No By Robin Wyatt Dunn

No.

No.

I’ve begun again. Everything you told me I wouldn’t do, I did. The colors inside the prison were musical — a symphony of color.

It was not a state prison — not in the usual sense.

Now here we are. It’s good to see you again. You’ve aged well. Putting on weight. I think you look good. It’s not what I would have expected. I’m not sure what I would have expected, but it makes sense.

Do you have any coffee? Sitting around without something to drink seems silly.

Surely you heard the rumors — all that was happening. I can confirm some of them. The government’s fallen, but the new one is much the same as the old. And it’s true Kansas has rebelled. I was there. But it was a sullen rebellion. I’m not sure that anyone cares. Not yet.

I care. Do you?

It’s not right, my coming here. There were other things I needed to do first, but they told me to come here. To see you, and your people. As though we could change anything now.

It was right what you said — do you remember? — that no one would forgive me. I took that to heart.

You’re a scapegoat now too, you see. I’m sorry for that. Still, it would be hard to find a better scapegoat. You, so gloriously isolated all these years . . . like a show-off. Pretending you knew so much.

Now you will know more.

I’ve come to kill you — you already knew that — but more than that, I’ve come to have vengeance on you and your town. We could do that — perhaps even better — without killing you. We could convert you.

I said you couldn’t be converted. I said you were stubborn enough to make it difficult. And I did want to be the one to do it.

We’re coming now. Over every state border crossing, from the East. Some from the South too. These trees will make beautiful graves for you, don’t you think? You’re fortunate in that.

I forgive you.

And I remember everything you said. Everything you did to me.

© 2015 Robin Wyatt Dunn

Robin Wyatt Dunn was born in Wyoming during the Carter Administration. He lives in Los Angeles. He is a member of the intelligentsia. He holds three degrees, drinks coffee (lattes included), and thinks that being intelligent is a good thing and talking about ideas worthwhile. He is the kind of pinko egghead Joseph McCarthy wanted to flay alive and burn at the stake on the White House lawn. He knows that the McCarthys and the Pol Pots and the George W. Bushes of the world are always and forever eager and ready to slit his throat and dump him in a mass grave. This is why he has a wicked sense of humor.

Lunch Hour By Robin Wyatt Dunn

I find the right parts to eat: her urge to buy the extra lipstick, his fantasy about a black dwarf, the child’s anxiety about ice cream cones, and the dog’s dream of clouds. I gobble them up so that they never were.

All the things that could have been and are not fatten my gut.

I live in a tower, over 2nd Avenue. I watch you cross the street. I look into your eyes, with my sunglasses on, and my mind, like a tongue, flicks into your brain.

© 2015 Robin Wyatt Dunn

Robin Wyatt Dunn was born in Wyoming during the Carter Administration. He lives in Los Angeles. He is a member of the intelligentsia. He holds three degrees, drinks coffee (lattes included), and thinks that being intelligent is a good thing and talking about ideas worthwhile. He is the kind of pinko egghead Joseph McCarthy wanted to flay alive and burn at the stake on the White House lawn. He knows that the McCarthys and the Pol Pots and the George W. Bushes of the world are always and forever eager and ready to slit his throat and dump him in a mass grave. This is why he has a wicked sense of humor.

Death By Robin Wyatt Dunn

I wait for his heart to stop beating and then I thread my wintery hands through the escaping fog of his spirit to wrap my cold and sticky fingers round it. Its warmth and age excite me; I lick my lips.

I draw the organ out through the rib cage and bring it between my teeth. I bite down and taste the horror of his sudden departure, long years of comfort, the longing, the sadness, and the religion of his years in Portland, even some ancestral spice: music in the blood.

I swallow the rest of the heart whole; it is scrumptious.

Somewhere near I can hear a jumper, plummeting, to earth . . . I speed into the air with my balloons, grinning.

The wind delights my being; I spin midair, swirling down to the site of impact.

With my hand, I sweep the dashed brains from off the sidewalk and lick the remains up, slowly, tasting now:

The descent itself. The plummet, also a religion, of fervor and need, so fast it is overwhelming and I shudder, swallowing.

He was a happy man.

© 2014 Robin Wyatt Dunn

Robin Wyatt Dunn was born in Wyoming during the Carter Administration. He lives in Los Angeles. He is a member of the intelligentsia. He holds three degrees, drinks coffee (lattes included), and thinks that being intelligent is a good thing and talking about ideas worthwhile. He is the kind of pinko egghead Joseph McCarthy wanted to flay alive and burn at the stake on the White House lawn. He knows that the McCarthys and the Pol Pots and the George W. Bushes of the world are always and forever eager and ready to slit his throat and dump him in a mass grave. This is why he has a wicked sense of humor.

Sharp By Robin Wyatt Dunn

Sharp dreamt, daydreamt really, in his master’s lap, or his master’s friend’s lap, they were much the same size lap. He dreamt of a distant wood, smells impossible to resist, a river he had once seen, in a dream, far away brightly shining, terrifying really, thrilling.

For in adventure is the cousin swept sundered from our breast, for what now remains? Only within.

Only within, or into orbit, are the worlds now for us, yet —

Sharp is running.

His master’s friend too, has sensed the moment, has seized it; they are running together.

What is it to move into the new valley? What terrible embrace of love yet reborn extends even now into our ancestral memory, into the dog’s mouth, into my hand?

His fur is warm and sweet, and so is my blood, set to run at a fecund time, a fertile frequency, on the long run out and the swift run back, for all exits are entrances, baby —

Sharp needs to know, or wants to know, just what he is missing. Just what he is missing out on.

Beyond the door, beyond the yard, beyond the end of the street . . .

Out into the world.

Bark Bark.

I who am not a dog am close enough, for I too hunger for the unsniffed breeze, I too wonder, what is beyond my yard? What is beyond my gate, down the road, out into the world, behind the sky and all that’s mine and not and what’s why, when we have smells, running us under each other altruistically expressed as man-dog, running, running, under moons and skies, each wondering why each exists, and not the other, first or last, an aegis painted and at thirst, for our deeds of glory, or at least something worth barking at, our aegis hungers for our souls, we must broaden them with our accomplishments, our stories, so musically inexpressible, as a breeze, filled with thunder, like the dog’s laugh —

Harf Harf.

A small dog but big dreams as I am full waked in my bier, O in my bier, my dog, come so we can clasp the last thing we may know —

Each other,

But no bier yet, I seize the dog and it scowls, laughs, we are walking, a sort of a walk but more, more of a fever, show me wherein whereout who where and when for what in which and all the presences prescient and amazed, my laugh and my tongue, the state and grace of suns and sermons on a droplet of moisture on the grass, this sermon is my thought, it lasts only a moment, like the feeling of thunder, long before it has arrived —

Each other, yet:

Each has arrived a beating heart made serious and worth within the barking goodness dreaming afternoons, but what for? Who with?

In this barking dream what reasons meant after the season’s aftermath are changing now and when? And what will happen next?

© 2014 Robin Wyatt Dunn

Robin Wyatt Dunn lives in The Town of the Queen of the Angels, El Pueblo de la Reina de Los Angeles, in Echo Park. He is 33 years old. You can find him at www.robindunn.com

The Voice in the Cave By Robin Wyatt Dunn

You make me speak again, though I had forbidden it. What is it that you want? All is fallen and my rage is impotent, so what do you need me to say now? Only tell me and I will speak it to you. Your lightest word will be treasured. I promise you this.

Tell us of your suffering.

No.

We want to know about it.

Why?

That is what we do.

Liquid, my face melted like a stream over these waxed skies and I dreamt of a river that was not mine and was not yours, it was something that had no meaning at all, I screamed and there was no light, only voices. Like your own. It was then I realized that it had all come to an end, Sofina’s treachery, my own madness, and the caper I had spun over these avenues and terraces, all mine, all mine, I would have had them, I have them still . . .

Tell us more of your suffering.

Even now I dream of your death, terrifying to me but so real, the death of you who opposed me, your faction, your demonic faction, you priests . . .

Tell us where you hid the bodies.

Sofina killed herself. I found her in the ocean water and I burned her on the beach.

You lie.

Your defeat is closer than you think. All of you are weaker than me, no matter how many nights you have prayed, and how many days you have spent in obedience to your temple, I am stronger than all of that, and I listen to those voices you would have had to hear too if not for my ears to absorb them; I have been your guardian and your slave. I am still.

We know.

© 2014 Robin Wyatt Dunn

Robin Wyatt Dunn lives in The Town of the Queen of the Angels, El Pueblo de la Reina de Los Angeles, in Echo Park. He is 33 years old. You can find him at http://www.robindunn.com

Victoriana By Robin Wyatt Dunn

I got a smell and it’s a killer cause I wet it on the afterjack, my reason is a pleasing dome for you to kiss at;  it’s serpent but it’s filler so let’s just set aside the mints for dinner and get into the meat:

Baby:  it’s too good but it’s the end, and I got to say I don’t know what it means, but I know what it doesn’t mean:  we’re not dead.  It’s the end but that’s because it always is. We chant and we arise.  Lover.  It’s good but it’s coming now to quits and we got to stamp the season on our mints, the spiking of the running quarter’s thumb — what do you call that? — the spikes along the wall, the thrumming of our call, we got to call the spot, five dollars down on the freeway —

East or west?  It’s west baby.  Still west.

Still a westerly is blowing in my name, and I got to say it’s not what I would have thought, it’s cooler and it’s colder and it makes my head erased but I am he who will not say the last embrace, I’ll just do it —

It ain’t yet.

It ain’t yet!

I got a smell of you!  It’s a killer cause I wet it on the afterjack, after I met you steaming fast into the shipping lanes of sky inside my heart and mind, smoking me and telling me I got it done.

Yeah, you can kiss my ass but I won’t kiss yours, but let’s leave it till after dinner cause I’m coming close to the little war we keep inside our pants, not sex but politics, a murder and an ace, not up my sleeve but in my anus, a bomb to bring into the city.

Honey it’s getting colder all these things the Victorians warned us about;  they were reactionaries, you know, they were building the empire and they were remaking themselves so fast it was unbelievable;  the original Futureshock, and they didn’t say shit.

They kept their mouths shut like the original mobsters;  cause they knew they didn’t know shit.  They didn’t’ know one fuckin’ thing.

Victorian.  Victoria.  1850 to 1900 on your afterburner tail, take my lover take me there — we got to get inside your cunt, we got to take those table skirts and put ’em round our lace and embrace the horror inside your gun, it’s the biggest one around,

I’m packing heat but it’s quantum, honey, it’s deeper than I ever wanted it to be, or ever could explain, I’m packing heat and it’s real bad, it’s cosmically enactive and it’s surgically enhanced;  it’s grafted to my brain but so are you, so come with me cause we’re gonna jump, we’re gonna jump to light speed lover but Victoria the bitch is coming with us —

© 2013 Robin Wyatt Dunn

Robin Wyatt Dunn lives in The Town of the Queen of the Angels, El Pueblo de la Reina de Los Angeles, in Echo Park.  He is 33 years old.  You can find him at www.robindunn.com

LA SNL by Robin Wyatt Dunn

And Jehovah jumped, his long ocean in his mind meeting the small ocean of the Los Angeles swimming pool, falling backward like Michael Douglas under the freeway overpass, every can of coke forever 50 cents, now and eternity, the wind rushes over his face and he accepts the inevitable glory of it, the inevitable change of wind, the movement and music of the world and its so many spheres, incomparably beautiful, mute to the ears of Man―

In this night is the death of tragedy, for there will be no more goat songs, and in this night is the birth of The Police, not badged or armed and not vehicled or helicoptered but scarred, rammed into the new century of a yet longer night, their wise and careful faces merged into the sadness of empire, both collapsing and clawing itself back into life, wicked thoughts flicker through Jehovah of San Fernando’s brain as he backstrokes across the smooth clear water chlorinated and American,

Unknown forever―

Truer than midnight, truer than the sun―

Liquid ocean brother’s dream the man who is not quite god and not quite alive, revivifying entire this broad moment of an equation that we have only begun to grasp―

It’s Saturday Night, Live from Los Angeles!

God let me touch your cathode face.

© 2013 Robin Wyatt Dunn

Robin Wyatt Dunn lives in The Town of the Queen of the Angels, El Pueblo de la Reina de Los Angeles, in Echo Park.  He is 33 years old.  You can find him at www.robindunn.com

Clean Up by Robin Wyatt Dunn

And you who seek to die, what are you?  Only symptoms, or messengers?  The pained of the world, written for us to see and witness and remember?

Oh you thousand suicides of my latest Los Angeles month.  I clean up the blood.  Sometimes I dream of it. Sometimes I work to regulate its exposure, the camera of my mind, but my heart is beating for a waking world of wrought things, meanings we can understand, to work our weapons in, our words.

Today was Georgia Pannaque, 48 years old — electrocution. The cat seemed electrocuted too, had perhaps been that way for years, like it was ready to molt.

All flesh is grass for the great lawnmower of God, of course, I grant you that immediately, and we can quite properly statisticate her entry for our planning purposes:  so many overweight bodies rendered into meat per capita as the effluents of air and water rise, as the decay accelerates, as our government threatens, as our minds are worried into some new shape we cannot see.

And you who choose to live, I amongst you, who are we? What fell world do we make now? If we are building a nightmare, we had best prepare our masks.

Politics, of course; I’m sorry but I speak of politics. Not social planning. I do not accept dioramas or plastic volcanoes.

Polis, Pole Star of the West Coast, our dream of Lem’s Solaris in California, our tight-winding dream of horror. Los Angeles: our duties are fast increasing. I call out to you:  I count your flesh, and watch your words, hoping that tomorrow it will be revolution.

© 2012 Robin Wyatt Dunn

Robin Wyatt Dunn lives in The Town of the Queen of the Angels, El Pueblo de la Reina de Los Angeles, in Echo Park.

Apocrypha by Robin Wyatt Dunn

What world is it, asks Millicent idly.

I call her that. That or ho. The heroin is a dry patch but fruitful too; she makes the strangest faces. I haven’t yet found the right way to die:  I want to be able to choose which world I go to next.

She is hungry. I feed her the applesauce, and she smiles. She is a beautiful woman, my daughter, beautiful beyond reckoning, beyond any hope of anything new — beyond this world. Her glow alone could fuse through quarks and open up the magic door I want to find, my exit.

What world is it, she asks again, a question I ask aloud, more lately, and what a question, one I want to know the answer to. How did we arrive? Why did her mother have to die? And why was it so easy to transgress?

The shape of her lips is also a door, a portal, with its porters and its histories. What histories are written that include my knowledge, and hers? Are we always and forever apocrypha? A fatal mistake, secreted in the desert to forget?

“Let’s go to sleep, Daddy,” she says, and we do.

I dream of her.

© 2012 Robin Wyatt Dunn

Robin Wyatt Dunn lives in The Town of the Queen of the Angels, El Pueblo de la Reina de Los Angeles, in Echo Park.