Tim Barrus: Highway Robbery
It seemed we all had Second Selves.
I am a communist. Ego or go home. You knew there would be a book. About it. There’s a book about everything, right. Wrong. What can possibly be Socratic about Love In the Afternoon. What do you mean, Love In the Afternoon. Socrates was very pro Love In the Afternoon. I think I know what’s coming. All the selves have assembled. If they hold, which they never do, I am constrained. What is communism. Communism was Love in the Afternoon on speed. Speed was all those communists ever had. It was all old Nazi speed and vodka and jeep oil, are you fucking kidding me. That Nazi shit will eat you alive in one fast burn of desert dust and you among the ruins, Nose.
And you are going to put some of that up your oh my Fucking God Get a Clue, Wasp. He means me. I’m Wasp. These are my little wasps. We are the wasp family. We sting things. Sing songs. Shoplift. Dance. We sell things like pussy and dice. We have a Wasp Podcast. It is called the Wasp Podcast. I’m not in this family you are the writer in this family. What is he talking about. The reason you are feeling confused is because while I am upfront and center, unless I have to pee, my second selves, there are a few second selves — it’s a wormhole — have been having secret meetings I was not invited to. I design spaceships. It’s my autistic brain. The Second Selves do not give a flying fuck. Charlene took an exit. High and dry. It’s always high and dry. It’s always luck. And if it’s the pictures they took of you, it kinda looks like the Hilton, at least you knew they threw them away like they promised. In Vegas, they sell 24/7 Thunderbird at the gas station with french fries what are you doing trying to kill yourself and the appropriate response would be to smile and say yes. You bet. Americans have a deathwish, and I know it will be trouble, saying that, but so many of you are so torn to rags and you smell like 1953. It seems you see no hope, usually it’s pills among the Second Selves, and none of us can go back. Not now. Not ever. We know more about going forward and those physics are a little daunting. A quantum leap in faith. And sitting by desolate streams it seems we are the monsters harder up, this summit of subdivides, the alliances, let’s all get in our rockets and fly off to fuck them. Fuck them. Exactly who is the voice of skepticism. In this. Oh, it becomes all too real, too fast. We fear for Democracy – as we faint dead away – clutching our hankies but what is it. How much will it cost and how long will it take. I want to see big spaceships exlode. Drones. Zsa Zsa. Then, there’s an awards banquet at the Ramada Inn. All the species are there. Everyone wears gowns. oh, my god, look at all the gowns. It’s the DOJ. We drink some pink squirrels and go home. When the physics seem truly impossible, there’s always an American who says no I can only do it my way. And in the end, the final curtain.
A few theories in Berkeley Town. Popping up among the White Boy Crackerjacks. Rumors. Whispers. Lips. Examinations. Bleakers of vodka at the bottom of vast, deep uranium mines where evidence of radioactive colorectal cancer cells suggest that photons had passed through here with no documentation whatsoever.
What the fuck. How many coats do we have to wear. All at the same time. Ten. Twelve. What does it mean to be homeless, It means you are a lunatic. The sun itself had away only to come back again.
People go YYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY. Sheer panic in the streets.
Oh, for heaven’s sake, because.
Sex under communism was prostitution unleashed upon an entire rock and roll Strange Elvis Culture that overnight seduced a time machine with disco drugs. Charleen, I was crazy. That is all I know how to say. Humanity’s lives are fucked. Our genetic codes are fucked. Our institutions are fucked. I would suggest that the criminals with gravitas are not the criminals we think of as having gravitas. It goes way back to highway robbery. Then, it became highway robbery and rape.
Every single time I sit down to write another book, I am plunged into a world of moving and crashing and the smell of guns. Life is death. Hate is death. Marginalizing ideas is the fundamental precept of Gatekeeping that bottlenecks ideas. These people punch a clock. They are not editors. They control the dissemination of thought. Play it right: they can be sources. Comment moderation is the next Great Book. I am serious. I look at Pop Publishing. Is That All You Got.
It is criminal to eat out of dumpsters. We are a community. I fish. Fish are poisoned. I am the only one of our little communist group who has never been to prison. I live on a mountain in Appalachia. A coal company wants to remove my mountain. Over my dead body. I am not going to it. No Great Book. A book on spiking trees. How about a book called Bamboo Stakes in traps. Why are you here. I am here to write. I fail. Every single time. I fail. To fail is where I live. To fail is not an opportunity. To fail is death. White people scream, it is not true. Ask anyone in prison. Books are my intransigent poverty. A sinking into the background so the story unfolds. I steal Great Books from libraries. I pretend when I read that my guts are not killing me from hunger. Marx especially. He speaks to my hunger like a witch. Sex with Karl Marx could become the next new fetish. I like the part where someone says: now, let us pray. But pray for what.
I would ride my dirt bike to school, park, and then, sit there. I did not go inside. I still hate those people and what they did to me. I am not educated. Ego or go home. They who see the Flying Dutchman never, never reach the shore. The Island Ponies did not recognize your existence. There was only a little island left like a sliver of land sinking into the Land Machine this land is yer land this land is my land I am up here at the treeline reading racing on the cactus ponies in the sun and I can see every coyote slinking on the way forward and the blood red photon sun is going down and the rocks get cold. We are a cold universe of cold life forms recreated by stones and snakes. The ugliness of it owns the store. We do not own the store. We are the communists. Hide the razor blades. Do. Not. Bring. More. Than. Ten. Guns. Strictly Enforced by Home Baking Girls Club of Petaluma. The whole ugly thing. You knew there would be a book in it. I had no idea of any such thing. You knew she was going to die. They were all going to die. When are we not all going to fucking die. You knew. Did he know. He knew. Did the children know. The children are communists. The children always know. Fuck me. Highway robbery has survived. And you will see in him the pillar of the world times ten.