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Peter Magliocco |
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white noise in any suburban shopping mall little shops of horror abound as condemned votaries in unreal cyber-markets virtually going nowhere in eternal entropy: those overpriced luxury items are specialty antique items or the sex of dead pornstars cryogenically frozen in a gamy curtained booth where Avedon waits to shutter all the overexposed flashers nearby department stores lost & found in the lap of discount alarms bells & sirens of digital appliances sound off in ears of mortal beings, then repetition sings strident thru your soulful insomnia when each dime dropped on china rivals a drunk's bottle breaking up every cat-mewl of Poe crying in a remodeled Baltimore gutter (where lost is never found & the shop displays never change:) yet no one mourns tyranny's-tympani assaulting the human race in aural insidiousness, humming vast voices from god's boiler room as telemarketers order you to spend your life's savings on Box Car Willie's CD hits before going tone-deaf The Color of Another Sky If these words could swim off the paper would they ramble around your amber mind, shutting the door to unwanted eternity? We were young soldiers on leave in Sitges, Spain (circa '69), ambling uncomfortably along the mammoth tear-drop's picturesque littoral castle ruins & upscale hotels fronted, posing for the front of a photographer's calendar. Bothered by the unknowable Spanish words coloring our ears with unexpected insults, it was to The English Bar we navigated our pitiful gringo selves bedecked in jeans & tie-dyed t-shirts of psychedelic hues, all the shades from a garish summer sun burning us with ultraviolet punishment. Beneath the cruel light of heaven's sky this beach town was too expensive for us, & even the barmaid scoffed as we entered still sweating out crude hangover toxins we tried to vanquish with another drink. Awkwardly playing darts, we listened to Zeppelin & the Cream on the jukebox glowing like a Western beacon in ESPANOLAVILLE: tourist haven for-wealthy-hippie-dropouts where "the night glows for silver dolphins," our Julie Christie sang, lustily serving drinks & recounting how one sea beast followed her while swimming in nearby cerulean waves -- so closely that even her husband left her after becoming jealous of the amorous dolphin "& the magic all felt powerless against," until she could no longer love men again. Hours passed & we felt jealousy later also, listening to how the ocean surf deafened us to distant radios playing THE SOUNDS OF SILENCE while we slept on the infinity of beach sands ... [Index] |
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Thunder Sandwich #26 - Summer/Fall 2005 |
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