Tyson Bley


NUDE

This is not like me at all. I don't
visit nudist colonies. I don't
like them. They're unproductive, really —
I mean, folks there are supposed to be engaged
in potatoeish and carrotish and crotchish
activities, and at first glance they
are. They
are. But look closely: a man horizontally buries
a pitchfork in the dirt, a woman with large spectacles
breathes coffee clouded — and lazy — into her lenses,
and the knuckles of one near the pool, one
unattractively naked man, are worn
flatskinned in Lilo paddling;

I don't know, sitting professorly with newspaper
across my lap, if this is a Kibbutz for naked
pariahs or if 'productivity' here is celebrated
merely in the overcoming of Nature's coyness
Nature's shame behind the shower curtain or stall door or
locker door or
wall divider or
wall unit or
boudoir or crotch newspaper.



NR. 114

1. Villain:

The toad picked the thin crowd where it could comfortably
hop. It hates shambling. Either this penchant has to do
with arrogance or the toad was warned by somebody –
by that guy with the bacon sign on his chest. ‘Don’t
buy T-shirts with bacon on the front.’ Or perhaps it
was just warned not to buy T-shirts. ‘If you hate shambling …
well that’s exactly what you’ll do through the strange
aftertaste of the haunted fountain sprouting in your mouth.’
The villain has no costume; a spell-caster who likes
to laxly dominate fans with his mutton chops and
CGI blurs or loins coincidentally censored by the odd
passing leaf or brick, almost unthinkingly kicking into
place with his hairy, swampy feet the quickly building fear’s
Tetrominos. He has a soft spot — or we have a
soft spot — or it’s soft-spot inducing — when all this
is done in favor of the laborious exercise of making
jawbone puree.


2. Hero:

He’s the neighborhood scapegoat way too frequently:
Southern hospitality put the other nail
in the coffin of Liam Neeson’s nap. Our idea of
good and bad was trying to rape something and all
it managed to rape was grayscale. He became known
on the lowlands and bayous as the caped crusader
despite being a self-proclaimed antebellum-phobe.
The exotic plant who booked a room on that bloodbath
family tree. He stole the effect of the widow or widower’s
egg salad sandwich by missing out on all the action;
by finding no use for the world’s disaster.
His nap is actually death in the disguise of the
Caped Crusader’s massage therapist painting dunes
all over his haunted hotel room’s walls. Nr. 114.
No room for Liam Neeson himself; no room
even for the sand.


Tyson Bley was born in 1978 in South Africa and at the age of 30 moved to Germany, where he continues to live semi-reclusively with a malignant Internet addiction.

His work has appeared in MyFavoriteBullet, Blazevox, Poets Of The East Village, Clutching At Straws, Disenthralled, and print journals like Smash Cake and Kerouac's Dog. His personal blog is located at http://soapstain.blogspot.com/
 
 
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