From "The Land of Love"

Meat Rock

I am, and I know that I am, sitting on a meat rock. It's comfortable as hell, and very good to eat, but I am being delayed from leaving it, and that is all I can think of, the delay.

I have a few complaints also. First of all, I think the meat rock is a parasite, leeching off of my mind. Second, every day the meat rock shows pictures of my past. Looking back, I am overwhelmed at what a fool I have been. God

bless you, meat rock! You try so hard to be some kind of symbol of something that I am touched.

 

Round and Round

Gerry, fourteen year old headbanger, shows his mother the album sleeve.

 

"See, Mom, the devil loses on this song. They're an anti-Satanic group. That's the whole concept: good versus evil. That's the message!"

 

His pale, painted face suddenly becomes very red and his mother backs up. He makes like he's going to hit her. "How can I make you understand?!"

 

For a moment it looks as though he wants to say something more but instead he sits down on the couch and begins to cry.

 

"But why do they dress like that, Gerry?"

 

The sobbing stops and Gerry runs and grabs the album. "It's just theatrics, Mom, look they're the good guys, they want to save the world. See it's a family: Klaus, he's the businessman, Nikki, he's like the little brother, and Michael Lee, haha . . . is the cutup.'

 

Praise for the Underdog

Otto Pung is one hell of a guy. He smokes three cartons of Newports a day, and makes really strong tea to take to work. He works in Arthur, Illinois at Jac-Co plastics. He counts items on an assembly line for 6.50 an hour, which is barely enough to keep the power on at his mobile home. But enough of this poverty! Otto does not expect pity or tender mercies. Nay, in past lives Otto believes he was:

A Duke of Winchester!

A Chessmaster!

An Underground Scholar!

Jack the Ripper!

 

He fills his days with nicotine and the imagined fanciful days of yore which lead Otto to believe in the present not as "bad times" but as a stopping ground, a bridge between past and future greatness. Otto smokes and works in his cocoon. He is ready to fly again and he is patient.