zokomonium

Sin # 1

kingzoko — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 06:46:49 +0000

They called him The Carnival King, because it was he who lorded over every last caterwauling, meowing nincompoop sighing out his days shit-deep in the useless tradition of bean-counting shenanigans on any of the skyscraper’s sixty below floors. His circus-freak charges swam in pools of paper, lock-stepped among sequined numbers. So many reams of paper, such long columns of numbers! So much clacking of keyboards all day long. And The Carnival King sat on his throne above everything – he sat on his plump, swivelly leather throne at the far end of a magnificent office which occupied the entire top floor, and drooled lushly over the numbers glinting on his desk. From dawn till dusk he drooled as he counted, counted, and recounted the enormous sums which had very long ago ceased to represent anything so real as diamonds or Jaguars, castles or private jets…which had ceased even to represent the silly but much-coveted rectangles of printed green cloth…which represented, in fact, nothing anymore beyond an extraordinarily abstract and velvety notion that had become his addiction and his disease. How he loved those numbers, The King did! They tickled him in all the right places. Whether the clouds thickened around his glassy box or the sun streamed in, no matter; he was blind to earthly climates. But he cackled in delight at the fattening numbers, grew heavy under their scorching light or sleepy behind their screens of coagulated fog. The numbers danced prettily for him, round & round, up & down, like giant teacups on a big spinning disk after the young pimply man in the top hat has pulled the lever; and their delineating commas were made of the sweetest cotton candy.

Then one day the caterwauling nincompoops who sighed throughout the sixty below floors, heretofore trapped in cubes of particle board, heretofore sitting or standing or slugging coffee or clacking keyboards or drowning in glittery columns of numbers (what misery, getting nines up your nose)…well, one day they stage a mighty revolt.

“No more shenanigans!” yell the nincompoops.

“No more of this circus!” yell the nincompoops.

“We hate the numbers!” they chant with vigor. And there is much hollering and chortling and throwing of chairs in the air.

The Carnival King hears echoing of the great hullabaloo from his glassy box at the tippy-top of the concrete-and-steel tent in the sky. His numbers begin to quake on their reams of paper. The cotton candy commas dance out of order. The papers themselves rustle and jig.

“Stop this nonsense at once!” The King bellows, and he stamps his feet.

“Nothing matters but that the numbers grow!” he bellows, and sees flashes of gold like fireworks in night sky behind his eyelids. Gold fills his vision, a background of velvety gold with numbers falling as vertical chains on the surface.

Throughout all sixty floors, no one hears, no one listens. The caterwauling bean-counters reach an extreme beat, a frenzied crescendo. They shake the walls of their concrete big top until the very beams sway. One by one, as if dream-side, the ceiling-high windows of The Carnival King’s sixty-first-floor box shatter, and his precious papers go sailing out into the open air. He snatches frantically (eyelids filling up with black)…but when this proves futile, there is nothing for it but to make a wide jump and sail out after them. The light wind has no mercy, and he plummets, safety-net-less, to the blacktop far below.

7 Deadly Sins stories

kingzoko — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 06:44:01 +0000

Over the last week or so I’ve written out flash stories along a theme: the seven deadly sins, one piece for each sin. I’ll be putting all of them up here eventually, but at the moment I only have one that is completely revised and ready to share. I will not be labeling them explicitly, although the characters are mightily exaggerated and thus it shouldn’t take you long to guess.

As always, constructive criticism is very much desired and appreciated.

Like reality could tear

kingzoko — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 08:40:47 +0000

I went for a long walk up the hill toward Twin Peaks. Mt Sutro Cloud Forest: it was fucking beautiful. Beautiful, BEAUTIFUL. Stood on the sidewalk, part way up a steeply slanted street, looking at the fog just dangling its diaphanous bits in the dark trees. And one of those brilliant red bottle-brush specimens in the foreground. I almost cried…wanted to cry…for some reason couldn’t. But I stood in awe of the gorgeous ethereality. And even then I thought to myself how frustratingly poor of a substitute language was for the heart-wrenchingness of such a scene. The first layer of inky green was unobscured, vivid and primal; the second layer taller, and more pale because dipped in mist; the third was a mystery – completely raped by fog, and invisible.

Then I found an awesome secret place. A set of steps off a tiny road, cut into a precipitous hillside. I walked down and up them in the rain…my umbrella stayed closed in my hand. I wanted to get wet. The rain fell softly, but I ached for it to pour. I yearned for it to pour on my face, get me drenched. I felt high on those steps – hallucinatory. Foliage encased the secret stairway. Trees, bushes, so many bright flowers, all covered in rain, vibrant and gigantic to the point of absurdity. The blooms larger than life – and me shrunken. The air seethed and quivered. I felt like I might just witness something absolutely not real. I felt like I wouldn’t be surprised by it, in that place. Like a creature from my head, from one of my unwritten stories, from any fantasy I’ve ever read, could very much appear in front of me. Like reality could tear, and that would be appropriate. It was almost inappropriate that it didn’t.

e. e. cummings took all the fun and now there is none left for us

kingzoko — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 00:56:55 +0000

period
of
i(n

.f i
ni)
t,e
ac.C
es,
S
the everything of the world
at
dAnCiNg
finger,tips
forgetting.inconceivable
Duchamp’s
u.rin:al
stuck in
afatbOx of tIm,e
ki.lling it
f(or
therest.of)us

i am doomed
To come To terms with my absolute non-newness
so.many rEVolutionS
so.many rEVoltS
i cannot begin
to
:s ‘t ag.
e
another one
nothing left for me to do
but
c(o

.p y
ba)
d,l.y
what those who have come before me
have done.

(now don’t you feel
the ,ra ‘)s
hy
itch
of the post-postmODern snake
eating its poStmodeRn tail?
(and in.
f -
&ect.
i :ng
us all with its venomous uselessness)

I had nine cat lives

kingzoko — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 09:25:22 +0000

I had nine cat lives
In the first, I was hopelessly in love with the little details:
reproductive cells in the exposed cross-sections of plants;
soap bubble striations
and the like
In the second, I traveled around the world (of course),
effecting extended stays in Laos, Norway,
and Peru
In the third, I sustained a long-term relationship
bruise upon bruise was applied by my lover in layers to skin & mind
In the fourth, my fur was singed by fires resulting from
the San Francisco earthquake of 1906
(from which I never quite recovered)
In the fifth, I ate sixteen mice throughout the course of a year
one of them got me infected with the pox
dirty little creatures
In the sixth, Yves Klein used my body on his canvas
he painted it a special blue and had me roll around
In the seventh, I did nothing but read passages from The Bible
and eat caramels
In the eighth, I went to school for ten years
and came out a doctor
regretting everything
In the ninth, I yawned, chased a bug, sharpened my claws,
and napped by a tire in the sun.

School blues update

kingzoko — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 23:44:14 +0000

School has begun again and so unfortunately I must put off creative writing (and thus blog posting) until December winter break. I tried, and failed, to finish this little dystopian sci-fi story I’d been working on before the semester started… but it will be up here in a few months, along with some other goodies!

Dream

kingzoko — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 05:09:43 +0000

dream landscape fantastic with craggy bluffs and
palefoam sky as wide and high as
the bluegreen lake was wide and deep
and backdrop mountains unrealistic
the bluffs behind us too jagged-perfect

and so much air,
so much air between it all

there we were, four pretty little girls
all in a row, along the cliff’s edge
all in a row, black & cream-striped Edwardian
(petticoats & parasols, hoopskirts & hats)
we were fixing just fixing to jump

spectators & tourists below would take photos
that was the game and that was the plan
our troupe was paid handsomely for such performances
unnecessarily for we’d do it anyway
we were itching just itching to jump

and so and so and so we jumped
into the wide high palefoam sky
behind us mountains unrealistic
below us the wide deep bluegreen lake
her murky depths stretching & swelling

and so much air
so much air
so much air between it all

it felt like flying
it was falling
my petticoat ballooning
a crazy parachuting
we were thrilled by the buffeting of the wind

I was thrilled, but then the dream rippled
my parasol flipped inside-out
and I was falling too far away
outside of the wide deep bluegreen borders
I kept hoping just hoping to wake

and so and so and so I fell
it felt like flying, cameras were flashing
the land growing larger as it came up to meet me
and for all of the itching & thrilling & jumping
the ultimate price to be paid

and there was so much air
so much air
too much air between it all

Idiosyncrasy

kingzoko — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 00:30:22 +0000

The man at the bar
once had an old professor
at State,
he told me
who used two pairs of glasses
reading & distance
would switch back & forth between them
during lectures
and that had always
been the man’s favorite part about him.

On the 28 Outbound

kingzoko — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 00:26:46 +0000

I just kept thinking
about his brains
how scrambled they must be
for his behavior
to manifest so.
Standing above his balding head
I had a vision
a big pile of messy spaghetti
and me,
twirling it with a large fork.

Cat suicide sunset

kingzoko — Sun, 17 Jul 2011 03:22:09 +0000

Our star yawning violently
slathers her worn-out spittle
a burnished orange light over
every tall building
window-laden, mirrorlike
surfaces refract her
sienna’d expectorate
the phlegm of her nightly dying
edges triangular, window casings
rectangular
buildings outlined black-lined thickly
to regulate
the hyper-saturated
meltdown into night
antique photos
monochrome’d
could not be more sienna-violent

There’s me on a sky-high balcony
with window casements
triangular
swimming only with trouble
in the saturated orange
of the evening
story of a black and white cat
his fur a deep apricot
and brass in this soaking
he is walking slowly backwards
towards the balcony’s edge
looking at me with saucer-large eyes
filled to the brim with hot brass light
and he, the cat, goes over backwards
I rush and see him tumbling
easily through the coruscated air
tumbling, falling, far, far down
to hot black, tarry street below
to compensate for the lack of sound
I scream a copper glow
the burnished sky turns rusty
and soon everything gets dark