The Love Song of Steve Sanders

LET us go to the Peach Pit After Dark then, you and I,
Where Steve Sanders' country club afro makes the girls press up against his thighs
As if etherised by his steel blue yet vacuous eyes;

Let us go, through certain ethnic streets,
The smell of poor people retreats
After restless days at West Beverly High
And the Peach Pit diner with that douchebag Nat:
Streets that follow like a tedious episode about Andrea Zuckerman
Of insipid plot lines
To lead you to an overwhelming question …

Oh, do not ask, “Is Steve Sanders racist?”
Let us go and make our visit.

In the show where black people dare not go
90210.

The teenage issues that are resolved within a three act story arc,
Oh dang remember that episode when Brenda pretended to be French

it was resolved within a three act story arc
And that time those two hot girls stole Steve's car,
But there were serious things too like drugs and fires and cults,
But that shit only ever happened to Kelly,
And the one cowboy kid who accidentally shot himself
He was no Steve Sanders, that's for sure,
Head blown off once about the house, that kid was boring.

And indeed there will be time
For other teen issues like abortion, alcoholism, and AIDS
Rubbing their backs upon the West Beverly crew
There will be time, there will be time
To sleep with Kelly and Valerie and Brenda and Gina and Clare;
But probably not Donna because she's saving herself for Ray Pruitt,
And time for the Peach Pitt After Dark with all those awesome bands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for Dylan to turn 33 while he's still in high school;
And time yet for an episode about Dylan's dad getting blown up,
And for Brandon to bone up,
Before the taking of Emily Valentine.

In the show where black people dare not go
90210.

And indeed there will be time
To wonder, “What's up with Steve's hair?” and, “No, really, what's up with Steve's hair?”
Time to push Donna down the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of Dylan's hair—
[They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”]
Brandon's morning sports jacket, collar popped, goatee on the chin,
Mullet hair rich and modest, but asserted by pretty sweet sideburns—
[They will say: “But how the plot of this show is thin!”]
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
To whack one out to thoughts of Kelly's mom, is that perverse?

For I have beaten off to the others already, beaten off to them all:—
Have beaten off in the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my jizz with coffee spoons;
I know nude pictures of Tiffany Amber-Thiesen that I will take to my tomb
Beneath the moon and stars I will place a baby in her womb.
Another hyphen I presume?

And I have known the guys already, known them all
The guys each one I went through a phase,
And when I formulated a mullet, I was Brandon,
When I was Dylan I pinned a girl wriggling on the wall,
Then who should I be?
To spit out all the douchebags of 90210?
And why should I be so annoyed by Joe E. Tata?

And I have known the moms and dads already, known them all—
Parents that are nice or drunk or blown up
[But in the lamplight, I could totally imagine doing Cindy Walsh!]
It is her permed hair
That makes me so digress?
Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.
And should I then beat off?
And how should I imagine doing it to her?

Shall I say, I have watched every single god-damned episode
And watched the stink that rises from the plotlines
Of douchey men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of convertibles?

I shouldn't have been so into it I guess
but it beats the crap out of Melrose or Models, Inc.

And towards the end, like in season 9 or 10 or whatever, they should have ended it all a little earlier, right?
I still watched 'cause of Donna and David,
But … WTF … with Noah and Janet ... malingerers,
Stretching out the story lines, nobody cared about Noah or Janet.
Should I, after after all those awesome seasons (and after my favourite Emily Valentine),
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
But though I have wept and wanked, wept and called Steve Sanders an asshole,
Though I have seen Steve Sanders' head [always with that hair] blown up like a fart,
I am no prophet—and here’s no great art;
I have seen the moment of 90210's greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Noah and especially Janet hog the screen, and annoy,
And in short, I was bored.

And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the Brandons, the Donnas, the Brendas,
Among the important issues, like when Brenda took that call from a date-rape victim,
Would it have been worth while,
To have ended the show after eight seasons,
Or is it okay to have squeezed the show into a ball
To roll it toward some overwhelming question,
To say: “I guess I was pretty into Gina towards the end”
If one, beating it into a pillow with his hand,
Should say: “Tiffany Amber-Thiessen had awesome tits but Gina whatsername was still pretty fit.”

And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,
After the Davids and Steves and even the James fucking Eckhouses,
After the coke, after the alcohol, after we finally got rid of Andrea Zuckerman's boring ass—
And this, and so much more?—
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:

Would it have been worth while,
To have ended the show after eight seasons,
Or is it okay to have squeezed the show into a ball
To roll it toward some overwhelming question,
To say: “I guess I was pretty into Gina towards the end”
If one, beating it into a pillow with his hand,
Should say: “Tiffany Amber-Thiessen had awesome tits but Gina whatsername was still pretty fit.”

No! I am not Brandon, nor was meant to be;
Am a bit like David I guess, one that will be a dick sometimes but generally pretty awesome
God I wish I was actually in that show, start a scene or two,
Advise Steve Sanders; no doubt, that he is a racist asshole bastard,
Deferential to the rest, glad to be just in the mix,
Social politics, love triangles, and domestic abuse (Ray Pruitt!);
West Beverly High was but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—
Almost, at times, the Fool.

But it never grew old … until about season nine I guess …
I still watch the re-runs and the DVDs sometimes.

Shall I perm my hair like Steve Sanders? Do I dare to ride a motorbike?
In my dreams I shall wear white flannel trousers, and work at the Beverly Hills Beach Club.
I have heard the Brenda and Kelly singing, each to each.

But I do not think that they will sing to me.

I have seen them totally hot for old man Dylan
and dozens of other guys
hahaha oh shit I just remembered when Brandon hooked up with that racist girl. He should have passed her on to Steve Sanders.

We have lingered in the lockers of West Beverly
By school-girls dripping with venereal diseases
Till David and Donna got married, and Steve Sanders ended up with boring face Janet. hahaha ahah ahaha hah aha hahfuck you Steve!

There's Rain and There's Oil

Hey Guys, this story is now featured in the first issue of Up ... check it out!

Sweatpants are sundresses and secret caresses. Yes, I've seen the bruises on the backs of your thighs. Everything now nothing, no loving no laughing; your words are cold and they are blood, the lies are clouding your eyes. Your skin is shedding and your teeth are thin. Your bones are bending from within. You have left tracks in the dirt.

Etched in your back, under your shirt with my hand and my nails, our names inside a line; it was a heart and we cried, drunk from the wine, abandoning everything and time. Now there's a blanket in the boot of our car; two empty glasses and your e-mails are written in French. The stench of the con, the truth of the trick. You are a brick in the water but I cannot let you go.

Our Eyes Were Our Hands

Hey guys, this story is now featured in the first issue of Up. Check it out!

New Year's Eve, popping balloons; our fireworks. No light but the moths were shooting stars that night and the sprinklers were our impromptu sex toys. Then in 1987 I was in love with you, a boy, I was a boy. A little Puff the Magic Dragon in the back of your brother's Datsun 120-Y station wagon but we both knew it wasn't the drugs. We shared a sleeping bag at religion camp, so tight and we bathed naked in the stream and we could see our toes on the rocks; it was cold. The water was clear and when my sneakers melted by the fire you let me wear one of yours and we laughed. Our eyes were our hands and how long we held on I couldn't say but to this day I can draw your face from memory and I do.

Now when we meet at church or at work our hands are our eyes and we shake and we sweat. Things have changed but I will go back in time and you will go back in time and we will be the men we never became.

The Dangers of Inhaling Helium from Balloons

My children eat their sandwiches and they adore me. I am a giant here and that's all I have so please don't tell them where the bees sleep.

When the boy is in bed and the girl is not crying I do sudoku puzzles and then I imagine bashing your skull in with a hammer while you touch my wife on her body. You have taken her and that is not okay but it has happened. Now you must be happy with what you have and by that I mean please just leave my children alone. I am a helium balloon floating above their sunny faces and scruffy hair and they are still clutching my string tight in their pudgy little hands.

But dinner time is coming and they will let me go because you are making hot dogs and nothing else and that is what they like. You will be their father and they will look at you with your t-shirt tucked into your jeans and when you say "in the flowers" they will know that I am nothing more than a colourless, odourless, tasteless, non-toxic, inert, monatomic asshole.

Girl in the Boys

Hey, yo, my poem Girl in the Boys is now up at Let People Poems.

Situational Comedy

Hey yo, my poetry series SITUATIONAL COMEDY is now up at DJ Berndt's PANGUR BAN PARTY.

A Million Birds and a Grizzly Bear

A million birds and a grizzly bear. The birds are not magpies or doves, but something in-between. Flight unseen, nobody knows who they are. The grizzly bear? His name is Dave and he hasn't felt the same since he heard JJ Cale cantillate "Cocaine."

"I've never done wrong," he yells up at the birds, "along the way, in this life that I've led. I've never had fun, I've never been bad."

"You've eaten some people," the birds chirp back.

"I'm a grizzly bear," shouts Dave. "I'm programmed to attack. But I've never done the unexpected or veered off track."

"Ursus arctos horribilis," whisper the birds back to Dave. "We think you live up to your name."

"This normalness is driving me insane," grunts Dave to the birds. "I can't very well express myself to you with these words; I'm a bear. But I'm tired of all this truth with none of the dare. I want to down a fifth of scotch and finger a fish and watch pornographic movies online. I want to take something that isn't mine and alter the numbers on a speed limit sign. I want to get a tattoo of Jesus smoking crack on my back and hatch a virus that can infect a Mac. I need to go nutso ballutso just one time before I sign off and decay into the dirt. I'm inert, benign, like porridge that tastes just right."

"You're doing fine," hum the birds as they fly out of sight. 

"Shit," says Dave to nobody as he stumbles back to the stream. "Winter's coming and I need to eat me some salmon."

Your Dog is So Lonely

There was a movie about McDonald's about the food and a man who ate a cheeseburger vomited so you should know that it is not good for you. Your floor is covered with trash and all that partially digested meat is sitting with bent legs in your stomach. It spits acid into your sphincter and you are going to die. You are so fat and greasy.

You are spending too many hours killing army people on your Xbox Three Hundred and Sixty Degrees and your dog is so lonely. Buy him a tennis ball and pat him on the head. Do something with your life. All your friends are boys and I think you are masturbating into your socks. Open the curtains it is so dark in here.

Are you a different person in the mirror? I don't like what I am seeing. Look at me I am talking to you. You need to wash your hair and I think you are drinking too much. I see the cans outside. You are not so sneaky as you think you are.

And your bean bag chair is leaking beans all over the place. Is this what makes you happy?

Good Night, Irene

Oh, hey, my poem Good Night, Irene is now up at Ana C's New Wave Vomit.

Otherwise Known as Guido Johnson

Oh hey yo my story "Otherwise Known as Guido Johnson" (1606) is now up at Crispin Best's For Every Year project.

Kissing Women in the Mouth

He waits for her to open the door before backing out. All she can see is headlights. She waves, he's nice. Cute in the face but she's sad. Inside now, she cries and driving home he wonders why the prostitutes refuse to kiss him in the mouth. He offers them more money and they take it but the lips, a kiss, the intimacy cannot be paid for. He wonders if he should have asked her for a kiss. He hugged her and he shook her hand and it was awkward and embarrassing.

She is a woman who he has met recently in a normal social situation. She is attractive, not a prostitute and another day he calls her on the phone from work and they chat about things and laugh about their respective uniforms.

"I will take mine off when I get home," he says. "And I will sleep okay."

"Be truthful," she says. "About the little things. It means a lot to me."

He is honest now and he tells her that he does not sleep well in the night. He eats alone and he wears his uniform until it is time for bed. He is ashamed.

"I am happy about the things you tell me," she says. "In a way that transcends your particular circumstances. You are a good person and you deserve to sleep and sleep in your sheets and on your pillow."

"I am not a good person," he says. "I have paid girls for sex with my own money and I don't know how old they are."

She is surprised by his honesty and relieved. "I have given my boss a blow job in his car," she says. "He is not an attractive man."

"I will ask you a question," he says, "and you do not have to answer it. Have you kissed your boss before or after you have sucked his dick in his car?"

She laughs and she says that she has not kissed her boss before or after sucking his dick in the car. She can't imagine it.

"I think about kissing women in the night," he says. "You or prostitutes or any woman in the world. What it feels like, how it tastes to kiss a person in the mouth with clothes on or at the movies or under the covers or in the snow. And to wake up in the morning and to kiss them again. I don't know this kind of kiss and I crave it."

"I will kiss you," she says. "I will hold your hand and you will touch my face and we will kiss in the mouth and on the lips. You will know and you will understand and we will take off our uniforms and I will be a woman and you will be a man and nothing else. We will be together."

"I won't sleep tonight," he says and he doesn't.

In the morning it is Saturday and she waits for him in the park. It has been a long time and she is drinking coffee and he isn't going to come. She is happy now, later in years and in months. But she sometimes wonders about this man who was so honest and broken and ready to walk through the door to everything. She wants to know if this man is kissing a woman in his bed and sleeping at night. He is nice but all she can see are headlights as he backs out of the driveway in her mind.

Wide Open Road

In her bed she stopped and said "it's a wide open road" and you knew just what she meant. It's a wonderful feeling, being over, in the beginning, the third instar of a fly. Sixteen days until you die and now you have come alive. Throw off the covers, punch her in the face. The window, the door, get the fuck out of this place. Get in your car or hop on a bus, go fast, stop, go, there's blood on your knuckles but you can't feel any pain. You didn't really punch her in the face but who she is or was or wasn't has been erased from your brain except it hasn't for the memories of vision, hearing, balance, taste, and smell remain. She's okay and it's okay to wink at your heart and high five your mind when you think about that first day on the train and that dress and her breasts and how she caught you peeking at her nipple.

But you are an excitable cell with action potential. Take off your shirt, turn right, there's nothing left in her of you. It doesn't matter who you're with or if you're not or if you read the paper. All paths have now converged at this critical point.




Yet nothing is critical or important or dependent on anything. Your phase velocity has been irrevocably altered and you are leaving the glass at a most peculiar and intoxicating angle. Good bye little boy, it is time to eat the frog and spit on the toad, for this is your wide open road.

We Have Done the Things that Whores and Painters Do

Close your eyes; I'm alive in your dreams, back in Paris before the war. I am an artist and you are the whore in my painting. Just a whore though, not less, not yet. I have captured your secret on the canvas and you have taken me in ways that we will both surely remember and laugh about. My name for you is "Petits Four" and that is ironic now. I am a Jew.

For days and hours I was consumed by your incredible aesthetic symmetry, my brush refusing to perfect your delicate proportions. Then, gradually and carefully, I unveiled the turmoil and the lust that scratched at your skin from the inside. You were a beast and we were beasts together and you were naked and raw like nobody or nothing that had posed for me before. I painted quickly and honestly until you and I were finished.

Then, I could no longer hold your hand or look at you in your face. My eyes were infected, senses numbed. I took what I needed and left you in a splendid and chaotic heap. Now I am here, in your dreams, to tell you I am sorry.

And when my time is death I bid that you return to my dreams and apologize also. To be who we were, in Paris before the war, is all that I desire. Speak and I will forgive you for laying down, for whispering my name or shouting it in the ears of Le Bosch while you were doing unspeakable other things to their bodies. You were a whore and I was a painter. We have done the things that whores and painters do.

I Never Told You This But I Was Born on the Day You Died

I see you, not with my eyes or in yours, but in words on the screen and floating by. These words that cannot be forgotten or contained in my mind tumble down the side of a mountain at even the slightest sound or movement. I am buried all the time and every day but I can feel you unearthing this rubble and tunnelling through the ice and snow. You do and will stand before me, always, not in Paris or a dress, but when it matters; your thoughts in mine.

Hi Daddy

Hi daddy, remember me? You drowned when I was nine. I'm fine, though I don't sleep too well at night. Worming around, it's hot. My feet get tangled in the sheets and I don't think about you until eventually I do. Are you still in that box, in the dirt? I picked the shirt that you were buried in but I didn't go to the funeral. Mum said, well never mind why. I want to dig you up and look at you. Do you smell like the ground? I would like to hold your hand when I'm feeling down. Like now. Even if it is decomposing or completely bones I think it would help. Things aren't going exactly okay for me and I want to sit on your lap and smell your neck. My friend is really sick and there's this thing with this girl and I know I could be happy but I need to sleep. Will you let me go? I promise I'll be back by ten. Sorry, sometimes I pretend that you are here in my memories, all those years when I was alone.

I saw you in the pool by the way, that day, and all I can remember is that you had a moustache and your hair was matted down in a straight line from your belly button to the rim of your bathers. I can't even think what colour they were. Is that strange? Sometimes red, sometimes blue. I don't swim much myself. That's obvious I guess. My girlfriend's name is Huo, that's Chinese for fire. She says I should take all my clothes off and jump in the deep end. She doesn't understand. Or she does. Either way, she got a job in Hong Kong and she's going. She's leaving me and that's what happens isn't it? In the end.

Clowns

A palindrome is when a clown climbs out of the vagina of another clown. And then another clown climbs out of the vagina of the clown who is climbing out of the other clown's vagina. And then a third etc etc ad nauseam to infinity. It's confusing. I hate clowns. Just thinking about them like this makes me want to vomit in somebody's open mouth. And magic. What is wrong with people? If your job is being a clown or doing magic tricks then you are an asshole. An ass-hole with a hyphen. Sorry to be so blunt but what the fuck is wrong with you? Do something else. Get a job. Watch TV. Rob a bank. I don't care. And this never-ending circle of clowns birthing clowns, is this what my life has become? Do I read the same backwards as I do forwards?  

I guess so. It's snowing now and it's weird because my thermostat is set at 80 degrees Fahrenheit. If you live somewhere where weather is measured in litres then you should know that 80 degrees Fahrenheit is hot. Even though it is freezing outside, literally to the point where the sky is cracking wide open and falling into great white mounds in my driveway, it remains uncomfortably warm in my house. I wear shorts and drink beer and shout BOO YA at my dog just like I do in the summertime but it isn't summertime and everybody knows it. All it takes is one look outside and it all comes crashing down. God's sleety jizz splattering against the windows, gutter sluts doing whore angels in the dirty snow; it's winter out there and I hate it.

But no matter, I will get in my car and drive to work tomorrow, sliding around on the icy roads and when I get there I'll tell Dave he's a cunt and I'll schedule a meeting to brainstorm ideas for next week's meeting and then I'll drive back home and eat dinner alone with the phone in my hand and I won't call my father or my children and I'll watch that show about the guys who say funny things and then I'll go to bed and record my innermost thoughts into a tape recorder that I hold in my hand above my head and I will accidentally drop it and it will land on my face and I will say something like "that's about right."

But the next morning, well maybe not the next or the one after that, but one morning I will listen to the previous night's recording and it will say "clowns are okay" and I will look into the mirror and I will say "clowns are okay" and that will be that. And people who do magic I guess.

Bieber Christ

Our Bieber who art on a poster above my bed,

hallowed be thy hair.

Thy kingdom come

My hair will be done

at Supercuts as it is on your head.

Give us this day our daily four page spread in People magazine,

and forgive us our listening to Justin Timberlake before we knew about you,

as we forgive you for being Canadian,

lead us not into a bad haircut,

and deliver us from having to figure out any complex meaning in your songs.

For thine hair is the kingdom,

and the power, and the glory,

for ever and ever.

Amen.

Stuck in the Moment

It's 1979 and Justin Bieber has just bombed the Masjid al-Haram, Islam's holy site at Mecca. Pakistani students are storming the local offices of Bieber's record company, Island Def Jam. They are burning it to the ground. I am in a reinforced safe room in the basement and I am okay. I'm writing with a pen on some paper and there's a girl and she is painting a picture of a man without a face. It's a protest piece. Something about facial recognition technology. She asks me what I'm writing and I tell her that it is a script for a TV show. It's the final episode of Welcome Back Kotter.

"What are you talking about?" she says. "Welcome Back Kotter came on before I was even born."

I tell her what I'm talking about. "It's the one where Horshack is dealing with being married and Freddy and Epstein have a fight."

"What year is this?" the girl asks. Then she says "look at your phone."

"My phone says it is 1979."

"Your iPhone?"

"Yep, 1979."

And now things are weird between us. And someone is pounding on the door. It's Bieber.

"Let me in," he says.

"Let him in," the girl says.

"Don't come in," I shout. "You'll fuck everything up."

"Can't stop me," Bieber says. "I'm a member of the United States 361st Psychological Operations Company."

"Shit," says the girl and then she sends me a text message. He thinks we're terrorists.

Terrorists.

TERRORISTS.

The word is in my brain. TERRORIST.

And things are changing. There are thoughts. Memories. TERRORISTS.

This isn't a record company. They think I'm a terrorist. The music is loud. It's hard to think. Why do I have my phone? Why is she texting me?

"It's in the painting," she says. "Tell me about the painting."

"It's not my painting."

"Look at your hands," she says. "Tell me about the painting."

My hands are splattered with blood.

"It's paint," she says. "Tell me about the painting."

I'm closing my eyes and I can see things inside of my mind. Words and diagrams. Calculations. Code. Hardware. Wires and lenses and plastic casings. I'm inventing facial recognition technology.

She's sticking a needle into my veins.

"I'm an artist now," I say.

"Once a terrorist," she says.

"But I sold it," I say. "To the FBI."

"Indeed," she says. "But what came next. Ibiza, of course. But what after that?"

"Art," I say.

"You don't think we would track someone like you? Tell me about the Usuli Twelver Shī‘ah clerics."

"I packed it in after Ibiza. I swear."

"Tell me about the Hojatoleslam wal-muslemin."

"I was studying," I say.

"Studying what?"

"Fiqh, kalam, Bieber, tafsir, philosophy, science, language, literature. Please turn the music off. I can't think straight."

"You were Hawza."

"No," I say. "They wouldn't allow it. I was just learning. About myself. About the world. People."

"Bombs," she says.

"Bieber," I reply. "BIEBER."

I'm awake now. Bed. Hospital. Pakistan. The nurses are laughing and there is a soldier.

"You told them everything," the soldier says. "You should never tell them everything. Now come with me. We're going to see Justin."

Stories from Second Grade

ha aha hah aha h I just found these stories at my mum's house. I wrote these in grade 2. In 1978.

Dragon

Witch

If I Were a Ten Cent Piece

Shoes

Holes in You

His words are drill bits, rotating, poking so many holes in you. The torque and axial force, spinning verbatim,  breaking the skin, tearing through your muscles and veins and blood and organs and brains. Your bones are shattering and it hurts.

And when the words stop, the taste of titanium nitride lingers on his tongue, in your mouth and in your throat. You are affixed to a wall, a small picture of the wide open ocean. And battling the waves within the painting is a sinking boat in a storm. The sails are torn and the mast has snapped. Too far out, can't get back. Everyone on board will certainly drown.

But he'll stop drilling, God willing, and eventually take on other projects. The screws will loosen, over time, and you and your picture will drop to the ground to be found one day by the workman's brother: a silent man who talks with his hands and then you will finally understand the beauty of language.