Thursday, February 23, 2012
Saturday, February 18, 2012
DENNY AND LENNY ARE HERE!
Check out Denny and Lenny in
Strange Pleasures and Pleasant Madness
chapter one of part one
just visit: dennyandlenny.blogspot.com
Sunday, August 14, 2011
The Hot Stall
It’s always in the shower where I stand and wait and think. Listening to the beat of the marble beads falling at my feet. I drink wine, sometimes, wasting away. Hoping for some better times, maybe a better day.
But, there ain’t much to be had in a small town like this one. It’s a place to sit and stare and never wonder bare or outward. Out here in the tomes of old, where the purple desert grass sways and the flowers look like yellow grapes on stalks of century plants hung among the other red dotting fins of lithe creatures that mope across this plane of mine, never dropping a dime from their tattered and holey wears – for this is a place of wonderment and money isn’t always necessary, but when it is, no one is tossing it aside recklessly like they would their own bodies – money in this realm is worth its weight in human sweat and therefore given a higher standard than life.
[…]
It rains down on me. And I feel it. Feels like needles and knives sometimes, and soothing orgasms, wet soft hands of a nymph others. In this place nothing creeps along the vines in my mind, and I meditate, like a monk in the Andes seeing God in motion, set apart in Energy, but I’m in a plastic shower stall in the old new west, paralytic in the mists of whirling modernity. I cannot even fathom the grandiose outside where they live in the pockets of the world. Cities. Growing and scandalous.
And I don’t think anyone knows where to go in a time like this. You can’t even escape this madness in the sticks, off the paved road. It’s supposed to be calm here, but this is where homo-suicidal maniacs are born, built in factory houses by heaving women doped up on speed and sperm. Breading like machines.
All can be had in this vast sandy island bigger than a continent, fashioned for the liking of such wondrous tikes as Doctor Moreau and the Marquis de Sade. In this place touched by God all is in vein and the worrisome madness is intensifying under the dark clouds and pounding rain.
[...]
I wrote a book in here once. In the shower. It was a short book in my head, one that I could tell you in a short hour; but it crept to life over the course of twenty-three tireless, sleepless, caffeine and cocaine fueled days – “The man never left a hour loosened,” a friend said to another in that time alone, in seclusion, and… I don’t think I came out of the darkness, the brooding gloom of my own Heart of Darkness.
This is for sickening men.
[…]
I let the water hit my face with the tinge I recognize as the abrasive overload of iron-oxide seeping up from the ground into my well through four inch pipes and into the steel water tank and then pumped at eighty-five psi into my house and through my shower head and onto my head and matted down brown hair and it stings my body and dries me out and I have to use a soft lotion of aloe to better articulate skin over muscle, so the thin cotton skin doesn’t crack and burn under my shirt which sticks, like hot leather in the summer, to my body.
Everything here is laced in chemical deposits, both natural and synthesized. Cardboard stiff.
[…]
Down the road there is a tired hidden park of trailers owned by a couple with wrinkles deep and calloused. The homes are new but the people are old and haggard, meth twisted, running lips torn down by fatigue and sun, and their clothes bore the marks of their lives, like scars mark wounds. There are Mexicans there and often enough they fight with the white boys in the park. The Sheriffs called often. And he gets a lot of collars. And he likes that - good for reelection. There is incest in the park, infidelity, adultery, drug addiction, and open drunkenness; wild packs of pit-bulls maul cats as rampant displays of lewdness pervade the loathsome community of toothless freaks.
Last week a tormented housewife cut her husband’s dick off at the balls and fed it to his dog while he howled and watched it all disappear, hog-tied on the floor. She fed pieces of him to his dog for six days before he died.
It was frantic despair driving all that happened there. Like wind moves a fan.
Other things happen there too.
Go there and watch and it’s the poor guttural orgy that is both pathetic and sick that you will see ad infinitum. But it is a twisted custom there, and people don’t speak about the atrocities except in the proper circles, because when things get out it isn’t pretty. Blood is always let invariably and the product is maimed bodies, lopped limbs, screams, and death in the night…
“They have their own Jerry Springer Show going on down there,” Zach said, on our way to work. There were mountains all around us, full of flowers. There had just been a snow a few days ago, but it was the end of April and the sun was a full bright orb of Energy in the sky. Now it was gone. And all that was left were flowers. Brilliant desert flowers. The valleys, normally dry were full of wild colors passing around, changing daily, redirecting with the sun, moving in their constant motioned beauty, parading out into the lands that I cannot yet reach. They bound beyond all boundary or fence, like a dream of Einstein.
That’s how it is here. Limitless.
[…]
The white plastic stall encrusted in the red muddy color of iron. The old door no longer transparent. And. When the water cools, there isn’t anything to meditate over – I turn the water all the way over. It comes straight from the earth, unheated, untouched, and batters my searing, steaming body, everything shrinks up, except the balls, which hang low, one lower than the other.
[…]
And I think, “Is there anything more?”
But there isn’t and it’s back to the lathe.
By: Dillon Mullenix
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
Scarification
These photographs are samples from a larger collection of modern floral graffiti art that I am compiling.
Saturday, July 16, 2011
Nacho
There was a knock at the door, and I thought to myself, “It’s a beast.” I thought that because I was on acid. Acid was readily available when meth was not. The beast at the door was bearded and wild, stocky like Frankenstein’s younger treacherous brother. He was known to kill cattle at night with a pitch fork and howl at the moon. I personally saw him eat the warm heart of a calf cut fresh from the womb. There was a nagging madness about him and you could see it in his eyes. It freed him. And because of his freedom he was feared, for he knew no fear himself, even when confronted naked by an ork sword in singular darkness of an avocado orchard by a redneck maniac named Manny Williams.
“What do you want?” I screamed looking into the abyss he called his eyes.
He answered quietly like a humble Hulk, “Can I pitch a tent down by the creek for a while.” There was murder in his tone.
“Sure, man… yonder past the shrubs is a good stand of oak you can camp in.”
“Thanks,” he said.
When he walked off into the night, disappearing like a clandestine apparition, something cold and weary, skulking off into the depths like the incorporeal vision of man, I hoped for the best, knowing the worst. He’d told me what he’d do to that man if he ever came back and tried to put his “momma out on her ass.” I feared a good while that that day would come. And by all accounts it had.
The acid rolled over me like waves in a frantic ocean, a painful tide, swelling like God’s umbilical cord unraveled and split to bear. Moon devils danced like lithium breakers on sandstone pillars in acrid typhoon weather – and not a soul was shook free. Lest be the damned. And the world shook with the power of a trillion neutron bombs at the dark center of the molten earth – and the holy light spilt forth with a passion of a million love struck women condemned to spend eternity with a handsome boy, clever of eye, curled and striking, like David standing ten foot tall, untouchable. All of this while the music played. And the stars danced and changed colors in the sky.
Next morning I woke up and drug myself to the General Store. There was word there of malice on the mountain. A man is dead. And he is a tax collector, say some, a vagrant, say others, and still others say the man dead was a man from the bank, come to take a man’s home away from him. I heard the name of the man they all say done it. The man that banker come to appropriate.
“Nacho’s, yeah… that’s where it happened, up at his house. Last I seen him he say he gonna shoot the bastard that fuck with his mamma’s home – she been payin’ on that thing twenty years and then they just come on out of the bricks and mortar and take it back like she ain’t got no right to it, like they ain’t been payin’ all these years, and it don’t make no fucking sense, there ought be a law against shit like that, goddamn, it’s un-American…” and the sympathies went on.
There was a definite conformity of reason amongst the patrons of the market that even if Nacho had done it, it was probably for good reason and for the best anyway. This, however, did not deter them from coming to a second accord, which was rare amongst this crowd who seldom agreed on anything besides a dislike for authority, on the fact that the murder had been particularly gruesome. It turns out that the bank man got his by way of an arrow shot from the hallow darkness of a small tin shed. This, nonetheless, did not kill him. The butcher then took the wounded man back into the chaparral where he cut off his toes first, and then his hands, all of which he cauterized with a cast iron pan. Then he skinned the man’s legs, cauterizing always as he went, and when his bank man passed out from pain and horror Nacho waited, and kept him alive, fed him water and vitamins, and then when he returned to consciousness Nacho would start again, prying off the skin with pliers and a razor blade he kept close to his bloodied reach. After Nacho was done with the body he left it there in the sand to be found by turkey vultures and then a wondering hunter, and left.
Nacho knew the man in his yard wasn’t the Man responsible, at least not personally, but he represented an evil far greater than himself and had to be destroyed, if for no other reason than to be an example, “You can’t just fuck people forever,” he said once, disappearing into the night.
The next time I saw Nacho he was coming out of the brush, out of the stand of oaks down by the creek. I hadn’t said a word to the Man. I was cooking steak instead, eye singed by the glare of the morning sun. I asked him if he wanted something to eat and he said he would and sat down heavily, broad shoulders tight underneath the loose black T-shirt. I had a small cooler at my feet. It was red and I had ice and beer in it. I got one out and opened it.
“You want a beer?” I asked, reaching.
“I don’t drink,” he said.
“How ‘bout a tab of acid?”
He shook his head, No.
previously published in Seahorse Rodeo Folk Review
By: Dillon Mullenix
“What do you want?” I screamed looking into the abyss he called his eyes.
He answered quietly like a humble Hulk, “Can I pitch a tent down by the creek for a while.” There was murder in his tone.
“Sure, man… yonder past the shrubs is a good stand of oak you can camp in.”
“Thanks,” he said.
When he walked off into the night, disappearing like a clandestine apparition, something cold and weary, skulking off into the depths like the incorporeal vision of man, I hoped for the best, knowing the worst. He’d told me what he’d do to that man if he ever came back and tried to put his “momma out on her ass.” I feared a good while that that day would come. And by all accounts it had.
The acid rolled over me like waves in a frantic ocean, a painful tide, swelling like God’s umbilical cord unraveled and split to bear. Moon devils danced like lithium breakers on sandstone pillars in acrid typhoon weather – and not a soul was shook free. Lest be the damned. And the world shook with the power of a trillion neutron bombs at the dark center of the molten earth – and the holy light spilt forth with a passion of a million love struck women condemned to spend eternity with a handsome boy, clever of eye, curled and striking, like David standing ten foot tall, untouchable. All of this while the music played. And the stars danced and changed colors in the sky.
Next morning I woke up and drug myself to the General Store. There was word there of malice on the mountain. A man is dead. And he is a tax collector, say some, a vagrant, say others, and still others say the man dead was a man from the bank, come to take a man’s home away from him. I heard the name of the man they all say done it. The man that banker come to appropriate.
“Nacho’s, yeah… that’s where it happened, up at his house. Last I seen him he say he gonna shoot the bastard that fuck with his mamma’s home – she been payin’ on that thing twenty years and then they just come on out of the bricks and mortar and take it back like she ain’t got no right to it, like they ain’t been payin’ all these years, and it don’t make no fucking sense, there ought be a law against shit like that, goddamn, it’s un-American…” and the sympathies went on.
There was a definite conformity of reason amongst the patrons of the market that even if Nacho had done it, it was probably for good reason and for the best anyway. This, however, did not deter them from coming to a second accord, which was rare amongst this crowd who seldom agreed on anything besides a dislike for authority, on the fact that the murder had been particularly gruesome. It turns out that the bank man got his by way of an arrow shot from the hallow darkness of a small tin shed. This, nonetheless, did not kill him. The butcher then took the wounded man back into the chaparral where he cut off his toes first, and then his hands, all of which he cauterized with a cast iron pan. Then he skinned the man’s legs, cauterizing always as he went, and when his bank man passed out from pain and horror Nacho waited, and kept him alive, fed him water and vitamins, and then when he returned to consciousness Nacho would start again, prying off the skin with pliers and a razor blade he kept close to his bloodied reach. After Nacho was done with the body he left it there in the sand to be found by turkey vultures and then a wondering hunter, and left.
Nacho knew the man in his yard wasn’t the Man responsible, at least not personally, but he represented an evil far greater than himself and had to be destroyed, if for no other reason than to be an example, “You can’t just fuck people forever,” he said once, disappearing into the night.
The next time I saw Nacho he was coming out of the brush, out of the stand of oaks down by the creek. I hadn’t said a word to the Man. I was cooking steak instead, eye singed by the glare of the morning sun. I asked him if he wanted something to eat and he said he would and sat down heavily, broad shoulders tight underneath the loose black T-shirt. I had a small cooler at my feet. It was red and I had ice and beer in it. I got one out and opened it.
“You want a beer?” I asked, reaching.
“I don’t drink,” he said.
“How ‘bout a tab of acid?”
He shook his head, No.
previously published in Seahorse Rodeo Folk Review
By: Dillon Mullenix
Monday, July 4, 2011
The Dream Camps
THE low-slung man, hunched beneath pack, made a fast ascent of a hill he felt had beckoned him. All trails led to a seeming darker light. The chaparral, like a maze, surrounded him, and for a moment, the world was large again, this wilderness empty and desolate, except for that one threat, which seemed inescapable despite the hugeness of the place.
At the top of hill he saw the endless flow of the high desert, undulating, dotted by staunch oaks and tired water starved pines. Leftovers from fires sixty years ago. Some bore signs, carbonized reminders of thunderous crackling flame hundred foot tall, emotionless, and sensational. God on earth.
“Shit, where the fuck is the road,” the man said to himself, between deep intentional breaths. “I know it is over this way.” He knew he wasn’t turned around.
“What do you see?” a voice said from behind him. It was Trent. His brother was behind him.
“You two need to hurry up,” Damien said.
“There was so much pot back there!” exclaimed Trent’s brother, Sam.
“I know,” said Trent. “Good thing we have guns.”
Damien gripped his pistol tighter. He’d had the gun for a while. It felt good in his hands. When he bought it new it came with two magazines, a holster for the pistol and magazines, and a lock. Everything but the lock and key were with him now. One magazine was in the pistol, which was a forty-caliber Springfield XD. The bullets were hollow points, and there were twenty-one in total between the two clips and the one he had chambered long before the hike had began, at home. Trent had some old 30-30 lever-action Winchester that had a few of the bolts missing. It fired, but sometimes it jammed, and in a clench, Damien would have rather had a good K-BAR. Sam didn’t have anything. And earlier he had just stood in the riverbed looking at these fresh boot prints running away from them. Damien, seeing that, had gone up into the bushes, he’d seen drag marks earlier, and heard of people getting killed for finding things like this.
“Let’s get the fuck out of here,” said Damien.
“It’s that way,” said Trent, pointing in the direction of where he parked his small truck.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“Alright, let’s go.”
All three began to run through the red shank, shrub oak, foxtails, desert sage, insects, and dry grasses. Red rocks jutted from the ground, sharp edges begging for a good fall. One of their few ways of fighting back. Decomposing granite made sharp turns hard to make in precarious places. Through a few washes, dry and slightly streaming, came and went, sand spread and grew tough and into rocks slabs and talus slopes and soft black dirt beneath shade trees and in stinging nettle and briars, mud and more insects, all in sweat dripping heat of midsummer.
“Holy shit, I didn’t think the fucking truck was this far away,” said Damien.
“The desert plays tricks on the eyes and mind, don’t worry, I know where we are.”
“We grew up out here,” added Sam.
Damien’s adrenaline was going strong. He felt his hands shake. They moved on through the heat. Through the trees and brush and around the poisonous reptiles and arachnids. Maybe this was what war is like, Damien thought. Everything began to look like a person hiding in the shadows.
As Trent had predicted the road soon showed itself and they could see the little truck. The sun glared off the crack in the windshield like a cry for help. Damien eyed the road, trying to see as far down the deserted dirt as he could, nothing, not even a plume of dust or the howl of an engine.
“Looks clear,” says Sam, and walks out onto the road.
Trent followed, lowering the rifle to his side and letting it swing like a brief case.
“Put the gun up, we’re not safe yet,” said Damien in a low voice.
It was June 11, 2009.
“What’s that?” Sam asked.
Damien and Trent followed his gaze, and it fell upon a man in cowboy boots and jeans, wearing a dirty camouflaged shirt, beanie, and sneer. His skin was fair. His hair long and oily, bearded and uncombed. The man shifted his weight into a better stance to shoot. He had a semi-automatic carbine. Trent dove into the bushes near a little culvert made of earth and let out a wild round. The man fired several times, unmoved by the gasp of the 30-30. Damien barked back with his pistol, and was met with a small hailstorm of acorn-sized lead. Other men could be seen bounding through the low chaparral behind their carbine toting compañero.
Suddenly the man fell. A loud report was heard and then nothing more. The other men were hiding. Damien dropped a few more rounds down range and then scrambled over to the truck and jumped in the bed. Sam was lying on the ground, blood coming from his half-open mouth. His chest was also bloodied.
“Get the fuck over here! They shot Sam.”
Damien jumped from the truck and easily tossed Sam into the bed of the truck.
Trent emerged from the brush and climbed into the driver’s seat.
“Go!” Damien demanded. “Get the fuck out of here.”
He opened his eyes, stared at the ceiling. It was white.
His first thought, in his cold sweat, was: It could have been so much worse.
The man’s heart rhythms ran steady after ten minutes on his back coming to grips with his new reality.
“What a fucking trip…” he garbled forth to the empty white room and strangling heat of woolen blankets. “I hope that isn’t a premonition to death by gunfire.” He hacked and then spat green–black slime on the floor near his bed.
first published by PenSpark.com
By: Dillon Mullenix
At the top of hill he saw the endless flow of the high desert, undulating, dotted by staunch oaks and tired water starved pines. Leftovers from fires sixty years ago. Some bore signs, carbonized reminders of thunderous crackling flame hundred foot tall, emotionless, and sensational. God on earth.
“Shit, where the fuck is the road,” the man said to himself, between deep intentional breaths. “I know it is over this way.” He knew he wasn’t turned around.
“What do you see?” a voice said from behind him. It was Trent. His brother was behind him.
“You two need to hurry up,” Damien said.
“There was so much pot back there!” exclaimed Trent’s brother, Sam.
“I know,” said Trent. “Good thing we have guns.”
Damien gripped his pistol tighter. He’d had the gun for a while. It felt good in his hands. When he bought it new it came with two magazines, a holster for the pistol and magazines, and a lock. Everything but the lock and key were with him now. One magazine was in the pistol, which was a forty-caliber Springfield XD. The bullets were hollow points, and there were twenty-one in total between the two clips and the one he had chambered long before the hike had began, at home. Trent had some old 30-30 lever-action Winchester that had a few of the bolts missing. It fired, but sometimes it jammed, and in a clench, Damien would have rather had a good K-BAR. Sam didn’t have anything. And earlier he had just stood in the riverbed looking at these fresh boot prints running away from them. Damien, seeing that, had gone up into the bushes, he’d seen drag marks earlier, and heard of people getting killed for finding things like this.
“Let’s get the fuck out of here,” said Damien.
“It’s that way,” said Trent, pointing in the direction of where he parked his small truck.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“Alright, let’s go.”
All three began to run through the red shank, shrub oak, foxtails, desert sage, insects, and dry grasses. Red rocks jutted from the ground, sharp edges begging for a good fall. One of their few ways of fighting back. Decomposing granite made sharp turns hard to make in precarious places. Through a few washes, dry and slightly streaming, came and went, sand spread and grew tough and into rocks slabs and talus slopes and soft black dirt beneath shade trees and in stinging nettle and briars, mud and more insects, all in sweat dripping heat of midsummer.
“Holy shit, I didn’t think the fucking truck was this far away,” said Damien.
“The desert plays tricks on the eyes and mind, don’t worry, I know where we are.”
“We grew up out here,” added Sam.
Damien’s adrenaline was going strong. He felt his hands shake. They moved on through the heat. Through the trees and brush and around the poisonous reptiles and arachnids. Maybe this was what war is like, Damien thought. Everything began to look like a person hiding in the shadows.
As Trent had predicted the road soon showed itself and they could see the little truck. The sun glared off the crack in the windshield like a cry for help. Damien eyed the road, trying to see as far down the deserted dirt as he could, nothing, not even a plume of dust or the howl of an engine.
“Looks clear,” says Sam, and walks out onto the road.
Trent followed, lowering the rifle to his side and letting it swing like a brief case.
“Put the gun up, we’re not safe yet,” said Damien in a low voice.
It was June 11, 2009.
“What’s that?” Sam asked.
Damien and Trent followed his gaze, and it fell upon a man in cowboy boots and jeans, wearing a dirty camouflaged shirt, beanie, and sneer. His skin was fair. His hair long and oily, bearded and uncombed. The man shifted his weight into a better stance to shoot. He had a semi-automatic carbine. Trent dove into the bushes near a little culvert made of earth and let out a wild round. The man fired several times, unmoved by the gasp of the 30-30. Damien barked back with his pistol, and was met with a small hailstorm of acorn-sized lead. Other men could be seen bounding through the low chaparral behind their carbine toting compañero.
Suddenly the man fell. A loud report was heard and then nothing more. The other men were hiding. Damien dropped a few more rounds down range and then scrambled over to the truck and jumped in the bed. Sam was lying on the ground, blood coming from his half-open mouth. His chest was also bloodied.
“Get the fuck over here! They shot Sam.”
Damien jumped from the truck and easily tossed Sam into the bed of the truck.
Trent emerged from the brush and climbed into the driver’s seat.
“Go!” Damien demanded. “Get the fuck out of here.”
He opened his eyes, stared at the ceiling. It was white.
His first thought, in his cold sweat, was: It could have been so much worse.
The man’s heart rhythms ran steady after ten minutes on his back coming to grips with his new reality.
“What a fucking trip…” he garbled forth to the empty white room and strangling heat of woolen blankets. “I hope that isn’t a premonition to death by gunfire.” He hacked and then spat green–black slime on the floor near his bed.
first published by PenSpark.com
By: Dillon Mullenix
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