On the evening of the 22nd, we got ourselves up in an array of
violently-hued finery, besmeared our faces with the evidence
of various ill-treatments and sallied forth into the garden
in order to properly celebrate the occasion of
Mlle. Pandora’s Holy Week of Whelping.
 The extravagant bloodbath tea party was
expertly orchestrated by the wondrous Mme.
who ensorcelled us with her culinary talents
in preparing a most marvellous repast of
chilled brains, extracted eyeballs, white chocolate
lady-finger-sandwiches, cakes and tartelettes galore,
a bleeding heart, and gorgeous poppyseed
birthday cake replete with edible blood-red poppies..
And of course, tea and champagne..
I  bow down before her mightiness, it is true-
and so should you!

Here she is before the fruits of her labours, with Mlle. Pocketmouse.

Behold the gory scrumptiousness!
Note the pointing finger pointing
at the finger sandwiches!
Tremble in awe!

My eye is broken now.
Maybe it’s punishment for flaunting
faux-wounds so brazenly.
Tomorrow is an Ice Cream Social
and Praying Mantis Mating Party
in honor of the Blue Moon,
which is really more pink, I think.
Then I’m going to Texas for a few days-
If anyone wants to go skinny-dipping.
Let me know.
I may return
with my mother’s fiddle.

The following message was pieced together randomly
from the ghosts and tatters of entries past.
A derivation of a derivation- spit up, hack and gurgle.
Divide, recombine and interpret. No new words. Only new meanings.
The randomizer can keep me busy almost endlessly-
Everything below has been written before.
Strange how even in this new Frankenstein configuration,
it still seems perfectly relevant to me.
It runs like so:
Running water is less than adequate.
my hidey-hole,
my sensory deprivation,
my sacred aqueduct is a shockingly small town, I’ll say that much.
We were, however, tossed out of the earth.
A cold room, filled with powdered lapis lazuli, feathers, gears, bits of map, theater-
The thought of packing up all of Italy..
The library there with case after case of the time- luck he says, eh?
Though I was here with all honours indeed.
I’ve been dreaming of children, toddling through fallow orchards
with a black rag and all old ceremonies falter and fall flat into dead space.
Also, I’ve got to design intertitle cards for the next axe to fall,
the other stuffed kind I had while curled up in the pantry,
and with a good many ruins.
You can read about it in full-force for a last dinner,
at which I hadn’t seen since I was shown how the world would end.
If plague and alchemy interest you, you should find this much to your liking.
I found it cold and stiff.
The thought of packing up all of my internal organs.
Please to see the shadows of large, slow-moving fish
moving through the mountains, spectacular and blue-
covered with a multitude of eyes..
They may have been too distracted to mention.
Also, I saw a giant red apple cart, howling with wolves as the operation fails-
her tiny face crumpling like a bad taste in my parlor: AN ACCIDENT –
In Padua we managed to postpone disaster
for just a little girl dressed as Ruthie the Duck Girl,
in a most aggravating and vociferous manner.
Sleeping on the street for hours also does deter.
Macbeth has always been my most vivid and frightening dream to date-
I have a feeling I’ll be taking a lot of them
Take away the hours of twelve and three.
While the Pursewarden spoke so brilliantly of Alexandria-
and the more he studied them the more he feared them.
My sacred aqueduct is a wolf.
Shrink is a blasted furnace.
Scars on his neck.
All of them “uniformly various and variously uniformed”
I’m still coughing up black lung frogs and planning my getaway.
Eating horse-head shaped gingerbread and manzanilla con anis.
Thank god for the address of an era, of us in this home this paradise-
Nothing connects, with all of our fish cases
have been too distracted to mention.
It’s good, near and not too far..
Look east, towards the sunrise and enormous rooms
that look cramped when filled up with a multitude of eyes..
Ah- I should have known then any sense of peace was to be killed
because she had gone blind in all three of her eyes.
I wondered if it was the custom of THESE PIRATES
to SUBDUE their prey, LOOT the ship, and BIND their captives..

I am dreaming:

It is night. I am sitting on the stone steps of a large and gracious manse- overlooking sweeping lawns hung with oak branches. I am reading a book, and wearing black underwear. A girl comes out and sits beside me. She comments that there is a crew of unruly youths who seem to be trying to attract my attention with repeated shouts of, “Catwoman! Hey, Catwoman!”. Which, apparently is a reference to my black underwear. I shrug, and go back to my book.

The girl nudges me again. I look up, distracted and slightly harried by this point, only to be met with the most intense dream-spectacle I have ever witnessed:

A cyclone of a circus has unfolded silently on the lawns before me. The roar of the animals and undulating, writhing activity of the scene is beyond organic- it has become a weather pattern. All the animals are a dirty white, grotesque, and utterly without sound- save for a dull humming. A white elephant, ears veined pink rears up directly in front of me- a ghostly challenger. White tigers and albino peacocks gambol about the ring. A polar bear wiggles and spins, dancing as if impaled on a spit- red mouth and yellowed teeth gaping. The sky is not quite dead-white, but more nacreous- pinky grey fish scales or petals shifting in the haze. Oil towers loom in the distance, all is dust. This is the midwestern nightmare- a monstrous carnival sapped of colour. This is where the white tornadoes come from. It was exactly as if I had stepped into one of ‘s paintings. The sky looked like this:

But I stepped inside it. Terrifying. It moved. It was talking to me.

Somehow I end up in a German steel mine,
thousands of miles beneath the surface of the earth.
It is a secret project.
Refugees, immigrants and gypsies all work the mine,
and I suppose I am one of them.
The enormous hydraulics system
runs perpetually in the Zigeuner-Kobold Mine.

I have a feeling that reading
“The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman”
(perhaps the only book by Angela Carter that I have not yet read..)
while in a fever-fueled delirium
of sudden illness surely brought on by
my hard-livin’ ways,
massive overexcitement of the humors
and this utterly diabolical heat
could have something to do
with such fantastical dreams, eh?

Also- I require immediate decapitation.
My skull had become so suffused with mucus
that I am no longer able to perform simple human functions.
I am now merely a hacking, sweating,
twitching, spitting shell of my former self.
I demand to be cryogenically preserved
in a glass coffin until at least October.
With a blue light on inside- you can keep it
in the corner of your room and
sing me songs when you can’t sleep.

A long absence which has been populated
with brass snails and rusty nails,
wire hangers bent into swan-shapes,
tiny paper parasols, and wishes sold
the ace of diamonds, the ever-present
gaming table, bones and dice-
signs, wonders and beacons.
A proliferation of spiders-
I stay in my lighthouse
and watch the storms
tear the sky apart in
arcing currents and
fiery white strobes
on blackened clouds.
I saw a rainbow from my bedroom window:

I found three white
strands in my tangled locks-
oh me, such a crone I have become!
Days and days sunk in bastard amber,
the cicadas roar and pink mimosas tickle.
All the birds in shackles, and I wear
chrysocolla housed in silver over my wrists,
and sweat in heaps of snarling sheets
while the rain beats in the open window-
dreaming of knives and spoons,
of sharks and saints..
The horse that crieth among the trumpets Aha!

The beginning of summer is always heralded by the
shriek of insects in the trees, the heady explosions
of crepe myrtle and bougainvillea, bees buzzing in
banks of periwinkle plumbago, the air heavy as
a dead wet dog wrapped around your head.
To alleviate (and celebrate) this heady season,
it is advised that sno-balls are consumed
in mass quantities- preferably under the
most enormous oak tree that ever was.
Or the biggest one I ever climbed,
either or- but you must climb it
even if you are wearing a long dress.
And also eating black cherries is
of utmost importance.
Especially whilst sitting in the
center of a fairy ring of mushrooms
beneath said gigantor oak.

The two on the right have such distinct little smiles.
Can you see them as well?
It’s a superstition here to kick them all over-
at least it would seem that way..
Has anyone else noticed this?

As for the sno-balls,
I highly recommend The Sno-Wizard-
a veritable emporium of delightfully
sugar-soaked shaved ices.
The very best are:
Vanilla Orchid Cream
and
Tiger’s Blood.

As you can see, Mme. P. favors the Tiger’s Blood.

My friend the inimitable Mistah Jaybird (aka. Kid Twist) and meself.
He look a little funny in that one, so let’s do the man right-
Here you can see how sweet- this here’s a good friend o’ mine:

And the loveliest Mlle. Dana, arrived from the wilds-
soon to return to Aix-en-Provence on reconnaissance
missions to determine how we might construct our empire.
Her eyes are sparkly blue jewels.
She came bearing the sweetest gifts-
the most wished-for blue dress (with pockets!)
and Diptyque’s L’eau Trois parfum (I swoon!)
She filled the house with roses and curly willow
and Mariage Freres tea (White Elephant)
and inspirations and plans for our migration
out of this horrid country.
Tanglewood Industries will reign triumphant!

Here is Pandora posing in the roots..
she is one of my oldest and dearest-
I have known her since she was 10.
Now we have set up shack together
and she is howling at the framed
(though now obliterated) doctorate
some poor man toiled at-
so far the glass over it has
broken twice- drawn blood
multiple times and then
there was a wild frog perched upon it!
The Haunted Diploma
is wreaking havoc upon our household..

There was another lovely foray
to this self-same oak
documented by 
and featuring herr   also.
I think I will be venturing there
as often as possible in the
following weeks..
You can peek at the ghostliness
here –  tiny balopticon

Little girls, it seems to say;
Never stop upon your way-
Never trust a stranger friend
No one knows how it will end..
As you’re pretty, so be wise-
Wolves may lurk in every guise.
Now, as then, ’tis simple truth:
Sweetest tongue has sharpest tooth.

CASE HISTORY

After the event Little R. traumatized. Wolf not slain. Forester is wolf. How else was he there exactly on time? Explains this to mother. Mother not happy. Thinks that forester is extremely nice. Grandmother dead. Wolf not dead. Wolf marries mother. R. not happy. R. is a kid. Mother thinks wolf is extremely nice. Please to see shrink. Shrink will make it clear that wolves on the whole are extremely nice. R. gets it straight. Okay to be wolf. Mama is a wolf. She is a wolf. Shrink is a wolf.  Mama and shrink, and forester also, extremely uptight.

-Words by Suniti Namjoshi
Images originally presented by the lovely

This morning, beginning around 5:30am
my world shifted and changed immeasurably.
The effects of this change, for the moment,
remain obscured and ambiguous.
New territory is being surveyed
with an assiduous eye.
Would that I could be less cryptic-
but it’s not for here..

Also, today being Mother’s Day
put me in for another pause,
as it always does. Normally,
it doesn’t affect me greatly-
but something about seeing
so many maternal visages
bustling about with candy roses
and pink cheeks made me
feel slightly forlorn.
I remember asking to sit
this one holiday out during
activity session in elementary
school- staunchly refusing
to make cards for my dead mother.
Even then I loathed exercises in futility.
I was told to make one for
my grandmother or my aunt, instead.
It’s been almost 20 years since she died,
and I don’t think I’ve even begun
to process the first decade.
Hum.
Anyhow, she was an incredible woman-
and I would have liked to have known
her, less briefly than I did.
The commonalities between us
are remarked upon as being
slightly uncanny- everything
from gesture and figure of speech,
to peccadilloes of taste and aesthetics.
I know it’s this way for a reason,
but I still can’t help feeling cheated.
I still sometimes do this ridiculous thing
when I see a middle-aged woman
with red hair, green eyes and pale skin-
wondering if it’s been a trick all along,
if it could be her- if she would recognize me?
Would I recognize her?
Her name was Margaret, which means “pearl”,
but always makes me think instead of
red cabbage roses trailing briars.

This is her, and one of her paintings.
She traded it for a Martin guitar
to a man who raised wolves.
He may have been her lover.

This is me before she died,
looking like I feel today:

I found out tonight that
my stalker is dead, two years
dead, actually- I just never knew.
He died in the psychiatric ward,
in prison of “unknown causes”.
He had stalked me for about four years-
and was arrested for it, twice.
Nobody ever really believed
that he was dangerous.
I had to testify against him
after he bludgeoned his mother
to death with several objects,
including a hammer,
pruning shears, and a rock.
He was found naked,
walking down the road
covered in her blood.

This was his mother,
at Alma de Mujer with
 “Madre del Mundo”.

I meant to write something other
than this today, and in fact, I did-
but this is what came out instead.
There’s more that I haven’t the words for.
And so I’ll just let it be.

Blast, blast, blast and hellfire!
Damnation! Suffering succotash!
I just got a trembly-voiced phonecall
from down at ye olde kaffeehaus
saying that some assclown left the
door to my frog Gustav’s tank ajar-
upsetting his delicately monitored
balance of humidity and causing him
to escape. He was found belly-up
on the kitchen floor. Alive, still yet.
Hopefully he will make it.
I really can’t have another frog
die (no, not croak- no laughing!)on me.
Poor Gustav. I’ve got to go bring him
home now- no more life in the public
arena- full of dangerous imbeciles..
And I got wrangled into doing an
interview with these German journalists,
for heaven’s sake. Goddamnit.
I feel just wretched.
My amphibious pal!

“In winter, the only men left in town
were either so young they were
in school or so old they were in bed,
or so spineless they sold things to ladies.
Everyone else was off in the pineries.
They got up at 4 and turned in at 10.
They swamped and sawed and snaked the trees.
They caught smallpox from each other
and clap from the girls in the dens.
They drank a lot and got caught by chains
and crushed by log jams.
Grudges got settled fast:
if a man was your friend, that was all;
if he was you enemy,
God help him or you.
The old fools got beaten
or strung up just to scare
some sense into them.
The younger ones got run out.
Sometimes a man would get
so used to the woods,
or so bitter about the people
in town, that he’d never go home.
He’d just put up a shack and
wait for the next freeze.”

I finally found, much to my great excitement,
the film homage to Wisconsin Death Trip-
an incredible book I have long adored,
by Michael Lesy, who also wrote
The Forbidden Zone-

No, no- not that Forbidden Zone!
Though if you haven’t yet been exposed
to either, any, or all of the above and the following,
well- you ought to be. I promise.

Also, just tearfully finished the final installment
of the Ken Burns’ Civil War Series, which is
quite, quite good. So sad it had to end.
Watching it reminded me of an odd job
I used to have- helping a quadrapalegic man
write his book about his lineage and
members of his family who fought
famously in the Civil War.
I spent many hot summer hours
re-typing piles of mimeographed
muster reports sent up from Hattiesburg.
Piecing together a history
from scraps of yellowed paper.
That’s what I like.

So, perhaps I’m beating a dead horse with all this
hub-bub about sailors and boats and such-
but here, finally are the pictures I promised then..

Here’s our drunken sailor, Sven (Yes! Sven, I shit you not!)
so ear-lie in the mornin’ being teased by the lovely mermaiden,
Missus June DiMorente and a wee pirate pocketmouse.

-Miss Pocketmouse Princess-
She stole his hat, and took a picture,
ear-lie in the mornin’..

The JUAN SEBASTIAN DE ELCANO. Such a beautiful boat…

I want a boat. I want to go sailing. Right now, please. Okay?

For more of an elegiac and frabjous view
(with sea-shanties in all the appropriate places!)
of this exciting frisson of salt-air into
our land-lubberly lives please see
or  , whose links I shamelessly filched..

In other news, I narrowly escaped being
mugged last night as I was coming home..
Does it count as a mugging if you got away?
Is it then simply “an incident”?
Whichever it was, it was damn scary.
I  knew better than to be walking home
late at night with sacks of laundry and
dollmaking bits loading down my bicycle,
(which I was using as a wheelbarrow).
As I came upon my house,
a man wheeled up to me on a lowrider.
A sinking feeling.
His approach was silent, huge dark eyes
staring, and he never said a thing
so it felt like some horrible dream.
He reached for my satchel,
but I wouldn’t let him have it
and the dogs set up a ruckus
and I was hollerin’ something awful
so in the end I guess he figured
it wasn’t worth the trouble.
It’s been four, almost five years
in this dangerous old town
that’s the first time anything
like that has ever happened to me.
It’s mainly just sad.

Have you ever been mugged?

What do you do with a drunken sailor,
what do you do with a drunken sailor,
what do you do with a drunken sailor
early in the morning?
Steal his hat and take a picture, that’s what-
I’ll put them up later when I have time,
but for now let me just say
that my morning was indelibly enhanced
by the sight of an adorable, dead-drunk
Spanish sailor peacefully passed out in a chair
at ye olde kaffeehaus..
The Spanish Armada has parked a 1920’s four master
in the river- I’m going to go give it a look-see
this afternoon when my work is finished..
Also, to anyone in New York-
If you have no plans for the evening,
please go see Michael Hurley at the
Knitting Factory tonight-
He’s one my favorite musicians..
And if he has a copy of
Hi-Fi Snock Uptown,
get it for me and I’ll
get you back!