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Dawn of The Dragons

Invictus

Beast Of A Different Burden

Sonbather

The Snowman

Just Missed Him

REMINGTON GRAVES

“Sing, sing if you must, but sing loudly. Feel…feel like they do, like the rest of the bozos out there– don’t nibble on the trigger finger! You’re on the chessboard, like the rest of us, so make a move. Calculated ones are good, but don’t wait too long. You wait a long time and some other guys gets the girl. You hesitate and some other joker gets the job, gets the promotion. Smell the roses, sniff some panties, smell the brittle pages on old books. Drag your feet across recently polished floors at expensive hotels. And tell them I sentcha! Make love to a couple of women–at the same time. Tell them you love them, but don’t lie, mean it when you say it. Let them feel your hurt. Let them grip your hammer with their hoo-has as you take them by the throat and with your eyes say all the things they’ve never heard.  And with their cries that call you god, they surrender completely, they will want you to take them by the hand…into dark and thorny roads, where the asphalt ends, where right and wrong come to a halt and wave goodbye in the distance behind you. Get yourself a goddamned dog…name him Lucifer. Kiss a schizophrenic broad behind a bus depot and close your eyes through the penny-taste in her mouth and give her a romantic moment for heaven’s sake. Listen to your mother from time to time, I mean really listen to her. Sit down with her and have coffee, especially if it’s past your bed time. Remember, women are not your equal, they’re your better; we are lucky to have those celestial creatures care at all about their cowardly counterparts. I’m gonna tell you somethings, and if you repeat it, I’ll deny it: shoot something up a few times. Like morphine, don’t fuck around with heroin, that’s for spics and niggers. Of course, I was in love with a beautiful African girl in my salad days…good grief, did this woman have a behind, her ass was such a masterpiece it’d make bishops kick holes in stained glass windows. Face of an angel, this one. I’m getting off topic here. Listen to those old records no one wants to buy, the ones sitting in libraries: Schubert, oh shuby-shubes, Beethoven, Wagner, Liszt, Wolfy and the rest of those assholes. But listen, don’t just hear it. Get off that damn device and look around you or you’re gonna miss it, you hear me?! Drink cobra’s blood and get your dick sucked by a man…or two. Don’t tell your grandma I said that. And if at all possible…kill someone…but only if you’re certain you’re gonna get away with it, and it helps if they’re scum and you’re doing it for money–it sits better. Oh, my dear boy, the tigers I would tail tug to have your time…”, he said slowly aiming his chin at the ceiling and exhaling as he rubbed on the grey hair on his bare chest.

 

The beeping and hosed machines whirred and gurgled and the scent of mint garnished the garbage next to his bed which was tortuously turning his guts. The sound of a 747 vibrated on the windows slightly and he pointed at an empty chair.

 

 

“Dad, who were you talking to?”

“The child that came in here and woke me up.”

“We didn’t see anyone walk out, dad.”

“You must have just missed him.”

∞

 

 

Feels Good To Be The Boss

REMINGTON GRAVES

I am a loving mother of three beautiful and crazy children–a boy and two girls. A megabitch to my employees at a leading law firm in Boston. My Rage Grover runs all day to and fro and Starfux gets my business at least three times a day. The walk-in closet in my home contains designer everything in black and a few garments in dark-grey.My mother and father are very close and dear to me and I attend church with them at least two Sundays a month–I know it means the world to them. I attend my children’s plays and sports games, depending on the season. I was voted “most likely to make people laugh” my junior year in high school and some yearbook entries read, “…and to eat your lunch if you’re not careful.” Calling myself a porker would be putting it mildly. All my old friends, and those who I dreamt would be, now reach out to me on Facecrook to tell me how gorgeous and how much like a super model I have become. They claim they’re jealous of my success and I believe them. Wherever I go, I demand respect and set fire to insecure women’s hearts; their men stare and I pretend not to notice, I pretend not to care. The truth is, I am glad they notice…I revel in it. I take pleasure in knowing that when they tuck themselves in at night, and the husband spits on it before he slides into that old, dull hole, he’ll be thinking of me.

 

Today is Friday, and that means its “fun day.” I got off work an hour ago and am on my way downtown to meet Kalpi for a drink or two. I spray a small amount of Fod Tord’s Black Orchid into my cleavage and check my lipstick in the car before I walk in. Kalpi is an Indian girl I met at a bar a few months ago. It was a chance meeting and we hit it off quite well. We always have a good time with each other–she’s got a great sense of humor and an amazing body. We talk and drink and ignore the myriad of guys that hit on us. You should see the hate from these lame assholes. I have no time for little boys trapped inside men’s bodies.

 

 

“I am so glad you got a chance to come out with me tonight, Kalpi. Feels good to be free of the little devils for the weekend.”

“Of course, the pleasure is mine. We have an amazing time together, girl–always.”

“We do, don’t we? Hey, I forgot to tell you, I just hired another lawyer. He’s gonna be a great addition to the firm.”

“I envy how strong and successful you are, so driven.”

“Thank you, Kal-kal, you’re so fucking sweet.”

“I mean it, though. It’s so sexy.”

“Ooh, you think I’mmm sexy.”

“Oh, shit, stop it.”

“You have any particular time you want me to drive you home in the morning?”

“Just some time before ten.”

 

My home is my palace. It is huge and surrounded by a hundred trees. We have dogs, a pig, a few ducks, and a blind rooster that bumps into trees all the time–poor thing.

 

We walk in and I scream as I take my dress off and look for the Dindori Reserve Shiraz. I got the wine for her. She loves it. She says she needs to feel relaxed in order to enjoy herself. I indulge her with pretty things, expensive things, it makes me feel good to put a smile on her face.

 

“Kalpi, are you ready, my dear?”

“I am, mama. Wooo!”

“Follow me, ” I say as I grab her by the hand and lead her into my bedroom where it’s dark as cedar and vanilla candles burn quietly.

“Will you be joining us this time or just watching again?”

“If I feel like you’re fucking my husband the way I want you to, I will join in to show you my appreciation.”

“In that case, I will definitely look forward to you joining us tonight.”

 

 

With a glass of wine I sit back on my vintage chair wearing my work suit and sip slowly and quietly.

 

Fuck, it feels good to be the boss.

∞

 

 

I Need You

REMINGTON GRAVES

Arabesque etchings surrounded the pause in her pupil, kaleidascaping past her porcelain countenance,  reaching elsewhere without effort, without thought. The coppers in her hair faintly took the sun by its golden strand, with a hazing, quivering hand, and slightly smiling as her bare feet crunched beneath dead leaves, wet grass, pine needles, whilst the smell of tobacco and warm vanilla guided the way. Cedar and patchouli with, at times, oakmoss grazed upon her chin. The blurring webs of silhouetted branches contrasting the flowing flame, that was her long hair, exhaled with a breath of juniper berries, pepper, vetiver,musk, amber, basil and jasmine as she ran. Her heart beat like a tribal drum.

The black swan on the lake, turned its head slower than any eye could detect; It’s iridescent feathers spread like a million fingers, ripples spread forth and tapped gently the edges of the grass as it drunk. The orange and brown leaves drifted out with calm resolve. A skipping brush stroke across a hued pink sky turned and transformed into the words she had longed to hear all of her life, the phrase that lacerated profoundly past the postulation she had fallen prey to, and she fell on her knees–instantly ripping them open and feeding the fields that housed her. Her blood drowning the green and gasping blades, her hands on her face providing no comfort. Tears cutting hot with dirt into her cheeks, as she mumbled the phrase in the heavens with a trembling tongue–knowing she was now in hell.

 

The moon had left its dark side and hid behind the fog that hovered. Wailing wolves wondered. Pine trees stood quietly the wanton witnesses. And time communed with the vault, the vault that is the heavens and azurely they concurred–far too fair this fawning maiden, far too faint her neck did lean, almost breaking, almost taking, the breath of life left in so obscene.

 

 

The winds rushed in chillingly and spoke their peace…

“Her words are the words of mortals and now she knows the lofty language…the language that broke the cold black marble, the words that rend veils in two, these words that shan’t be spoken, now surely have infected you.”

 

 

With puffy eyes she turned and looked at you–the you that sees herself in her…sore from sobbing and body tired of convulsing, she raised her face and calmly parting, her soft-pink lips opened like a treasure chest, and pushing forth the fervent phrase:

 

…”I need you.”

  ∞

 

 

 

 

Pharmakon Live At MOCAD

PHARMAKON

“She glowers in measured silence as often as she shrieks, and ever serrated tone cuts straight to the bone, a carefully calibrated interplay between frequency and resistance.”

–Spin Magazine

 

The Joke That Never Did Arrive

REMINGTON GRAVES

How did the certainty of this analogous situation disperse without conscience effort on my behalf?

The little dubious delvings recalled once and subtle, had tempted a nostalgic arrogance this side of reason.

And we tempted fate, you and I, with a levity now benign and bothersome.

 

How many episodes must one man endure as the yawning no longer yearns with the fawning of yesteryear?

 

 

The entire scope of it all surely did summon the situation in technicolor and carved in stone a latent truancy–a dismal and ringing modulation–through television static, evoking the old derailing drivel.

And love with its one soft syllable, haunted the haughtiness in her conversation; the deft detachment drowning the drone; embittered with bribery stemming from her bolstering psyche with certain significance.

The sink dripping still. The toilet incessant with its stubborn gargle.

 

Lashes coming down in time-defying motion, slow like the insolent train that ignores the body on the rails, blurring like stealth foreign weaponry.

 

All was lost and she tried her hardest to ignore that fact. The idea was to live life, her mother  used to say, as she smiled through the wrinkles and shied away the grey.

 

 

Nothing short of neckless abandon, head levitating and taciturn, my red balloon…slowly hovering, turning corners, six feet above cobblestone streets, calling me and drawing me.

 

Hail this subterfuge, said its crimson reflection, bending obtusely streets below, arid lay the ground that crowns the frown. Knotted in sophisms dangling its cord, pallid and pubescent, fingers trembling beneath.

Tantrumed and tenebrous, the bare feet mangled in Matamoros, I was destined to destroy the fallacy of destiny and thrust forward on my floating throne, the vessel once the vassal, paragaon of pity, O child, sweet child of whine.

 

 

 

I promised not to promise and here are the hands, hammering at the typewriter keys, with ten arbitrarous jurors

jacking off and waiting for the joke that never did arrive.

                                                                            ∞

 

 

Circles

REMINGTON GRAVES

La plage plagued like pestilence, evoking dampened sheets of sweat, and all at once I remembered how we were madly, clumsily, shamelessly, agonizingly in lust with each other; a lust mature enough to consume the all-too-childish notions of love. I daresay, we sung our bodies frenzied and electric, beholding the difference in years, the many years between us. And we wondered without words, with pastel and blurring images, the sorcery and subtlety of our addiction. O, how we both struggled…to lay to rest what demons dared to sever such a union. Of course, we held each other in our thoughts; with opaque pedal roses smudging at the roadside, in automobiles; in contrived conversation, there my voice called out to you: blow this banality, and come hither; zipping under midgeoned parking lot lights, there your eyes did stare, in the sinews of my squirming brain, long-lashed and longing –warming over this wretched corpse.

 

Schuby-schubes’ Piano Sonata No.20 in A Major on the headphones as I slither through parked cars, some of them containing cadavers with moving mouths, others inhabited by dead men with their dead friends and their dead wives in their dead lives.

I know, in this insufferable heat of summer night, as the wheels of my bicycle keep turning and the beads of perspiration keep pouring, that the hot breath of life does exhale in sighing sublimity, reminding me of death with its nothingness of abstinence. Smiling and going in circles like a dog chasing his own tail, I dig the drab and delve the drunk of  the moment with all its mediocre madness and overwhelming ecstasy of esoteric elegance.

∞

 

 

 

One More Job

REMINGTON GRAVES

What terrible lies did bestow the wrath that guides you? How calmly and unequivocally did the throes of a leaving conscience dismiss you–you the man bearing the bludgeoning blade?

 

The music rang truly like a toothache in the empty piano room; the dust lifting with every note.  And her footsteps almost cutting into the oak floors. Almost a lifetime ago…the dead and dried lilies heavy-headed no longer looking up at the ceiling and praying for the sun. Out through the window, the wind through the straw roofs and the waves crashing against the stones, I wanted to drown in that endless blue ocean. My home was here, I thought, and cannot stay.

 

Come, let us both forget these old tragic tales that serve no purpose but to drag down the able demon, to derail the devil within. You see me still, don’t you, as you stand there naked and wet after the long hot showers that seem to only exacerbate your pain…pains of old age, achings due to lashing out in fatuous rage, fists pounded against many a brick wall, feet tired and torn, and your wretched posture a joke. I have not forgotten.

 

“I can’t hear you, goddamn it!” He bellowed fiercely white-knuckled gripping at the marble countertop and exhaling through a silver mustache, long and steady.

“Sir, the president is ready to see you now,” came the voice of the maid who leaned in with head turned slightly as she ran her thumb against a cold doorknob.

“I won’t be much longer,” he called out reaching for the towel.

 

 

“Hey, Betty, will you see me again tonight? You know, after your shift is over and all?”

“Goddamn you , Leroy, you gonna get me fired. I done told you, boy, I gotta watch this old man and make sure he comfortable and all that.”

“Why you gotta do it? Who is he, anyway?”

“I ain’t sure. He was in the war and got shot a whole bunch of times  and ate some of his friends to stay alive in some cave overseas or something. `I get weird chills when I look into his eyes. I ain’t lying neither.”

“Will you quit all that nonsense? Just meet me tonight, girl. I stole us a bottle of that wine ya like. We’ll sneak into one of the rooms we ain’t tried yet.”

“Oh, all right, shit. Damn, boy, I won’t hear the end of it if I just don’t give in with you, god all mighty,” she said jumping in the air as she felt a hard pinch on her left buttock.

 

Carpeted footsteps faded down the hall coupled with loud whispers and flirting laughter.

 

IMG_0010.jpg

 

“Hang in there. Just shake his hand.  Maybe he’ll have you do one more job for him, you know, for old times’ sake. Maybe I can retire and move to Hawaii like I’ve always wanted to. Hell, maybe Maliah’s  still there…with those wild brown eyes. There I go again, dreaming. Maybe in another life. Well, I don’t know that I would do it any different, even if I could,” he said into the mirror, reaching for his razor.

 

∞

 

 

 

 

 

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