Advance praise for Kyle Bern's AMERICANGULAG

"...kind of poetic genius...something very strong..." -- Matthew Stokoe

"The voice of a generation..." -- Bebe Zeva

AMERICANGULAG

A novel.

Coming soon.

My Father is the Devil

My father is the Devil.  THE Devil.  Satan himself.  My mom's a nice person.  That makes me 50 percent Satan, 50 percent a nice person.  An outside observer would never know.  When I'm awake I do pretty normal shit, like read books and lay around praying for death.  It's only when I'm sleeping that the beast runs wild.

I do all types of wild shit in my sleep, like invent methods of torture that don't exist yet.  I won't scare you with details but I'm telling you, my subconscious is totally fucked up.  My dreams are where my truly Satanic self comes out.

Being part Satan has its advantages.  The Hell I occupy while unconscious carrier over into my waking hours enough to allow me to express myself in really sick ways.  On the other hand I'm plagued with disturbing thoughts, like, if I sacrifice small children to Satan (my father) will it bring Eric and Dylan back to life?  Times like that I have to remind myself it's just my father talking and my mom would never approve of such behavior.

Now I'm awake.  Thank you, mom.  Thank you, God.  I'm shotgunning my third cigarette of the morning and my eyes are blurry but fuck I'm awake.  If you knew how much this hurts you wouldn't be alive.

Behind the Scenes of That Last Story

M: Let me see what you did here.

K: Yeah, for sure.  You know how much I value the input of my, you know, favorite editor.

M: Don't call me that.

K: Sorry. So what do you think?

M: You have drugs and lots of them, which is very you.

K: You think?

M: The camera angle shit isn't you, but you've done it so much it is now.

K: Thanks.

M: Come to think of it none of this shit is you, but it's not like anyone reading it will know the difference.

K: That was my thinking.

M: You get bonus points for the Columbine reference.

K: Bonus points?  That was the whole reason I wrote it.

M: I get that, but you have this tendency to write like you're trying to get to some sick punchline that only makes sense in your head.

K: You know me.

M: No one but you and I will have read the authors you're stealing this material from.  I say run with it.

K: Cool. You're the best, Matt!

Place of Interest 9,000

A shitty motel room.  Shitty and gray.  Fucking PCP.  It's been days.  I ask her for the third, fourth, fifth time, what's wrong.  She still stares at the spiraling ceiling fan which I see as a camera spinning around and around spotting all this gray in this fucked up room.  Static from the TV set tells me its not just the drugs or my imagination, Satan is here for real.

Outside it was crystal meth and night.  Lights in the night, neon, zoom zoom fast, we couldn't keep up.  Now we're here.  Dusted.  I can't tell you how much gray there is.  Too much.  I burn a hole in my middle finger lighting a cigarette.

What's wrong, six seven eight.  The camera zooms down, spiraling, locks on her pupil.  It widens.  A different shot from somewhere else in the room shows all the gray, gray clouds, gray static, gray gray gray dancing over her white body with the jeans halfway down and her hand on her crotch.  Switch back to the extreme close up of her pupil.  Offscreen:

"Dylan Klebod broke my heart."

Then she asks for more dust, or crystal, I don't hear right.

17

she moves about the courtyard, flesh eyes forward in their flesh frame, ghost feet not kicking up anything.
she took photos here, before she took pills and vodka somewhere else.
why has returned? maybe for me.
at least in the dream i can be that selfish.

25

winter
a new year
a fifty year old man's voice saying "did you cum?"
me mouthing "no"
him not knowing it wasn't about that
his yellow cum on my porcelain belly
it was about love or something he couldn't understand
i understood everything

AMERICAN GULAG: a novel

My new novel, titled AMERICANGULAG, is set to be published in 2017 with the kind assistance of Mr. Matthew Stokoe.

The Life of Pablo - album review

Kanye West's The Life of Pablo is one of the greatest albums of all time.  This is an album that should be played at funerals and in places of worship.  From the first track to the last one, we on a ultra light beam.  This is a god dream.

"Now, if I fuck this model, and she just bleached her asshole, and I get bleach on my t-shirt, I'ma feel like an asshole." Ye drops the pop lyrics of the year right here on the second track, "Father Stretch My Hands," but he's not done: if you keep listening there's a story there: "I was high when I met her. We was down in TriBeCa." Ye does a little step-step maneuver with his vocal pitch to match the spelling of "TriBeCa".  This whole thing is genus.

"I feel like me Taylor might still have sex. Why? I made that bitch famous." True? Maybe. What is true is that Yeezus has "loved us better than our kin did, from the very start" and as I'm typing this and hearing the screech of my mom's steering as she screams for me to to call an ambulance, I drop the phone and instead sing along full force with Kanye and Rihanna. "I just wanted you to know I've loved you better than your own kin did, from the very start. I don't blame you much for wanting to be free. I just wanted you to know."

David Bowie's death and the post-empire

It's 11 at night and I'm on a lot of drugs and I'm scared.  We have dexedrine to balance out the ADHD, klonopin to balance out the dexedrine, DXM to counteract the PCP, and mood stabilizers and anti-psychotics to balance out everything.  Its one of those nights where the paranoia that paralyzes the national character is paralyzing my own mind as well.  From across the room the night sky's abyss stares in at me, representing everything foul and fucked up in the USA.  I sit in my ivory fortress, in my ivory tower.  My ivory fortress is my last stronghold against a rapidly dying world and it is where I am reporting all of this from.

Nightmares

Whenever I fall asleep I have nightmares.  I have to stop falling asleep.

When I was 4 it was Thanksgiving and my uncle pulled his cock out in front of me.  He pressed it to my lips.

Before and after that was school.  School was the main nightmare.  I keep coming back to it, it and the tiny shit town that raised me.

I have to stop falling asleep.

College is where I accidentally smoked PCP.  For the next seven years after that I was locked in PCP hell.  I saw the world distorted and black.  My mind was a contorted version of what it had been.  When I slept on PCP, I didn't dream, or if I did I didn't remember it.  Seven years later my mom discovered that DXM can counteract PCP.  I'm out of PCP hell.  Whenever I fall asleep I have nightmares.

I have to stop falling asleep.

While I was under the influence of PCP I became a drug addict.  I was also raped.

I have to stop