Swiss Oil Painting Print Vintage Franz Anton Heim 1830 1890 APPENZELLER Volksku | eBay

Swiss Oil Painting Print Vintage Franz Anton Heim 1830 1890 APPENZELLER Volksku | eBay

McSweeny surrenders

by Jesse S. Mitchell

illustrated by rhoda penmarq

It is most of the time that I feel like we are already living in an ancient civilization. Some old museum empire stuffed full of sawdust and feathers, all stale air and quiet reminiscence. In fact, everywhere I turn my face I can see the ruins, not yet ruined, the crumbling battlements, the mothballed fortresses; make an appointment, take the tour. Everywhere I see the crumbling, rotten rock and stone and wooden skeleton of the world I was supposed to inhabit, dry rot and sagging beams, degenerating sheet rock and spreading seams. It is too awfully bad it was already dead by the time I was born…at least that is how it feels. It feels stifled and frozen. It feels like every single possibility and prospect is by now set in stone, deceased, ceased from living and now only dreaming, sleeping, dead and gone. It feels like we are written pages in a history text-book and the covers are closed shut. Most of the time I feel this way and almost certainly, another attitude accompanies this mood, the sincere hope that the future is blind. That while we may already be a patinated museum piece of a society, the future has no eyes at all, no way of observing us or studying us. And there is no reason to feel the push and pull of explanation to reflective observation. I can see no way for us to justify to more advanced souls, how Rankin and Bass, Mother Teresa, and Pol Pot all existed more or less contemporaneously. And that is without getting into the Cultural Revolution, Tintin, the Shoah, and Wounded Knee, and all these things are relatively recent. Imagine our compounding shame if they started to dig deeper. I mostly hope the future is completely sightless, senseless, ignorant of us entirely. Go point your microscope elsewhere. But even that seems too optimistic and in more dark humors, I know no reason why we deserve such anonymity, oblivion. And I hope the future is made of nothing but eyeballs, red, dry, lidless, ocular nerves engorged and stained, staring back at us, glaring, pointing every light and illumination at their disposal our way. Let us cast the long shadows we deserve. Let us answer for ourselves. Not that any of my whims or wishes matter. The latest released national security reports paint a very evocative picture of the very real world to come, a realm of desolation and dread. A dried-out, barren desert wasteland of scum and villainy, where marauding bands of costumed bikers and craven mahouts lurk and roam the streets in search of easy gold, sex and oil. (Malnourished luchadors hanging like bats from high rafters waiting to drop and swoop down upon us for our social security numbers so they can go online in Nigeria and buy bowls of millet and rice for starving Islamo-socialist children in Indonesia. Oh the humanity! Oh the Anti-Americanism! Oh the horror! It is nearly here!) If anything the government tells us is to be believed. Personally, this latest possible scenario they have proposed sounds a trifle suspect to me, and not a little Hollywood, but… Of course all of this criticism requires a great deal of surrender. A letting go. An acknowledgement of certain perceived or hidden weaknesses of both character and motivation, a retraction of all pride in oneself and ones previous blood. A cold act. And one that all follows total defeat. A useless act in reality. Defeat is defeat enough, there is no logical reason to supplant it. And defeat is a difficult thing, a tricky situation. When does defeat truly become actual defeat? William Carlos Williams in his introduction to Allen Ginsberg’s ’Howl’ said that defeat was a natural thing, an ordinary thing. Defeat was one of the most trivial of all human experiences and simply must be gone though because every man is defeated but a man, if he is to be a man, is never defeated (I paraphrase slightly). Maybe the point of this epoch, and I mean epoch in a poetic sense and not the strict geologic, is to test our limits of defeat, of overwhelming inhumanity, of being crushed not by nature or outside forces but by ourselves. We are on a precious and precarious course to conquer and crush ourselves entirely, into a fine dust, a bloody pulp, our best natures over our worst, our worst qualities over our best. The wrangling back and forth of man and animal and conscienceless brutality and unimaginable compassion. Maybe this century of war and wars is really meant to be not a war with each other but one with ourselves (I say tepidly). But either way we do appear to be losing. Maybe this is a civilization of surrender, a nation of loss and maybe it is a thing that deserves to be discovered for what it is, but until that future time let us all share together the teeth of defeat that have us all slung along this horizon and continue to try to survive, all of us in our own primitive, ancient ways.

chester and marlene

by fan taser

illustrated by eddie el greco

when chester married marlene he did not realize how many friends she had. marlene insisted on inviting her many friends to dinner and to "evenings" and chester found the friends and their conversation confusing and incomprehensible. he was particularly disenchanted with walter, an old friend of marlene's who appeared with excruciating regularity. one evening, after having a drink too many, chester informed walter that nothing he, walter, said made any sense. chester followed this up with a choice of words that were quite outside the boundaries of polite and rational discourse. this incident occasioned the sudden end of chester and marlene's marriage. both obtained the services of competent lawyers. it was all very civilized. money was not an issue. marlene had large amounts of it and chester not so much, and neither was inclined to seek any from the other. the townhouse which had been marlene's remained in her possession. after this, their paths diverged sharply. chester took up with gina, a two-bit floozy who wasted no time dragging him to his doom. gina had a "former" boy friend named jerry whom she saw regularly and the pair conspired to murder chester. he did not have nearly the money or valuables they had thought, but as they were never caught, they felt they had not done too badly. chester had had few friends and no standing in the community and after a desultory investigation by the local authorities assisted by the state police, the case was forgotten. marlene married bradley, a wealthy man twenty-five years her senior. they had what all their friends considered a wonderful marriage. after his death, she continued to give her parties and "evenings". as her old friends died off, she contrived to find new ones to take their place. an evening at marlene's was always satisfying without being spectacular.

I

l'amour, part 36

by gabrielle-jeanette perfidy

illustrated by rhoda penmarq

part thirty-six of seventy-eight

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part 37

tales of the hotel st crispian, chapter 92: "blue moon"

by Horace P. Sternwall

edited by Dan Leo* 

illustrations by roy dismas , danny delacroix and eddie el greco

*Associate Professor of Sumerian Literature, Assistant Water Polo Coach, Olney Community College; editor of How’s Tricks on the Outside? The Prison Poems of Horace P. Sternwall, Vol. 1; Olney Community College Press; underwritten in part by a generous grant from The Pep Boys: “Hey, you know you can’t afford a new car! Let Manny, Moe & Jack help keep that old jalopy of yours running just a little bit longer!”

I say again, Mr. Sternhagen," bellowed Lord Wolverington, "don't you agree that youth is wasted on the young? Haw haw haw!" Harold P. Sternhagen returned from the story (or was it a first chapter?) that had just passed through his brain, to the here and now, to this table in the Prince Hal Room of the Hotel St Crispian, and to the sight of the horrible gaping rictus of that old pansy Lord Wolverington across the table, to the leering wizened painted mask of his companion Miss Charlton, to the terrified pale face of that Michael fellow (or was it (100) Henry?) squeezed in between those two ancient wrecks. “Farmer” Brown clapped Harold on the shoulder, bringing him ever more fully into this world, the one people called reality.  "Oh, I completely agree!" said the Farmer. "My own youth was entirely wasted on me!" "As is your middle age," muttered Fred Flynn, sitting to Harold's left. "What's that, Mr. Flynn?" said the Farmer. "I said as is your middle age being wasted, and as will your old age and senescence, should you live so long." "Ha ha!" said the imperturbable Farmer, leaning across Harold, so that Harold could smell the man’s Old (200) Spice aftershave and the Brylcreem in his harshly dyed bright-brown hair. "So right you are, Mr. Flynn! But I shouldn't have it any other way! Ha ha! No other way indeed! Ha ha!" "Haw haw!" bellowed Lord Wolverington. Miss Charlton made a cackling sound, like the sound an old hen makes as she's being throttled for the stew pot.  Michael or Henry continued to look terrified. And Shirley, Shirley De La Salle, continued to sing, over there across the smoky room.  “Blue moon,” she sang, “You saw me standing alone…”

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toquette - 3. monsieur borin

by jolene de joinville

illustrated by roy dismas and rhoda penmarq

"good morning , jacques." jacques, the proprietor of a tiny cafe in an alley in the heart of the city , looked up from his broom, with which he had been sweeping the sidewalk in front of his establishment. "ah, good morning, m borin, i almost didn't see you there. a bit early this morning, eh? " "indeed, for i was unable to procure a copy of my newspaper this morning, and i usually give it a casual perusal on my peregrination over here, which, as you may readily surmise, causes a corresponding reduction in my rate of ready approach. this morning, thus unburdened, i fairly flew over, and thus you see me." "and i hopeto see you well, monsieiur. the usual. monsieur?" "of course. of course. what else would i have?" m borin settled his bulky carcass into "his" usual sidewalk table (one of three), the one which he always always took when it was available, and the weather suitable. "to be sure, to be sure." jacques turned to the front window of the cafe, and made a signal to his youngest daughter, who had been stationed there, and who turned away in her usual sullen manner, to execute the indicated command. "a lovely day, at any rate, eh, monsieur?" "good enough, i suppose, good enough. a day like any other, let us hope, eh?" "to be sure." "for what could be more desirable than a day like every other, i ask you." "nothing, monsieur, nothing. look here, would you like me to send the girl to find a copy of your newspaper, after she has brought your coffee and croissant?" "why thank you, jacques, that would do very well." jacques nodded. this was a conversation they had had many times before, for m borin's paper - neither the largest or smallest of the city's numerous dailies - was often printed late or not at all on any given day. jacques was a close student of his regular patrons' moods and peculiarities, and he knew that m borin enjoyed having the same conversations over and over - such as the one they had just had about his being "a bit early this morning". "i hope, " m borin went on, "that the paper being late does not signify any more political unrest, of which we have had entirely too much lately." this was another recurring theme, and jacques picked up his cue accordingly. "that would indeed be a pity, monsieur, especially as it is such a fine day."

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