuds that never fit right;
rifles by the door rusted by evening rain,
nerve blockers every three hours for pain;

warm under your shirt, the flow starts, hot blood, cylinders fire lust into my hands, the guessing game thinking about how you’ll taste when i take off your clothes;

“the door fell off its hinges last night”
“that’s okay, you can just blame my dad”

Fredrik Kolstø, “The Young Carpenter,” (1886)

it’s the feeling of finally sawing through it’s the feeling of 90s country music on tha tellavision it’s the feeling of waiting in line to pay for the parking pass in the morning before work it’s the feeling of putting a knife against your palm it’s the feeling of looking at the sky it’s the feeling of having an addiction to Ozempic injections it’s the feeling of adding vinegar to baking soda it’s the feeling of smoking Faulkner’s Nosegay Cigarettes it’s the feeling of wanting the feeling of security but the TSA sucks my asshole so i eat the apple like Eve it’s Christmas time I live forever like Adam naming all the animals it’s purely angel projection, nano emulsification; i’m gunna create a snuff film where i torture people dressed like super heroes like imagine Captain America tied to a surgery table Hostel style, i’ll think about the heavy riff from Sabbath Bloody Sabbath in the moment, i’ll use rusty scissors to cut open Captain America’s breastplate and as he shouts, ‘HAIL HYDRA,’ i’ll make him look down at his own insides and I’ll yell, “REMEMBER, THIS IS WHAT YOU’RE MADE OF,––“

I saw a tree with blue gums foaming at the roots; i put my flag in the dirt and i’ll stand by it until i’m under it; artist suppliers, art supplies; the soft bottom of a wheel of brie; I’m the diamond studded honkey that means i’m white and a lil bit sparkly; Ham and turkey, cool city chic, a new multi-purpose building that smells like brown sugar;

Chevy chase on drums, weekly 3:30pm tornado warning siren, the hair on the shower wall looking like a flying spaghetti monster, cheap treats at the Cambodian donut shops, i’m sitting on your throat and my dick hangs over your lips and you grab it like a microphone and you yell into my urethra, “ladies and gentlemen, give it up for kool and the gang;”

Using my incisors to break open dry lips; deep-coded psycho paralysis; unholy dismemberment, weekend hack-a-thon; coastdream videos of drones flying through industrial decay lined with blinking lights and obstacle hoops;

the pipe in my bathroom sink leaks into a blue pot sitting on the floor, the pipe in my shower head doesn’t work so now i can only use the bath faucet to fill cups of water to wash myself in the morning, the pipe that i use to smoke with in the morning is a metallic cigarette it’s always clogged with sludge, when i went to the airport to fly for the first time since covid (5 years of no flying) i forgot i’d left a metal pipe in my backpack and it got confiscated by security;

homeless man walking his wheelchair to the red-light; old lady snapping at her grandson behind me in line at Walmart: “i know i shouldn’t have brought you, i knew you was gunna act silly, you always do;” the american house spider trapped in a stoppered vial; chest acne, flirting with comedy, ; the journey the yearning the cheesy lines of reskinned lines bleeding into new children of old children the dying happens unexpectedly most wretchedly the suffering creeps up like snow the winters are longer and the summers are hotter and the books take more time to read and then there’s that long lost need the endless weeks monday to friday thank god for fat tuesday;

art is supposed to change you, because change, like beauty, keeps the intentions of art alive;

Børge Solem’s Passenger Listing for the Tanaro ship’s voyage from Risør, Norway to Quebec, Canada in 1865 being added to Ole Andreas Larsen’s cemetery folder;

art is supposed to keep you the same just like you’re not supposed to fly out of an airplane during the flight, but then again, if you wanna jump out of the emergency door and plummet to your death, then by all means, i won’t stop you;

city hall as a replacement for instinct; we Facebook poke things to make sure they’re still alive;

i know little girls in Mississippi
who have 2 fingers on each hand;
i know little tiny babies that are
baked into sweet, royal dough;

Angel soft TP, Pizza,
Cookie dough or cinny rolls,
& beer (>if you want) (>yes)

smoking outside Sleeping Cat Studios
in an alleyway by a black flight of stairs
that leads up to the Main St. apartment of a
Trolley driver who never gets any shut eye;

the King of England has cancer in his ass (his royal heinie); optional cheers for plunderphonics playlists; i finally let my parents be my parents, they’re both retired, we’re all different, them more-so than me, they buy weed from a guy out in Cape Gerardo who sells carts out of an old refurbished pizza hut building;

18 salami (dry),
8-9 bottles (cabernet),
2oz honey packets;

knicking away parts of the chest, pink thews brûlée’d;
watching the old guy at the park practicing his short putt
while his son is at the trading office shorting a put option;

love-fifteen,
shopping at
the Kosher Kroger,
testosterone pills,
men rejecting men,
Chili erl and OY573R5,
the clock goes tick tock,
as time pulls hairs out of
my freckles, my cock;

this is the part of the reading where we get interrupted by big black dick spam videos and we wait for william to kick the person from the call so we can resume (think of this as a reprieve);

“i don’t know what was worse 10 years of gettin’ beat up by my kid’s daddy or my addiction to alcohol;” the iron giant and the old man and the sea; fecal matter smeared on a door handle; “my dad is still alive, but the drugs killed who he was;” looking for a 1080p Oversnatch XXX Parody video file; TN hotdog cuts with cheese and fritos; Firewood for sale $15 a bundle; roasted walnuts that resemble shriveled smoker lungs; your heart is a cockroach date cut open, except i replaced your seed with mine and i shoved it into the ground, right by a carved Gruyère Tombstone;

a short life filled with meat extenders;
perfection comes after being chewed;

kids in an industrial kitchen using one dry hand and one wet hand to egg wash rice balls in blended panko crumbs; madam annie cook using her brothel to house the sick during the memphis yellow fever epidemic of the 1870s; my worst fear is association and paperclips bent straight; Texas ebony, blackstone daisies, fairy dusters with long fleshy stamens, golden eyes, and desert hackberries, all at the mercy of Mormon crickets; is that a cactus out there or a tall man staring back at me; “Jesus Christ, his parachute isn’t opening;” fossilized tree resin shipped from Russia; what does a perfect being do in the real world besides eat Swedish fish; city hall as a replacement for instinct; snuffing out Corporate goths and hearing Aryna Sabalenka’s loud grunts on an airport bar television; a lady named Asia going for a walk while wearing red sunglasses; i’m ten years old naked in the public showers at the Sardis lake camping grounds walking on dirty tiles covered in sin and shit looking for a clean stall to take a group shower with my new friends;

lying on your back staring up, white lines poke through the sky;
every sound of loud booming keeps me thinking of when i’ll die;
rip Tourette’s guy, hey remember mylifeisaverage.com (?) good times;
let’s go listen to the Beatles on the juke (pref. komm gib mir deine hand)

leering into an empty fountain filled
with tree parts, a black plastic bag,
soda bottle caps, loose brick rocks,
a battery, small pencils, and a rillo pack;

in the city of Memphis there are 100 tiger statues
scattered all over the city at different locations;
i’ve had sex with over half of those statues;

parking lot Pace Arrow motorhome
containing chopped up remains in
stow-away luggage compartments;

missing spaces filled in by 
discriminate guessing sequences;

taking part in a prophecy,
iPad art by David Hockney,
orange Tums tablets broke in half,
at the drive-thru, using the app;

4 oz flour, 1 egg, olive oil;
chicken hibachi (only broccoli and
carrots for veg, 2 yum yum sauces),
gyoza, and amazing roll with chopsticks;
Slices of Pear and Almonds on Toasted Bread;
blueberries stuck together by grey mold;
missing child found in wolf droppings;
Add this to your Dictionary:
Back to Belly Pile driver 

the perils of Kat, feral like a cat that’s
tossing around in desire blankets,
teeth sparkling like designer trinkets, 
commanding shivers and forethoughts of
foreplay; the knowing of, your breathing;

alive at 2:45 (IT’S FUCKING 2:45) and i’m thinking about nitrogen gas executions,
Stevie Nicks and the war on drugs, and the tools we’ll need
to disrupt the firm cohesion of Lindyman’s sticky culture;

little tanks defending heaven because
even in death there exists the bizarre;

it’s 1967 you’re a young Vietnamese man training to fight against United States soldiers as a Viet Cong you’re a father and school teacher enlisted as infantry everything is so confusing after endless grueling weeks of training and saying goodbye to your family you’re finally camouflaged in the jungle you’ve killed seven men and now you’re waiting to jump on the enemy,  suddenly Forrest fucking Gump sneaks up on you he stops and turns to point his rifle into your face, you have one brief second to think of your son before Private Gump says to you, “I-I’m real sorry Mister Gook, but Lieutenant Dayan says I gots-ta neutralize you;”

$6 sushi on Wednesday (small victories)
i remember my last Back Yard Burger,
do you?

one more Hershey’s Kiss,
one more LandShark;

licking out small wet clumps of tissue balls
hanging from folded skin wiped clean of urine;

exploring impossible sex fantasies made real in the movie Acting Out (2007);
googling the natural end-result qualities of a long-time decomposing body;
the end of Seinfeld in 98’ and the beginning of King of the Hill in 97’;
the United States v. Microsoft Corp. (decided four months before 9/11)

there are 21 horse statues scattered around Germantown, Tennessee,
and i (admittedly) have stolen the penises from 5 of those horse statues;

one time i worked with a black DJ named Art, i miss him;
you’re more than dead to me, your face is decaying bone;
“…Phoenix, Arizona International is a dementia friendly airport…”;
it always made me feel insecure when kids in sitcoms made my parents laugh;
the dutch and their fascination with nature and stick gathering;

>”Winter landscape with faggot gatherers conversing on a frozen lake” by Josephus Gerardus Hans (1826 – 1891)
>”Faggot gatherers beside a river” by Jacob Jan Van der Maaten (1820 – 1879)
>”Faggot gatherers by a rushing stream” by Hendrik Pieter Koekkoek (1843 – c. 1890)
>”Faggot Gatherers, Moonlight” by Ludvig Munthe (1841 – 1896)

*grabs four piping bags of whipped cream and holds them in front of my belly*
“hey dude look, look at my swollen milk utters, check ‘em out, i need to be freagin milked”

each cross section of a human body viewable online;
“ya know, you never see houses getting TeePee’d anymore;”
playing the penis game at the bank (and winning);

i’m tying an apple charger cord
around my middle finger
while i play with myself;

the last time i prank called somebody i called pizza hut
and told the worker that my name was Sweaty Butts
and I only ordered one pie: a cheese pizza, thick crust;

soul-eyed woodland spirit owns land in Arkansas,
her sloped ears are well attuned to Skynyrd,
her Jewish friend from high school takes care
of mentally challenged kids during the day
and then goes to the local barcade and gets
all removed and polished drinking Mile’s dry London;

the old woman living in the SHU don’t forget the men living under the stares i’m the Oz behind myself fair trade yes go tare yourself and take care of yourself bury the rest of your shame in your unconscious just be in the sky be sunconscious; i’m putting a beer bottle up to your eye and tilting your head back relax, i’m tethering the spirit of a sunbeam giant, “i don’t care what we do, can we please just go outside and spark up real quick i am shivering;”

“don’t worry man, let me handle this, i’m cool with the Portuguese”
“you do understand that i’m talking about jellyfish, right”
“oh, uhhh, i don’t think you’re allowed to call them that anymore, dude”

people will sling clichés at you until you finally look back at them with the same dead stare that they have; Germans putting together iron caskets and the shortcomings of the Irish lifestyle during times of stress; god thinks about you in the same sense that i look after i wipe; are you the confident dog that barks at a full moon or are you the hesitant dog nearby that barks when other dogs start to bark (spoiler: you’re the dog butthole scooting on the carpet in the house like a domesticated retard); OP is a faggot gatherer, university Yik Yak bomb threat, Bill Cosby black face, the turn of the century exploitation of the American Wigger;

COPY AND PASTE ON LETTERHEAD,
SKIN AND LIPS CUT OFF, LEATHERFACE;

Prep kitchen in an old ballet instruction room,
Crumbling gorgonzola with securely gloved hands,
Watching myself in the mirror learning how to dance;

sleeping in front of the COGIC bookstore;
new park statue: Golden Calf Kelly Clarkson;
calling the salt shaker gay when it spills;

i’m not gunna lie all of this sounded waaay better in my head;

you’ve posted a picture of your unshaved stomach on the timeline and your profile picture has a border around the edge (always on the edge) I scroll up and see you’ve posted about wretchedness I go to my bed and i flip off my cat and refresh my tab to see if there are any posts about new guidelines for publishing;

hold on, let me ask siri:
hey siri, can you take a screenshot
hey siri, take a screenshot
hey siri, take a screenshot
hey siri, take a screenshot

hey siri, can you take a fucking screenshot