EL GATO DEL VERANO (Issue 26)

EDITOR'S SCRATCHING POST
CATATONICALLY SPEAKING



POESIE
Two poems by Leonore Wilson
waking up on the wrong side of town by Philip Miletic
Howl for Dessert; Or, The Beat Guide to Making Coffee Yogurt Pie by Ian Marshall
Two poems by Michelle Nickol
Two poems by Philip Byron Oakes
Identity by Ralph Michael Chiaia
Flowers by Luis Cuauhtemoc Berriozabal
So Many Legs I Couldn't Count Them All by James Babbs
BOOM! BLAM! BOOM! by George Held
Woman Contemplating a Yellow Cup by Neil Ellman
Pulse by Brenton Booth
The Crumbling Clock by Paul Tristram
Two poems by Willie Smith
With Fire For Eyes and a Mouth Full of Grubs by Holly Day
That Will be That by Roy K. Austin
The Odyssey of Pastor Harold Scnabel by Donal Mahoney
Daddio by Jules Archer
Two poems by David Mac
except for screams by Wanda Morrow Clevenger
Two poems by Rob Plath
Two poems by John Grochalski
Nukes by Travis Blair
please send weapons by David McLean
Novelty Items Near Memoirs by Caleb Puckett

IRE THAT SAT/PO'LIMMICKS

Mein Yampf (Satire) by San Monto


Ultimate Questions (Polemic) by Edwin Young
Welcome to AmeriKKKa: Negro Vaginas GO HOME! (Satire) by Alison Ross
The Mystery of the Disappearing Jobs Market (Polemic) by Nick Noyes
This Never Happened to the Other Fellow (Satire) by Jon Wesick
Contemplating Modern Existence (Polemic) by Edwin Young
On Civil Disobedience (Polemic) by Nick Noyes
Education is an Oxymoron (Polemic) by Edwin Young

APPRAISALS
Gillian Prew's Throats Full of Graves (Book Review) by David McLean
How to be a Slacker in Downtown 81 (Twin Film Reviews) by Alison Ross
Vampire Weakness (CD Review) by Alison Ross
The Men of Lamantia (Book Review) by Alison Ross
Manic for Sonics! Part Duh (Deerhunter CD Review) by Alison Ross
Exxistential Musings (The xx CD Review) by Alison Ross

CATATONICALLY SPEAKING: The Perks and Perils of the Dual Narrative on Crime

I am no sociologist, but I do view myself as a very amateur cultural anthropologist. Not because I covet that title or any sort of prestige, because in all honesty I am too lazy, introverted and jaded to seek any kind of academic fame. Rather, I see myself that way because I enjoy studying people and their behaviors as it relates to culture and socioeconomic status.

I am a particularly keen observer of society and people as these things pertain to income levels. And though I myself have not experienced extreme poverty, I have had brushes with it when I was unemployed and underemployed. And, of course, unless we are working in an overpaid job reaping untold amounts of capital on the backs of others, the vast majority of us (the ubiquitous 99%) are becoming more and more squeezed economically, working our fat (or emaciated) asses off at jobs that pay us paltry salaries that barely keep pace with inflation.

But it's all very obvious to me, as it should be to anyone who possesses a functioning facility for logic, that since crushing poverty causes all manner of problems, such as want for adequate nutrition and shelter, that it can and does often lead to crime. It's just cause and effect; there is no moral dimension to it. If you're hungry, you're gonna do what you have to do to survive. Any of us would resort to that in urgent situations.

And furthermore, when you are poor - and again, this is just the logic of PHYSICS - and you are not eating properly and receiving the proper emotional support and incessantly worrying about money - you are more likely not to give too many shits about what you do to other people.

So, germane to all of this, there seem to be two narratives on crime: one, which calls for more police protection and stricter jail sentences in the face of hoodlums rampaging our streets, and another, which calls for compassionate PREVENTION of crime, recognizing that when people are well fed and cared for, they tend to make saner, safer choices; they can eventually ascend to self-actualization, as in Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs above.

I understand both narratives and sympathize with both and can even see the merits of both. But naturally, I am going to lean toward the latter as my preferred narrative. Why? Because it's the only one that will ulimately solve the problem. More police, bigger jails, tougher sentences - these things don't even temporarily solve crime. They shuffle things around a bit: more police in one hard-hit area means the criminals may retreat to another area; larger jails means more room for new criminals; tougher sentences means the criminals will stay longer in jail but exit eventually to commit more crimes since jail does not rehabilitate, but exacerbates...

So how do we compassionately prevent crime?

Well, it's no coincidence that crime spikes when the economy is faltering. So if we infuse a more socialistic economic structure into our system, while still retaining the elements of democracy that we all treasure, this will drastically curtail poverty and as a magical result contain crime!

It's already been done in Scandanavian and certain European countries to great success, so NYAH. You cannot accuse me of being a utopian socialist; it's called Social Democracy, and it works. And to some degree the United States already implements elements of it, but our brains have been so indoctrinated AGAINST socialism that we balk at the very utterance of it, not understanding its deeper implications.

Naturally we can and should have an adequate police force.I am not suggesting we should not. I am also not suggesting that those criminals who are repeat offenders or egregious offenders should not be confined. What I AM suggesting is that the narrative on crime that delineates ONLY police-state solutions and does not include compassionate prevention as its central thesis is flawed and untenable.

But of course, it's a radical proposition, compassionate prevention of crime. Humane solutions are always seen as dangerously upsetting to the mainstream way of things.

This issue of Clockwise Cat is suffused with talent both poetic and polemical. The polemical tends to be overtly rebellious, while the poetic is more subtly subversive. Either way, both brazenly denotate the orthodox order of things, and I am proud to feature such sizzing scribblings in this here humble zine.

ROCK ON, SUKAZ!  

Two poems by Leonore Wilson

Lucifer Before the Fall

    after Thomas Nash, Pierce Penniless, His Supplication to the Divell

He was a clear body once, pure bright

air, invisible, hidden,

so imagine not being mattery,

how boring it would be like carbon monoxide

crawling into the mouth

of one waiting for death, the gentle

transparent poison or fall out

of plutonium bastardizing the children

of Hiroshima, Nagasaki,…

Better the angel be veiled

with a grosser substance

that the human eye can see,

a form dark and thick,

emsulsifiable as milk or oil,

better to be insatiable

than ignorant, disturbing the divisions

of space, undisciplined Eve,

impetuous as pipe and harp,

better to barbeque like St. Joan

loving the faggots’ blaze,

the hangman’s match, the pyre’s

chaos; better to have the eye-lids

fully open when the child’s head

crowns and the pain of the cut

vulva burns, better to be awake

then dozing like Adam,

to be a part of Lucifer’s flesh,

his narcissism because to fall

from Heaven is the beginning

of beauty, is the start of the dark

fecundity on earth, for his

descent was not a waste

but comfort of tongue and reed,

this forgotten god, twin

brother of our own bones’ bloom.

++++++++++++++++++++

Translucent Body

  

“Not to find myself touching the other side of transparency, but my own transparency.” Clarice Lispector on the Berne Cathedral

A few shine in the great dark of the Pacific--

   sprawl over the pitted limestone, the nipped sand

in the silence so that they make the scars glow as they pour

   over the grooves and striations like holy chrism

on the sick, the infirmed--- creatures soft as infant-flesh,

    fontanels, transparent as Lucifer before he fell

from the heavens—disc of the god-body as it dissolves on the palate….

Ah, eye-lid of Christ, morning glories languish among the bluegrass

   as what touches the heart refracts the light

so tenderness shines deep-kneeled in song like the dividing pearl-cell

   of the amnion. I listen to Schumann’s arabesque

at dusk, to the boy-artist Kismet as he touches the white keys then the black,

   and he heals the ineffable mystery of each small sorrow I’ve

kept; he loves my child-dark thoughts encouraging me to walk wild

   into estuaries, to fix myself like the moon-jellyfish, the cat’s eye 

inured to the ocean’s brunt, inured to the blowouts of my mother’s anger

   and my mother’s fists, so that I am the crescendo of the waves

themselves—emptied, exiled—and flourish as the old hermits of Egypt did,

   those who dug their own graves, and wept in them daily so they’d never get lost….

Author bio: 

How to be a Slacker in Downtown 81 (Twin Film Reviews) by Alison Ross

Lately I have become obsessed with two films that fascinatingly document time and place. One of these films I saw when it first came out, and one I only recently saw, due to its belated release. One concerns a city during its cultural apex that I inhabited during the time of filming, and the other concerns a city during its own cultural apex (in a slightly earlier era) that I began to visit during a time of transition ten years later.

Both cities have now fully transformed into less-intriguing-but-still-interesting places, but happily, we can "visit" these cities during their more dilapidated yet much cooler incarnations via these films: Slacker and Downtown 81.

Slacker's Austin, Texas, and Downtown 81's NYC are iconic cities; Austin is less globally well-known, of course, than NYC, but domestically is cherished for its live music scene, funky aesthetic that can best be described as "cowboy bohemian," and reputation as a progressive oasis in a stubborn GOP stronghold. NYC, naturally, is internationally iconic, which needs no real elaboration except to say that at one time it was a much more colorful, if more dangerous, destination. Such is the price of "cool," I suppose.

As far as the films are concerned, both feature eclectic eccentric characters and are stream of consciousness in style; both feature acting that is mostly raw but endearingly real; both celebrate a more surrealistic lifestyle - that is, eschewing a soul-stifling generic office existence for a philosophical way of being; both revel in their scrappy, grafitti-strewn environs; both were made on shoestring budgets.

Where the films principally diverge is that one (Downtown 81) is an attempt to capture artists like Jean Michel Basquiat and pioneering hip-hoppers and other musicians on the verge of greater renown, whereas Slacker's characters are obstinately anonymous oddballs who wouldn't know fame if it slapped them in the cerebellum. And of course, while there are many other divergences in the films, another major one is that Downtown 81 predated Slacker by a decade; it celebrates the late 70s and early 80s of NYC, whereas Slacker's Austin glories in the late 80s and early 90s as that city's peak.

====================

SLACKER

Richard Linklater's stunning debut film, Slacker, stream of consciously flows as fluidly as the Colorado River that bisects Austin, and is an encapsulation of an idiosyncratic bohemian utopia on the threshold of gentrification and homogenization. Austin, in other words, eventually capitalized on and ultimately razed the very things that made the city such a coveted place to live.

The ironic thrust of Slacker is this: The movie is an audacious statement about being yourself, and not getting sucked into the machine, and yet Austin became almost an emblematic corporate machine. The characters in Slacker are educated and intelligent to the point of pretentiousness at times, which is also the point: To expose the counterintuitive definition of "slacker" - i.e., not an apathetic lazy ass, but someone who lives on the margins of external society, and retreats instead internally - one who doesn't want to participate in the "every commodity of what you produce is a piece of your own death" work world ethos. Slackers don't so much scoff at work as they scoff at the death-by-corporate-treadmill. 

There are touches of surrealism in Slacker (Twin Peak-esque coffee shop characters, including an hilariously harrowing autistic woman), blending with quotidian mundanity (a couple arguing in bed, mischievous children, cafe conversations about school, relationships, etc.). But its real beauty lies in the garrulous eccentrics from all ages and walks of life who meander philosophically through their day just as Slacker meanders through Austin, catching glimpses of their lives but not lingering unnecessarily, so that we never get to know one person very well, but by the end have the perfect portrait of a city's more off-the-wall inhabitants.

Slacker's unfortunate paradox is that it celebrated the eccentricities of a cozy college town, but also unwittingly became part of why the town could not sustain its ubiquitous weird and metamorphosed into something less quirky. Austin has retained an undercurrent of funkiness, to be sure, but it will never be as homegrown-offbeat as it was in the 80s and early 90s. I mourn for those days and relive them every time I watch Slacker.

Slacker work scene at YouTube

+++++++++++++++++++

DOWNTOWN 81

D81 is less cinematically aware and accomplished than Slacker but follows a similar stream of consciousnessness and makes one ache for the halcyon days of the magical grime of 1980s era NYC.

NYC, like Austin, was at the time on the cusp of corporate crystalization. Before this took place, the Lower East Side was populated with vagabond eccentrics and artist-rebels who risked brutal muggings in order to live cheaply and live their vision.

Unlike Slacker, D81 has a plot, albeit a flimsy one. And anyway, the plot is subjugated to the unkempt visual milieu of 1980s Lower East Side NYC: tag-laden subways, graffiti-scribbled structures, ruins of buildings resembling blitzkrieg-era London...and yet the area is frantic and manic with artistic life. Filmmakers such as Amos Poe and no wave musicians such as DNA, Suicide, and James Chance, plus Kid Creole and the Cocunuts, are featured in the film, and even Blondie makes a kitschy cameo.

The "plot" of D81 is based on artist Jean-Michel Basquiat's real life circumstances at the time: centless and homeless, he attempts to sell his paintings as a way to make income, and tries to pick up girls in clubs in order to have a place to sleep. At one point in the film, Basquiat even sells a painting for a considerable amount of money, but he has nowhere to deposit the check.

Fortunately, fairy godmother Debbie Harry swoops in to rescue him financially. Basquiat, who later met with great fame in the art world but was virtually unknown at the time of filming, floats ethereally through Downtown 81, encountering street artists and taking in punk and rap performances along the way, and musing about existence in a charmingly unorthodox way.

In fact, D81 is like one of Basquiat's pieces: a crudely drawn, gritty city forming the backdrop of a tattered canvas, while sundry artsy creatures populate the foreground. NYC's once-upon-a-time bleak but beatific beauty was never so starkly realized as in Downtown 81.

Daddio by Jules Archer

Hey daddio, I don't wanna

go, down to the basement

Because of the creepy
crawlies, in your pants that

Flash and dance and poke
pink flesh down into my own

Private and pretty parts. Hey
daddio, I don’t wanna

Dig your style in
darkest parts of night

times. I won’t say yes, sir.
No, sir is all you need because no

Means no despite what the boys
down the block and in the bar and

In my cunt slur and stutter and
preach to me about being a

Nice baby, a good lay, and all that awful
jazz you hear on the radio and in

Rough spots down below.
Hey daddio, I don’t wanna go

Prude no more because my skirt
Shall ride my thighs like

Gangbusters, which is not the same
as gang bang or gang rape or

Good girl, don’t call me, good
girl because I have a better set

Of lungs now and hey, daddio
I will make fists more often than

Not. Make my face and buck my
hips like a Saturday night brawler.

Take my right but I will take yours,
daddio. I will give you that full-fledged

Disclaimer at the end of
your name that screams

rapist. And hey, daddio,
how do you like me

now?

Author bio: 

Somewhere between being born and raised in the backwoods of Montana, Jules Archer developed a craving for the written word. Today, she writes random stories of heartbreaking torpor and domestic bondage. Jules Archer has appeared recently or is forthcoming from Monkeybicycle, >kill author, PANK, Northville Review and elsewhere. She writes to annoy you at: http://julesjustwrite.com. 

This Never Happened to the Other Fellow (Satire) by Jon Wesick

James Bund took two cards from the shoe and placed them face down on the green baize. Using a wooden baccarat pallet the dealer transferred them to man wearing an eye patch and white, smoking jacket. Bund turned his cards over.

“Six for the bank,” the dealer said.

The other man turned his over.

“Eight for the player.”

After turning over his chips to the dealer Bund passed the shoe and left the table.

 “Excuse me, is your name Bund?” A woman in a black, evening gown ran her finger along Bund’s shoulder.

“That’s right. Bund, James Bund.”

“You’ve been served.” She handed him an envelope.

Bund studied the woman’s pear-shaped behind as she walked away before reading the envelope’s contents.

“A summons? Sexual harassment!” He folded the paper and slipped it in his lapel pocket.

Something wasn’t right. Staying close to the wall so he wouldn’t be seen Bund followed the woman out of the casino. It was a festive night in Monaco with well-heeled tourists strolling the sidewalks in search of a little nightlife. Bund could tell the woman was an amateur by the way she walked purposely toward the docks without any of the detours and double backs that were standard tradecraft for a trained agent. Someone must have put her up to this. But who?  A silver Bentley pulled to the curb and the woman got in. Bund glimpsed a bald man under the dome light before the door closed and the car drove away. He raised his hand to summon a taxi when his cell phone buzzed. It was a text from headquarters.

“Return to London immediately.”

On the high-speed train Bund dreamed of a courtroom. Female barristers their breasts swaying from open, legal gowns danced under multicolored lights. Bund stood from the defendant’s chair. The judge put a black cloth on top of her white, legal wig, produced an order to pay child support, and pointed her gavel like a pistol.

“There you are!” Honeypenny looked up from her computer. “The old man’s been looking for you all afternoon. Go right in.”

Bund passed through the two red-leather padded doors and stood before N’s desk.

“You wanted to see me, sir?”

“Ah 067.” N took off his reading glasses. “We’ve been getting several complaints lately so I’ve enrolled you in MI-6 sensitivity training in Istanbul.”

“With all due respect, sir…”

“All due respect nothing! I won’t have MI-6 dragged through the courts by every personal injury lawyer between here and Addis Ababa! See Honeypenny for your travel arrangements. You leave, tonight.” N put on his reading glasses. “Oh and 067, take some condoms for God’s sake!”

“I don’t have your tickets, James.” Honeypenny smoothed her hair. “A Mr. Goldhoarder in accounting said there were some irregularities in your last expense report.”

“Ah, Honeypenny.” Bund adjusted his slacks and sat on the edge of her desk. “I don’t leave until later tonight. After I cancel my karate lessons, airplane rental, hour at the shooting range, and SCUBA, I’ll have just enough time to arrange a romantic dinner, oysters, conch chowder, and Dom Perignon 85. My place? Say around 6:30?”

“Sorry James.” Honeypenny looked at her nails. “It’s Tuesday and I really must shampoo my hair.

Goldhoarder was a ginger-haired man in a ginger suit with a yellow vest underneath. Even though he was British, he spoke with a Swiss accent.

“Man has climbed Mount Everest, gone to the bottom of the ocean. He’s landed men on the moon, split the atom, achieved miracles in every field of human endeavor except accounting.” Goldhoarder turned his computer monitor so Bund could see the spreadsheet. “This is the entire MI-6 operating budget! By implementing the principles of cost-benefit analysis I have increased efficiency by twenty-three percent.”

“Yes, well, I’ve worked out a few statistics of my own. Your cost cutting has decreased this department’s effectiveness by half and cost the lives of a dozen good agents.”

“You’ve troubled me with your extravagant expenses for the last time, Mr. Bund!” Goldhoarder’s face grew red. “I’ve cancelled your credit card.”

“You expect me to pay for a ticket on the Orient Express with cash?”

“No Mr. Bund, I expect you to fly!” Goldhoarder handed Bund plane tickets. “Goodbye, Mr. Bund.”

At airport security Bund emptied his pockets and placed his attaché case on the conveyor that fed the x-ray. He stepped through the metal detector, took his keys, and put them in his pockets.

“Sorry sir.” A uniformed guard handed him his case. “You’ll have to check this.”

After returning to check in and passing through security again Bund boarded the plane. Only then did he realize that Goldhoarder had put him in a middle seat in coach. Bund sighed, sat next to a pimply teenager, and took out an Ian Fleming novel.

“Ugh! Ugh!” A stocky, Asian mute in a bowler hat gestured and took the aisle seat.

His girth overflowed his arm rest and took up a quarter of Bund’s space. This irritated the back injury Bund sustained in a fight to the death with two leotard-clad Capoeiraistas two years back. Difficult as it was, Bund fought valiantly to maintain possession of the arm rest along with a quantum of dignity. Once the plane reached cruising altitude, flight attendants pushed carts down the aisle.

“Drink sir?”

“I’ll have a vodka martini, shaken not stirred.”

“That’ll be four pounds twenty.” The flight attendant put a tiny bottle of vodka and pack of pretzels on Bund’s tray.

Bund took out his wallet and handed him some cash.

“Sorry sir, we only take credit cards. Would you care for a soda instead?”

After Bund put his wallet away, he realized his neighbor had taken possession of the arm rest. Twisting his body like a yogi he tried to find a comfortable position to read. A child behind him began to kick and the man in front reclined his seat so his head was practically in Bund’s lap. Bund put the novel down. In moments like these he longed for the good old days, like when Dr. Lacombe beat his testicles with a steel cable.

“My name is Bund, James Bund.” He put his passport on the counter of the Istanbul Motel 6.

The clerk held up a finger for silence until he finished his phone conversation.

“Now, what was your name?”

“James Bund. I have a reservation.”

“No record of you here.” The clerk typed on the computer. “Credit card, please.”

No Topkapi. No Turkish coffee. No Blue Mosque. Training took place in a windowless room in the motel’s basement. It began with a long-winded presentation on the statutory authority for demanding gender-neutral language in MI-6 reports that would have made the troops guarding Fort Knox unconscious faster than Delta 9 nerve gas. Bund guzzled instant coffee in a desperate attempt to stay awake. He couldn’t nod off because there would be a written test. It looked like he was doomed unless…

Bund sized up the instructor, Ms. Domino Theory. She was an athletic woman with a beauty mark next to her mouth. Domino wore Ugg boots, a denim skirt, and a suede vest over a dark blue jumper. Based on her dress Bund made a plan and approached her at the end of class.

“Ah Domino, I’ve enjoyed the class so far but there’s something you don’t realize. Respect is not a zero-sum game. I’d like to discuss it further with you, say over dinner. I know a place with the bestmezze in Istanbul.”

After dinner and several glasses of raki Bund accompanied Domino back to her motel room. Once the door closed behind them, she wrapped her arms around his shoulders and kissed him.

“Oh James!” She lay back on the bed, her chestnut hair fanning out over the pillow.

The new MI-6 budget wouldn’t cover champagne on ice so Bund raided the mini-bar for a plastic bottle of white wine and some peanuts.

After a suitable amount of fondling a kissing Bund reached between her legs only to have a steel-like hand stop him.

“I’ve got my period.”

“That’s all right, darling. We can just,” Bund swallowed, “cuddle.”

Once Domino was fully asleep, Bund slipped out of bed and took her laptop into the bathroom. It had to have the answers to the exam questions. As expected it was password protected. Bund attached his watch to the USB port and pressed the buttons that would activate the hacking function. The dial went black except for the message, “ERROR 404.”

Bund retrieved his cell phone and dialed.

“Thank you for calling Cue Division. If you want sales, press 1. For an inquiry about a delivery, press 2. For technical support, press 3.”

Bund pressed 3.

“All operators are currently busy. Please stay on the line. Your call is very important to us.”

Bund put his head in his hands. It was going to be a long night.

Author bio: 

Host of the Gelato Poetry Series, instigator of the San Diego Poetry Un-Slam, and an editor of theSan Diego Poetry Annual, Jon Wesick has published more than sixty short stories in journals such as Clockwise Cat, The Berkeley Fiction Review, Space and Time, Zahir, Tales of the Talisman, Blazing Adventures, and Metal Scratches. He has also published over two hundred fifty poems. Jon has a Ph.D. in physics and is a longtime student of Buddhism and the martial arts. One of his poems won second place in the 2007 African American Writers and Artists contest.

The Mystery of the Disappearing Jobs Market (Polemic) by Nick Noyes

For those fortunate enough to contain within themselves a slight anarchistic propensity, the illogical monotony and blatant hucksterism of an election cycle can be quite comedic—a dark comedy, of course, when you remember the hungry and desperate.

I imagine a politician’s speech writing group. Only a single item is scratched onto their blackboard: How can we say just enough to make it appear that we have said everything without actually saying anything? How can we convince them that we have solutions—jobs hidden like Christmas presents in the back of the closet—when we actually don’t? And how can we do this while maintaining that we’re not actually the problem? My imagined meetings are always short—daydream blips—as I know that these speech writers operate efficiently in their science.

 

(And if all else fails, they tell the politician, just go with the old “We need to get this economy moving again! And I know how!” The folks love that. Standing ovation.)
 

There’s a reason why there are never any clear and decipherable solutions offered, and there is a reason why politicians refuse to to address pragmatically the true reason why the world’s job market collapses like the rotten apples behind a foreclosed home.
 

Our economic problem doesn’t lie in the finding of a solution but in the application of the existing but meticulously hidden solution which remains so only to allow for the perpetuation of the established order. Here’s a secret: There is a fix to the economy, and it’s simple and readily available. The establishment knows about it and pray for its disappearance.
 

Let’s take it from the top. Where exactly did the jobs go? Well, they didn’t really go anywhere. They’re still here, humans, however, aren’t the ones doing them anymore. This little fact is largely ignored in political speech in favor of the sexier, more campaignable—cue some dramatic music—mystery of the disappearing jobs market. Spooky, right? This mysterious tale teaches the public to see the politicians as the Hardy Boys, and just like in Hardy Boys books, this mystery is a complete work of fiction.
 

I saw in a McDonalds a new machine. It dropped a plastic cup onto a conveyor belt. The cup moved slowly down the line. The cup stops. Fills with ice. Moves. Stops. Fills with Coke. Moves. Stops. A lid is pushed on. It is passed out a drive thru window. This, folks, is the mystery of the disappearing jobs market.    
 

Human job markets are replaced as technology advances. The public’s problem is not the “mysterious disappearance” of jobs but the political systems’ refusal to adapt to new ideas regarding occupation and labor in a technological society. The Recession is the result of politician subservience to corporate systems that remain steadfast as the beneficiaries of pre-21st century economic models of labor despite our current awkward dialectic synthesis of Industrial Revolution and grocery store self-checkout. 

 

The politicians cannot admit the necessity we have to alter our models, and if they did, the corporations that finance them would get hit substantially, and truth be told, the politicians aren’t the ones who require new models of labor. They’re not the ones losing. Their jobs aren’t the ones being replaced, and in fact, the recession actually makes their jobs easier. Why campaign on real issues? All we need is a the good ol’ “We need to get this economy moving again! And I know how!”
 

The politicians—and their corporations—are hell-bent on staying within this particular economic paradigm, and if they dared acknowledge the extinction of the pre-21st century economic model and shifted their focus to education, where jobs are actually created, they are exposed as not having a genuine political

agenda or anything worth anything to the public.

The politicians would lose their power over the helpless public and also - more importantly - their corporate paychecks.

Save for time-travel or The Road, there exists nothing that could return our economy to the way it used to be. Our economic system is outdated and unfit for today’s technological world—and if you don’t believe me, go to a grocery store on the 1st day of the month. We’re not in a recession but an unnecessarily awkward economic reconfiguration.
 

In 10 years time, when your own personal Google Infrastructure Repair Vehicle drives itself along fixing the pothole in your road while you eat your McChicken value meal that was pieced together and shot out of a quaint red and yellow box the size of a child’s dollhouse, who will the politicians conscript you to blame? Mexicans? the Chinese? The lingering effects of Obamacare? For the sake of your psychological well-being, may you be lucky enough to be blessed with a slight anarchistic tinge.

Author bio:

Nick Noyes is a young writer from Sun Valley, NV. Sun Valley is the (record keeping) largest trailer park in the world and a suburb of Reno, the second drunkest city in the US, and is located in northern Nevada, the state with the worst education scores. Nick Noyes is proud of where he comes from, or at least that's what he said in a job interview once. Nick Noyes can be found at Harvey's Bar or at nicknoyes.wordpress.com 

Two poems by David Mac

Sometimes Nothing Happens Or It Does Not

Hot crucifixes in a young girl’s hell

She don’t believe in much
W/black nails black lips
Black soul to look through
 
And she comes in the place some times
Dragging her life off the streets
Sometimes she asks for change
Sometimes a cigarette
Sometimes even a drink

As if any of it matters
As if any of it don’t
 
The thing is we are all strange
All strangers at some point
But we all rub and slither up
Our lives against each other
And for that moment we
Know one another completely
Till it lasts or it falls away
And we go back to being strangers
Once more and nothing but

Hot crucifixes in all our hells
We don’t believe in much
But sometimes we do
Sometimes we believe in everything
Or absolutely nothing at all

====================
 
Breakfast Poem
 
O what pointless demise
What old crow in skeletal tree spike 
No longer dove
O nothing on TV so might as well die
Gameshow coffin reruns
Never find out who shot JR, Phil Mitchell 
all the rest    blah blah…
O death position
Sticky black toffee caught in a girl’s hair
Sleep is Death Rehearsal 
and we’re practising almost every night
Get good at it in the end
The end the end the end…
I blow my nose and see it
I cut my thumb and see it
I shine my shoes and see it
Even in mystic beer cans negative whisky bottles
Seen it everywhere
For Death is Life reflection
Death is a pair of sunglasses on the window ledge
And it’s gonna be cloudy or rain
At least that’s what the weather says
But we all know what’s really gonna happen!

Author bio: 

David Mac is a 34-year-old wino forklift driver whose work can be found in many journals, mags, sites and zines, including: Streetcake Magazine, Bone Orchard Poetry, Ambit, Purple Patch, Ink Sweat & Tears, Monkey Kettle, Clockwise Cat, Heroin Love Songs, Neon Highway, Antique Children, Danse Macabre, Mud Luscious, Burning Houses, This Zine Will Change Your Life, Obsessed With Pipework, Howls and Pushycats, Word Riot, The Delinquent,  Black Heart Magazine, Broken Wine, Horror Sleaze Trash, Negative Suck, Naughty Girl X, Mad Rush Magazine, Gloom Cupboard, Yellow Mama, Welcome To Wherever, Thick Jam, Instant Pussy, Camel Saloon. and many times in Clockwise Cat. He has collections out with Erbacce Press, Knives Forks & Spoons Press, Ten Pages Press, Writing Knights Press, and Like This Press, plus various self-published chapbooks. He walks upon the planet in a state of worry.