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This week in WH’s phone II

What do I know about photography? Nothing. But I just click at stuff when I’m liquored up. I’m a goddamned artist. Okay. I’m an idiot.

No Quiet Nights

Last night? What the fuck happened? The eggs tasted good and there was so much gin. Dreams of tongue kissing something that has an impossibly long face and huge hands. Dreams.
I wake panting, face down, burning inside and the feathers scratch my skin, the nettles and tinsel dance and tickle and poke and find their way inside me. Some kind of trash bird nest. A note blurs into sensible.
Don’t be sorry, you sorry bitch.
Motherfuckers.
Gore full, my belly bloats out in front and my breasts are pregnant tender. Beak marks and teeth, ripples of red around the areola , bile in my throat.
I’ve gotta get out of this tree and back to the underground.
Down in the woods, down on my luck, down on myself. Who the fuck did I get down with? Go down on?
I’ll say sorry to the white owl king and start again because every night is a night out.
The PA shudders through the woodland tunnels:
Come on down with the wolves and the owls, get on down where they hoot and howl
Dance around in the skin of a sow
Get the spook piggies and a thorn covered crown
Ooh la la, Pom Pom le Rouge
Tell us what you did last night!”
There is fear in the halls. I’m stinking of it with every breath, like a recovering alcoholic, dream taunts and piss stank skin, bags under my eyes holding all the old knowing that will blow me wide open and leave me on the floor before him, spread-eagled and barren.
Flashbacks from black to brown:
What’s the dog doing wearing the head of a man?
Now I’ve got a burn in her gut and a bite on my hand, where are my rings? At least he let me keep my fingers.
I must remember to take the appropriate measures, kill the baby goat with copper wire and hot golden broth.
Visit the apothecary and make love to the alchemist. Set fire to the evidence as a form of penitence.
When it gets too hot, just remember, there are no quiet nights in the arctic.More from the PA:
“Down on your knees in my court”
He appears in his terribly clean robe, impossibly albino, erection jutting at a proud and awkward angle.
The Owl king hoots and calls for more whores.
“Who will spit? Who will swallow, it’ll all be the same and the night plays out like a rosemary stain!”
As usual he is dramatic at the moment he approaches climax.
I say “good morning” in the evening and give ersatz curtsy, dipping my chest low and feeling my nipples remember the chewing hounds, birds and men of yester eve.
He’s checking out my bosom and I’m playing his game
“Are you sorry, Le Rouge?” He booms and gushes and the small women faint and drown while the larger ones set sail to stranger shores.
I’m always absolved, so I never abstain.
“Yes.”
Now I powders my cheeks and smear honest blood on my teats, swig absinthe in the latrine and laugh long and loud at the drowning dead, their spirits won’t sink as long as He provides the vodka, by barrel and burlesque, they are kept afloat.
I’ll Keep dancing with the dragon gone from scarlet to green and let great white wings canopy my bed, even if it means oceans and apologies and fear of the dark, a hatred of gears and steam and wires and clean living. I’ll say “M’lord, it meant naught, an honest mistake,” and false men in black with fuck my corpse at my wake.
When I wake on the morrow, I’ll say sorry again
Even if Hell freezes over.
Remember that there are no quiet nights in the brimstone lodge.

The Skeleton’s Problematic Granddaughter – A Tale of Southern Horror

PART 1

“Shut up, children, I got a story to tell,” says WH, drunk as hell and looking only half as frightened as he should.
What is downstairs?
He spills wine so red as to almost be black down his tight clinging shirt, his beard and chest hair a horrible briar patch – who knows what evils lurk within.
“A long time ago, before I was born, there was a girl, a girl . . .” his eyes glaze over, flashing a dangerous shade of void.
He belches softly and continues, voice all gravel and horror.
“A girl, she was called Deardrie Fell.”
“Who was she, WH?” asks a slip of a girl, her flaxen hair almost as fair as her skin.
“My dear, stupid child,” slurs the grizzled sonofabitch, “she was The Skeleton’s Problematic Granddaughter . . .”
The hideous fellow now leaps from his mouldy velure covered seat, spraying the children with the blood like droplets of his chosen beverage. Wheeling across the room, he grabs a poker from beside the fire and storms out of the room.
The children look aghast at me for guidance. Hush, I tell them, hush. Don’t make him get weirder than he already is.
We hear him, stomping down the stairs into the wine cellar.
Silence.
A long silence.
The children whisper amongst themselves. They want their parents.
Your parents are gone, children. Hush. He may return.
There is a terrible clanging beneath the floorboards. Now screeching. A triumphant bellowing creates an ear jarring harmony. Silence. Not quite.
He is whispering.
The flaxen haired girl begins to sob.
I turn to comfort her.
“Now, children. Gather round. You. Open this.”
He is back on the mouldy, red velure seat, pointing a dusty bottle of wine at me.
The poker is covered in gore, resting across his torn black jeans.
His Chuck Taylors are likewise adorned.
With no other recourse, I uncork the wine and the room is filled with a wicked miasma.
“Milk of the cockroach teat!” He laughs wildly, spraying spittle, tongue green, teeth yellow and black.
“Smell that funk? It’s the swamp. Mangroves covered in ice and islands of glittering bone. You can almost see Old Black Louie in stilettos, walking up something’s behemoth spine when you get this stink in you.”
The children gag.
I have tears in my eyes as I fill his plastic goblet, encrusted with plastic jewels, stained around the rim, where his lips have touched it far too often.
He waves the goblet away when I proffer it to him and snatches the bottle.
He takes a rude swig. I hope that he doesn’t send me below to fetch more wine.
“Now. No more interruptions.” He spits in an ashtray.
“Deadrie Fell, she was a skeleton’s problematic granddaughter . . .”

PART 2

I blanch some when he looks at me over the top of his grease smeared glasses, fogged up from his constant perspiration in spite of the bitter cold that the fire pitifully tries to fight off.
He smiles, yellow and black and red dribbling into red again.

“A long while back, before even I was born, there was a city made of glass,” he is whispering and the children gather close, they can probably smell his guts rotting within his ramshackle body.
“There was also a city where worms lived and a city where everything was already over. These cities were surrounded by the darkest of woods. The deepest of all dark woods. You don’t get dark or woods like that anymore.”
“Why not?” whispers a fat little boy of eight or nine.
WH glares at him and then softens, blows a long whistling sigh, spittle and wine.
“Night forgot what she was for, son.”
The fat boy seems happy enough with a response, though if he knew what WH really meant, I think that he’d leave the room crying, he wouldn’t sleep again, either.
“In the city of Ends, there was a woman, a very beautiful woman, by the measure of any time.
Men came calling on her, to paint her portrait, to make busts of her wonderful face. To ask her hand.
She sent them away.
She called them boring and to her, in the city where everything has already happened, this could only be expected.
She wanted the wild.”
WH creaks up from his chair, the children lean back; in terror or merely as a reaction to his overwhelming odour.
He drips perspiration about him as he performs a slow dance, gathering an old moth eaten black sheet from a pile of soiled linen on the floor.
“And the boy! He had wings!”
He swoops about the room, cackling and quorking the nightmares of rats.
“Who?” the children ask in unison, squeaky voices trembling.
“The Flautist ,little ones! The Flautist of course!”
WH leans by the hearth, pulling long from his bottle. Oh Morning Star, please don’t let him finish that before dawn.
I cannot bear to go below the floorboards, not tonight.
Not any night.
What is down there?
The drunkard is back in his chair now, left leg crossed over the right and a jar of whiskey in hand. Something is floating in it. I don’t want to get closer.
He shows the children and they giggle.
“My dear, look at this . . .”
I sidle over and peer into the jar.
There I am, afloat in an amber sea, waving up, mouth opening and closing, but voice too small to be heard.
He drinks me down and I swoon.
“Here, sit on my knee,” he says and I am powerless to do anything but obey.
I can smell him. He smells of what the night was about, even though that was before he was born.
“I’m far older by way of the innards, dear,” he laughs so hard into my ear that I want to be sick.
Can he truly read my thoughts.
“The Flautist was wild,” he says, stroking my hair with the back of his hand.
“He was born in a city made of worms. But rarely. Rarely was he there.
In the city of Ends, the young woman lived on an austere estate that her father had owned before her, before he left for the woods. He knew about the dark and the night and why stars can’t be trusted and what is was to visit with rats.
He built ships and played the fiddle where the nymphs danced, covered in white bugs that glowed like morning and cast no shadows in that light.
In a city of Ends, no one looks twice at a skeleton gentleman, as long as he comports himself in a manner befitting once of his social standing and, oh my, he was nothing if not conscientious . . . and dead.”
The children are as close as they dare get to WH and his voice is a low, dark rumble. I can feel it rattling through his body as he speaks. I don’t think that I could stand up if I wanted to.
“His daughter was a great musician, much as he was. But in place of the wandering fiddle, she took to the ponderous heavings of the cello. So many nights, legs splayed upon the stool until one day, she broke a string!”
I spill to the floor, atop the screaming children as WH heaves to his feet and hurls his half finished jar into the fire place.
The room goes pitch and the heat rises, even as the rain begs to be let in, clawing at the tin roof, chattering on the windows.
He is glowing, or rather, the darkness is not touching him.
“She went into the woods . . .”

PART 3

Under the floor, something moans, impossibly loud and low.
WH is not in the room.
The children weep and clutch at my skirts.
I gather them to me and sing.

Entendez-vous dans la plaine
Ce bruit venant jusqu’à nous?
On dirait un bruit de chaîne
Se traînant sur les cailloux.
C’est le grand Lustukru qui passe,
Qui repasse et s’en ira
Emportant dans sa besace
Tous les petits gâs
Qui ne dorment pas!
Lon lon la,
Lon lon la, lon lon la, lire la, lon la!
La, lon la!
Quelle est cette voix démente
Qui traverse nos volets?
Non, ce n’est pas la tourmente
Qui joue avec les galets:
C’est le grand Lustukru qui gronde
Qui gronde … et bientôt rira
En ramassant à la ronde
Tous les petits gâs
Qui ne dorment pas!
Lon lon la,
Lon lon la, lon lon la, lire la, lon la!
La, lon la!
Qui donc gémit de la sorte,
Dans l’enclos, tout près d’ici?
Faudra-t-il donc que je sorte
Pour voir qui soupire ainsi?
C’est le grand Lustukru qui pleure:
Il a faim et mangera
Crus-tout-vifs, sans pain ni beurre,
Tous les petits gâs
Qui ne dorment pas!
Lon lon la,
Lon lon la, lon lon la, lire la, lon la!
La, lon la!
Qui voulez-vous que je mette
Dans le sac au vilain Vieux?
Mon Doric et ma Jeannette
Viennent de fermer les yeux:
Allez vous-en, méchant homme,
Quérir ailleurs vos repas!
Puisqu’ils font leur petit somme,
Non, vous n’aurez pas
Mes deux petits gâs!

The room is lit. I have no idea how or for how long.
He is in his chair, clapping, slowly.
Sardonic, discoloured smile.
“Very good, dear one. Very good.
Now, let us continue . . .”

Taking The Throne Tour

Time to Take The Throne, sucker.
That’s right, folks, we in camp Gay Paris are riding out into the sunset (read as anywhere that the booze is cheap and ‘love’ comes easy) with our sleazey grime family, Brothers Grim
Joining us for the NSW dates will be long time lovers, The Snowdroppers and new additions to our hot spots, Kira Puru & The Bruise.
For the VIC dates, we have grabbed The Yard Apes, Marshall & The Fro, Little John and Plague Doctor (with more TBA) to give you something to drink, think and thrust to.
Don’t thank us yet. Wait until we’ve got more intimate.
Thursday February 10 – The Lass O Gowrie, Newcastle NSW w/ Kira Puru
Friday February 11 – The Vanguard, Newtown NSW w/ Kira Puru
Saturday February 12 – Baroque Bar, Katoomba NSW w/ The Snowdroppers
Friday February 18 – The Evelyn, Melbourne VIC w/Marshall & The Fro
Saturday February 19 Karova Lounge, Ballarat VIC w/ The Yard Apes
Sunday February 20 Old Bar, Melbourne VIC w/ Plague Doctor and Little John
Sunday Febuary 20 – mystery special event!!

Stay Down In The Hole

Long time coming.
Wall fell down.
Well has been poisoned.
Cats are in the bag.
Lifeless.
But if you’ve been keeping up, you already know all of this.
I remember when Hell was cold and quiet, not full of young ghosts, rubbing their tits on any devil with ties to the blues community.
What a fucking scene.
Then it got hot and dark – that’s fine, for a while, but then someone busts in and flicks the light switch. No one is beautiful at four in the morning, especially in a bathroom stall under flickering glass tubes, make up smeared and gag reflex kicking in.
I tell them that I’m in love, nonetheless.
I’m a fabulous liar.
But it’s easier when they can’t look you in the eyes.
Buy two patches and stay ghost.
Get gone.
Get back to that silent ice box.
Stygian and still.
Chasms where the beasts loiter, cards on the table and bottles of cheap liquor spilling in gutters, roaches getting drunk too.
But everyone whispers.
Echoes of that now.
Savage nostalgia cannibals gnawing out the long intestine, stuff it with offal and make a real meal of us.
Candy cane legs running across the ceiling in stilettos.
I was going to grow up and be a dancer.
Plans change.
Everything dies, given time.
They’re handing out time like it was about to go out of style.
Gas light and good plumbing, that’s all we really need.
Put beer cans in a bucket of water on the front porch and they’re good to go in the morning.
Drink whiskey from crooked stills when the sun sets.
Night falls early in kind towns, falls fast and heavy when you crawl down far enough.
A long way to go.
New Hell is sun up, pants down around ankles and thrown from a slow moving car.
Roll down a hill and wind up in a rose bush.
I first met the wolf there.
It was 1985.
It was also 1767.
This hole is a special kind of wonderful.
Send help.

More Night Life with Slim and WH

EARLIER
“Wrong answer, fucko.”
I hit him right in the drooling mouth and that piece of shit goes down, bleeding and missing teeth.
Slim is losing blood too and our man prolly caught whatever Mr Pickins has, dude messes with some weird shit.
Demons, I hear.
Whatever he can afford that will fuck back.
He’s not pretty. OK, he’s gorgeous.
I get it. Can’t judge. Won’t.
Whatever.
Our man is a liar and he’s down.
“Step off, Slim.” I say. Flip my grip to the dirt, right at this guy.
He’s sobbing and saying ‘no.’
He’s saying it enough to piss me off and my temper ain’t nowhere near as bad as this fucking tall redhead at my side.
“What, fucker?” Screams Slim in an eerie half volume.
Have another cigarette, asshole, it will do wonders for your diction.
“What?”
The shit head is pissing himself.
Literally pissing himself and wringing his hands.
He’s saying commercial prayers, right to our faces like we’re a couple of amateur off the book thugs.
Fuck this. We’re professionals.
“Tell us where he is, shit for lungs, last chance. Slim, assure this asshole that your shit is loaded.”
“Fuckin’ ay loaded, WH. I’m a fucking professional.”
“You know what that makes you, you rat fuck piece of shit?”
The guy is crawling towards us, clawing at his cock and face.
Like that makes a difference.
It’s almost worrying.
“Dead.”
Boom bap bap.
That is the rhythm.
It’s almost hip-hop and when his body spatters on the floor, there’s the bass line.
If you got the chronomamcy to slow this down, you’d get a good break.
That’s how they catch it.
Shit like this always happens so fast.
I can’t stand happy hardcore and BPM.
Fuck.
Give murder back it’s art.

LATER
Back in my apartment.
Stinks like a fucking grease fire.
I make Slim smoke on the rotting balcony.
Nice view of the hotel car park.
Android hookers standing in a line, not even hiding their plates.
Dudes drive by, casual, but the whores are too poorly made.
Even for this neighbourhood.
I bet my cash is real good here.
Real good.
Moral even.
“It’s on your hands, Prophet,” says the tall fuckwit.
My partner. Right?
He coughs and hits again.
Delicious smoke tendrils in ambient light.
I love how it flickers. Crazy light.
Crazy , tall. sonofabitch.
No nicotine in the house.
As much ‘drine as I can handle though.
Can’t he smell it? Like piss and vinegar and mothballs.
I can’t handle it anymore.
Too many moths come to visit.
Now I gotta be wary.
You can’t trust a knife or gun when they flutter in.
You can’t trust yourself.
I spit. It’s a long way down.
A droid-whore looks up at me, red trigger eyes focusing.
Fuck off, I sign.
She/it flickers back at me in binary.
I get it. I just don’t care what she is getting at.
The sluts scatter when a noisome pack of Bird-cops wheel past.
Carrying body bags. Half a dozen.
Half a dozen of each.
So low.
They ignore us of course.
Whatever they’re dealing with is so much bigger than us.
Far as they know.

LATER STILL
“It’s on your fucking hands, you piss poor prophet!” I say.
Standing right behind him.
He towers down.
He doesn’t turn around.
Just takes a raw drag on another cigarette.
Reeks like fucking Hades junk.
I cough. Not politely,
“You wanted to pump him,” says Slim.
Smug.
“The fuck I did. You were mad.”
“Should I be, shit?”
My hands are scarred with teeth.
“Yeah, don’t hit ‘em in the mouth, Hubris .”
Is he going to hit me in the mouth?
He laughs.
“Ah, cocksucker had it coming.”
“Unprofessional.” I grin.
“Fuckin’ ay.”

The Night Before Gay Parisian Christmas

‘Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house

Gay Paris were drinking, but not passing out;

The booze was all lined up on the mantle with care,

Cuz eight bitches would soon be ‘ right up in here’;

Slim Pickins was dancing, both poppin’ and locks,

Cuz Slim is a B-Boy that loves to up-rock;

And with his bandanna on under his hat,

WH busted, the illest of raps,

Then from the kitchen, there came a great clatter
Smokin’ D emerged with a gourmet style platter.

“Quiet down, you bastards,” cried out Blacktooth,

“I’m watching Christmas Vacation, National Lampoons!”

The hos all arrived and exposed their large breasts

Belly shots of whiskey are what happened next,

And every one laughed and they drank and they ate,

Even Miss BZ, who showed up so late,

Driving a Benz right through the window,

With K. ‘Whoremouth’ Conroy and some powder like snow ,

Oh what a Christmas, Oh Lord, what a ruckus!,

They chanted ‘Wu-Tang ain’t nothin’ to fuck wit!’ ;

“Now, Hot Dick! Now, Slim! now, Blacktooth, WH!

When you throw a party we know they’ll be great!”

To the top it all of, they paid for the whores!

And drove away quickly, distracting the cops,

Who had recently received, an anonymous tip,

Most likely the Snowdroppers, who felt they’d been dissed,

Gay Paris though, had sent invitations,

Intercepted by Tenderloins, who had trepidations,

Of partaking in pleasures that veer to excess

They kept them at home, tucked up in their beds.

GP raised their glasses and drank it all down,

When down their Chimney came a wonderful sound.

Dressed like the 20s had never quite finished,

The ‘droppers arrived crying ‘Yo! Now we up in this!’;

A bundle of booze was strapped to their backs,

And Cougar and London were so high on crack!

Johnny and Pauly, were tell tale gin drinkers;

Their noses so pink, like prostitute nipples!

The guys partied down with their hookers and blow,

With beer, wine and spirits, did I mention the hos?

They all got crunk and down like South West,

Slim battled Cougar and came out the best;

Johnny and WH talked of some books,

But in between notes, they did bourbon shots.

Blacktooth and Pauly were so busy riffing,

They never realised the fun they were missing!

London and Hot Dick were mixing bad drinks,

And drinking them down before they could think;

Then God appeared and spoke of his works,

But WH said, “bitch, I’ll battle you, jerk”;

And running his hand up the face of a ho,

He smote God with fury and the dopest of flows;

YHWH, Adonai, Jehovah and Christ,

You created the world? Nah, but what what about science?

The Devil appeared and tried to make nice,

“Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good-night.”

Like A Virgin

Orgy

How dat ass was won

Gimme dat

Shit n’ tarnation, sure has been a long time since I was up on this thang, what with one thing and another. To start with, I’ve been taking to most technology with a +3 Hammer of late, if you know what I mean, that’s a feather in your funky little bonnet, baby.
When the smoke and whiskey breath finally cleared after the Beards tour, we were left feeling a little superior, after all, Slim and me obviously had the best beards out (well, that is a perfect use of past tense as right now, we have children’s beards, shame us and spit at our feet if you see us on the street, though I’ve taken to a veil and wearing a long golden tail to disguise myself, but now you know, so bring bright lances and give me a dragon’s funeral).
Strange thing – for some reason, Karnivool asked us to play three nights with ’em at The Metro in Sydney and you know us, any excuse to get liquored up and half nude in public, off we went.
We rounded up quite the team for this little outing into having the kind of stage to match our obvious more rock than thou skills (shit, they even let us smoke in the stairwell and switched some beers from VB to Becks for me, though with the amount of whiskey I was packin, what the fuck was the need?).
Big ups to Georgeous George, the soundguy and Dr. Jono Barwick, who cured my worst hangover ever with a Little Creatures Ale. You sweet SOB. I hope his daughters are as arousing as he is.
The thing about playing to Karnivool’s crowd that made it so easy to get half nekkid and ‘rapey’ was that they had no idea what was going on – either did we. I made a connection with some sweet ladies and was feeling damn good about it until I realised that they were definitely the kind of women who could get me put in gaol for a long time. Shit, I’d love the quiet time so I could write the great avant-fantasy novel of our generation, but child molestation just ain’t my bag.
After three nights of riding a burning steam train through what was otherwise a lesson in soundscapes and excessive lighting – minus a guitar, a pair of trousers, a hat and a shit load of dignity, we were laid to rest…
Of course we still had one last show booked before going on a writing hiatus (even though the first album isn’t even out yet, assholes) and that was to be with our hottest lover brothers, The Snowdroppers – but what do you know? The bastards hit the road with the north coast’s favourite ‘rockers’, Grinspoon. Good choice, fuckwits.
So next thing I know, we’re jumping off the bill too (hey, note to bookers – putting us on with crusty/homophobic/sexist/racist acts will get you a roylal fuckover by us, gleaming scepters in and out the metaphysical ass until it’s a weird cross between OZ season 2 and a Richard Miller novel. Read Squed. Do it.)
Same venue (Spectrum) the next night. Oh, are we pricks? Yeah. You should have seen my replacement trousers.
I feel bad for anyone who wasn’t there. I feel worse for the people that were; me resplendent and erotic, unreachable from my one foot tall stage, crotch apparently stuffed with a cucumber – it wasn’t but who am I to argue with the people?
The only real problem with the gig was that Slim, Blacktooth and D forgot themselves – this is The WH Show and I am unhappy to say that they all recieved a sound thrashing the next day for stepping out of line. Slim said that he was sorry, but I could tell that he was lying to me, his moustache dripping with beer foam and legs performing a weird shuffle that I later recognized as the same hypnotic stomp he had been using the night before; bastard! Using his powers on his own husband/leader!
In album news, we have a venue and line ups booked in Sydney so far, the line-ups will include most of the good bands in Australia. I mean GOOD not popular. Oh and if you’re thinking of sleeping with me at a show, bring money, I’m broke.

My First Wife – Sayomi Shimizu

Fox Queen? Pom Pom?

Ok, so now I need to tell y’all about my first wife and yes, she was indeed a fox queen, kitsune’, whatever you want to make of it.

She was also a crossdressing samurai and studied not only the martial arts of ninjitsu, judo, kendo and karate, but also the darker arts of the wu-jen… not to mention her time spent as hangyoku of the hot springs near Atami.

Our graphic design slave once suggested that Sayomi enjoyed ‘boosh doofs,’ this is not so, Gina Belle.

Sayomi Shimizu does not do doofs. Sayomi listens to the sound of trees falling in the woods when she is not even there to hear it and drops gangsta haiku over the samples of Masamune swords cutting up Mongols, the swish, chop, thud creates an excellent back beat.

Sayomi has been know by many names and titles throughout her long and strange life, the most commonly used of which was Pom Pom in both 18th Century Paris/Gevaudan and 19th century North Africa, where she spent a time working in the secret white slave trade.

Most recently, Sayomi has left a fifty year career as a gun for hire to become a recording artist. She says that she is glad to be working as an entertainer again.

I hope that this clears things up.

Much Love

WH