James Beach

Science Fiction, Fantasy, Nonfiction and More

By

Fuck Off, O Starbucks

Fuck off, O Starbucks
Fuck off, O Starbucks
with your brand-name colon fuel
homogenized from third-world beans
go build a haven for the craven
light and simple, like your demographics
Just go do yourself, O Nike
With your deity name
and your $100 price
for the name of black savior Jordan
stamped on the leather
made by off-whites in some Indo-Asian purgatory
bought by ghetto kids with things to prove,
that you sold them on,
that can’t be proven by buying:
their own worth
That c-note is thirty pieces.

Go blow your own logo
and stop shooting it all over my mind.

Take your useless website,
and roll it around in your sterile dot-come.

And all of you poor lost once-creative deviants
betraying your own mutant roots
keeping the robots in the marketing hive alive –

All of you can just eat my stinking ass.

It’s unfamiliar taste will strike you.
You’ll chew on it like a new idea
from some as-yet unplundered,
once-viable now-doomed subculture
You’ll powder it and perfume it
but no matter how you try
there is no demographic
baffled you will retreat to the whiteboard
make diagrams, hold focus groups
taste-test my ass against Jennifer Lopez’s
but you can’t figure it out
my ASS it will remain, triumphant.

Hey, I know all you really want to do is
market-share our auras
and trademark joy
and figure out the demographics
of dancing spirits

You work towards a glorious future ™
where we’ll be born in already advertattooed skin
to amortize the original sin
of lacking pre-paid brand-name souls

But at least for now,
without fear of copyright infringement
not that that would ever stop me
I can tell you to FUCK OFF
off of my world
off of my face
and away from my
precious
remaining
time.

By

Dawn Hours

Light slips in quietly
so as not to startle
The night has been fought off
And a sky all the colors of war, becomes at peace.

A candle’s lit in a corner of the workshop
where they build another day.

Curtains move lightly with the pulse of the wind
You should be sleeping
But the moment has drawn you to the dawn

more than the power of the ages, more than just the
flower of the sages thoughts.

Moments like this were seen before there were eyes to see it.

It throbs with electric quiet.

Clouds do slow and dazing dances
Half light playing off their arms

As sun rises to take the stage
And you do as well
To build another day.

By

An apology to an unnamed you

Passing judgment
in passing.
inadmissible evidence.

divided
mutated
closed and crying eyes
striking in the dark
the closer to my heart
the easier to hit.
I’m scared to grow
the light hurts
let me
never
get another scar

let me
never
make
another mistake

let me
just
keep dreaming

By

Angsty the Clown Bear

insert angst here
and more here if we feel like it
there’s only me,
no one else has ever felt so bad.

and it’s not like they care unless
they’re forced to listen
right?

you’d be the same way too
if you weren’t so much better

alone in a 3-ring circus of friends
feeling like a bear surrounded by
wolves and ready to strike

eat animal or vegetable,
whatever strikes a fancy
go kill the nearest creature or
just scratch back on a tree
or

just bear it

By

It’s My Island (with Erin Chambers)

are you listening?
I hear you’re planning to come to california
you can visit my island
if you abide by a few simple rules.

1) you can not be camera shy
2) you must like juice
4) you must let go of any preconceived concretized notions of how we do
things out here
z) you must be willing to get wet

when you arrive you must do the following:
float your chest cavity along the water until it feels hollowed out clean
and ready to fill with sensation
eat raw avocados sprinkled with nutritional yeast and call them french
fries
wrinkle your nose and sneeze out the east coast
gulp down the vast Coriolis-swirled martini that should be awaiting you
frond the milkdrop and make it coo
take a nighttime flying journey over this city in a clawfoot tub
blink in the spun sugar which melts on your eyelashes or sparkles on a
chilly day
and let it color your steps sublime
while our boots cement my deja vu to the sidewalk.

easy, huh?

Response to Proposed East Coast Deprogramming:

test subject ‘James’, a known liberal, agrees with the following conditions:

loopy tai chi- style hippie techno dancing
momentary disorientation may occur while subject undergoes his aura graft
subject J may retain a preconceived notion that Californians dislike
preconceived notions

Subject admits to liking Juice more than that sugary carbonated cancer
is quite willing and able to kiss the ocean,
Floating in clawfoot bathtubs is nice,
J also likes velvet-coated dragons with good stereo systems.
Deja voodoo is also a good option.

However, any glass of port in a storm.

Lets move forward with this on the same page, there’s no “fuckin’ A” in team.

Regards,
Smog-enshrouded future slate

By

Alternate Ego-go

They dance around in their cages, and sidle up to the bars.
Their currency, a turn at the reins, for a sweet, brief caress of the ego.

Welcome in. Drink deep, and take a look around.

There’s a man I don’t like to know I know.
He’ll kick your cat across the room
just to see the wondrous texture of flying fur

and when you ask why Fluffy’s coughing,
he’ll compliment your drapes.

He’s not the only kind of dancer.
But I can’t deny he’s in here.
Somewhere.

He lives to play the games you don’t like to think you love
And he doesn’t just play them because they work.

He’ll dump a fuck in you as easy as draining a soft heart of a
swollen hope;

trade your money for a lie just to see you wake up broke.

wrap your heart around his fingers,
and snap them just for fun.

Money, souls, and promises, just another set of songs,
to dance around.

Only one of many inside here,
yelling “let me out! I’d know just what to do.”
Or just smiling smugly, jaunty hand dangling a cigarette
between the go-go bars.

Just one of many alternating egos, only one shows at a time;
one, at any moment, every day for the rest of our time,
in this finite flesh.