Dec. 15 -

Bad day, bad start.

These days I spend every moment of existence

regretting my past and dreading my future. I can see the

future, but only in 5 minute increments. My brief future

is clear and inevitable, but I am physically unable to

prevent or alter it. I can only crawl on my stomach like a

sick wretched snake. I am a snake, and in 5 minutes I will

die on my belly. I can see that for certain. To avoid the

terrible visions of the 5 minute future, all I can do is

crawl. I've crawled through the sour soggy patch of

sewage in my front yard. I've crawled over the scalding

blanket of blacktop outside my house in the Mississippi

summer. And I have crawled here today to beg

forgiveness and to be killed by a crazy man who I once

knew....

Here he holds me against the cold, wet earth - holds

me with a gun to the back of my head, and he's screaming

that I must remember ... I must remember. I'm so choked

in fear I cannot respond. Only gasp and ponder my life in

these last moments. Before I feel the shift in the air from

the tension drawing his finger back against the cocked

trigger. And I can smell the spark that charges the power

that feeds bullets to my mind, that feeds my life to

nothingness. I am replete with nothingness.

Dec. 18 -

Had a wicked bad night. Climbing the walls over this

dream about being a kid again, and being with this guy as

he beats the holy hell out of this guy, just this skinny

guy, with the butt of a revolver. And then he starts

kicking the guy, and me being just a kid, I start to cry. And

this guy, this man I don't know, points the gun at his own

head and starts screaming, "I'll blow my [expletive deleted] brains

out if you don't quit crying!" Writing those words almost

seems amusing to me now, but when you're actually there,

and those words are actually said, it's like your guts have

spilled out into the floor, and your heart is just tangling

like a piece of fruit, inside your chest that is about to snap.

I feel it so strongly, I could only have been there.

Dec. 21 -

The fighter at the Cooter farm tonight was him. He is

not well-liked. He's the guy picking fights and spitting at

everybody. He popped a skate punk in the jaw tonight

with a half-foot of PVC pipe. I heard the kid's neck creak

and his jaw bone buckle. It was like lusty violence. I

loved the cracking.

But they tossed him out. His hair is wild hair, and he

gives this toothless yell - it's like a primal howling. The

wail of the hellbound. Their party completely stopped,

and I've never seen an Ego Shovel party silenced by

anything - not wild open sex, not a guy wigging out of

his skull after a bad trip. But this guy stalled that bash ...

with a howl.

A viscous foil to the shallowness of misbegotten

youth.

I defecated a poem to him:

Navy clouds and bitter moons.

Kids cry hollow and run for drinks,

Thirsty, never - never clever;

Like moths to lights and lights to malls -

I too can flutter and flounder by moonlight.

Can't tell the stars from airplanes anymore,

I sit beneath the moon, I rot and watch it;

For all my walking and struggling,

Can't wait for permanent escape.

Dec. 22 -

I have to start keeping my dreams recorded because

they've gotten so trippy, and I'll need them to write a

whole play about my dreams to explain the things that are

happening. I'm frightened of myself when I sleep. It's

like a demon shutting off the lights and having its way

with me in the motionless dark. Settled all around me

waiting for me to sleep and I can hear it in my sleep. My

heart pounds like footsteps and I hear breathing in the

corner. And I'm lying on my stomach, I've torn my

covers and heart beating like steel and all the words come

spilling out of my head.

I don't know who made them.

So the dream I had last night, it awoke me to truth. I

was a kid in the passenger seat of a musty car, hurdling

through the darkness on a late-night interstate. And up

through the midnight mist, motorists were stopped on

the right shoulder. One was a state trooper, his blue

beacon lights revolving and warning us. The trooper was

walking toward a stopped car, and perhaps he felt the burn

of the headlights on his back. He whipped around as the

beams flooded him, and before I realized what was

happening, the car grill and hood swallowed him in a

swift gulp. The car bumped and burped as it mangled the

trooper's body. The car swerved back onto the highway

and sped ahead, leaving the carnage behind.

"How's that for swift justice?" said the driver. I turned

and looked. It was him, younger and less frazzled. But

equally compelling and insane.

Dec. 30 -

Why is he here, causing me these dreams? Dreams so

vivid they conflict with my reality, enough so that I call it

to question. I have never seen you in my life. I haven't

actually experienced these things. Yet you are so familiar,

and these experiences, these nightmare flashes are fused

in my consciousness. These dreams are calling them up.

Your appearance is so alarming. It's like I'm chained to

a mad man.

Jan. 3 -

Lee's roommate moved in today. Her name is Purity.

An auburn wonder. She's a tender dream.

Her eyes, they just - pierce me....

Jan. 4 -

This girl is Purity is a wicked spy. I've seen her in my

dreams. She's there lurking in the background. Or the

one I become sexually obsessed with. That nude stranger

in my dream. I've seen her there, and now she is here.

Jan. 5 -

His name is Rory. I knew that - somehow I knew. I

overheard some people in Proud Larry's talking about

him. Supposedly he'd gotten quite drunk the night

before. Moved way past oogling. Boozed up and hitting

on sophisticated women, rubbing his primal stench and

filth on them. They say he danced around the room as if

being tossed about by some giant invisible hand. It took

two bouncers to throw him out. He actually drop-kicked

one of them. A perfect drop-kick, which I've never seen

live in person. A drop-kick to the head would kill most

any weakling. I can see this Rory floating off, mid-drop-

kick. Floating off to sulk in the night, and to breed his

danger in the hearts of young women and men all

through town. In my dreams, he has been lurking around

the house.

Jan. 8 -

I've been hanging out with Purity, watching fake

gameshows and other prize deals. We really connect. Just

sitting there together in understanding. There's a quiet

softness to her that I can't stop thinking about. It's

something That quiet is something I've needed and felt

often in my life. To watch me and to be in my circle,

you'd think it was soft and quiet, but in fact it's deafening

and harsh and degrading. To think like me is to be

delivered to madness. Either the same is lurking in her, or

she has a silent wisdom I need. I need a god on this earth

to explain my surroundings and how I perceive them.

Jan. 13 - 2:20 a.m.

Had another nightmare. My mind is back to doing evil

things. Lee told me that when I woke up this morning, I

came and watched her bathe. Just sat there on the counter

and stared with this blank, detached look on my face. She

said it made her feel weird. She asked me what was going

on. I told her I had no recollection of watching her bathe.

When I woke up it was because I dreamed about Geena

again.

Jan. 14 -

Rory is stalking my perimeters. I feel him breathing

down my neck.

Jan. 15 -

Drunk out of my mind tonight. Knowing it. Crying.

Before I expressed myself too much I had to come inside

and lie down. Was chatting and lusting over Purity.

Wanted to tell her about the night ride that made him the

sick fickle bastard, the tongue-tied lunatic with a gash in

his soul, his secrets steaming and gushing out. The

purple-eyed beast [vulgar reference deleted]. Crashing his head

through a car window and painting the concrete with blood.

Rolling around in the grass and sand and cigarette butts,

crying for his lady to come back. It's my fault... It was the

old drunk man standing in the road. It was Rory standing

in my way. I tried to swerve and miss him but I came too

close to the embankment and we flipped and tumbled right

out into the blazing median, crashing into the dandelions and

disaster. Flipping and absorbing the shocks. Battered

about, bruised and broken. Smashed through the glass

and lied dying out there in the pitch black night, no one

around to see how destruction rang death. She took it in

the neck. It was twisted at a funny angle - her head was

all lifeless and serene. I poked her and shook her and I

knew there was no life left. There could be nothing but

bones and muscle, rendered lifeless by shock and God

knows what else. What caused her to leave and not I?

Not I... Not I... Not I... It was not I, officer. I'm dead,

officer. I'm alone in the grass and dead. I have beaten the

life out of her. I have touched her, splayed out in the

grass. We used to have picnics, carried on until dusk.

Messed around in the bushes. There's so much love in

her dead body. I had to feel it and caress it one last time.

It was love without life. Passion and thrills and it was

all that kept me alive.

Jan. 17 -

Hey, you slurring dog with your entrails streaming!

How about some sympathy for the mad and

impoverished!

Jan. 21 -

I've really found something in this girl Purity -

found someone. She's more of a sensual person, like me.

Not always running off at the mouth, spewing

irrelevancies and pointless lies. We can sit in the same

room for hours and say nothing, but also be saying

everything. Body language is the key. Brain waves in the

air. You can channel those if you're thinking right, if

your mind's on the right frequency and you're aware of

the world and lives around you. If you wake up and

watch yourself on the planet, with so many others. I've

never loved watching the world through a TV with

anyone as much as I love watching and listening with her.

Jan. 23 -

Haven't seen Rory around town, but I hear he's

looking for me. People tell me he's asking questions, so I

run away. Back here to Lee's house. She's never around,

but I just want to lie down next to Purity any way.

Jan. 24 -

Maybe he was my uncle.

I dreamed of eating dog shish kabob. I woke up hungry.

I know this all goes back to Uncle Glenn's. Going there as

a kid, it just pinched my mind, bruised it. How could

Aunt Helen stand that? Him pushing his crotch up

against her all the time. Rubbing her down there in front

of everyone, like it wasn't a big deal. Like he was putting

out a cigarette. She wasn't happy about that. She was

always on the verge of tears. Someone should have taken

a shovel across his head, that horrible man. That evil

demented [expletive deleted].

Sending me to Locke Station for two weeks while you

and Dad were in Washington. How could you? Leaving

me with that freak of nature. Is that where we came

from?

He kept that yellow lab tied to a tree on the hill behind

their house. It was their hunting dog, Uncle Glenn told

me. It wasn't hunting much on that hill. Hunting for

death maybe. The dog's fur was caked with mud and dung.

It had pea-sized ticks swollen all over its neck and ears. It

whimpered and cowered, wallowed in the dust and ants.

It smelled of dung. Piles around, running wounds and

brown, bug-infested water. What a mad place to live.

How could any living creature survive in such filth and

depression?

I took a shish kabob skewer from the kitchen and went

out to tease that sad scared dog. I punctured its belly a few

times to see if it'd eaten anything lately. I'd just seen Jaws

and thought it was cool how they pulled a license plate

out of the shark's belly. There was not much inside the

dog. Pretty soon it started going into spasms and was

howling so loud I had to jam the skewer in its ear to kill

it. I thought I could make it look like a bear killed it, so I

used the skewer to tear out its intestines. It was like

ripping the soul out of this animal. The most incredible

rush, like seahorses sawing on the brain with gutrocks

from torn abdomens. Tearing life from the bone, the

earth. Sopping with blood and meat I got on my hands

and face.

What I'll never forget is how Uncle took me out to see

it the next day. He wanted to impress me. He took me up

the hill and it was that old yellow dog. His tongue and

eyeballs were hanging out. They were still and

unquestionably absent of life. It was strung up on the tree

by its intestines. I'll never forget what uncle told me:

"I bet them cow [expletive deleted] perverts in the paper

had a hand in this."

This disturbed me beyond description, the sight of this

poor neglected animal, unfolded against the tree that kept

him bound. And the man who had bound him, gloating

over the horror of it. I had nightmares about it for weeks

after, and now they have returned. One more thing to

cringe over.

Feb. 1 -

He's done it this time.

My friend Silva was raped by him. She phoned it in at Lee's

insistence. Told the cops about this horribly stringy mess of a

man with long wild hair and estranged eyes. She was looking

into the face of a demon as it jammed itself inside of her and

told her wicked secrets. That was the worst of it, she said --

the things he told me. She wouldn't elaborate, but said that she

didn't think humans were capable of such lascivious thought.

The purest evil. Evilclear. Rotting minds wherever it tasted.

She asked if there was therapy. My body will mend itself, she

said. But my mind...

Feb. 3 -

The hunt is on, and they still haven't caught him. He has been

sighted around, but not many people know about what happened.

Silva preferred to keep it all quiet and I understand her worry.

She doesn't sleep at night. I don't either, I told her.

Feb. 9 -

Here's another dream. I'm in one of those paddle

boats on a lake, and who should pop out of the water but

Ben Ellis, my third grade pal. He pops his head out of the

water and says, "Heaven is not the nicest place to go." It

struck me as so odd because my whole life I'd counted on

heaven being so great. And then I have this boy come to

me, a boy who has obviously been there, and tells me no,

no it isn't the best place to go. What if we've already been

to the heaven we're counting on? We've been there and

back, and that time and place was the reward for ... for

what? For what? Creation? For living happy and better

lives? For pretending there's something out there? I saw

him die! I know the reason he died! From heavenly

intervention? Hell no! That little boy died from beasts.

He died from believing in them and knowing them. He

died from himself and from all of us.

Walking in the mall, third graders. We were having a

big time. The first time we'd been allowed to roam away

from adults. Me and Ben - and he was there, I'm sure of

it. Talking and skipping, being loud and obnoxious. I saw

Ben standing on the ledge of the fountain, bending over

watching the spray turn colors. Watching the pennies

turn orange and pink and green, imagining sherbert and

sticking out my tongue to taste the water. Watching the

boy, it was like watching a mirror. Someone so young,

our age. I thought it was a stepbrother who could get away

with murder at home. Was there someone else, barely

existing outside of Mother's love? So vindictive. I can

still see him running over - shoved Ben, who went

flying into the waterfall river of changing lights and

streams. I saw him landing on red. The lights went out

but his body lit up with electricity. He flailed and flopped

and the lights in the mall flickered. He sizzled in the

water, boiling in the pretty streamers. He sizzled and fried

and the store lights went dead. Sunlight from the exit

shined in as he sunk to the bottom. He sunk down to

sleep with the pennies. And I stood on the ledge, reaching

out. "He fell in! He fell in!"

I only now remember it to be true.