What it Means to Mow by G. Arthur Brown

The eyes of Balkan Sam, carrier lunatic, were duple. What this means for future generations is still uncertain, but binocular vision was a particular skill of his. A few people admired and wrote about that. But I’m not one of them. I just mowed his lawn.

I mowed his lawn enough times to really get good at it, and he paid me in lengths of velvet ripped from the robes of long dead chamberlains. Balkan Sam, he’s the left side of heaven, my dad used to inscribe on vans.

I think it was already August. I was mowing and not just for vanity’s sake, but to protect the innocent from the armadas of dangerous tick terror cells that were rumored to be spider-holed betwixt blades of too-long grass hidden in respectable lawns owned by crazy men like Balkan Sam.  Being a hot summer, he brought me a glass of poison lemonade. I didn’t drink it, of course, because I’m not a fucking moron. But I thanked him and I continued my mow.

Mowing is a manly art. Man against Nature in the most primal form you can find in contemporary society. It is man with a large mechanical tool telling nature how to behave, what to look like. The mower I use is a riding mower, but it’s not a tractor. It’s the kind that drives like a tank, the kind that can do a 360-degree rotation. I’m at war with these weeds. And Balkan Sam can see that, so he brings me a lemon-grenade, but I’m not a fucking moron and I know it’s poisonous, so I don’t pull the pin and throw it to blow up the tiny arachnid enemy, who may or may not be couched tentatively under a leaf of clover, waiting to suckle the capillaries of some unsuspecting dachshund who certainly doesn’t belong on Balkan Sam’s lawn, but who tends to end up there when his owner has had far too much mead at the Renaissance Faire. 

It’s like hunting. There is a part of the male mind that needs to sit in silence and fight nature, destroying something living, or at least cutting large bits of a living thing away and leaving them to shrivel and die in the sun. Plants have a whole different kind of existence than do animals. It’s hard to say when they are alive and when they are dead, when they are the parent and when they are the offspring. Balkan Sam comes out and cuts off one of my fingers. He wants to create a rhizome that will grow new hunter-mowers, and you can sell that kind of shit on eBay now.  I’m not a fucking moron, so I don’t care that he cut my finger off because that was my poison finger and I’m not a fucking moron. I’m an adventurer, riding into the thick of a very tiny jungle, as far as five gallons can take me.

Balkan Sam rushes back out, those two googly eyes just googling at me, and tries to fill the tank with poison gas. “Save it for the Texas chambers!” I shout over the sound of some of the best mowing the East Coast is likely to see this summer. It’s already August, I think. I should be done by Christmas. 

Copyright 2013 G. Arthur Brown

Artwork Max Ernst

Kitten Invades Alaska!

Kitten was sighted in a Barnes & Noble in Fairbanks Alaska!  Special thanks to Sarah Shaw.

It won't be long until Kitten finds it way into coffee houses in Iowa (I mean, if they've got coffee there, I have no idea), preschools in Utah, churches in Missouri, houses of ill-repute in Wisconsin.  It's all the r(amp)age. 

Have we forgotten what R.A. Harris had to say about G. Arthur Brown's Kitten so soon?

"One part a nightmarish family saga, and one part a fantastic, surreal voyage of discovery for a kitten. It's a seriously fun mix of grotesque humour and sombre existential horror."

That it is, R.A. That it is. 

James Brown Saves Christmas by Andrew Wayne Adams

“Get up!”

“Get on up?”

“Get up!” shouts James Brown again, “it’s Christmas!”

“Holy shit!” I say, and jump out of bed, throwing off the covers and rising straight up like Nosferatu. “Christmas!”

We run downstairs, James Brown in the lead. His face is all sweaty. He screams, “Stay on the scene!”

And by “the scene,” he means: Christmas morning!

We each have one present under the tree. From each other. He opens his first, ripping away the paper to reveal: me!

“So good,” he shouts, “so good; I got you!”

I open mine next. It’s: James Brown! He doesn’t wait for me to finish unwrapping him before he gets up and dances, flinging off the last bit of paper himself as he does the Mashed Potato.

Dad comes in—we haven’t seen him in years—and unwraps his present (that he got for himself) to reveal: a snakeskin purse!

James Brown screams, “Papa’s got a brand new bag!”

Then Dad leaves again for several more years.

We both fall silent, looking inward. I sink to the floor. The Christmas tree wilts. From the fireplace comes, not Santa Claus, but carbon monoxide.

Then James Brown does the Twist, and he looks at me and screams, “Get up!”

“Get on up?”

“Get up!” he shouts, and I do, and we both run to the kitchen and fling open the cupboards and fridge and grab flour and sugar and eggs and butter and PCP and start to make Christmas cookies!

Once the dough is ready, James Brown rolls it flat by dancing on it. Sweat drips from his face and mixes with the dough.

I feel good.

We cut shapes from the dough. We bake the shapes. We decorate the baked shapes and put them on a plate. We make hundreds of cookies of every kind. I feel nice.

James Brown picks up a gingerbread man and says, “This is a man’s world!” Then he eats the gingerbread man.

We eat hundreds of cookies.

The overload of sugar and PCP turns James Brown into a monster. A vampire, to be specific. He grows fangs and dons a cape.

He attacks me. I grab a cookie shaped like a crucifix and try to ward him off. He hisses. I back him into a corner. He does the splits and wraps himself in his cape. I stand over him, holding him in place with the cookie.

A saxophonist sneaks up behind me and honks his instrument in my ear. It startles me, and while I’m distracted, James Brown bites me on the arm.

The saxophonist bows to James Brown, calls him “Master,” then turns into fog and disappears into the exhaust fan over the stove.

I look at the bite on my arm. I look at James Brown.

James Brown screams, “I got you!”

Indeed; and soon I will be like him: undead!

I cry out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

I drop to my knees. James Brown drapes a cape over me.

I die.

James Brown puts me in the oven and rolls a large rock in front of it. I bake at room temperature for three days/months. Then:

“Get up...”

“Get on up?”

“Get up...” James Brown croons into my mind through vampiric telepathy; “it’s Easter!”

“Holy shit!” I say, and burst out of the oven, rising from my tomb like Nosferatu. “Easter!”

We run outside and hunt for eggs and drink the blood of humans. The humans call me “Master.” They are my flock. I feel good.

I knew that I would.

-------

Andrew Wayne Adams is a total jerk from somewhere in the Midwest or something.  He wrote a book called Janitor of Planet Anilingus.  He stole G. Arthur Brown's Kitten and he won't give it back. He now lives in Portland where he is happy and successful (and licking butts).

Copyright Andrew Wayne Adams
Artwork by Leonora Carrington

The Story of Geordio's Rooster Flock by G. Arthur Brown

Geordio had a whole flock of roosters. This is not something you find all the time. You can find whole flocks of hens.  Mostly in the trees, which is where they sleep. Easier to find when they are sleeping. Craftier than you might think in the day time.  Seems crazy. Foxes and raccoons are out at night. 

“Fuck our eggs!”  squawked one rooster!
“We don’t even have any fucking eggs!” squawked two roosters!

Geordio, as I said, had a whole flock of roosters.  This was because he was a homophile.  He couldn’t relate to women, even chicken women.  He even got rid of a poinsettia that he thought might be a girl.

I totally told him it wasn’t a girl.  He still gave it to a homeless man, who was very happy about it, until he realized it wasn’t cannabis sativa. 

But the point is, you see a group of chickens, you assume that most are hens.  This was not the case when you came around Geordio’s place.  First of all, he just had them inside, like dogs or cats.  There were nearly twenty of them.  And the shit was caked into his carpet, which wasn’t good to begin with, so that I wouldn’t wear my nice shoes in his house for fear of fucking them up. 

I was at his place one night. 
“Fuck our eggs!” a rooster squawked.

And yeah, roosters can’t lay eggs, but they were laying something that was sort of like golf balls.  If you boiled them down, and then crushed up the residue and snorted it, it got you super fucking high.  We even gave some to that disappointed homeless guy.  He could fly after that.  I’m not sure if he could fly before that, but he did have large wings.  

Copyright 2013 G. Arthur Brown
Artwork Remedios Varo