J.J. Campbell (1976 - ?) was raised by wolves yet managed to graduate high school with honors. He's been widely published over the years, most recently at Horror Sleaze Trash, otoliths, Cajun Mutt Press, The Beatnik Cowboy and Terror House Magazine. You can find him most days on his mildly entertaining blog, evil delights. (https://evildelights.blogspot.com)
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destined
i want to believe
i am destined for
more than this
i know it's probably
bullshit
but wasting away
in a small town
while the rest of
the world passes
me by isn't exactly
what i thought was
intended when i
chose life over
death at the age
of eight
once again
first thought
best thought
----------------------------------------------------------------
being used
i think of
the nights
where i
used to like
being used
by a woman
i wonder if
those nights
will ever
exist again
------------------------------------------------------------
tragedies
i often wonder how
many tragedies i have
within me
once a day is plenty
i don't need any more
than my own to look
forward to
-------------------------------------------------------------
nothing to talk about
i love a woman
with tattoos
no one wants
a situation with
nothing to talk
about
the scarier the
better
only a few of
us know how
to properly
deal with
pain
--------------------------------------------------------------
there is a better place than here
fight back
the tears and
understand
there is a better
place than here
i'd like to believe
the soul moves on
to see something
way better
if not,
then i suppose
this is truly
a living hell
STATIC ATLANTIC
Here the windows open onto sky’s grazing,
Tumbling through the landscapes with ultraviolet features
And upturned eyeballs.
Brushing the chipped shoulders of 7-day lotharios,
Barking at houses and uniting in a chorus of frayed knots.
The rosy squeals of the pig pen were never far away,
Chin deep in soapy water and mimicking the superstars of daytime television.
Showers screaming.
Can we seek the relief of 2:00am blackouts?
The wilderness in two miles of personalised number plates?
I left my head treading cathedral yards,
Pondering the value of Exe.
I never liked how broad those shoulders could be.
Another flock torn into motorway stations.
Waxing gibbous and the occasional telegraph pole
Bristling with prickled declarations,
‘Untangle all the lanes and burn the views’
NOEXIT.NOEXIT.NOBALLGAMES & salvation.
Until then we’ll peruse the wristwatches and altered states of appearance,
Asking only questions, but were we ever still alive?
20/09/2020 Exeter, Devon
SEMPER EADAM
.who in the stops of 12-19 Fore St.
Shrugged off the silvery inevitable
And the bitterness
Of the glitter box granite.
Pressed with a deadpan disdain for modern life
And JAN&KEITH4EVA.
Is this the greatest thing you’ve (n)ever scene?
(Pylon to B4) A tension within the gambit,
Shaving a min. or two from the GRN root
Until ‘The End’
Preserved itself a little differently.
Over phished clouds pass like cattle,
Brewing car stock for shovel headed storeys
And increasing the chances of reign fall.
OR in constant use.
Please advise.
11/08/2020 Welcome Street, Exeter
BAD HOMBURG ADJACENT
(…) blend ‘Blue no.5’ with screwdrivers,
It will crawl through the yards, the postcards, and heels.
Plugging holes in the carpets with its broken jawed azure,
Pondering cord progressions,
The cut ’n’ paste never (may contain salt).
From its amber lit pockets were the kwik tongues of hermits
Stitched to the din of its hot tin lining. ON SALE@public addresses.
‘Was it time to feel electric?’ – whoeveryouare
It processed the rhythms of future folklore,
Screwed another ribbon into the barking purple.
Seldomly bobbing over radio waves
And for Displaying Purposes Only.
Beyond were the fruits of circa ‘43
Ripening in the synonym: streets,
Temporarily built to last
With bottled capped receptions at the
PAYE.SLOT.CASH. Trespassers will be prosecuted.
>
>
>
>
W/duvets in the whistle stoop,
Showers in the bistros,
Tyre tracks up the backs of lonely harts,
The wrong side of a set of showroom curtains.
Trespassers will be prosecuted
So stockpile you’re remaining darlings
//bad homburgs remain adjacent
Dazzlingly nettle skinned and wandering.
Were you just as scared as I was?
20/09/2020 Exeter, Devon
“Scientists first observed the phenomena in the early 21st Century – the polarity of the earth was shifting. A repeating occurrence every 10,000 years. At first it was gradual. The populous was not adversely affected – until. After World War IV and nearly one billion deaths, one-tenth of the population, the earth transformed overnight as if the planet needed repentance. The South Pole and the North Pole changed positions. Reverse Polarity,” the autonomous holographic professor paused to wait for questions. None.
“Creatures such as eels, fish, insects, and birds among other migratory species were adversely affected. Later, studies proved the abrupt magnetic change caused the alpha brainwaves in many species such a dramatic alteration they all died. It was unknown at the time if humans were tapped into the Earth’s magnetic field as the aforementioned species, but they were equally affected.
Later this event was known as ‘Dar la Vuelta’ or the ‘Blip’ or ‘Balik’ – meaning the “Flip”. However it was referenced, no amount of bombs could come close to the devastation. Only one billion survived. The Equatorial nations and surrounding regions were not affected.
“Many shouted it was a message. ‘It was mankind’s turn to repent. ‘
“After several brief months of chaos and a communications blackout the South America nations united, led by Ecuador; as did the African nations led the Congo; followed by the southern Asian islands led by Indonesia. Three new world powers. Once established, the military forces from Ecuador and Columbia along with Brazil – known as the Republica de Amerigo – migrated north to the old United States. Purpose, to control the infrastructure and obtain superior weapons. But this was a waste of time. The Dar la Vuelta had disrupted all pre-existing electrical devices north of five degrees latitude – the same was soon discovered south of five degrees latitude. They returned to their respective nations. But later on, they returned with their own equipment and weapons in order to take advantage and protect of her resources. United under the same banner, it was decided not to disclose this discovery to the other world powers. The intention – allow them to waste time and resources. Once the same was discovered by the United Indo-Islands when similar attempts were made in old Russia and North Korea and the Chinese Communist Regime, the Congo-Kenyan Empire’s spies relayed this intelligence to their superiors – they retreated from their attempts to control the old Iranian nuclear stockpile. Instead, Europe was their new resource target. And like their Amerigo counterparts, they figured out to occupy and utilize land to their north and south by spreading their own technologies across their newly acquired respective regions.
“Despite the distrust, there were no wars. No territory disputes. There was plenty of resources. Even the old cartels, the old militia and the old Triad realized the new abundance and a peace was agreed. But this was viewed as a temporary pacifier to a yet another new era. An era of over-population like not previous experienced prior to the Dar la Vuelta.
“¿Any questions, comments?” The professor asked his surprisingly attentive class – aside from one.
“¿Por que’?”
“¿Why what? Senorita.”
“¿If we won, why do we need to learn all this mierda?”
The holomatrix of the professor fluttered. “That is a question for anyone who intends to repeat history.”
“¡That’s not an answer!”
“On the contrary. It is. ¿Shall I continue?” The class removed their eyes from the solo disturbance and redirected their attention toward the professor. “Once the three super-powers began to repopulate the planet, the disputes began. Trade disputes. Resource and territory disputes. War. Population decrease. Population increase. War. ¿Would mankind ever turn from this vicious cycle? From one age to the next it seemed this destructive pattern was predestined.”
“That would require an Intelligent Designer.” One student stated as he stood, and politely returned to his seat.
“You are correct Senor.” The professor scanned the classroom. “¿But – is it possible to be predestined to change?” No one answered. “Back to the history lesson. ¿And where are now? Victors in the last war. ¿But at what cost? Two billion. 10% of the population,” a raised hand caught his eye. “Yes Senorita.”
“We were defending ourselves.”
“Yes. That is how history will be recorded,” silence. “¿And how will history record our current events?”
The professor initiated the two-dimensional holo-screen which emitted from the ceiling. News reports from around the world. “The greatest migration of anyone who can manage the cost or beg, or other unsavory means left their homes for safety. Lines of refugees. The various militaries from numerous nations are moving their respective equipment and weapons across multiple boarders by ground and air. Of course, this is causing chaos and conflict to erupt particularly since Union Ecuatorial is not prepared for this influx and has vowed to defend her borders around the globe,” a news anchor’s voice-over reported. “As the planet continues to increase its pace of reversing poles – which according to prominent scientists throughout the world, predict is any day now – the exodus from the northern and southern hemispheres toward the equator is massive and unprecedented in human history,” she continued to report.
The professor pressed mute, as was his class. “Predictions indicate approximately only one billion people will survive,” he paused. “¿In the aftermath, will the survivors respond in the same fashion as our planet?
“Will this be on the test?” A voice from the classroom blurted.
“It will be on the most important test of your existence.”
~
“For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in pains of childbirth right up to the present time.”
As mirrors confirm, you have your dad’s hooked nose and someone’s curly hair but overall resemble your mother. Shared bloodline notwithstanding, you escaped becoming a remake of your paternal great-great grandmother. Since such is the case, I hope you have also escaped some degree of body botheration in these slim and exceedingly body-conscious times. The qualifier because what female escapes appearance anxiety altogether? None I know, have known or read about. Even the beauteous V. Woolf self-reported her “ugliness.” If you’re supposing the comment that Virginia looked as if she’d “been pulled backwards through a hedge” affirms Virginia’s self-criticism, rethink. That Rebecca West remark refers to Virginia’s clothes, wardrobe, presentation—not to the frame and flesh on which those disorderly clothes hung. (See what I did there? Tossed in a literary anecdote to postpone admitting what I’d rather not.) Female insecurity in the looks department gives every indication of being a regenerative, evergreen malaise. Even to type those words makes me peevish. However: the deal I struck with myself when I started these notes was not to pretend there’d been progress where there’d been none, or that, gazing back from the advantage of a riper age, I’d describe my own twenties as a period of pure nirvana. Those years were nothing of the sort. I spent most of the decade unhinged and terrified.
Time out,
Aunt K
West Coast
Tuesday, March 5
DeeDee,
I’d have written sooner, but I was waiting for my temper to cool. Since that adjustment took the better part of two days, I’d appreciate it if we kept those recovery stats to ourselves. Your extended family has never gone in for ranting of any sort, outbreaks of which are viewed as unseemly and conspicuously self-indulgent. Extended pique of the sort your aunt just indulged in? A disgrace to one and all. Onward. Before you joined us, our immediate family was a uniformly blue-eyed crew, shades of blue the differential among us. My eyes are darker than your father’s, his darker than your grandfather’s but quite close to your grandmother’s hue. None of us smile with bee-stung lips. Your grandmother’s skin “never burned” when she sunbathed—a sparing your dad and I coveted, since we shared your grandfather’s quick-to-flare paleness accented with freckles. At the beach, regardless, your dad and I stayed all day in the blistering sun. In the late afternoon—and not until—your grandfather joined us. Prior to, he worked on jigsaw puzzles inside the cottage. I could try to describe my six-year-old’s squeal, the whirly excitement of seeing him crest the dune, available at last to take me past the breakers. But I wouldn’t succeed.
Love,
Aunt K
West Coast
Friday, May 17
DeeDee,
It would make sense if I’d felt trapped in a car, by a car, as the Ford Galaxie veered toward the ditch or thereafter, surrounded by broken glass and crumpled metal. But it didn’t happen then or then. It happened the afternoon cousin Linda and I had stayed late at school for a 4-H Club meeting, driven home by another club member’s mom. Amped up on cookies and soda, we were a screechy gaggle of nine- and ten-year-olds cavorting on the backseat all the way home—or almost. As soon as Mrs. Simpson turned off East Ridge onto our dirt lane, we saw what shouldn’t have been lined next to ditch cattails: car after truck after car, parked, drivers missing. As Linda shoved her way across legs, I frantically worked the door handle, Mrs. Simpson telling us to wait, just wait, until she’d come to a full stop. But we didn’t wait. We’d run that dirt so many times for fun, for games, run it just to run and now we ran in terror toward Linda’s house, streaked with black, still smoldering. The Meadses were okay; only the house had been harmed. But we hadn’t known that, trapped in Mrs. Simpson’s car. We weren’t afforded that comfort, separated from our own.
Love,
Aunt K
West Coast
Friday, May 24
DeeDee,
On the second floor of the Carolina building, above the Carolina Theatre, our family dentist drilled. In between cavity excavations, Dr. Johnson’s patients could hear snatches of soundtrack, if not otherwise loopy on nitrous oxide. I hated going to the dentist. (Who doesn’t?) I also had a mouthful of cavities, a situation that did nothing to improve my attitude. As a reward for getting through an exceptionally grueling session, your grandmother took me to see Old Yeller, downstairs. Since she hadn’t read Fred Gipson’s novel prior to (boy adopts dog; boy and dog bond; bad stuff befalls dog), she must have considered the Disney version a safe bet. (A very iffy post-Bambi assumption, it must be said.) When Old Yeller gets shot, I was by no means the only distraught child in the audience. However: judged by extremity of reaction, mine logged up there in the top five. Your grandmother quite literally had to drag me, bawling inconsolably, down the aisle toward daylight. During the car ride home, chest heaving with sobs, I assaulted the narrative. To spare Old Yeller’s life, why couldn’t this have happened, why couldn’t that? An addiction, reworking the narrative. Once someone’s developed a taste, does she ever go clear?
Love,
Aunt K
West Coast
Friday, Nov. 8
DeeDee,
The Loma Prieta temblor. A seismic event that absorbed your attention or no? Although I wasn’t around for the quake itself, I arrived in time for the aftershocks. Unsettling: the swaying of electrical wires in a windless moment. Although I’ve yet to dream of earthquakes, I suspect that night terror is in the works. You’ll have no interest in your aunt’s dreams but bear with me. There’s a reason I bring up last night’s night script. Instead of the usual scenario (tidal wave approaches while I stand paralyzed in its path), last night I was ahead of the game. A tidal wave still played a major part in the dramatics, but from a different angle. Through frantic (and dream-lengthy) effort, I managed to kick my way to the very crest of the water wall. The reward of that strenuous survival? A backside view of a multi-storey drop. If I had/were a therapist, I’d give the interpretation this spin: aging. You think you’re in control, on “top of things” but the other-side plunge will be swift, frightening and ultimately fatal. Yes, I realize: getting-old yammerings are as boring as recycled dreams. But, you see, the actual point of my sharing is this: your aunt’s not old. She’s simply anticipating.
Chris Butler is an illiterate poet howling from the Quiet Corner of Connecticut. He has published 8 books in his “Poems of Pain” (or POP) series, with 2 more soon on their way. In his time that is spared, he is also the co-editor of The Beatnik Cowboy literary journal, soon to release a chapbook with his comrade in the wars of words, Dr. Randall Rogers, entitled DEAD BEATS.
Cyborg
In this youngest day of premature age, our offspring are the future, dying in real life just to become a cyborg.
Implanted with tracking chips, nanomachines plugged into every hardcore port before developing the ability to read and write,
they’ll soon begin thumb strengthening and mind devolution by poking uteruses, until every baby is born with both bionic and carbon based parts.
In one generation, one dumbphone will have more intelligence than the entire population no longer growing inside a tube.
The dumbphone is far too intellectual than all the people in all the known worlds.
Cellular devices connecting to biological machines on a cellular level, dismantles the DNA sequence downloaded from the first birth, programmed with original chromosomes.
Intravenously attached to mePhones, mePads and mePods, Because there is no I in me.
Facespace, Tweedy Twits, InstaGratifucationGram, Timber, GrindHer, Slapchat, WildVine, ClitCock, WeShat and BoobTube steal our attention, in order for our need to seek attention during each day’s detention.
The first tool of man was the stick, a weapon of impersonal demolition. The second tool of man was language, a weapon of interpersonal devastation. The last tool of man will be misinformation, a weapon of mutually assured self-destruction, bombing us in the form of a black monolith.
We are only woke when the mind is at rest, sleepwalking through protests of peaceful violence.
Memes are the cultural genes of any generic society, with the power to hijack any and all social interaction, spreading pamphlets from fiery zeppelins during propaganda pandemics without medical masks to keep our mouths shut.
Minds with master’s degrees in memeology see you as witticisms for idiots, unknowingly inventing an army of sentient thingamajigs with simulated stupidity, long before the incarceration of the one zeitgeist lightning strike…
…the almighty phone…
It tells us where we are and where to go, how to get home down unknown roads, connecting us with ten digits we no longer need to memorize, cheats so people can’t tell that one can’t spell, keeping contacts intact despite long lost distance, nuanced destroying machines of an emotional emoji, sharing opinionated commentary no one cares for, with imposed guilt to keep us woke by invoking insomnia, political correctness autocorrected before even written, canceling a citizen’s existence once send is pressed, and the only thing we can never leave home without.
Gradually, the dependency seeps into all of society.
Unable to initiate, copulate, maintain and sustain conversations face-to-face or voice-to-voice, but instead opting for text-to-text
Even when you shut off the shutter, the cameras are always watching, especially when playing solitaire while squatting on the toilet.
Facial recognition software knows us better than we know our best friends, significant others, domesticated pets and megaton nuclear families, our privacy is eaten away at us like spam with a side of cookies, disguised as apps with no entrée to devour.
Instead, biometric fingers play the rhythmic keys of algorithms sequestering our unhealthy habits and isolated lifestyle from the rest of the real world.
Conversational swipes that smudge fingerprints from right to left on scratched screens to express which picture makes you want to sext dicks the most, then conveniently hacked and on display as a C-list celebrity peepshow free to download for pubescent boys to continuously blow their load over.
Some will even deepfake a new face of uncanny valleys onto the wrinkling skin of airbrushed lies, the latest form of plastic surgery to propagate with or against the disinformation machine, all of which will get my name prominently displayed atop every government watch list,
then unfriended by superficial friends and unfollowed by lemmings just before the cliff.
In order to continue, one simple click equals a bound and gagged agreement, an arrangement that forces the user to read then reread the slight variations to terms and conditions of the tiny fine print hidden with invisible ink between the lines, forced to consent to their blood contracts, Issuing consensus to corporate Satan to torture you for an eternity, or until the next cruel agreement when a download is required from passing billboards of dangerously distracting QR codes, the new and improved unbarred mark of the beast.
From trolls demanding tolls for safe passage over the fiber optic bridges, to masked bots masquerading as human beings whilst fishing for cats as they moan and piss into our drinking water from upstream, it all seems to exist in a fantasy fairy tale indistinguishable from the extinguishment of reality.
Even in the privacy of our own homes, as the old saying goes, we are never alone. Unwelcomed house guests disguised as girls named Alexa and Siri, wear a spying wire unwarranted but governments, but the corporations in power, pretending to be the global positions system’s guardian angel, recording all of our priceless lives on permanent records and selling access to our electronic existence and priceless debts to the highest bidder.
Drilling the mountainsides for zeroes and ones, digging up bank accounts, social security numbers, credit score cards, birthdates , mother’s maiden names, emails, text messages and mapped out routes where there are no canaries. Even single toothed prospectors in goldfields digging forty-niner miners take megabytes into counterfeit bitcoins that were sifted by panning in the same digital streams, until they create a crater called credit reports that strip mine us all, and surveillance surveying what we’ll spend our life on buying next.
Until a simple butt dial from our back pockets exposes our secrets to not only the receiver, but any listener on the same spectrum on the other end…
However, even worse for the selfish is the selfies facing the fate of Damnatio Memoriae,
the deletion of a human being’s electric existence by means of a search engine and browser’s history.
This banishment from the grid is in the coroner’s fraudulent report as social suicide, but instead death was carried out by execution, quartering one’s texting digits in the cybernetic town square as the crowd’s six second creeper clips is cut down just as fast as it was pasted up.
When you are persona non grata and your name is not even spoken of in dead languages,
and as your carbon-based footprints imbedded in the shore’s sand are instantaneously washed away by eternal high tides, no longer with a legacy to stand on.
United we progress toward a perfectly monitored society, in the inherent anarchy of the year Twenty-Twenty.
