Original Press Release Statement courtesy Realicide Youth Records
Nostalgia, or a longing for experiences past, is something most of us can relate to. But perhaps equally relatable is the private sense of torment and psychological erosion which can accompany indulgence in this longing. Amidst the common shroud of confusion and mortal fear we may find our lives fallen vulnerable to, the past often appears alluring or more fulfilling than various obstacles of the present day, yet by the dictations of time the past is forever a forbidden reality. Jim Swill's Caustic Nostalgia is a collection of poems spanning 2007-2010, documenting and exploring this struggle between self-destruction and enlightenment throughout his own turbulent experiences. Simultaneously brutal and beautiful, these poems convey the precise intensity this author has become known for within the American underground and DIY scenes. Along with his various chapbooks and spoken performances, Swill is known as a core member of Realicide and frequent collaborator within groups such as Evolve, Bunk News, and Get Born. 28 August 2010, edition of 250 books, hand screenprinted gold on black covers, 64 pages.
Excerpts From Caustic Nostalgia 2007-2010
Rubble Of The Mind
Rubble of the mind
Who am I ?
In the cold pnemonia mornings
so sickly you couldn't be sad within it
so gray it's only a loss to say so
insult to injury
I have hardons in my sleeping bag over the cruelest of people
Anyone lovely appears weak and tangible
and anyone fractured and existing like a walking shard of glass
becomes some ideal affection
Who am I?
In the vedic astrology I am Libra
In the clinical astrology I am a number of houses
In the magazine astrology I am lucky numbers
in the western astrology I am Scorpio
and I suppose I took a liking to the later
because I never wanted a boring label
rather be rmembered as a hand buzzer than a necktie
so who is it
waiting over there
in the mirror?
From here it's blank and antireal
but I remember that skull of wackjob eyeballs
and it's in that mirrorworld somewhere!
My friend Jonathan years back said the mirror world was sinister.
He may be right
as I have found many a dark monologue in the trance of it's
reflection
Who am I now?
With the upset stomach, nausea, nosebleeds, dizziness, and migraines
for fucks sake I haven't taken acid for years
but I can recall nights screaming
and writhing like those people strapped to beds
taking my liberties public
Who am I?
Man who is losing the poetic craft
unable to keepwriting because you wanna know
the beginning again
addicted to the past
Dead birds and broccoli stumps
rubber band paper clips and all this hair
getting itchy for scissors
always changing enviroments whether it be the room or the body
Who is it with such enormous ego problems
to where mushrooms make anatomy a nightmare
and the childhood past is some dark and tragic mundanity
that frowns the mouth
Who am I so who's who concerning
all puffed up with rhetoric
aesthetic symbols and sacrifice
but just a mediocre zine
in a few bedroom closets is the transpired artifact
of all the pain
See it all there
haloween candy
birthday cakes
christmas trees
easter baskets
valentines
and fireworks
All that is just a rubble of the mind
All prior to that dreaded love sickness
like a terminal illness
alienated by my own bedroom
and sick of seeing schizophrenics everywhere
because theyre easier to relate to
I want the sickness to die
but who am I
all longing for the hands and faces
all looking at the tits and the asses
thinking I'll never know so why bother
might as well have lottery ticket powder
in my hair
all pacing in the midnight with headphones making you deaf
sour boots and unshaved crustache
Who am I
with my hands all smelling like my dick
and my eyes all sleepy bogged out
watching other people sleep
and thinking I'm so tired
with all that sunlight everywhere
gray brightness
touching my nerves like a hangover from a wet dream
Who am I?
In the randomized state
wandering over borders
and looking for something without hydrogenated fat and high fructose
at every gas station
opting for a diet of salt and vinegar
with coffee in an irrevocable 3 inches of styrofoam
No sense in beating off
there's nothing playing on my fantasy reel but devils
I got all my limbs and body parts moving
so I shouldn't whine so much
but to me it's all beautiful
only others see the negativity
and to me the negativity is what makes the positivity shine
its what makes me feel real and alive
like a horribly dangerous ride
where I wanna spred my asshole open for the cops of all earth
and throw glitter on a dead deer
boffo popped whammed out on the highway
guts exploded in headlights
but we ignore it
we have to
we're already tensed up
So I love whoever it is this body represents to you
I guess I'll know I'm in here
but maybe you wont
whoever you may be
Sleep It Off
Go to sleep alone
wake up harder for it
callous identity
callous anonymity
callous perception
callous redemption
go to sleep alone
wake up harder for it
bones become skin
skin becomes a memory
every root covered in concrete
every field plated with metal
every word recycled
appropriated and polished
every moment like knives
like glass
like exactos
like scalpels
go to sleep alone
wake up harder for it
When you've been alone long enough
you can come alive
see yourself in many private dimensions
compared to the disguises concocted
for another's perception
go to sleep alone
wake up harder for it
Get The Job Done
Isolation birth
the same few faces, familiar voices
walking thru a burnt field, an ash haze
eternal and dark
Dark dark days in heat
where I'm bloody burnt and swollen
my leather hands
on spindled meat
The heavy smell of sap and burning plastic
I keep silent around everyone
Its' not that I have anything to conceal
I have nothing to give them
My heart is one of menial enjoyment and labor
manually pumped just to get the job done
Ghost faith
A mind distanced from society
Hands on my own body and the earth
Hands running along oiled gears
An old man leans back and smiles vacantly
as my furrowed brow remains focused
on the spaces I have yet to fill
his life a testament to a dead America
begging for welfare checks, disability checks, unemployment checks
Not him, not the past, not now
as time progresses we are weaker, slower, malleable, and desperate
flowing down a river than doesn't spring from earth
but from the spout of technology
Data streams and melted coins
pushing us up against the bricks until blood runs through the molten
drank by guzzling mechanical beasts drunk on the power of human
erosion
Phone Company Piece 3
It’s feels like de ja vu, but then you remember it was just like this
yesterday, and the day before that. The same pattern, the same cycle,
like those tubes the hamsters run thru, up and down to different
stations, necessities, recreations, but it’s always connected thru
the same L’s and X’s, rings, and squares. It’s so unnerving, when I
round the highway and see that looming square of black glass peeking
thru the leafless tress. Knowing how many people are shuffling and
apologizing in a silent fever inside, and soon, I’ll be right there
with them. Feeling the fat grow around my atrophatic muscles, with my
eyes twitching in the strobe of computers and rowed white lights,
hearing my mother’s words “this is the greatest job you’ll ever
have”, my bosses words “ this is the easiest 10 dollar an hour job
you’ve ever had”, my step fathers “it’s not so bad” down into one
cubicle over “I just feel nothing, its all a repeat, and I’d want to
die if I took the time to think but I can’t, I can’t really exist
here.”
I’m eating a peanut butter candy bar and drinking a diet lime soda
while spinning in my chair pretending to choke myself with the
telephone chord, we all get a kick out of that shit as do most jobs
like this. Jokes about shooting up the office and turning it into a
war zone are just kind of a common thought because that’s the kind of
monotony you’re subjected to. When people lash out, when people get
shot at their jobs its out of these environments, stupid ones.
Stupidity is worse that sadness, there’s no such thing as misery
before the stupidity. Stupidity is that inescapable repetition of
uninspired guilt filled moments in such a fast tandem you just want
to sleep until you’re at work again, mind gone so far awry that the
outside world appears to be more like a separate biodome rather than
your world. Your world is a Styrofoam cup and a well rewarded
vacation to the bathroom, getting your stats up, fixing TV’s when in
reality you don’t even own one. Your world is a quick moment of
taking the headphones off, no more calls, no more voices, no more
darkness, and silence waiting to be assigned to someone’s assigned
petty banter. You’re world is calling India for a DSL transfer
repair, your world is a napkin with a crude self portrait with fangs
and a dunce cap saying “thank you for calling the universe member
care, how may I provide you with excellent service today”, this world
includes practice runs of that, dress rehearsals of that, jokes and
reminders and conference calls of that script “how may I how may I
sorry I'm sorry so very sorry sir mam, sir mam, hello sorry how may I
provide you.” Your mouth is a clowns mouth, and the clowns mouth is
always smiling.
Industrial Mantra (Mamba Venom Dream)
We drink from the clay bowl of mamba venom dream
with viper fangs the length of fingers
pointed out
vindictively
and when we sing you hear the scream
that hovers in our hearts
weighted with the heavy metal poisons in our parts:
Our parts that link the chrome to flesh
that hold the crucifix to breast
that make the platinum bullet proof vest
to hide us from the hollow
but shallow within
beneath the grin
is short and stagnant sorrow
We sing in sheer abandon
under rust and flattened stars
As galaxies expand in time
we're like gerbils wheeling cars
In the plastic to plaster
brother to bastard
servant to master
gorgeous disaster
bricks to black to blood and back
we want it faster FASTER
And as we drink the nectar
from a bleached and hollow skull
we’ll realize we have always hungered
but never desired our bellies full
Conversation Between Cop And Suspect
Cop:
My intentions are to promote absurdity, so I wanna know why you're
trying to remain rational. Don't you know logic isn't the most lawful
choice for someone who looks like yourself?
Suspect:
OK lets restart: My intentions are to promote absurdity
be it the use of psylocibin, THC or just awkward emotions in bright
department stores be it the far off architecture of seemingly alien cultures
or just watching commercials, like really watching them
and feeling the subversive minimalist seizures of calculated persuasion
just run up in you. I just thought I was being an adult here, I mean
jesus and santa are the same in my head, it's a result of looking
thru telescopes,
and what I saw was there's a lot more out there in space than just
people,
so I don't really think it makes sense that some creator force has
our face.
Cop:
You're testing my limits here
were talking the truth of the moment if you didn't already know it.
I'll tell you my side and seeing as I'm the only one talking
you're expected to believe it
Do you wanna feel this? (asked indifferently)
Suspect:
I'll pass, I've already got a good idea of my emotional roller
coaster for the day.
Cop:
Well sir, you seemed like you were lost and looking for something...
Maybe some comfortable suffering, you know the kind everybody gets
around here. The kind that makes guys like you all apathetic and
tiresome. It has a supreme credit rating this kinda depression,
honestly I've never seen anyone spend so much money with a healthy
state of mind. (the cop fondles the tip of a nightstick with his
middle and index fingers while pointing his eyes at it) So I'm still
asking, do you wanna feel this?
Suspect:
No... thanks for the concern, I'm actually planning to feel a slight
feeling of ambition after I get a caffeine high until I get horny
then I'll probably relieve myself and not really feel much of
anything, so I'll drink a few beers and pine for the womb like the
arms of a strange and unknown lover whom doesn't truly exist but I'll
manifest characteristics of my old lovers minus the flaws into the
human embodiment of a person I cannot be with in any way because they
are on the absolute opposite end of the perception spectrum when it
comes to base level reality.
Cop:
Good good, gotta remember to keep yourself down, thats what being a
good American is all about.
Suspect:
You bet officer, by 3 am I'll be contemplating suicide while I shit.
Cop:
Have a nice day then.
The Buttery (Saint Louis, MO)
I watched her lips close
as she whispered my order
The yolk of an over easy egg oozed over the plate onto the red
tabletop
blue strands of smoke linger around the jukebox and I
before slithering out the door in a haste
each time it opens after another one gets buzzed in
and at that moment I failed to understand why anybody else
besides myself would want to come and eat here
Another grease trap with compassion
the owner's large pistol very visible in its holster behind his apron
Another grease trap with regulars you never see because you never
look up
you just hear their grizzly voices
with equally grizzly sources
almost fishing for your attention
while you stare at the butter flavored piles
melting into butter flavored sauce
Nothing lighthearted gets brought up really
24 hour breakfast diners always convey deep reconciliation
A time to ponder and bite your nails
Everyone knows why you're here
and it's not until your eggs are cold and crusty do you start eating
Nobody fits in with anybody but everybody is allowed
no matter how disheveled
a real good place
kind of dark
“nothing is true everything is permitted” Hassan-I-Sabbah
You run a hand thru your greasy hair
knowing the smell isn't coming out of your clothes
breathing thru your nose
never saying a word
just listening to other's words
and the sound of sizzling
as you smash your cigarette and bite ice cubes
Across The Street From The Buttery (Saint Louis, MO)
What feelings do you get when you find loose bullets at the bus stop
kicked in a pile of hamburger wrappers and crinkled tall boys?
I wonder where the rest of the bullets are
I wander where the rest of the bullets are
How much blood has dried into a dirty black stain
like a wad of spat out bubble gum collecting soot
would anybody dip out if there were shots fired?
Or, would we just purse up and close our eyes
like we do in a gust of freezing wind
clutching out transfers and putting our cash in our sock
while the traffic lights fade off
and the street darkens
with no other pedestrians in sight
alone under the street lamp
with your eyes locked down the road
waiting for that blinking vessel to come and sweep you away
from the territory of a strangers war
Phone Company Piece 6
Tired eyes covered by nonchalant hand gestures
visions of shredded paper
visions of glistening ham
the glass bulbs broke in reflective shards
shimmering imbedded in the sole of a bleeding foot
Into the stars beneath my hands
non admiring, non questioning,
simply moving over casually
to eclipse eons of distant life
kaleidoscopes of intricate gas and light
formations frozen to black matter
covered by my simple hand
We watch the space of our dead futures obscure beneath melting
plasticzip fly in a waxy pile onto one earth below.
Can You Feel The Silence
I remember the house as if it were my own
when I walked in on my friend shooting up his dad
He turned to me and gave me that “holy shit isn't this crazy” smile
His dad's eyes focused in the needle
after it went into his arm
he squirted some into his mouth
“it's real, it's real” he said
his eyes rolling back
The apartment was once neatly assembled
not much was ever there
but it was taken care of
His voice was loud, nasal, and clear
though his eyes were sunken deep
from the years he should've been dead
he was still funny, really dark, but funny
He played amateur blues guitar and harmonica sometimes
He apparently wanted to release a Halloween sound effects CD
He wanted to own a subway
and sometimes he wanted to pay his son back
All in all in most moments he seethed discontent
as if he wanted anything and everything
now matter how unattainable or unrealistic
His skull was a birdcage being drenched in steel reserve
He told me I should marry young
or else I would regret it later
being a father of two, he knew
His new wife was by no means an article of compassion,
she was blatantly acquired with intent and desperation
When she was a young girl she was dragged
50 feet from the grill of a pick up
Her legs were permanently disfigured,
her ass shredded to pulp and sewn up solid and cheek less
She wore a colostomy bag, and had a hungry possums voice
It commanded superiority,
She was from a very wealthy family,
which he married into with haste
My friend said his father once picked him up
in a convertible wearing sunglasses
and drove them halfway to Florida high on heroin,
abandoned the plan, and drove back on the comedown
Now large portions of that family money belonged to the liquor store,
or debt collectors
A fortune spread like ceremonial ashes
over the drug dealing individuals
of western Cincinnati
Cash relentlessly wasted on pleasure
or frivolous objects of mediocre satisfaction
Yet she remained
smoking cigarettes, staining the coach with her intestine hole,
supplying their marriage with a monthly disability check
like the company of a cancerous ghost
She was also prescribed scores of medicine
my friend's Dad traded or dealt of course
in the currency of liquor or malt liquor
Choices include 4-0, camo ice, or steel reserve
grocery bags stacked with 1 dollar tall boys
I think his wife's laugh, choke, coughing routine
like a violent fit,
was resemblant of jabba the hut
his father trying to prove his intelligence
shirtless and sweating
piercing with sobriety, no matter how much he drank,
all of us blitzed of ameltryptaline. “amels” or “tryptals” when being
pervertedly referred to
I think I said “are we gonna die?”
in inaudible murmuring as if in a drug paralysis
we shared high and diseased glances
with our puffy eyes.
I can remember the carnival like crack smoking
in the bare living room with stolen steaks in paper towels
pawned off at local bars
I remember the pink tile bathroom with a beach towel
smeared with human feces
as there was no money for toilet paper
The sneaking thievery of the pills with wonderfully precise stealth
and the slap happy glee that followed prior
to the emotionless void of the various pill's effects
I remember sleeping in a filthy daze,
cannibals stealing my change
Sharing Your Mind With A Paranoid Survivalist
Neurosis flooded my words
and any illumination dulled to a Polaroid memory
I need a rifle for my kitchen
to pull while cooking breakfast
because it’s just that much closer
Our novels will burn with our paintings
Our porn will burn with our furniture
Our mattresses will burn with our dogs and cats
Neurosis bashed my brains in tight
compact in my narrow head
The banks admit to the fictional properties of money
but the mall is still pushing
as the gas sputters out on the highway to work
It is so simply ending
without the fires we had preached
without the metropolis being swallowed in a nuclear flash
but in the gunshot we had written into satire
in the death camps illustrated in a video game
in the seemingly endless agony
displayed in an overlooked newspaper box
This is no time to weep
This is no time to fall in love
You need a rifle for your bike ride
a Kevlar vest to match
You need to know the proper berries
which you’d properly digest
Watch their precious metals melt
into a molten shining tomb
Tomorrow? Tonight?
I can’t get it right
it’s coming on to soon
Expanding Flaw
I want to define it
My dreams are all too small
Simple mataphors
forall the things I have done wrong
As I clutcha wilted flower in the center of my palm
in attempt to preserve beauty
I expand upon the flaw
Isnt it so easy
I should just let go
when given the choice to dominate
how could I say no
To watch it die before me
Hold power over time
Instead of reading symbols
I'm only reading signs
The same as when an insect
has been torn to bits
it crawls in agony
so I choose to step on it
but was it really my place
to shadow it's final nature
Is it really truly final
or is it solid as a vapor
just because I'm guilty
of killing just in part
Am I a natural killer
Is there carnage in my heart
Or is it heart at all to me
Or is it simply nature
My nature is to build and burn
to turn the trees to paper
so I can write my letters
expressing simple guilts
about the world and dying
and how a flower wilts
or what is wrong with my mind
the horror that I saw
In attempt to preserve beauty
I expand upon the flaw.
Greenmount Ave (Baltimore, MD)
Foot steps on greenmount
where the smoke is blue, it's shadow brown
and the concrete blocks are spattered with black bubblegum
Church bells clang out different broken melodies everyday
or maybe I just don't know the song yet
Footsteps thru grocery aisles
where the carts are half empty because we're counting quarters
and vegetables rot in landfills
as bellies swell with ramen noodles
Wind chimes are detached percussion
or the wind just stopped blowing the smoke out of my face
Foot steps thru bookstores
where the genius prose is off collecting new dust in dormitories
left with a billion paragraphs of bland disorder
Car stereos breathe rhythms in rattling sheet metal
my feet unable to walk the beat
Footsteps thru jam packed sorrowful bars
where men play drinking games with sexual despair
with the jukebox playing the songs of freaks I've embraced
The strangers hobble thru my backyard with bullets in their sides
my empathy invisible as I fill my face with oil and smoke
Nobody Knew
nobody called
nobody sent mail
nobody remembers
nobody knows you know
While the bones down here turn over and over
into sand for souvenir
and the stars push closer closer
but you can’t see them
Nobody on this earth said your name
No doves, no swallows, no robins;
maybe the worms and the silverfish knew
but the rain washed them away
No young men jeered
No young girls laid on their stomachs
and masturbated to your dreams
Your dreams of theatres of humiliation
where your bed is dragged into a buzzing beer sign ghetto
where your dead cat, dead grandparents, dead neighbors are all
still dead
as the caustic image of the only person you’ve ever loved
sucks off disheveled artists with graying beards
No sunlight can save you
No wind smells as sweet
Not enough cum is made to compensate for your lonely prick
-and the paint peels back, and your relatives die
-and your hands cut open, and your gums bleed
but nobody knows
And it feels as if you may as well be in a circus
where they touch you with feathers and needles
and girls squat their pristine naked centers over your
mouth like chandeliers
before they hose you down and give you cancer
The kind of cancer that would fuck your face up.
Then your reflection wouldn’t know
Photos wouldn’t know
Family never knew
And your despair spans galaxies of vivid lava and broken prisms
as your imagination and genius would fall and tumble into the sun
but nobody would know
you were here alone
Satanic Warship
Into the mythology of icons
“Satanic Warship” - graffiti below northside viaduct
cartoon malice
pixelated porno clips in manic sedation
for Pepsi cola raining from skies painted red with cheap CGI
guts swollen with cancer, pieces of stale cake sticking to the guts
bursting open obese people in car crashes
like large pot pies filled with blood and gray spaghetti.
God bless daffy duck,
Donald duck,
the dicks who who create assholes
and Arnold Schwarzenegger's suffocating face from Total Recall.
God bless
The retarded comparison of Superman and Batman
both characters are capitalists
and extensions of this never ending fatman bomb of dancing pictures
all of which are catered with our dreams and aspirations
that spill out of broken minds
eroded like sands
to medicines that burn like acid
The thirst will find our very essence
hunt us down, rip us apart
like a hound dogs captured fox
as a spit filled bugle sounds off in flaccid triumph
Xan Man
Remember the golden girls
“xanax is typically prescribed to middle aged housewives and mothers”
His eyes gleam a devil shine
a glint of an eerie detatchment
ruthlessly aware
yet brutally intoxicated
I think of the truest culture
only us midwestern american white kids know about
that super sickly credit card over your minimum balance
withdrawal while you got withdrawals from your pills
while dude you called aint got his script filled
and you would fucking kill someone
if you could
but you just call dude back
and dude says calm down its not like its crack
you hear your cellphone disconnect and you react
by destroying some of your possessions
realizing all this time you been watching tv and eating burger meat
you try to take it back
with a simple affirmation
stack all your best qualities
but all you got is a beggars face
“People try to put us down”
and we stuttered
A shoe of piss or a shoe of puke
The truth he says
The truth I speak it
he banters
Veins drift a lazy river
of broken down pill matter
nestled like a parasite on a coscious mind
to bring it to delirium
a spirit to it's knees
a line of real blood
that thin trickle
ran down his fist
when he was done preaching violent anarchy
in his hand he crunched the empty can
of a monster energy drink
Xanax is insane on a technical level
Irrational Bliss
I want the graven image
I need the graven image
Two skeletons leaned in woundidly
over one another in an unnerving dependency
teeth bared, eyes identical, motions controlled
that's a flesh less daydream
and understanding there's little to be understood
of what is called a psyche, or an ego, or a spirit
those can be chemical controlled
auto immune body to body
dust to rust then back in my body
breathe deep
like fire streaming across open plains
a moment of absolute contempt
with being alone
feeling connected
forever never alone
then back into the rational head
unaware of the fateful daydreams to come
minute to minute
back to the body
Two skeletons leaned in desperately
is what a wounded man sees in embrace
everyone's at war with one's self
someone must've said that
Carnival Of Decay
In one body I encompass the carnival of decay
In one eye you can remember
a birthday cake extinguished
In one eye youn forget
the biblical remnants of rubber devil hell
One hand remembers
each loose breast and the voice that followed
trembling with adolescent desire
One hand forgets
the diseased and decrepit body parts
saught after in a haze
and traded for wadded dollars
One foot remembers
the bare skin on dew
the stone creek waters
nature in the panorama
One foot forgets
the feeling of bugs dying in it's push
and popping the shards of glass in a trashcan stairwell
as your body derives it's agenda
from a universal public
The lights so bright
it becomes alienating
and in the acceptance of a million strangers
it feels as if your identity is being pieced together
in the hands of invisible agents
In one body
the emotions color my face
In one body
the memoriam decays
In bone and in a colorful dissolve
as if it was a salted slug
the carnival of decay
breathes it's noxious air of release
The Psychedelic $150 Handjob
I've seen things that kick up the clouds in the sediment of death
colors forming from empty space
and auras in a breath
all that's left are busy signals
for the rest who cannot rest
Hold the skull and cross the chest
pray to the spirits of the mind
collectivley accumulated
passivley in time
they'll eat and pave the ruins
they'll feed and starve the body
consciously craving intimate substance
unconsciously now rotting
Memories of sex with strangers
paid too much to churn the cum
lazily they watch the clock
as your mounted
eating crumbs
northing real or worth the thought
of dwelling on it's sickness later
virus virus diseased liars
sex for colored paper
Ships Within Ships
Our hands outstretched:
thru technology we channel the human spirit
but manifest a curse of mechanical decay
within the process of replicating ourselves
in plastic and metal:
for the only doppelganger
would be the image of cancer
As beautiful cosmos expand and dissolve
and our tides pull and push evolutionary pools
we disguise our fragility
in our ability to dominate and torture
Carnal smiles
open welts of iron whips
and imaginations gagged with poison medicines
Do not let these devices control you
for they are merely extremities of the flesh
Though your body may frighten you
though you feel bound to skin and bone
you are not a simple organism
nor a divine machine of pulsating muscle
We are vessels
We are channels
We are ships within ships
unaware of where the ocean ends.