Hue Blanc's Joyless Ones

February 26, 8 pm
The Circle A
Milwaukee WI

SEE YOU THERE

New Leaf - part 1

He sat with his mouth unsociably open, watching his office window snatch the sleet out of the air. Each shape shuddered before the melt like an anticipated blow, streaming down in nervous little worm trails. He knew there was something about the whole scene that pleased him, white business park wasteland, plaything cars and plaything people populating the distant diorama. Something about the fragile death of innocence and the disorder of heat. He wasn't exactly sure.

Not being sure about much of anything was the recent side effect of his new turn of thinking, and of course the hash cookies that were still singing in his head. But he knew, he thought, we all know that drugs are never so causal. Although they are indicted for it. They only introduce the conditions, we are always responsible for the rest.

He didn't so much as flinch when his coworkers happened by. On any normal day, he would snap back to his computer screen and his heart would thud with the dread of being found out. He was accustomed to feeling that every look and word from them was a judgment festooned with the shitty daisies of office manners. And this was likely not far from the truth, because there were things to judge. The stained and wrinkled slacks he wore every day, the odd couple of moth-eaten sweaters he cycled through each week, the occasional facial bruises, and untended goatee. There was no bigger elephant in the room than this awkward sore thumb status of his. But it was changing, or so at least was the amount of attention he paid to it.

He didn't seem too bothered to identify what exactly had transitioned, and to pry into it would have been the old hat way. The new leaf he was turning was one of prioritization. Wading through the clogged perceptual sewer of the day-to-day, and snatching deftly at the jewels. There wasn't much time for picking scabs of self-esteem, or appeasing the inner panel of second guessers that held the joy derived from basic life chronically on trial. He was too busy being surprised by the depth of the world. Like the riveting life cycles of falling sleet, his own vast smell libraries and the memories they safeguard, even the strange object permanence lessons of elevator doors.

As he looked out over the highway, the cars and construction, the blurry lunch-breaking human figurines, he wondered to himself how people really feel life. And how many feel it like him?

Midnight Track - Why Should I

Why Should I
Improvised by Chris Ward and Jim Yates
Guitar & Vocals: Chris Ward
Keyboard: Jim Yates

Just a Stop to Think

the slabs of sky overhead witness an eating
while my body gives off the heat of nothing that resembles a want or memory
or any of the scratchings and shapes inside me

thoughts flare out through a summer telescope soundless as the sun's storms, and i can't think of my blood as mine the way it looks nothing like me.

but i feel my forehead smooth as I lose my sense of standing upon anything i should consider my parent's porch

and not just tall tales regaled by my phantom feet.


i love it when the summer molds beneath my eyes like basement windows, and the world fills with the smell of the dying and delicious fallen from trees.

it breathes into my beliefs.

and goosebumps of a bluer sun announce the onsetting monster who will bundle every bone and ice age every eye, if only to provide something eerie again: for each inhale one endless halloween.

the wind is poised for shape shift, it whines with the change, and my ears siren with it circling the weird cinnamon scents leaving every pit in the trees.

i envision my nerves peeling away. fraying out to feed on lights and signals. i start to feel plugged in to the power-line sky, as it shows me itself soaking airplane slash marks in a bloody water of clouds.


i get eaten by these syndromes, seeing the forest having never heard of a tree.

and there's a persisting distance hacking lines between me, stretching thin whisper windows over every wall that baffle me with their two-dimensional landscapes.

and in the corner i'm a brain and a repetitive heart, banging out the rhythm to drown the source.

and seeing only one angle at a time.

George & Gloria (A Short Story From Gorilla Bones: A Collection of Short Stories By A.L. Barkhaus)

“The can is runnin’ again. Glor…Glor…GLORIA!”

“What!?”

“Damn it get up outta bed and fix that toilet! PLEASE!”

Gloria threw the large motel comforter over George’s face and squirmed out of the tightly tucked sheets. George huffed, took Gloria’s pillow, and molded it around his head as he turned away from her. She scurried through the dark room to the cold bathroom. She flipped on the light and began to jiggle the flush lever. The light from the bathroom illuminated George’s enormous body in the bed.

“It ain’t going. George…Babe? Geeoorggge!”

“WHAT?!”

“It aint going.”

“Damn it! Gloria, I am not gettin’ out of this bed. Let the fucker run. Turn off that light and just shut the door.”

Gloria did as George said. She tiptoed across the room wearing only George’s shirt. The shirt made her thin frame look like tent poles moving fabric in the dark.

“George,“ she whispered, crawling back into the bed, “ When can we go home? We can we stop runnin‘? I want it to go back to the way thangs were.”

“We can’t Gloria. We can’t. Ya did whatcha ya did and now we got’ta…got’ta…OH damn! Gloria. Get over here.”

George turned towards her. He wrapped his large ape like arms around her and pulled her close to his body. Her head was underneath his chin resting on his chest. The hairs on his chest danced a little when Gloria would exhale.

“Gloria”, he said, in a soft, low voice, “I love you, and I will stick next to ya no matter what.”

“Even, even if I can’t get the toilet to stop runnin‘?”

“Yeah Glor. Even if you can’t get the toilet to stop runnin’.”
　

Drunk Track: Eat Layers

Eat Layers
Jim

Dayvan Cowboy

It's no less magnificent than it was five years ago.

Return to Horse Mountain

Ghazal for Savage Love

I want to cut you apart and sew us together,
and the night to pass beneath our blood-stitched quilt.

I want the liquor in my midnight coffee to taste of your sweat
and the dreaming terrors to reflect your dripping face.

If the stars are as small in your heaven as they look from here
and the hearts as empty, I’ll never be born again.

I want the streets we live on to melt into flowing gold
and the breath in our lungs to sing like boiling kettles.

I can feel your cold hands slipping between ribs
and see your blank, bloodshot look in the morning fog.

I fight with your memory in my suit of tin armor
and slash at your ghost with my paper sword.

But don’t be afraid of me, I’m hollow and dry
as a bird’s skeleton —- brittle, slender, and clean.

Leave me here in my nest with my ashes and pelts,
but don’t forget your whisper, “This is always ours.”

The Happy Birthday Chris EP

Please enjoy the maddening sounds of Chris Ward's 24th birthday EP, courtesy of Elephance Anonymous.

chapped.


Blue Ball
Matt & Jim



Don't Let The Mice Die
Jim



Happy Birthday Bob
Matt and Jim



The Days
Matt and Jim


There's Time
Jim



You're Old as Shit
Written by Nikki, feat. Matt and Jim


We're All Afraid
Jim


download is forthcoming...

listen to me

the voice says: Listen to Me.

like the backseat boy of self important eureka.

like the Narcissus night debasing in the only light of its puddles.


Listen to My Feeling, it pleads from too much sugar and solitude.

can't you hear the star screams in my blood? the hollering stormdrum being struck?

if I feel it, it must be everywhere. a principle, my gift, the sine qua non brick of all that is.


it's a growing up to know the thunder goes unheard. the climbing chords fall deaf on the walls, and the colors stay pointlessly yours.

the voice is a kid, born spoiled from dreams.

and each dream is this damnation.

Acid Western

Black Sparrow Pub
223 Main St
Lafayette IN

February 13th

Costume Party & Art Installation & Film Screening

Dress as either:

a) Indian

b) Cowboy

This is where perfect is