Sunday, December 26, 2021

The Rats of Autumn

You'll probably think I've lost my mind when I tell you about the night the rats knew something the rest of us didn't know...yet. You'll think I've gone mad, but somehow those awful beasts have some kind of instinct the rest of us don't have.

When rats are hungry they're pretty unstoppable; they'll go to great lengths to get to whatever food they can scrape up. Even if you're working 85 flights up they'll climb that far to get to their food.

I worked in a building that was so insane my company was just that, situated on the 85th Floor. It wasn't even the top floor, there were still about 20 more flights up, maybe more. But those goddamn rats could sense there was food this far up and they were going to climb all the way up here to get to it.

I was working late on some last minute matters which my deadbeat supervisor sat on for about a week. He called me in to his office and told me I had to put in some overtime to get it done, in fact it had to be ready for his desk the following morning. What a prick.

I had the task of reconciling our financial records, which were so poorly entered into the system it was going to take hours to clean up. If and when we get audited it's going to be a bloodbath. While I was crunching numbers and shuffling papers around like a Monte Carlo baccarat dealer I heard that familiar sound.

Scratching sounds coming from the walls, other times you could hear the thumping inside the walls and other distracting noises from the ceiling. Everyone knew what it was but didn't want to discuss it much. I think it scared a few temporary employees away. Rats.

We knew all about them without discussing them at length. The general rule was cover your waste bins before you went home, and if you didn't you'd usually find them knocked over with your crap all over the floor. The cleanup crew came in every two days, so you had to cover your crap.

When it got late the rats got bold and would run around in packs pushing over the bins and going for whatever food they could find. Finding rat turds around the carpet wasn't uncommon. Naturally the cleanup crew was terrified of these rat packs so they'd work in pairs, just in case.

As I worked I saw a small ratpack race by me, and then they did a strange thing: they stopped and just stared at me for a few seconds before they continued scrounging for food. They were headed for the break room, so I was going to stay out of there.

The clock edged closer to midnight, and as it did my head started pounding with pain. Maybe I was allergic to all the rats running around the floor. Perhaps a disgusting cocktail of rat piss and crap fumes were getting to me. As my head pounded harder and harder, I could hear the rats stopping their rummaging.

When the clock finally hit midnight they quickly scurried towards the elevator shafts and whatever cavities in the building they came in on. A mass evacuation, building wide. You could hear echoes of their putrid little bodies thundering down the shafts, hundreds of them running down the concrete and steel nooks and crannies of this oversized structure.

My head hurt so bad I decided to call it a night and go home. As I grabbed my coat and headed for the elevator I wondered what made all those rats run out of the place in one group like that. That's unheard of, and you couldn't hear them at all in the shaft. It was weird.

Exhausted, I slept in the next morning. I awoke when a friend phoned and told me to turn on the TV. I saw my building on fire and collapsing. American Airlines Flight 11 flew into the North Tower with the South Tower destroyed shortly after. I slept in the next day and the day after that.

Did the animals know? Well, the animals knew something. Their mass evacuation from the building spoke volumes. Their instincts, their intuition can speak more than human insight can. But it doesn't matter. I spent the rest of 2001 looking for another job. In another state.

Sunday, October 31, 2021

Sweet 65

Prowling on the sawdust is a naked boy cracking a whip. He has a pile of tornadic ink black hair draped all over his childlike face...like a samurai orphan. He cracks the whip like a lion tamer. There are no lions in the cage, but clocks. Half a dozen clocks. They angrily prowl the cage and he cracks the whip again. They sit up on their stools, roaring and screaming at him.

The clocks have wet fangs bared at him, they also have razor sharp claws with blood stained on them from scratching themselves. They want to tear away at him with time…ravage him with painful years and decades.

Once they lost the plot and got at him..a little lunge and he went a little deaf and went a little blind. In revenge, he not only cracked the whip but made contact to them, tearing off a minute hand here and there. Let them know who’s boss. Now they obey.

Before he was born his mother was in a jail cell pregnant, expecting him and a gypsy shared the cell with her. She told his mother that the boy was going to be the loudest most cacophonic creature ever born…he would burn up every room he walked into. Outside the cell were the sounds of people rioting, burning cars, pulling down monuments and breaking shop windows.

Insane Scorpio boy, intoxicated by the darkness, turning everything upside down and frightening every beauty and every beast in the forest. Look at him now, cracking his whip and taming the clocks that want to tear him up. They’ll never succeed. Sweet 65.

Friday, October 1, 2021

All The Madwomen (Shock Corridor)

Creeping up a dark crooked staircase pushing on a large steel door
opened up to a cracked linoleum floor it was a roomful of women
all the madwomen
one sat in a rocking chair singing lullabies to a doll with no eyes
and one arm missing
another laughed hysterically at me, choking on her laughter
tears rolling down her face in cascades of pain

Hearts and hard-ons scrawled all over the walls
boys’ names scrawled in crayons HARRY ADAM DAVID CHUCK
correction: ADAM was scratched out with the scrawl FUCK HIM
a girl stared into nowhere tearing hair from her head
whispering He Loves Me He Loves Me Not
the little black one baring her teeth at me pushing me in the back
hissing I’m sick of your shit ya hear?

via GIPHY

The cracked window high above pouring broken light into the gloom
there was the blonde who slapped me over and over, yelling
“I’M SAD! MAKE ME LAUGH!”
a few clawed between their legs vigorously rubbing their vaginas
bright red raw ‘n mangling their breasts
as their tongues mechanically rolled around their lips, drooling
moaning like cows in an abattoir

The room heated up and manic musk filled the room
they moved in and circled all around me
pushing me down and grabbing my sex kissing and licking and biting me
like piranhas, a swirling maelstrom of hair and teeth
I screamed and screamed
the last thing I heard was Daddy I love you

via GIPHY

Friday, September 3, 2021

The Figurehead

I have walked slowly away from the jeers and ridicule of others. They follow behind me, throwing trash and their feces kept in sacks, screaming obscenities at me. They have tied cans around my testicles which scrape against the pavement as I walk. It would be foolish to expect anything from everyone otherwise. I’ve seen the films. I’ve heard the stories.

I’m heading to the ocean and a few of them are dropping off. Walking patiently to the sea where I’ll feel real. In the beginning God created a blue ocean of water below and a blue ocean of air above. Everything blue.

The rabble has slowly dissipated to a couple of drooling idiots who follow behind like babbling cretins, mumbling and cursing me, some not even knowing my name. Just kidding. None of them really know me. None of them even know my name.

Hypnotically walking to the harbor, the small port. There’s a boat I remember and I climb the bow like a spider. The drooling idiots urinate all over each other and collapse into a purple seizure, swallowing their tongues.

I lie on top of the bow, mounting it like an erotic clutch. I feel my limbs harden then petrify and I am now a figurehead. I have grown wings and fins both. My hair dangles like seaweed and cold sea green water courses through my veins. I no longer belong to heaven or hell because I belong to Poseidon. His misfit child.

The boat embarks from the harbor and I can smell the salt air, the cold waves lapping against my long, slender legs. The wind is fresh and rippling around me. Sea gulls circle around screaming like hysterical old wives. Sailors run around setting sails and lifting anchors. Tattoos of feet running around the deck, keeping busy.

Quietly in the distance I can hear mens voices behind me talking about women they've loved. Women they've left behind. Laughing. Lying. Laughing.

For awhile the ship rocks in a flicker ring of light and color, one minute sunny and clear, the next all cloudy and harder waves rocking the ship. I look down and see a jungle of marine life passing around me. The whales. Sea lions. The dolphins. Octopus. The sharks.

If I died like…people, they would have to burn me and sprinkle my ashes all over the sea. The very first thing God created. Land was an afterthought. People were just an afterthought.

My body points the way ahead into the deep blue sea. The waves reach out and caress my legs as King Neptune greets me. The clouds quietly part to let the sun come in and greet me again. When it gets dark the moon and the stars will show us the way. Next stop Athens.

Friday, August 20, 2021

HOT WIRE MY HEART Punk Noir Potboiler OUT NOW!

Hot Wire My Heart is now available for your entertainment and continues my string of punk noir novels, which include Every Good Boy Dies First and Every Bitch For Himself. It’s a punk take on Sweet Smell of Success, a whirlwind ride through the 1978 San Francisco punk scene through the eyes of gossip columnist Dante Sterno. He dishes out all the dirty gossip on all the local punk heroes and heroines for Ripoff Magazine, a cheap local zine.

Dante’s pursuit for more and more dirt on popular rockers in the scene becomes more and more shameless and scurrilous as the book goes on, and it finally reaches a point where his dirty scoops catch up with him. To ensure his survival he hires the services of car thief and protection thug Big Jason Gulliver, back again from Every Bitch For Himself (which chronologically follows this novel).

Big Jason provides some much-needed protection but unfortunately raises the ire of a prominent politician, who in turn contracts rival car thieves and gunmen to liquidate Jason. In between the action there’s lots of sex, violence and hardcore punk. There’s even room for a roller derby match in between all the skull cracking.

The character of Big Jason was based on a real punker I knew, a tough, amoral thug – Irish, of course – a cross between Lawrence Tierney and Matt Dillon. He really did protect people, sometimes for money but mostly for the thrill of kicking assholes around. A man like that is instant gold for noir; a thug who’s capable of making any kind of trouble is as noir as it gets.

Hot Wire My Heart, named after a Crime song, was a chance for me to reminisce about the old days of San Francisco punk, a scene that many of us Southern California punks would trek up the coast periodically to enjoy. San Francisco punk was more art damaged than LA punk, beneficial because it resulted in less aping the London scene, which LA sometimes indulged a bit much.

Bands like The Avengers, The Offs, Crime, UXA and The Sleepers made art on their own terms. Since the average punk audience back then was so small there wasn’t a lot of money to be made, resulting in no need for compromise and creating the most original and exciting punk of that era. I hope Hot Wire My Heart recaptures some of the energy of those electrifying San Franciscan nights.

Hot Wire My Heart retails for only $3.99 and can be bought at these eBook retailers:

Amazon Kindle:
https://www.amazon.com/Hot-Wire-Heart-Andy-Seven-ebook/dp/B09CRVJHL1/ref=sr_1_3?dchild=1&keywords=hot+wire+my+heart&qid=1629249084&s=digital-text&sr=1-3

Apple Books:
https://books.apple.com/us/book/hot-wire-my-heart/id1581407105

Barnes & Noble Nook:
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/hot-wire-my-heart-andy-seven/1140023225?ean=9781098399412

Kobo (Canada):
https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/hot-wire-my-heart

Scribd:
https://www.scribd.com/book/520407943/Hot-Wire-My-Heart

BookBaby Bookstore:
https://store.bookbaby.com/book/Hot-Wire-My-Heart&b=p_fr-ho-bl

Thursday, June 17, 2021

The Heartbreak Playlist

Well, there she goes again…another song about me…how I broke her heart…the story she never gets tired of telling…just think, she’ll be singing this song about my cruelty all over the country, all over the world…hey, Dallas, I broke someone’s heart…hey, Baltimore, I broke someone’s heart…today her heart, tomorrow Tokyo…then there’s the other one…she wrote that one about me lying to her…my love was lies…so she said…all the girls in the club cry along with her…that’s me, chrome-hearted Romeo…Chromeo…your heartbreak is filthy lucre…selling millions of units, didn’t you…talking about my cold, cold heart…you cashed in with your broken heart…other fellas moved in but I was song-worthy, yeah?...here’s another one about that prick who lied…he lied…I died…thank you, for my next number this one’s about that asshole again…you’re too kind…back stage all the new boyfriends get pulled like little marionettes…while I recline in my leather loveseat…the cad clad in black…I’ve never done good things…I’ve never done bad things…I’ve never done anything out of the blue…

Cockroach Shoes

See me walkin’
pair of cockroach shoes
brown crinkled leather
long antennae kicks

When I walk
it makes sounds
castanets cast a net
christ Annette

La cucarachas
clicking down the concrete
the pavement ‘n apartments hear
cockroach shoes

‘N christ Annette
castanets
clicking clicking
christ it’s sickening

Wednesday, March 3, 2021

The Hell of Administration

Years ago I worked for local govt.
i'd take my aft. break
standing in front
of the Steppes
of the Hall of Administration
suit and tie
smoking on a big cigar
ragmop cigar
reading the Bible
chuckling to myself
Book of Isaiah
across the street from the
Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels
Temple Street to be x-act
kids getting off the bus
staring at me
the Devil's sparkle-headed boy
the all-time fallen angel
with a
big swingin' dick
and smokin' one too
fuck you

Friday, January 15, 2021

Minstrels Anonymous Spoken Word Album Available Now on Bandcamp

Today marks the release of my first full-length spoken word CD, Minstrels Anonymous. Tracks can be bought individually for download, or it can be purchased as a CD On Demand. There will be no vinyl or cassette releases (I can't believe people are making and buying cassettes again, but whatever!).

Minstrels Anonymous is my first solo album after several decades of making noise in the trashed-out back alleys of Hollywood. Years spent haunting clubs like The Masque, The Roxy Theater, The Gaslight, The Shamrock, The Hollywood Palladium, The Whiskey A Go-Go, and a million dead ballrooms.

After years of playing ear-splitting noise punk I've settled down to playing neofolk music on my mandolin and free jazz on my pocket trumpet and tenor saxophone. Neofolk is folk music with heavy goth and industrial influences, artists like Death In June, Emily Jane White and David Eugene Edwards, formerly of 16 Horsepower and now Wovenhand, just to name a few.

What prompted a writer who swore off a music career into making a spoken word record? When the pandemic hit and I went into lockdown I released a long-shelved novel, Red Coffee, and then proceeded to work on my poetry compilation, Year Of The Bat.

After editing, re-editing and rewriting Year of The Bat to my satisfaction I sent it off to the DIY publishing house for formatting. What they sent back was a nightmare.

It looked like a drunk five-year old got ahold of the manuscript and formatted the whole thing. Titles in tiny font running into the opening lines of the poem, pages not aligned properly, fonts changing up and down for no rhyme or reason - and not bad enough to even be deemed avant garde, for Christ's sake! It was like they hated the whole project and threw it back in my face.

After a week of nagging me constantly DO YOU APPROVE? PLEASE APPROVE? and then the annoying TELL US HOW WE DID begging, I sent back a message saying KILL IT and I WANT A REFUND.

Instead of crying in my beer about the savaging of my poetry book, I sat in front of my synthesizer. Then I played with my drum machine. Then I turned on my mp3 player in dictation mode and started reading these very same poems. I've since bought a Tascam 4-track recorder, but the earlier recordings have a weird metallic vocal sound to them. That's the mp3 player.

The first recording was Hollywood Is Killing Me, which I posted on SoundCloud. Ideas for new recordings started pouring out of my brain like a leaky faucet. I made the most of my lockdown by staying in and recording constantly, until the album you're holding represents the majority of my aural output for 2020.

As spoken word artists go, my main influences are monologists like Joe Frank, Ken Nordine, Lord Buckley, and the great Gary McFarlane. The Kenneth Patchen album with the Canadian Jazz Quartet was also a major influence on my album.

I made every effort to make each and every track sound unique and separate from each other to avoid any kind of monotony, which can often mar many spoken word recordings. Some tracks have folk backing. whereas others are heavily influenced by early Seventies electronic artists like Ruth White, Delia Derbyshire's White Noise, and Jean-Jacques Perrey.

Track listing:

1. PKW
2. Hollywood Is Killing Me
3. Stainless Steel Trees
4. Disney Superstar
5. The Scenester
6. Tomboys
7. Nerdy Girl
8. Rorer 714
9. Power Trio
10. Dreams That Money Can Buy
11. Action Painter
12. Suburban Adam & Eve
13. Halloween Birthday

Minstrels Anonymous is available for download or CD format via Bandcamp.com. You can find it at: https://andysevenltd.bandcamp.com/album/minstrels-anonymous

Newer tracks can be heard at: Soundcloud.com/andysevenltd