The Secret Society of People Who Live and Die Alone

In his kitchen
The heat wave strikes
No one to call
No one he likes
Time to lie down
For no one he waits
Put in his tomb
By desirable traits

Michel Dubois de Saint Jean d’Angély

Ici

On n’est pas sérieux quand on a dix-sept ans

A été fusillé

On n’est pas sérieux quand on a dix-sept ans

Sans Motif

On n’est pas sérieux quand on a dix-sept ans

Par les Allemands

On n’est pas sérieux quand on a dix-sept ans

Le 31 juillet 1944

On n’est pas sérieux quand on a dix-sept ans

Michel Dubois

On n’est pas sérieux quand on a dix-sept ans

A l’âge de dix-sept ans

An Influx of Megabytes

In capitalism, nothing remains sacred. The earth, water – all is pressed into the service of commodity consumption. Even Bible salesmen will entice you to get your name embossed on the cover. But conversely in art anything, no matter how vile, can be sacred. The artist can shout with true conviction: Did you kill that Mosquito? I was studying it!

In a totalitarian state, one need not make any decisions. All you have to do is wake up and praise the dear leader with every breath. In heaven, it is the same.

In Seattle, it is acceptable to dye your hair pink or blue if you are past the age of fourteen. It is a personal aesthetic expression of the whole city: artificially formed, but projecting a radical teen spirit.

I saw a punk rocker with a patch on his leather jacket that said, “Fuck the police.” In light of the recent austerity measures against public sector workers, it is interesting to think that punks and conservatives, two categories obscured significantly since their origins, have finally joined forces.

War and the Ocean: For people living far away, it is too easy to act as if these things do not exist.

I spent ten days in the Negev desert with a few newly discharged Israeli soldiers. They chided each other, “I fucked your mother,” or “I fucked your sister,” but always spared me of their taunting. I did not expect it when on the final day, a couple of the men said that they had fucked my mother. With this, I knew that I was now their friend. What they did not expect was the feminist reversal. I said, “Oh yeah, well I fucked your father!” And where the all-stars of the Bible used to roam, we joyfully debased, in the spirit of friendship, the holy trinity of psychoanalysis: mommy, daddy, me.

We all want to be the best, but if we are better than our children, in the end we will feel like shit.

I was bundled on the porch when a gangster bumping loud music drove by in a little slug bug. His unshakable mother reprimanded the snowball throwing youths: Oh let him be in the slug bug! He is my boy!

Is it possible to grow and thrive while living in your hometown? Yes, as long as you spend part of the year somewhere else.

Half an hour outside Reykjavik, on a landscape that resembles Mars covered in snow, the Thor Data Center is preparing for an influx of megabytes.

A selfish girl on a train to Chicago once said: Can you believe she missed her dead husband so much, she would go to his closet and smell his clothes?

A control freak once said: My fiancée is never late. If she was, she would not be my fiancée.

No one would ask, “So what are you doing after the orgy?” which is why Baudrillard compares that event to the apocalypse. An orgy is many little deaths happening collectively, mirroring the collective grand death we all have dreamt about. But with every ultimate event or dream realized there is disappointment that the pursuit has ended. This is why no orgy is complete without a scene. A wife gets talked into attending and then resents having to participate. A husband seems amenable to the idea until he sees his wife blowing a strange man. Nothing hurts like the buyer’s remorse of a dream that has vanished into its disheartening completion.

When Gandhi became world famous, manufacturers of round eyeglasses rejoiced.

If you are surrounded by three men who wish to kill you, concede to them that they will probably win. But then promise, that in the ensuing struggle, one of them will surely lose an eye.

Genie to the rich man: I will grant you any wish you desire but what you receive, double will go to the poor.
Rich man: Then put out one of my eyes.

Because history has been abolished in favor of the hypnotic allure of the perpetual present, we are perpetually children because our history has been abolished. I, for one, cannot imagine the past or future, only the same ancient task that unifies all humanity: figure shit out on your own. So please do not fault me if I feel that I am the son of no one.

Up All Night with Nostradamus

I awoke in the night and
Found Nostradamus at my table
I asked him
What will happen in the future?
He said
You will go to the police station
To report that someone stole food
From your apartment

What will they tell me?

Only silence
Broken by ghostly government announcements
For free hot baths
Follows decades of tittytainment
And a Kingdom placed in doubt
With trouble double

I poured him a brimming glass
Jingling with cubes
He said
I predict it will be refreshing
And later
Water flows like a hotel pianist
Noticed only when it stops

He got up from my table
And embraced me like an ancestor should
Ready yourself my son
You will get the future you deserve

One Week with Fred Creekbaum in the City of Light

Day 1
     I went to the museum of Paris today to give a series of talks to a group of American high school students about the founding and history of the city.  I said, “The guillotine played prominently in the historical narrative of the city around revolution time.”
    “Could you request to be guillotined face up?” one youngster with coke-bottle glasses said.----- -----
     After my talk at the museum I read Sherwood Anderson’s Parisian diary in the Jardin du Luxembourg, and it was probably one of the worst things I have ever read. I knew that Hemingway satirized Dark Laughter with The Torrents of Spring, pretty much ruining Anderson’s career, and after reading his Parisian diary, I was glad Hemingway did it. Hem’s shot reminded me of my own forgotten New Year’s resolution, which was to tell more people to go fuck themselves. I decided to finish the afternoon with a chess match, and I was pared against a man that worked his whole life to kill reality. You guessed it. Karl Lagerfeld.----- -----
Day 2
     I saw a video projected on to the wall of a naked woman hula hooping a hula hoop made of barbed wire today. She was bare-ass naked and the barbed wire was cutting the shit out of her. The piece was created somewhat recently in 2000 by an Israeli artist named Sigalit Landau. In the next room over there were works of art, mainly from the 1970’s, that focused on vaginas. These works of art tended to reaffirm the feelings I get from the decades of my lifetime. All the decades of the latter twentieth century can be approximately described using the f-word: 1960’s - Lets Fuck, 1970’s - Fuck You, 1980’s - We’re Fucked, 1990’s - We Don’t Give a Fuck. The Pompidou also had some works by Salvador Dali, one of my all-time favorites.----- -----
     I saw a show on TV about a French lady who is an alcoholic. She started drinking at age seven and had already had five drinks by the time they interviewed her at eleven AM. The show was sad but a good exercise for listening comprehension because the woman spoke French slowly. After the interview, they let her get in her car and drive away. Reversing, she slammed the car ass-end against the wall of the parking garage and the airbag deployed.----- -----
Day 3
     I took one of those boat rides around the Seine today and saw many Parisian monuments from the view of the water. Let me tell you, our tour guide was one spiffy feller. He had some of the best manners I have ever seen. Whatever lucky lady brings him home to mom and dad will have a mom and dad saying, “You better marry that spiffy feller.”
    The spiffy feller’s best line was, “It is interesting to know that when the Eiffel Tour was first built, Parisians thought that it was ugly and they were afraid it would fall on them.”
    He asked for tips at the end and I would have given him one, but I didn’t have any liquid cash on me.----- -----
Day 4
     I thought my experience in the park at Butte Charmonte couldn’t get any better, but I was wrong. After a brief snooze, I opened my eyes to see a black and white cat jumping and leaping and having the time of its life. He was so free and I loved him more with every bound that he took. A Parisian woman in her early sixties came over and started talking to me. She was the owner of the cat and said that his name was Domino. She said that she takes him for walks around the neighborhood, and he is more popular than she is. He was extremely well mannered when he came over to me and I couldn’t believe how soft he was. I had no trouble seeing why he is so popular. The lady said that she is surprised that she has never been asked to train animals for the movies, with the way Domino turned out and all.
   “I’m glad you didn’t,” I said, “That shit is cutthroat.”
Day 5
     I walked through the Pere Lachaise Cemetery today and all the death bothered me less than my sagging pants which needed a belt.
     I saw a fat kid sitting by Jim Morrison’s grave, wearing a Jim Morrison t-shirt, burning a fat doobie. At least in my college circle, it was a faux-pas to wear the t-shirt of the band that you were going to see in concert that night; to wear an artist’s t-shirt to their grave seemed to take it to a new level.
Day 6
     I went walking in the Bois de Vincennes today. I didn’t know it until I arrived, but there is an enormous and stunning Buddhist temple in these woods. A kind looking robed man greeted me as I entered through the temple gates. Next to him were bananas and bottles of water, free for visitors. On a day so hot, the gesture did not go unnoticed. Several of the buildings had a natural look, earth tones as I believe they say on HGTV. The buildings looked so organic that it seemed to me like they were growing and emerging from stagnant trees and greenery around them. I entered the temple itself and wasn’t sure what to expect. What I got was a twenty foot tall golden statue of Buddha. Three Asian women prayed on a mat while a dozen other white people, tourists like me I’m assuming, looked around the place wide eyed. I would have loved to quiet my mind and meditate, but I was spending too much energy trying not to offend anyone. (Hopefully that is not an offense itself?) As I left through the gate, the man in the robe was gone and I was sad that there was no one for me to thank. I looked at the bananas and water bottles by the gates, glistening with condensation and sitting unattended on this hot summer’s day. I pictured the robed man asking with a sweat and frustration on his brow, “Did you seriously take a second banana?”----- -----
     Outside of the temple was a large field at the beginning of which had a sculpture of several Zen Buddhist men. The statue was rather large, the men life-size. If I am translating the inscription correctly, the statue was made by a Japanese artist named Seiichiro Takahashi in 1972 and is dedicated to those on an endless quest for truth. To the right of the statue, two girls in matching black dresses and heavy Goth looking eye shadow were doing some sort of interpretive dance. I have to say they were quite talented; doing handstands and dive rolls on the ground with all their movements synchronized. Their dresses were backless and as I watched I thought about how itchy the grass was going to make them afterwards. After watching them for about a minute, I noticed among the dozen or so onlookers, a man wearing a white robe, an amulet of some sort around his neck, and the same dark eye shadow as the girls. His robe was not legit looking like the man at the temple and the way he was smiling and nodding his head up and down made me think that perhaps I was witnessing the commencement of some up and coming cult. In front of the statue I saw something equally bizarre. There were five French guys tossing around an American football. I wasn’t sure which sight was more unusual. I think the guys were more endearing because the whole time I was there, I never saw them complete a single pass.----- -----
     I sat on a bench by the lake in the Bois de Vincennes for some time and watched people pass by in canoes. I have a love/hate relationship with canoes because when I was eleven, I was canoeing and a snake bit me in the leg. It was sleeping under my seat and I must have done something to startle it. The good news for me was that it was not poisonous and the scar it left was small. There is a French proverb I learned that says ‘a scalded cat fears cold water.’ In my case ‘a bit boy fears an empty canoe.’
Day 7
     I boarded the plane for Miami. With the $$$ I made giving the talks, minus accommodations and two expensive restaurant meals, I was down only $300. The trip was a wild success.

Love Boat: The Masquerade

     June 1978. A blind woman sits naked and alone in her cabin, playing solitaire with Braille playing cards. She dreams of coaching in the NFL.
     Identical twins fight over who gets to leave the room and who has to stay; they have only purchased one ticket.
     Two frat boys, hulking and privileged, wrestle in the large, Howard Taft sized bathtub of their honeymoon suit. Upperclassmen watch this homoerotic baptism into the world of their fathers with saliva trickling from their lusty maws.
     In the Coral Dining room, The Masquerade is raging and I am on a mission to find her. I pass an older gentleman dressed as Davey Crocket. He extends his hand to a seated lady, “How do you do? I’m Frank Rustler of Rustler Jeans.”
     At another table someone says, “We get our whole supply from Annabelle Fournier’s Slaughterhouse.”
     In the corner, Stubing looks smug.
     Through a jungle of embarrassed husbands and witty wives I see her, the cruise director.
     We dance and I do not regret quitting Mossad.
     “What do you think?” she says.
     “That you are everything I want to wrap myself in until I die.”

Hospital Garden

We spent her penultimate day
In the hospital garden
With the remote control nightingale
You got her and
When I asked her why she was crying
She said
Christmas 1982 will give me
The courage I need

Once again
I could not bring myself to say
I’m so sorry this happened to you momma

Her slow expensive
American death
Gave me wrinkles
Stole some years
And turned me into an animal
That night
You saw me
Crying by the fire
When I told you
I’m not sad
I’m just glad it’s over

Second Place in Kentucky

For Eight Bells

The first horse roared across the line
A little man on his back
After that, the second horse came,
But his little man heard the worst sound
That a little man on a horse can hear:
Popping

Because when you are a horse
Going certain speeds,
Your desire to stop
Can become even stronger
Than your own front legs
Breaking
Like brown beer bottles

Women wearing hats
And men with cigars
Cheered or sighed
Depending on their wager

The cork popped
From the champion’s champagne
When we saw second place in Kentucky:
Two busted legs and a bullet to the brain

Red

Leaving the nursing home
I saw a memorial on the bulletin board
To one of the residents who had passed away recently

She was in her late eighties
And was no doubt affected in someway
By the ambitions of the Nazis

She must have traveled somewhere
Or seen something amazing
In her eighty some years of life

On this sheet of paper
It had a recent picture, date of birth and death
And two lines for “Comments”

Two lines to sum up a life
Hers said, “She loved the color red.”

Search and Destroy

They gave me a gun
And they said, “That’s the enemy over there
And if you don’t shoot them
They’re going to shoot you”

I was in the ground hiding
When I stood up and shot him
The look in his eye
I’ll never forget it
He went down
I got sick
That first time

Frittering

I can remember lying in the sun, watching a dog stair at a tree when my brother came up to me to ask what I was doing. I told him I was just trying to do something that didn’t cost any money and he said it didn’t matter, that they were probably deducting money from my account over the internet. Past debit purchases from days ago that were just now clearing.

“Why’d you have to go and say that,” I said agitated. “Now I feel all thwarted.”

I wanted to feel the opposite of thwarted. Stimulated? I started writing poetry in my head.

“Why is that dog just staring at that tree?” My brother said.

“I don’t fuckin’ know,” I said before quietly reciting to myself, “To Michael Jackson on his Deathbed, Part One.” About a half hour later my belly was getting red and the shavings from my brother’s whittling were blowing all around my face and getting in my hair.

“Why don’t you take your fuckin’ whittling out-front,” I said, but he didn’t budge.

I couldn’t remember any of the poetry I had written in my head, but I didn’t care. I had never even known anyone personally who had written any poems.

“You know any real poets?” I asked my brother.

He stopped whittling and looked up like he was really trying to think for me.

“You know Dougie Sampson, from Marietta?” He asked.

“The tall guy who speaks in tongues at that weird church?” I said trying not to laugh.

My brother went on unfazed, “His cousin told me he knew a guy in Charleston that got a poem in a book. The editor sent him a crisp ten dollar bill.”

I sobered up and thought about how it would feel to see something I had written in a book, and then I pictured myself opening an envelope that had crisp ten dollar bill in it.

“No shit,” I said.

Then, blocking the sun from my eyes I said, “I don’t know. I don’t know why that dog is staring at that tree.”

To the Women of France

Un

Nature is calling me and I need a hike

Maybe you would like to go on one too?

People tend to feel more comfortable

Away from all the franchised rules and obtrusive cameras,

Cameras that won’t stop a bullet

But may be used to assure the gunman is guilty and punished

And this will hopefully make me feel more comfortable

About getting shot

Deux

There are a lot of parks in Paris

But that is far from where I am

Making it extremely unlikely

That on my nature hike

I will come across a young French woman,

A recent graduate of L’Université

Nervous about her internship

And looking for someone to talk to,

Someone young enough to excite her

But someone old enough to long with her

For the sweet France of yore

Trois

I know I am not perfect

If I am twenty-eight now, I have said,

“Sorry, I would but it’s my birthday” thirty-one times

And I know that equals out to a few lies

But I do have the presence of mind to know

That you are as beautiful as art

And art and husbands do not go together

So if you see the camera footage of me

Getting shot on the Avenue de la Bourdonnais

On a day I should have been back home,

hiking in the woods behind my house

I want you to know as I lie on the curb

Covered in blood,

And my awkward tourist fanny pack

Overflowing with museum receipts

That for you in my heart,

There was only love