Your grief and rage are layers of peeling paint pasting together the rotted boards of a ramshackle house and when those layers are scraped away the bat-filled building collapses into a massive sink hole which gives birth to a ravenous mouth crammed with rows of shark teeth that devours everything I consider mine. So the night is long. Luvgood Carp, Editor-in-Chief
Author Archives: luvgoodcarp
Great! Now You’ve Exasperated Death.
You’d think I’d be rich – these days being what they are. You’d think I’d be living like a bankruptcy attorney during the Great Recession. But I’m not and that’s your fault. Oh, I’m busier than ever – what with the many spectacular ways you’ve learned to efficiently kill each other – I’m just not getting paid.
In the old days, the family made sure I was paid. Depending on the society, they would put coins on the departed’s eyes. Most cultures had similar traditions. Humans knew how to show appreciation. But as you evolved, you got stingy. I am officially exasperated.
So I’ve opened my own business. It’s on the internet and Block Island – in the same strip mall as Drinkie McFalldown’s Wee Irish Pub and Ted’s Definitely Used Cars. Bring in a corpse. Any corpse. I don’t care. But the person must be dead before entering the building. And for the low price of $200.00 I will give you fertilizer – a few weeks later.
Using the most advanced social sciences and certain secret spices I have perfected, that corpse will decompose before you could ride a horse to Canada – turning into a fluffy, almost environmentally-safe, Kinda Like Loam (patent pending). It can be used for any horticultural purpose – or unclogging toilets. Did your hippie uncle love pot? Turn him into Kinda Like Loam, spread him across your weed patch, and then smoke him. All you need to do is bring me a corpse and $200.00 (cash only – I no longer accept crypto). Testimonials to follow.
Raven Breathless (formerly known as Death)
The Santa Cycle – Part 5
It was the eighth shopping day before Santa jumps in his sleigh and sprints around the world on a trip fueled by meth and cocaine stealing my cookies and all the acclaim for the gifts I bought using a card I will no longer be allowed to retain. Luvgood Carp, Editor-in-Chief
The Passenger – So Many Questions
Cormac McCarthy’s The Passenger opens with a dead woman hanging from a tree. She committed suicide on Christmas day. So that’s brutal, but then you remember who the author is.
The Passenger is a beautifully written Southern Gothic. It’s also frustrating – taking detours that may be interesting but don’t lead anywhere. For example, one character has a wordy monologue about who really assassinated JFK. It’s only mildly intriguing because this terrain has been trampled for decades. So you wonder – was McCarthy being paid by the word?
After the suicide, the story jumps about 10 years to 1980 and a small plane crash in the Gulf of Mexico. Excellent, more death. Perhaps McCarthy can work the Holocaust into this. Spoiler alert – he does.
Bobby Western (think Western Civilization) is a salvage diver. He is sent by an unknown client to investigate the crash. He and his partner, Oiler, dive into the literal and metaphorical murky waters, use a torch to open the plane’s door, and find 9 drowned passengers. The plane’s black box is missing. It is clear there was a tenth passenger, but that person has disappeared. When he returns to New Orleans, government agents show up asking vague but concerning questions. Oiler goes to work on another assignment and dies. Was he murdered? Is Western next? How come the plane crash is never mentioned in the newspapers? Is Western being followed? Who keeps breaking into his apartment? Can he do anything about it? If he can, will he? So many questions, and McCarthy isn’t interested in answering any of them.
This story is really a meditation on the shitshow that was the twentieth century. Auschwitz and Hiroshima are the “sister events that sealed forever the fate of the West.” It doesn’t help that Western’s father was a physicist who helped build the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.
Western’s sister (Alicia) is the young woman who committed suicide. She was schizophrenic and stopped taking her meds. In flashbacks we jump into her mind. She’s a twentieth-century Alice in a demented Wonderland, and these chapters are stunning. They show McCarthy at his formidable best, and the novel is worth reading for these sections alone.
Western is haunted by Alicia’s suicide. He loved her very much. Maybe too much. Incest is hinted at. He’s also extremely troubled by his father’s work on the bomb. If Alicia is a modern-day Alice, Western is a twentieth-century Hamlet. He certainly has daddy issues, and suicidal Alicia just might be his Ophelia. Plus Western is supremely indecisive. He doesn’t know if he’s being hunted by a killer or haunted by a ghost. He’s trapped and doesn’t care. “If all that I loved in the world is gone what difference does it make if I’m free to go to the grocery store?”
So who is the passenger? Who isn’t? The passenger seems to be any creature buffeted by storms trying to survive without necessarily knowing how best to do that.
Gladiola Overdrive, Chief Editor
Thoughts on the Dangers of Pretending to be a Poet (Part 5)
Delusions of grandeur. Pretend poets think they’re special. Which is ridiculous. Poetry never saved a life. It hasn’t cured cancer. I’m certain it never will considering how much liquor it drinks.
Have you read Lewis Carroll? Pure nonsense.
So this is a message to everyone who pretends to be a poet (and that is every poet living and/or dead): get a real job. You will be happier and so will your family. Poetry has never solved any problem. You know what has? Money and hotels.
If my lazy-ass son had a real job, instead of masturbating all day and calling it a poetry blog, he wouldn’t keep asking me for money. I wouldn’t keep telling him no, and I would love him.
Poetry is easy. I will show you. I literally wrote this off the top of my head three minutes ago.
The Ballad of Knowgood Carp
I know damn well
when I cast my spell
I will be okay
on the Judgment Day
because I have more money
so I can buy God's honey
and if I want to bone ya'
what I'll do is phone ya'.
Do better than that, B.S. Eliot. I defy you.
Knowgood Carp, Owner of all the Hotels on Block Island and Some in Connecticut
Challenge Accepted
The world is cluttered with “be careful what you ask for” stories, so do we really need another one? Yes.
My grandmother passed away last week, so I was called back to Roanoke. At the gravesite, the minister gave a touching tribute. She obviously did not know my grandmother. As she was wrapping up, the minister did something unusual. She asked people to share their feelings.
“There are no wrong feelings at a time like this,” the minister encouraged.
After an awkward silence, someone volunteered, “sadness.”
“Of course, that’s very normal and appropriate,” the minister replied.
“Anger.”
“Yes, that is normal too. We shouldn’t be afraid of our emotions. Everyone mourns differently. And that’s ok.”
“Arousal,” someone called out. A few people coughed. Others snickered, but in a respectful way.
“I think I understand what you mean,” the minister said haltingly. “Our brains our stimulated with all sorts of thoughts. It can be confusing.”
“No, I have an erection.”
“Well, that’s . . . “
“It’s throbbing.”
“Let’s say a prayer, shall we?”
Tengo Leche, Social Anxiety Scholar
Cavities
Who throws pepper in the air so upstanding citizens will sneeze? Who slips sugar into milk so wholesome kids get cavities? Who hides the cherry flavored condoms so chaste teens get STDs? Once it was the evil fascists, then the dirty commies followed by the hairy hippies, Russians, Iraqis and Chinese who committed these depravities. So who will we blame next for giving us a mouthful of cavities? Luvgood Carp, Editor-in-Chief
Annie Ernaux’s Exteriors: The Most Honest Review Ever
Don’t read this book. It’s a fraud.
I don’t normally give book reviews, because I don’t normally read books. They’re a waste of time, and this one sure was.
First, it bills itself as a memoir. Now, when I think of memoir, I think of great men, like myself, doing great things, like own hotels. To my surprise, this memoir was written by a woman. I was immediately suspicious. What has she ever done? The answer is nothing. She rides trains all day and makes observations. I could do that, but I have better things to do. And for this kind of crap someone decided this Annie Ernaux woman should be awarded the 2022 Nobel Prize in Literature. It just confirms why I never had any respect for that award.
Second, Annie Ernaux has no friends. Nor should she. She’s a voyeur who is obsessed with eavesdropping on strangers – as if strangers can tell us anything about ourselves or our world. Yet, she seems to think so. Here’s something stupid she said. “It is other people – anonymous figures glimpsed in the subway or in waiting rooms – who revive our memory and reveal our true selves through the interest, the anger or the shame that they send rippling through us.”
The only time a stranger ripples me is when she’s sexy. Then the hunt is on, and she won’t be a stranger for long.
Knowgood Carp, Owner of all the Hotels on Block Island and some in Connecticut
Annie Ernaux’s Exteriors: A Stranger’s Connection
When Annie Ernaux won the 2022 Nobel Prize in Literature, I had only one question. Who is Annie Ernaux? Why have I never heard of her? Is she French or something? That’s where the internet comes in handy. She’s French. Regardless, I picked up one of her books, Exteriors, which was first published in English in 1996. It’s short, curious and rewarding.
Ms. Ernaux believes a “hypermarket (supermarket) can provide just as much meaning and human truth as a concert hall.” That concept has been expressed before, but not quite the way Ms. Ernaux presents it. She writes in a hyper-detached style, as if she’s a scientist. She focuses only on the essential. Unicorns do not prance on these pages. Exteriors purports to be a memoir, but there is no sustained narrative. The book consists of written snapshots of complete strangers. Her observations are more akin to sparse journal entries.
Still, it is literary and themes do emerge. Ms. Ernaux describes contemporary society as purely transactional. Tacky consumerism pervades everything. She’s not a fan of the ruling classes either. Their obvious disdain for the working classes is oppressive and depressing. The few relationships presented tend to be dysfunctional. Ms. Ernaux does not interact with anyone except the reader.
So why does Ms. Ernaux write about the strangers she observes on the train or at the mall? I enjoy being a voyeur as much as anyone, but is this mere voyeurism? Ms. Ernaux thinks not. “It is other people – anonymous figures glimpsed in the subway or in waiting rooms – who revive our memory and reveal our true selves through the interest, the anger or the shame that they send rippling through us.”
In a crass world, there can still be profound connections, even with strangers. A child on the train reminds Ms. Ernaux of her sons when they were young. A woman waiting in line reminds her of her deceased mother. “So it is outside my own life that my past existence lies: in passengers commuting on the subway or the RER; in shoppers glimpsed on escalators . . . in complete strangers who cannot know that they possess part of my story; in faces and bodies which I shall never see again. In the same way, I myself, anonymous among the bustling crowds . . . must secretly play a role in the lives of others.”
Gladiola Overdrive, Chief Editor
Breaking News
A cow covered with hundreds of mouth-like lesions each containing a tongue that lovingly licks my ear - tells me all the black lies I desperately want to hear; a massive udder with hundreds of mottled leathery teats and I suck the sour milk. Luvgood Carp, Editor-in-Chief
Pungent Sound Journal of Pulp Poetry 