Tyson Bley

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A SPIRITUAL JOURNEY

‘If my eminence is ever exhibited in a wax museum,
they will not exclude my iron stomach, I can
bet you that. I am not OK with this.’
The cooking show host voices many personal
gripes on national television, blaming God for everything,
not just for the iron stomach. ‘I’d be a freak, and kids
would stick their hands through the wax feeling
for the hard round heavy organ. Tittering. I am not
FINE with this…’ Backstage later he looks around
and realizes, with a massive relieved sigh, that
it’s a sign of personal satisfaction to have
your dressing room plastered with dachshund almanacs. 

Shadowy bottled lightning sits on the prophet’s
knee as he glibly traces the future of the new Levi’s
clothing line – he is peeing himself in his black jeans
but whispers, ‘After a life of incontinence, I am now
fully rested. Such boyhood fantasies about body modifications
leaving me striding past the pool with Robocop shoulders
are taxing and absurd. Good luck with your new label,
Leslie Nielsen – mastermind of planetary nostalgia!’

How do these luminaries afford all their prostitutes? With
dinosaur extinction. But the winter following is as
pointless as trying to gather as much collective data
as possible on Cheech and Chong. They’re left with plenty
of time to run the Ben Hur script by a group of immortal,
comet-resistant hippos. Who will manage beautifully.
While the rest of us flap and jump around on the tailgates
of our own spiritual gulags, like trying to flick the gangrene
out of our bottom lips.

‘Seeing spots is the occupational hazard of competitive eating.
Cousins in the same endeavor – a fable about autism
and a life-imitating-art incident at once. You butchered
your tonsils with excellent sandwiches. Their ghosts:
GPS voice recordings lost in insect time & space.
Your amazing travels: jet lag fibers stretched over
your iron gut. Ceramic Jerusalem in which your soul
sports its badass monocle among street artists.
Suddenly it’s possible to sleep with a pinhole.
To kick the electron discovered by Christopher Columbus.
To compute