Michael Closes The Drapes on "The Sun"
Because I
was a writer of some stripe or another, my silly Aunt Nancy egregiously assumed
that my life would benefit from a subscription to "The Sun" magazine. The
literary digest was for a bunch of pathos-seekers who needed a jolt/dose of
heaviness to make them feel more alive. It's motto was
"That which shines
also burns. . . . .",
the pain of mortality and how after this we would be
snuffed out forever.
It was the kind of thing that appealed to aging "Silent Generation" types with garden soil-spattered hands, who were ennamoured with tales of flat-affected farmers from Nebraska taking cross-country trips down the highway on riding mowers at 15 MPH and the soul-affirming stories they told about running into ragged Mexican fruit pickers living on $5/day, their families living in tin shacks under the blazing Southwestern sun. The ouevre was so unglamorous, even the Sundance film festival wouldn't take it!
I needed this like I needed to be told to drink less soda, or to buy less CD's, or to recycle more, even though this conscientious act of Green Party-style self-abnegation would make a negligible effect on the overheating planet known as "Toilet Earth". Just move to higher ground when the floods come, you know? And shoot the looters right between the eyes, once you see the whites of their mad, grimy eyes.
So here is a parody of
some "Sun" literary figures torn through the machine known as "Insufferable
Industries" and hopefully spat out as wizened beings. Or if they ain't wizened,
does that motto go, "that which shines also BLEEDS"?!
"Eternal Truth, empty and perfect. You give me nothing, you take nothing from me"
-- "Lisbon Revisited", a 1923 poem by Alvaro de Campos/Fernadio Pessoa.
"Lisbon! Lisbon!" muttered long-haired Lucas Bergstrom in tattered rags, dragging a gimpy leg behind him as he limped with his arms outstretched in the air, after truth eternal and gentle. It was "the pose" that mattered after-all, like "La Christo": a beautiful Iberian woman in a nun's habit gripping a golden crucifix with wide eyes as he ordered himself lashed to a cross of woe.
May the statue of the Virgin Mary weep tears of blood, but miracles were few and far between-- much less beautiful Iberian women with wide, staring eyes tuned into his wavelength-- much less someone willing to lash his loin-cloth swaddled body to a cross of discarded plywood in a burnt-out church.
So he settled for writing poetry outside the cafès of Lisbon, drinking coffee and scratching out words with the nub of a pencil he stole from a library. Every once in a while subscribers of "The Sun" would hand him a few Euros with great compassion.
2) The Infinity of Snowflakes
Sy Safransky was an outcast. The stark brick wall where the ruffians smoked, above it all the gray overcast sky under which he paced away in rejection. He was a sensitive Jewish boy, and he remembered that his mother loved him very much.
He remembered something that he read in the spirituality section of the library, that reality should be considered largely from an experimental and personal way at looking at things. It began to snow, and Sy had a feeling that it was somehow just for him.
He caught a snowflake in his bare hand, and regarded it with momentous gravity before it melted. No two snowflakes were identical, each unique and special in this universe. There were no coincidences after-all.
Then a cop car came by and splashed Sy Safransky with slush, Lucas Bergstrom beating his forehead against the window, hollering out "Lisbon! Lisbon!".
3) The Little Chilean Villagers
To dig wells, to plant corn, to provide irrigation, to serve as a doctor, Lewis Hersch meant to educate the little Chllean villagers how through idealism they could sell trinkets through the non-profit "Plowshears" distributor and raise money for their betterment instead of growing coca plants for the local cocaine lord. What he didn't count on was the paramilitary commandos leveling everything he worked for. Now gaboons beat on his skull like a drum.
Click here for their advertising blitz to get us to subscribe to their magazine!
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"You want a-nuther song? Well I ain't plain' one mutherfuckin' note until someone comes up here and puts sum money in my god-damned tip-jar! You know I only came here for one purpose. . . . . to take yor fuckin' cash! Why, I could make more profit puttin' out my meth-head neighbor's asshole and ringin' a bell, hollerin' 'Man for sale! Man for sale!'
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
(Rheeee of Crickets)
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("I heard that, Missy!")
© 2010 by Insufferable Industries
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