okkoto

if you liked the movie fight club i highly recommend the book, as well as chuck's other novels (survivor(nothing to do with the shitty tv show!!), invisible monsters, choke, and lullaby). the book is different, sorta more in depth, different ending too. my favorite part of the book is that tyler's vision is alot longer. i pitted soome of my own words against the word's from the book in the following poem. all words in italics are chuck's words. i met chuck once and gave him the poem and he called me plagurist. i think he was joking but he never got back to me to let me know what he thoght. i suppose he's a busy man.


Carrion and Ash (Tyler's Poem)

"Imagine yourself..."- Chuck Palahniuk


I.

The sun used to be a god.
Now it causes cancer.
And we put up umbrellas
And smooth on lotions.

The moon used to be a goddess
And soon we will colonize her.
Raping her pristine whiteness.
Invading her virginity with space stations
And eventually theme parks and shopping malls.

The sky used to be a limit.
Now our buildings scrape her.
And she bleeds and cries.

Imagine yourself stalking elk
Through the damp canyon forests
That surround the ruins of Rockefeller Center.


II.

Business men who get their hair cut before
twice a month
And moms who want their children
To be little adults
Clutter and suffocate
Shopping malls.

Imagine yourself wearing leather clothes
That will last the rest of your life

People behind a desk decide
Which methods of self destruction and escape
Are acceptable.
Police officers are drinking beer and masturbating
After a hard day of eradicating the female hemp population.
The E! channel decides what will make people happy.

Imagine yourself planting radishes
And seed potatoes
On the 15th hole of some forgotten
Golf course.

And the kid who
just pumped your gas
just mowed your yard
just served you your food
Is eating peyote buttons
In his piss-hole apartment.
And he imagines himself
As free floating energy
Trapped in a skeletal prison.
Doomed to die again and again
Only to root himself back down
In Earth's soil.

We'll paint the skyscrapers
With totem faces
And goblin tikis.


III.

A rusting spiral
Plummeting deeper into
Humid darkness.

"One great big festering neon distraction"


IV.


The wolves and the jackal will
Reclaim their lands.
Their lupine eyes glowing like embers and ash.
They will trot amongst the
Burnt dwellings.
Their tongues hanging and that
Slight wicked smile
Will crack up the sides of their mouths.
Coyote and foxes,
Wolves and jackal,
Crows and condor,
Reveling
In the carrion and ash.

Imagine yourself climbing
The wrist thick kudzu vines
That wrap the Sears Tower.
You'll climb through the dripping forest canopy,
Jack and the Beanstalk,
The air will be so clean
That when you look down
You'll see tiny figures pounding corn
And laying strips of venison to dry
In the empty car pool lanes
Of some abandoned superhighway;
Eight lanes wide and August-hot


-okkoto

comments more than welcome

__________________
Witness

I want to tell what the forests
were like

I will have to speak
in a forgotten language

- W. S. Merwin