Dan Pegg

suburban decay

2012-02-26T21:49:00.001-08:00

Forest Hills Cemetery (angels & ghosts)

2012-02-26T19:43:00.000-08:00

romp through Forest Hills Cemetery

2012-02-26T18:26:00.001-08:00

“To be nobody-but-myself --- in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else --- means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight, and never stop fighting.” - e.e cummings

interior consolation

2012-02-06T21:05:00.000-08:00

it's harder for the real people

2012-02-06T21:00:00.000-08:00

2012-01-29T13:34:00.001-08:00

degrading myself and the Irish population at the same time.

2012-01-26T21:04:00.000-08:00

Americana by Derek Palmer

2012-01-26T18:07:00.000-08:00

By Derek Palmer

thrift store find

2012-01-25T21:03:00.000-08:00

heady winter night song

2012-01-25T15:19:00.001-08:00

abandoned umass staircase

2012-01-25T15:03:00.000-08:00

Eileen said these stairs were the portal to Hell.

Maureen

2012-01-24T18:50:00.000-08:00

The window yawned open with a snapping sound as dried paint chips fell to the floor. The air outside was warm and smelled like mud.

Maureen took in a deep breath before resuming ironing her work apron. She used the surface of her grandfather’s old desk served as her ironing board. It was a collegiate desk, bulky in size and built from sturdy oak.

A grease-splattered kettle sang out from the kitchen.

“Fuck,” Maureen muttered while letting the steam of her iron hit her face.

Maureen made her way through her messy apartment, maneuvering though the piles of collected textbooks and stacks of papers from her courses at Bunker Hill Community College.

Maureen ripped open a bag of hot chocolate powder and sifted it into a green mug. She poured the boiling water into it, letting the loose hot chocolate powder float about her like a frantic brown dust storm. She poured some milk into it, two percent- they never had cream in the apartment. She paused for a moment, sipped the hot chocolate.

Maureen lit a cigarette and walked towards the open window. Outside, the view of identical triple-decker houses stretched out before her. Spanish voices were mingling around outside, permeating over the thawing earth. Maureen flicked a lingering ash outside.

The cell phone rang a tired old ringtone that came with her discontinued mobile phone.

“Hello? Yeah but, Caitlyn was supposed to cover my shift. Well nothing, I just had this essay to finish…okay. Okay. I am on my way.”

Maureen placed her frumpy work apron over her slender frame. The wrinkles were only partially creased. Then threw her half lit cigarette out the window before slamming it shut.

Longfellow and Dickinson on a state school wall.

2012-01-24T10:51:00.000-08:00

occupy umass boston

2012-01-24T05:55:00.000-08:00

first day of the last college semester.

king of the forest

2012-01-23T12:11:00.000-08:00

shameless, but unselfish, promotion for my father's vinyl site. http://shop.kingoftheforestrecords.com/.

Okay, so maybe a little selfish. I took the pictures.

Caroline

2012-01-23T08:45:00.000-08:00

"Caroline was killed by a shotgun blast to the chest in her mother's home on West Street, on September 13, 1857, by her husband George who believed her to be unfaithful with a peddler by the name of Barrows.

George was a farm laborer, who worked on the farm of John A. Craig, Esg. a former Wrentham Selectman, who lived at 566 West Street.

He had previously separated from his wife after heated arguments but they were later re-united.

Caroline had know George from their schooldays. She had also known a somewhat older man, a peddler by the name of Barrows. At 20 years of age with with short curling hair, Caroline was considered beautiful, but had a bad reputation.

On the day of the murder George Lewis and the peddler Barrows had an argument and George went home in a rage, confronted his wife and struck her several times in the eye and face. She managed to escape with a horse and wagon and went to her mother's home. George got a shotgun and followed her on his other horse. When George found his wife in the house he fired at her and missed, but the second shot hit her in the chest and knocked her to the floor. He then used the gun as a club and struck her in the head killing her outright.

When it was over he went to the farm of his employer and reported what he had done.

George R. Lewis was reportedly a mild and inoffensive man and had always Bourne a good character even though his mother had been divorced and married a black.

The sympathy of the people of Wrentham were with him at the time of the trial. He pled guilty to manslaughter."

-Dedham Gazette of October 3, 1857

Caroline is buried in a tiny cemetery off of Route 1A between Plainville and Wrentham, Massachusetts. Toppling, lichen covered gravestones surround her own modest marker, which is tucked away at the far back corner of the cemetery. It doesn't surprise me that the "people of Wrentham" seemed so disconcerned with the death of this 21 year old girl. She was a woman of a "bad reputation," after all. Small towns always have that tendecy to damn the individual whose not living up to their provinicial codes of conduct.

What could have been said between George Lewis and the peddler Barrows that would have erupted to Caroline's violent death? What did a beautiful woman like Caroline see in a wandering, village merchant who was "somewhat older" than herself? All of these details that weren't covered by the Dedham Gazette in 1857 have long since been forgotten. Tucked away and buried.

In a town like Wrentham, Massachusetts- which is predominatly known for its large outlet mall and being the claimed hometown of Tea Party elected politicians- we forget the stories of the people who actually lived, worked and died here. It was little more than a bucolic, farming town not even a full century ago. But people forget; people don't care. Spoiled teenagers in their parental-bought cars will continue to drive past Caroline's cemetery without the slightest aknowledgment of the people buried there. Many of whom homes they may now live in, or on the extinct farms that have been destroyed to make way for their McMansion housing developments, where the current generation have grown up without any lingering curiosity as to what or who existed there before them.

Caroline could be considered a sort of saint, or martry, for all the weirdos living in the suburban "tri town" area. She will be there for all those who care enough to look.

2012-01-23T08:27:00.000-08:00

Falk's Market

2010-07-14T08:28:00.001-07:00

broke into the old general store
dusty paint cracking soda shop,
dead eager adolescent hearts,
jerking carbonated drinks from rusted taps.
sour penny candy.

the old man stood surrounded by fading dolls, broken bottles and moth eaten cloth
"we knew what we were doing back then" he told me.

"you're a ghost"-I told him.
"nearly blew my own head off in 1910"- he tells me.

He used numbers when I asked him to spell out his name.
"you're just fucking with me aren't you?"- I asked him.

He had a friendly laugh.

"I just think there's something wrong with being alone"

2010-02-06T08:00:00.000-08:00

born to be alone,
my body lies in tatters in the fanning branches of a leaveless tree,
my heart is a muscle of knotted roots that grapple deeper than any puritan city.

young lovers will carve names against my skin,
I give refuge to the wild escapes of the father barred daughters
and garbage collectors sons;
the spoiled youth.

I like the idea of providing shade for the wandering tramp-man
with the clitter, clatter of his pots and pans,
the lone wanderer smoking a pipe of herb grass.

He sings songs of faraway cities down rusting railways.

His words will ring through my hollowed bark-

when the broken hearted dangle themselves
from my branches.

walt whitman should have visited Coney Island

2009-10-21T21:40:00.000-07:00

a slavic witch told me my palms read no sign for love
on Coney Island -

displayed human oddities,
hay lined cages-bearded women-freaks.

the half dead siamese twins,
contorted lifeless limbs forever haunting the surviving sibling.

I was a lone white flame on a sun kissed beach-
the oldest roller coaster dipping in an out of the atlantic,

I ate the world's best hot dog.

god made man in a half-wake stupor

2009-10-05T21:39:00.001-07:00

I stumbled upon a coven of witches

who sat encircled,
smoking long cigarettes
on the lawn of a teetering,
abandoned
whore house.

One told me I bore the same face of Adam.

Where was Eve?

I asked if I could bum a smoke.

She said, "No."

family history

2009-10-05T21:36:00.004-07:00

I was sick of white people.
Manicured lawns of patchwork green along dead end
side streets.

In the old days of the South an ancestral mother
was butchered to death by her son.

Her remains scattered and buried
by the hands of African slaves.

hollow bones nest roots of yellowing weed grass;
Sprouting towards Liberty, South Carolina.

the pavement of highway 8 silences her.

college kids

2009-10-05T21:36:00.003-07:00

the impressionable youth live in homes poor people die in;
hypnotic trance blaring in rooms of dead children.

the future of america reside in refurbished slums;
homes of evicted immigrants.

In the suburbs, homes built by world war veterans were destroyed.

We believed the middle-class wasn't dying.

They would call us an over privileged generation.

potscrubber

2009-10-05T21:36:00.001-07:00

I wash dishes in Purgatory,
scrubbing out grease with lemon scented suds.

Martha plans her weekly escape,
silently pulling out her feeding tubes.

Angelina is always laughing, "We didn't blush in my day."

Genevieve pours herself powdered hot chocolate,
like darkened sands of time,
swirling around her in the breezeless air.

A tired old man wanders our
endless
corridors.

A visitor.
"The way things are, he probably drove himself here."

I take naps on the dead man gurney.

if they're not
using it

to wheel
out
old
corpse
meat.

Howard yells that he doesn't want no lemon juice.

It takes longer

for the
dementia
ridden ones
to leave.

heart breaker

2009-10-05T21:35:00.003-07:00

She spoke with her dead mothers wisdom;
a lovely voice, breathing insight on wisps
of menthol cigarettes.

She grew up the house of a long dead sea captain;
her eyes the color of the emerald isles,
that could lead any sea-faring man home.

She conversed with ghosts on autumn nights,
who warned her of a loveless life.

In a past life, she had broke the hearts of many eager men.
Their dead voices still calling out to her through curtain-drawn windows.

"I don't believe in love."

mayflower descendant

2009-10-05T21:35:00.001-07:00

Mayflower descendants rarely left New England.

Tituba danced naked
in the forest
with the daughters
of snow-capped puritans.

we slaughtered heathans;
hung witches
by their devil marked necks

we'd like to think we could lament;
grieve for the sheer
seething
white
hate.

made from the
ancestors.

never learning.

the pilgrims drank native blood on thanksgiving.

plainville

2009-10-05T21:34:00.001-07:00

I was raised in houses built on main streets

The fruits of a lust filled working class.

Helen was a product of rape

A boy
burned
to death

in a
slab
ranch

with asbestos
lined
walls.

She told me I looked like someone
who would live in a house
somebody died in.

hand reader

2009-10-05T21:33:00.001-07:00

I made friends with a witch
who lived next
door to a
methodist
church

in a wind chimed cottage,
she'd tell of
ancient lives,
timeless lives.

leathered palm lines told stories.

humans choke on doubt.

a man handed out flyers
on how to
survive
the end of the world.

christ's bloody hands sought bandages.

In the center of a dead
suburban
sprawl

I would be
the
last
lighthouse
keeper.

man love in a grand am

2009-10-05T21:31:00.001-07:00

Two boys kissed
in a parked car
on a rainy night.

we were the sons
of the
mechanics,
the salesmen,
the electricians,
the plumbers,
the repair men,

who slept
behind
darkened
windows.

tiny houses lost
in the pouring rain.

in the distance,
our cold-war
school buildings
sat
sulking
in the wet
damp.

rotting,
empty edifices

We ignored
the
invading
headlights

two nights from Father's Day.

Two boys kissed
in a parked car
on
a
rainy
night.

2012

2009-10-05T21:30:00.000-07:00

the angels have been bowling
with god for some time

drenching the northeast

having us forget how
infinite
it all is

from
beneath
overcast
skies.

some wait for the earth to crack open

grasping to mayan prophecies

like how

our mothers cling to the
subserviant
apron strings
of the
Grandmother

fathers become as
fat and sloppy
as the institutional loving
Grandfather

In a stale-smelling
house
of
old
dying
people

Agnes grins out
into the storm
chuckles to her ghosts,

"Are we going?"

and then, the middle class died

2009-10-05T21:29:00.001-07:00

the laboring classes
produced
remedial-classed
trash.

teachers told me
I had a disability

with learning.

I just could not adjust

to
silently
suffocating
in
windowless

class
rooms.

the executive classes
gave birth
to the spoiled,
over-privileged.

forever chewing
on mother's

umbilical cord.

We pumped gas
into your
father-bought
cars

that you escaped

to your
trust-funded
universities
with.

while we
rotted away

here,
in childhood
ghost towns.

sinking lower classes-
With you asking us to not scream so loudly:

"This is why people look down on you guys."

Katie

2009-10-05T21:28:00.001-07:00

my dog died on a sweltering August morning

We lived our lives like dead ladybugs
stuck in the winter windowsill

of an antique house.

rickety wooden window panes,
splintering, spider web
glass.

escape is for the weak of will - they taught us
within institutional husks;

brick buildings with sealed fire exits,
dead insects on radiators.

I could never love a dog so much.

no lack of love

2009-10-05T21:27:00.000-07:00

I left purgatory triumphantly
under Armageddon-orange skies,

I'm done feasting with the near-dead.

I'll miss plainville
during twilight hours

where people sleep comfortably
in veneer sided houses,

remaining wilderness,

street lights shadow
grasping tree branches
against slick asphalt roads

delicious greasy smells
from the lone railway diner-

haunted general stores,

bloodshot counter clerks
selling cigarettes to hooded,
sandal-footed strangers.

graveyards,
lonesome ghosts spying on me
beneath tomb caked eyelids

in the misty early mornings
they call out to me-

"never die
in a dirt white suburb."

a dug up railroad-side
harmonica

led me out of town.

but, you got pretty

2009-10-05T21:26:00.001-07:00

the fate of an ugly duckling is tragic:

up right, wheat yellow cowlicks
like an unwanted crown.

wired toothed mouth.
boiling, pore-oozing red skin.

a strange man's voice stammering
out of my throat.

avoiding reflections

I would tare at my face
with dirt encrusted fingernails.

I emerged awkwardly,
clumsy crippled beggar with a complex
for a walking stick.

Then they start telling me
"I'm a sucker for blonds"

when lusty ugly men consume you in patchy moonlit wilderness
you can't help but wonder what the the dead grandmother would say.

I am no longer in the protection of saints.

I wish I could cleanse myself-
purge my flesh until I'm an even toned bronze.
A bird perching statue outside of a house of god.

they will revel at my perseverance.

public execution

2009-10-05T21:23:00.001-07:00

“You’re still bright eyed in this city,” Illinois said to me.

I descended from the whore of a king-
The Hand maiden to a since-drained prosperity.

the first born son of bastard royalty;
Raised on the
Watered down middle class luxuries

Cable television in houses with no basements
Shimmering shards of glass in the uncut lawn-

soft eyed girls kissed me in grass-poking parking lots.

My new home is a sea wading metropolis
founded by pasty pale, witch-hunting
Purer-than’s.

Beautiful scholarly boys in collared shirts,
Encouraged free thought-
Various spice colored faces

Lust is a reversed horned devil in a tarot card deck.

Soured and alone-
In a past life I was a seaman’s wife
Who birthed the son of a savage

I was hung facing the sun rise.

"I've always lived in the highest of luxury"

2009-10-05T21:21:00.001-07:00

the boy made Narcissus look like a modestly mirrored saint,
vanity so thick one would gag from lack of honest air.

He lived in seaside castle, furnished with foreign antiquities-
painted semblances of forgotten mistresses.

The former owner had thrown himself into the Atlantic-

The boy lived among ghosts-
gaunt dead faces
observing, pupil less stares.

the boy worshipped their dead decadence-

envious, sexless wives with tightly brooched necks
whose gowns still sweep the chilled ballroom floor-

brandy sipping tycoons- suffocating cigar smoke
over hushed talks of minority uprisings.

A cursed, guilded cage of a castle.

the mirrors in that house-where he'd practice his self worship;
must have had reflected so many pairs
of tear soaked eyes,
trembling lips;
sex-tossed, feathered hair-
numb rape.

silent screams.

he had damned himself in that haunted place-

never to find life among the living.