we are the champions

Hey guys, best and best all around! I just finished my novel (of course, in the roughest form possible; much much editing awaits). All I can say is boawouduhadoifeoijohqaui bf uoiwehfohaodighiuwh foihqdoui fhopaid hf uiqhweiuf jioefqo2~!!!@%%#^&#%^*$#@!!! Yes, that's a word (look it up scrabble maven). In a celebratory manner, I have posted a paragraph from its final segment. I know it may be rough and it may seem hard to put into context, but basically the immortal is finally dying as the universe dies itself and he is remembering bits and pieces of his life. There. Now I'm off to sit on my balcony, listen to some music, drink a Newcastle, and think about seven years of writing this motherloving fiction angel. Peace and love.

Come on back, the band leader declared. It’s as if we can never go away, never fade, the immortal told himself, and blared on his trumpet. There was a time unequal to all others where he blew brass across a hot muggy night. Back back before fire and fine cars lasered around the countryside, before flying contraptions and the blank stare of satellites had killed any mitigating silence. Back the first time around, when the world was young, when man was still new and inexperienced. The night of the jazz solo. The immortal took his fine trumpet, buffed it in-between songs, and was content to look out amongst the crowd. As the sweet mist of music developed again, he closed his eyes. Blue notes, he felt, red ones and the buggy yellow. He sighed and leaned back as the helm of his horn lifted through the air. This was not his band, but he was a famous face in the crowd. He made the room spin. A cat dizzy and loose. Oh fresh, the band leader spoke again and again. Roared. The room was a divot, a whirling dervish spun mad with lust for the sweat of a good woman, a good man. The lovers in the corner did not raise their nods. Eyes were made to be lost in other eyes, of course. The music spoke and it preached, and the lovers in the corner did not move. Hand in hand, the immortal wanted to be his actual horn, the air of his lungs. He thought of nothing. He left life, left living, left the club and the night stairwell, the booze so free, and he floated into the ether. This was the want of his entire life. He figured the future then, how many children, the barge of buildings, a flow and note of time lost, the cosmos, the fleeting chance for violence and beautiful surrender, and went up into the spinning fan blades. Ice in drinks. Young things still on the prowl outside. His face was a fire, his lips a torrent of heat. The trumpet sounded out as all other instruments faded. “If I am to come back, let me be free,” the immortal hissed, balled into himself in the dying present. The universe was dying, oh it is dead, oh god. The trumpets of the past have all gone wah wah wah.

New Work...from a New Writer...

Posted below is a contribution from a friend of the blog's named Broderick. His short prose piece is a little weekend treat for you all youz kids out there on the internets. Enjoy and if you want to contribute prose or poetry or art or whatever, just e-mail us and if we pick up good vibrations you could be seeing your work on display. - Jeff

Lanie Visits II

Lanie had a certain feel. She was a sun in a box. Her bouncing ball followed the sound squeaking out of the stereo. Silently, she approached the door. I, on the other hand was a walrus drifting in a mellow ice. I flopped out of my comfortable couch to get the door. The bell had already rung twice; any more would have just been rude.
“Hi”
“Hey… come on up”
I stared a little while. She looked great. Lanie had been rummaging through her sister’s closet again, in search of something new. The wind blew gently, her sisters dress drifted slowly with her red hair, only to reveal blue jeans she probably bought last week from a store at the mall. I don’t know why she did it, probably because it’s “indie” or good for the environment or something like that. I didn’t know anything about fashion.
We went up the winding stairs to the music room. There were instruments sprawled all over the room, as well as a tower of records in milk crates slowly growing in the corner. I sat down on the couch to continue my duty. She looked around the room, like always; I figured it was some feminine ritual in order to suppress any comments about the absence of any apparent organization.
“What are you going to play for me today?”
“I don’t know. How about you decide?”
She wandered over to the tower and moved a couple of boxes around. After five minutes a cry for help came,
“Where’s Sonic Youth?”
“In that white bin you just moved, in about the middle. It’s in alphabetical order by artist then the albums are in chronological order of initial recording date”
“Oh…”
She pulled out the dusty square with a candle on it. Then Lanie put that black disc on the turntable and the needle glided merrily. She then turned her attention to me.
“Whatcha doing?”
“Messing around with the record.”
I had recently received some fragments from my crazy old uncle. He said he bought it after flunking out of some school. He hung out in New York for a while, bought the record for my mom, then broke it some how. Anyways, I figured I could salvage it by soldering the jagged pieces together.
“Oh… what’s it sound like?”
“I don’t know. That’s why I’ve been so obsessed with it.”
“You know if you put as much effort into your social life you could be pretty popular.”
“Most of them don’t have any mystery though. If you know all the archetypes you can read ‘em like books, not the good ones either.”
I think I can be absolutely unreliable sometimes. That was just another pop in the record, another random burst of thunder, another blast of noise. The ancients saw these as omens but modern science has destroyed their myths. But Lanie shines on, despite a cloud of a boyfriend.
“Just look at your boyfriend, there’s no happy ending in those pages.”
“Oh stop it. He’s sweet and its not like you’ve had a date in what, two years?” I tinkered on with a small smirk. I seemed to be a square peg in a round hole; I didn’t fit either.
“You’re going to go off with this attitude and then what? You know I’m not going to be there for you to brood….”
There was a small pause. We both stared at the inevitable knife of time as the record squeaked. I know one day it’ll be over. But today wasn’t that day.
“Anyways, I know this girl who’d be perfect for you. We could double date on Saturday. You know, the typical movie and a dinner.”
We laughed at my prospects. The sound waves were calm and they washed upon our feet. Then he stuck a gigantic rock in the middle of the beach.
“Oh, that’s him. I have to go.”
I watched her drift into his car. It was a red mustang. In a sense, he was the car after all; he looked just like it. That bastard probably spent more time with it that Lanie.

Saturday eventually rolled up to my doorstep. Lanie’s boyfriend drove us to the movie. I moved in and she was there with long blonde hair and a small yet pointed nose. She was wearing a white shirt and a denim skirt. We were in our seats with thirty minutes to spare so I started talking.
“Lanie’s told me so much about you, especially your music collection.”
I nodded. Her eyes rolled around the room, searching for something, or somebody. She wouldn’t look at me, and I knew I wasn’t that hideous, but then again, she might not have any beauty.
“So what kind of music do you like?”
“Whatever’s on the radio, what else is there?”
She girlishly giggled and twirled her hair around her finger. Oh God! What had I gotten myself into? Her brain seemed to be as white as her shirt! I seemed to be stuck in one of those blind date shows. However there aren’t any subtitles to make me laugh and I’m the one having a bad time. Never trust optimists about people if you’re a pessimist: they overlook the flaws that are blatantly obvious to you.
I tried to move to sports. Bad Move. She just went on and on about how “hawt” the football players on the school team were. By then I knew her eyes were longing for one of them, my only consolation was that my mind was yearning for something else. It was a silent disagreement, but a fierce one. The only thing worth fighting for was the end, and every minute moved me closer to the electric end.
Finally, the movie started. It was a drama. I hate dramas. Every one of them is a sadder sequel to your life. So I tried to look to the characters for something thrilling and there was nothing new. It had all of them: the angst filled protagonist, the oblivious parents, the girlfriend, the nemesis, well, all of them but not even in an epic way.

Afterwards, we went to a casual restaurant. Lanie’s date was spurting out his interpretation of the film as the other diners clinked their utensils. He made it seem like this huge psychological turnaround of utmost importance. He kept on saying, “You might not have caught it, but it means…” Lanie just fawned over every word and my date was stuck in an infinite loop of “Like, oh my gosh, that’s so true!” and “You are so smart!” I politely stapled my tongue to the table; it was in character. I started focusing on the blob of sound before me waiting for something to break.
Then it happened.
“Tonight’s the day candle…”
“You might not have caught it but the protagonist’s line there was totally a reference to the Great Gatsby and it meant that he was alone.”
What did that jackass know about Fitzgerald, being alone, the movie, or anything? I abruptly stood up and extended my fist to his empty existence.
“I never thought I’d see a dark star falling.”
It was a perfect contact as if it was meant to be. His bulky form fell to the floor. The restaurant went silent. Everyone stared at Lanie and my date as the two girls gathered around him trying to stop the stream of blood from tissues from their purses.
I knew I wasn’t going anywhere except for his home if I stayed with Lanie so I walked home. There was a full moon and the night, cool, crisp, and welcoming, seemed to invite me. It was about three miles from home so there was plenty of time for meditation and singing. When I got home my parents were asleep so I just went to my bed and faded away.
The next day I decided to go over and apologize because I figured, as much as he had it coming, I probably shouldn’t have hit him. Luckily his parents were home so I wasn’t going to have the shit kicked out of me on the spot. Surprisingly, his parents were nice. His mom thought it was good of me to apologize. That relieved me because I knew I wouldn’t have to face the court and a wall of paper. He took my apology but was apathetic. I could tell it was a mask.
I tried to call Lanie but she didn’t answer. She was nothing more than a specter that week, or maybe I had just been the ghost all along. I saw her at lunch and was about to approach but he was a wall of a caveman.
Eventually, I got a hold of her on the phone.
“I never want to talk to you again!”
“Come on Lanie…”
-Click-
I held the phone up to my ear for about five more minutes hoping it was only a bump in the record. It was the sound of losing Lanie. I continued on as I did before her, and I eventually got that record all back together. I put it on the turntable and waited for it to revolve. “Amazing Gr…Click. Buzz” The stereo hummed on in pain. The needle was broken.

immortal

Hey guys, here's a paragraph I just edited from my novel. I liked it and thought I'd share it with you all.

As he dried off eternally, the immortal examined his frame. His legs and penis and abdomen and chest and neck and jaw. He held a notion of sameness between himself and all of humankind, and closed his eyes a moment, pretending to fly through immense white clouds. If I crash, here, Eloise, send love. For his next road trip, he wanted a van, something capable of hiding inside, away from the hot and tepid elements of the horse-faced countryside. He could bring his wife, bring her pajamas and her glasses, her rum cakes and wrinkled test papers. They could dive into lakes and discover swimming holes and lay in creek beds. The immortal opened his eyes. The light seemed to bend and buckle and waver. The immortal stayed with the steam and hiss of the shower a moment more, then quickly vacated the bathroom as if on mission. He dressed, stretched his limbs, cleared his throat, then headed out for the diner.

novel hovel

Hey guys, after reading Jeff's Sagittarian Conflict poem, I decided I'd share a paragraph from my novel that stresses the main character's early romance to a wife of his, or at least, his reflection on the subject. Just some quick things to know for this part of my novel: the main character is immortal, he's on a road trip, he's a novelist (and remember, this is just a smaller story in the larger scope of the novel! wheeeee!!!). Hope you guys like.

His whole life had been pointed to this moment, directed, and whipped, beaten and loosened. The immortal could feel wild lifetimes converging in his veins, a wife roaring, a novelist scrawling. He could see Eloise, his love, sitting high in a castle of theses and red capped pens. He thought about her and motored. Sometimes it was easy to dream her into existence, thinking about plastic and paper clips, flesh and fingernails. Sometimes it was too easy to love her. He revved the engine; the distant halo of the city dwindled behind. The immortal shook himself; but she is noble too, he whispered, and spelled the word Eloise in his mind. She had a strong sense for fiction, fancying all elements of Shakespeare and Salinger. She sparkled like a drum more often than not, and her rhythm was a river, and the immortal was a leaf. He kicked the acceleration harder, upped the rev, and faded faded. He wanted to be with her now, despite himself, despite her university schedule. He wanted to be near; he thought about their origin. He was a sailor, she was a student, he took her fishing, she wrote him poetry. They fell in love in bungalows and libraries. He had written a novel about it once; an empty house passed by. He didn’t think much of the novel, but he wanted to believe in it. It was one of the first things he had written, and even now it sat dense somewhere in a cellar, collecting dust for no one. And this cross country trip too, he thought, was made for believing. It was a snake, a dragon with many heads, and he wanted to be a knight, spinning wheels and all. He wanted to carve his initials in every tree he saw on his way west to the great desert. Here stood an immortal man, soul and all, he imagined, a large knife, a cut-away desert setting, cacti and lizards. All on the way home, and take your time too, he reminded himself; he didn’t want to get there before he got there. He had to make sure that his bike was beautiful and smooth, and that it ate the road, and that when he stopped, there would be a red landscape with a single tree and a beautiful young thing and a wicked creek. The immortal had to have his fun, it was essential.