Chris Morrison

well they kept me up and spinning and running all yesterday and last night and the day before, so i have some things to share and some more i will show soon. i’m home from the hospital now. my stomach has been acting up again, they gave me more pills and a boot out the door. these pills are fat white ones. they’ll look pretty with the little pink ones i think, but anyways.. this is a mess of my mind; mixed up prose, poetry, beginning and clips of short stories, some that i will use and am& others have already been set aside to lay for now. sorry if it’s messy, i just liked the process of the mind emptying itself onto the page.
..
..
I don’t understand- why the bear hunt?
.
He showed no leniency, towering over his workers, his shadow stretched like a clock tower on their backs. And as he would breath, the clock would tick and the men would sweat. With hands thrown over shoulders, gripped around picks and axes, three dozen men swore to themselves, under muffled voices and broken rock, that one would take the foreman down from his tower.
.
The floor supervisor made his rounds, checking chains and blades, keeping an eye on the men and the foreman’s tower alike. It stood as an obelisque, a sore protruding from the earth in the center of the camp. A light shown from it and the floor supervisor rang his bell.
.
Lunch would be served.
.
The men remained standing in the line for their shit shit shit…
unfinished.
..
..
MONGROL
.
And I want to tell the tale
Of a fight between
Men and classes
Of gods and of bastards
but I loose the urge
the sense of
new
exciting breathing down my shirt
my chest and back
and these women and their legs
they make me want to write
and their breasts and faces
.
they make me want to write
.
a story of love and shame
defeat and blame
and their conquering

of me!
.
I surrender to the
masses!
.
I lay in defeat.
.
I will write a story of
war.
..
..

I felt her on my cheek. I didn’t dare to open my lids still too heavy and sore with sleep. “I left two cigarettes and a few dollars on the corner of the bed. I’ll be back in a few days.”
.
PARADOXICAL LIVING
.

MAURICE – Why would you dare to sleep?
.
CYNTHIA – How could I not? The days have become whirlwinds. I am lost inside the gusts and swirls of colors. That is all I see. A shadow moves and I go blind.

.
MAURICE – You have to understand that it’s all part of the process. You must remember to give and take!

.
CYNTHIA – Give and take? I take nothing!

.
MAURICE – You take everything! All that you need to give is, you! And when you do, you will see CYNTHIA, you will see amazing and beautiful things!

.
CYNTHIA – I am tired of seeing MAURICE! I’m tired of these eyes and what they show me. It’s nothing!
.
MARUICE – No!     CYNTHIA! –

.
CYNTHIA – It’s nothing MAURICE!  Nothing!   These eyes are as good as false gods and misspoken prophets.

.

The Cambrian explosion marks a time frame in which there was a sudden burst in new complex living organisms.. where is our Cambrian Explosion in our art world? In our literature? In our people. We are lost without it. But now we have it. It is here, we are it.
..
..
the Drought

Sometimes I can hunt all night. Alone, high in the trees – I am king! Conqueror of the dark and the trampling. You can hear horrific things sometimes at night. The things that make you want to stay high in your trees and I try but I get curious. I am beckoned to fall. To see the forest floor in the pitch of night, you must feel your way around. The surrendering to the beasts! It makes your blood pump. You are alive!
..
..
Black HOWLER
He often called to himself when no one was around. He liked it better that way. The echoes in the house reminded him of his youth. When his mother would leave with his sister and he would be alone for a while, standing shirtless in the dining room, bare feet on the hardwood floors, calling to the walls with screams of young anger and confusion. He would let his mouth throw ripe words across the rooms until saliva ran from the corners of his mouth, drooling to the floor and collapsing- exhausted.
But he was not to be like this anymore. His anger had been assuaged; his mother had told him so when he turned 18.
”Now you are a man. Now you are strong and tall and can say your words without a scream. Now, you can’t still be angry; there are bigger things.”
He remembered her saying.
And again, he called out into the dark of the room, but heard nothing. He stood at the end of the wood paneled room, long- running the length of the basement, he screamed again. And there was silence answering. He tore his shirt off and threw himself with his heaving lungs, calling out, still into the abyss. With his hands strained, fingers frayed; bent down by his sides-he spit fierce words, cursed and hit his head. Doubled over into a ball of a man, on the ground his head tucked between his knees- he swore with his tightening stomach and chest, seizing and releasing with each cry.

And the room went deaf.
.
thank you.

my good friend Juin Arnuad, who sent me Volcanoes set fire to the Oak Trees, has sent me another short existentialism story. he said that it was a short story that is suppose to come with a series of heavy ink-done drawings. i recommended my friend mike guilmette, who is now doing some of my and his short story drawings. i would really like if you would all critique and send me any and all advise or criticism towards these stories. Juin has also told me, to “tear his shit apart”, so please, anything, vicious and diluted words are welcomed.
I have found with my writings and my moving that they have accompanied each other. As i have moved west, my stories have as well. They have left their city settings in hope of finding westward expansion. they are fake, i am shit, and this world keeps me spinning.
One hit for the Night is something that’s new to me; writing as the night, wishing not to. it seems too young, too fake, like a mannequin stomping around a grotesque bar. but i wrote it, because i was drunk, like i am now, two bottle deep with my friend andy- freshly drunk from the good ol’ PA, visiting the mountain trends.

Cigarettes
A stout man with a red hat exited the back gate and stumbled a great distance, never seeming to reach anywhere. He turned that small town in New Mexico inside out.
He reached the outskirts of the town and kept up his stagger to the desert expanse.
Days past and the clumsy feet, of the stout man in the red hat, seemed to take on a prideful stride. As the yellow monster raised itself in the sky, the feet never hesitated, casting a series of blows across the barren wasteland that laid in front of them.
After finding a spring and the seldom stretch of shade that sparsely covered a space to lay in, he found a rest.
The smell of the silent cold night awoke the stout man, who had contorted himself to a fetal position, where he lay hugging his shoulders – shivering with his breath.
He stretched and placed his hands underneath his balding head, where tufts of hair and exposed scalp reminded him of his stagger, reaching for his red hat that had been turned into a makeshift pillow, he instead found only the cracked earth beneath his sun-beaten hands.
He lept up from the childish ball of sleep and wildly turned about, as if mad, staring off into the distance, a harsh and lonely abyss. Night had swallowed the landscape and everything in a stone’s throw; only barely making out the rock that had been his mid-afternoon savior, he stumbled a few feet in every direction furiously kicking at the desert floor. He fell to his knees and threw his hands about in a desperate attempt to find his red hat.
He returned empty to the rock.
Slouched against the wind scorched rock surface, he again planted his clumsy feet in front of himself and tucked his knees to his chest, huddling as a shell of a man, he lit a cigarette and watched the burning glow of nicotine.
The stout man no longer wanted to walk, he felt no impulse to move away from the small town in New Mexico, from the winding dirt streets his hopeless feet had traced, from the unpainted house and the room he rented out, where there was a large picture of a sailboat crashed on rocks and an impending storm in the background, and from the small cot that he lay on, alone- on horrific nights like these – but he felt no urge to return. He missed but spited that life that had become so estranged. He cupped his hands and lit another cigarette, the red cherry began to pour smoke and the stout man smiled.
He had nothing to do now but wait in the blistering desert wind.

-Juin Arnaud

4:48 a.m.
Monday, July 13th 2009

the Patient
Whether sitting on the steps of the city or the edge of the mountains, the patient stayed the same. Never to forget the days past, he remained silent with his dis-contempt and sat petrified with the fraying of his loneliness. Legs paralyzed, they only bent back to allow sitting. The patient relied on his findings throughout the day to make his happiness. Little thoughts, quarrelsome ones that built his staggering existence. Which way the wind blew and at what time- and compared to yesterday and the day before. The week became his solitude and the weather built a career out of it. Sitting and observing the sun, he never sought for shade, wishing to be burned by it daily, for even, perhaps- to be scolded so badly by it he would become unrecognizable, even to himself. And the days grew long and with them the patient’s age and weathered skin. His hands became a quicksand of leather when you tried to hold them, even he himself, found it hard to merely hold his own hands. They would envelope one another, cupping and sipping each finger up into the center of the palm. Furious balls of anger from long years of living alone collected and hung low down by his sides, when he walked and propped up next to him when sitting on his chair or even held a cigarette or two when the scaring sun went to slumber.
And one morning, when the patient arose, still stalking about with over sleep, the sun did not. And he waited on the porch for hours, sitting with the balls of fury weighing down by his sides, waiting for the brilliant brass ball to release some tension, some loneliness- but it never came. The tiresome day past and with it the patient went as well. Steadily rocking with finger nails tearing into the center of his palm, he slowly slipped out of the chair onto the thick wood of the porch floor. Laying on top of stretched cracks and fractures in the wood, the body of the patient lay clothed in darkness.

One hit for the night
He watched her from down the hall, sitting in her chair taking cheap hits of wine. Looking down at his half empty glass of rum and coke, he wished he had the feet-work and the speech to whisk down the studded hallway to ask her for a few hits. She sat as queen, in the corner of the room- she was watching everyone else around her. They stumbled from lips to ears, hoping to find someone to share their night with, and she knew it and he knew it. Tired from their drinks they begged them off one another and continued to keep their feet kicking down on the hardwood. Staggering about with delusional whereabouts, they asked where they could piss, “Down the hall towards the living room and across from the kitchen.” Down and towards him. He sat on his couch and said little to the conversation of faces that circled him. Usually finding solace in the mid-bathroom talking breaks, he grew weary and stared down the hall towards the green velvet chair that held his mighty queen. She looked down but past him. He sipped his glass and made the break to the plastic white bottom. The drink, gone; he sucked on the ice cubes and cracked them down with his teeth all the while never letting the velvet throne leave his sight. His stomach turned with each hand past on her shoulder and each smile given. He tried to stand, only finding wobbly, elastic legs stretch beneath his large frame. Holding onto shoulders that seemed stuck in the floor, he made his way slowly to the kitchen, away from the bathroom scene and the frantic nasal conversations that accompanied it, and away from the hungry couch that sucked you dry like a bat at night, and away from the girl he named queen and the green velvet throne she sat on, away from his eternal gaze of misunderstanding and misguided affection. To the island in the kitchen, sticky with red wine and cheap sodas and vodkas- a clutter fuck of cups and crumbs laid across it and he slammed his red plastic cup down. He got ice from the freezer he had visited several times already, twisted the plastic tray and cracked a few out on the counter. He brushed the crumbs off and put three in his cup. He got his rum and filled up the rest with it. He stood back and took a hit, smiling with his little accomplishment- a defeat over love and one battle won in the sweltering summer night.

last night in my dreams, i beat my father’s face into a dinner plate at a family dinner party and i lost the girl i never should have had. i sunk a car into a small lake, one i had been to before, and it was easier getting out than expected. no one was mad except for me.

i move into a new home today. a small brick house with a smaller brick corner room on the bottom floor with two large windows and a small bed. four other guys live there and i don’t know them, have never met them. it’s on ‘the hill’ in boulder, a party area that i’m not too pleased about. maybe it’ll be good. i start work for another week. i’m happy and scared.

hannah told me of a fire that lasted for three months in the mountains. it was started by a park ranger who had set a love letter on fire. it burned 6million acres and since i heard the story a week ago it has never left my mind.

i saw mountain goats yesterday and climbed a 14thousand foot mountain. there was snow at the top and i made a snow ball. i started to loose my fear of heights.

i found my ancestor’s grave, buffalo bill, the cowboy gunslinger of the midwest. he’s said to have the best shot ever. he’s buried in the town of morrison on a small hill.

i wish i could shoot like him.

I want to thank the sunday and wednesday community and especially matthew. already, your thoughts and words have begun to sculpt myself and my work. i have found inspiration and kind words, and although they often appear to be subtle, they have guided me threw the turbulent waters of discord.
when matthew and i first began talking about sunday and wednesday, sitting on his back porch or my side stoop, it seemed as though we were always drunk with wine and cigarettes, laughing and talking about the one day that we’d actually get something done. and somehow in the dwindling twilight of summer days, matthew put together this. and it’s beautiful. and i’m glad i’m here and a part of it, with him and all of you.
with that, i would like to share some new/ish, poems and dialogue shorts.

i wanted to write about my childhood some more, and still do. it’s hard for me to do this. i get worked up and freeze. i tried to use some light repetition to ease back into the flow, but it still becomes paralyzing, .39 is my attempt at this. the ones that follow are about many different things. i may attempt to talk about some, to give some insight, but i still am struggling with whether or not i like the idea of telling the reader what i’m trying to say. it seems to almost defeat any purpose of my writing. although i think it’s good to know what the writer is thinking about when reading his/her work, at the same time, i write to see what the reader is thinking. please, give any and all feedback.

.39
hiding underneath my couch
when i was younger-
i’d spend hours squished under the living room couch
i loved the way the cool hardwood floor
felt on my skin, on the bare skin of
my elbows and forearms
to feel my cheeks pressed against it-
laying flat on the floor
i could see down the kitchen and out the door
i would lay there when my mom was at the door
when she would wring it and to see
if anyone was home to help with the groceries
I would lay there when my father came home
to see if anyone wanted to

I would lay there and i wouldn’t get up
I would lay there and look out the door on the floor
looking at the dust bunnies and dirt
looking at the reflection of light
and I would feel the wood
covered swift with dust
i would turn my head
and look at the door’s reflection in the television
turned off-
i would watch them wring the doorbell
standing at the door.

.00
I work and you buy
I sell and you buy
I give and you buy
I ask and you do nothing

.60
When I was little
I lied to
grownups
but never to friends.

Little things.

Things that I felt weren’t lies.

things that seemed to make
sense.

And they believed me
because they seemed
to make
sense.

So i asked my mom,
How she knew that they were
lies.

.42
kids write poems that slant to the sides
.                                               that move in
.     awkward lines
.     that make me dizzy
and it’s                                                          hard
.                    to read
and it’s                                         always in
those damn damn damn damn
.                                             college books              with
their art and shit                                             -
.                                                they never let me into those
damn damn damn damn college books
.                         with all my art and shit
because                                                              i couldn’t
.                                        read in lines
.   that                                                                                  were spread
.                                     like my jam
.                         all over                          this
.          page.

(please excuse the periods, without them, it moves all the lines back to the left, and the poem looses a lot haha)

.01
Walk in my shoes and you’ll step in holes.

.51
I AM A CAPTAIN ABANDONING HIS CREW.
Like insignificant dust
on a mirror that no longer
reflects. I’m drowning,
a boy with no arms.
The mouse trapped by
his tail  and
having nothing
to hold onto or to get
out.

.19
I remember when I had fierce
confidence -
and now even my pen
shows the wear of
city living, leading
my eyes
on a downward slope.
I lost my way
and when she asked about
what I meant
when I said I wanted
to be happy
I didn’t have
anything
to say.

a Conversation

Pat, can we move the couch?

No.

Come on Pat, can we please move the couch? I hate it here.

(Pause.), He lifted his beer can and stood up.

I just don’t want to move the couch and blow out my back.
I’ve been training for the company softball game for three weeks now.
Perry said I’ve been looking good,   and you know how all that company bullshit is.
If you play well, they pay you well. I’m a decent player and you’re the one
who keeps saying that we need to save up for a bigger place for the kids.

Helen smiled and held her stomach.

Please Pat, I really just hate it here.

Fine, but if my back or shoulder goes out, we’re never getting out of this shit hole.

Pat struggles with the couch, Helen stands to the side, frantically shaking and waving her skinny arms. With her belly so large, her arms look like nothing more than
straws sticking from a pile of hay.
Pat finally manages to lift one side and continues to walk the couch to the
other wall in the room, lifting the right and then the left side.  He set it down
quite impressed by the small feat he had accomplished.
He turned to smile at Helen.

Helen was bent over on the ground looking at the used condom on the floor.

They had never had sex in the living room.

Pat was standing behind her, next to the couch. He was breathing heavily, staring at the condom.

It was there in the middle of the floor, looking like flattened roadkill, eyes still open, staring back at them both.

Pat got two home runs and afterwards, returned home, alone; to the couch that he had moved back to the first wall.

My feelings are indifferent to this. I know it needs some work, but it was a quick twenty minute write up and still somehow, draws me back to it.
have a good one.

and they took five years of writing. And they took my ‘Scum City’ artwork, my first and only gallery invite. And they took my pictures and my words and my porn and my memories from everything I left here and back in Colorado, they took it all and probably sold it for a few hundred dollars. I’m pissed.

We had someone break into our house when we were sleeping. He came in threw the front door, went into the living room where I sleep and went next to my bed, next to my head and took my laptop. My macbook pro. I’ll never have enough money for another one. &He took 2 Xbox controllers, an ipod and the last 20 dollars that I had. We called the police and they said they could do nothing. This act only fuels the burning in my loins to fuck everyone in allston and get out of this city. When talking to our Brazilian neighbors last night about the recent robberies, the kid who we talk to most, had just seen his bike that was stolen with a new chain around it, up the street. He said he called the cops and they said if he didn’t have any paperwork to prove it was his, they could do nothing.
They then said, if it is your bike, steal it back, wouldn’t that be funny?    
Steal it back?    When would be the best time for that?  
Before the different groups of 3 or more 15 year old kids come up with a knife and say “give me you’re fucking wallet!” or
after the coke and meth heads storm out of our building, ready to fuck and fight?
Or better yet – maybe rite when I walk down the street and even the fucking bro kids
have to jump in and try to fuck you up.
Fuck you Boston Police.
You sicken me.

aside from that, I’ve been going crazy not having something to write on. I got some more ink and just starting hitting at those typewrite keys again, which leads to me having tons of random pieces of paper thrown across my floor and by my bed, both underneath and on-top of. But if feels good and nice and I know I can touch it and hold it. I’m just truly upset about this short story I lost called “The Man, Wife and the Husband”. It’s been over a year of writing and only three pages, but perfect pages, where every word had been looked over and chosen carefully. Whole days were spent around deciding whether to use a comma or a semicolon in some line. I knew it would be the butterfly wing’s flutter that could change it all, but now it’s all gone. Maybe that’s just how they flapped this time.

here is some new poems, liking some, hating most, i will not edit these – refuse to. they are set in stone.

We have a nation here, of horny men and women, deprived of sex. Deprived of drugs, and fu
        ck or n or cking. C K or N or C K I N G
      is it F U N or F U C K or is it F U C K I N G.
      ???
      Grumpy men and women, it is no longer a time to be sorrel,
      but a time for jubilation!  It is time for those and these
      things that are wicked and disgusting and taboo. Now is
      our time to indulge in our wicked vices and to walk the line of
      gross consumers. We have a voice but we want a megaphone.

Thursday the 21st
12:57 a.m.

When the sports games on
I’m not allowed to type
in the living room.
The celtics dribble their balls -
all orange and shit
the people in the stands
are shit.
the people in their homes
are shit.
the families that sit around
players and watcher’s alike
are shit -
and they’re fucked.
  And when football season
comes along,
at least now i know
we’re a nation of raw assholes-
sore from last nights’
anal fuck.

The 21st, 12:47 p.m.

When you wake up mad
and go to sleep after the sparrows
have woken and opened their mouths-
sleep holds nothing more
than a wishful wet dream
a nocturnal emission of the damned
and that where I am.
and that’s were we are.
In the living room.
Sitting on my bed.

late that morning, recovered from last nights drunken mouths, where TJ and I spoke on the overpass, I tried to remember

It looks like plastic, like
cardboard like the graphics on the
game console.
But when I see it, I know it’s more
than the plastic and graphics and
cardboard and it’s more than
glass and steel and concrete
more than the miserable souls
waking and sleeping
and the continual hum of street lights
and the tires grinding a soft slow
treading down and down
the empty streets.
It’s five in the morning and there’s a moon in the sky.

the 19th, 11:33 p.m.

down in a gambling
stream of hope
we rot in our 
corrupted ways
new men born as
slaves.

the 19th, 2:49 a.m.

When looking for gold, I found mud
and the mud became
quicksand
and I lost
the two prettiest girls
I’d ever
seen.

the 20th, 6:14 p.m.:
on writing 

don’t do it when you can’t
don’t do it when you want to
don’t do it when you don’t feel it
don’t do it when you can’t sleep
don’t do it when you can’t eat
don’t do it when you can’t shit
don’t do it when you can’t feel
don’t do it when you can’t hear
when you can’t see
when you can’t answer
when you can’t ask
when you can’t fuck
when you can
t
when you can’t
when you can’t
when you can’t do anything else always do it.

[when i search for my despair
i am numb
when i ask why i can't sleep
i have nothing.
an ill response to my own thought.] 

i have a few more poems and some prose and drawings to show. i will later. i’m sorry for not posting, i feel bad from not getting it out of me. but i will later tonight or tomorrow. I’m going to use the dunkin donuts gift card i found, leftover from christmass, to go buy breakfast, lunch and dinner – then my last dimes to get on the 66 to cambridge to work. I want to blow it all up sometimes.