House of Nezua [Libro]

took luna to the park and on the way she perks her head up noticing it’s especially crowded
i say there’s a lot of people here today, hunh?
she replies softly with was it pride? almost protectively they’re all my friends
and i am almost overcome with tears right there in the lying sunlight

relationships…devices people use to control love, and other people. does anyone love freely anymore? to love? and to celebrate a spirit in our lives? or that we can share time with someone? does anyone give love away because they love loving? and want to help you grow? or does everyone come with a bottom line, a codicil, a demand. people…we don’t even know what love is. to many, it is something in there somewhere, behind all the other attachments that guarantee us nutrients and objects and situational leverage. we forget that in love is freedom. and removed from it, love dies….we use our feelings as a volley, we send them out expecting a return. often when we don’t get it the way we want, we bare our teeth. is this, love, then? are lovers people we would bite to death if our kisses were denied?
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i went to the art store yesterday and spent twenty dollars on pens. twenty dollars is no small expenditure and no casual choice when you need five thousand dollars or so for your mouth. but i won’t let poverty crush me, steal pens and color and joy from me. so i went and decided to bring home a good pad of paper and a pocketful of pens.
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so today is the day of the root canal that i hope will end this immediate crisis, which is a toothache that recedes and flares up at will and to such a degree that my life gets hijacked over it. of course, that is not really the issue. the issue is the broken teeth and the decay, and the pain is just the body saying GET THE FUCK WITH IT, KID. i still am amazed that to keep your teeth as whole as possible you need to pay about two thousand dollars for a tooth needing root canal and crown. but they’ll yank it for $100 or so. as if whole teeth are a luxury, as if chewing doesn’t become very hard when your teeth aren’t meeting up and healthy, as if you dont feel like something ugly and shameful when your smile begins to fall apart. but some of us can’t even afford the preventative work very often, or regularly. that’s why the poor people have gaps in their mouths so often. that’s why rich people can have such pretty smiles. i hate their pretty smiles like diamond lights winking down on the toothless and toothachey and toothwanting. i hate it like i hate all the gaps that stand between the hardships of the poor and the well-padded pantries of the well-to-do. i wanna be the santadontist for poor people; i’ll come round at dawn and hand out pictures of myself pulling rich people’s expensive dental work apart in the middle of the night. if we can’t bridge the gap one way, we can do it another…

it’s always a bit intriguing to me…sad but not in a way where i pity. it’s a desperate understanding i have for these people. it’s a horrible ache to uncurl the fingers, even if i’ve never touched them, watch them, drop them, on their way to the sun. those people you meet who burn with such a windwhipped flame, blown skyward by indignation or a festering fury or an inseparable sadness that they shoot inexorably on an arc aimed perfectly toward their own destruction. their lives are upended, spiraling, fractured, always darkening and utterly gothic tales of wreck and ruin. the friction and conflict they meet on their jagged way seems to soothe their overheated souls and they only respond to each incident with a deeper lean forward.
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anyway yeah i think after july 6, i may actually be able to at least get my loudest tooth taken care of (can’t afford the crown that will be needed tho) so i can begin sleeping and laying off the ibuprofen. i’m really sticking it to my liver lately trying to drown out the pain from this tooth. between whiskey and ibuprofen, i’m kickin that thing around like a heavy bag. but what are you gonna do? trust me, liver health at this point is pretty abstract. pain that makes your actual hair hurt and gets you from sleep to pacing in five seconds? that’s something you deal with, whatever’s on hand will do!

but july 6 is when a check clears. and its at least big enough to light up the dentist’s eyes i hope. enough to get me in there and have the decay drilled out of this tooth. even just doing THAT would probably give me a lot of relief. altho honestly, i think its so close to the nerve at this point that if they go in, they’re gonna take the whole nerve out and good, is say! begone! your nest has been disturbed, your peace shattered. there is no more protection for you and so i wish you well, nerve. sorry i couldn’t take care of you better.

one day i’ll write the story of what happened to my teeth this time around, what happened with my stomach, how that whole volcanic thing began. it began when i was working at a place…well, i haven’t told many stories about that place. but when i do, trust me. you’ll understand why my stomach started erupting acid. although i almost think telling is the worst way to talk about that experience. painting would be much better. but you’d need sound, too definitely.

yeah, i definitely see an entire series in my future on that job. that “friend.” i shouldnt put it in quotes. i befriended him, so be it. i should not try now to devalue it. but how much can you befriend a boss? and a boss like him? but…i saw the good part of him…so yes. i was his friend. yeah. that doesnt mean i won’t tell the story exactly as i lived it, tho.

anyway, that started it, and shortly after, just trying to “make it’ in the city deepened it. and here i am trying to remember what’s important. peace of mind. an open heart an open mind. but you can’t just let anything in. you can’t just let anything into your heart and your mind. or you can, but there will be consequence. your body may not like it. the body is the agent with two feet on this plane, the body talks to the world about what the mind and heart are doing. especially if the mind won’t listen to the heart. then the body talks louder.

i was trying to write about how everything is connected in my first essay to the think tank institute that just made me a Fellow. i figured i’d use the place to get abstract, to try and flesh out important larger patterns i see; to try and offer paths toward new, effective, expansive progressive thought. the first edit back suggests they want less of a “meditation” and more of a coherent and strident argument for ‘progressive values.’ maybe they called it a “meditation” cuz its mostly questions. i thought they were good ones. i think a good question is worth ten good answers. i’ll see what i can get going on the next edit, which i have to give them today.

my favorite part of ben by michael jackson is how he sings notes from the relative minor but over the (major) tonic. that creation of a tension, and an incidental third addition, tells the part of the song that words never will.

i’m a tooth scientist now. and in my experimentation this morning i realize i have a achieved a great victory in my field, being the first to devise (or at least the first to advertise) a sugar alarm that is wired directly from the mouth to a drill planted deep in the jawbone, with (optional) filaments that extend into the neck, as well!

go ahead and ring it for only ten or fifteen seconds and in no time at all you will feel as if your left eye is trying to sag out of your face, and your jaw weighs four hundred pounds. (pain itself is extremely heavy, that is why it turns your hair white and makes your mind empty.) now, that’s an alarm you won’t sleep through!

one swig of something like the popular drink known as “coffee” and in three seconds your alarm will be first moaning, and then outright screaming! the reaction is almost instanteous, it’s a very impressive device with extremely organic and complex circuitry.

TO RESET

to reset alarm, simply brush open area of tooth (you will need to break a tooth in half to construct the alarm) with cold water for a moment. however, unless you brush out the entire mouth (tongue too!) your saliva will contain minute sugar traces and they will set the alarm off again. this is a scenario in which you can experience the “fade in” behavior of the alarm. simply brush out entire mouth out to prevent this “Fading in” of the “alarm” sensation.

SENSITIVITY:

should you desire to do anything ridiculous or “extreme” like drink an entire cup of coffee rather than the far more reasonable sip, it is advised you stand in the bathroom, brush in hand. you will need to brush after every swallow. yes, the alarm is sensitive. the degree of sensitivity cannot be adjusted after the construction of your device, so remember to break the initial tooth carefully! for example, should the break run below the gum line, then the saliva will actually pool and rest inside the open area of the device, which will render your alarm with more or less of a hair trigger setting.

note: if the user attempts to drink more than a few swallows of “coffee” or any other sugary drink, the alarm will soon be ringing so intensely that the user will begin to lose the ability to think coherently at which point it may scare them to look up and see a disheveled, mopheaded person in the mirror with a cup of coffee and a toothbrush looking slightly annoyed, or grimacing, depending on what stage of this experiment is unfolding.

USES:

this device has many uses, mainly so that one may know at any point in the day when any particular foodstuff has sugar in it. the ability to detect is unerring, incapable of failing and immediate.

warning: it is not advised to eat candy or or any food designed to actually showcase the glucose molecule, as the food will actually lodge into the Detection Base (or “tooth”) and cause the circuits to overload which may crash your calendar application, and shortly after lead to deep draughts of whiskey.

UPGRADES:

Future iterations and upgrades of the Sugar Alarm include:
-Alarm that detects and is activated by room temperature air
-Alarm that detects and is activated by own saliva

i think everything’s gonna be okay but i have to map things out so i can move on full steam. i need a schedule. i need a team. i need a medivac crackerjack with a hacksaw and a dream. i need a tattooed third-eyed coffee-girl to wake me up with cream. i need a doe-toed plum-tongued bronze-strummed woolly velvet butter-laden seam. ooohh the ibuprofen did its magic for the moment and cut me off from the squirming static shaddering from a broken molar radio tower. and i even think that before long if i juggle my jobs and obligods right, i can strain out enough to lure the dentist into lending me his esteem.

for father’s day i got a puppy. luna got me a puppy. well, not really. more accurate would be to say that luna became a puppy for father’s day. that is, she peed on everything. she’s potty trained, but not fully independent with it. i must have forgot to have her go before bedtime, so she peed in my bed. and then the next morning on my chair, my computer chair. and the floor in my room as she hopped off the chair. it’s my fault. i didn’t adhere to the schedule of stops she needs to keep herself dry. in the end, she peed in so much stuff that i had nothing left to dress her in, and had to dig into the jumble in the closet to find something. so i spent most of the day doing laundry and scrubbing things and still it smells like pee to me. it may just be my overstimulated olfactory nerves but i’ll do some more cleaning tomorrow just to make sure everything is…well, not “golden,” but yanno. clean. what a day. yeh. when i realized she peed on my chair i just had to laugh.

pain and urine. it’s a sunday to soak into. and isn’t today some kind of holiday?

salud!

the pain is everywhere, it is a dancer, a frantic dancer, my nerves are fluttering with sensation so pure it is poignant, it is an orchestration of  song, my body melting into strains of  what might be music, i can’t be sure, it all bends during the intense moments and things overlap, i feel the roots of my dying tooth viciously sprouting into my jaw, i rub my neck to try and stop it from spreading, but i cannot, the heat flares up under my skin, my eyebrow, gently claw at my forehead to try and grab it, my skin shudders agony but then it fibrillates into near-orgasmic pleasure and i can’t tell where any of it ends or begins. for a moment the siren backs off and the relief that fills my heart is huge, but the dancer knows not what he wants yet, who he is, what is purpose and what is pointless and so the feeling swerves and doubles over and then blooms anew and half of my face radiating an invisible icy net and i try to think of what is in my hands, it’s three ibuprofen, i can’t remember what time it was, the last two i took were this morning, werent there also two at about four am? whatever, this will have to be it for a while and if this doesn’t work there’s always whiskey, the pain is now under my eye, it has its hateful, angelic, petal-thin hands scooped underneath my cheekbone and is cupping my eyeball with a panicky grip and i can feel the whisper-bright devil breathing, my eye beats like a quivering drum with each reverberation, i stare ahead and weep. all language has ceased to mean anything reasonable there is nothing left to do but dance

this is the spoken version of a poem i wrote on umx in september of 2007. the spoken version does not read all of the written, but that is because it felt complete at this point…the written one wanders elsewhere, but this felt like the right place to end it when i read it over a few times. ive been asked to read this one aloud, and it took me a couple years to do it, but here it is.

 

 Like Mango on the Edge of a Knife: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

From the Nectarine Meat collection of poems. Soon I’ll post a download link to this album in its entirety.