The Lepers Decalogue:
<1 a pigeon expostulates
<2 special forces pet of the month
<3 rant of the tyrant of france
<4 dumpster manifesto
<5 double negative
<6 global anaesthetic
<7 i jack around
<8 death of a muse
<9 essay on regurgitation
<X cannibal suicide


1. A Pigeon Expostulates
      Not a bad town. Lotta statues. Convenient overhead phone lines.
Abundant bread crumbs, donut speckles, rain-marinated biscuits. Alleys alive
with fascinating dumpsters. Up by the Market, the discarded skin and grease
of crisp chicken wings.
     Bums, concentrated down in the Square, provide the not infrequent
delicacy of sidewalk barf – half-digested Dinty Moore plus Vienna sausage in
a sauce of Night Train, garnished with Bugler flakes. Along the wharf
anybody can live off the tourists – potbellied gawkers addicted to inspiring
the locals to hustle down tidbits.
     Everywhere rooftops for you and the flock to philosophize away the
afternoon. Your only job – to cake-walk before toddlers that shriek.
     Backfires create thrills. For sport, spend hours pot pooping
pedestrians. And if you do get squished by a truck, a bus or some alienated
teenager – no sweat: the sea gulls clean it up.
     Bridges and ledges galore – what more? A bedroom community smack in the
heart of downtown.

2. Special Forces Pet of the Month
     Anti-personnel knickers. Cobra G-string. Flak bra with periscope
nipples. Machinegun garter belt. Concertina wire merkin over velcro vulva.
Elbow length fishnet heat seeking gloves. Shrapnel nails; matching bayonet
toes thrust through claymore stiletto heels armored with an inch of uranium.
     This bombshell likes to listen to contemporary jazz, after blowing away
targets in her backyard. Her favorite fantasy is killing two guys at once,
while raping a Cuban with a potato masher from her collection of Nazi
memorabilia.
     She is a firm believer in peace, and will do whatever to help Charlie
achieve that state on a permanent basis.
     She had a solid military upbringing. Her mother was a WAC and her
father “Mad Dog” Hinky of The Big Red One. She last had sex with a pistol at
the age of three.
     She hopes her modelling career culminates in an acting job behind enemy
lines. Our Ms. October isn’t for everyone. But keep her in you sights – lest
she spot you first!

3. Rant of the Tyrant of France
     I live in duplicity city. Duplicity city lives in me.
     Everywhere they watch. Transpose time. Translate space. File away life.
Ignorant they are not. Are afflicted instead with a cunning low enough to
shame a virus.
     Smiles return stamped no such number. The very ears have walls. Salted
snails unnerve nerve. Freeze pretending walls on the fly. Word salad all
with a thousand island dressed up, but no man is no place to go.
     I aim for remote. But wherever I turn, at my ankles they pant. They are
not large. Not pretty. Keep ascending the seam of my pants – insistent as
inspissating pissants.
     They sport names like Rosencrantz, Hale, Mata Hari, Passepartout,
Distant Thunder von Stulpnagel bin Lee Dumbrowski. They say you can’t see
them.
     With luck, you shut up – let the mind sink to the level of a leaky
spigot (it won’t shut off) – that’s all there is: the tick of listening. To
pay attention is existence to grant.
     They even secrete bugs under my underpants.
     An inquisition they implant. Snoop crust. Pick neck. Sluice marrow from
any ideas that hatch about skipping out. I am a trout in the shallows
surrounded by cormorant.
     They admit knowledge signifies folly. They argue panels of control pave
the road to lunacy. They suspect paranoia a psychic jam, the soul thrown a
rod.
     They even mike the floor of swoon – oozing worm blind – as they sow
their eggs with suppressed expectant pants.
     They spawn beneath my blouse. Under the battle scarf soak the
adam’s-apple. Capillery up throat throughout pharynx. Infiltrate skull wall
– where their words out of the woodwork work.
     So yes, to confront the slur, I am Rumplestiltskin. Tearing myself
apart. Ripping hara-kiri hard. The better with the next rant back together
to stitch the tyrant.
     Because yes, yes: they are me.
     They all are my army.
     Because I live in duplicity city. Because in me duplicity city lives.
     Because I am this rant of the Tyrant of France.

4. Dumpster Manifesto
     I wanna wrench words apart. Watch ‘em go nuts, while I nail and screw
their guts. Rip the fabric off linguistic bolts. Overlay with reverse
English syntax. Say the haymaker to KO OK. Translate into hyperbole the axes
of speech. Trash the scortatory subjunctive. Whip slang into whatever shape
it takes to make talk smart – all over smart, like rape in the blackberries.
Treat communication to a night in the unconscious out. Knock the gism outta
neologism. Split the light of reason through Annie Sprinkle’s prism.
Metastasize spoonerism impediments to itch blisters whose burst spews scum
webbing the razor’s edge wth plague some lexicon down the road will dub thee
knight.
     So along the alley I creep. Jerk open dumpster lids. Eye contents for
scuba. Content to spot nothing to keep me honest. Fast the fastest path down
to fasten peace. But the leavings of an entire civilization gloat in the
sodium. Ketchupped Velveeta, bent fork, blown tire, ozone tenderloin,
mouseturd mustard, disembowelled computer, surplus pickle, Byzantine
circuitry with kitty litter accreted, foetus pizza the pie of my gassed
pupil. Happenstance student, ablative absolute lucky, I aim to stand back up
looped with the goop and poop every sophisticate pimp of an imp implies.
I dive, I eel, I flagellate, I virus, I shed my sheath and dig.
     I’d snorkel my sister. But that I already exsanguinated her for
retsina. Sold her flesh to the people at Alpo. First ground the heart for
gibberish to fertilize the pharmacy – eight brand new names a week… a figure
of speech! Mother I wouldn’t touch; and Sis – bombshell figure! – is Mom. I
hail from Appalachia; the progenitrix of my half-brother a cyclone – go
figure! Over out up where Shakespeare’s accent thrives; vocabulary pared to
essentials; wear our doublets to bed.
     This one night, I’m inside a garbage can banging around like armored
knights in a gangbang. I’m at home – heels to the sky. This is fun. This is
my slippers and pipe.
     I’m frenching from an egg shell an ecru scrim. A siren pulls up. Rap
City rhapsody. Erotic as the keen of a piccolo sax. Pull myself out of the
50-gallon galvanized collection can. Turn to confront in the gloom my
tormentor. Officer Jack Black, the beat cop.
     “Evening Perfesser,” he smirks. “Hardly workin, I see.”
     I wipe the essence off my mouth. Belch sea anemone. Fish the stars
outta my throat. Croak, “Any rhyme, any reason?”
     “Jest a routine for weapons.”
     The Law unbuckled. Snap undid. Purred zipper. Dropped trou. Indicated
with index tubular osculation appropriate. Now, I’m not gay. But I did
pulverize my own mother for drug money. I mean, I’m not stupid.
     So after the chestnut blooms, I spit it out on the stones, clamber back
up onto my feet, he grunts, “OK, now you’re clean – let’s discuss why I
really came.”
     “Not, I guess,” I shrugged, “for love?”
     He kept head down, tucking shirt back in; anyway in the shadows doubt
could read whatever expression: “There’s this perp called The Vampire.
Serial sucker. Figured you’d know about it, being an artist in slop.”
      I bit my tongue. Tasted coppery thought. Bitterly muttered, “What about
it?”
     “Whereabouts. Next victim.” He jerked head back up. “Is it you?”
     Without warning, without a clue, Mr. Ed came on the screen. The horse
affected to wheeze salutation in a bass. Up welled the theme – optimistic
whitewash of “The worms crawl in, the worms crawl out.” Well, it was just a
black-and-white set off back in my mind. “The ants play pinochle on your
snout!” I drew the knave of spades – mum grave digger.
     He took my nothing at face value. “Ain’t you – him, next victim, both –
how come bloated cheeks on the dead mouse atop your head like a topknot? I
mean, if so – why not?”
     I snarled induction cut no juice, its inverse less magnetic yet. Long
as my grandmother stayed asphyxiated in a tesseract encasing yon dumpster. I
nodded up the cobbles to the greasy back of a dead spoon. Health Department
closed. Latterly a rat bowling alley, roach safe house, wino pin club.
     “OK, Mr. Citizen Kook. Let’s try torture.” He turned me around like a
rotweiler. Had me from behind pluperfectly. Sutured the puckernut future.
Burrowed his arrowhead deep up into yesterday’s tomorrow. Completed, in a
plethora of disjointed scenes, the sex act.
     I puked last night’s crow, along with mush stuck up in the gall craw.
Pride surfed the Roller Derby Coast. Wavered betwixt weltschmerz, angst.
Couldn’t say boo; till abulia defaulted to the upper hand, and I grabbed
through the tesseract. Fondled the inside back of my navel. Strangled Granny
for an encore – oedipal fling inside that crypt. Only fair, as not in Jack
Black’s reach the courtesy of around.
     When the ramifications finally terminated – we boasted new terms for
violation. Equation simplified, breath lessening, heartlessly elegant, we
lay smoking up the block, under a busted streetlight, on a loading dock that
doubled as latrine plus outdoor no-host wetbar.
     “You and I,” he puffed, “equal one.”
     “One and the same,” I sighed. “Mobius-stripped doppelgangers. Kissing
cousins-german. Sound with signal overloaded. Music of the hypercubes.”
     “No, I mean,” he clarified in the dark, “understood cubistically.
Comprehended Freudwise in Picasso lingo?”
     To be sure: we were only two – cop and vampire-cum-victim – around out
front on the street; where words never fly apart at the seams, except to
sell tongue acceptably in cheek. Or the old penny opera hawked past a tart’s
tonsils for headlines.
     But say hey dig this flash: Humanity equals Nature. So it is our
nature, naturally, this disease to communicate.
     “You know,” he exhaled. “You got a nice whore throat.”
     Over on one side I rolled. Fell to feasting on his jugular. Fingered
semiconsciously the automatic. A pigeon – wedged like a sybil in a
drainspout – burbled a nightmare: The tourists, the shriners, the new agers.
Those who come just to be doing something. Those who never come to be. While
this remorseless code transmits its pest.

5. Double Negative
     One day, all alone, without no pants on (it was August), I decided to
bug the phone. Seated myself on the end table. Flopped the apparatus into my
lap. Picked up the receiver. Unscrewed – despite the complaint of the dial
tone – the mouthpiece.
     Dipped my proboscis into the plastic-metallic guts. Sucked myself up
like a mosquito about to pop – when a solicitor invaded my ear, wanting to
sell me a plot.
     Told him, in a nasal whine, I was busy having a good time – would he
please get off the line? He insisted I could purchase a vault for next to
nothing.
     I bounced the body of the phone off the wall, continuing to snarf and
snort the unscrewed receiver. Odor of Silicon Valley flooded my worldview,
as I choked I preferred dying at the expense of the state.
     The solicitor cackled that was un-American. So I stung his tympanum
with electrically untranslatable snot. He hung up, promising first to
harrass my mail.
     Anonymous as a worm, I got it all on tape. Does anybody sweat it?
     Yeah, I do – because I bugged my own line!
     And the larva, the egg, the protein of my hate has escaped into space,
like every word we breathe.

6. Global Anaesthetic
     I rush to the curb. Snatch along the way a bud. Blossom into my auto;
puddle jumper bought to get me to work. Won’t start. Then does, but dies.
Turn it over again. Catches; coughs.
     Waiting for the heap to warm, I drive in a coffin nail, chug the bud,
help myself to a pint of beam in the glove.
     Am I going to work? I race the manifold. Do I care? The chassis rocks.
I haven’t worked in a week – stoned during that space, petrifying time in
ether. Stuff takes up space. Ether – especially if you work in a laboratory
– is everywhere; it fills the between; permeates spaceness. Ether is what
light oscillates in a vacuum; or so I guess, rocking my auto, after sitting
in a room with a rag and a jar. Release the emergency.
     My foot drifts off the brake easy as wood cast ashore by breakers.
Although unsure where, we go, despite the feel I might head for work.
     The root of my uncertainty would appear to be the drought. Lent without
a drop. Dust aplenty. Bulbs on the dash burnt. I drain the beam. Trample the
gas. Feeling for a hole, crack the vent. Slip the bottle into the stream.
     This auto can’t get me to work, I flash, watching in the rearview the
empty splatter the sidewalk I must be driving, as I swerve to avoid a tree.
     I am visiting the store for alcohol, being too ethereal to penetrate
the lab, punch the clock, pinch another jar.
     At the intersection of Twisted and Knot, I park against a hydrant.
Rattle boxcars into the 7/11. Snake-eye the refrigerator. Rock-climb five
six-packs off the shelf. Juggle a twenty into the register. Skip the change.
Stagger out with a glass pyramid.
     Night has fallen. Oscilloscope lightning ribbons the sky. Ragnarok
threatens. Before the surge, spurting down the avenue, a disembodied surfer
shouts: “The deluge! The deluge!”
     My auto stalls. The water climbs. They find me sloshed below the wheel.
Engine flooded with fire.

7. I Jack Around
     I jack a round into the chamber. Squeeze the trigger. Let fly a round.
     The Lord passes what goes around What comes around becomes ammunition.
And so I put a round square in the eye of God. What goes around reloads.
     And I bang God’s wife in the cunt with this prayer I taught my sphincter to speak:
     I jack a round into the chamber. Put the barrel to the monkeys in my
temple. In her dying gasp God’s wife – over His Dead Body – pardons all,
even the farts in the words; all that is except perhaps the blanks.
     I let the monkeys fly.
     In state in the temple lies the Lord.
     When I look to reload, I am out.
     I jack around.

8. Death of a Muse
     Behind a spruce on the ridge – (in binoculars) – black boughs spear the
cocktail onion moon. Branch by branch it climbs. The maria too obscured to
identify. As the seconds gather, gray splotches on the orange face – in
their glide between branches – wink. Frozen in every wink – the dirge on
which the earth turns.
     The Sea of Crises eases at last above the spruce’s crown. An onion
slipping off the spit.
     The binocular field shudders. I see my heart thud.
     No more time to kill. This is it. Moonrise. Time to go in for the kill.
     I return the binocs to their velveteen-lined leather case. Toss case
into truck. Drive at moderate speed. Keep an unobtrusive eye peeled for
cops.
     When I reach the house, let myself in – she lies in the parlor already
dead. I shoot her anyway, clicking away at all angles. These the last
polaroids. The farewell stills. Her with a knife in the belly, naked, just
come from the bath. Still a thin smile – from over on the sofa where her
head landed.
     Obviously killed by someone she knew and trusted. The gore-caked ax
stood in the corner beside the lava lamp would have struck the first, the
fatal blow.
     The killer necessarily powerful, quick. A lumberjack? A butcher? A
momentarily focused schizophrenic? A character not only handy with, but
always carrying an ax. A friend she would expect to walk in – ax in fist.
     I recognize the tool. A Sears model. The one I always pack in case it
becomes a matter of a rat. I hate rats. Their very idea keeps me awake at
night. I lose a lot of sleep imagining rats.
     She used to say I had, in a previous life, myself been a rat. Hence my
irrational hate. As if hate ever partakes of the rational. Insofar as she
let me take, there was love.
     Somewhat faster than the moon conquered the spruce, the snaps develop.
The decapitated remains emerge like a barge and a buoy drifting from the
lifting fog. She was up till this afternoon a looker. Even in two pieces,
and with limbs hacked (clogging disposal?), she makes the member rise.
     I flip the polaroids onto the torso. Lean one against the dagger’s
haft. The shot from above, showing the haft as a knob an inch above the muff
– a second navel, black and shiny. With such a knob you might dim the
lights, or gently elevate the muzak.
     From down on the shag, take one last snap of the picture spattered
torso. The shot leaned against the haft centered in the field.
     Waiting for this last echo to develop, I recall our affair. Me always
taking pictures through the window. Her posing in peeping tom innocence. We
did Lady Godiva astride the wet bar, Venus on a half-rack of Bud, Maya
before the tv.
     She understood my problem. Better than I ever could.
     I became the pet. She dug throwing bones. People get off strangely
sometimes. So I let her let me photo her all over the house. Any time of day
or night; if she had the leisure, which was most of the time. We were
independently adequate, soaking up small inheritances. She’d pose just the
way I liked – moving around in love with passing through air.
     For every cheesecake we set hundreds of blurred nudes free. They roam
still – as slides in carousels on shelves in closets.
     If only the rats hadn’t broken in; last year around Christmas. They
entered through the toilet. Wet and fetid – blood in their eyes. Or squeezed
up around the plumbing under the sink.
     Now they come in all the time, anyway at all. They have gnawed the
bungalow into a clapboard sieve. I can’t kill enough to make a dent. Soon
I’ll be swimming in rats.
     One now scales the sofa, headed for her head. Glad I took those shots
when I did.
     The vermin worms up her throat. I’m sure the larynx will prove a
delicacy. As will her silk tongue that was slow to anger and tasted – when
licked – like octopus.
     Atop the laminated haft I balance the final shot. A photo of her
torso’s photo propped against the haft. Silently titled: Twin Engine Prop
Job.
     I stand. Jiggle my own personal shutter. Till a zoom develops.
     From the woodwork the rodents cheer. We are all – all of us going to
shoot the moon.
     Seed shoots.
     The rat inside the head slurps. While it chews out through her smile, I
catch breath.
     Then fetch kerosene. Set a match to the doused curtains. Test prick on
ax blade.
     Flames lick. Rats break for the corpse, knowing this can’t last.

9. Essay on Regurgitation
     You shouldn’t, unless you must. Sometimes I’ll go for weeks – holding
it down, dizzy, anxious. Finally you spend a whole day struggling not to.
Second by second, choking bile, restraining the sea. Then it hits – the
twinge that broke the camel’s back.
     I run for my typewriter. Grab it in both hands. Spin in paper, like
throwing back the lid of the pot.
     And it hurts – spurting that first loaf! The horror – you are a machine
of filth and disgust. Bile sears the throat. Nose aflame with chyme. Canned
corn, raw hash, chunks… a salad of stench tosses anyone close. Fortunately,
I type alone.
     You heave, heave, heave. It begins to feel good. Like confessing to a
series of murders. I am crying. Overjoyed at being overwhelmed, relieved at
attaining the pinnacle, where up weds down.
     A few parting sloppy burps. My fingers desert the keys. I suck the
tips. The world tastes of vomit – vomit gone.
     Blow my nose. Gargle. Rinse. Wipe out a word or two like a deb
powdering zits. Step outside my studio. Prepare for the next uphill sweat…
hopefully not too soon.


X. Cannibal Suicide
     I poured a finger of scotch into a coffee cup. Ate the cup. Licked up
the spilled scotch. Gobbled the mouth of the fifth down past the neck; was
wolfing the table leg, when mother came in to iron some bugs out of her
pocket calculator; couldn’t help but notice the ruined fifth, the cup
nowhere, the table wobbly on three legs.
      She threatened to knuckle down and hand it to me. But I trumped her
rump. Tugged the table leg out of my throat. Clubbed her to death.
     Blood spattered the venetian blinds. Mother slumped to the foot of the
refrigerator.
     I threw up a window. Sat on a foot stool. Re-swallowed the table leg.
Munched on the arm of a chair till I was stuffed. Then jerked down the wall
phone and ate out the mouthpiece and considered sucking the news off the tv.
     But decided instead to put the mouth of a firearm to my temple and
pray.