Byline: Famous Monsters Part 15 The Monster Reawakens

Buford Youthward
stockcap@hotmail.com

Shaking the rust off, I watch old friends navigate the fine line between genius and degenerate.

My sources tell me cheap art doesn't always equal cheap feeling as they denigrate my dishonest efforts at being and becoming dishonored.

Feeling around for a pastiche, a patch, a pattern that perpetuates my pastime I realize memory moves in one direction, time in another.

The faces of wolves in flames on stone screens flash alive, frozen by fire like the greatest graffiti, relish dropped on civilization, spicy brown mustard smeared on a gingham picnic blanket.

I saw you set alight a poop-filled paper bag on the front porch of popular sensibilities, ring the doorbell then take off. I laughed and ran around the block like a kid on mischief night watching as the old folks answered the door, stepping on the flames, dancing on dog shit.

Destiny will always be a tyrant's authority for crime and a fool's excuse for failure. There's no fronting.

I dress the part and dress down the dogma. My costume glows in the dark, fades in the light, gets caught in the shadows, gets taught wrong from right.

All meaning is conflated. Art and economics share the perspective that no thing is just one thing. There are always two sides to every interaction, the opportunity cost of any activity is its negation.

First we feel, then we fall, head first, diving down, staring at the flowers of evil in your eyes. Beautiful and cruel original sin, original sacrifice sends me on a search for the fantasies we live by and the realities we live in.

We all risk losing our soul through subtle devices, tumbling over the precipice, under provinces of the subversive. The liberal listener tunes in to the local granola station fundraising for fun, trying not to concentrate on the discombobulation.

Friends gather on the rusty fire escape, discussing different escapes, lamenting our last waltzes with danger, our latest dire circumstance, confiding, when you get to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hold on.


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