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Filter by Category : Tag : Date

Filter by Category : Tag : Date

Dawn of The Dragons

Invictus

Beast Of A Different Burden

Sonbather

The Snowman

Almost Done Here

REMINGTON GRAVES

I’m writing this letter. Well, it’s not really a letter. It’s more like an entry. I heard on the television that writing your feelings down might help with your stress. And that it might help with your anger. Do you think that’s true? Hell, I wonder if it will help me get laid. I guess I can dream. I like playing checkers and watching birds sing. The yellow ones are my favorite. Sometimes I watch the Red Robins when I get sick of all the yellow. I also like the Italian women, at least all the ones I’ve seen in the girly magazines. So, anyway, I finally got around to it: I ordered the most beautiful rifle in the world–the Carcano rifle. I think it was made in the 1940s. Kinda heavy too. I wait patiently for it to arrive. March 12 is when I sent off for it. What the hell is taking so long? You know the japs are pretty smart fellas? For my money they’re gonna be leading the world one day, I’m telling you. Their ladies aren’t too ugly, either. Well, anyway, I paid extra dough for one of them precision fancy Japanese scopes to get fitted with it. I wonder if it’s gonna rain today. The rain scared all of us kids in the orphanage when I was growing up. You know the orphanage and the Marines have a lot of things in common, but I’m not gonna go into that. Stresses me out thinking about the past too much. Remember me telling you I was gonna get rid of that military general? Well, I bungled that. Oh, well, it was a fun try. My wife would leave me if she knew the things that go on in my head. But Russian broads are different, you know. They’re not like American girls. They know how to treat a man. But sometimes just some–

 

 

“Darling, are you still in here pushing that pencil again?” She said holding a glass of lemonade and wearing the lavender apron she thought made her look like an endearing house-wife.

“I’m almost done, here. Pour me a glass will you?”

∞

 

 

 

Notable Quotes

J. G. Ballard

“All over the world major museums have bowed to the influence of Disney and become theme parks in their own right. The past, whether Renaissance Italy or Ancient Egypt, is re-assimilated and homogenized into its most digestible form. Desperate for the new, but disappointed with anything but the familiar, we recolonize past and future. The same trend can be seen in personal relationships, in the way people are expected to package themselves, their emotions and sexuality, in attractive and instantly appealing forms.”

 

 

Grave

REMINGTON GRAVES

What atrocities had this aching angel of a fierce fall, turned to and tried and finally held fast all which she thought was good? The upside-down flames of red crashed against her pale and speckled shoulders, and she bowed with a curve and she hissed quite unhinged. It was a dance the way so maddeningly macabre her bare feet gyrated amid the wet grass under a missing moon, cutting large orange and yellow leaves to pieces. The night breeze beckoned and beckoned until the stars faded into an oblivious farewell. Her gown, half wet, clung to her breasts and wrapped between her thighs and nestled neatly in her cunt. An ivory temple–this maiden, with her pallid pillars turning into small hands with thin fingers did point into the infinite void–lush and languid the l’appel du vide. I had lost my place upon the planet as I did what shouldn’t and watched her unwelcomed from afar…mouth agape and tears streaming, cutting as they raced, my hands were two stuttering spiders searching for a hidden home. My feet complained of all the hours and all the days and weeks and years, I had stood waiting with supplication for a saint to save me, that would not come. Of sinners and saints, I know nothing of, for self-preservation is the highest law. And If he arrives and tempts you say, “yes” if yes is what you need to say. And if she appears pleasantly and queer, say, “no” if no is what you want to play. Show me the perfect lover and I’ll show you the grave.

∞

 

 

Before I Would

REMINGTON GRAVES

The sand felt soft in its warm coarseness as my toes made fists while she waved to me from the middle of the waves. Her blonde hair looked almost black. She was wearing the bathing suit her last boyfriend had bought her. I pretended not to know. She looked great in it, and it mattered not to me where it came from.  The golden strands from the sun then turned her hair to red as dancing shimmering diamonds bounced upon the water all around her: her smile blazed through the distance between us and her eyes squinted from overwhelming joy. I grinned as I imagined her pretty feet moving back and forth in the murky salt-water scaring all the jellyfish away.

She had convinced me to wear shorts; I never wore shorts–my skinny legs always kept me away from swimming pools and beaches as a child. My right hand shielded me from the sunlight as I bent slightly forward so as to see her better.

 

Her hand touched her lips and then extended to me as she puckered her mouth.

 

Satie’s Gnosienne No. 3 began in my mind but slightly off-key, and I knew…I knew she would say goodbye before I would.

 

 

And maybe, I already had.

∞

 

 

 

My Stripes Remain The Same

REMINGTON GRAVES

The alchemic stupor that lulled then pulled me under, brought with it bright dancing lights that invaded through my ears with such longing in its horrendous hiss, and with a slow frame-by-frame I saw the toilet bowl in my restroom and managed to turn my face leftward as it made contact with my marrow.

 

There, on the other side of that shitty blow, I awoke to find myself a singing bird–me, chirping and whirring violently, music notes of all kinds into the ionosphere, and with them color and shades that painted the trees and skies as they went. Values vitiating the monochromatic monotony of the masses and their complacent mortality. I was poetry pulsing and pushing.

 

The sound of men was cursively cacophonous, and above their heads I beheld them like lethargic moths staring at individual glaring lights–as they walked, as they drove, as they ate, hardly able to help themselves.

My song was so natural, a language all my own. I kept singing and singing, and singing alone was its reward. In such a state I had forgotten that I was ever a man. No hands to ponder upon, no legs to lead me…simply flight and song.

I continued on my voyage and came upon a skyscraper. There I saw my own appearance, an image so beautiful and terribly terrifying: A fowl of iridescent hues haunting the other side of my reflection, no doubt. On the other side was a woman who wanted me for I was of great beauty–but she wanted me to keep me in a cage and never let me fly again.  A thousand monks began to chant in baritones somewhere far below. My wings slowed to a pause and they pointed opposite each other, one to the west and the other to the east. Tiger stripes traveled stridently across the perfect plumage…comely clangor followed as the monks bit their tongues off…and I saw each tongue wiggle like lazy worms into a hole, into any dark hiding place.

 

 

Beeping brightly and sharply lifting my sticky and blood-dried eyelids, I awoke and rose slowly. Breathing calmly with each movement. I hit the light switch and stared in the mirror and mused for a moment at the striped pattern on the right side of my face.

And I wonder, even now, If I, Adrian Vino, was dreaming that I was a magnificent bird, or am I a bird dreaming now that I am a man?

 

Either way, one thing is certain, my stripes remain the same.

∞

 

 

Revenge Of The Nerd

REMINGTON GRAVES

Pink has always been the perfect color–pastel pink preferably; It is the color of soft cake, the hue of babies breath, the slippers that belong to blonde wives married to mob bosses, the tone swirling in the sink after I cough up a little blood, the tincture of the tramp who truly tells you all the things you want to hear…

 

And I hid this affection, this adoration of said tinge, for fear of the fellows fucking me up at the tender age of thirteen. Enter Tom Bruise on the television screen wearing those wayfarers the only way he could, and I saw the Izod whilst my reflection shook in his shades. Such heights of narcissism were risky business, I thought to myself standing in my tidy-whities and sport socks as the apparatus then known as the VCR struggled to clear a thin stream of static on the screen. What great technology, the neighbor would belt out over his fence admiring his own.

 

I knew then, a baby-pink alligator shirt was my next item of order. But how, oh how, would I, a punk, acquire such a fine garment? I wondered.

 

“We’ve got BUSH, we’ve got BUSH,” blared a character called Booger on the boob tube as I sat watching the women undress in a film called Revenge Of The Turds. I must have watched that thing a hundred times. And not just because of the gratuitous nudity, or the beautiful beaver shots, as I imagined Booger would say. I would count off the pink Polo shirts in every scene: four…five…six…Dug the music and the crude comedy. The golden-haired girls cheerleading for their chumps.

 

Now at the bruised age of forty, I own two handfuls of Lacoste shirts, of many colors and patterns…but my pride and joy hangs in the corner of the closet, ah yes, the pink…the pink polo. And every time I slide into such a bad ass t-shirt, I swear I can hear Bary Numan singing in Metal and I turn around sharply, in nothing but mentioned garb and point with both index fingers at an empty space and expect some young kid watching me…as he sits alone in a room because he’s afraid to go out of it in fear that his Uncle might beat him, his cousin might give him the why-don’t-you-run-away face, the world and all the pretty girls in it will reject him and remind him that he doesn’t belong with those spaghetti legs and crooked teeth…

 

 

Films by the Numaninator now kick in with its heavy bass line and sultry, slithering and colossal synth lead, and Lambda Lambda Lambda register by the wacky wizard of this pleasure principle–and now I know the truth: anything can happen–anything can happen. I was a nerd and still am, and fucking proud of it. I am successful at what I do: I have been tattooing almost fourteen years professionally , I have released a couple of music albums, I have painted for a couple of galleries in Los Angeles, girls get giddy when I garble on, I buy myself whatever my nerdy heart desires from groovy gadgets to radical records. I could keep going, but like a Fax-machine, you get the message.

 

As much as I love to wax on about my favorite decade, I need to stop here and get some sleep since it’s almost three in the morning, gotta be somewhere early. I will jump out of bed and moonwalk over to the crapper and commence the morning due. When I’m enshrouded in Polo and Ray-Baned, I will climb into my car where I feel safest of all.

 

But hear this: Your kids, the pathetic punks at the convenient store, the video-game-nerd of a nephew, the incessant reader at the park, the black-clad demons smoking cigarettes in empty parking lots with a little too much eyeliner…they will one day take over the world–they will bloom into your doom.

 

And I close this with one last thing…my ultimate revenge is: a happy life…without you.

∞

 

 

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