Howl by Ella Runciter

for Joe Chip

I saw the best minds of Runciter Associates destroyed by

madness, slow hysterical heavy,

Dragging themselves through the dim-lit halls at dawn

looking for an instant fix,

Angelheaded inertials who searched for the ancient godly

S. Dole Meliphone in the trickery of Luna,

Who dust and tatters and hollow-eyed and low sat

huddled in the supernatural darkness of hotel room closets contemplating death,

Who cowered in men’s rooms,

jumping in urinals and standing on their heads and listening to the television through the wall,

Suffering sweats and bone-grind-ings and

migraines under retrograde in Joe’s bleak furnished apt,

Who contemplated processed oleander leaves, saltpeter, oil of peppermeint, N-Acetyl-p-aminophenol, zinc oxide, charcoal, cobalt chloride, caffeine, extract of digitalis, steroids in trace amounts, sodium citrate, ascorbic acid, artificial coloring and flavoring in La Salles Model-A Curtiss-Wright racketing through time toward lonesome Des Moines in 1939 1929 1992?,

Who journeyed to Des Moines, who died in Des Moines, who

came back to Des Moines & waited in vain, who watched over Des Moines & brooded & loned in Des Moines and finally went away to find out the Time, & now Des Moines is older than her heroes,

Who fell on their knees hopeless praying

for each other's salvation and light, until the Ubik illuminated its life for a second,

Ah, Joe, while you are not safe I am not safe, and

now you're really in the total animal soup of time

What sphinx of flesh and bone bashed open

their skulls and ate up their brains and imagination?

Jory! Solitude! Death! Time! Spraycans and unobtainable cures! Bodies melting into the stairways! Earpieces screaming in the Beloved Brethren Moratorium! Old men weeping in the consultation longue!

Jory! Jory! Nightmare of Jory! Jory the

loveless! Mental Jory! Jory the heavy judger of men!

Jory whose love is endless time and life death! Jory

whose soul is frozen and thawed! Jory whose presence is the specter of genius! Jory whose fate is a cloud of sexless hydrogen! Jory whose name is the Mind!

Jory in whom I sit lonely! Jory in whom I dream

Angels! Crazy in Jory! Cocksucker in Jory! Lacklove and manless in Jory!

Jory who entered my soul early! Jory in whom

I am a consciousness without a body! Jory who ate me out of my natural ecstasy! Jory whom I abandon! Wake up in Jory! Ubik streaming out of the can!

Visions! omens! hallucinations! miracles! ecstasies!

gone down the American river!

Dreams! adorations! illuminations! religions! the whole

boatload of sensitive bullshit!

Joe Chip! I'm with you in cold-pac

where you're madder than I am

I'm with you in cold-pac

where you must feel very strange

I'm with you in cold-pac

where you've seen your compatriots murdered

I’m with you in cold-pac

where your condition has become serious and is reported on the vid-phone

I'm with you in cold-pac

where the faculties of the skull no longer admit the worms of the senses

I'm with you in cold-pac

where you scream that you're losing the game of the actual pingpong of the abyss

I'm with you in cold-pac

where we hug and kiss Ubik under our bedsheets against time that coughs all night and won't let us sleep

I'm with you in cold-pac

in my dreams you walk dripping from the thaw on the highway across America in tears to the door of my conapt in the golden night.