I roll over after sex and give the guy my back.
\nHe knows it’s time to leave and puts on his clothes
\nAs the sunlight streams in. When he walks out the door,<\/p>\n
I wonder if he’s filled with self-hatred, maybe a sudden desire
\nTo punch the first person he sees. If the one-night stand is any good,
\nIt’s as if you’re carving insecure hieroglyphics into the person’s mind.<\/p>\n
He or she will never be able to decipher what it means or what you mean.
\nOh well \u2013 I get out of bed, light up a smoke, and begin to dust off the day.
\nLast night marked one of the worst nights of violence between blood and fingernails.<\/p>\n
When the Ferguson Grand Jury made its decision,
\nI was sitting at a dyke bar and nursing a drink.
\nI just wanted a nice glass of wine<\/p>\n
And now it feels like I’m hung-over on the blood of children,
\nSwaying through my apartment like strange and dangerous hydrocarbon.
\nI guess we gorge on genetics when we feel scared or sad.<\/p>\n
The sad thing is, no one cares anymore.<\/p>\n
The scene was an image of lifelessness:
\nMillions of Americans wearing bulletproof armor and launching satellites into Missouri.
\nA group of high-tech tycoons mining our asteroid anxieties for resources.<\/p>\n
They’ll do whatever it takes, anything to make you sweat,
\nLike cross-dressing your eyes so you’re confused at what you see \u2013
\nAnother strain of paranoia contagion characterized by paradigm shifts.<\/p>\n
When Michael Brown was shot dead, causing 3 million gallons of crude oil
\nTo pour into the nation’s bloodstream, I was busy digging around the basement
\nLooking for the Ramen noodles I had buried years ago<\/p>\n
For a time like this, when there’s a whiff of apocalypse in the air,
\nWhen debt levels are soaring, when the year is on track to be the hottest on record,
\nWhen thousands of small space rocks are fisting earth’s atmosphere,<\/p>\n
When anarchic ice loss has tripled, when drag queens seek refuge
\nOn the northern shores of Alaska. These kids are inheriting
\nA deeply troubled planet, unable to express identity in the landscape.<\/p>\n
Look, I’m more than just a queen in foot long eyelashes.
\nI’m afraid of getting lonely or angry like sea ice or tundra.
\nI’m prepared to never leave the house,<\/p>\n
To embrace a lifetime of always missing out. I might as well let the agoraphobia bloom
\nLike a ghost orchid. Each ghost orchid can bloom one to ten flowers
\nThat open one at a time. Depression works the same way. <\/p>\n
It sets off a domino effect that only leads downhill.
\nOh well \u2013 we all bloom into ghosts one way or another. Empires too.
\nSo let’s party until we come up with a conspiracy theory worthy of a tinfoil hat,<\/p>\n
A tale of genocide that’ll chill you to the bone,
\nA tale of carnivorous teardrop fossils trapped in American amber.
\nMight as well get more oxygen in preparation for combat,<\/p>\n
But don’t let the douchebags get you. I’m no different than what’s going on.
\nAmerica’s a cross-dresser too. A corpse that puts on a dress of heartbeats.
\nHow it prances around as if it’s living and breathing, but we all know the truth.<\/p>\n
How to Help Your Sun Feel More Comfortable about Its Sexuality<\/strong><\/p>\n Somewhere in space, there are tiny worlds This sun has dreams for the future, of leaving the fear behind Weirder than America, weirder than the illusion we have here on earth, Like taking huge hits of antimatter and having cosmicdelic visions \u2013 And singing like assholes. Or like having one-night stands with tipsy black holes When gravity becomes ordinary again, when space-time ripples begin to unripple, Moment of interest before boredom sets it. Suns need to experiment too, Useless hearts handcuffed to fate, unable to explore even the tiniest puddle So much that you stay home all day making voodoo dolls out of dark matter Because stabbing a voodoo doll is so satisfying, because constructive anger After all, it’s tough to keep your eyes clean after 5 thousand million years To get out of the vacuous deathbed and start a brand new day. No one wants to lie That our sun is a star that lived its young life to the fullest, that its arms Wondering what death’s like and downing 40s of love. I hope that our sun Playing Goldeneye on N64 and watching friends evolve into enemies<\/p>\n Before deciding it’s finally time to leave the rustiest corner of the galaxy<\/p>\n And figure out its identity. I hope it windmilled its self-loathing energy Because sometimes when I stare at it, I see an old man wearing crusted pajamas Where he put things, wondering if all star-crossed lovers are sleepwalking Some Advice for Victims of Necrophiliacs<\/strong><\/p>\n In the middle of nowhere, the moon screams past Katherine and I To tell us how to move, to tell us how to feel. From the penguin and shark orchestras Making things worse encourages us to do nothing. Or so we thought. First time Like some silken spider. Then the inevitable verbiage: you don’t look at me, And had their way with it. See, it’s not me; it’s you. Once the revelation sunk its teeth in, Of flesh find themselves surrounded by conniving necrophiliacs. It’s all so simple! And Are constantly cannibalizing the sexual conquests of the past, always reminiscing Of another, that this is love, and hope that two negatives make a positive, that because Big mouth to spit out solemn songs, when it uncorks its tentacles from up out of the abyss ABOUT THE AUTHOR<\/strong>
\nSwarming around an adolescent version of our own sun.<\/p>\n
\nAnd taking to the open road, because the universe is a weird place,<\/p>\n
\nAnd that weirdness should be explored. Suns need to experiment too,<\/p>\n
\nLittle stop motion angels fluttering from planet to planet, chasing after God<\/p>\n
\nAnd sneaking out of their parents’ Cape Cod cottages in the early morning,<\/p>\n
\nBecause quite frankly, suns are horribly bored, and newness gives them a brief<\/p>\n
\nFalling in and out of love, possessing hearts that look like hospice submarines,<\/p>\n
\nOf feeling. Suns need to know what it’s like to be cold, what it’s like to hate someone<\/p>\n
\nHoping that with each pinprick the person’s entire multiverse unravels a little bit,<\/p>\n
\nHelps us change ourselves, helps to change the way we see the bigger picture.<\/p>\n
\nAnd many of the stars we see at night have already died. It just takes them a while<\/p>\n
\nOn their deathbed and think about a lifetime of regret. I hope, no I pray,<\/p>\n
\nAre sleeved in hormonal hesitation marks, that it spent its formative years <\/p>\n
\nDidn’t waste away its youth while sequestered in a wet basement <\/p>\n
\nInto something slightly positive, into exploring the loveliest places in the universe, <\/p>\n
\nSleepwalking through the halls of an assisted living facility and wondering <\/p>\n
\nThrough a wasteland looking for his light. It feels nice to be wanted like that. <\/p>\n
\nAnd suddenly our clothes are off and we’re making out like two lava stones.
\nThis is how we get our sentimental fetish on: by getting drunk on the outskirts
\nOf empire and waiting for awkward music to sweep into our ears,<\/p>\n
\nOf Myrtle Beach to a country music jamboree, we do it all \u2013 just so long as it turns
\nOur bones into bumper cars. We’re very anxious to get from one place to another,
\nTo crash ourselves into anything, because we’re deficient in design. The fear of <\/p>\n
\nI met Katherine, I was attending a support group for victims of necrophiliacs. I was
\nLooking for more people like me: dead inside with dried-up guts, not ever in the mood,
\nBut always pheromoning enough that I’d always find myself crawling across strange skin<\/p>\n
\nIt’s like you’re not even there, with so little blood flow I’m surprised you could even
\nGet it up\u2026I never thought of the alternative: that these intercourse inebriates somehow
\nCracked open the casket of conversation and dragged out my corpse, threw it on the bed<\/p>\n
\nI realized that all of America is equatored head to toe in division: black & white, rich &
\nPoor, medicated & unmedicated, corpses & living beings. Occupy this, occupy that, but
\nThe strange blood flow is where the addiction sticks, where the desperate blowup dolls<\/p>\n
\nThat’s why I went to the support group where I met Katherine. The doctor told us all
\nThat the trick to making it in America is finding and redefining intimacy, what it means,
\nThat this is just one pitfall of living in a declining empire where the talking heads of state<\/p>\n
\nAbout the glory days, how their words drip venom and shove necrophiliacs into the
\nWombs of its women and boogeymen into the balls of its men. It’s all so simple!
\nThat the trick to making it in America is to handcuff your dead eyes to the dead eyes<\/p>\n
\nEmpty space has more energy than everything in the universe, we should apply this logic
\nTo the wonton wormholes beating inside our chests. That we should carve a kissing home
\nOut of nowhere & wait for unparalysis to set in, when all of ghostly America opens up its <\/p>\n
\nTo suction cup the neurosis through our holes \u2013 only then might we feel a little less dead. Play our cards right & we might even evolve into cardiopulmonary gamma ray bursts,
\nHomosapien explosions that release more love energy than anything in recorded <\/p>\n![\"Justin](\"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/Justin-Karcher.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n
\nJustin Karcher<\/strong> lives in Buffalo, NY. His recent works have appeared in The Rain, Party, & Disaster Society, Fuck Fiction, The Sirens Call, Melancholy Hyperbole, Crab Fat Literary Magazine, Mixtape Methodology<\/em>, and Maudlin House<\/em>. You can find him on Twitter (@justin_karcher<\/a>).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"