Tyler Fugazzie

screenwatching is swatching away our emotions 

static imaginations 

i’ve counseled the separating galaxies
and they tell me dark matter is the dull personality separation from 

the clay to the foghorns 

“It’s called Brutal Death By 16 Million Pepper Daggers and it’s our least popular item.” 

“I’ve had Jack-o-Lantern Apocalypse, Red Pepper Police Pursuit, Devil Tailwhip, Gangrene Tongue, Joe’s Hot Torture, The 13 Million Firecracker, The 14 Million Firecracker, Habanera Haymaker, Tastebuddies, and Magma Bloodflow; I can handle Brutal Death.”

“Coming right up.”

Jonas wiped his mouth. The waitress stopped breathing.

“Sir, you’re not supposed to drink the whole bottle! Somebody call 911.” 

“Nobody’s calling 911!” yelled a burly Italian man covered in stolen gold watches and heavy gold rings. He grabbed Jonas by the collar, “No FDA is coming here. No ambulances is coming here,” he turned toward the waitress, “get him a glass of milk.”

Jonas’s wife frantically searched the web with her phone. First she looked up if someone can die from drinking hot sauce. Then she read an article about an aspiring chef who met an untimely demise because of a hot sauce drinking contest with his friend. Then she looked up if it’s illegal for a restaurant to refuse to bring in medical attention for a diner in danger. Then she looked up who actually regulates restaurants. It is the FDA. 

The waitress returned, glass of milk in hand, and Jonas looked like he was working up the courage to call a long lost lover who used to routinely abuse him. Millions of neurotoxins were attacking his constricted tongue and feeding him hallucinations. 

He opened his mouth to ask for help but instead incinerated the waitress with a stream of fire. Patrons screamed, shoved, and raced towards the exits. Jonas glanced at his wife and incinerated her. She was looking up other restaurants in the area.

The owner managed to escape along with the hostess. She called 911. The burning restaurant  was mesmerizing. It attracted dozens of onlookers. The owner noted how much more business they would’ve done if he had lit the building on fire sooner.   

“What seems to be the problem?” Huh. This startled the owner out of his fantasy planning.
“The problem? The building’s on fire you moron.”
“Old firefighter’s joke. We’re on it.” The firefighter summoned his team, and they ran into the building. 

Jonas, roaming around unscarred like the mother of dragons, signed a receipt using the name of his third grade history teacher. He walked into the kitchen and dumped his head in the sink. He lit the water ablaze. 

The firefighters were clueless. The fire was too spicy. Water wasn’t doing anything. They retreated back into the parking lot for a quick meeting. They called their chief. Their chief gave them an idea. 

“Do they still exist?”
“Sure they do. I’ll send one over right away.” 

A white truck arrived looking like an ice cream truck minus the addictive jingle and candy-colored signs. A totally plain ice cream truck. Out walked a man wearing all white. He adjusted his white cap, donning a dutiful expression. He raced to the back of his truck to grab a hose. He opened the hose and milk gushed out. As the Scoville fires cleared, the onlookers cheered. Jonas was found lying against the wall of the kitchen, head bobbing around in circles, drooling. 

The owner was fuming. A man tapped him on the shoulder. His khakis and Clarks screamed FDA. He wrote something on a piece of ticket paper, ripped it off, and handed it to the owner. 

“So this is it for Gino’s Spicy Shack?”
“No. You need to get a fire extinguisher.” The FDA agent adjused his glasses, returned to his vehicle, and drove away from the smolder. 

body awake – mind ticking
wear tear – walk talk
energy burned – reserves working
sermons served – pace slowing
man woman – last standing

desire dyed with twice-stomped-on matches and rocky-cadence roads
we’re the sons and daughters of ultramarathon runners
and cactuses are too cucumbersome to care for outside
the desert

listen to your favorite song for the rest of your life
and you will strangle yourself with the first gifted excuse

sleep tonight – sleep tomorrow

there are endurance caverns underneath my eyes
not worth exploring nor hoarding ferried treasures

faded light – staggering night
binge eating – hunger strike

writers like to do this thing where they’re like

“as i’m writing this, i sit on a laptop by a pool, by a living room with a bearskin rug and a broken chandelier…”

they like to act astonished at the state of the moment

“wow i’m using this machine to connect to other machines to connect to humans, with invisible waves, radio waves, the same ones orson welles used to terrorate and alienize listeners”

—

the best state of the moment in recent memory came courtesy of famed endurance artist and metamodern provocateur shy labuff

shy is a child star turned transformer turned artist who chromecasted his life for all of us to see except it wasn’t a regular part of life it was him spending three days of his life sitting in a movie theater watching himself act in movies 

wow we watch famous manboy in movie watch self this was so make me think self, audience, watch, act, reflection, fame, celebrity, subject, artist, reaction, statement, narrative, perspective, technology, humanity, eyes, popcorn, hoodie

i’m you tubing it now. this is the citizen kane of our modern lifestreaming times

dolphins are conscious breathers

meaning they choose to do what we do automatically

there’s a radiolab episode featuring a dolphin trainer feeding her dolphin’s sexual appetite with a little hand love 

i wonder if the first time this trainer did this, she used the member of a member of her own species 

i wonder if he breathed heavily during the act

the man, not the dolphin (i bet the dolphin kept a buddha breathing cycle)

imagine the tragedy of seeing a dead dolphin

outside of your house or apartment

with its limp tongue litteredon the sidewalk, with big x’s where its eyes should be

hunted down for sport without even getting jerked off for its troubles 

on mother’s day i wonder why
today of all days i have to try
to give a hug and sing a song
and eventually say so long
when all i want is to buy you a beach
and let you feast on the finest foods in the east

it’s not fair a visit can’t last forever
but i’m happy our visits bring us together 

you have three geniuses for sons
but i’m the youngest and toughest and funniest too
and if matt and justin see this, let them poo poo

i’ll never understand how you cleaned up our poo poo for us
but i’ll never let go of your sunshine and love

“I’m sorry, that’s not correct”
She said, removing the dagger from his chest

Sammy’s eyes paused the world
And he retreated from the scene

Students piled into the small auditorium
Chatter bouncing off the brown-stained seats
“It’s not fair,” Sammy thinks

Harris Miller gets up to the stage and raises his arms
Classmates laugh and cheer for his welcome, entertaining presence among
Spoiled bookworms and gifted-and-talented nerds

“Spell…”
“Spell…”
“Spell…”

Was all Sammy needed to hear to try to correctly spell his word again
It didn’t make sense
He had a talent for English; spending time in advanced reading classes and gloating about his command of language

Laughter broke Sammy’s thoughts
Harris triumphantly messed up his word
To the resounding approval of the audience

“I can be funny too,” Sammy thought, his eyes welling up

I want to admit to a mistake
But I have none I can remember

I’m thinking real hard about this too
Believe me, I want my chest tension to evaporate.

I was a perfectionist for so long that I’ve become perfect
I’ve perfected perfectionism

she made her living
ballooning a start-up founder’s image with verbs
the paychecks shined brighter
than the press tours

“don’t you want your name on this?”
says her concerned mother
“no” the girl replied

after the founder,
was a surgeon
who had a knack for bizarre cases

after the surgeon,
was the basketball star
who was seven feet tall with a one inch finger

then the disgraced country singer
who had two hit singles before killing someone over bingo

then the up-and-coming movie actress
who was earnest, had a Buddhist practice

then the presidential hopeful
a bit of a joke but benefitted big from vocal local support

and all the other presidential hopefuls
their advisors
their advisors’ ambitious children
those childrens’ friends

thousands of people released memoirs because of her
ghostwrite extraordinaire
probably the richest writer
you could never find

ghostwriting became her obsession
she committed deeper and deeper to the craft

no one knows what happened to her
she disappeared

“where have you gone” her mother asks

her answer was
tucked inside the lines of page 67
in Dr. Brown’s Melanoma and Me
but that one never
made it to print

sketches on creativity:

-constant panic
-humdrum numbness
-borderline insanity
-care to taste obscenery
-sombrero insomnia
-Ggold
the 1+1 run around
-unknown hormones
-sysysysys
-repetitive separation sensations
for soul mold