Thank you for this secular exorcism.
Thank you for the poltergeist at the podium, for the ectoplasm dripping from the mic.
Thank you for clutching your pearls.
That last shot was, I admit, a doozy.
Thanks as well for my body, which is a life-sized map of my body. No borders without war.
And where would I be without my remains splayed across the light table, reduced to proofs and contact paper?
Without the Chelsea grin?
In the ooze, that’s where, in the sepsis.
Thanks for strands of mucus draped between my halves.
Thanks for terminal interrogations, for infirmity.
For shoving the adrenaline needle directly into my heart.
Thank you for not assuming that all ghosts wear white.
I'm so grateful that orgasms shake me apart, dismembered by pleasure, the shrapnel of rapture.
Thanks for tolerating my bubbling libido, for the scalpel game, the caress of steel along my footsoles.
Thank you for the deformation of character, victimless crimes, and false witness. Thanks to the Divine Watchmaker for assuring that all points of view remain skewed.
Thanks for my own murderers attending my funeral.
Thank you for teaching me the value of suffering for art.
This is, indeed, my finest hour.

after Young Frankenstein , directed 1974 by Mel Brooks
Before the director collected flies, there was Frankenstein. Before Dracula lapped the spatter from a virgin jugular, there was Frankenstein. The genre prototype, a ghost story haunted back to life. Brooks' monster is a gentler sort of moron. Still, the villagers itch to boil him in oil. At first, the ladies and other nervous persons fainted as Karloff appeared on screen, but now they choke on jokes. Now the hunchback fills his mouth with mink. Fear erupts into laughter–should I be flattered? Ambulate, heel to toe. Plop on a top hat and mumble on the Ritz. Now hush, Frau Blucher. You’ll spook the horses. Soon they’ll be whipped into glue.
after The Rocky Horror Picture Show , directed 1975 by Jim Sharman
I crashed the theater tonight and popcorn flew. I thought I dreamed the picture; it melted like a tab of LSD and everybody loved me. A monster flexed like Flash
Gordon in gold briefs. I tore off my disguise and leapt before their screen. I lost my virginity in the back row, my stitches out and all. My girl (I guess she was a girl) sang, “Hot patootie, bless my soul!” so I did. By then Sarandon’s eyes were big
as my fists. She made love to the monster! The doctor died for glamour! See?
You people break the laws of science for love. You slay each other with pickaxes for love. So I’ll make every one of you love me.

after The Elephant Man , directed 1980 by David Lynch
My head, but not my head. A knobby pumpkin spinning on a pole, a Harryhausen puppet. Putty, sticks, and wire. My greatest discovery: the latent medical anomaly: dyscephalus . I coined it myself, "the disorder of extremities in which the subject's head, seemingly attached, is clearly not the head belonging on that body. Lately,
I’m devising means to shuck it and release this handsome, sweating face beneath.
[ A hospital is no place for secrecy ] A slow melt, revealing the actor embedded in all that wax; or yank a stiff corner of gauze to unwrap the death mask; or else worms to eat away the outer onion. Medicine is messy. O head, dear head, throne of sense and senses, you hateful helmet! Why can't I pull you off?
breakfast cereal, 1971, General Mills
Please tell me you're joking. His eyes are two portholes, all of him a portmanteau so obvious you hear the hinges creak. At one side of his head, a pressure gauge emerges.
A steam whistle blows at the other. His pink complexion is like a phial of bloody milk, and his fingernails are straw- berries. Strawberries! An outrage in hot coral. Each bowl hemorrhages, rosy with toothrot, while you sing in praise of color teevee. Each box promises its prize, the choking hazard: werewolf kazoo for summoning the Fruit Brutes .
They slink out from behind dumpsters and snap you up from the playground. They could twist your little head off like a milkbottle cap. What a sweet pack.

Make ready for the Pantheon: the post-Enlightened gods.
Gods of film and light and steam, of medicine and speed; gods of flesh and divided flesh—
God of Parts, the Hot Dissector;
Goddess of Needles and Thread;
She Who Numbs but Never Heals, the Opiated Spider Head;
Spirit of Smog, Bronchitis God, Sacred City Air;
Patrons of the Auto Crash, their glass in constant shatter; Antiseptic Goddess,
She Who Bathes Hysterically;
Her nemesis: Bacterium,
Germ of the Billion Young;
Titan of the Gleaming Crank, whose films are made from nothing;
Illuminus, Electric God, who holds you til your feet explode;
The Psychoanalytic God; the Mesmerist; Lord Id;
Gattling Gods; Bullet Gods;
God of Gas and Masks;
Naval Dreadnought Kraken Gods;
Zeppelin Gods and Airstrike Gods;
Boy God of the Shell-Shocked Stare;
God of Trenches; God of Stenches;
God Who Stanches; God of Stents;
Bring them out, bring them out,

in bronzes and on posters, with handprints in cement— kneel before the Great Red Tank!
The past is dead. Do not lament.

Midnight Movie Trailer
All is quiet in the sleepy little town of your body, when– out of the blue– a threat beyond reckoning: cells.
Rampaging, devastating cells!
Your own body, the Enemy!
Cells that wouldn’t die! Your cavity, a Black Lagoon!
Septic! Primordial!
B-movie invaders! Nanozombies eating your brain!
Creeping like the Blob, a Colour Out Of Space!
Midnight cells!
Horns and tusks! Propagating like triffids!
Cells driven crazy by carcinogens, gamma radiation, x-rays, microwaves!
Angry, mutant cells! Magneto was right!
Iron Man's body turning to lead! Cells!
Your lungs growing rocks, breasts and testes black with cells!
Saturn returns to find you riddled with lumps, nuclear waste! Winter coming early!
Bubbling, sizzling cells!
Breeding, selfsame vermin, your form a swarm of nesting termites, plague fleas!
John Merrick on display! Spongy, reeking!
Cells!
Stygian, eldritch horrors! Chthonian menagerie!
Sucking, loping tendrils of cells!
Body snatchers, replacing healthy cells with alien life forms!
John Carpenter’s Thing : even one cell can infect the whole organism!
Someone call Kurt Russell

to fight this Big Trouble In Little Cells!
Burn down the crab-clawed terror! Burn down cells!
Seize control of your body! Assert psychic power!
Mind over matter, astral physics, faith healing!
Discovery Channel Pin-up Girl:
“I survived a hundred pound tumor!”
Carve it off! Carve it off!
X-ray the Monster! Within the beast: growing hair, growing teeth!
Inside-out werewolf!
Robotic cells, programmed to exterminate themselves and failing!
Slave laborforce of cells, not taking it anymore!
Replicant cells, more human than human! Tinkered with!
Cells that think they’re people! Intelligent, opportunistic!
Eco-terrorists! Communist cells!
Secret societies, corrupt pharmaceutical corporations keeping you sick!
Cells building cities inside of you!
Dystopian, cloning!
Metastasis: Manifest Destiny of cells!
Deviant cells, dividing without discrimination!
Queer cells! Tricksters of dubious gender!
Cells wearing beards and rouge!
A depraved cabaret!
Invert cells out to get your children!
Illegal immigrant cells!
Mexican menace, African rituals!
Cells decapitating chickens, burying them at the train tracks!
Crossroads cells, Santa Ria, Obeah!
Serpent cells ridden by the spirits!
Your body becomes its own Voodoo doll!
An effigy of yourself! Sacrificial cells!
Heathens dancing in the swamps, offering blood and guts to arcane idols!

No escape!
Crank addicts going through your garbage at 3 a.m.!
Cells without logic, flourishing unpredictably!
Cellular Cells!
Passive aggressive! Godless sons of bitches!
Skin cells, film cells, las peliculas!
Strawberry crocodiles!
Tick tock cells!
Prophase, anaphase, anaphylactic prophylactic cells!
Infecting you!
Mocking safe sex! Epidemic of cells!
Cells winning the war against you!
Your body’s armies– defenseless!
Tick tock!
No escape!
Tick tock!