mostlygristle

[mostlygristle]

revenge body

https://newbodytapes.bandcamp.com/track/encounter

i think the tape is sold out. but please support my friend.

[mostlygristle]

Смотрящий

[mostlygristle]

six-word prompts for fellow unmotivated humans

let's see if i ruin everything

help me bake a circular saw

thousands of deer are fucking TOGETHER

everyone you know is now oval

everyone you know is now lava

man runs, man melts, melt runs

Thursdays are the Wednesdays of January

John Berryman, the human dial tone

the March Hare is bending galaxies

grope me while i build bird houses

your breath smells like burnt silence

motorcycles are everywhere, motorcycles are nowhere

7/11 was an outside job

sixty eggplants inside a Precambrian laptop

Jurassic Park now open for brunch

Let's Fuck South Dakota: The Movie

the cat is puking for world peace

spooky bunnies hide in candy dungeons

deodorant from the eighth star system

ornamental bowls full of discarded penises

an inside out bus station; sorry

Selected Poems of Jackie Earle Haley

there's an app for intestinal sandworms

let's grow our dad an ass

American Institute for Partially Eaten Crullers

high school hallway turned into coastline

Mona Lisa Overdrive partially hydrogenated oil

sky as kite, skyscraper as string

oh fuck off, history of Boise

swollen board game full of eels

Nerf pirates spotted off port bow

climb aboard the Sluiced John B

parkay floors understandably believe they're margarine

please vote wood paneling for president

slow grinding unheralded nocturnal navel emissions

your grandmother's face as an armchair

we're crossing the bridge of byes

my window needs new face lotions

folded library folded into a library

i-285 as an alternative to living

laser removal scars (taco bell tattoo)

colony of manifestos with hexagonal crying

dunkin donuts parking lot goth culture

chicken poems for the teenage soul

[mostlygristle]

the house i grew up in has been condemned

i drove past it the last time i was home

home means something different now

it means driving 1000 miles

to look at things dead and dying

the house i grew up in has been condemned

the freestanding basketball hoop i bought

with lawnmower money in the 5th grade

still stands free in the driveway

awaiting sick dunks

the house i grew up in has been condemned

it will be a restroom in a mall some day

people will piss in the basement where

i stored my bike and first saw porn

under a dusty bulb

they will bag up khakis along the fence

where my neighbor grew small

bitter tomatoes

the house i grew up in has been condemned

but because i am starved for beauty

i hope cashiers will take their breaks

where my deaf cat sunned himself

and feel a passing warmth

[mostlygristle]

Couldn’t find this listing again, but the seller was VERY indignant about “time wasters” not taking this dreadful moss-covered couch off his hands.

[mostlygristle]

the spiderman pointing meme but it’s godzilla and mechagodzilla

aesthetic of the day is kaiju gesturing at each other

[mostlygristle]

everyone wants to be the hero or the villain

i want to be the weapon

plunged into an enemy’s chest

separating fibers and loosing fluids

drawing the air into a body

my handle held warm and firm

and afterward

tossed in a wet street hole

down where the rats chill

and enjoy their perfect

letterbox view of the moon

they will feed on the blood i wear

and i will say to them

in a small and knifely voice

i love you all

and i will feel a part of so much

[mostlygristle]

Jim Carrey Is Standing Up Again

Jim Carrey is doing a stand-up comedy tour on car dealership rooftops. The title of this story is the title of the tour. He hopes it will revitalize his career.

For the first 15 minutes of his act, Jim Carrey assembles a contrabass saxophone with his back to the audience. A man in the front row becomes very upset by this. The man’s son starts crying and begging Jim Carrey to please stop assembling the contrabass saxophone.

Jim Carrey does not respond. He puts the contrabass saxophone in a big cardboard box, wraps it thoroughly with packing tape, and drops it in front of the upset man.

Without an introduction, a short documentary film is played in which Jim Carrey visits a monastery where they harvest black truffles. The monks were given the land by a wealthy woman with a passion for gardening. The areas where her vegetables and flowers once grew have been roped off. The monks never make a sound, except once a day when they gather in the hull of the boat they dragged up from a nearby beach and yell incoherently until they are hoarse. The monks take Jim Carrey on a tour of a vast medical facility full of big, ominous machines beneath their property. Jim Carrey looks uneasy for the entire 45min runtime.

Then, a couple, both covered in birthday cake, stand in front of his standup routine and have a loud, tearful quarrel ending in one of them attempting to jump off the roof and having to be stopped by security.

The show ends with a member of security revealing that under his uniform he is wearing a full pantyhose bodysuit and nothing else. Jim Carrey is confused. He asks him questions. Then, one by one, all of the crew take off their uniforms, revealing they are also wearing pantyhose bodysuits. Jim Carrey removes his clothes, partially out of concern that maybe he too is wearing one and just forgot, and partially in the hope that it will be a fun surprise for the audience. Instead Jim Carrey is sad to find he is now nude on a stage on the roof of a car dealership. He lowers his microphone and cries quietly. Security asks the audience to please leave. Jim Carrey stands nude and alone and crying on a dark stage.

[mostlygristle]

rapture by blondie

i always thought the first line of the rap was

“fab five freddy told me everybody dies”

[mostlygristle]

tfw you forget an awful person’s name

[mostlygristle]

iphone notes #1

when grief drops in and a large part of you feels nothing and another smaller secret part of you watches the part feeling nothing and gets upset

[mostlygristle]

excerpt

jamie is 12-years-old. she is sitting in the passenger seat of the honda civic. her dad is yelling at her. he is saying she didn’t try hard enough; that she has to “want it”, that she has to “want to do better.”

jamie is not looking at him. she is looking at the smoke from his cigarette turn from blue to gray. she is looking down at the sweating, sun-warmed gatorade bottle half full of cloudy blue fluid, half-filled with cigarette butts. she is looking at the beads of moisture collected near the top. she thinks about the contents of the reflection. she feels herself sweat and her heart rate climb. she thinks of the hundreds of beads of garbage moisture reflecting the sweat. she feels the panic hit her and begins screaming. the car is too small to contain the screams. her father covers his ears and flees the car. nearby car alarms sound. starlings fill the sky. the windshield cracks.

when they get home, jamie hides in her room. she hears through the thin apartment walls her dad tell her mom “a rock did it.”

[mostlygristle]

are u cool with people getting tattoos inspired by your works? ie a few lines or smth similar. also, needless to say, i love your work and the general vibe you've got going on

wow thanks so much! and yeah, if you do, send me a pic!

[mostlygristle]

trad gras och stenar

i hear sieve and think “civ”

like 104 in roman numerals

like the video game franchise

like the college course

like civilization

the best we’ve ever been is a sieve between a farm and a sewer

from new dirt to the used dirt

i can’t even call life strange

because i have nothing to compare it to

except rocks and water

i know nothing of space except how it makes me want to lie on the ground and give the grass my eyes

i saw space in the desert once; that shit whips hard

it’s big as fuck and fuck seems really big

bigger than the ocean which is now 88% shit

water seems way stranger than life

did you ever look at a bug

it’s nothing like water, really

[mostlygristle]

i was born drowning

i can't doggie paddle but i love saying it

doggie paddle

i was born drowning

held by the world like a mirror holds thunder

i haunted the ICU for weeks like

i see you

i see you telling my mom to start grieving

to lift her mourning up and swaddle

hold it like the ocean holds the shore

i was born drowning

i was born drawing

a breath is a line is a wall

a thing that we share that keeps us apart

my lungs are shit

and i still sink

but i do not sink still

[mostlygristle]

i found this on an old hard drive

in 2003 i went to the doctor. i didnt go to the doctor. i went to a pediatrician. i never got an adult doctor. i went to my pediatrician's office. my pediatrician had retired a few years before. i sat in the waiting room. i waited in the waiting room. toddlers looked at bubbles rise in a fish tank. a boy with an eye patch moved a wooden train car along a wooden track. receptionists looked at me. i moved the hair on my chin with my fingers. i crossed and uncrossed my legs. i was called in to an exam room. i sat on a sheet of paper on a exam table. i looked at a scale made for weighing babies. i moved to the low metal stool beside the hazardous waste bin. i looked at the hazardous waste bin. i moved back to the exam table. the hem of my jeans loudly tore the sheet of paper. a nurse came in and asked me why i was there. i had a lot of answers arranged in my head in preparation for the bracketed implications in this question. such as why are you [a twenty-one-year-old] here [in the exam room of a pediatrician's office? or why are you here [cuz like you are clearly not an adult because you would have an adult doctor but you have hair on your face and your voice is deep and why why are you here what are you what the fuck are you you not-baby not-boy not-teen bad-adult]? i told her i had a lump at the base of my neck and wondered what it was. she listened to my heart beating through a cold metal disk attached to earbuds by a long tube. she wrapped my arm in nylon and velcro and squeezed a rubber balloon until my veins bulged and felt sore and my skin itched. she took notes. she looked at a folder. i imagined it was annotated with amazon.com reviews of my medical history. 'two stars.' '7 out of 12 pediatric nurses found this review helpful.' she looked at the lump on my neck. it looked like neck skin if neck skin were stretched over a clear glass marble. she left the room. i read three sentences in an issue of parenting magazine. twenty minutes later the nurse reappeared with a pediatrician. before she entered she knocked. i assumed she knocked just in case i had decided in the interim to disrobe and shit myself like all the other patients. i used the opportunity to put the issue of parenting magazine back on the side table. the pediatrician repeated what the nurse said i said regarding the neck skin glass marble. she examined the neck skin clear glass marble. she felt it with her fingers. she asked if it hurt. i said no. she said it did not feel warm. this seemed strange because i am warm. she said it looked 'okay,' that it looked 'benign'. she took off the gloves i hadn't noticed her put on. i was preoccupied by the seashell art on the wall. she told me to keep an eye on it. she told me to keep an eye on my neck. if it got bigger, that was bad. if it changed color that was also bad. she did not explain 'bad'. i said 'ok' and was released.

in june of 2007 i went to italy. while in italy i went to greece. while in greece i went back to venice, italy. in venice, italy, i got drunk. i slept on the steps of the train station. two crust punks from northern italy, both wearing kreator t-shirts, tagged an anarchy 'A' on the pavement in front of the steps, then passed out next to me with the paint cans still in their hands. i woke up when the cops walked by around 3am. the cops looked at the 'A'. the cops looked at me. the cops looked at my friends. the cops looked at the sleeping punks. the cops kept walking. i waited til they passed to brush a moth out of my hair. i pulled the safety orange button-down shirt i was using as a blanket over my face. i got up when i heard the bakery nearby putting out metal patio chairs that scraped the concrete. the sound left the concrete and went directly to hairs on the backs of my ears. i got a coffee. i put whiskey in my coffee. i got a piece of bread. the bread tasted like a ham sandwich. there was no ham. i put more whiskey in my coffee. later i got drunk. i passed out face first in pigeon shit at the base of a lion statue and woke up from the heat of the sun. gondoliers were taking pictures of me and laughing. i headed back to the train station. i stopped at the bakery again and bought a caprese sandwich. i ate the sandwich on the platform while i waited for my train to florence. i thought about florence rosarbo, a girl i went to high school with, who loved madonna and wore platform flip-flops. she was the first person i ever heard call the police 'the po-po': 'uh oh, here come the po-po in the know-know.' i noted the sandwich tasted funny. the train arrived and i found a window seat easily. i noticed i smelled bad. i noticed my hair made a noise when i ran my fingers through it. i noticed a sunburn on my forehead. i noticed the base of my neck was aching. it had been aching for hours. i rubbed it with my hand. i began to feel sick. for a moment i thought the two sensations were linked. then i thought about the sandwich. then i noticed the neck skin glass marble had doubled in size. then two american moms sat next to me. one mom said 'you look like you've been having a good trip.' we talked about new jersey. i felt more nauseous. my skin felt warm; my insides felt cold. the neck skin glass marble felt soft and warm. it did not feel hard and dense. i got off the train in florence. i slept in a public park on a bench by a fountain. i woke up with a fever, muscles feeling exhausted from tightening against the cold, and with the urgent need to shit. i shit at a bakery. i ruined my underwear and threw them away. i paid a man at a hostel 15 euros to let me use the shower. i felt the neck skin glass marble. it felt warmer than the rest of me. in the mirror it looked red. it looked sore. i took a train to rome. i slept between two dumpsters. i woke up still feverish. i went to twelve public restrooms. i threw away three more pairs of boxer briefs. i took a train to milan and a bus to the airport. i used the train station bathroom. i used the airport bathroom twice. i threw out another pair of underwear. i slept on the airport floor. i flew ten hours back to atlanta. my mom picked me up at the airport. at her house she took my temperature. it was 102. she asked how long i had been sick. i said at least four days. i said 'also my neck. the thing on my neck.' she said, 'oh no.' she let me sleep in her house. i slept for two days.

in mid-july of 2007 i packed to move to nantucket to take care of a house. i was suicidally depressed. my ex-girlfriend came to help me pack. she had dumped me three days before in a bar called manuel's tavern. she asked what was on my neck. 'the same thing that's been on my neck since before i met you.' she said 'why is it so big?' i said 'i don't know.' we packed the car. i drove to new haven on my way to nantucket. i slept on a friend's floor. my ex moved to new haven to go back to school two days after i arrived. she asked if i had been to a doctor yet. i said no. she asked how long it had been big and swollen and hot. i said two weeks. she said, 'i am driving you to a clinic right now.' i said, 'no i will go to my doctor. i will go to my retired pediatrician's office.' she said 'ok, but you have to tell me what happens. i'm worried. go today.' i called my mom. she said the same thing. 'go today. i am worried. please go today and tell me what they say.'

the next day i sat in the pediatrian's waiting room. parents held crying infants. parents and infants and toddlers and children looked at my green hair. a nurse called me in. in the exam room i showed the nurse the purple soft hot neck skin balloon. she felt it with gloved hands. she took my temperature. she felt the purple soft hot neck skin balloon again. she hurried out. she came back a few minutes later with a pediatrician. the pediatrician said hello and pushed her brow over her eyelids. i her showed all my teeth and raised my eyebrows until they were in the middle of my forehead. she felt the purple hot soft neck skin balloon. she and the nurse spoke outside the door with the door open. when they came back in the pediatrician said 'what you need we can't give you here. your cyst is infected. it needs to be drained. it is dangerously close to your brain. if the infection spreads, it is going to kill you. it would be what they call an office surgery but i can't do that here. you should go to the emergency room. you should go today. you should go as soon as you leave. we won't charge you for today. i'm sorry.' i said ok. i went outside and sat in my car. my mom called and i told her what they said. she asked if i was going to the hospital now. i said maybe. she yelled at me. i hung up. my ex-girlfriend called me while i was parking in downtown new haven. i told her what they said. she asked when i was going to the hospital. i said i didn't know. she asked where i was. i said 'york street; the car is running.' she said, 'keep the car running, i am walking over now and we are going to the emergency room.' i said i didn't want to go. she said, 'fine i know of a clinic. you drive, i'll tell you how to get there.' i knew where the clinic was but didn't say so. ten minutes later she got in the passenger seat and said, 'ok let's go. this is ridiculous. let's go. c'mon.' i drove to the yale medical clinic in branford. i explained why i was there to the receptionist. i sat back down. a few seconds later i was called in by a nurse. i walked through the swinging doors and looked back to see my ex pacing, her arms crossed, her head turned towards the window and the afternoon sunlight hitting car windshields. the nurse took me to an exam room and handed me a gown. i disrobed and put on the gown and waited on the exam table. a physician came in and asked to see the cyst. i moved the collar of my gown and he touched the cyst without gloves on. he said 'ok, we are going to have to drain that. it's a malfunctioning sweat gland. sweat glands are supposed to have a membrane on them to let out the sweat. this gland does not have a membrane. the sweat that's built up in this cyst has gotten infected. ok?' i did not understand which part of what he had said i was supposed to reply to so i said, 'ok.' he said he would be back in a few moments and in the meantime i should get into the seat set up on the other side of my room. i was to put my face in the padded ring at the head of the chair. he said he would be back shortly. i did what he said. i could feel the blood collecting in my face. when the door opened i heard several pairs of feet instead of one. 'i hope you don't mind, i brought some students so they could see this procedure. it's a non-sterile surgery. they might not get to see one of these otherwise. is this ok?' i said, 'of course, go ahead. bring as many as you want.' i felt myself smile. i heard the physician move a table with instruments on it closer and sit down on a stool. he wheeled the stool over to me until i saw his shoes through the face rest. the physician began saying something about anesthetizing the area before making an incision, but one of the students interrupted to ask why they were all wearing goggles and masks. i perked up. 'is it going to blow up?' i asked. the physician and the students laughed. the physician said, 'yes there is quite a bit of pressure so it's possible once i make an incision it will burst.' i felt him put something soft around my neck. 'this is so cool. i'm bummed i won't be able to see it. can someone take a video of it?' i heard the students laugh. i was very excited. i felt the pinch of a needle and then another. shortly after my shoulder felt like it was filling with hot wet sand. shortly after i felt was i thought was the tip of a ballpoint pen draw a line down my cyst. instead it was a scalpel. i could feel pressure released the cyst. it felt like my shoulder exhaling. the physician explained to the students that in a non-sterile surgery, there would be no stitches because the cyst would need to drain over the course of a few weeks. 'i'm going to pack this with gauze and leave a piece of gauze out to help the cyst drain. i'm going to prescribe you something for the pain when the local wears off and some full-spectrum antibiotics. you'll need to take them every day. they're going to make you tired, so i would suggest taking them before bed. ok? also you'll need to eat something with probiotics in it because the antibiotics will kill most of the bacteria in your body including possibly the beneficial bacteria in your intestines. you'll need to change the bandage every day and make sure the cyst is draining. ok? you might have to apply some pressure to get it to drain. ok?' i said, ok. he put a bandage over the cyst and relocated the table of equipment and pulled the soft thing off my neck. i stood up and thanked him. on the table i saw the soft thing. it was a big napkin. it was covered it what looked like black coffee. the cyst had exploded.

in the car on the drive back to new haven my ex asked to see the prescriptions. she stopped when she saw the physician had prescribed me 40 vicodin. i parked they car. she turned to me. 'i want you to throw this away.' i said 'but it's going to be painful. he said i would need something once the local anesthetic wears off, which it's already doing.' she said, 'i need you to promise me. promise me, ok? promise me you will get rid of this. do not fill this prescription.' i asked why. she said, 'i know you and i know how you're feeling.' i stared at the steering wheel. i felt it vibrating in my palms. the tips of my fingers shook. 'ok i will.'

i filled the prescription for the antibiotics at the walgreens near the house where i was staying. the pharmacist told me about wanting to take a road trip so he could eat at sonic. 'we don't have them up here.' i took the meds back to the house. i changed the bandage in the bathroom. i squeezed the cyst. it hurt. some blood and what looked like mayonnaise and oatmeal came out of the hole. i wiped it off with a piece of toilet paper. i squeezed it again. again it hurt. again some blood and mayo and oatmeal. i put a new bandage on. i take a pill and lie down on the air mattress. the pill made me tired in a few minutes. i thought about the vicodin prescription i left in the car. i wondered how many it would take to kill me. i thought about the throbbing. i felt the throbbing and turned over. i wondered again how many. i wondered how long. i wondered where i should take them and when. an hour passes. i got up and put on shoes and walked quietly down the stairs. i got in the car and found the prescription in the pocket of the driver's side door. i tore up the prescription and carried the pieces upstairs and flushed them down my friend's toilet. i laid back down on the air mattress and fell asleep.

i woke up feeling sore and anxious. i took two 400mg motrin and felt slightly better. i called my mom and told her about the vicodin. i changed the bandage and squeezed the cyst. less blood came out. the same amount of other stuff came out. i drove to american apparel. i tried on a striped v-neck t-shirt. when i turned around to look at the back in the mirror, i saw a pink and oily stain near the collar. i took off the shirt and saw the bandage leaking and a lot of blood. i put my shirt back on and put the v-neck on a rack outside the dressing room and hurried out to my car. i called my mom on the way to the clinic and told her something was wrong. at the clinic i was told i needed a prescription for a different antibiotic. 'take this one in the morning and take the other one at night. ok? we don't want the infection to spread again. ok? if it bleeds this much again tomorrow, come back and we can see what to do then. ok?'

i filled the new prescription and called my mom. she asked if i was ok. i said i didn't know how to answer the question. she said that was ok and to think about it and call her back.

three days later on the drive to hyannis i thought about the two full-spectrum antibiotics. i thought about all the bacteria they were supposed to kill and all the bacteria they might accidentally kill if i didn't eat enough yogurt. i imagined a lower g.i. infection. i imagined a g.i. joe action figure with a distended abdomen. i thought about how i would be alone on an island for several months with nothing to do but make sure the house didn't burn down. i thought about alcohol. i thought about drinking so much i wouldnt feel the cyst. i wondered how long it would take for the cyst to get infected again. i thought about being on a beach at night drunk and dying of a brain infection. i let my brain be filled with this image. i imagined wearing a shirt with a blood stain. i imagined a stranger finding me in the morning with a bottle of bourbon in one hand and a pack of unfiltered pall malls in the other. i pulled into a motel parking lot. i paid for a room for the night and fell asleep to the sound of 'monday night raw'. six hours later i woke to the sound of construction in the next room. i checked out and got in my car and drove to the port. i paid for my ferry ticket. i paid $125 for my car's ferry ticket. on the ferry i ate a bagel and drank coffee and read part of hunter s thompson's 'hell's angels' and took a thirty minute nap in the driver's seat of my car. i got out and walked to the front of the ferry. i saw a lighthouse at the end of a pier. i saw the diorama of an island full of houses become larger. when they became full size we docked and i decided i should take my first pill of the day. i pulled one out of the bottle in my bag and swallowed it with a gulp of cold black coffee. i thought about the stain on the napkin in the clinic. i thought about how i'd never learned to sip. i heard the ferry bump into the dock and, momentarily, felt my legs fail to hold me up. i grabbed onto the railing and waited for another bump. the ferry had docked. the water was still moving.

[mostlygristle]

my dream is to overthrow the government without having to talk to another person about it

400 million people

all thinking the same thing

and knowing it

hopefully

advancing

like a belch in the throat