The Advent of My Becoming

the advent, dear friend, of my becoming/breaks the pencil, tears the page, that dump sludge/where words collide. don, i am doubled in/doubt over your narrative, dribbled in/iambics, pentametered in ruby grain./have you stopped talk of mud and rain only/now when forces outside scratch borders run/closer than powerful, harder than near?

most honest friend, you live an honest life/while i pity troubles self-caused, ruins/plagued plays, for what underlay memory/pervades my english ... though incompletely./catholic all sisters become, by which i/mean universal, that special art of/total being; i know you know my meaning, and in baptized/certainty i pray this letter back across/the border into that safe, but double/hand of your better friend, whom shelters you from/wind as i cannot, nursed by callous castle ...

.h.

p.s. my shrink suggested this versical cure/ it helps, truly, albeit impure.

Share the name of your therapist

Better than TV silence, forgetful friend. Surreptitiously ask me to jog your memory - I'm completely forgettable inside myself ... It has its high points, however. I admire my handsome visage every time I encounter a mirror and devise new mnemonic devices out of the small talk of eyes and noses. At ease and back into the cynics.

However, while you keep your shield in place: Avoid using it as a crutch! Your goal: Make empty noise without filling pages 144 and 145. Stay off topic. Think about what attraks you to what appetizer. The old adage about avoiding politics and religions leads only to doctors and lawyers, so avoid all at all costs. And above all, avoid sisters.

I myself speak of her no more. I say things that I don't mean to remain dishonest at my worst. 'Transition maintenance,' as they call it in the self-help kingdom of Denmark. I sit close to nerds, pampering them with astronaut constellations like, 'What were you like in college?' Followed by a star spray of 'I don't believe yuse.' Thinks develop much further beyond the superstellar superficial. Further the interaction without founding new planets.

Yours remains my universe, and memorably spare. Slow in dragging the mutual choice of mangled fate. The second or third month that passes, I reacquaint myself with the ashes of your previous letters (burned and bottled for safety, you understand). Studying and reviewing the increased surface area, I open and explore without the recap and review of a fresh letter, which I burn now and add to the cycle I trust your next skillfull thrust will stoke into a further flurry of furious grey. The most precious element in common with the sky above.

H.

Two Thumbs Up!

Dear Q!

I'm glad I executed him too. The question is whether or not you'll kill my sister in return. Cross collision on the carpet of your road.

I must be brief. I'm expecting Ebert, my new crown critic. Even dumbshows, these days, require write ups in the Village Voice.

Send me a vial. Prove this endless rain you claim in vain.

H.

Baboon Rising

I'm certainly not hiding my baldness, dear friend! That much I need to establish, for I have more hair than a minister has hymns. Your nonstop recognition of my highness is always appreciated, however.

Hmmm ... Was that your man? The mailroom here in the castle occasionally triples as courtroom and death chamber. He did more than deliver. He became wrath. The law of power dictates that I understand why he committed the act. He went truly postal. "I just wanted to shoot my gun," he said. A held tribunal. We entered into the analyzable intelligibility of the act in question.

Your man was buried in rain, but it was on a bright and sunny day that we extracted the letters from his bag. I must not have noticed your latest amongst his deenergized shrapnel. Well, we all gain purpose through our work, I suppose. Unfortunately, the aftermath of murder begets another scene, and just yesterday another messenger shot up six of my servants. Another of your own, I don't suppose? Do tell me if there's a connection. I would be pleased to send you the remains of all the casually slaughtered.

Perhaps not the choice of a new generation, but just as frisky. And with a bit of peroxyde to neutralize the disease, the blood'll roll sweetly on the back of your tongue.

Hummingly yours,

Hamlet

Dear Mr. Quix,

I am most honoured. Operating again under the rubric of your guise. I live now near the Britich Isles, perhaps the Trumpiest isles in all the world.

I still believe in your mission. Some of my favourite artists mistake you for another Pritish artist I knew. He said, all I need is your account and routing number and we can start this employ going. Please contact soon, time is of essence.

H

A Little Absynth Never Hurt Nobody

never partisan to being
i'm back nonetheless

the just assassins
affirmed me
burning

after the grave
your acts upon
my body

your unceasing eulogy
creeps on my mind

i got your shoes in the mail
wore them a short while
they revised but did not protect me

being apart is just another way of being
together
or have i misread your laces?

ah, you still fixate
eliminator of my dumbshow
more politic it is, then

h.

Morrison Hotel

Don Q.,

Fab suggestion. In the absence of eyes, you've grown a set of nipples. I was in California once, and I'll tell you about it - if you promise to tell me how your man came to be Elpenor? Has he been reading Ezra Pound again? Or Homer? At any rate, your tale of rooftops and chimneys reminds me of the lines:

Ill fate and abundant wine. I slept in Circe's ingle."Going down the long ladder unguarded,"I fell against the buttress,"Shattered the nape-nerve, the soul sought Avernus."But thou, O King, I bid remember me, unwept, unburied,"Heap up mine arms, be tomb by sea-bord, and inscribed:"A man of no fortune, and with a name to come."And set my oar up, that I swung mid fellows."

I had gone to see Penn and Teller in Vegas. Alice Cooper was the opening act. My sister was not yet in the madhouse, and I am glad that this combination of rock and roll and magic prepared me for the traffic of Bedlam.

Of course I was invited on stage. Asked if I could escape a straight-jacket, I said, "But of course," and settled the matter by stealing Cooper's wallet and watch as he strapped me in. That was before I realized that he was the singer, not the magician. Later, Prudentia, my woman at the time, confessed that Las Vegas is in fact in Nebraska!

At any rate, see about writing me more often and I shall see about doing the same.

H