The decades turn on a slow blade, the years find definition on the fives. The blind curves always come and go hard. Dark corners are full of dragons. All the way back to eighteen six five. We tried to rip ourselves in two and beyond past the ‘76 founders back to the 1619 project. The black plague, the children’s crusade. Joan of Arc. Jesus Christ died on the zero alongside two thieves, the false trinity and the first of the fives along this timeline.
Five is a fire sign.
Slingshot to 1945 and never again be thou not far from me oh lord.
The storming of the private Ryan beach is the wild west for half our country some of us slingblades got special after red dawn. the first freedom fighters against fascism in the Americas were the Mayans, the Aztecs, the Iroquois and the French Canadians. Why do you think it’s called Lafayette Square. The next batch of antifa insurgents were the people attacking the Alamo, the Apaches, Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull. The women and children at Wounded Knee, John Brown and Nat Turner. Edward Teach and the black flag pirates in the Gulf of Mexico.
The most famous antifa cohort were the soldiers in the trenches at Gallipoli, army nurses dying of spanish flu, the boys who died on the beach in Normandy, the sailors who drowned on fire in the south pacific.
The last batch of antifa were Emmett Till, Malcolm X, MLK and the million man march, the flower children at woodstock, the students at Kent State, the Black Panthers, the girls walking into that school in Little Rock and the national guardsmen who watched their backs.
The trail of tears is a flat circle and we believe our own mythology at our peril.
The fire next time. The razor jones flares too bright, ponyboy.
Answer the question, Claire.
Fade to the mister orange theory and the first chapter of kiss me judas, fade to ghost the black parade to nineteen ninety five.
The OKC bombing. Nineteen nine five was a heart shaped box. All of us were choking on the ashes of our own apologies and waiting to see who would be the man who sold the world. The summer after Oklahoma City, I’m reading blood meridian, child of god, confessions of Billy the Kid and left hand tricks with a knife.
The cowboy kid is born the night after Jerry Garcia died and by midnight I’m floating through slow as Moses crossing Pearl Street, the cowboy kid’s mom in labor in my yellow cab I’m on the radio same dispatcher same cold blue cat yeah dude we get paid in prosthetics all the time steampunk pirates in these hills floating pearl street mall slow as feels like rain at alpine kids everywhere the valley kids you knew kids you worked with got high with chasing 27 playing tomb raider the club kids the gutter punks the kid trying to feed flowers into a vending machine delivering porn on a mountain bike penny lane the Kerouac school summer was seven always wheelchairs in the road he just told you mister orange the box her pretty head mister pink don’t tip.
The five is a red spiral, the five is fire. Ninety-five mister I’m cooking the orange theory, running the weed deal, man I’m watching lost boys, I can drop the big dick like a virgin theory like a field sobriety, pale fire cells interlinked every word on a loop in your head stretching teardrops in the rain. The devil’s greatest trick. If you could see what I’ve seen with your eyes. The red right hand, what’s he building in the murder ballads. The air was always on fire those days, same as these. Folks are always crazy and the edgelords were going just as as mad in ‘95, the freaks get crunk to the point of paraschiz over bad ideas. There were fewer guns yeah maybe but still we keep doing this shit. Carl Sagan was right, the climate is fucked but it’s taking forever for Waterworld to get here we have never not been expecting zombies it’s baked in to the resurrection the end never not near the fives are sharp corners they cut us without fail.
There were fewer folks carrying in the open but reality was Blair Witch slipping fast nine inch you are nails you become animal doom preppers in the hills remember running miss dot to get her scrip at the Woolworth the ancient chemist she still saw dirt roads cowboys, her mama knew Doc Holliday and your brother Fred bought a ton of guns after Waco and Ruby Ridge Timothy McVeigh shit was brewing Kurt Cobain the fours are dark hearts Jerry Tupac big the bomb squads blowing shady boxes needle in the hay Elliot Smith broke gen X everywhere twice a week pink sky hills always on fire never not sine qua non ted Kazinsky manifesto in the air corners blind the curve religiously cold is jack white playing jolene making you feel do you know what a turtle is Leon.
The OJ trial, folks from Los Angeles to Atlanta squawking jawing more Tupac Biggie than wild west, the next corner was turn of big wheel the two thousand the summer after Fight Club, Office Space, the Matrix, Columbine, the basketball diaries and kiss me judas were in the air that summer, nine eleven on the wing, smoke on the wind. The sky was high and bright summer after columbine summer Kerouac with Hubert Selby junior, me and Jim what the fuck talking requiem with Jim Carroll, no dude no snipers on the roof. He says Leo and Mark were both motherfuckers but too young to play Phineas but Leo could be the kid, says Jim.
Leo in the gunfight with the priest man what? No dude no snipers, gimme a light rule 34 was never not a thing. Leo for the basketball kid, the wheelchair kid got a scholarship, one kiss for the crow. Brandon Lee broke us like River Phoenix. I’d give you my pulse, offer you my breath if I thought it was useful. Find what you love and let it kill you. Let two birds crash the lake, one comes up with a fish twisting silver and I am religiously cold
Those punks can fucking act says Jim, they know how to be assholes, how to lie and how not, welcome to Hollywood, his name is Robert Paulson. The fall semester after Columbine the air bright as silver, the cloud coming nine eleven still a shadow, kids in Denver, high school kids carrying Kiss Me Judas, the matte black edition with the ghost half skull got pinched confiscated suspended. MacAdam Cage and I dropped the ball there, we should have printed thousands more of those. Have a look the contraband the velvet antifa carrying. What were the religiously cold, the unbound kids up to.
Kiss Me, Judas is a tragic antihero dark love story and a noir bloodbath that ends with a kiss for a dying boy. To my knowledge none of the young heretics, the nefarious velvet kids, the lost ponyboys, emo tomboys, goth bookworms carrying contraband skull head Judas none of the velvet antifa kids turned out to be mass shooters, not to my lookout. But if I know a dozen suicides, OD’s, kids vanished and murdered then everyone reading the velvet cloud along that corner in time has chalk outlines on their shoulder and at their feet and everybody they knew did, too. All of us did but a lot of us are still here.
The warm and bound wrote a book.
I had a cat worked psych with me at the ER, one of my guys said fuck man I read that Judas book in jail I know ponyboy vote for pedro my country tis of thee when doves fucking cry.
Time to get judas back in print need to chat penguin meantime podcast posts coming bedtime rush hour chapters and fuck the next curve sharp corner summer two thousand oh five war in Iraq pop pop, Marshall Mathers, Hell’s Half Acre the winter of oh five I was on a stage with George Pelecanos at a noir festival in the Alps answering questions about the depths of the banality of evil. George asked me how did Jude kill the Blister, you don’t want to know but it was art.
Dark corners are full of monsters.
Slay your dragons, love your demons.
Hard edges are hard. The suicide jones is our jam and we have seen this movie a thousand times, keep walking
Then summer fall oh five with Clevenger, the contortionist we did an eight city run, City Lights, the viper room, Pete’s Candy Shop. Both of us were assholes about the observer effect. No fucking cameras at the reading. Took the Amtrak across red rock desert to land at some dive in the Tenderloin under television sky some shit hole cave, too jammed inside stood on hood of car no mic chapter reading chapter one of hell’s half under television sky.
The next corner hit like a train, the large hadron collider smash cut to the gold escalator, everything is stupid but here we are.
Dark corners and sharp edges.
Blind curves are the worst and the fives cut us without fail.
If there is no spoon how does it fucking bend.
fuck you ponyboy.
kiss me cut me choke me till my eyes roll back to the ghost parade.
If you want to live call 911, Judas was his best friend, the soulmate. The quantum tangle, the three. I know, pull up your skirt mary, that’s why he trusted him with the kiss. That kiss is the lynchpin, betrayal is hard. Trust the girl around the dark corners are hard, Lucy knows stay gold don’t look back, Orpheus always don’t fuck up you only need one what does who the fuck am I am what is religiously cold who is the don’t look back she’s right behind you she’s the wing on your shoulder, the velvet is childhood dreams the liminal the lost time the space between the razor jones, the velvet warms and binds. The stories fold the flashes of memory the stories are all we have.
The stories are our hearts.
Razor the image, blade the haiku.
The origami suicide note will cut you apart like a love letter in the rain.
The voices keep us, the stories hold the center that doesn’t hold. The widening gyre is bottomless but the stories fold together to build a pillow fort in the cloud.
I pray the stories hold us, all of us
peace.
revisit phineas poe on a suicide jones theory of the fives how the fuck gonna sling this on the fly daylight burning podcast coming winter 2025
to the Velvet substack
conspiring with television sky pirate bedtime stories ask the bard link in a minute
post script.
if you want to live call 911.
theory of the fives it gets cool for a minute then we get fucked we do it every time that’s why they agent smith told you who the virus is the only species that willfully destroys itself and burns the world down because it can this shit we are waiting for Godot while we turn the planet into have you read neuromancer the fucking sprawl the endless highway loops dead train stations mirrors everywere wheelchairs in the road morpheus fucked us he fucking told us and we still take the red pill every goddamn time no dude the matrix respawn I’m writing the blue pill neo twitches takes the blue reckons he can come back there in dream anytime fuck that eating cream of wheat in a submarine shit the machines don’t know what chicken tastes like trinity is hot in the real but in the cloud she can fly she’ll be back go inside the dream the ginger with the flash drive what the fuck did you give him mister anderson follow the rabbit follow the girl with the tattoo take your mind apart from the inside matrix respawned take the blue bill that chick always follow the white rabbit dude what the fuck.
stare
Fuck, Will. Read this one a few times through already and will do so again. Electric stuff, man.