empty space in the moscow metro

the infinite distances / unbroachable in the slicing walls

recedes beneath the weighted light

and the extending ground / smooth in the shine

as if wet



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boulder sky

today, boulder, co




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downtown moscow

tverskaya

moscow: january, 2007



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new story up online

hey y'all


sorry for the long break - had to fly home to colorado from ireland and this altitude is killing me

new story up online:

::Sveta the flower dealer has an ass that will stop someday but not today my friends ::

You can find it here at Underground Voices, a slick, edgy ezine.



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new story up online: three damsels in the neon bath

check out the new issue of the southern cross review up online - they just published a new story of mine three damsels in the neon bath. Check it out, son.

... because what happens when you follows the girls from the cafe? ...



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bring it

feel like mouthing off about my story?

check out the forum and have yer say.

punk.



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actually that photo didn't suit the post at all

god edwards likes his wendy's


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"Wendy's, Honey" is up online!

Hey y'all.

My latest story, Wendy's, Honey, just went up online today.

It's about how a trip to the drive thru can lead you face to face with the Great Abyss.

It's up online at thieves jargon, an edgy litmag that's published some cool stuff over the years.

Check out this page for the other stories I have published on the web.


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new story up online - perfect crime

just a quick announcement that a new story of mine, perfect crime, has gone up at The Aggregated Press.

... because is revenge really a dish best served cold ? ...



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past the / layers to make meaning

is the meaning of the eye

breaking down sensations

and track out the patterns

not inherently of man or men

of what, we always / dismiss

from the haze of expectation




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leningrad covers zemfira

a little inside, I know







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Sarah can't have any more abortions

Like, ever. but first, she'll need a Greenday-backed montage.








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cartman's Makin it Right song

Cartman attempts to make up for convincing a woman to get an abortion, trying to exterminate the Jews, rigging the Special Olympics, and feeding Scott his own parents in a bowl of chili through the magic of song and a little help from his plucky friend, Butters.




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too funny not to post

Stephen Colbert's Threat Down: Exposing how the mythical Chupacabra head recently discovered in Texas might only be a body part from a mutated dog with a thirst for blood. Sleep tight, America!







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Pressure mounts over

the space of confession

Drawing the day - to peace


a wracking conscience

Is secondary to release

needling the words - to speak.


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more online publishing news

another bit o news on the online oublishing front

heard back yesterday from underground voices and they will be publishing a story of mine in their decemenber issue. It's a cool journal - raw, edgy, an they produce a print anthology from time to time.


cool.

new play up online

good news on the virtual publishing front - looks like the literary magazine ygdrasil has decided to publish a play of mine, "atomic age."

It's up online here . You have to scroll down a touch.

Oh, and don't ask me how to pronounce the name of the magazine. I surfed around their site for a while to no avail.

Here's my basic synapses, and the play itself isn't much longer:

... two loving parents go on a campus visit to their son's apartment, who is obviously making great strides in graduate school ...

the pieces of history - fit

when the stories

come together in - two



trails of your possibilities

are safe as a - map



and all you have to do

is - blow

moscow underpass v

I swore the moon did notice

That I left my little bed

But the more I squint

And throw the stars

I think – myself – instead

moscow abstract photo of the day

cool blues - or perhaps even a letter.

from tverskaya street, 3 am.

russian brides are such a good idea

found a fantastic russian bride website today:

uk.anastasia-international.com which you can tell is legitimate from the get-go because it has "uk" in its title and then claims its head office is in Bangor, Maine.

Even better: each and every "real girl" has an enormous gallery of slutty photos, like this bad boy



That you can only see full-screen versions of when registered. By credit card.

You're quite saucy, Sveta M. For every article of clothing you take off, I'll give you another MasterCard digit.

Or would you rather go for Anna G.?



God, hard to say. I think I might have to go with Anna, though, because she has no children.

But by far the most hilarious thing about the site are the comments from "real users" riddled with very russky grammar mistakes. Try this one:



For the men looking on Anastasia to find a lady. This website is one of the safest you will find. I have been using this site, off and on around 4 years plus several other dating sites. Anastasia is safest.

I used the services of Anastasia to meet the ladies by email, then Anastasia phone. To keep a business going like they do, requires money or no business to offer this kind of protection and service. So don't worry about the credits required as I once did, just be wise.

These ladies are real. Going to visit a lady is the only way. I encourage you to use Anastasia when you start your search.
Also keep in mind Gentelman — these ladies are people, like you, they worry about whom they might meet, they don't want to play games. You may contact me if you want 100% proof, that this is a great website, it's always improving and it is fair and friendly people to work with.

Blessings
Jerry H.


Jerry H? Are we sure that isn't Grisha or Gosha? And when you've taught English to Russian for as many years as I have, the "Russianness" of the English just comes flying out at you - just check the following, where I'll indicate mistakes with []

(1) The lack of articles and agreeing verbs (mistakes in []) ["anastasia is [] safest", "[it is] fair and friendly people to work with"...]

(2) The randomly added commas ["I have been using this site[,] off and on...", "if you want 100% proof[,] that this is a great website..."]

(3) And the missing prepositions ["I have been using this site [] 4 years plus"]

Sure, Anastasia, I'll be wise and hand credit card over! I would must to be great fat idiot not to!

Try this other great quote from very satisfied happy customer:


I have recently visited Russia, and the small city, Belgorod, where Anna lives. We have decided to get married, as soon as she can come to Australia.Thank you for your help.

David D. Australia

Where you see the same extra-russky comma in the "we have decided to get married, as soon as she..."

God, can you imagine how sketchy of a site this must be if these are the quotes it features? It essentially implies that it's never had an actualy letter from an actual client, meaning they've probably never had an actual client.

Take that, Anatasia.com! No matter how hot Ira K. is, I'm not sending her any more flowers.



Ok, ok, I'll send some flowers - but no more sports cars.

Jesus, and then confused Aussie sheep farmers wonder how in the world they've ended naked up in the back of a hut with a gun to their head. As in this story reported by the beeb today.
Poor sheep farmers. All they wanted was a much younger bride from an ostensibly poor country to share their sheep farmsmanship.
Take it from David H. of CA if ou have any lingering doubts:

From the staff to the women I corresponded with, I was always treated with a form of excellence only found in the very best businesses in the world.

abstinence only rix or rax or whatever the kids say these days!

here's a pic from a high school website in south carolina:





and I honestly have no idea how it's supposed to have any affect on horny kids because

(a) is the person in the background supposed to be a dude? or are we looking at respectful lesbians?

(b) whoever it is back there, looks like she/he is already elbow-deep in boob

and

(c) what exactly are they waiting for? nightfall? I don't see a ring on that finger...

not surprising, though, if you look at the tools in charge of the program on the original site. you can be sure that if "trav spears" were to ever tell me anything I would immediately do the exact opposite.




guy's like the missing link in evolution.

The site continues:

The Abstinence Education Course is a two-week program taught to 6th, 7th, 8th and 9th graders through out Edgefield County. The classes deal not only with the importance of abstaining from sexual activity until marriage but also with respect for self and others and decision making skills.

((scroll down their site for a very creepy appearance by the "reptile man" ... ))

Binge Drinking = Bad

quoted from our friends at kid's health

Chet has known Dave since they were in elementary school together, but lately their friendship has been strained. Dave's drinking on weekends has turned him into a completely different person. Dave used to get good grades and play sports, but since he started drinking he hasn't been finishing assignments and he has quit the soccer team.

When Chet saw Dave pound five beers in 30 minutes at two different parties, he realized how serious Dave's problem was. He knows what Dave is doing: binge drinking.

Why Do People Binge Drink?

Liquor stores, bars, and alcoholic beverage companies make drinking seem attractive and fun. It's easy for a high school student to get caught up in a social scene with lots of peer pressure. Inevitably, one of the biggest areas of peer pressure is drinking.

Other reasons why people drink include:

* They're curious — they want to know what it's like to drink alcohol.

* They believe that it will make them feel good, not realizing it could just as easily make them sick and hung-over.

* They may look at alcohol as a way to reduce stress, even though it can end up creating more stress.

* They want to feel older.

What Are the Risks of Binge Drinking?

Many people don't think about the negative side of drinking. Although they think about the possibility of getting drunk, they may not give much consideration to being hung-over or throwing up.

You may know from experience that excessive drinking can lead to difficulty concentrating, memory lapses, mood changes, and other problems that affect your day-to-day life. But binge drinking carries more serious and longer-lasting risks as well.

People who are drunk also take other risks they might not normally take when they're sober. For example, people who have impaired judgment may have unprotected sex, putting them at greater risk of a sexually transmitted disease (STD) or unplanned pregnancy.

People who binge-drink may find that their friends drift away — which is what happened with Chet and Dave. Drinking can affect personality; people might become angry or moody while drinking, for example.

Save Money By Turning off your Lights!

The Moscow city council started a campaign to reduce energy consumption among its citizens. Among other tactics was this hilarious billboard:




Which tells you to "save money by turning off your lights." Comically enough, the sign is lit-up by a number of high-powered, energy-consuming bulbs that run all night long and doesn't even face the flow of traffic on Leningradka. Anyone want to do the math on how much energy they're wasting getting the message out?


I think the irony was so strong that it almost broke my camera-fon - contrary to the assumption you must have made, that foto above has not been shopped at all....

Today I saw the Sun -

After months below the Sea -

She didn’t wince twice –

While breaking the ease of day -

Nor consider me –

space in seven dimensions

into the space / she considered / hoping to take the deep / but foiled by a / sky so usually blue

Loss and Return

a short story - private workshopping







Loss and Return

(After a City of Bright Lights)





Hunter left New York City for Sterling on a Monday night planning to drive the night through Pennsylvania and the darkened, hollow forests and then find a cheap motel the next morning in Ohio and sleep the afternoon and early evening. As it happened, though, with the trees reaming out the colors of the dawn in the rear view mirrors and the traffic starting up on the cold, sleek roads after the night’s rain, he didn’t feel tired when he broke into Ohio and the plains and the morning traffic, steadily stretching long on the hard-black highways, wasn’t as heavy as he had expected, and the new angles of sunlight, blending the red taillights on the black sheen, produced a kind of cozy hypnotism on his brain. Hunter’s hands gently grasped the underside of the wheel and his eyes felt just a little blurry and he played with the radio buttons and settled on country.

All through Pennsylvania he had felt good – actually, much better than he had expected to feel. At some point during the winter, he had convinced himself that he wasn’t dreading this return home and talked about it openly with friends just like you were supposed to talk about these trips: “Oh, yeah, sure it’ll be great, haven’t been home in a while” and the like. Then, as the days grew longer and the city nights contracted and he found himself going to bed well after the sunrise, he realized he had managed to play off one important, reasonable justification after another to put the trip off another week or so. And he started having strange dreams, too, of walking in on the family he had left a year ago – idyllic as your family can only be in a dream when you know you’ve somehow betrayed them – and his mom would be wearing an absurdly well-ironed apron and cooking apple pie and biscuits and getting the next day’s roast ready, and his dad would be in his smoking jacket reading the paper and his brothers would be sitting by the fire, cheeks rosy and healthy from chopping wood or repairing the tractors and so much was true of it, for they wore aprons and smoking jackets, and chopped wood. So much of it, though, while familiar, had simply never happened. Like the way his brothers smiled at each other.

And they would all stop whatever they were doing and turn to Hunter after he entered, not just in shock and horrified at all that Hunter had come to see and do in New York but like they had just heard about it. Like it was a play and his demise had been announced just before his convenient though nonetheless ill-timed entrance through the front door.

So Hunter had assumed it would only get worse the closer he got to home, which is why the lightness in his heart and the lack of contractions around his lungs felt while imaging his feet on the welcome mat so surprised him through the spinning shadows and winding highway of Pennsylvania. He had even half expected a kind of panic to come over him at each successive state border, maybe even the desire to turn the car straight around and get back to his tiny room in Brooklyn and call Claire and she if she was working and maybe even his dealer. Maybe that’s why he hadn’t called ahead to warn his family that he was coming – the fear that he would never again be able to pass west of Philadelphia and so his family’s disappointment at his absence would be all the more bitter for their expectation and all their oh won’t Hunter just love to see-s.

By western Ohio, the countryside settling and the sun bearing an odd and inappropriate sense of normalcy on these foreign plains, a kind of panic did overtake him. And it was worse for Hunter because it was not at all the panic he had expected or developed contingencies to counter. The panic was – the conviction that everything would be fine at first, the pies and the relatives and the chores and the dinner at Taco John’s, but then he would need to tell his mother everything about New York. He would need to tell her he had done a little coke, but that he was sure he could take it because he wasn’t the addicted type. He would need to tell her he was actually thinking about writing, that he hadn’t gone to church in ten months.

Mother, yes, but don’t look so disappointed, because I haven’t told you about Claire, and, oh Gosh, I need you to be calm. Let me just tell you. Let me just tell you. You see, mother, she’s technically what we call a pre-op, and yes I do want you to refer to her as a she. Because, mother, we’re in love. Yes, mother, a she, and it’s complicated…

He had never felt the urge to confess anything to his mother until the heart of Ohio. The frustrations of high school, the dizzying confusion of junior college he had all managed to turn into smiles at the dinner table and polite anecdotes where no one is harmed and every learns a little more about themselves and the world. This is the panic he was not expecting: the sudden thirst for his mother to know everything, even how much he had cried after the first time he had slept with Claire, and then to look for some sign of forgiveness in her timid, brown eyes, to lean against her shoulder and feel her arms around his back and those soft hands of hers that always smelled like Vaseline and then at the moment he could first see the suburban haze of Indianapolis under the weak dusk light. Hunter caught himself drowsing ever so slightly, the car over a few feet to the right between a few blinks, and told himself aloud that he didn’t need forgiveness, he needed sleep.

The details of the motel itself where he stopped blurred into the general picture of a suburban highway-side motel: exit ramp, unhurried intersection, two fast food restaurants, three gas stations, a truck stop, signs to little towns it was hard to imagine actually existed and from his bed Hunter couldn’t even recall what the man down at reception had looked like or what color the carpet had been. His room smelled like it hadn’t always been non-smoking and he studied the darkness of the ceiling and the stiffness of the sheets beneath him.

He had Sportscenter on quietly in the background and it wasn’t really dark outside. The Nuggets had won and the Avs had lost. He turned the TV off and lay on his side, where he asked himself rhetorically which was worse, dating a transvestite or writing a liberal column for a tiny online publication, imagined phone calls on the subject between aunts with tightly-wound buns of hair and very respectable glasses, laughed a little and vaguely wondered what Claire was up to and then feel asleep for five solid hours of sweating sleep.

He left western Indianapolis a little after midnight. His stomach was churning from an ill-advised Coke he had drunk back at the hotel and he tried to recall whether he had dreamt at all of his family. They were classic rural America: well meaning, proud, confused about most of the world, pegging Denver and Cheyenne as the two great urban centers beyond which nothing could logically make any sense at all. The name Kansas City, even, had held a ring of exoticism on your lips, a weird aftertaste from a spice you’ve tried for the first time. For a while Hunter had thought that this was their greatest strength, their fierce protection of what they found important and their ability to focus on the matters at hand. It had always been his weakness, and he therefore had assumed it must be a great gift. But, more and more, he was finding himself concluding that they preferred their ignorance out of laziness and fear to be proven wrong, not out of some kind of rugged, well-meaning pragmatism, and even felt a certain haughty pleasure in his new righteous attitude about the people he had grown up around. And that’s what, if he was honest with himself, he was most afraid about – they would sense his disdain.

Missouri slid past him in a blur of morning darkness and cornfields and the heaviness in the head after five hours of hot sleep. The cities that had once aroused such a feeling of wonder passed by in quick, incoherent flashes. It wasn’t until Kansas that he felt any kind of alacrity, with the sun behind him and the pavement lit with a mellow sheen and the sky a dizzying blue. This was the country he was used to, the light off the fields and the little trails that went down by the fences and irrigation ditches next to irrigation equipment. He could feel the tools in his hand and thought about how he could never feel as comfortable walking into a bar in Williamsburg as he could stepping out among the rows corn, but then that was what he enjoyed about the city most of all. Not apologizing for his discomfort.

And just when he was most curious about how he would feel, when Missouri and Kansas had become one long road from darkness into the waking hours, he found that he felt nothing. It felt false to even try to force a feeling to outer the emptiness, to rouse some handle on the fear or the homesickness he had experienced over the past year. The last stretch to Sterling has snuck up on him, and he found himself clutching in the suddenly swirling clutter of his brain for what he would say, how he should act, what he should tell them about his life. After all, that had been the entire point of driving – that he could get these kinds of things into order. That planes go too quickly and land even faster and what can you really say on the side of the airport. But the more he would try to order his thoughts to hint at a reasonable kind of behavior, true to himself yet true to his roots, the further any real idea seemed from him and the more abstract and disjointed the whole project seemed.


Hunter’s confusion made the road speed by quickly and he was surprised when he saw it was already getting on into the afternoon. And it was strange to pull into his driveway when you saw that it wasn’t the entire world and the beginning and ending of all living, with Denver comfortably off somewhere in the distance down the highway, but just another drive where some people must be living. He was struck by the entire arbitrariness of the positioning of the road, the mailbox, and the American flag hanging from the front brick of his porch and a wave of nausea gripped him below the stomach, rolled its fingers all up to his throat, and left him a little weaker still gripping the wheel and his foot on the gas pedal.

Hunter wished he was waking up in Brooklyn as he closed the car door behind him, his weight bending over legs and a back much more cramped than he could have imagined possible, and had never felt that New York was actually his home until this moment.

He walked quietly up to the front door because he didn’t want to make a dramatic scene out of his return, shouting, carrying on. He saw that the handle to the front door was bronze and a little rusted, very different than how he had pictured it back in Brooklyn, and parts of the wood frame were chipping off on the sides.

My God, he suddenly thought, they will see right through me, Claire’s cum on my back. All that I am and all that I’ve done is stained on my face, my eyes, my mouth, and it’s not just the earring that marks me as an outsider here. There’s something already different in my posture and my eyes and the way I hold my head and they will all see it immediately and know what it means. Knocking did not seem right. And so his hand trembled as it reached for the surprising cool metal and opened the door with a slight push. And so here he was, and he made him take a few steps in.

There was no one in the living room and Hunter suddenly felt much more comfortable in the silence of the empty house. It was, after all, his house, and all of the details slowly reassembled themselves from his memory to the actual woods and carpets that he saw before him though it all seemed bigger to him, the carpet thicker and smell dustier. The family must be off at the fair, he thought to himself, or in Cheyenne. There were a few books scattered across the low oak table by the smoking chair: his dad’s National Review, a copy of Dumas’ Count of Monte Cristo, some Coulter, and a print-out of Pushkin’s Stationmaster that Hunter wondered at and almost reached for. But then he remembered himself and decided not to disturb anything until the family returned. Relieved at the peace in the now-familiar room, the way the light played across the picture frames with relatives and Christmas cards and church events, he made his way down one of the hallways to the kitchen.

And in the entranceway he froze and almost gasped. Later, he would realize that the sounds coming from the kitchen had been absorbed by the birds outside, and he also remembered how little sleep he had been getting before. His memory of the incident magnified the time he stood in the entranceway to a full minute, his brain first blank, then embarrassed, then completely numb – and nothing to do with his hands. He felt like he would throw up if he could feel his stomach, and he staggered back down the hall and out the door and into the strangest blue sky he had even seen before or since. No one, of course, from the kitchen could catch him before he made it to his car, and there was no one at the door when he pulled out of the drive automatically heading towards Main Street.

Hunter wondered where his mother had been as he turned his car West for only few minutes, and he wondered how the light off the picture frames would look to him now, and then he drove long into the night and the cool, shielding mountains, and the towering slabs of rockface that blocked out your view of the stars.

more on moscw night walks home, streelights and trees, eerie vaults of spiraling blue

outdoor cafe table in the summer

moscow enigma

Is Moscow really the word's most expensive city?

I think so

moscow metro memory v

still makes me dizzy

how to: become a babushka

have you ever wondered why russian girls can sometimes make such a dramatic shift from gorgeous devushka to boxy babushka in only a few short years? I certainly have. And so I decided to do some research

goodbye moscow

... just arrived in dublin ....

... with the vague, completely unfounded conviction that I'll be back in Moscow soon ...

... though I suppose, you never really leave?

moscow cafe scene

just try not to make eye contact with the enormous transvestite sitting right opposite you

moscow haze

... it will be summer / we will go to the dacha ...

moscow underpasses: turgenevskaya

This is what you asked for

All of it all of it

All of it

the sky's coming down on you, young man

so why not / drink that beer / today

Somehow the heat of pillow gives me the impression

If I could just keep concentrating

on all the little pieces

at once

They would finally fit:

No seams or edges or headaches

and the wind would turn cool

Heavy with sleep

colorado / to unload my head

so what / if I am / lost








see more cooberton

heart away / head to stay

And how all of this really / Means nothing to me

can't stand the chill





The moments just add more moments

No matter the spaces between

Concentration has its affect

To roll on the shadings

Give shape to the demands of skin

... and wished her mind could flow into that easy, babbling current ...

Mutant scales wreck dirty Music

On the side of my paint-chip brain

White with texture, hollow tension

In keeping out the noontime heat



The drills bear in, to pull at the spaces

Syncopate from temple to tongue

Its strings draw out, sharp for friction

And cast me back into the sun

variation on irish sunset

How to: Get Drunk Fast

There are times to turn it down and times to turn it up


The above is a link to my element moscow article - you can find it on page 5.

Wht is he looking forward to indeed

Statue where the Russian kids and middle-aged drunks drink on weekends and public holidays...

communist hero...

next to a western-style mall...

ah but my nerves are too lipsy to take this all any further...

Palo Alto

Oh You imitation of life

All the trappings of order distilled

While lifting the flag of nerves and destruction

To chase away the dark

Of perfectly lined streets

How to: Get into Premieres

Ever want to know how to make it into the glamorous world of Moscow movie premieres?

She slides up and

She slides up and kisses me

Skinny, in those limegreen panties

She whispers she loves me

Heavy, like a bag of bricks

abstract: moscow bar

pirates premiere

yaaaar

Ghosts in the Moscow Metro

Moscow Heat Wave

The way the light plays off the cup,
White and heavy, against the grit
Of 33 in a Moscow outdoor cafe,

The trees look green, against
My beter judgement
And the sky: an
Aching indistinct haze

The sun rolls heat
Over sponsored awnings, dust,
Sweat glands and peroxide
And the mashed-up cranberries
Taste of ice

Moscow Metro; Mayakovskaya

From the train window, January

Can't stand the 33 degrees in Moscow.

Oh the fidget! Oh, the hem!

There will be plenty of time

To get healty

Two Pictures of Zurich Forest

Motorola camera washes out the sky and put us on the edge of oblivion - what's beyond those trees I wonder.

Abstract Bottle on my Moscow Balcony

Irish Sunset

aCrlioghag