Remix Fiction: Ships Sailed

ORIGINAL

“Ships Sailed” by CBR

Ships sailed.  Through rum and ice. It’s almost closing time.  Ten minutes until nine and I hope you’re not singing — I know who I want to take me home.  Because if you are then I will never want to take you home.  And I hope no one else will either.

And my home — hey jealousy — is in the tropics.  Of cancer.  Where the stress is always free and the only tumored cancer comes from lack of sunscreen if rumors are to be believed. Vitamin D efficiency.  Salted breeze curing flesh like frozen meat.  Melting the hungover nose.  Noose on the planked pirate.  There she blows — voyeur gazing Lauren.  The little bitch in the window. How much? The little doggie with the waggley tail.  How much?

I liked her better with curls.

But I came for the booze.  So don’t you dare start humming — to take me home.  Oh, I would know.  The short pause in answer while you cleared the fog of bad pop music.  Don’t dare and don’t confuse me for caring, Lauren.  I’m staring at warren street signs looking for the 109.  But it’s all foreign.  Which way should I go? Can’t make up my mind. Yes Ludo which way?

Follow your sunburned nose toucan SAM.  Futuristic Japanese blue neon follows wherever it grows. Head uptown.  Find the bright lights.  Imbuing shoes and sidewalks in its incandescence. In essence, I’m effervescent.  I even shaved my beard today, so I look less peasant.  More pleasant.  Party worthy with no worries.  And I find the rum stacked on shelves like unopened library books the color of wood.  Would you mind not humming — closing time for you to go out into the world? I’ve been polite. Warned you two other times.

Three handles of the hula girl with the clerk Jay and Silent until the cash hits the counter.  Then arrrrrrgh matey.  So he must be sampling the wares.  And maybe that’s not a bad idea so I grab a brown paper bag to-go.  I don’t care who stares.  It’s back to the apartment.  Stumbling along the pavement.  Wishing I had a sword to slay the voyeur, but the little doggie has left the window.  So the dull thump of music stands alone.  Or is it shoes?

Both.  And cheers for the bottles of booze when I open the door.  Cheers for circumnavigating.  Cheers for the black-flagged Jolly Roger.  What are their names? How should I know?  High-diggity-dee the pirate’s life for me.

We need a drinking song.  A rum-sea shanty.  No, goddamn you! It’s past closing time. We just want loud.  Not lame.  There.  Stop.  X marks the spot.

Sleater-K is just fine.  I wanna be my own Joey Ramone.  Punk is close enough to pirate.  Bang heads and break shit.  Drink until your head spins.  Bottle landing on Lauren.  Seven minutes in heaven.  Hips touching the abyss.  A good port beyond fog-hidden facelessness.

Let’s dance.  Dance and swing our swords.  Fending off the other sailors and swashbucklers.  Let’s dance like good punk pirates, Lauren.  Let’s float a note.  A message in this rum glass.   Sailing through to me.  To you.  The future.  The past.  The wooden leg.  Metal hook.  The eye patched.

Let’s dance.  Let’s rape and pillage.   Let’s forget our bullshit.

That ships already sailed.

Where Everybody Knows Your Name

Ahhhhhhhhoooooooooooo howls wolf-Jack leader of the drunk pack.

Spirit guide of the sober.  Swaying happily at Hangar Bar in Alamo City.  Carrying 23s of Miller Lite.  Six at a time fingered precariously between his paws.  Defying laws of physics like all good alcoholics.  Gravity free.  Simply because he can.  And can’t stop.

42 hours into a weekend bender.  Day-drunk at the only establishment that hasn’t kicked us out.  Immediately.  Considering our behavior, noise level, insistence on driving.  Normally home to UFC events.  Metallic silver tribal Tapout leotards.  Iced urinals.  Two dollar drink specials.

Let’s get naked. Let’s makeout. Says shirtless wolf-Jack.  Not one to discriminate age, gender, attractiveness.  Sniffing shirttails.  Scratching backs.  Cocooning prey in his underfur.  Canis lupis clutching at hyena-Kelly.  Radiating heat.  Drunk-nuzzling.  Cannibalizing drinks.

Let’s makeout wolf-Jack yells at coyote-Choli.  No she barks.

And you are?  wolf-Jack asks.  Just kidding Wiley E. Cholita.

Ahhhhhhhhhhhoooooooooooooo!

“Central Park”

SURREAL FRAGMENTS: T-Rex Sneeze Guard

surreal fragments: GLORY AT SEA

Short film “Glory at Sea” by director Benh Zeitlin

TEQULIALETTER: Sherlock Stockholm

TEQUILETTER: Old Stockholm

Dear Old Stockholm,

There are nameless graves inside my desk. I might look for you there, but I
never found you. Were you ever there at all? They said they buried you. Along with a box
of matches. To help light your way.

But they are all liars, dobbs. Every last one of them. They are constantly talking in the
drawer. I come there to sleep now.  Lullabies of past lives and forgotten names.

I miss the trees, dobbs. Where I used to hang my gin and tonics by the thread of her hair.
I don’t know what happened to her I think she drowned in River City. With the rats. Three
were just too many of them. Trying to claw to higher ground. You should have seen her skin.
Red tears oozing into the water.

Then came the shark. They tookmy arm when I reached for her. It still hurts soemtimes. Stay
with me here dobbs, and don’t believe everything you read. It’s the snakes you really have
to worry about. Right on the front page. That’s how they got into your home. The heart
attack. At first, they just called it a phobia. A defect in the muscle. Since birth. The
dawn of existence. I think it’s the ink. OSHA came tor warn us about it. With a word search
But I was told it was something more personal. My name in letter I didn’t recognize. Right
next to fire extinguisher. And a snake coiling around a boy’s neck.

I put his obituary in the paper today. It said he had a sister who died under similar
circumstances. Both to be burried on Tuesday.

Whatever you do, don’t use the matches.
I
I’m sending you a few eulogies I found in my desk. I hope they’re not yours.

I Hope they’re not Mine.

I’ll try to dig you up next time there is new construction.

–Rock Hudson

surreal fragments: HAUTE QVCOUTURE

Surreal Fragments: BUTTERFLYPHANT

sharkitecture: AQUANET

Straight out of sci-fi, Shimizu Corporation has proposed a water network [AQUA-NET] to be built in deserts in order to kickstart their developmental viability. If only Liet Kynes had thought of one of these, Muad’Dib could have avoided a messianic jihad and Leto II might not have had to spend millenia murdering ghola Duncan Idahos with his signature worm-thrash smash.

The plan calls for the creation of recirculating seawater lakes surrounded by walls extending down to the impermeable layer. Water will  move between neighboring lakes through gravitational force creating a network of canals feeding these lake reservoirs.  Once these water zones are created and sustained, artificial islands can be formed on the lakes utilizing the new water supply.  The canals will connect these isolated zones and provide transport opportunities.  Hopefully some Saudi oil baron is greenlighting this as we speak.

For more of the gritty details, head on over to the plan overview at Shimizu. While you’re there check out their other dream projects.