COVENANT

St Jerome’s Father’s covenant was a half-
Built Gazebo, located in the back of his
Father’s garage. It looked like the needle-
Tip of a rocket ship. Inside was stowed
Guns and porn and other relics of burnt-
Out masculinity. Some nights Rome’s
Father would come home early from the
Tracks and sit inside the Covenant and
Cry in between solitary shots of Kentucky
Sangria, toasting to his shadow, thinking
About something lost and not recovered.

“If they’re empty, they’re just like
Toys.” St. Jerome said, cocking the dual
Barrel of his fathers Remington, making
Blam! sounds through his lips. We all
Knew that St. Jerome’s father wouldn’t
Be back home from the Tracks until ten
Or eleven and that we could sift through
His shed for at least a couple more hours.
“Blam! Die fucker.” Jerome said, pointing
The dual nozzle at Anthony Noel. Noel
Wore Headgear and bore both braces and
Spectacles. Every day he would arrive home
From seminary with a wedgie. Feeding his
Index finger into the central part of his face,
Pushing up his glasses, Noel began to drool.
In a tender lisp. “Phat happens if Papa Bear comes
Home? He’ll skin each of our thucking hides.”
“Blam!” St. Jerome fired imaginary
Bullets into the back of Noel’s head. “Old
Man won’t come home ‘til he wins. He’ll be
Drunk as fuck anyoldways. Even when he
Is here, all he ever do is drink and smoke.”

“Blam!” Jerome fired the gun again blowing
Over the gaped nozzle. “Here,” Seb said,
Rustling through a heap of magazines.
“Bet you never seen this before.” He told
Noel, opening to the center of the magazine.
“Bet you never licked one of them before.”
Jerome said, Brushing his tongue over the Top
Of his lip. “Please,” Noel said shielding
His arm over his thick glasses as if the sight
Of a half-siren with her legs saddled in mid-
Squat would condemn him to box seats in
Hell. “Shit,” Jerome said, looking at the
Centerfold “I know I be hitting that shit
Night and Day,” Seb laughed as Rome
Pretended to ride an imaginary colt,
Spanking it’s behind with his palm. “I be
Hitting that shit Night and Day.” “With
What?” Noel retorted to Jerome, making
Jerk-off motions with a clenched fist. “Yo’
Mama?” Rome’s face became Vesuvius. He
Quickly grappled the musket by the femur barrel
And took a hammering swing at Noel. It was
Well known both in the mold of the locker
Room and in the dimness of St. DuPree
That you just never talked casually about
Jerome’s Mother, Lady Piffany, who drove
Out to Casey’s General one night and
Was found washed up, naked, against the
Grainy shores of Hillsborough thirty miles
North, a month later, her thighs riddled with
Cigarette burns. “Thorry,” Said Noel, with a
Slight lisp.

“I tho-gauth, about what
Thappened to your Mom,” Jerome had Noel
Pinned inside the deep gravel of the Covenant,
His arm locked, uncled around Noel’s back,
There were several cracks. With his a free
Hand Rome grabbed the magazine and held
The page wide-open like a hymnal during
Chapel. “Look at it!” He demanded as
Noel cowered, his hands behind his neck,
His body lodged in embryonic posture.


Seb picked up the Gun, cocked it several
Times. “Open one fourth of your eyelids
And look at it!” The lids of Noel’s eyes
Slowly creviced open. Rome spread the
Centerfold ajar to the glossed sheen of the
Siren. “Now lick it,” He demanded, to a
Writhing Noel. “Stick your fucking tongue
To the page and lick it!” Noel was shaking,
Uttering the rosary to himself in Latin.
“Pussy,” said Rome, shoving Noel over to
The corner, tossing the glossed dog-earred
Magazine on top of him like Noel was a
Martyr.

The sun was positioning itself
Into a heavy squint over the nuclear
Woods. It was the third week of March.
In the north, near the Bluff, the slight
Pentecostal glower of smoke lit like an
Ember from the riots. Yedish stores were
Pillaged by Vice Lords. ATM’s were
Ploughed over with rigged Hummers.
Mayor Jude declared a State of Marshall
Law on Spring Equinox. News copters
Clipped by overhead and the cafeteria
Applauded today when Lunch lady Iola
Johnston was interviewed on CSPAN.
“Those little shits should not be in this
Country. They should not be in any country.
They should burn in hell." The whole
Cafeteria exploded in calloused palms while
Rome got detentions from Sister Teresita for
Claiming to have found a human ear in the
Stuffing. “Thighm no futhy!” Noel volleyed
Back, his lisp in full bloom. “Here then.”
Said Jerome reaching behind the half-
Finished bar his Father found down on
Moreland and Fourth and promised to fix
Up one day. Behind it were two handguns.
Noel’s shoulders once again jolted north.
“Don’t worry, they’re empty. They’re
Toys.” Rome tossed one handgun over to
Seb. With the weight of a petrified boomerang,
He dropped the six-shooter in Noels lap.
“Just a toy. Just like the shit you play with
In the crib, when you go home at night and
Yo Moma tucks your ass in and sings you a
Lullaby.” “Thighm no phuthy!” Exclaimed
Noel, pressing the index nozzle into his
Acne-riddled forehead. “Fire then.” Rome
Said. Seb looked at Rome like he was fucking
Nuts. No one fires a handgun at their temple,
Even if the barrel is empty. “Come on now, fire it.
It’s empty. It’s just like a toy.” Noel’s eyes
Welded shut. There was a moment of silence.
Rome called Noel a little shit. He elucidated
The Freudian connotations implicit in the
Term motherfucker. He continued to deride
Noel, asking him why he was so afraid.
With a deep breath, a concentrated gaze
Sketched to his face, Noel’s eyes
Buttoned shut, his cheeks bulged, his
Adam’s apple seem to swallow itself in a
Constipated gulp. “Go on fucker. Fire it.
Why don’t you put your balls where
Your Brain is? Fire the gun.”
Noel’s mouth opened in slow motion. His
Chapped lips seem to swallow the nozzle.
There was the snap, the sound of granite
Applause and a quaver of cobalt that
Sifted above his head as his body peeled
In opposite directions.

“Don’t Worry,” Rome said, later. “Well just
Bury him at the Old mill.” “What about the
Covenant?” Seb said, picking off a slab of
Noel’s brain as if it was lint.
“Well have to clean it off
Of course. But don’t worry.
Even when dad comes in
Here he’s usually so fucked up that he don’t
Notice anything, and even if he do notice somethin'
It’s nothing that he hasn’t seen before.
It’s really no big deal.”

-from Glass Continent

GUILTY.....

Took my friends Shannon's advice and printed out both Bloggs (they copy and paste PERFECTLY to MS WORD...) I took the square pillowy heap and collated it into a cool binder, embellishing the cover with a modern-deco painting by Elizabeth Peyton of Sophia Copola, titling the "novel" YOU WERE ONLY WAITING FOR THIS MOMENT TO BE FREE....usurped from the Beatles song BLACKBIRD......subtitled A Chronology of Seasonal Bloggs by David A. Von Behren....Crazy bloggs...on the back of the novel I posted pictures of daniela, shannon and arya.....Boticelli's Three Graces (ibid primavera)....I remember the first time I saw arya's blogg ( I never heard of a blogg before....."Blogg...isn't that like black smog or something?")..... I honestly thought it was borderline frivolous "Who would want to post all of their emotions on line? For the entire planet to pick at and peruse?"

You don't have to be a modest camel-herding professor to know that Sistah A occasionally reels in a tautly baited hook (daniela was part of the initial tackle)..... I am completely 80% proof oblivious of exactly where this fetish sprouted from (?)...but it's been fun....Thanks arya!

Here's how little David's summer commenced: I went up to St. Paul MN. to attend the 30th anniversary of my literary mentor Garrison's Keillor PRAIRIE HOME COMPANION. Keillor's about twenty-five percent responsible for my literary lifestyle (listen to NPR's Writer's Almanac)...anyway, I purcahsed two tickets months in advance and you-know-who bowed out of attending the concert with me, so I had to spend the vacation trekking across the thick-plains of Mn. and Wisconsin alone, which wasn't exactly all that bad. But when I actually attended the concert there was a vacant seat next to me (where, of course, I imagined Swissy Missy's svelte shoulders to be)....the person who sat on the opposite side of this vacant seat was dressed like an Eskimo attired in Lands End garb and periodically, throughout the concert, he would slough segments of his outfit from his skin so at the end of the performance there was this gigantic mound of cotton and tattered threads stationed next to me, in my purchased seat, where I had imagined her impeccable body to be located.

No, swissy Missy wasn't there with me that night in late May, but I'm blessed to say that I've had some beautiful soul's seated next to me, smiling through the elctronic shaded blue of the computer screen, throughout the entire summer!

Thanx! It's been real. It's been fun, and shit, girls, we're just getting started.....

Alright Sport Dweebs....

Check this out:

http://nik.lockergnome.net/blog/_archives/2004/5/4/51731.html

3x5 inch qoutes

Since I no longer have access to a writers desk, here's some literary quotes that would have been posted above my old smith-corona on Little 3 x5 inch notecards back in the day.... sorry they look like easter skittles......


"Whatever evolution this or that popular charachter has gone through between book covers, his fate is fixed in our minds, and, similarly, we expect our friends to follow this or that logical or conventional pattern we have fixed for them. Thus X will never compose the immortal music that would clash with the second rate symphonies he has accustomed us to. Y will never commit murder. Under no circumstances will Z ever betray us. We have it all arranged in our minds, and the less we see of a particular person the more satisfying it is to check how obediently he conforms to our notion of him every time we hear of him. Any deviation in the fates we have ordained would strike us as not only anomalous but unethical."

-VLADIMIR NABOKOV, LOLITA


"JUST BECAUSE YOU KNOW ONE STATE OF AFFAIRS, WITTGENSTEIN ASSERTS, DOESN'T MEAN YOU CAN NECESSARILY INFER ANOTHER DIFFERENT STATE OF AFFIARS FROM THEM. AND YET, THIS IS WHAT WE ALL TRY DOING WHEN WE SPEAK ABOUT THE FUTURE, ISN'T IT? THE RESULT BEING THAT WE NEVER REALLY KNOW, IF, WHEN WE THROW THE APPLE INTO THE AIR THIS TIME IT WILL COME DOWN. NOT AT LEAST UNTIL WE SEE IT DROP. IF, THAT IS, WE ARE ACTUALLY SEEING IT DROP WHEN WE THINK WE ARE ACTUALLY SEEING IT DROP, AND NOT IMAGINING IT, AND NOT BELIEVING IT, AND NOT HOPING. IF, THAT IS, IT IS AN APPLE. IF IT IS AIR. IF WE ARE WE. NO, WE REALLY DON'T "KNOW" MUCH, IF ANYTHING ABOUT A PLURIVERSE ASWARM WITH LANGUAGE GAMES THAT MUST BE PLAYED OUT AS CERTAINTIES THOUGH THE NEXT SECOND MAY GIVE THEM EACH AND EVERY ONE THE LIE.....WE'RE ALL CONTINUALLY WAKING UP IN OUR BEDS, A FUNNY FEELING THAT THAT UNEASY DREAM WE JUST HAD WASN'T A DREAM."

-LANCE OLSEN, TERMITE ART, OR WALLACE'S WITTGENSTEIN, from THE REVIEW OF CONTEMPORARY FICTION, YOUNGER WRITERS ISSUE; SUMMER 1993

President George W. Blogg

Wondering what's in George Bush's Blogg (or his brain) click here:

http://www.theonion.com/news/index.php?issue=4031

In tandem

Here's a little passage from Stephen King's ON WRITING that I've been thinking about today.

For years I dreamed of having the sort of massive oak slab that would dominate a room--no more child's desk in a trailer laundry-closet, no more cramped kneehole in a rented house. In 1981 I got the one I wanted and placed it in the middle of a spacious, skylighted study. For six years I sat behind that desk either drunk or wrecked out of my mind, like a ship's captain in charge of a voyage to nowhere.

A year or two after I sobered up, I got rid of that monstrosity...I got another desk--it's handmade, beautiful, about half the size of the T. Rex desk. I put it in the far west end of the office under the eave... I'm sitting under it now, a fifty-three-year-old man with bad eyes, a gimp leg, and no hangover. I'm doing what I know how to do, and as well as I know how to do it. ....

It starts with this: put your desk in the corner, and every time you sit down there to write, remind yourself why it isn't in the middle of the room. Life isn't a support system for art. It's the other way around.

Dust Spangles on the lips of Wayfarer's Glory

Uncle Mike gives his nocturnal lecture inside William's cafeteria where I eat breakfast and lunch during the school year. It is the first night of Heartland. Prayers and chants have been said. Students are reminded of curfue. Everyone walks around continually fidgeting with their nametags. When I walk into Williams Hall with Mike, a young kid with auburn hair pulls me over and gives me a hug.

"I remember you from last year." He says, recalling my name.

"Thanks, And-drew," I say, squinting at his nametag.

"I have to ask you something," Andrew nods. "It's personal. I mean, it's really personal."

"Ok," I nod. I'm balancing a stack of books Uncle Mike will reference in his speech.

"There was a girl who said something about you last year. I need to ask you if it's true or not." His pupils widen to the size of manholes.

"Sure," I assent. We are surrounded by bodies. Uncle Mike embraces older Baha'is from Bloomington. The room becomes a carousel of flurry.

"Only I can't ask you here." Andrew says, concentrating very intently.

"Alright," I add "No problem."

*
Uncle Mike commences his lecture by informing the audience to be audacious. To take chances. To "preservere", as Shogi Effedni would say. He relays the story about Abdu'l-baha and the cornerstone to the House of Worship in Wilmette.

"Remember what Abdul-Baha said when the cornerstone was christened? "It's already built'."

Heads bob and inwardly sway. There are approximately seven of us. The tops of the heads range from thining to glazed white to hubcap bald. It is ten at night. I'm by far the youngest.

Mike continues melting perfunctory proper speech building icebergs into fluid oratation. He quotes a spam headline scraped from his latest e-mail, encouraging his audience to be intrepid and dauntless; to be fearless in our thinking, to take chances. He encourages us not to be afraid of failure, especially when a movement is intrincially 'youthful' is learning how to walk, autonomously, only all of us are trying to keep precision and balance.

"Remember, amatures built the Ark, professionals built the Titanic."

There are a gaggle of huffed-grins and periodic nods. Uncle Mike's voice is a verbal shine, a buffed avuncular grin with a slight midwestern twang peeled into his resonance. His voice feels like it could be gently stirring autumnal leaves into a dervish scuffle beneath a pumpkin heavy October sunset. Although adavanced in years there is not a scratch of senility itched into his rhetoric. Vivid streams of dialect seem to foam from the side of his mouth. Stories salivate and grace his every smile. Uncle Mike has a gift of making the Baha'i faith simultaneously sound very mystical and extremely practical at the same time. He has a gift of coalescing these two spiritual extremes in his speech-taming them with his benevolent tongue-exhibiting how these two polarities globally mesh, constituting a singular horizon for mankind's intermindable future rather than a question mark positing anxiety culled from a collective species tumultuous past.

There is union threaded in a genetic horseshoe strand of oneness. The bulk of mankind's epistemological pinnings fuse open into a periscopic stem of similarity, sprouting from the soil of every continent.

And there are seven of us huddled around xeroxes and hard-jaundice glower of cafeteria lights, listening to Uncle Mike's parlance, as one listens to the gentle tap of rain. He seems excited and smiles.

Archived photo albums from previous Summer and Winter school lay behind the table where Mike is lecturing. Sporadically a couple saunters by, slow in discourse, pausing to listen at Mike's discussion and alights the album, sifting through each page with a golden pause and gradual smile. Mike warmly acknowledges the alumni's, tossing out his welcome matt smile.

*

"It's something really personal." Andrew says, tugging at my sleeve. I have my "David-we-really-ought-to-start-thinking-about-your-health-in-terms-of-physically-longevity" noctural cup o' jamoke toated in paw. I set down my heap of books and follow Andrew, into the corner, near the old couches where I used to sit and dream with a girl named Melissa months before.
Andrew metronomically moves closer to me and squints in my ear.

"Do you smoke pot?" He inquires, with Blakean innocence.

"What," I say, intermittently startled.

"There was a girl here last year who said that the reason you were smiling all the time was because you liked to smoked pot."

I smile.

"No Andrew. I don't smoke pot. I just smile alot. You can say alot with a smile, even if you don't have much to smile about."

A toothy grin arcs into color above Andrews chin.

"I'm sorry. I just thought about that alot since we met last year."

"No problem," I say, turning around, looking for Uncle Mike. Andrew nudges at my sleeve again.

"Remember the handshake you taught me last year?" Andrew says. I smile. I remeber Andrew. He's grown about three feet in the last year.

We perform our 'secret-brother' handshake, pummeling our clenched fists, benignly smashing our knuckels together. I tell him attaboy and tussle his hair, scooping up the mound of Books like a papoose en route to Mike's lecture. When I see Mike and spot the flock of patient-gaited friends stepping gingely into the cafeteria I am completely unaware that Andrew is behind me, stepping into the contours of my flailed shadow, watching my direction, tracing my every step.


*

"When we emblazon His name, we emblazon all the names." Mike says, with warmth and conviviality. Mike has just handed out cheaply collated Xeroxes with trignometric lines. The word ABRAHAM headlines the top of the page like a Title of a syndicated newspaper. Branching off from the word Abraham are three discrete (yet connected at the top) parrellel bars, the names of ABRAHAM'S three wives, SARAH, HAGAR and KATURAH each propagate additional black streams. Sprouting from SARAH there is a little incompleted square that ends with the names MOSES and JESUS respectively. From Hagar (who, along with Katurah, I had never previousy heard of before the lecture) is a long artery stemming down three-fourths of the page. The word MOHAMMAD opens up mightily like a island with wings in the center of the page, only the line continues through Mohmmad, down to almost the bottom of the page, ending in the words 'THE BAB'. On the far branch, the branch that demarcates Abraham's third wife KATURAH, a long, singular black river slices down the far right hand side of the page, shooting straight down like a comet in perfect linearity ending with the word BAHA'U'LLAH. Caterpillared across the bottom of the page lies what my mom might classify as a "verse of scripture." It is Genesis 22:18 :

And in thy seed shall all nations of the earth be blessed.

Uncle Mike continues to discuss religious plurality and spiritual union. He discusses scriptural correlations. He quotes (a la William Sears) a Buddhist adage that heralds the forthcoming Buddha arriving in a time when "metal strikes metal" and then he notes that in 1844, the same day when the Bab declared was also the same day when Morse sent the first telegraph, saying "What hath God wrought?" (Numbers 23:23). Uncle Mike reads the word 'Jesus' in the original aramaic and then reads the name of Baha'u'llah and notes the uncanny similarities.

He does all this while smiling.

Lavender Prayer

Lavender prayer for two bloggin' buddesses and the rest of turtle Island (Now that I know yer' both alive and well).....only rule...you have to read the poem slow and loud.....


For All.


Ah to be alive
on a mid-September morn
fording a stream
barefoot, pants rolled up,
holding boots, pack on,
sunshine, ice in the shallows,
northern rockies.

Rustle and shimmer of icy creek waters
stones turn underfoot, small and hard as toes
cold nose dripping
singing inside
creek music, heart music,
smell of sun on gravel.

I pledge allegiance

I pledge allegiance to the soil
of Turtle Island,
and to the beings who thereon dwell
one ecosystem
in diversity
under the sun
With joyful interpenetration for all.

-Gary Snyder