sunny paradise (march)

sunny paradise (march)

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genome spooned the mush into her mouth, bobbing his head and grinning. she stiffened slightly.

he put aside the can and spoon and leant down to kiss her nose.

he was innured to the roar of the transports, the stabbing glare of the headlights from the freeway. the bare concerete coldness of his room. the red filmy dust in the air.

said her father shorted on filters to pay for his booze, myrtles young body poisoned, paralyzed wouldnt have her any other way though shes beautiful like a bruised flower, you hold your breath her bodies so delicate and her eyes see right into his heart

he wipes her mouth with the back of his shirt lowers himself to hoist her on his back

time to go, you know how your dad is. we'll go along the wash.

mussolini says its a dreadful irony that beach front property used to be so expensive and now they cant give it away fast enough, 'dreadful irony' genome grins a very mussolini thing to say as if he was quoting from a book

the black soup of the waves filled with fishbones, plastic and ammonia an genome tends to agree but myrtle loves it still so he moves carefully down the cement stairs

the back of his dads head, the television blaring as usual sounds of the german occupation

his dad calls himself a patriot hasnt worked in ten years lives off genomes work as research facilitator. human monkey mussolini calls it, they say its all he's qualified for, no big deal except for the headaches and a bit of a skin allergy

havent seen my mum in six years and don't blame her neither.

know shes been around because she switches my furniture around, and the pissbucket is always empty.

dad says she lives up in a hatch in the roof like some kind of freak and lowers down cooked food on a basket, won't come down until hes knocked out on pills and beer

my life as a punchbag

not much to see in the pasture, thats what they call this bloc,

for workers with two strikes to their name. great fuckin big advertising banners so the truck convoys can see em from the through-way, dumpy concrete houses, rancid fog rolling in from the bay

all kinds of chemical puddles coughed up from decaying transport pipes

throat still burns even with the rebreathers

i can feel myrtles heart beating through my back..

three strike workers like mussolini get carted off to work assignments under armed guard and recycled if their productivity hearing gives them the thumbs down. hes been maintaining his output with a blend of executive uppers and downers which the telly says are a guaruntee of success for the upwardly mobile worker or your credit back but he's in a bad way,

its capital time and thats capital air and they dont fuck around..

anyway, these days resume screenings include the details of your friends and family, their gene potential.. so we dont hang out much anymore, i can't afford to drop any lower on the food chain

iii

lazlo says in art you find the last seeds of religious thought,

"they believe creativity is a bacteria you can kill with antibiotics.."

he says everything you need to know about morality you can see in the way light and dark blend on the human face & that art, like love or compassion, is about seeing, not knowing..

lazlo works in the chemical factory and he claims to be a student of black market literature. when i first saw him hunched over the production line he was claiming to be brain damaged and partially blind, but i must have made a good impression on him cause he effected a miraculous cure in the shitter and came clean

laslo has the uncomfortable habit of shouting out product names in mid-sentence..

he was once volunteerd by his supervisor for an experimental project

which he claims he can't remember

though he does recall being hung by his ankle from some kind of conveyor belt.. the stitching on the leather strap..

returned home he found himself immediately aroused by the sight of billboards,

he began sonambulating down to the shops in the dead of night, masturbating in front of posters of the malboro man, new ranges of home appliances.. vomiting at the sight of abritary brands of skin lighteners, non-stick pans, deoderants..

the moon is full, slightly tarnished like copper,

i imagine thats what the earth would be like if you dipped it into a sink and scrubbed all the shit off

myrtle is stretched out in a blanket her breath pluming in the night air,

i toss a bottle into the still water, but it hardly breaks the oil on the surface.

'one of these days when i save enough money, i'm goin to pack up and find a place of my own, somwhere a million miles from the city with trees, grass and real rivers with water you can drink.'

i know shes listening.

'a place where the sky is blue and the clouds are white, and the air is fresh.

i'll grow my own food, maybe catch fish when the weather is good.'

i feel for her hand under the blanket, squeeze her fingers.

'you and me. no more twelve hour work days. get up when we want.

no people, just birds, the wind in the trees.'

mrtyles da looks like an oilpainting. his face is all smeared white with a drooping mouth and a long moustache, heavy sad eyes.

most of the time he sits in the dark laughing at jokes in his own head, the laughter of a veteran head case.. when his drink runs out he starts crying, crumples up like a piece of paper

i can see him through the window resting on his hands and knees in a litter of empty bottles.

A line of machines rumble past behind me, large hulkers, long haulers, spewing fumes & noise, stirring up the fog.

the door opens with one elbow & so i bend slightly, pass under the doorpost, kicking aside trash with my feet.
The air reeks of piss and vodka, mouldering
furniture, i turn my head away and breathe into my armpit, moving careful as i can.

he stares off into the distance, his eyes darker than spilt ink, his chest crushed & arms bent. i can hear him wheezing like an old bellows. his shirt is spotted with vomit & cigarette ash.

dono, it's I. I brought myrtle back. dono.

i track my way through the mounds of newspapers tied up with twine, the stuffed dog, the empty bookshelf an the bits of broken machinery.

i lay her down on her bed n change her clothes,
fuss over the wires and tubes that keep her from choking to death, keep her kidneys from clouding up, keep her blood clean and fresh. roll up my sleeves and brush her teeth, put a few drops in her eyes.

a goodknight kiss, her mouth tastes of cinnamon.

the tube is the last place on earth youd want to hang out unless that is, you were a reekin drunk.

Not that anyone is openly drunk in public in anymore, since management started the evening rounds. A rattle of gunfire and bobs your uncle. They even put in a twenty-four hour hotline, up your rations if you leave a productive tip. Mind you, not all of the boozers get plugged. A lot of em go through re-education, sometimes theyre assigned to detention, like my mate musso.

Theres nothing like staring down the barrel of a 30.06 to give a man fire in his step.

Theres a lot of newspaper about but not much of it worth reading. Theres a

loudspeaker in every wall filling the underground with squawks and hisses, someone shoutin advertising slogans like his testicles caught in a vice. The papers just run sports now. Productive sports that is. Assembly line jackoffs.

My da still talks about the footer like it was someone close to him what died. His eyes go soft and his face reddens. That was the day the common man got his, ma son. Thats the day the fuckers stuck it to us.

train's crammed full as usual, packers working to fill places. bodies passed over heads. no talking in the coaches, everyone trying to suck in a little extra air.

you never meet a mans eye in the sardy. communication strictly a no-no, overpowering stink of council soap, sweat, cheap colognes. tobacco. day old beer. bodies pressed so hard together its sexual. faces in a dream blurred in the edges of your eye.

im watching the drab stained concrete passing behind the mesh windows as we descend like a coffin down a grave chute.

can't afford to assume anyone here is working joe. could be a car full of paramilitary. still, the ride is a pleasure compared to whats coming; fifteen hours of hard labour.

we move like a single body with the clacking of the rail.

lazlo is waiting under the gate, his chin pressed down on his chest. his body is gaunt under the canvas windbreaker, his hands pushed deep inside his pockets. as i pass him he loops a hand through my arm and walks alongside, his slow sliding steps like a bug skipping across water. the chimney rise high into the sickly yellow clouds, the crusted black walls of factory C tarred with diesel fumes..

do you know genome an ak47 in the hands of a russian is like a cello in the hands of a viennese.. so much history..

this is because no men have suffered like the russians, suffered in the cold hell of mother russia.. the music of the gulag, of soviet concrete.

We can sum up our own existence in the word concrete. Stable but dull. Heavy and oppressive but strong. Compassion can seem like weakness alongside strength. The masses will always side with the easier choice, the less confusing choice.

lazo glances up at the guard tower.. at the impassive grey helmet, the dour face of the guard leaning over the edge of the stone enclosure. The rim of his steel helmet throws a black shadow over his face.

abandon hope.. all ye who enter the stink.

I never found it necessary to speak to Lazlo, his idea of a conversation was a deep valley and the echo of his own voice. Enough trouble dealing with my cramp of anxiety. Hate the morning detail.

Our boss man was a regular slaver. All the force of capital industry was directed through him, down his heel and onto us. Supposedly a soldier in a war. . According to popular myth he was also a cannibal. Couldnt imagine sharing a foxhole with the fucker.

He was a squat bear of a man, with an upright military bearing and a chest stickin out like the blade of an axe. His head was shaped like a stack of bricks. He had eyes like black marbles and a mouth like a drooping rubber band.Had an uncomfortable habit of leaning in close and flaring his nostrils. as though he were smelling something bad on your breath. He's run a finger down your neck and taste your sweat as if it were the most natural thing in the world.. for a grown man to taste another mans sweat.

Johnny vertigo lives down among the filing cabinets. his hair is thick and spread like butter across his head. This is due in part to a fungus that thrives on the cold dampness of deep storage. He wears milk-bottle spectacles and one of his teeth sticks out at an angle between his lips.

Johnny likes to work. He believes in the fear. The mind tends towards fragmentation he says. Its tied together with a spit and a rubber band. Momentum protects us from the fear. When we get the fear the self begins to dissolve, we blossom out into the void. Now there may be men who can face that, he says, but not I. No sir, that is not the road for me.

For all that he's a staunch anti-intellectual, the man paints cockroaches.

The intellect is only necessary in as much as it contributes to functionality. The development of art for instance, was merely a waste product. Man and his perception of man, like a monkey using binoculars to watch himself in a mirror, fiddling with the controls, now in focus, now in focus.. until, like a microscope, a single pore fills the whole view.. and then individual atoms in their stately dance. Forget thought, gene. Move papers. Theres madness in the details.

He'll look up from the gaudy little fucker he's got pinned to the desk and nod, like he's answering his own question. Clean his brush, wipe his pants down.

Lead me down through the passages, like a blind gravedigger, touching the walls to feel his way where the lamps have burnt out. Though there

are no soldiers down here, no cameras, i always got an idea nagging at the back of me mind that someone is watching. some little security ferret in the deep dark. He slots his card and the door clanks open. A technician hurries over, takes my coat and ushers me to a cot, running through a checklist. Johnny watches for a few moments, hikes up his pants and heads back into the darkness.

They're already sticking tubes in me, running an IV, bringing up monitors. Perfunctory greetings, they dont make bones about treating me like an animal. doc higgins stares right through me, like my skin was a nuisance.

you have to wonder what kind of shit they're running through you. i've been fairly lucky, the worst was a mild stroke. I get recurring migraines, lesions, a rash but all in all lifes good for a two strike worker.

When the knockout comes, i'm still in mid thought, not even a tumble to the canvas. Usual story. They don't like us hearing their discussions, though I can't make head or tail of their pigeon lab-speak.

Wake up a few hours later, jaw hurts, back hurts. Confused. Someone injects KO in my IV. Wake up again and the days over, good as new. One of the interns helps me off the cot, hands me a cup of coffee. I stagger back down the passage, concentrating on the folds in the back of Johnny's shirt, trying not to puke.

mr. harris is one of the oldest crew in the sort' n press department.
He spends most of his working day fused to an enormous metal spine
that hangs over the belt feed system. Everything beneath the concavity
of his ribs is machine complete with rivets and pipes. He's a quality
control drone, qualified to say yes or no and divert produce back into
the recycle belt. He's not unpopular with the lads, who like to crack
jokes about his magnetic arse. He has a quavery voice & paint stripper for

breath.

The administration has not been unsuccessful in their attempts to make
the aged more productive. Everything above a category E geriatric that is.
There is a certain point, a line in the sand if you will, where you can
no longer squeeze out another minute of work from the human body. Of course
the body in question is usually more mechanical than organic by that time.

Case in point. Lets call her grandma A. Works her fifty years. Rises all
the way to the bottom of the barrell. The company will
let her retire only, over the years of labour, most of her vital organs have been replaced. Her family not likely to pay off the fifteen thousand mark bill.
Goes to the workers court. She loses case. Repo crew enter home with warrent and remove most of grandma.

I'm watching mr. harris as they wheel him into the canteen, trying to ignore the
taste of my slop and my burgeoning migraine. It aint much of a future to look
forward to.

His buddy, Jim “freizeblock” martini had coded every soviet expression imaginable into Microsoft word, he had even reverse engineered the capital principle, to treat the word Microsoft as a diminuitive and reverse the assignment of a capital letter to the company.

War of principle and counter principle occurred. microsoftjie.

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