Pacemaker by Randolph Chabot Jr.

It seems in silence that the better things are born.
The dull ache can only tarry the coming of the morn.
Should skin be falling off while the heart is speeding?

Whispering! the note worth holding

Is the one worth needing.

Sir you have a blindspot
Buddy you’ve got an oilslick
Brother you’ve got a bloodclott
Dang right I’m love sick

Love should be sick
Only if its pregnant.
Suffering from pains of straining horizon
Love is a little one of the greater Love rising

I’ve got engines for veins
You have rockets for walkers
Our Father the Mover
The Void filling talker.

Sir should skin be falling off while the heart is speeding?

A stillness echoed, the note worth holding

Is the note worth needing.

Labels: Golly Gee

Meat by Randolph J. Chabot Jr.

In between seven kingdoms
Where all their borders met.
Laid a carnival of flesh a meat market.

A truly beautiful place with ivory hanging wet,
Dripping organs into seekers heavy set
Stomachs with arms inside their prison guts.
Pushing hands through making peek holes with their cuts.

Everyone praised it for its carnal glow.
Kings and autoworkers bow to it and crow,
At the young moon hiding the face of a slave,
A nurse, or a princess, a doll costume knave.

This bluish slate leaving limbs detached
Keeping mangle arts secret keeping scraping screens latched.

It was my first trek to that holy city.
Ten thousand meat slabs hanging, evoking pity.
Such beauty and terror should not coincide
Each body a pearl to find and to hide.

At the pure sight I vomited and shook.
At the very thought of that prophesied look.
My hands and my body twitched harder even still.
Arms were dragging me, insulting my will.

They pulled me over to a hanging disaster.
Their nails grabbed my eyes, “behold son your master!”
Then by my hair they yanked up my gaze.
Whip Crack! Her scream that lasted an age.

I cried as I stared, it was Love, my mother, my keeper so dear.
She looked at me softly and whispered, “Your click brought me here.”

Today at work there was a mouse who did his business on the table where we eat. Needless to say we were a little grossed out. I mean bubonic plague, do we want a repeat of the Middle Ages (all though I would kill to wear a sword and a tunic and not be mocked openly in public)? The girls got out their nuclear/chemical/hellfire and brimstone hazmat suits and bleached the table white enough to be a fashion junky stuck in Billy Idol bleach blond for the past 20 years (holy hair day batman)! So everyone was up in arms, they tried cheese but the mouse was too crafty and got away unscathed. The Audacity! "Try peanut butter, cheese whiz; yeah get his little feet stuck in there!" Were the shouts I heard in the back round accompanied by laughter and much merry making. One man even went as far as to say that if he did not get it tonight with his cleverness he would get his 22 and night vision goggles to hunt it in the attic himself. I was a little disturbed. The mouse is so little, and do not get me wrong I can see why a mouse would have to die. I lived in real low income housing for awhile and my front door had a hole in it big enough to let a bison in through. I actually sat down on my floor and watched ants file in one day, it was kind of funny. Anypoop, I am saying that when there are brown recluse spiders in your house I am going to probably kill them. You can say different but once one has crawled on your booty you might say different (a bite from this type of spider can make a part of your body rot practically off. I am not saying I have a really nice butt or anything, but if I was missing a cheek think of the problems I would have sitting and finding pants). So sometimes things die I am o.k. with that sort of, but that does not mean that we are ever allowed to be brutes about it.
In Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky the main character Raskolnikov has a dream in which a peasant named Mikolka decides to flog his old horse to death just because it is his. He piled everyone he could find into his cart and tried to force the old horse to pull all of them. The onlookers laughed and cheered him on as he beckoned like a deranged ringleader, come one come all! Even those who told him he was cruel in the beginning laughed when the horse tried to actually move the cart. We as humans are kind of like that sometimes. Why do we laugh when others suffer? Why do we call the people that we war against animals? How can we say it is out right just because it is ours? I have never fought in a war before, but I can tell you what; if I did I would not hate my enemies. I would not kill with malice and hatred in my heart. Even if it was a man like Saddam Hussein or Stalin who killed untold thousands I would be sad to have to kill them. Sad that they had become what they had become, sad that I had become them, sad that we live in a world where others decide it is o.k. to kill. Screw that it is o.k. to kill sometimes. I do not care what your reasons are. There is something shocking about it that will mess with your head and will scar your soul. I used to hang out with homeless people when I lived in Minneapolis, and met a guy who had been a sharpshooter in Vietnam. This man lived with his little boy on the streets and drank himself to sleep every night. He told me at about 3:00 am in the downtown city square known as the Music Hall that he could see the faces of the people he had shot getting blown off every night. He said he had shot women and children and he could not help but regret it but look at it. But look at the half faces and contorted looks of pain like an excerpt from Hades.
So what is it in me that strains my neck to look at a car wreck that can watch the testing of atomic bombs without flinching? Gladiator fights, public hangings, horror movies, I enjoy gore just as much as the next guy, but it has started to weird me out lately. So in the words of Sufjan Stevens “the State is advocation!” I am not saying the rest of the world is terrible and I am so high mighty look at me and my untouchable holiness, be gone mere mortals. I am terrible too. I just want us to be bright; do I really want to be kind? Do you?

I would like to take this chance to inaugurate the 10th of November as Freak out and Shout About Kick Butt Literature Day. I recently read an article in Poets and Writers about Malamud and the article raved about his devotion to his craft and art. After reading the Fixer all I can say is, right on man. People say I have a way with words, funny. The story about Yakov Bok or (Mendel Beilis) is a blood stain on the human carpet that annoys us like an obsessive compulsive (me) who stays up all night thinking about dirty walls or hair in the sink. Yakov is falsely accused of killing a Christian boy for his Jewish witchcraft. The Fixer is only half fiction. It follows the actual trial of Beilis. This is not meant to be a professional writing about the ins and outs of the socio-historical aspects of the novel, but a shout out against hatred in general. Then there was the Blood Libel. A blood libel is when a group is falsely accused of using humans in sacrifice for religous purposes. The Christians were accused of it by the Romans because of communion. They thought they were literally drinking the blood of Christ (transubstantiation a philosophy some Christians subscribe to) and superstition took it to the point where people thought that they drank the blood of others. Holy vampires batman! It is really sad because in the Beilis trial that is exactly what the Christians were accusing the Jews of doing. They based the entire proceedings on racial prejudice and unadulterated ignorance. In fact all of the evidence points to the saintly Christian mother (who was actually a scarlet and a lowlife) who killed her own son because he knew too much about her shady dealings, but they refuse to believe it. They wanted a Jew to burn. I felt that I was the heartless prosecution throughout the whole story. I am a Christian and my brothers did this. People that I would normally trust and look up to because of our shared belief. Where does love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you fit into war and hatred. Where does that fit into the Inquisition or the Killing of Servetus by Calvin (a highly enlightened man right). Where does turn the other cheek come into the killing of the American Indians or Yakov Bok. Some people have said to me, well yeah well they were killing us. I do not see anywhere in the Bible kill someone if they try to kill you. In fact the Bible mocks that ideal. Look at Mathew 5:38-39. I am afraid sometimes of what is going on the world around me, I do not know the answers, but I know from the history of my religion that most of us do not care to believe what the Bible really says. So if you do not believe what I believe, I apologize to you. I am sorry for every ignorant judgemental Christian who says they believe in what Jesus said, but is unwilling to do anything about it, or to believe in it for that matter. To anyone who is a Christian do not be mad, just change. How hard is it to let go? How hard is it to get rid of those fears and sins that easily ensnare us. Do not act of fear, but love and trust. Cheers mates. Literature Rocks-R

I live in Michigan not to far from Detroit and the part of the year has come when the sun says forget you it is fracken cold outside I am heading south. Leaving us vitamin c and d deprived Northerners with a sombre look for about 4 months. Ouch! I like making people happy, laugh (if I can finally figure out something clever to say in a conversation) and encouraged, but the winter reminds me that I am incable of changing the world, which quite frankly pisses me off sometimes. I wish we could click our heels with our ridiculous glitter red stilleto's and things like world hunger and my neighboors being shot would just go away. And I wish they would so I throw my few farthings into the collection tray going by and hope that I did all I could, which seems small. This message was not meant to be winter but the anithesis of it. If anyone ever reads my blog this is the message I want you to read. There are cheer leaders and marching bands, with my million trumpets trumping, drummers drumming, triangle players triangling. Ribbons and neon yellow paint on a black surface, bike rides, ice cream, goodness all containing, kisses, huggs, grandma, grandpa, vacation, roller coaster, swimming, friends laughter, and all good wishings to you. Sometimes it is hard to do good because we are sad or down and out. So ignore the hunched over sad man lurking in the corner of your mind like a a gray static on the tv, and love your brothers and sisters. That is all I can say, and as simplistic as loving people should be, it really is not. How many people commit suicide every day. They felt that life was not worth living because we made it that way. So we'll change.

This has been the rant of a action crazed hoper.

I recently just finished reading Travels With Charley by John Steinbeck, and in the story there is a part where John says that everybody needs the Russians, and by that he did not mean the Russians specifically. You see it was during the Cold War era that this was written and everyone was complaining about the Russians. Just like today how everyone complains about President Bush. I am not one to say whether or not that these complaints are unfounded, I have not studied the argument, but I do know that some of the biggest complainers no less than I do, which is next to nothing. He goes on to talk about the fact that humans just like to complain, to make some one else the bad guy. If your a Republican you will mock the Democrats, bah those gay liberalists. Or if you are a Democrat you will say something like those narrow minded, Christian, right wing braggarts. Atheists will mock the believer, the believer will mock in return, both gloating in some elitist I am better and smarter than you in some kindergardenesque na na na boo boo idiocy. And at the same time I am complaining about the people complaining. It is kind of funny when you think about it. I hope less people get offended about such things, and just laugh a little bit at how stupid we can be sometimes. Now do not get me wrong there are some human mistakes that I will not laugh about that are serious, but I will forgive you if you do. There is always the one kid who just takes it over the edge and makes a joke about unborn babies or the World Trade Center bombings. And maybe it is just their way of coping and getting back to some kind of a resemblance of being normal. I do not have the answers. I just thought John was clever. So bring out your Russians! And we will have a look at our tender prejudices.

If I had all the answers, their would be no mystery. The magic of my childhood that gives light to the decisions of my manhood, would dissappear. Like the argument of the famous lawyer in Brothers Karamazov, a child cannot know good without a picture of kindness to guide him. Without a figure to imitate. That is why I know God exists. Without a picture of goodness and love humans could not imitate it. God is that picture that Father that we always look up to as the guardian of our childish weakness. I might have spoken a little bit over my head. Who am I to think such thoughts. I will not lie though. I do hope in such ideals. Cheers Machine-R