Salt, c. 2007

[matchup #57 in Tournament of Bookshit]

Waste, do you know the word. Often it comes at night when I’m combing my lines in the dark. When I’m mouthing the name of a woman, or fucking myself, or wondering why I carry on being American. Waste means whatever waste wants. In the middle of my life I searched for myself in the engine. I’m not dead links and waste and zero results, I told myself. I wrestle the ancients and yell their names when I’m blackout. I unleash myself on myself and fuck the crow from my book. But waste means here comes the shepherd’s crook. Ask me anything I’m the bellwether nobody tags. Waste and my instant telegrams of perennials and teacups and my shoes in the cities I love they will vanish. I’ve failed to convince myself to subscribe to myself. I stand before the wall on which nothing’s written. Waste means I’m following. I came here to waste in the box but everyone called it life. Waste finds me new addresses, new names every day. A red name, a green name, then orange. Like the colors that hang from the wires that tell me to drive. Waste means traffic. Waste means more invites. Waste means I interview Salt, my friend in his twenty-sixth year because his father manages waste to make money. I remember one day a dozen years ago he came home smelling like shit, Salt writes me. Are you like him do you watch the river of waste to make money. Waste the river of fishbones and scumbags and hair and bloodrags it’s blackbread with the crust come alive. Waste I’m disabling my family filter. Shit definitely one of the top three smells. I think of when I think of him, Salt writes me. The others? I don’t know. Waste the others. Waste and we’re sorry nothing matched your search. I fired a shot into the river nobody published it. The birds will sing none of it back. Waste is I stop telling stories. Yes, Salt writes me. I’ve thought of my father below me. Guarding his river of shit when I flush myself down the hole. Waste and return to the engine. I read to you my life I wrote today from my wireless. I sharpen my banter. Waste creates me a page in the encyclopedia of waste. No one has met my waste yet, not even me, but my waste is yours for the buying. I’ve only seen the place from the road, Salt writes me. You’ve seen it too. My father’s job is he watches the shit out to sea. Waste it’s none of my business. Waste is to hell with the scene. Waste is chanting encore. Waste wants one more song. Waste wants my chronology spread out like my waste on a wipe. My father born and he cursed and a dozen years now he watches the shit floating past. Waste of a nut. Waste of a rearing. Waste of a man, get rid of yourself. Delete my waste then return to the engine to scour. Everyone wastes on my wall on my birthday now. Everyone ten thousand views and dislikes. I’ve failed at waste but I’ve died is that not a triumph. I loved a woman I’ve wasted another. Combing my lines tonight, will I waste in the engine and result in myself. Father he curses the waste floating past. Will I mouth the name of a woman, waste of a woman, tonight while she floats down the river. A raft and the suitors of waste on her arm. Foie gras smeared like waste on their teeth. Toy soldiers and dead cats and wedding rings in the river. My father steering the raft with his pole. John my father, Salt writes me. Waste of a name. Waste of a name I never made for myself. Waste has me flagged for removal. Waste is embedded. Waste wants my history. I wonder could I go back into the tunnels tonight and waste the one named Charon. Bury his name and his pole. Unfollow him. And write my father the waste king’s name there instead. And maybe I’ll lay him to waste and we’ll all call that life.

—Danniel Schoonebeek

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WINNER: sewage treatment technologies, because when I ask Salt what he thinks would happen if we didn’t have people like his father managing our waste, he tells me we’d all be boiling our shit water to make it potable.