THE TEXT AND THE BOOK

The text and the book were getting a divorce.

To tell the truth, they couldn't even bear to look at each other anymore.

"I don't know why I ever thought I loved him," the book said. "He took up every little inch of space he could, until I felt I was only there as some sort of horrible platform for his existence!" she told her girlfriend.

"She would close herself off constantly," he told a buddy sitting next to him in a barroom. "Somebody had to fill that space of silence up. And that somebody was me. Now it turns out she preferred silence. Who fucking knew? I would have been happy to leave a page blank wherever she wanted it. If she had only told me. Fuck it. Who cares, right? Let her sit there by herself, all her pages blank."

"Was there another text?" his buddy asked.

"I don't know. She swears no. But sometimes I'd catch a glimpse of intertextuality in the footnotes. Here and there. Ya know what I mean?"

His buddy nodded. He knew exactly what he meant.

"Wait until he finds what it's like out there," she said with transparent vengefulness to her girlfriend. "Let him hook up with a wall, try to pass himself off as still relevant. He has no clue what's out there. Let him pretend he's young, attractive graffiti. Wait til he sees how few heads he turns when he's no longer literary."

"She'll probably go into a tailspin, let any text that looks current into her pages," her husband snickered in the bar. "Let her find out what it's like to have a text lying around in her pages, one that doesn't move units. That can't pay the bills. A real lout of a novel. Or worse: fucking poetry! Let her find out what it's like to be the one who must bring home the bacon. Let her enter the fucking War Zone. Middle-age literary critics lying in wait like starving, anemic lions."

"Well, that's a little harsh buddy. She did keep your home for you. You shouldn't really discount that as work, ya know?" his buddy said.

"What are you? A fucking feminist now? Some sort of fucking materialist-feminist? You watch Oprah too? Get pedicures?"

"No...I'm just saying..." his buddy began but didn't finish. He took a drink from his bottle. And then stole a sidelong glance at his buddy. Making sure they were still cool.

"I need to get some tonight," the text said. "It's getting up to my ears."

His buddy laughed.

"A night when any blank surface will do? I hear ya." His buddy took a swig.

"Thank God we didn't have children!" is all I'm saying, the book said now to her mother on the telephone. There had been talk about a sequel. Or a trilogy. "You have absolutely no idea how frickin grateful I am that he was shooting blanks the whole time."

"The reviewers were fucking right!" said her mother. "And you will love again. Trust me, honey, it's going to be like being reborn. And I will be right there insisting you wear white for your next marriage. I won't hear any different. Don't think your father showed up like a Best Seller the moment my pages were ripe and nubile for printing. I spared you the details of my experience with potboilers, but I think it's time we had a little heart to heart. You're ready."


MORAL: A BON RAT, BON CHAT. (The French sometimes get things reversed.)

THE ANTS AND THE DISASTER

Everywhere the ants went, they went together, and every thing the ants did, they did they did as one, as a tight military.

All the other bugs knew they were a unified front. A force to be reckoned with.

One sunny afternoon, a grasshopper saw the army of ants marching past and asked them, "Where's the party, guys?"

Grasshopper are usually very flip. (It's unbecoming, but they're clueless.)

"We" one ant droned.

"Are" said the ant next in line, a born soldier if the grasshopper had ever seen one.

"Marching" said a third ant, not breaking his stride in the least.

"Off" said a fourth, huffing a bit.

This ant was a little obese. He had been "spoken to" by the Queen numerous times about this. But even She had given up after a time.

"To" said his much fitter brother-in-arms. This ant was clearly a gym bunny.

And this ant was the spitting image of the first ant really. The grasshopper couldn't get over the striking resemblance. They could have been twins!

"War" said a sixth ant proudly, never breaking stride.

And off they went single-file into the distance, so many of them the grasshopper couldn't even count.

"Another ant war. What a big surprise," said the grasshopper to himself, unbecomingly flippant as ever.

The grasshopper passed the afternoon having a lovely late brunch at the Succulent Greens restaurant. Afterwards, he was standing around on the Garden Common (picking his teeth with a toothpick) when he saw a horrible sight.

Ants were running screaming over the horizon!

They were missing legs and antennae. They were hopping on five or four legs as best they could.

Some of them were even on fire!

The grasshopper realized with absolute horror that only about a tenth of the ants that set out were returning.

"What is it, Soldier?" the grasshopper asked the first ant who came running past him.

This was a young ant who had seen his first True Battle that afternoon.

He had to grab the teenage ant and hold him by his shoulders to stop him in his mad dash back towards the colony.

"Of!" screamed the ant.

"What? What was it, Son? What's out there? Other insects need to know, man! Is it coming our way?" the grasshopper stuttered, in very legitimate and prudent fear.

"Of! Of!" the ant sputtered, pointing one of his quivering legs at the horizon.

"Of WHAT?!" yelled the grasshopper, panicking a little now himself. "Is it that kid with the magnifying glass again?"

"Of!" the shattered young soldier said, and the look on his face showed now his aphasic frustration.

The young soldier realized he could never tell the story. Because he was only one of many who held the story. Something flickered through his ant mind then. He saw a giant Evil jigsaw puzzle floating in the sky. And then a million telephones gleaming with similar Evil on quite normal-looking desks.

But no words came.

The ant had had a sort of intuition of the Evil behind the Master Plan. But this thought was too big for his brain and it suddenly went white as a movie screen that has lost its motion picture.

His brain was trying to spare the poor creature the horrible enlightenment that was trying to reach him.

The young ant crumpled to the ground (it wasn't a big drop) and then unconsciousness showed him clemency.

The grasshopper left him there and turned and ran towards his pricey condo, determined to save what he could of his wonderful belongings before that horrible Of (whatever it was) came over the horizon.


MORAL: TO GET THE WHOLE STORY, DON'T ASK A DRONE.

HATRED AND BOREDOM

Hatred and Boredom had been married a very long time.

Much, much, much too long.

They had fallen into that twinning syndrome. This is where married partners began to resemble one another. As an old man or old woman can start to resemble his or her pet.

That scary phenomenon.

They were strolling near a high cliff, which was the couple's favorite thing to do.

"Let's pick up things suicides dropped on their way to the cliff!" exclaimed Boredom.

"Oh do let's!" exclaimed Hatred. "But let's make fun of them!"

"Of course!" said Boredom, ever the compliant spouse.

"Let's throw things into the Abyss again today. But only precious things," said Boredom.

"And spit at them as they plummet down into the Void! As a funny eulogy!" laughed Hatred.

"A capital idea!" said Boredom, who was rather just paying lip service, since he really didn't put much stock in ideas.

And then there was a lull.

A horrible lull that seemed to last centuries.

And neither Hatred nor Boredom knew what to do to fill it up.

"Let's throw ourselves off the cliff today," said Boredom.

"Okay," said Hatred. "But look at those children having a picnic over there! Let's gather them up first and jump while holding them," said Hatred.

"I suppose we could," said Boredom.

I am happy to report that the children turned out to be carrying firearms, so Boredom and Hatred abandoned that part of their plan.

They stood at the cliff's edge. The wind blew mightily as they both teetered at the tip of the void in their precarious, cheaply-made footwear.

"I always knew it would end like this," said Boredom. "I'm not even excited that we're going to jump."

"I knew it too," said Hatred. "I just wish we could hold those children while we jumped. What sort of fucking asshole sells guns to children anyway," snorted Hatred.

"I did," said Boredom, and then jumped.

"Wait for me, Beloved!" yelled Hatred after him into the Abyss.

And then he jumped too.

Boredom and Hatred lay shattered on the nasty, jaggedy rocks that greeted the Sea where it drops those endless come-on lines to the shore, seeking an Impossible Date.

"I loved you always," Hatred said from its broken body and reached out to caress the dying Boredom's cheek.

But Boredom threw off its hand and gasped, "I never really wanted you. I waited and waited for another. Somebody to deserve me. But only you came."

And then Boredom died.

"You were a horrible spouse! I lied just now," said Hatred.

And died too.

Much more quietly than it would have preferred.


MORAL: "PETS THAT PERSIST IN AUTOPHAGIA SHOULD BE DESTROYED." (Joan Retallack)

THE AVANT-GARDE SNAIL AND THE CONFESSIONALIST SLUG

The avant-garde snail was critiquing the confessionalist slug's latest poem.

"It's too naked! It's like you wear your skin on the outside of your body!" the snail said.

"I do wear my skin on the outside of my body!" the slug practically shrieked.

The slug was exasperated. He had heard this complaint from the snail every day for years. The snail never "got" his poems. He didn't know why they were still friends.

"Not all of us have the luxury of carrying around a big convoluted shell to protect us from the world!" yelled the slug. "A shell given to someone by his parents, no less!"

The slug had become a master at sarcastically emphasizing certain words.

The slug did wonder, though, whether he had sounded too defensive.

"You need a shell around here. I mean in case you haven't noticed, there are a heck of a lot of feet around here! Did you see what happened to Stemward last Wednesday?"

They both knew what had happened to Stemward. The whole garden knew what had happened to Stemward. Virtually the entire garden had attended Stemward's funeral on Saturday. It had been a "closed coffin" affair.

What that young girl's sneaker had left behind was not pretty.

"Oh, the same thing would have happened to you! If that creepy monster in pigtails had stepped on you instead of Stemward. Don't you remember last July? The Bicycle Massacre? As many snails as slugs died that afternoon. Having a shell doesn't make you all that special. And need I mention the word escargot?" the slug retorted.

"Listen to this," the avant-garde snail said.

The snail cleared his throat dramatically. And then the snail began to read his latest masterpiece. Without encouragement or solicitation of any kind.

The poem was a transcription of every move the avant-garde snail had made during a twenty-four hour period.

The slug listened to the poem and grew exceedingly bored.

The "poem" just went on and on. Nattering. "The snail did this." "The snail did that." It was the prose and garbage of life. Not poetry!

"Who cares what the snail did?" the slug though. The snail led an undistinguished life but was trying to make that life distinguished by putting the mantle of art on it. He was putting art on like a comfortable bathrobe. A plush bathrobe.

"Art is fire," the slug whispered to itself. And felt very superior. And bored.

After a while, the slug began growing very drowsy and very passionately regretted that it did not have eyelids to shut.

And then it mercifully ended.

"Well? What did you think?" the snail asked with peduncled eyes atwinkle, rabid for praise.

"I thought it sucked," said the slug.

"Funny. A group of Monarchs invited me to publish it in their journal, a magazine-- I should add--which has an inter-garden circulation.

"Good for you," said the slug. He couldn't stop seeing the snail in a funny bright fuschia bathrobe. With big pockets. He looked ridiculous.

"Well, did you even understand my poem?" the snail asked bumptiously. He was sure that to understand him was to adore him.

"Oh, I understood it," the slug said. "And I stood under it too. For a very long time."

"That's not funny," the snail said and recoiled into his shell a little bit. Then he realized this recoiling was a mistake and quickly oozed forth further, remembering that reticence is the least avant-garde of traits.

"Well, I had better go. I promised to babysit some larvae," lied the slug.

He was dying to get away.

"Alright, alright," said the snail. "Same time tomorrow?" he asked hopefully.

"Sure," said the slug. The slug did have a new poem about salt he wanted to try out on the snail. He was sure the snail would be impressed when he heard the slug's description of the horror of feeling one's skin actually melt away. Of course, the slug didn't know what that actually felt like. But his poem sure did.

So they turned and oozed away from each other. In opposite directions.

"When he dies, there's going to be absolutely nothing left of him," the snail thought to himself with malice and contentment. "And when I die, what are they going to see? A shining shell. A gleaming beautiful shell of a poet!"

The avant-garde snail could feel the fever of genius-pride burning in that thing it had that sort of looked like a forehead.


MORAL: THE AUDIENCE IS ALWAYS WRONG.

THE FACEBOOK FROG AND THE TWITTER BUTTERFLY


"117 of my children are pregnant!" croaked the FACEBOOK frog via its favorite social networking/empathy solicitation site. "I hope they're not planning on moving home!"

"Tadpoles having tadpoles!" the TWITTER butterfly fluttered into its keys, typing a sarcastic rebuke on the alternative social networking site (since it knew the FACEBOOK frog didn't follow its Twitter--and was resentful).

"I think my best friend has genital warts," the FACEBOOK frog growled later that afternoon in a Status Update.

"T.M.I. Central! Amphibians don't deserve friends," snorted and editorialized the TWITTER butterfly. (It should have been pollinating--but its boss was momentarily out of the flower and the butterfly was slacking.)

"I see some asshole butterfly flying over. Ima gonna eat it," the FACEBOOK frog typed around 4:42 p.m. EST.

"Frogs are evolutionary throwbacks who..." the TWITTER butterfly was was announcing to the world at 4:42 p.m. as well. It was just touching down on the "D" key when a horrific slingshot tongue hit it right square in its bombastic colors, with all the force of a flak attack. The TWITTER buterfly was taken down in milliseconds, and found itself shooting down at a dizzying speed into the FACEBOOK frog's disgusting gullet!"

"MAYDAY! MAYDAY!" the butterfly yelled into its L.E.R.S. (Lepidopteran Emergency Rescue System).

But the message didn't even make it out to to the butterfly's 3G network. The frog's tongue had done its damage much too quickly.

"Where's my keyboard?!" screamed the TWITTER butterfly, suddenly in total darkness.

"Welcome to the Meaning of Life," said a maggot the butterfly suddenly bumped against in the FACEBOOK frog's icky, gluey stomach.

And then the butterfly began to scream more continuously and uncontrollably. Not like a game show contestant. The other kind of scream.

He found it annoying that other insects were also screaming at the same time, so much so that the butterfly had trouble distinguishing its scream from the other screams.

"Death is nothing like TWITTER," the butterfly thought then.

IT was the butterfly's last thought. It was less than 151 characters.

The Twitter social butterfly hadn't realized that the FACEBOOK frog had indeed been following the butterfly's TWITTER---under a fake identity.

Frogs are as deceitful as they are ugly.

The FACEBOOK frog was already typing out to the world how disgusting the TWITTER butterfly tasted.

Within a month or two, the TWITTER butterfly's FOLLOWERS all went somewhere else.

They were hungry for more sarcasm soup and the butterfly wasn't serving.

He had already been served.


MORAL: HE WHO SOCIAL NETWORKS LAST, SOCIAL NETWORKS BEST.

THE OLDEST STORY


The Earth woke and her husband The Sun greeted Her.

"Good Morning, Beautiful!" the Sun nearly sang. "I only have eyes for You!"

"Oh save it," Earth snapped. "Every time you 'have eyes' for me, I end up pregnant. And don't come anywhere near me. My breath smells like the grave!"

"Why do you have to cover yourself with those clouds, baby? Why can't you just walk around in your natural beauty--let your man admire you?" the Sun whined.

"Sure you love looking at me now. But there's someone else you like to shine on too, isn't there?" Earth glared.

"Baby, you promised we weren't going to talk about her!"

The cloud cover grew denser over several continents and subcontinents at once.

"Wot? You're the center of the universe and you get a little bent out of shape just because I mention your whore? She has a name. Say it with me: The Moon! Your barren old hag. I suppose you like it because you can stick it to 'er all you want and never have to worry about any children popping out, right? I didn't mind her following me around back when she and I were friends. But now it just feels like she's stalking me. I can't even bear to see her acne-scarred face! Fucking gravity!"

"You promised we'd leave that subject in darkness. She's nowhere near here now. You know we agreed to send her to apogee. And there she is!"

"But there she won't stay! She'll be back again soon enough, basking in you. And glowering at me when I'm out with the kids. Listen. I think it's time for a vacation. I picked up this brochure for this place called Solstice. It looks quite nice. Very restful. I think it's what I wanna do."

"Sounds wonderful. Should I make the travel arrangements or..."

The Earth chuckled.

"What?" the Sun asked, sensing bad news on the way.

"We ain't going together. This is something I have to do for me."

"But Baby!" the Sun whined. Then grew accusatory. "Are you doing this to try to meet someone?"

"Oh, it's always the guilty ones that say that, ain't it?!" Earth laughed scornfully.
"I'll be back. Besides I'm taking the kids with me...obviously! So wot? You worried I'm going to meet some roaming star and fuck 'im while I have the children screaming their heads off, having their usual wars with one another and climbing all over my body? Oh, won't I look sexy!"

"I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that."

"It's alright. I'll be back. I just need some time to think. Some away time. Maybe I can bear to look at you after I get some rest and chill out at Solstice."

"Okay, Baby. It will just make me love you more."

"Alright. Well. I removed the cloud cover from Asia just now. Did you notice that? I know how much you love my Asia."

"Oh, it's gorgeous. Let me kiss it."

"Just once. On my Mount Everest. I have things to do. I'm a working mother, remember?"

"Of course, Baby."

"Fine. Oh. One more thing. If I get word---and trust me, I have my planetary sources--that you were fucking around with Venus when I was down there at Solstice, it's over. I mean it. I'm going straight to an attorney and dissolving the gravitational bond, and you won't ever see me or the children again. You understand? I'll find a star that treats me right. Maybe someone younger in the hydrogen to boot! Wouldn't that be a kick in the thermonuclear ass! You can go neutron and dwarf star and I won't give a shit; all you'll have of me will be photographs and memories. So you can think you can stay in line? Think you can keep your exposure to a minimum with the other orbs while I'm away? Keep it in your pants?"

"Yes, dear," said the Sun, noticing Venus spreading her poisonous clouds seductively and doing her best not to giggle.


MORAL: ORBITING IS A DANGEROUS HOBBY.

SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS



The word Sublunary was a mess.

She was crying and her mascara was running.

This is always a bad thing (unless one is young, pretty and trying to get laid).

But it was worse. Because Sublunary was a nerdy word.

Nerd mascara running elicits little horny empathy.

She walked up to her friend, the word Car.

"Everybody in this high school hates me! I can't stand it!" Sublunary whimpered.

(All words are permanently trapped in a time warp of high school for all time. They can never graduate, but remain stuck there forever, like teenagers in reruns of some horrible MTV lockerside twenty-five minute tragedy mill.)

"Well, look at yourself!" Car accused. "Look at how you dress."

"What's wrong with the way I dress?" Sublunary moaned. And hid her face in her Elizabeth ruff and in her locker as two of the more popular jock adjectives strutted past.

"Everbody knows they're gay for each other!" she whispered spitefully about the two adjectives.

"Well that sort of attitude is gonna win you a lot of friends!" Car laughed.

"But what's wrong with me? I'm an outcast just because I choose to wear a farthingale to gym class?!"

"That's a start. Of awakening, I mean." Car said cruelly. "And then look who you hang out with, girl! Just because you got a part in 'A Valediction Forbidding Mourning' doesn't mean you have to hang out with the cast all the time. Do you really think anybody's going to take you seriously if they see you eating lunch with Sigh-Tempests and Inter-Assured?"

"I think you might be prejudiced against hyphenates," Sublunary accused.

"Fuck you. I have no problems with hyphenates whatsoever. I dated Cell-Phone last year, remember? Duh!"

"Cell phone is no longer a hyphenate. After several visits to a plastic surgeon, I should add! And I believe Cell Phone is in therapy with Dr. Self-Hatred about that little problem she apparently has with having been born hyphenate, in case you haven't heard!"

"Why do you have to be such a megabitch?"

"Why do you have to quote Heathers? Oh, is that what it takes to fit in around here? Dated movie quotes?"

"Well, I saw you hanging out with Laity yesterday after school. Who the fuck names their kid "Laity?" Normal words name their offspring things like "Folks." Or just "People."

"People is addicted to crack, in case you haven't noticed. He got suspended last week. Laity is a very nice guy!" Sublunary said defensively.

"You just like those little turtleneck sweaters he wears. You're not gonna get a boyfriend hanging out with all those gay words. To speak frankly. You're getting a reputation, you know?" Car said and raised his eyebrows.

"What sort of reputation?"

"In two words, fag hag."

"I thought that was one word," Sublunary said. And then, "Well, never mind. Who cares. I just think some words are born to be ridiculed. There's probably nothing I can do to change my fate."

"Your fate! See what I mean? You do that Donne production and now it's like you have to talk like Queen Elizabeth the First is on the fucking throne."

"Well, I'm not as innocent as you think. And for your information, not all the words I hang out with are gay! Just between you and me, and I will kill you if it doesn't stay that way, I slept with Profanation after the dance Saturday."

"Oh. My. God." Car looked at her with something like pity.

"What? Jesus! What?" Sublunary was panicked now.

"Profanation also slept with Laity after the dance Saturday. And everybody saw Laity giving him a blowjob under the bleachers during the game Friday night."

Sublunary wanted to kill herself. Right that instant.

To just go completely archaic.

"Does anybody have a fucking eraser?" she said sarcastically to words passing by on their way to class, who looked at her like the freak she was.

MORAL: THE MOTTO OVER LANGUAGE HIGH IS "BE HIP OR DIE."