I have been half in love with easeful Death / Call’d him soft names in many a mused rhyme

EPISTLE TO SUZANNE (POSSIBLE LEONARD COHEN REF., CONSIDER) DRAFT 2.1:

"We are all terribly, terribly lonely." Read this and though of how weird it is to be human. How we fire these grappling hooks into nowhere and hope to hook on to something (in this metaphor I guess we're all floating along on parachutes. Poetic, innit?). I'm learning guitar because of a picture I saw of Neil Young.

Day 2. Did you find the present I left in your locker? It's a bootleg recording of Shellac playing covers of Herman's Hermits songs, with Fred Schneider on vocals. I'm sure you noticed that the case is made out of steel and that you need a combination to open it. I'll give you the numbers if you give me yours.. Ha ha.

Day 4. Did you not like the XL Bauhaus shirt I flung at you from across the hall? I thought you could wear it in a kind of 80s throwback sexy shoulders type of thing, or maybe you could wear it to walk around my apartment at night. Or nothing at all >:D. Wait, I don't have blinds, that might be weird.

Day 10. Please stop staring at me while I'm reading Gravity's Rainbow or trying to win me over with your dew drop eyes while I'm mentally toying with a list of the best Werner Herzog movies. It's kind of annoying. Ha ha, just kidding, I'd definitely like to have sex.

Day 30. I'm including a character in my latest short story that's based on you. It's about a young 17yearold who falls in love with a beautiful coquette but is torn between the fulfillment of romantic cliche and a life of spontaneity; a life of artistic pursuit; a life of constant reminders that Death has always his spindly hands wrapped around your neck; is always ready to throw his black cloak over the scene; to cast a shadow--a palpable darkness--over happiness; to take all meaning from flesh; to widen the gap between signifier and signified, to place you in that gap; that gap of no-feeling-no-loving-no-passion-one-way-or-the-other-no-drive-to-even-place-pen-to-paper. Worse than listening to "Idioteque" on repeat.

Love,
Kevin "The Emperor of Ice Cream" Bowen

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MUSIC: best of garage punk (that I've listened to in the past 6 months, mind you)

Compulsive Gamblers - Crystal Gazing Luck Amazing. Thanks to W.B. for the recommendation. This album rules. Full-bodied production with hearty horndog vocals.

Headache City - Headache City. "Tearjerker" was one of my favorite songs of 2008. Seriously sounds almost like something off Marquee Moon.

The Mummies - Tales From the Crypt. You know these guys. Wild and crazy and they dressed like mummies on stage.

The Muslims - The Muslims. "Nightlife" in particular. They also have a 12" or whatever with a cool cover of "Walking with Jesus." Recently changed their name to "the Soft Pack."

Yokohama Hooks - Turn On 7". There are so many bands that do the Yeah Yeah Yeahs thing better than YYY, my mind literally swells 3x its normal size when someone asks me why I don't listen to YYY and I blurt out all of the band names at once, a mystic shibboleth that turns my muscles inside out and that's really why I don't talk about music IRL.

Kim Phuc - Wormwood Star 7". Snarly, guttural. I don't know, I'm out of adjectives.

The Menthols - 848 7". "848" is a great catchy/funny garage song, one of those weird things you'd find on a 2020 Nuggets record and probably be embarrassed about if anybody heard you listening to it, but secretly you chant it in the shower, as if the words were an stopper to plug up the horrible drain of loneliness through which you find yourself falling day in and day out.

The Feeling of Love - Rapeman 7". Ignore the rude-ass title and listen.

Here's The Electric Bunnies - Chewing Gum 7". It also is good.

50. Three Laments (Tallis Scholars, Lamenta, Includes Tallis' Lamentations of Jeremaiah

George's Lament

"Hey, Frank, sup. Nah, it's just a cream cheese sandwich today. I prolly oughta have a salad or something, but all the dressing makes my stomach go funny. D'jou see who got fucking employee of the week? Yeah, that fuck. I think that fuck has a fucking wire loose. I mean, I was here fucking naming mass e-mails when that little cocksqueezer was first finding out about frottage. Kid comes in and he's all "anal vore" this and "cock vore" that. You see what he got employee of the week for? "dragon fruit scat anthro unbirth." That's not porn, Frank, that, that's, that's... that's fuckin' word salad is what that is. The fuckin biz, man, used to be you had to be about mutual body pleasure and frank exchanges of sexual desires. Now it's like fuckin' Pete the magic
dragon goes to Fire Island. I don't know, Frank. I just do NOT know.

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Harold-san's Lament

Here's something I don't understand: why would Nipponese women want to look like western women? Consider the Nipponese eye: almond-shaped, hooded. So much more to it! The eye seems coy, it seems to want to hide. The western eye lays it all out there. It's so vulgar. The window to the western soul is like a shopfront, everything on display, screaming 'buy me! buy me!' The Nipponese eye... steady on, man. I don't know why I was born in America. There must be some sort of mistake. Wind from the East, take me home, take me to my real home!

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Laurie's Lament

I'm not going to eat today. I said that yesterday and I ate. I have to put that behind me. If I'm going to feel good about myself then I am not going to eat today. Today is what I have, and that's all I'm going to have, that and sixteen glasses of water. I've had eight so far, so that leaves sixteen. Why did I eat yesterday? I saw that cauliflower and it looked so good. I was weak. I ate it. Then I felt myself digesting it all day. I could feel all that acid in me, turning it into fat and what it didn't turn into fat it turned into shit. I swear I'm going to be sick. I want to digest myself until I am perfect. I can be the fire that feeds itself. And that's all I'm going to eat today. I ate yesterday, and that is all I'm going to eat today.