Excerpts from:
THE SECRET TOME
of The Oracle
of The Unseen Hand
of The Marketplace
MEL C. THOMPSON
(The Premier Victim
Of Post-Suburban
Traumatic Stress Disorder)
CHAPTER TWO
The Imaginary Senator From California
Copyright © 2008 Mel C. Thompson
The following are limited selections from Chapter Two.
Contact the author for free PDFs and/or free chapbooks of full text.
Excerpt # 19:
Notes from Aaron Brothers Art Mart
I’ve painted myself into a corner.
We have confined ourselves to a canvass.
Sadly, we are all bad painters.
The countryside couldn't be uglier.
I worship our national ugliness
On an altar of beer cans and footballs.
My very act of typing was once
Considered an act of treason against
My hard, hard Orange County gender.
Millionaires have their own ghettos.
Even Phil Spector could be your killer.
Different gangs have different styles.
But back to this artsy little business
Of slapping some color down on anything:
Canvas, wood, cardboard, paper, currency.
Yes, I will devote myself to counterfeiting,
But in concert with any government still
Willing to print money and call it real.
I hear you’re still hung up on “the truth.”
Wow, you know, that’s a hard disability
In today’s competitive survival market.
You know, I got over that whole thing
In a quick one-week seminar. Honestly,
They can turn you into a liar who really
Loves himself. You’ve got to master
The fine art of rationalizing. Write a check
Or two to charities and call it all a wash.
Pleasant Hill, 11-6-2007.
Excerpt # 16:
Notes from The Case of The Unlocked Building
Your genetic weaknesses are tantamount
To a kind of treason against all honest
People who have devoted themselves
To sacred self-doubt and holy self-loathing.
Your distracted incompetence amounts to
A kind of violent crime against all of us
Who are also sick and weak, but agree to
Kill ourselves for things we hate, in order to
Prove we are thereby people of deep integrity.
We cannot proffer our hard-earned dollars,
Dollars we destroyed our own souls to steal,
To watch people lounge about in wheelchairs.
How dare they sit there, devoting their minds
To something other than our selfless suffering?
I don’t want to hear about World Literature.
I don’t want to hear about enlightened
Governance, nor the so-called “people.”
I hate “the people” because I hate myself.
To have mercy on the lonely, ugly populace
Would be to finally forgive myself for
The blasphemy of being human after all.
I am not human. Humanity itself irritates
Every nerve in my body. And if I had mercy
On myself, then I would have to forgive you.
It’s not that your offenses were really so great,
But I’ve invested so many decades despising you
That I would be nothing now if I started to love.
Pleasant Hill, 11-1-2007.
Excerpt # 18:
Notes from The Dry Cleaner’s Nightmare
We need your help urgently.
We want to transfer this burden
Of chaos to your gullible shoulders.
We count on your self-loathing
To build our brand of servitude.
Don’t think of it as slavery.
This place is crowded, stinky and dark.
You’ll have to help us rationalize.
Our personnel director’s exhausted.
Our pandemonium is charming.
Consider yourself fortunate.
We won’t destroy just any soul.
You’ve got to really want it.
We’re looking for rabid hunger
Beneath your youthful, dying eyes.
The air is hot and heavy.
We’re lost in an ocean of suits.
Keep the boilers on high.
The work-ethic is my suicide.
Please have mercy and fire me.
I can see the hospital gates from here.
The diagnosis will be complex.
Thorazine will do in a pinch.
Can we pass this on to social workers?
The global economy swallows me.
The Information Age is a graveyard.
I swear to God I am not alienated.
Pleasant Hill, 6-17-2007.
Excerpt # 20:
Notes from The Answering Service Tragedy
I’ve known a lot of sexists.
I’ve known a lot or racists.
I’ve known a lot of homophobics.
Most of them were working stiffs.
Most of them were sexually repressed.
They taught me how to shoot guns.
I was a well-armed liberal.
I believed in Law-and-Order Socialism.
It was all peace and love till you crossed me.
That was only fifteen years after LBJ.
Redneck Liberalism still had solid roots.
We knew how to pass legislation.
Promotions popped up like fungus.
Cars were big and had lots of metal.
We drove our gals to church
And made out in the parking lot
While the hot Santa Ana winds
Fanned the fires of Satan’s lust.
Our contradictions were pre-lingual.
We claimed to hate hypocrisy
While swimming in a red sea of it.
I was a trailblazer for men’s rights.
No one gave a shit about men’s rights,
So I retreated into a cocoon of self-pity.
I became the dial of a rotary phone,
Forever the exception to the menu.
I’m still holding for an operator.
Pleasant Hill, 6-21-2007.
Excerpt # 21:
Notes from Christian Cassette Repairman
They are hardwiring our subconscious.
A gospel radio station is implanted
In my brain tissue. It’s bioelectronic.
Bigotry can be transmitted to the id
Where no liberal thought can survive.
We’ll tell you you’re open minded.
It’s all about having a muscle car
And the muscles to prove your point.
We can always shout you into silence.
The Lord pays minimum wage,
And Jesus is opposed to your union.
Christ is in love with weaponry.
Show us your Christian gun collection.
Can you picture Saint Paul right now
As a wealthy, perky defense contractor?
Your depression can never be cured
But we can engineer it profitably.
Come take Saint Peter’s Depakote.
The Truth cannot set you free at all.
It can only compound your debts.
Watch out for the next big merger.
All the world’s monotheisms are set
To combine their infallibility soon.
Convert in advance while there’s time.
The contracts all go to the believers.
The subcontractors are all slave ships.
Keep that Buddha on the down-low.
Pleasant Hill, 7-2-2007.
Excerpt # 23:
Notes from Christian Song Leader
Faith is the hope of things the eye sees not.
Hope is the vanity of that heroin horse kick.
Vanity, you sweet, sexy thing, I love you.
I’m singing to get out of my own skin.
I’m singing to that drug in my veins
Pouring out of every pore of my face.
Dominique, if you can hear across this,
Our continent of white American loneliness,
I will shout my little gospel song to you.
Jesus is just one head of a three-headed God
Who bears us in hard-labored child birth,
Loves us like a mama with a shotgun heart
And then fries us up like Shiva do before
He fires off that Lingam seed that starts
The heavy, hot, game of life and death,
All over again. Oh mercy me, I think I’m
Overloading those Crown Chakra circuits
With too many megabytes of poetic data.
Ten thousand miles of shoreline rip past my
Mind’s eye and crowd my gray matter with
The filth and froth of the five hundred cities
I’ve walked every street of till a closet full
Of every kind of shoe lay worn to the sole,
As I am worn now to the soul. “Nearer
My God to Thee,” may I walk my hippie
Way, a path that sometimes excludes You.
My Love, My Love, I was never quite true.
Pleasant Hill, 11-10-2007.
Excerpt # 25:
Notes from Rise And Fall of A Youth Minister
I was the Karl Rove of spiritual brainwashing.
Soon the message was the organization
And the organization was the machine.
The machine kept running long after
The Spirit had wisely fled for higher ground.
First we saved souls, then we raised money,
And soon it was time to print policy papers.
I knew the right time to sneak out the back
Door and flee with my decaying Bible.
First there’s a heart palpitation, then a tingle
Up the spine and into that addict’s playground
Where it shimmers and rushes and swirls.
Then the cosmic bookkeepers come to clean
House and find out who’s in charge and
Who they swear their allegiance to. But I
Had no commitment to anything beyond
Expanding the skull’s capacity to tune in
To that Trinitarian dope hit. Seek ye
First The Kingdom of God, then all these
Stocks and bonds will be added unto . . .
Somewhere we lost the rhythm and the
Pianist and the organist walked out,
Not seeing the art in the geopolitical
Map. Stairway to Heaven was a good
Transition to Stairway to Mushrooms,
And Stairway to Guru, and Stairway to
Every Voodoo slot machine in Jesus Vegas.
Pleasant Hill, 11-14-2007.