Words by Matthew Peipert
Illustrations by Ben Peipert
Origin
Hello, Creature!
I preach the gospel of true emotion, the flowering of your soil, and the pluck-pluck of stripped-down sensation. Carry your ego in a sandwich bag and sprinkle it on the genitalia of paternalism. Watch it grow and chop it down. Creak!
I have bulbous balls. One of them moves without provocation. Metabolize, synthesize, philosophize. “Wet Yarn” is the password. My progeny smell like the cabinet under the sink so follow them down with your nose, if you can. Hot cross buns. Make sex when love is in your ear too much.
April. God is electricity. March. Follow the leader to dissipation if you will. Sunday. Slip into the lethargy of the last remaining animal on earth. If you agree, raise your right tentacle and repeat the sacred oath: “My life is neither mine nor thine. I will therefore open my clench-clench for reception.”
Reverse Birth! I will pursue in life exactly the things people tell me not to. Shaman, medicine man, witchdoctor? Yes! Pure nincompoopism! I will belch out the sum of all that is human, which is good, and I will mash to the rhythm of cricket legs.
Pleased to meet you, too.
A flame to the rich. A joy for the poor. A missile to the heavenbent and healthcare for the whores. Smear the warpaint. I promise, the dirtier you get the less it bothers you. Cheetah run and jump! Water ensconces maximum womb float. Sink. The bottom of the sea is salty as German licorice and bubble blood feels great on the ascent. Fire at will!
Thank you, Creature.
Who Are You?
Who are you, Creature?
Are you the face at the bottom of the cup?
If so, “Sluuurp!”
Are you the light fixture on top of my head?
If so, “Ouch!”
Are you the robot in the raincoat?
If so, “Don’t get wet!”
Creature, your facial expression tells me nothing at all.
Are you the hotshot cowboy with sloping shoulders?
If so, “Dang!”
Are you the runt crowded out from the teat?
If so, “Me, too!”
Are you the half-shaven man from the television commercial?
If so, “Looks good!” and “Scraaatch!”
Please don’t resist my attempts to identify you, Creature.
Are you the fire-crotched woman who tasted my mouth?
The marsupial baby who lives in my pouch?
Creature?
Are you the bumping-head bangdrum on Saturday morn?
The hunk of mass-matter from which I was torn?
Please tell me, Creature.
Are you the bucket of eels behind my eyes?
My lovelorn shadow who cries when I die?
Are you a friend? A foe? Or are you a spy?
Do I know you, Creature?
Mouthful (featured by Beat the Dust)
Creature, I must tell you these things:
Civilization is stacks of people. Morality is unforced. Technology makes coming into an ultra-soft tissue possible. Water gives life. Water looks cool shooting out of a showerhead. Television is always on. Genius forsakes routine. Picture frames house seeds of fawned-over falsehood. An alleyway fight launches two vastly different futures. Hamburger gets ground. The trucks collide. Cues are taken. Notes are burned. Gas is ignited. Scent is sweet and dangerous. Cues are missed. Best friends become ghosts. “Why not” is the answer.
We are claimstakers of futures uncertain. We are common sense cronies. We are cuckoo ballslappers. We are myopic wanderers. The world is mottled brown-green. The sky is in the sea. The fish push the waves. The trees make the wind. The Belgian makes the beer. The beer makes the baby. Babies cry like animals. Cages are for those who crawl into them. The coward shouts from moving vehicles. The insults always pass. The heckler heckles. The air expands his trachea. The insults always pass.
Drip dry in my bedroom. The curtains move slowly. The walls hold large mammals. The man tells a joke. The people laugh later. Insight goes nowhere. Idiocy is supreme. Laughter is vitamin. Upchuck makes angels. Impurity is recommended. Buying is selling. Trading is good. Insomnia is overflow. Naked is natural. Shame is bright as a rose. Beauty is strength plus weakness and weakness is the penultimate discovery.
Thank you, Creature.
Pull
Creature,
There is nothing in your head that doesn’t want out.
Let me deconstruct you. Let me lunch on you like a fucking cannibal.
No, not yet.
Feel free to breathe, for now.
See, life is a sieve, Creature,
And you won’t be coming out the other side.
But let me love you despite you, Creature –
Let me engulf you if simply to engorge myself.
Steady now, Creature.
Steady.
Peer into my volcanic eyes.
Steady.
Although they will burn you, Creature,
Although they will char you unrecognizably and incinerate you,
You must admit, and you must confess –
Lava has never looked so erotic.
Turtle
I’ve got soup, the soup of selflessness.
I’ve got grapes, grapes like clustered noggins.
I’ve got nuts, nuts like a final clearance sale.
Allow me to present you with shapes, Creature. Allow me to present you with slugs.
Don’t be afraid. Don’t tremble. Soak in my arms. You deserve it.
It’s going to be all right, Turtle. May I call you “Turtle”?
If you don’t mind, Creature, please don’t question my logic. I know how to fold it up and hide it away. It won’t disturb us.
Can I tell you some things?
You are precious. And you are cool.
Your Roman nose – I adore it.
Your postured fingers – please make a rabbit show.
Your eyes – Neptune and Uranus.
You amble the inside of my stomach, Creature.
I want you to know that you tangle me.
You garble me.
You shimmy me back and forth.
Spit me out, Creature. Can I live in your bowl?
Shit me out, Creature. Can you gaze upon me?
Can you feed me? Your love will fill my heart with joy.
You are more beautiful than Eden, Creature, and
I’d like to blow you up.
Trinity
Creature,
A spool of thread, until we’re dead, unwinds in time.
A man with tusks, appears at dusk, he’ll slash your price.
Imagine the wind, Creature. A grassy hill. A flower. An ant. Nothing too revolutionary. A death. A life. Our death. Our life. You know – same old shit.
See, Creature, all truth is transient. All life is forever. All crap is ultimate. Every day is your life. All sickness is a tiny miracle. All miracles happen sometime. All brains circle the center. But everybody knows that.
Flip it. The center is it. We must praise it. We must get drunk on it. We must not take it for granted. We must hunt for, grunt for, beg for and receive it. We must beat it up. And not everybody knows that.
So join us!
For the answer,
The paratroop oblivion,
For the nine, the ten,
The storm of breathing,
The sheeping of wolves’ clothing.
Bang!
Join us!
For the life within,
The marvelous malcontents
Coiled in the corner.
Fang!
Yes: The breakneck mimbles the mazy chasers the slipknap jappers.
No: Anger canker linger stinker cracker smacker hello or goodbye. Please.
We: Heroes, dreamers, dreamt up, smoky. Lapping at clouds, impaling and receiving the eye, the heart, other blood-filled companions.
Us: Hungry, barely engorged, searching yet chucking away, roadside nibblers and twisting lispwisps. Never getting enough. Together.
So thank you, Creature.
You’re welcome.
Sambuka
You can’t catch me, Creature!
I run and I waft. Injection is the fastest way. Shimmying through upper levels of the troposphere. Hiding behind the blots. I shake your hand as you sleep. Your hair is plastered and you smell like skin and humans. But you’re not!
You can’t shut me down. My silent spaces. My life. Bread under a microscope. How are you today? I secretly take a giant whiz across the city.
You can’t shut me down. I revolve and see the future. It’s unpronounceable. It has no mouths only membranes and flippers. The fish feel so good. The atmosphere is gliding and turning over.
You can’t catch me. I’m ripped open pooped out gone over the mountain past mention beyond remembrance and exceeding body count. I’m in heaven. Sipping sambuka.
See, gradual decomposition and liberty of mind go hand in hand. They fuck in bed. Lucidity is all around if you can only relax. But so many nerve centers. Shopping centers. Poisonous arrows that never fall out.
You can’t catch me, Creature, and I’ll never stop. I’ll never give up. I’ll walk right by you.
Creature, you think you’ve got me all sorted out. Yet I float down your river like a corpse grinning, with one hand on my hip. I evade your trap with a wonderful nonchalance that you find infuriating.
Come on in, Creature, the water’s fine. I dare you!
Latent Forms
Creature, if you insist on measuring existence in syllables, it might sound something like this: tonsillectomy, tuft, tic-tac, tremble, tube top, turgid.
(What year is it anyway?)
Imagine if you will, in your seedy thought cavern:
A man in a pink shirt furiously pedaling a bike somewhere in Asia shouting, “Numb, nannoo, nuts, nefarious, nary a day!”
His words are like a narcissist. We shouldn’t admire them in the least. We should let them steam out of his ears as his jaw chatters like a set of wind-up teeth. We should hold them in contempt as if they were a being who wouldn’t even look our way. Besides, listening to others is for people with nothing better to think about.
Hey, Mister! Hey, Creature! No one ever told me I’d be stuck here. I demand an explanation for the cleft in my future. I want to sing like a lark and fuck like a rabid dog, foam spilling and smelling like sulfurous summer and banging like a concussion. I want to be one light year away, trapped in shaving cream form.
Moreover,
There’s a ghost at my door
And a hair in my perfection.
There’s a disconnect with my host
And a thistle in my friendship.
There’s a paradise in my subway
And an eyepatch on my deity.
In conclusion, my friend, the theme of this life is a cruel one and the hope of this world nutty and cashew-shaped, with a pen name and a fake moustache.
Lobe
May I have a moment, Creature?
Please sit down.
You are nothing but a skin-ghost, but I love you with all my pumping heart. You are nothing but a giant meal for higher life forms, but I applaud you with both wings. You are nothing but an anomaly, yet all my tentacles sizzle you up and down.
I’m sorry. I don’t mean to hurt.
You are nothing but a helmet on a stick, but I want to buy you lunch. You are nothing but a moon-pisser whose stream comes way short, but I must interact with you. You are nothing but a septum-gazer in need of a mirror, yet for some reason I yearn to be your kin.
Stop me if I am causing you pain. I love you.
You are nothing but a goggleman’s delight, but you astound me. You are nothing but a canister of entrails, but I will vouch for your heroism any day of the week. You are nothing but a pack of unwrapped gum, yet allow me to chew on you like a lover’s earlobe.
I hope I have not hurt you. I so want to remain your friend.
Thank you, Creature, and…touch me…won’t you?
Symbiote
Creature,
I wonder, how did you come to be in my ribcage?
I feel you, your breath on my heart. I feel your tiny fists, wrapped round my spine, pulling. They bend my back effortlessly. My posture wilts and stiffens without warning. Strangers watch my contortions in confusion.
Now I have an audience. I write in the air with a cigarette, elaborating my point. Your ear is pressed against me, listening to them. The people are nodding in agreement. That’s when you begin screaming. I close my mouth so they don’t hear. They might worry, not realizing it’s a joke.
There are powers beyond us, Creature. I have no idea what they want, and they could very well be as callous as they seem. For that reason, let’s stick together. If you agree, simply apply a light pressure. Oooh. It tickles. You feel like a gigantic fart, just waiting to happen.
I’ve been thinking, Creature. The fish bump their heads against the glass. Is that what it feels like for you? What can you see in there? Do my lungs resemble angel wings? My organs must be soft as babies. What can you hear? Gentle percussion? Dripping noises? Voices? What does the spoon feel like as I slide its cool concavity over my outer surface?
Creature, I believe in demons. Their heads are like mosquitoes, and they suck you from the inside. And I believe in gods. They grow on you heavy like disquieting moles, though you must love them anyway. But I think, and I hope, that you’re not like either.
You are safe in me. I feel your void, the vacuum at your center. My heart is gravitating toward it, slowly making its way down through my torso. In the void swirl life and death, pecking at each other like baby birds – adorable, yet terribly, wonderfully frightening in their potential.
You are very special, Creature. Something must have brought us together.
So how about a drink?
Do you prefer red wine or white?
Toast (featured by Louffa Press)
Creature,
Here’s to Manhattan – ever-piling human nest of steel, chewing gum, brick, hair, piping and discarded q-tips. Here’s to the Maldives. I wish I had visited you. Here’s to non-sentient life, squirming and blind. Here’s to heaven, where we are right now, and also to hell, the realest place you may have ever been. Here’s to oil-free pelicans and short memories. Here’s to unwashed people. Salud. Here’s to repetition, the defining action of our lives – to breathing and pumping, to clipping, trimming, brushing, picking, washing, hugging, kissing and clicking. Here’s to avoiding the brittleness of preservation mode. Here’s to alien mitochondria, all ten dimensions and massive Guatemalan sinkholes. Here’s to a timely purchase of Sandwich Set A at Narita International Airport. Here’s to the miracle of airplanes in air.
Here’s to the self-delusion of self-sufficiency in the here and now. Here’s to New Zealand. I finally forgive you. Here’s to whittling, masturbation and skyscrapers – to placid ponds, defensive stabbings and performance art. Here’s to reptilians unloved.
But mostly, Creature, here’s to you.
Cheers.
The Fun Never Stops
Oh Yeah, Baby! Oh Baby, Baby! Oh Creature, Baby!
You’re a demented goose, Creature.
You quack on the edge of normalcy.
You make the lemonade oh so sexy like.
You undulate with the slow, churring machine.
There was a thought there but it went away.
There was a thought there but it’s okay.
We’re all the same – distracted space people just barely blessed by your imbalance.
Boom!
In my naps I see nothing. My dreams are blind as a thumb, small as a watch battery. Your footprints appear in the snow – a fool’s path of pure faith, melting and fooling.
But when we slap phooeys, my friend – then it’s like…ma ma ma…MAMS, man! You know? Utter mammon! Udder madness! Then I understand your necessity. Then I get it. Then I wet it with my tongue.
It’s like rock paper scissors then:
A snaggle-toothed porpoise. A yeti. A lashmite. Or how about a joke? Okay. Here’s one. Oh baby! Here goes:
Jesus, Mustafa and Methuselah walk into a bar and…ah…damnit…I forgot the punchline but it has something to do with a dick and a bendy-straw. Yeah. A dick and a bendy-straw. {belch}
A joke, Creature. A monkey-face. A chicken nugget. I’ll laugh at anything right now.
Anything.
Futurist
Hello Creature,
I can see God. She is crying out of happiness and her nipswings are satellites. That makes me happy. Her moans move through headphones. What can it mean?
A collage. A mosaic. A pimple that’s a pixel.
A straw inserted deep into the brain, at first failing to suck up anything substantial then…
Blitz}}}
Nanotech rebuilds the messiah.
Biotech won’t stop the blush.
Infotech equals poor posture.
Neurotech knows nothing even more.
Chindia overlays and makes the world die in the end.
But I am happy, Crying God With Satellites for Nipswings.
I am happy, Pimple.
Thank you.
I am happy, 2020. I will be 44.
I am happy, 2040. I will be 64.
I am happy, 2060. Will I still resemble my photo? Remember my photo? Will we still have to get drunk? Will we still have friends we can hold?
Can we still find heart in a post-reflective paradigm? With our minds in a memory-stick? Purgatory may be now, you know? Unenhanced. Stem cell-less. Fingering immortality. Geometrical swirls that look so tidy but taste like oil.
God help us. We see dollars for deepness. We eat plastic bits.
That can’t be good.
Ahem.
I watch your satellites in the night sky. They make me fiddle with knobs. Press buttons. Scan eyeballs. But thank you anyway for the future, God. And, please, stop crying out of happiness. It’s still contagious in this day and age.
Anyway…
I’ll see you soon, in a while.
Slap me five, future-style.
And forget me not:
Okay. Send file.
(blip)
Fizzle
Creature,
Overheard above the sound of my mind slipping down a hole like a chain:
Red Pilot to Blue Pilot: Lose yourself in the information, Sonny.
Bulldog to Eagle: Since when do cows wear boots?
Locust to Beetle: Sing the song of throaty garbanchium. Latin is dead and so is my friend. I saw her on TV for an hour last night despite desperately trying to tune myself out.
You know, the voice of dread, the path to happiness, the mincemeat monk, the needle of celibacy and the rottening of milky smiles all have one thing in common – they haven’t been optimized in years!
Black out and receive the blessing. In the meantime I pledge to you my undying impatience and lack of resolve. I ask only for a blizzard of stimuli and a tank in which to periodically dunk my desire. This cup may be finished but that precious little sip seemed to last several insects’ lifetimes, didn’t it?
Now, Creature, won’t you please join me in a second helping of back-buzzing, buzz-packing permutation?
Ahh.
Yes.
Pass the pigs.
nnnn.
Hooky
I’m not going to work today, Creature.
You may have noticed someone in my room earlier. You may have noticed what I said to her.
“Hey, you!” I said. “I opened your head. Now take a hike. Leave me alone.”
Do you remember?
I mean, we were funneling, Creature – channeling, passing it on, exploring with a finger. Gravity. Notions. Other mysterious forces.
We had everything, Creature. Serenity. Sobbing joy. Lobotomy. Hamster-wheel head.
There was everything. Spark. Anthill frenzy. Destruction. Rebirth. Keeping it still. Feeling nice.
So, I’m not going to work today. They’ll see me. I’ll talk to them. I’ll pretend to be interested. They’ll see right through me. I’ll say something crazy.
I prefer colors, Creature. You know…hues. Blues. Reds. Flowers. Wavy motions. Extreme violence. Heroism. Bearded damnation. Mindlessness.
Creature, I never should have said goodbye. I never should have dismissed her after drunken moonbeams. Drunken sucking. Yes.
I wrapped around her. That person. I figure-eighted her. I bit her soul. She was up for anything. That seemed great. {sigh}
Do you ever wonder about Realization, Creature?
Do you ever contemplate opulence? Griffins? Cheese?
About how dogs live for uncomfortable silence?
Or the trumpets of madness?
Ah, hell, Creature.
Never mind.
Goodnight.
Atomic
Creature,
Eyes rolling at night, blinking at the stars. Goo goo.
Rationalize to survive, eat to move, love to keep evil at bay.
Percolating, flying at the enemy, warring with whisper, velvet and rhyme.
Everything at our fingertips. Feeling the storm within. Rain falling. Heart beating. Synchronizing. Beating ourselves up. Loving ourselves. Giving. Killing the core. Filling up anew with something delicious.
Thank you.
Fathers. Mothers. Continuity. The flowing of liquid. The replication of matter. Resilience like the raisins in a muffin. Growing fat. Waning. Rising. Shutting down. Whirling. Cutting. Exploding and forever merging. Learning the code. Figuring it out. Translating the bounce of things too small to be seen. It’s in my head, in my brain. Part of me, Creature. Part of us.
See, I’ll love you to extremity. I’ll love you to the plunge, to the end-all. I’ll love you though the blackness, despite the nothingness, without even existence.
You are my darling. My drug. My rug. I lie on you to you and about you. My Creature.
Ha Ha.
Freak
Have you been drinking, Creature?
Fucker.
I know how beautiful your words can be,
but they are only words and my skin is at war,
my heart can’t breathe under itself,
can’t stop hitting, tearing, despairing.
Why, just the other day I felt creamy. You were sleeping, Creature. My life couldn’t budge you. It was good.
You never should have showed me heaven. You never should have given me spoonfuls of god god god.
The shooting joy is gone. The train ride home alone one too many times. The reflection, the grinning wrinkle-man. The skull games the freeze frames and empty jizz sessions as daylight empties itself outside.
They only come out at night, Creature,
They only…
I only come out at night.
I only come out at night.
Creature?
Absence
Are you alive, Creature?
It’s been so long, and things got intense,
But I miss you in triplicate –
My tiny bones atwitter for your tap.
There’s a war now, Creature,
With families on fire, liars,
Spattered flesh and minarets.
Many things are lost between the rivers –
Have you been, too?
Why don’t you visit, Creature?
My head’s a gristleship these days,
Skimming the meaty veld of memory
Just dredging for dollops of you.
And my bed’s a whale, Creature,
Swallowing me whole in the dark and
I miss your gazellic nuzzle nightly,
Leaning lonely against the blubber.
Please come back, Creature.
Please end now, War.
Creature, let me find you in a fossil –
A trilobite perhaps.
Let me fish you in my gar-trap
And gut you with joy.
Or let me go hunting,
And pin you down grunting
And drape you with bunting.
Because you are sublime, Creature,
Like carne asada burritos
From Roberto’s
And I missed you
The other day.
I See You (Hear it live here w/ Robin Coe @ Loopline: Lost & Found Vol. 6!)
I see you, Creature, on the bus, belching against the window.
I see you, wrapped around the sodden moon.
I see you, a black-silver statue – magnifying, reducing, extracting, exacerbating human drama.
There you are, not one of us, mind you, but I see you.
I see you piping though tubes, garbling this, garbling that, flowing onward, seeping into hearts.
I see you, making your case, pontificating, barking at night in the mirror.
I see you, carrying your club, hidden behind your veil like a knock-kneed bride, swigging your flask, directing your limbs in a translucent orgy of light and direction.
In space, underwater, no sound, no sense – you make me believe, Creature. I see you and I never look away.
I want to examine you.
To rewind you till you screech,
To grapple with your eyes,
To unsheathe you,
To feed upon you,
To lick your oyster-like parts.
See, always, through nowhere, you’re walking, you’re talking, you’re: Lolling, frothing, baking, seething, breathing, clinging, loving, extending, expanding, using and lying.
Stripes? Disguises? Whatever.
Me? I wear a nametag. I wear some skin.
You? You’re sneaky. You’re in the rain, in the bushes, laughing it off silently through your hair, forsaking the seasons, bouncing off gravity, smelling like whiskey, escaping through your pores.
I’m onto you.
But I won’t tell.
Because I see us in time.
I see the rush inward, the swirl of our fragments.
I see us in time – drumming, fucking, dreaming and dismembering – with no money, no fame, no past or projection.
I see us in time, Creature: a stalactite, a stalagmite.
I see us in time, in the dark, in the final cave.
I see us in time, half-blinded, untended, unblended –
Zap-zapping the blackness between us.
Lost in a State 