WARREN BEATH

We hope we haven’t given away the ending
Spoiler alert
Feel the burn
We are back and we have brought the stuff
the Things
You know
the pictures?
well This is going to hurt
we’re running through your halls
we’ve dilated your cervix
we’re tearing it up
we’re knocking things over
we’re breaking out the windows
We’re on roller skates
we’re cool kids and we’re happy
It’s a dot.com world and it’s ours
We laugh in our throats
We cough blood
We can’t sing
But we can dance just as good as we want
we think you’re going to remember This
we’re everything we’ve claimed
This has got to hurt—
we think you’re going to like This one.
Well what do you think of This?
You thought we were gone
Well isn’t it a wonderful world?
This is never going to end
There’s something in your Inbox
He put it there
It’s going to make you bleed
Well everyone wants to think about the One
You know what we mean
There’s true love once
That repeats repeats repeats
themselves
That’s how it’s going down
We come from a world that is so far out
you could watch for us a hundred years and
we would surprise you
We have the pictures
They are graphic
we think you’ve always known
Are you listening?
It’s the tick of the death-clock beetle
Behind the realness there’s a world
of hurt
We’re going to open the can
We are going to staple your eyes open
You will be strapped in the wheelchair
and we will turn you to the screen
Start the video
This is going to make you feel strange
But there is intoxication
for you
There is the dream
You won’t grow up on us?
Shut up.
This is never going to end
No pain no gain
You consigned us to flames
we emerged on fire
Our backs aflame
and ran through your ruins
igniting the galleries as we go
It’s fun for us
You may not like it as much—
Top of the world
sitting on a million gallons
of nitroglycerine
We know what we’re doing.
You cheer us on and you know it
We are the power
We have steroids
Riding the backs of cockroaches
whipping them to frenzy
We laugh and gurgle
Aren’t you tickled?
Those are razorblades under your eyelids
That is blood on the keys
Your own shadow rips and plows
through a thousand thighs
You’ll never know all the names
You’ll never know enough
We have the security camera
We are antacid
We have motor drives
There’s nothing you can do about it
Yeah, we’re cute
We’re cute kids
We talk babytalk
But your ears still bleed
Boot to the head!
It’s a heavy metal thing
It’s alternative pop-rock
It’s an indie movie
It’s the broken spaghetti strap at Cannes
We paparazzi with guns
You’re blind in one eye
You’ve heard this all before
It all sounds alike
This is never going to end

. . . . . Mel Gibson paused in his musings and chewed the tip of the pen. The words he had written seemed affected. There was the awkward “ticking of the death-clock beetle” which seemed too literary and contrived. There were the usual allusions to time and blood which he thought of as his signature. A sense of loss that was really a self-pitying solipsism. Just like the others, and maybe he just had one story to tell.
               He poured himself a vodka martini from the wet bar, and lay back in the recliner. He thought about the insufficiency of language— but maybe it was his own insufficiency of feeling. Maybe as far as his personal poetry was concerned, he had turned self-absorption into a literary cottage industry. What he thought was inspired was maybe really just calculated promotion of sympathy for himself— an attempt to portray a basically cold and unfeeling person as demon-ridden and therefore his own victim.
           He smiled lopsidedly and took a deep drink. Well, wasn’t his self-excorciating honesty an indication of a basic ruthlessness for the truth?  He hesitated and took the pen from his pocket.

“Demon-ridden victm
contrived
time and loss
self-pity
insufficiency of feeling
the literary cottage industry
of self pity
We are the children of your id
Strangling the Russian supermodel of the soul….”

     He stopped again. He fell to his knees.

      “Help me God,” he breathed hoarsely, clenching his fists. “Help a poor sinner— Mel Gibson—- and save him from himself. I have turned my back on you, O Lord, and your wrath is too great. God please help me. Deliver me from myself. Heal me. Let me know Your will. Your will be done, not mine.”

     When he opened his eyes, the room was suffused in a glow.  A radiant figure appeared above the wet bar and seemed to hover in a corona of scintillation.  He squinted against the radiance and thought it was the Virgin Mother.  It was Elvis Presley. 

       The King raised his hand in benediction.  “There was born of a semi-virgin a man who shall be called Mel Gibson and his life shall be a trial and his sufferings shall be great for the sporting of mad wood and his blood shall rise and he shall know adversity from the seed of woman.  He shall wait on the seed of woman and his own seed shall lay uncast in his testicles outside the water bubbling forth and he shall lay abed and know the sufferings of the Son of Man and the hard wood shall remain unchallenged by the lipsy botox of quenchedness and the fire of his loins shall spread through mankind unabated,  and he shall make a movie of the Son of Man and yet his wood shall be hard as the Cedars of Lebanon and he shall not know rest nor balm but shall lay chaste aside woman of Babylon and her heel shall smite his bone unto dissatisfaction beside the waters of a jacuzzi.  And he SHALL be known as MEL GIBSON in capitals and the earth shall sing hosannas to his performances except for the Conspiracy Theory thing, and he shall make a movie that shall heal those who have not heard The Word and forever shall his name be praised when praised names are praised or even when the wood is high, and they shall carve his image on the head of supermodels of all nationalities and his seed will flourish across the lands of the earth and even unto DVD Region 3 of the PAL variety and he shall smite the teeth of the whore of Babylon and they will know it in the world and where dentistry is forsaken. Thank thou thy God that thou has suffered the pummeling of supermodels with taut abdominals intact, and hast not expanded to a girth such as strains the bonds of your pants until the whiteness consumes your manliness in swaths of fatness, for the sandwiches of life thou hast made of the peanutbutter of conceit and the fried banana of sin are the fruits of forgivedness which shalt expand ten-fold upon thine garage of collectible vintage automobiles.  The shrill plaints of bruised supermodels of a Russiany persuasion shall be the trumpets of victory blazened over the winning of the soul of Mel Gibson to a salvation that far surpasseth the earthly joys of virility and mouthly pleasures of jacuzzis.  Though the harlot of the east bloweth not the trump of glory nor even Mel Gibson’s harp of desire she beareth hard wood for the winnowing of the sins of the flesh.  Thou shalt triumph over thine enemies and shalt reap supermodels seven-fold and spite thine enemies with envy for thoust treasure in heaven and the Kingdom spread before you shall be verdant of supermodels with ripe loins in which thou shalt plant thine seed for generations untold.  The carburation on thine expensive cars shall be a trial to those who would smite you or deny thou the orally joy of bubbling hot water and brooks running from the hills to fill the jacuzzi of your soul in a radiant glow of modeling concubinage bowed in homage unto thy Mel Gibsony-ness forever and ever.”

     Well now, that’s better, Mel Gibson thought to himself.