Hello Stranger

Nonet

 

Brother Michael returned to the Bonaventure Convent with a heavy heart. Brother Bobby noticed immediately.

"Brother, why so glum? Where have you been?"

Michael sighed. "The palliative care ward in town."

Bobby sighed: "Alas! Those are the saddest visits. Was the poor soul all alone?"

"No, there were reporters everywhere."

"Oh! A man of worldly renown."

"A politician."

"A servant of the people."

"He served them all right; their heads on platters and so on."

"What?"

"The man was a butcher. He starved to death almost the entirely of the Tenderman Valley. I don't recall the exact numbers, but something on the order of 100,000 were murdered. They refused to be the slaves of the general population, so he sent in the army."

"A socialist, then?"

"Very much so. He would have gone much, much further, but for Intervention."

"So it goes."

Michael sighed. "He acknowledged his sins, and I gave him extreme unction. His soul goes upwards, unspotted by his crimes against humanity."

"He has no longer done anything wrong, and all is forgiven."

They were silent for a moment.

Michael said: "Extreme unction is the part of this job I sometimes really hate."

Bobby said: "Yeah. Fuckin dogma."

 

*

 

"My friends, if I am elected I am promising ... a robot tax. Yes, companies will have to pay excessive taxes if they displace a human with technology. Thank you."

"My opponent does not go far enough. My party will impose surtaxes on all computer technology. No computers, no robots. We'll stop those robots in their tracks!"

"I now release a part of our platform we were holding onto, and that is we see the problem inherent in electricity as a thing. It's too cheap, and it powers computers ... and robots! Vote for me, and say bye-bye electricity!"

"We are a small grass-roots party, seen by some as radical. But I don't see anything radical in our platform promise to stop all factories from producing anything. They're taking work away from handicraftsmen and artisans!"

"What a bunch of cowards my opponents are! The problem is hammers! Hammers, hammers, hammers! We need to get them off the streets and out of the workshops! Full employment will result!"

"Hah! My party proposes confiscating all the pencils and pens! A vast new workforce of memorizers shall rise, to communicate all our totalitarian governmental pronouncements! Throw off your chains, people! Oral culture now!"

 

*

 

The wagon train through the pass had come to a complete stop. We were all looking over the burros but no-one could see what the gosh-darn hold-up was all about. We were stuck there for some-odd three-quarters of an hour then some of us said enough was enough. We got down off our packs and started to trek ahead. We passed us some hundred wagons, orphans, widows, dogs, what have you. We broke half-heartedly into some trail-songs as we ambled through the dust and around the brush. I was there, as you can probably guess, being as none-too-pleased as the rest of my impromptu compadres, going over hill, over dale, through the Chisholm. Buck shouted: "There's the front!" and we all craned to see the first wagon aways away, just a speck in the distance. We got us some closer and saw a crowd all standing around. Finally, we pushed us through all in a huff and swearing and such, only to see what was going on. It was two lovebirds who'd nested on the trail, with their little lovebird chicks just born fresh a couple-three days past. We made camp with the rest of the folks, and waited patiently.

 

*

 

"I built it with my mind."

The architect looked at the crowd. No-one was laughing, so he continued:

"The land was simply sitting here, ready for the taking. If it hadn't been here, I would have built the land too."

The crowd followed him into the building and down several flights of stairs.

They were in a long narrow hallway with doors spaced regularly along its avenue.

"These are apartments. Some have yet to be occupied. I couldn't tell you offhand who's living in the occupied apartments, even though their occupancy was approved by me personally."

He showed them a tunnel entrance.

"That leads to the house. We may cover that in a future tour."

A small round elevator at the end of the hallway was big enough for all, and they ascended.

"We are in the north tower. That highway out the window is the 401. We're in Ontario, you know. And that building down there is a science centre."

They all got out onto the roof. Narrow beams led to the south tower.

The architect told them: "This here, this roof, is somewhat dangerous terrain. However, don't worry about falling or jumping; you'll awaken before you hit ground."

 

*

 

Acknowledgements

 

Aaron Abraham Adam Adrian Alan Alana Alex Alexandria Alice Alison Allan Allison Amy Anastasia Anders Andre Andrea Andrew Andy Angela Anna Anne Anthony Arthur Beatrice Bella Bob Brian Bruce Caleb Cameron Carla Carlo Caroline Catherine Celeste Charlie Charlotte Chelsea Christina Christopher Clara Colby Colette Colin Cookie Dan Daniel David Dean Dennis Derek Diana Dominic Donald Edward Elaine Eleanor Elizabeth Emily Emma Erin Eva Evelyn Fabio Finn Fiona Frank Frederick Gary George Georgia Gordon Gregory Helen Houston Ian Jacob Jacqueline James Jane Janet Jennifer Jeremy Jessica Jimmy Joanne Jocelyn Joel Johanna John Joy Jonathan Joseph Josephine Julian Julie Juliet Kaitlyn Kate Katherine Kathryn Keith Kenneth Kevin Kimberly Laura Lawrence Leo Leonard Leslie Lily Lucas Lucy Maddie Madison Maggie Marcos Margaret Maria Mario Mark Martin Marvin Mary Matthew Maya Megan Melanie Melissa Mia Michael Michelle Miranda Miriam Monica Monika Myrtle Naomi Natalie Neil Nicholas Nicole Noel Patrick Paul Peter Philip Phillip Rachel Ray Rebecca Richard Robert Rodney Ronald Rory Rose Rowan Roy Ruth Sam Samuel Sarah Savannah Scott Silvia Simon Sophia Stella Stephen Steven Sylvia Tammy Tania Tanya Terrance Terry Theodore Thomas Timothy Tommy Tony Trevor Veronica Victoria Virginia Vivian Wade Walter Wayne Wilbur Willa William Winston Zoe and the rest

 

*

 

In the Copenhagens we met coffee caulked at a lost corner of quasi-urban space marked in Denmarkian, German, French, slogans, glyphs, and cartoons. A bus festooned with hanging poor folk passed. You swore you were lost. I asked what you'd lost. No single answer and no single ejaculation has yet answered me.

There's (or so I understand) a billion other guys that look like me and talk like me but half of them refuse to believe any of the others exist. It's also understood (in some circles) that the same goes for you - assuming you are one of the group that believes in this Copenhagen stuff.

I certainly didn't know how I had gotten there, to that corner. In fact I didn't know how I'd gotten to the Copenhagens. You seemed to be likewise unknowing about your own private provenance. We both knew, though, that it was all a matter of a throw of the dice

which taught us it was not ever from the beginning a matter of chance. We'd always lived in rotating billion-windowed prisons and then and there two of our vistas got en face; you told me you were lost

but I'd lost my translator.

 

*

 

When God first got into the process of creating the numbers, He first made the 1. And it was tall, and straight, and He figured it might come in handy some day. And it was a good number. Next day He looked upon the 1 and thought it looked lonely, so He made it a mate: a 2. And He liked 2's gentle curve and He felt it made a good mate for the 1, as stiffness meets softness. And He saw their relationship and what the relationship implied so He quickly overnight dreamed into being 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9. And it was very good. He left them alone for a while while He caught up on His paperwork and when He returned He saw they had multiplied chaotically and they had formed a tower reaching up to the sky and he saw 4,810,485,729,048,572,957,282 ascending nearly to touch His toes so God kicked at the tower and it tumbled to earth. The numbers scattered hither and yon, and God started again from scratch. He made man, and woman, hoping in His heart they would never learn of those misconceived numbers, for numbers could destroy all creation....

 

*

 

She was one hell of a drummer as she rolled through sixteenths sided by toms in 3/8 for sixteen bars followed by nine quick quarter notes on two cymbals.

"O-KAY!" she shouted. "I'm almost ready!"

She took us, me and my photographer, outside to a slope overlooking the ocean. Down a slope were planted red tee flags in single file, for what purpose we knew not and about which we did not ask. She marched us into a glass room and she sat me down across a table from her and ordered my photographer to start snapping and snapping.

"So what have you done lately?" she barked.

I opened my mouth to answer but she interrupted: "We already know!" The near wall projected my timeline, with education years in blue and prison years in red.

"That ratio doesn't look good! Too balanced! You should have focussed on one or the other!"

I told her I wasn't there to be interviewed but rather to interview her.

"No matter! Here are the answers to all the questions you may have planned to ask! You haven't gone far enough! You must choose life or death! Which do you want? What is your goal?"

 

*

 

Let's all pack up our snakes and our ladders and go one box to the right.

There 're no ties here, and it 'll be a nice change of pace for everyone.

It 's a different climate over there, or so all the maps do indicate.

Who knows what it 'll be like, nearer the sea, or farther from the sea.

The grammar may be slightly different, a new dialect, but we 'll catch on.

The food, I promise, will be different food, since cuisine is mostly local.

What trouble can it be?

We 'll be leaving behind all our troubles and a bunch of sad empty houses.

What good 's a house with all its dust we think we have sole right to?

Better to let another line of longitude throw it all away in disgust

Because it was n't all that interesting to begin with as wisdom shows us.

It 's just a lot more of that ruin they say that civilization 's made of.

We 'll all get new colours even if we can 't pay for them in ready money.

Oh, I 'm forgetting about how time will be a completely different time!

Pack it up!

 

***

 

Nonenigmatical Variations

 

Another Ballad

 

Out of nowhere you appeared that night

on a barstool right beside my perch

I was drinking thinking about that fight

and the reasons for it I vainly searched

You asked a drink and I supplied

a margarita double teq

and communication to me you tried

some sonar to a dreadnaught wreck

And I looked at my face in the mirror above

with you at my side with your chin in your hand

I recalled what I used to know about love

and wondered if you could understand

You turned away then looked again

with your eyebrows moving peculiarly

and that's when the strangeness did begin

unidiosyncratically

Because across your face I saw

another face so briefly dwell

by someone else a sketchy draw

of someone else I knew so well

And startled me my memory

of days long gone and hours long passed

some girl I knew, some history,

in youth that promised it would last

And then it was gone like some lost chord

me groping for forgotten names

and staring at you without a word

to see if the vision would come again

But what's long passed is dead and gone

can't resurrect it for a song

 

*

 

Another Way

 

"What did you just do?" he asked, staring at her closely.

She laughed tequila and asked: "What did I do?"

He said: "Your face - across your face passed the face of someone - someone I used to know."

She raised an eyebrow - nut? - and tried: "Well that's an interesting idea, but I'm sure I never met her - so how could I have her face?"

He ran a finger down his glass without looking. "It was just for the briefest second. Now you're back to being - Joanie, right?"

"Yes, it's Jody." She thought a moment. "I wonder who I was."

"You've probably never met her. It all happened some time ago."

"What all happened?"

He moved away a bit. "Oh, I mean - our friendship happened. I don't know her any more."

"Why? Did she -"

"Oh, no, no. At least it's unlikely."

He took up his pint, drank, and put it down again. He looked up at the mirror again. "It was your face in the mirror - save for the moment when it was her face in the mirror."

Maybe it's just your great imagination, imagining things."

He couldn't consider the possibility.

 

*

 

Another Writer

 

Perhaps it was because the tavern - dingy, love-lost, and in the quicksand of an irreversible entropy - perhaps it was because the tavern had failed to relate to its proprietors that it had lost more than a few light-bulbs over its sleepy summer siesta.

Thus when a pair of green eyes plied themselves upon a mirror, or rather passed through the mirror to the ocular representation that was seemingly plastered upon its glass, eyes that were looking nearly in a bisection of the presented plane, to the face of the person who sat beside the observer, subject F, a twitch could be seen upon the visage of the observer, subject M, by any disinterested third-party viewer from as far away as the heavens.

He turned to look at her carefully; more carefully than was warranted apparently, and most carefully it could be said to have been from his own perspective, as he plunged through his memories in search of - what? - who? - when?; and his mouth opened to speak without a word ready-set to mind; all of which caused F to look into M's eyes and at his mouth agape and plainly say: "What's up?"

 

*

 

Another Playlet

 

[Slow music, curtain. A tavern bar rail running USL to DSR. A mirror suspended above, behind, angled, prismatic, for audience to see as well as the characters. BARTENDER behind bar shining glasses upstage, while centre is MAN and WOMAN. They are talking too quietly for the audience to hear.]

MAN: It was really one of my better days....

WOMAN: Oh, come now, you must have had better days....

MAN: It was certainly in the top ten....

[WOMAN leans down to grab her purse. She pulls out a package of Camels and drops it quite deliberately on the bar. MAN reaches into his coat, producing a cigarette lighter. WOMAN smiles and takes up the cigarettes again and takes one out. She pushes the package away and swishes her hair. MAN sees her in the mirror and a shocked look comes over his face.

[Tableau.]

WOMAN: (aloud) You look like you've seen a ghost.

MAN: I do believe I have. You were someone else for a moment there.

WOMAN: Someone special?

MAN: (after regaining his composure with a sigh) It's just this town.

WOMAN: It's just this night.

[Lights begin to dim. Penultimate chord of Tristan und Isolde sounds. Curtain.]

 

*

 

Another Entry, Another Problem

 

e o n x y y r o m e m n g t

y p o r t n e y a n f m r n

e d i s i n t e r e s t e d

b e t b l e h d g t n b e v

r r a a i v g r a t o s n a

o e t l b i u i r o s o o e

w d n o i t a n i g a m i t

s r e o s c n k t r e e t t

k u s t s e d i a o r o c e

e m e s o p a n s f h n e r

t n r r p s e g i q f e s a

c d p a q r r o r r i m i g

h t e b d e d l o s i p b i

y r r n k p r i s m a t i c

 

*

 

Another Menagerie

 

A cat walked into a bar. She checked out the scene and noted the music was trebly which was alright by her. She sat down at the bar and examined the rest of the clientele. A couple donkeys, some birds, and right over some three seats was a good-looking dog. She smartly moved a couple seats nearer and struck up a conversation.

The dog said he was just passing some time a-thinking and a-drinking. She said that was alright by her, and that she was just a bit lonely. They sighed together and ordered some more, a catnip cocktail for her and some Old Leather Shoe for him.

Drink. Drink. Drink.

He pulled away suddenly and his hairs rose. He shook his muzzle and said, "Sorry. I just saw something weird."

"What was it, honey?"

He snouted to the mirror over the bar. "Your face just made this expression of someone I once loved. It was uncanny; it was like you became her, for just a moment." He shuddered and chewed some more.

"I don't know if I should be flattered," said the cat. "You were in love?"

"Arf."

"So what happened?"

Pause.

"Some animal got to her."

 

*

 

Another Porn Star Funnies

 

First Panel

 

He's going down on her in a motel room with a neon light reading GOTEL outside the window. There's a seascape hanging on the wall, and a lamp beside it giving off lines of light. She's shouting in a bubble: (Oh yes, yes! Don't stop now! I'm gonna....)

 

Second Panel

 

He's stopped, and he's looking at what he's eating out, with a shocked look on his face and lines of surprise are radiating from it. She's leaning forward, saying: (Why have you stopped? I was almost there!)

 

Third Panel

 

Nearly the same as before, with him saying: (For a moment there, just a moment, your pussy looked exactly like a pussy I used to know, way back when, years ago; and for a moment it tasted the same, and the folds of the labia were the same! It was like déjà vu, but not!)

 

Fourth Panel

 

They've rearranged themselves, about to start sucking a sixty-nine. She's saying: (There! Is that better?) and he's saying: (Much better upside down! And yet....) and she's saying: (Still not right?) and he's saying: (I'd like you to get off.) and she's saying: (That's what I intend to do!)

 

*

 

Another Damn Thing after Another

 

He wrote: Points of recognition - aspects within each point of recognition, colour, texture, etc, cross over from one to the other - direction or pointedness included - motion or implicit motion - settles down, breaks some barrier - =recognition

"Excuse me, bartender, may I get a Manhattan?"

He saw her in the mirror over the bar. Damn dame, like she owns the place, of all the gin joints, one damn thing after another.

She started in to playing with his curls. "Hey, junior," she said. "Know what a Manhattan is? They were old-fashioned before Old Fashioneds."

He looked her in the eyes sans mirror. "I'm no kid, and I know the game."

She laughed. "Elisha Cook Junior."

He returned his gaze to the mirror and saw the subject about which he was writing. For a moment her points of recognition jibed with the points of recognition of another of the past. He wasn't thinking straight; or the world had not changed but rather his mind had folded eighteen points of recognition upon itself such that that which he saw was not exterior to himself but rather his self was what his self used to

 

*

 

Another Pop Song

 

At the bar (at the bar at the bar yes the bar)

In the mirror (in the mirror in the mirror in the mirror)

That's where I saw that it was you and yet it wasn't you alone

Because you tossed and turned your hair in a memorial way

When it wasn't you alone, oh no, you wasn't there alone

On that Memor-mor-mor-mor-mor-mor-mor-memorial Day

 

Like a ghost

Like a girl

Like the girl of my dreams

At a bar

In a glass

Where it's not ... what ... it .... seems

 

So I stared (so I stared so I stared yes I stared)

Up at you (up at you up at you up at you)

Your face looked nice and swell as you became my Jane again

But my memories are now as deep as anything you'd care to say

C'mon let's rock our cares away forget about our awful pain

On this Memor-mor-mor-mor-mor-mor-mor-memorial Day

 

Like a ghost

Like a girl

Like the girl of my dreams

At a bar

In a glass

Where it's not ... what ... it .... seems

 

You got your past and I got mine

Let's order up another six of wine

 

***

 

Trio

 

"A most cunning exploit"

 

In response to perennial complaints about society's reluctance to battle against the system, GOVERNMENT today announced a wholesale re-ordering of space to be followed some hundred years hence by a wholesale re-ordering of time.

"It's been thoroughly costed and is affordable in the longest run, with synergistic interdepartmental combinatives and redundancy-coöperative effectuals tasked aboveboard," we quote.

Phase one rolled out at six AM this morning as GOVERNMENT benevolently displaced the residents of Industrytown to allow a modest corps the privilege of inflicting landscape improvements upon the now-deserted domiciles through the deployment of saplings and shrubberies on the fifth floors of all buildings rising more than sixty metres (one hundred and ninety-six feet) off the ground as commonly understood.

"What will come as a result? Frankly, we don't know," we quote. "Innovation often comes at the price of destructive novelty; if only we could convince our recalcitrant opponents this, streets would be forests and forests streets. Reason. Sweet Reason. More reason."

In other news, the window of discourse shifted this week to some extent as upwards of 22% of Canadians appeared A.O.K. with voting for a political party whose leader is demonstrably more racist than I am.

 

*

 

Where are youse now, and where have youse been?

This is the mighty question facing all aspiring novelists, in the brief and telescoped days before the creation of their journeyman effort, as this paper-weight and that paper-colour are judged to rejection, as this Indian peacock quill and that Indian ink are queried qua viscosity and density. They test out phrases in their notebooks, judging them by their ratios of ascenders and descenders and curve and straight. They pull apart large scales and small, asking themselves: "What restrictions will I put on paragraph length?", "Will dialogue be marked or unmarked?", and "How many words must I misspell in order to belie not carelessness?"

And as they perambulate from stationery shop to university canteen and back again, allatime percolating expression via the mode of production inherent, who knows but that perhaps they may arrive will-i-nill-i at a thought or two worth expressing? Stranger things have happened, haven't they? Haven't they?

Suppose. Something new, something radical, may emerge. A new thought - not shopworn, not conformist, and most definitely not I.W.W. When that event takes place, pray all its metadata remain virtually unknown. The form must marry content - thus not for any market.

 

*

 

What's the best way to come to finally become a literary critic? Not to become the cock of the walk, but I believe I have a tip for you all. This is shooting out to you all, to every Gary, Mary, Stevie, Tammy, and all within range out there. Back in those schools I fired my rockets at, we learned all the terms and all the measures. In the seminars we tried to be honest, not to beat around the bush, not to muff it in other words - because we were all after all spending a lot of money to be there, you see - yet we were all groping for some truth - but it always slipped through our fingers. We could easily find the climax of the narrative, and the subsequent bittersweet falling action; but we didn't know how to come at it. Finally, Professor Dick Kooze let us in on the primal secret of all literary interpretation. He said: "The one rule to remember, the rule that will never be wrong in lit crit - or even clit crit - is:

"Simply: if you think something in a narrative is about sex - it's about sex."