The Fargo Kantrowitz'z Literary Campsite

ken talley, fort worth, TX–22 years for being a drug addict

failing flip flopper, just human, I guess, after all.

We’re all just human. Get over it.

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human center of time and life

mixed messages

juxtaposed

and if the night runs over

and if the day won’t waaa

and if the wave should falter
along the stony

and if the night runs over

and if the day won’t last

and if your way should falter

on that stony path

it’s time to pass

ping

The world is dead today. Perhaps it is only me. But I doubt it.
No money is ever enough money.
Hunger reaches further than satiety has knowledge.
We fall down.
Hoping upon the steely tendrils stretched too thin to hold us anymore.
Where is dawn’s sweet grasses where breezes carry word of feeling again?
Not here. There. Where the world waits in black like ocean’s bottom’s core.
To be cracked. Traversed. Conquered. Delivered. Then more.
No words tell that score.
Of bloomings later for loves of every age. Breath sweet again.
Cherry words. Honeyed silence.
Cries crackle and then peeter like lightning too weak to make a slash.
If there is no air to carry our voices then we are truly dead.
The dreaming head topples. It’s insides proven false.
No. Dreams of life do not life create.
And we turn. Gulf between thought and fragile bone. And know.
Man does not live by word alone.

Love is not in the game plan for old joe.
Not even close
he wants nothing but to live and love and
maybe get laid now and then,
but until then,
he ain’t doing none of it
He’s like a teenaged girl
hoping for something to happen
which won’t
he sits around and laments the facts
of existence
pure and simple
He loses touch with himself
and dreams of times when he will know
something greater than what he knows
which isn’t much
but is something
although he’s not sure
what it is

character #2

yeah, but he knows better than to come around here.
We’ll kick his skinny little ass back to burbank
I don’t need that guy hanging around here
he gives me the creeps
He’s always talking about the way life should be
When is he just going to sit down and shutup
and appreciate the way that it is?
It seems to me that people like old Joe don’t know shit
about sherlock holmes
Seems like us old farts who sit around her day after day
have lost touch with something, but we don’t know what it is
joe says he does, but he don’t either
that’s what bugs me
the nerve of this guy to profess that he knows what is and isn’t true

character #3
Ah, give him a break.
Joe’s walked more golf courses than you’ll ever walked
raised three kids and two grandkids when the one bailed on him
he’s a loudmouth, sure, but he’s a good hearted loud mouth.
That kid over there. Joe taught him how to play.
You can’t tell by looking at him, but that kid shoots in the low 70s
and that’s because of Joe.

Character #2

yeah, but joe is so full of shit that kid probably improved his game
just to get joe off his back.
Hey, kid, put down that hamburger for a minute and come over here.

The kid, about seventeen, comes to the table and addresses the old man who called him. There are three other old men there. Bill, Wade, Tom and Jack.

Tom
You think that old guy Joe is a good teacher? I mean, did he teach you your game?

Kid (Craig)
joe gave me a couple hints once or twice, but I picked it up mostly by myself.

Tom
so the old man’s full of shit?

Craig
I wouldn’t say that, but he’s a little bit talky.

Tom
a little bit talky?

Craig
well, I guess he’s a lot talky.

Tom
That’s better. He’s a lot talky. You can go back to your burger.

(This has been a test of recollection patterns from my people to yours. We will now circumnavigate the globe thrice more until we have full systemic patterning at which point the human may be allowed to live another thousand years before destruction. Thankyou.)

There was once a man named Rodrigo who did not know everything, but he knew some things and the one thing that he knew was that he would live to be an old man and die alone on a hill overlooking a cliff or in his bed but he would be old. Rodrigo knew that time was on his side but he didn’t know what would lie before him. Everything was … the form would become him and he knew what it would be. … at last sight he would be known to have been gone. Then he was. But first there was anna maria who he married and … how come some things…

The image of a woman’s breasts here

Go there then, go there then again.

How come? You.
Oh.
Time management
Wastemanagement
Literary management.

Use questions where question marks are unneeded
Ask questions but first knead it, the bread that is…
Oh, c’awhmahn! Darling…

And mysteria walked out of Theodore’s life forever, never turning back. Theodore had said that one solemn thing and at its passing from his lips he had released mysteria from that which she had needed from him and she went. Mysteria went.

1.

the world went that way once. Went in the way the world was wont to go. Went wild there there went wild she did. The world there did she, the world there did she go.

“Shufflin’.?”
“Yeah, I guess so.”

Stu sat there and stewed. The tall cowboy hatted Frehner sat next to the other who stewed and then pulled out some chaw and put it in his mouth then spit.

“Goddamn, rascal, di she, you know it’g got ti go.”
“Go?”
“Go.
“Spect.” Said stu and he just sat there and kept on stewing.

400 years later.

I thought that was that? You know what I mean? You got to know what I mean.
Spect
Kribulon 9?
Spect
Very well then. Former radicals.

,…but the sun wouldn’t set that day. I was about to say autumn when it didn’t seem autumn, it seemed cold. But autumn it was. A cold autumn. It doesn’t matter. What will come will come. There isn’t much that you can do with it anymore. Sometimes it seems that the cold will always be the cold, but it doesn’t stay that way. Cold is cold, true, but, and there’s always a but, it don’t. What were the people doing? Which ones? The fat people who acted smart but weren’t because they were fat. The skinny people who acted smart and secretly hated the fat people? The middle people who want to go to church. (What the hell do They do?), the lost? the beaten? The forever young? I don’t know. What do they do? What do any of them do?

But the sun would set that day. There had to be some reconciliation between the sun and the moon. Or the moons. Another ride on a magic flying carpet? Where would you go? Over mountains and cities at night under stars at day under sun. Where would you go? What would you see? Would you end up giving all your friends rides just to be nice until your flying carpet is so full that it falls heavily to the ground? Which friend would have to go first. Probably the fat one. This is why the skinny ones hate them so.

But at least we had property. And land. And we could go somewhere and everybody could live in harmony or dis-harmony as you would have it be or if. Land. But the only thing to do is dig, for the world will become too much for you, the modern man, the one who thinks that you can make money like dad did in the 1950s. Rare and getting rarer. There is too much for the likes of you to do with all that dough. The likes of me too. All of us. Every last living, breathing red-cent-lovin’ all of us. Leaves little for the rest of them.

But some places it seems like enough. Like if you have land and everybody can come to your land and everybody can live together freely and in peace. Is it possible? I would have to say that I think the answer is no. It seems that there is always one or two people who always insist on busting it all up. Sometimes the skinny people and the fat people get into a fight. I know, I know, everybody is supposed to get along, but sometimes skinny people hate fat people That Much. Sometimes people have different styles of extravagance, cleanliness and neatness. This is always a deal killer. Slobby Joe over there living round meticulous Mick. Clash. The border war. Maybe we just hate everybody and think that our little home town in somewheresvill nowheresville is the best thing in the world and we never should have left in the first place because the leaving made me a different person that nobody from nowheresville knows anymore. Or we each think that there is something to our “art” that is, I was going to say “better”, different. We see worlds in our worlds and we want to tell, but there is a line. Everybody wants to tell, but there is a line. You’re going to need to throw a show. You’re going to have to perform a ritual, but everybody will have to know and be a part in it, but you, from somewheresville, nowheresville, don’t want to impose. In the meanwhile you stew. I was going to say stu.

“Spect.”
“Spectnothing!” You spew, Anton!
“Spect.” Didn’t mean nothing to Anton or “Stu.” Didn’t mean nothing to him at all. What would it matter if he “stewed.” Everybody needs to know that this is okay. This is “Anton.”

Stu?
Stu.
Good to meet you, Stu. I’m Delvidere, Brockton. Brock. I’m Brock.
Brock.
Good to meet you Stu.
Anton.
Hmm?
Never mind.

2

There is never no never no mind about it (he said). There would be something else involved, but it wouldn’t have to do with you or me or anybody reading or the next mountain ledge we need to peak over! What did I say? (another voice somewhere. Ssshh. Can you hear it? No, Jody, listen! There’s another voice in this cave!

Arlengetti!
` Yo! What is it Tarkenton?
You got jody over there?
Shit!
No!
You got my daughter over there Arlengetti! (my name was arlengetti because my forefathers owners were Italians named “Arlengetti.”

I think you do.
And the race was on.

Jody Tarkenton was sixteen when she met Arpin. Arpin Arlengetti was considered the best chess player, by far, that Wilmington had ever had. When they traveled down to Booth and played for State, Arpin was the last man standing. The trophy sat there in his living room, over the mantle, insisted upon by his mother Anne, a “semi” retired school teacher who took substitute jobs whenever she could. Her back pain was the reason and her weight. It was plain to see. Arpin’s mother Anne was fat.

Arpin! Where’s my cream?
I don’ Know! Shit!

A typical conversation at home, but passable. Arpin mostly sat in his room and either read or played his computer a game of chess. He couldn’t get internet where he lived and, besides, his mother wouldn’t be able to afford it. He had other siblings, all older than him and mostly gone from home. Where? St. Louis, Phillipsburg, Oakley and a brother out in Hollywood trying to make it as an actor. His sister Jane had become a nurses assistant and then a nurse and lived in a big house with her husband and four children in Phillipsburg. Their house had a whole acre of land and she kept some sheep in a little pen just so that her children could grow up learning how to love and care for things. Her kids are still small so we can’t yet say if she will ever end up eating any of them, which to Arpin seemed horrible. It was a wait and see game, one Arpin didn’t want to have to mull so he put it out of his mind like all the other things in the world that he didn’t want to have to mull, like if he would ever get a girlfriend, like if he would get in Case-Northwestern where he wanted to study constitutional law, would he ever ride the stern of his own small ship through choppy waters along a wild and exotic coastline, maybe Africa or Spain? He didn’t know. What more could he think on the subject except that it was all leading to something and sometimes adding the score is the hardest part. It is hard to know if what you are doing is something worth doing. Whether you are on the right track, what thing could happen that could break your heart and thereby keep you from your goals? The wrecked, the seemingly lost, the masses. Arpin joined his political science club where he got to that final conclusion: there can be misery within the masses.

Spect.
Yoospect. You know! There isn’t any doubt about it. You know!
Spect.

3.

any room for here here? Or I just dreaming? Good a place as any to get off I spect. Hearing that word round the stratosphere. Almost conked me on the head with it outside Nebulous 3. Sh*t, if it weren’t for that sarbortulanator malfunction Kremulon would have had some bargain in the deal. Blown up his own race too, what a leader, what a *sshole.

Anyway, got some creamed yodel beak here, best creamed yodel beak you can get in your can, if youre lucky enough to get a can anymore. Mostly its all just tubes. All just m*therf*cking tubes. Haint enough.

Sh*t, Wilbur, that you?
What?
That you?
Yeah, I’m here, so what
What happened to you. You was the smartest kid in the class.
I lost it.
You lost it?
I lost it, man. There was nothing to know. It was all just hype.
So you weren’t a boy genius?
No. that was all just hype. There’s nothing to know, man. There’s nothing to know.

4.

laying upon the meticulous rounds of the hillock beside him, he saw.
Nothing
Oh nothing
Just the breeze
The breath of the breeze
No, no more,
Oh Edie, how come
You know we’re so old
I know,
Oh I know you know, now you stay out of the shower.
I’m just combing down what’s left of the old hair I got on my old head. Dear be down with you in the coffin in a minute.
Dario
Anna marie

Before the night fell the grasses swayed. All life was somber and still. A cricket bleated alone as crickets always do, this one, too early to sing, waiting for night as the orange sun disappeared behind the mountain.

The water of the lake was smooth, not a ripple, grasses grew out of there too. Tall grasses sticking up like trees with thick stems and the brown, very brown, dark brown almost browner than the trunks of the trees on the shore stalks, as I said, stood perfectly still.

What happens when the stopping begins? Eyes wide open we seek movement. The poets always sing of themselves in the wisps of winds and sways of leaves, but when selves disappear the remaining former proof lives on, soulless, unknowing, lost.

Too much silence can kill a man says Huxley. But Huxley doesn’t know anything. He cuts corn down when seasons of corn cutting come. He rushes out to strip the land and comes home a richer man for a season, the good season, in between the times of waiting and loneliness.

The poets are always looking for friends in nature. Somehow they know how to relate. Sunshine becomes God and moon the almighty mother. Loneliness doesn’t grip them. They don’t need the flesh and blood of their soul sisters or their brothers. We all fall down.

And stories, expanding in underwater silence, our talent’s bubbles bursting upon the water’s skin. If we could tell our stories, let our stories come up and be as real to each other as they are to our all too often unknowing selves, then we could breathe.

But breath is but another dream, another wasted thought to the drowning man, his story and his being watching the round orb of the sun blur and decrease. Eyes on deck. Keep watching says you, but the poet knows that even the underworld is there for him to relate to. Even then.

Where do old hippies go when no one finally cares?

dirt. (catch yourself, you never know when the hoochiesmooch) lots of dirt that time dirt. Old dirt. dirt that didn’t do it for you anymore. dirt that didn’t care anymore. good dirt. soiled dirt. ingrained dirt. the time of dirt. dirt.

always wanting to end something before it’s begun. the journalist in me… but the in me says…

not the eye puke

better, like the next word. eye word down but not out. forgot the aspirin. maybe the pain will go away.

runon sentences make you a bad writer. forget the moment of bliss and wonder. just kidding. really just true love. more later…

Merilous fulsomes in the dark. welcomemats Joycean style bad style run on style bad writer just kidding. really just love. more later…

for the moments of bliss and wonder were real, or were they?

(we interrupt this message to bring you this announcement. you have reached the other side, i repeat, you have reached the other side. the other side is sign for death, sign only, the import of it’s mystique, the atmosphere of it’s contents, but not real, just a thought of, just a thought of and nothing more so love for a moment of bliss and wonder, makes you wonder about God.)

God has a rap sheet.

Hip Ho a Hibbit.

habits of movement of head to bob and weave your way out of the next real solution’s enigma. what do you see between the flying conundrums?

more flow perhaps? where every boundary is broken? twisted turtles and slower thoughts slowed.

a documentation of what you were doing at all through the very reality of letters strategically placed.

what futility.

but what of the wonder and bliss? You can’t stop thought. your brain folds and unfolds. but after awhile you have to let go too. you’ve got to find your way, the way you should write. the view that you can accept and once you accept that view you have to understand it

a deep deep sound gravity awakens night tickles day lays upon her night and leaves.
corrosion explosion notions of nought cannot doom reality or her graces final musings.

A ticket to space is not the same as being there. When we wake we realize our dream has left us, but we do not wonder where it has gone. Why?

If our motions considered us we would never be able to move. If our sounds sought us after we made them we would be harried and run from city to city like some Cain unable to forget Abel.

I would make my world a centerpiece rather then give to it a stone  that may or may not bring it luck. Give it a reason to make glitter from the passing moon and the stationary stars.

If love could visit me tonight I would sit down first for tea with it. If it could not make itself known to me completely I would go to sleep with the one that I love and dream it to me and it would lie upon my breath afloat for hours.

The star’s son has been commmitted to knowing less tonight. The boys and girls who dreamed they would someday know how to dream have fallen asleep again, put off play for something higher again only to wake up wondering again.

If music were my master I would bow down forever upon an altar of moon. I would not consider myself less if a smile were given to me  by a friend. I would die if it were taken away, but usually I need not fear either and that is a sadness that I bear.

If women could only understand men they would know that our hearts too have pulse. I’m tired of being called unknowing by those who think that they know. I would choose no battles there however for no curve of cheek or hue of skin can predict from where love can arise. Not even mine.

I love to love and fear losing the love I have known. What valleys have been riveted into my being by my experiences with love. What sounds have coursed through my skull because I have wondered at the loss of love. To have loved even for a moment is enough to make you restless for a lifetime until you know such a moment again.

I give nothing to you tonight. I take all for me. The world is mine if I am to understand the concept of the scope of reality. I cannot think less than within that sphere whose boundaries I defy anybody to make in front of me. I confuse light with dark and sound with silence only because I refuse not to be open to the experiences of all or none.

Fourteen years have passed since I last looked into the circle. Two thousand years went by before I realized that nobody cared anymore. Who am I to say what is being done is not proper? Nobody. I say it anyway. What is not proper. I do not know. That is the mystery of my pursued quandary.

I will sell the dust on my shoes for a million. Take a beanie baby and hang it by a tree and snare a citizen as they come and steal in the night that which cannot be taken except under the eye of God.
Adam and Eve. Well, it’s not as though they’re dead, you know.

I take my liberty now, but accept the price tomorrow. I, by knowing I do not know and yet exclaiming anyway, will pay the price in looks of knowing that I do not know that you will all give. For if I know, how then can you know if what you know is different from what I do. I laugh and then hide, knowing the argument silly.

John Emmons was shot in the shoulder because he thought a conversation silly. Was it an angel that made him jump away at the last moment that extra inch further that mattered? An angel is song, known in body and soul, and therefore let the angels reign…

The wine drinkers
offer merriment
unto themselves only
never to the lonely old man
who picks through balloons
looking for the one to find
to turn and blow on
into an animal
which he ties and gives to you
like you mattered
like you mattered as much as
the animal
for which yours was formed.

**********

there are small catchings
in little woods
in large woods
there are big catchings
mountains
not bugs.
In large woods.