Works of Outsider Fiction By John Sullivan

John Sullivan received the "Jack Kerouac Literary Prize," "Writers Voice: New Voices of the West" award, AZ Arts fellowships, Artists Studio Center fellowship, WESTAF fellowship, was a featured playwright at Denver's Summer Play (Changing Scene Theatre), and an Eco-Arts Performance fellowship from EMOS / University of Oregon. He was Artistic/Producing Director of Theater Degree Zero (Tucson / Bisbee AZ), and directed with the Augusto Boal / Theatre of the Oppressed focused applied theatre wing at Seattle Public Theater. For the past decade, he has used Theatre of the Oppressed with communities to promote dialogue on cumulative risk / environmental justice issues in collaboration with NIEHS environmental health scientists.

Dragontooth Children Blues

    “Are you radioactive, pal?

     Pal, radioactive.”

             John Berryman (51st Dreamsong)

Dragontooth Children

Cold sheet     we all

Rub together

For the heat   (not the ions)

no shoe, new shoe, empty   (not bereft)

prowl the street     mutter back

and growl, again, we do    (not grudge, not taunt)

and we mutter

you do right, my man

you do right

don’t be bitter or you

hurt your own soul bad

don’t be bitter

for your own soul’s sake

just be bluesed            (Good God, my boogie suit

                           “just busted into flame”)

and be bluesed             (my shoes, the very same,

                           catch on fire, just go out

                           dancin’)

be thou bluesed   like old

shoes scuffle up   outside the perimeter

klic-klic echo   pass you by this street   

of unstrung soldiers   leaking conjures

tired curses, questions   always   

more bloody questions   

like why now   why this low-down moon

rubs me so ugly

like why now   why this wind, this hawk

thing calling: Mrs. Bones

cross my face  

and twist   like new snow

make a hiss   like a stone up top

a sky down below

calling: Mrs. Bones

Mrs. Bones     calling

off frozen prairie

and I shiver    (like a reflex   but far away from it)

and I listen    (ear to earth   down eons of isms)

and I shiver    (as all flesh shall, in the end,

                crawl down)  

and I listen    (for the arco   on the downlow)

and I shiver, and …

there’s blood on the wheat chaff

hard moonlight leaves its   own special scar

like “soul-flight to the gone sun”

there’s blood on the wheat chaff

black fallow loam   don't look   

don’t walk out there

til the moon’s gone down

But hey, grow my own mouth

wide open   like a movie star

Dragontooth Children all hatch

when the weather goes bad

Dragontooth Children all hatch

and march together

all together   tight        (like Busby Berkeley,

                            not so much)

in a jagged circle   tight  (more and more like Leni

                            Riefenstahl’s deco-thug

                            chorea)

in a straight line   locked, all together   

tight     all together:

we

can’t kick that rhythm

til sun don't hiss like snow no more

then goodbye, goodbye, Mrs. Bones,

goodbye

then goodbye rumor, too

taste it in the air

in the moonlight     in the dust

I do

around my skin I draw

an Ellipse of Uncertainty

and squeeze some further ichor

pure blood at the vuln    (or just a flood of profane

                          lightnin’, maybe)

from Soren’s retro “Either / Or” tattoo

staying on     right here

I will, between steel

and its own shadow

some say: it’s a good place to visit,

but to hide?   (or just fake it?)

I don’t know?

Dragontooth Children     ain’t no lack

of Dragontooth Children

come a scuffle up   we

search a sky for the good fight

and a glow

and we bring bad weather with us

and our mother is bad weather

    and we sing loud to our mother

Edsels and Deloreans of the Gods

         I slouch toward holy Youngstown flat out, shaking down my ’69 LeMans full of spit, sloppy rings and it’s own kind of lust. Pulling on my quart of SunLand Gin, shaking that way too, I tune my radio to this griot lady growling scratchy, spookhouse blues behind a harp and poke my tongue out the window just for remembrance – for that last taste of steam, particulate and acid in the used up, but still flammable, factory air.  O Youngstown, I remember you, owned by Westinghouse, US Steel, in thrall to Sheet & Tube, your pale sun spinning, blind and hollow, in a brown sky like the palms of Pluto, yeah, like Egon Schiele out of Goya gassed up and gone on something skank and eternal.

Long time, long time Youngstown, you cut a swathe through my dreamtime, flapping your wings like a black shroud at a new Tong Funeral.

That’s how I remember, but too-bad-now because the Steel Goddess lost her shine, shut down, got stiff and creaky, and the air now tastes all government approved.  No burnt shards of recap, no junkers of the fracked and dead spread out along the highway, just civic skin and soft light, all things pleasant, total too, and downtown near the formal zone of silence I meet this hologram of Allan Watts, shaking like an Ariel with no wings in the wind. Like me, so we shake it down together for a while and wait on slow bolts from Jesus, shaking, smiling, I say: Mr. Allan Watts, whatever incarnation are you working on today?  And he beams back at me, his smile transects the dead orbits of industry and need spinning hollow over Youngstown like eldritch crows at work upon a dead knight’s corpse.

In ’68 I saw Allan on this PBS show and his head glowed through his tonsure like the bone beneath.  Even then he beamed throughout the stratosphere and drew a tree of chakras on a screen behind my eyes, and his mouth moved as his hand moved, and he said while he drew: “Love is multipolar, a warm valence, a wave that washes over, and renews …” on and on, as sullen Youngstown sweated for the promise of an early absolution.  I’d sleep then, nestled in my ignorance, and dream upon the shiny dome of Allan – like an ice moon, like the blank swollen eyeball of a punchy swollen monkey – until my own dream became the bone beneath his tonsure, became, itself, that shiny dome, became … became … until my eyes snapped open and my own mouth moved: but O the price, my own mouth sang that groove, the one price always got’s to rise, especially when you need the merchandise that bad …

… and now the polished air of Youngstown’s fallen deep into grace.  Far from flare and smoky contrail, far from blaze and orange breath of the Bessemer ovens, the new sun over Youngstown floats, all domestic now, newly bald, why wouldn’t it be loverly, and this hologram of Allan Watts chants steady into my face:  “ … the problem is embodied liberation, the problem is embodied liberation, the problem is …” like I’m steady nudging on his needle, or he’s got this glitch in his cante hondo circuits,

and wanders through the dead heart of Youngstown stuck in a recursion loop.  It’s plain to me that now: the plain folks got some downtime during graveyard shift, and breathe good, too, like Kundalini zombies, but now, they also got no pockets, can’t dance, won't walk, don’t much sharpen their hobnails on the old familiar skullsongs.  All the gears and jacks and levers of ancient Youngstown stalagmatize and rust, and this hologram of Allan Watts beams its futile dream, and chants into my face: “the problem is …”

… my gin’s all gone, and the bottle slurs its dry tongue of dust back me, jeering nya-nya-nya, etc.  “Still got the try, old machine, or what?”

I Don’t Want to Die in Babylon Missing You, H.D.

Almost closing time.

This old school bar sweats blue haze, nods away.

Lady Jett of blue-eyed black-haired bleak horizons rolls

her wide load hips and moans.

One last song whines

through scratchy speakers: hey

it’s one of Mama Thornton’s, treacherous

and needy. Say, I drag that ball and chain

for real, H.D.

Some dead crazy white girl belts that

tune open, like an artery, sinks a big claw into each note

so it bleeds, it bleeds, and it peels

me back like an onion full of love.

But it’s not the great love that

you promised would “slash through thought

and bring back power to the world.”

Hey, I’ll try anything to make me different.

While my hands unfurl and blow past

my eyes, I breathe in and out on the QT, still

waiting for this lightning

you promised.  Well, where is it?

They’re playing our song, but no thanks to you.

I can hardly hear it above the color

and the commentary.  There’s another damn

hockey game on television, and that ain’t no big thing.

That’s only profane blood, spilled, undistilled,

to feed the profane souls of all us prolies.

That ain’t nothing like our love.

Hey there, Mr. Bartender, glowering inside your

little nook of grog and unreason where

Our Lady of Perpetual Unraveling just left you

two tears for a tip. Switch off the stupid TV.

Punch it out, maybe.  Jam your foot through

that nervous plasma and release

the harpies gnawing holes in your chest

if it makes you feel redeemed.

But listen, my man, just listen

with true-after-midnight ears.

Listen to that dead girl wail

the only song we’ll ever hear her sing.

For real. H.D., you’ve got to trust my love.

I don't want to die in Babylon hooked up to a tube.

If you were right here, right now, we’d shine

big time.  We’d go down slow, locked together

for the “power” and our love of Li Po.

And again, for your neck’s soft kerf we’d do it,

and your eyes, glazed over like my own, and green

inside the surf.  Pound me open

with some clean pain, H.D.

I know you, and you know how I like it.

Hammer me, big mama, once

again, once again.

The Dynamite Confession of Eraser Grunt

O-you-Dynamite.  Now

I worship

You, only, Dynamite.

Dynamite is my uber-pulse.

Naked jive juice

At the synapse.

Take, for example,

The astrolabe of Zam Buk Alleya.

Or the feral medicine

Of celebrity zoom.

All prior artifacts

Dial down

The glow-lip of Dynamite.

Observe closely.

An entire Fairyland of Mighty Mouse.

Bad cat hat wearing

Lance in hand

Slaves, all,

To da’ push

Of da’ Dynamite.

The strategy of Dynamite is clear,

And insurgent: first, attach

Dynamite to the anterior sorb.

Next, force apart the lips

Of Jallaludin,

Immortal star dozer

Grey lid, next

Flutter wind through a catfish

Backwards,

Spread your cheeks

Next, and squat.

A squeak of beak

And bone booms;

O-you-Dynamite.

Behold:

In a dumpster:

Here’s a pair of hands

With fingers

Fresh out of history,

That still snap

And frizzle on the sly.

The wait’s just too bare,

Buster!

Perched upon a plunger

Designated: Do It!

Whether or not you owe

Yourself, or just imagine.

Crank down on that dynamite.

Of course.

There’s always another dumpster.

2 legs no feet – where-

O-where’s the rest?

Even on the last beach

These sick gems

Jut above the sand

Of Malibu Royale

And bleed

Dynamite.

Like legs,

Like these legs

Really bother people.

Says the brain,

The suit of serge extortion

Drag, the Dynamite

Cigar. So, here

Is an offer,

In fact, an epic:

Our killer

Bunny

Speaks from downtown

Sunny Burbank: find

One magic

Hand,

Get a free

Photo

Arm

Around the Dynamite.

Says the brain

The suit of famous

Grooties: what you

Handle in a dumpster

Is spoiled

Protein – mutable

Last stand of the Phosphene

Cascade Kommandos.

It is not

A Deuteronomy of Dynamite.

Says the brain

Zooted, cush

In armor that proceeds

A hip tic,

A famous boot n’ ear

Weapon,

Half-mast

In a thick red jelly.

When you witness

Dynamite,

It is not

A star of terragon

And apples.

It is not a star

Of nannies in Japan.

It is not

An accident,

Either, as

Doctor Brown-Eye Handsome

Dynamite

Installs a ray

For real calibration.

Now each cell

Bears the signature

Of Dynamite.

Becomes

A child

Of frost

Whose fingers

Drum

And worship

The drool of dynamite.

O Dynamite,

You freak encounter of Akropolis

And la-la.

You Constant Prince,

You martyrized elixir.

You bird

Of murk

And barb.

I, Eraser Grunt,

Of mind and sound

And pyre to the stars,

O Dynamite,

Do hereby bend

And kiss

Your furry bum.