There’s always been a counter-culture.
And by counter-culture
I do not mean the CPAs or CEOs,
Or those money **’s at Goldman-Sachs,
Nor do I conjure up a ****** of Brooklynese,
Some De Niro or Pacino, or
Bobby-come-lately Cannavale--
This decade’s guinea strunz--
Standing on the back of the truck
Checking his hand full of dollar--
As in Almighty Dollar--bills.
Another hour’s pay & time to
“Count duh money.”
Nor do I mean Harvey Korman
In his greatest film role:
“Count De Monet,”
Part 1 of Mel Brooks’
History of the World:
Harvey as French fop, 1789,
And we may as well throw a
Sop to Cerberus with nary a
Bean Counter around, to be found.
And if you are with me thus far,
You may as well stick it out to the end.

What one word defines the counter-culture?
For me: RESISTANCE,
Any kneecap reflexive swim against the tide.
For Count DeMonet:  La Résistance.
When hair is short,
They grow theirs long,
Or shave their heads,
Pierce their tongues & *******,
Inka-dinka-dooing their epidermis,
Mere skin-deep commitment to Liberté,
Always the least tangible of
French tripartite banner slogans.
The French:
As always, putting up a good show,
Masters of illusion & flexibility
When it comes to ethnic integrity,
Captain Louie Renault, Vichy stooge,
Exemplar extraordinaire,
Double shocked to find gambling
Going on at Rick’s Café,
His morality to the wind,
Tacking strategically,
Playing it safe, as always, a
Fickle-finger to the weather.
The French: girlie men, bent over
Presenting bidet-puckered rectums,
For *** and Viet Cong humiliation,
Once again, declaring victory,
While slipping out the back door,
Wearing nothing but their socks.
But I digress.

The Counter-Culture,
A mile wide and a centimeter deep,
Putting up a good front,
A Potemkin still life,
In it for appearance sake,
Like Billy Crystal doing Fernando Lamas:
“It's better to look good
Than to feel good.”
Looking marvelous, of course,
All the girls want to be
The Dragon Tattoo girl,
Haunted & smart,
Solitary & suspicious,
Cybercrime wealthy.
Cashing in, raking in affluence;
The guys all with Bobbitt night sweats,
***** shriveled, shrunken ball-sacks,
Count De Monet
Counting duh money.

Calf augmentation => silicon implantation
Endoscopy, otoplasty, baby
Mentoplasty, rhinoplasty, scalpel
Juvederm at 4, Starbucks pit-stop right after,
pop some xany's and go

Chemical peel, dermabrasion
Dr. Unknown PhD. meet patient Montag XR3.
Brain stimulation, kneecap replacement
Doc, I'm starting to miss the table, is this a complication I should expect?

Fat grafting, bone grafting, mystic tanning
(what really is natural nowadays?)
Chin reconstruction, laser resurfacing,
(what really is me anyways?)

Consultation with your post-op pain,
It's gonna be "Ouchy" for a month,
but worth it in the end.
Self-esteem scan shows a cancerous tumor and growth
Yuck
And here I thought plastic was
"cancer-free"?

Did you know that if you leave your car in your driveway,
With the keys in the ignition,
And someone sits down in the front seat like they own it, and drives away,
You are the one who is liable for theft?
They can drive that sucker to the coast.
They can burn the upholstery with their cigarettes. They can bring their friends into the back seat, and fill the compartments with their refuse, and ****, and they can leave it ruined in front of your house, or crushed into the median on the highway, or left in disconnected pieces under an overpass.
It will be called, “unauthorized use of a vehicle.”
It will be called a “misdemeanor.”
But you left the car running.
Weren't you kind of asking for it to happen?

They said,
This,
(Gesturing to the skirt which fell to two inches
above my kneecap),
Is like that.

If I walk outside of my house in jeans and a t-shirt, or a long dress with thin straps,
Or with my chin tilted out,
Or with long eyelashes,
Or with full lips,
Or with my hips swaying when I walk,

It's like I left the car running.

It's like I invited them to force their bodies into the front seat.
In their minds, or with their hands, or with their lips to anyone who would listen to them.

Little girls in leotards become like unlocked car doors;
Where men can burn their cigarettes into their skin,
Or stick their fingers in
In plain view of their parents,
And told to let it happen,
Quietly.
It isn't theft,
It's “a medical examination.”

What did they expect?
It isn't a theft.
She was just as guilty of negligence.
It isn't really a felony.
It's not THAT BAD. (Stop being so dramatic.)
It's the unauthorized use of your body, for a time, or one night,
or every time you close your eyes for the rest of your life,

Sure-

But you left the car running.

Consider
a girl who keeps slipping off,
arms limp as old carrots,
into the hypnotist's trance,
into a spirit world
speaking with the gift of tongues.
She is stuck in the time machine,
suddenly two years old ******* her thumb,
as inward as a snail,
learning to talk again.
She's on a voyage.
She is swimming further and further back,
up like a salmon,
struggling into her mother's pocketbook.
Little doll child,
come here to Papa.
Sit on my knee.
I have kisses for the back of your neck.
A penny for your thoughts, Princess.
I will hunt them like an emerald.

Come be my snooky
and I will give you a root.
That kind of voyage,
rank as a honeysuckle.
Once
a king had a christening
for his daughter Briar Rose
and because he had only twelve gold plates
he asked only twelve fairies
to the grand event.
The thirteenth fairy,
her fingers as long and thing as straws,
her eyes burnt by cigarettes,
her ****** an empty teacup,
arrived with an evil gift.
She made this prophecy:
The princess shall ***** herself
on a spinning wheel in her fifteenth year
and then fall down dead.
Kaputt!
The court fell silent.
The king looked like Munch's Scream
Fairies' prophecies,
in times like those,
held water.
However the twelfth fairy
had a certain kind of eraser
and thus she mitigated the curse
changing that death
into a hundred-year sleep.

The king ordered every spinning wheel
exterminated and exorcised.
Briar Rose grew to be a goddess
and each night the king
bit the hem of her gown
to keep her safe.
He fastened the moon up
with a safety pin
to give her perpetual light
He forced every male in the court
to scour his tongue with Bab-o
lest they poison the air she dwelt in.
Thus she dwelt in his odor.
Rank as honeysuckle.

On her fifteenth birthday
she pricked her finger
on a charred spinning wheel
and the clocks stopped.
Yes indeed. She went to sleep.
The king and queen went to sleep,
the courtiers, the flies on the wall.
The fire in the hearth grew still
and the roast meat stopped crackling.
The trees turned into metal
and the dog became china.
They all lay in a trance,
each a catatonic
stuck in a time machine.
Even the frogs were zombies.
Only a bunch of briar roses grew
forming a great wall of tacks
around the castle.
Many princes
tried to get through the brambles
for they had heard much of Briar Rose
but they had not scoured their tongues
so they were held by the thorns
and thus were crucified.
In due time
a hundred years passed
and a prince got through.
The briars parted as if for Moses
and the prince found the tableau intact.
He kissed Briar Rose
and she woke up crying:
Daddy! Daddy!
Presto! She's out of prison!
She married the prince
and all went well
except for the fear --
the fear of sleep.

Briar Rose
was an insomniac...
She could not nap
or lie in sleep
without the court chemist
mixing her some knock-out drops
and never in the prince's presence.
If if is to come, she said,
sleep must take me unawares
while I am laughing or dancing
so that I do not know that brutal place
where I lie down with cattle prods,
the hole in my cheek open.
Further, I must not dream
for when I do I see the table set
and a faltering crone at my place,
her eyes burnt by cigarettes
as she eats betrayal like a slice of meat.

I must not sleep
for while I'm asleep I'm ninety
and think I'm dying.
Death rattles in my throat
like a marble.
I wear tubes like earrings.
I lie as still as a bar of iron.
You can stick a needle
through my kneecap and I won't flinch.
I'm all shot up with Novocain.
This trance girl
is yours to do with.
You could lay her in a grave,
an awful package,
and shovel dirt on her face
and she'd never call back: Hello there!
But if you kissed her on the mouth
her eyes would spring open
and she'd call out: Daddy! Daddy!
Presto!
She's out of prison.

There was a theft.
That much I am told.
I was abandoned.
That much I know.
I was forced backward.
I was forced forward.
I was passed hand to hand
like a bowl of fruit.
Each night I am nailed into place
and forget who I am.
Daddy?
That's another kind of prison.
It's not the prince at all,
but my father
drunkeningly bends over my bed,
circling the abyss like a shark,
my father thick upon me
like some sleeping jellyfish.
What voyage is this, little girl?
This coming out of prison?
God help --
this life after death?

I FORGOT TO WASH MY HAIR FOR TWO WEEKS IM ******* SLIMY ALL OVER DO YOU STILL WANT TO KISS ME
this isnt a ******* pride parade **** me with your eyes open
**** me and say "god,the smell of you"
the stench
******* spiders crawling out of my mouth i smell like a gutter turned into a bomb shelter
im an epidemic
ITS ******* ART THATS WHY I RIPPED OUT YOUR THROAT ITS ALL A METAPHOR DONT YOU SEE IT NOW
let go of me. let go of me--slime central
home of the world famous gutter babe
******* ******* shut up ******* **** me
bury your pride and the ******* ****** weapon in one line its not that complicated
but i want to be messed up, or i used to want it
or i will want it
i can feel everyone vibrating with the force of it all and somewhere you're laughing at me
chains around your ankles
this is what it takes to **** a martyr
this is what it takes to swallow him whole
go out guns blazing
WELCOME TO YOUR DARKEST HOUR
**** the switch, or turn the lights off, or whatever
put a blindfold on when you stab yourself
put a blindfold on me when you pull my intestines out with your bare hands
desecrate me
im not a tomb but im a funeral pyre
bodies are my specialty
sorry, i misspoke
what i meant to say was, "i want to **** myself"
but i won't, not when the meats so fresh, lick blood off of my kneecap
YOU WERE ALWAYS GOING TO BE THE SACRIFICE
sentiment is for liars and thieves
(im both but you dont know that yet, it hasn't happened yet--shut up, I'm telling the story.this is my fall from grace,not yours)
bite your tongue bite your teeth too in fact
just bite yourself ******
its better this way, or whatever you want to hear
what am i supposed to say to a graverobber? do you want me to thank you,is that what this is about?
*******, *******, what the **** are you still doing here, anyway?
i hope you rot
i hope we both rot
(AND HERES THE PART WHERE YOU SAY "I ALWAYS LOVED YOU" AND HERES THE PART WHERE I CUT OFF YOUR HEAD)

Control
Everything comes back to control
There are pins on a board
Places you took me
Needles in my skin
Places you touched me
But, no
This time I'm not losing it
Maybe it's because you're only a foot from me
Maybe I still have some hope
Trials and errors
Everything comes back to trial and error
You were a trial
I was the error
I'm realizing in time,
Everything really does fade to black and white
I'm realizing
Everything doesn't happen for a reason
This wasn't fate
This wasn't a higher power
Here I sit,
Ready to pour
And your back is turned to me
Nothing's the enemy
There is no ******* enemy
Walking through empty corridors,
Filled with paranoia
I'm not afraid of going numb again
That'd be the best case scenario
No,
I'm afraid of feeling this
All of it
Like a slow, steady beating
Like a nail on my kneecap,
A hammer in your hand
Like it was all just
Nothing
This was your trial
And I was the error
Like a hammer in your heart
Like your heart morphing into a hammer
One swift hit
Trial and error

i found a birthmark shaped like Alaska
on the inside of your kneecap,
and i only saw it the day you
let me cross the border;
it was sensitive to my touch,
the moon-like ripples leading
to the needles on the pine tree
in your back yard.
sometimes i can read behind the
lines of DNA makeup,
like the lonely biologist you seem to be,
but your lingo is foreign to me,
tattered words and language deficiencies,
i can hardly follow along the braille
carved onto your outer layer,
the marble you worked so hard to
weather on your own time.
yet, somehow its turned to rubble again.
sometimes i hold an out of order sign
against my breastbone so i can set eyes
straight and wish anyone would light me on
fire,
           (but not literally, i'm absolutely against abuse)
i want the sticks but not the stones,
since wood won't leave my body bruised.
use my transitions for kindle,
and my organs for the flames.
i want to be colored red,
like ambulance lights, stop signs,
painted like a signature to warn others
how my frequencies can only be heard
by animals.
maybe some other life forms,
or god,
but i have never hoped more that
you would pick up on my signals,
my freckles scream out samples
of how this could be
or what we could have known.

I woke up this morning, and no I am not singing a blues song....
There is something big and white in a small room
I had a torrid few minutes trying to recall...
re-fri-ger-a-tor
a step forward
ouch! My kneecap hurts, not fun.
I learnt the refrigerator although white
is not as soft as a pillow or a cloud
I managed to make the room safe
by pushing the refrigerator
out of the window.
Whoops.....sorreee!
there is something under it outside, round and red
a volley ball is round and red
but this round thing is gurgling
and very red indeed
except for the things like lips that are going bluey-grey
Wow the world is fun with severe memory loss
and a laissez-faire attitude to exploring things.
Bubby, my neighbor gave me a present
it is heavy, has a handle and a little lever on the side
safe......fire.....safe....fire......
It fits in my mouth, I wonder if ..
BANG!!....

I was suckling the barrel
of my grandpa's favorite gun,
when Gloria strolled in,
head held high,
like a 12-story *****.

"What the **** are you doing?"

"Nothin', sweets, I was just wondering about the taste."

Gloria mixed herself a Mt. Vesuvius,
unplugged the telephone,
turned on the tv,
dug her nails into my weary couch,
over and over.

I didn't ask how her day went,
she didn't call me babycakes,
we didn't touch,
I just watched as she changed channels,
sunk further into oblivion,
I traced my kneecap with
grandpa's gun,
it was something to do, I suppose.

"You know you got to get out," she finally said.

I looked like a suicidal *******, baptized in cobwebs,
and every word I threw at every guest teemed parasitic.
I hadn't left the apartment for awhile,
it seemed like every time I did, I would collide with
some enemy, and my bloodlust was subsiding.
I didn't like it to be so awfully one-sided.
"Hey, look at me," she demanded.

Maybe the neurons are crippled,
can't cross the synapse,
or perhaps it's this culture that
listens only to the false priest in its head,
but when no one else around you is living,
it makes the whole gig seem a bit pointless.
"Gloria, sometimes it's better just to die."