And
    All I Got
        Was This Lousy
                Case Of Larvae

The Cover

I just finished my novel, Say... ¿Aren't U A Monster?

and I'm starting a new one, And All I Got Was This Lousy Case Of Larvae

Here's the start of Chapter 1:

I always thought you had to be queer to see a ghost. I believed that and you couldn't move me off of it. I only wanted to see the one and true world, not the Holy Catholic Church or some transparent, anti-reality and terrible ghost. Only when I saw a ghost would I start believing in ghosts.

And, actually, I'd probably only believe that I believed that I was believing in having had seen a ghost.

I know two things: 1)There's no justice in the world; and 2)There's no such things as ghosts. Other kids may believe that you can serve up ghosts on a platter, along with a suspicious menu and blood-curdling nausea. But to me, Dylan Brown, that's jam without the jelly.

I just wanted to nip that in the Osama Bin Laden.

In case you're wondering, I live on Fear Street, the terror-filled street in the world. However, my life has somehow not been one mass burial of sawed-off body parts. Nope, my life has been free of the ghosts of Fear Street.

But ghosts have a way of fucking with history because they see things differently. That is, if there were such a caper-capturing conundrum as ghosts.

¿Why do I say that? You ask.

Because there is a decided pro-ghost contingent here on FeaStreetet. The sun will shine tomorrow and the sky will cooperate and not fall and the day will be beautiful. But, for those of us who think that the sky will fall, it is a somber and perplexing realization. It's like that time a gust of ghosts blew into town. Oh, ¿didn't I mention that?

Well, I think I'll tell you right after my dad stops being a stupid jackass and starts being a green version of the crucified Christ. I believe in rodents, I believe in reading books and I believe in watching TV. The rest you can set on fire. And what's left of that you can throw into the garden for compost.

Today, Fear Street was Spectator Street, everyone looking into everyone else's window. It was a perfect day if you believed in creepiness or in chasing tornados. But, then again, ¿who doesn't?

Max and Jennie

"Your dummy is pretty fucking rude"

Check out Max's multimedia project for my novel,

The Land of the Cheddar Monster Vivisectionists

from Say... ¿Aren't U A Monster?

-I'm not saying that, goddammit, I'm quesadilla'ing it -Evan contested, rapidly losing touch.

-The salamanders are here -Andy said, because she couldn't resist.

Evan ran out the door and two salamanders ran after him. This was Evan's big chance to join the Army. But the door was actually closed and Evan ran into it in a full gallop, the whole scene lasting only a second in human time.

The cover to my novel-in-progress,

Say... ¿Aren't U A Monster?

Max and Bobby Seale

more photos HERE

16

One day later, despite school, Kris was walking home with Cody. They were touching hands and cackling. The trees laughed at them as they passed by, moving branches to see the spectacle better. The boys clasped hands like reindeer and jumped in the air, falling to the pavement.

-I haven’t had so much fun since I urinated this morning -Kris was refunding the fun he had sold to Cody yesterday.

-Me too, except I was reading the encyclopedia this morning and trading on the stock market
-Cody said, pocketing the fun that Kris refunded into his long red robe.

-There’s like a zimbillion dentists in the encyclopedia. They’re right before dorks -Kris said-, but after television announcers. At least that’s the impression I get when I glance toward the Yellow Pages.

Cody hissed like Tim Roth in “Planet of the Apes”.

-¿Are you voting for Nader? ¿Is he running? ¿Or would you rather vote for ice cubes or puddles of water?

-Olive juice -Kris kept the refunds funning.

They cruised the calle. Just a couple of guys pissing on passing pie vendors. Another couple of guys wearing white uniforms were on the escalator, recounting their days as Contras when they would pin people down and plunk out their eyes like they were water buggers.

-Those Contras were nasty, little motherfuckers -Cody commented.

-They were teeming with nastiness -Kris sugared the truth.

-Speaking of nasty, little motherfuckers, ¿what are you going to do with Mr. Madero? -Cody asked.

There's No Room In The Garden


I have ten acres of land and a pair of ant hills

What I need is a unique experience

An experience that doesn't feel like I just got done having it



I need room in the garden

For boll weevils and piranha

For life

I'm a satellite

And I'm old

And it's fall



There's no room in my garden

I have roses

cat turds

even the comatose body

of James Joyce!



I need help

I cultivate my garden

I put in long hours

I long for more room

But there's no room in the garden

If I pulled out the roses

I'd feel sad

I need help

I need God to come down and pull out all of my teeth!

"SUPER" BATTER by "Don" Cheney

I finished THE LAND OF THE CHEDDAR MONSTER VIVISECTIONISTS!!

Here's the beginning of the 2nd Chapter of

THE LAND OF THE CHEDDAR MONSTER VIVISECTIONISTS II!!

2


I saw that the door was closed but I tried to walk through it anyway. Watching this, Sara was chilled to the phone.

-¡No! -She screamed and then was back on the phone-. I don’t believe it. She just tried to walk through a closed door... Amy, ¿who else?

I had half a mind to paint her car red with black zebra stripes, but then I remembered that she didn’t have a car, just a medical affliction and a black eye.

My parents watched all of this like they were playing Atari Golf with a platypus.

I was a frustrated painter, if you hadn’t figured that out yet. So was my brother. But Jed was also a pain in the ass.

-¿You like? -He asked, holding up a painting he had done of his ass.

-¡Jed! ¡What kind of artist paints his own... -Sara EXPLODED-. ¡Give me a fucking brake job! Oh yeah -She turned to her Atari-playing parents-, ¡I don’t have a car!

-This picture is goddamn obscure -Jed explained with the wisdom of a man-. It kinda looks like a small, furry animal.

-But, but, but -My sister thought she was bulbously funny. The truth was she was closer to a punk-ass like Jed, who ritually threw salt on the living room rug and danced around on it.

-Jed, ¿what should we turn Sara’s room into? -My mom asked.

To Sara, there was no business quite like everybody else’s business and she primarily used her room to write herself invitations to other people’s parties.

-You know perfectly well what we can turn that shit hole into -My dad replied as if someone was talking to him.

-Yeah, an homage to my ass -Jed replied, cluelessly-. ¡I’ll be the artist!

-¡You are NOT turning my room into a shrine to Jed’s ass! And you are all going to stop treating me like the Pear-Of-The-Month -Sara was getting sassy.

-I’ve never met a chocolate-dipped ice cream cone that I didn’t like -Jed so-called replied-. Because I’m a good painter.

My new novel that was is, is is in progress: The Land of the Cheddar Monster Vivisectionists

I've started writing chapter 8, but I have chapters 1-3 typed and on the Vivisectionists web page

My new novel that was is in progress:

Land of the Cheddar Monster Vivisectionists web page

So far I'm in the middle of chapter 6, but I have chapter 1 typed and on the Vivisectionists web page

-¡Mmmmmm! ¡Mmmmmm! ¡Mmmmmm!

Kris Powell furiously poured lamb down his sister’s gullet.

Lindy Powell looked like a watch, complete with dial and stem. It made her look like she always knew what time it was, but, if the truth were told, Lindy looked like a bomb had gone off in her mascara, coloring her entire face a shade of red that made Kris shake his head.

-Thanks for the lamb -Lindy said, poorly feigning enthusiasm. And then, with one rapid movement, the lamb came back up, trying to reanimate itself.

-¡Oh, man! -Kris protested when the mascara exploded, not to mention the regurgitated lamb part.

Lindy knew she was so right:

-Take a chill pill.

Furiously, Kris grabbed the book that was Lindy’s neck and started choking the title page out of her.

-¡Die, you fucking question mark! ¡You wouldn’t know a schwa if it smacked you! -He exclaimed. He knew that his sister detested every page in her own book.

Lindy never ate anything except books. She’d down One Hundred Years of Solitude before Kris could even decide what part of what animal carcass he was going to gnaw on.

-It’s fucked that bombs are always going off in your life -Kris said rabidly.- But it’s no coincidence that your mascara always wins “Honorable Mention”.

-I could make better bombs if you’d help -Lindy said, despicably.


-The Land of the Cheddar Monster Vivisectionists

I Saw Two Good Houses Over There NEXT TO Death

Chapter 4

-¡Put those pies in order by entrails!- Mom ordained. No one was looking to suck up to her, she'd make a pistolero go limp. Her voice tumbled down like Euripides tiptoeing nude through a Miss Vicki salad.

I opened the door. The house smelled like a pitcher of Fresca. My eyes had stopped working when I put them up my sleeve. I was hot, much hotter than any fire.

-The light in the kitchen was just a fire.- Dad said. -I'll call a performance artist to put it out.-

¿Was he serious or had my eyes been disconnected from my electrons?

-¿Why don't you call a saber-tooth tiger?- Mom said in response.


MORE OF 4 HERE

Jesse reading Chapter 4

I Saw Two Good Houses Over There NEXT To Death
by Don Cheney - a multimedia project by Max Cheney

Max & Mat at Torrey Pines State Beach May 14, 2005

Just across 110th Street

pimps trying to be mischievous or sweet,

and here is a sandwich and suddenly

the beautiful edge I was tying

to running on a treadmill

will not reply.

Max - May 5, 2005

Max & Meredith -- April 18, 2005

We serve King William out here


We serve King William out here

during this war to end your knowledge.

Where the fort once stood

there now is a smoking rubbish

heap of men women and children.

I'm Captain Blood and I've ordered

your crew to take to the boats.

Dig? Or shall I spell it out?

It's a piece of cheese -

a fucking piece of cheese,

a blanched face.

Their glances grew in insolence, almost.

IN THE SERVICE OF KING WILLIAM

this ship is now virtually a unit

of the ignorance I could gladly have forgotten.

ACTUALLY, I find you all tiresome, said Captain Blood,

and he looked down with a glow

that said, THIS REIMBURSEMENT WILL TRUSS

me up like no other fowl,

having until now observed all of

the odd particulars.

Jo and Max 8/11/04

RND_WORD

red plum

Chris Tyndall!

Geckos -- Hawai'i July 2004

Max -- The Big Island -- July 2004

Jo -- 11/26/04

Jo / Max -- 11/27/04

Philosopher and One Onlooker

airfield areas cremated = pancreatic and segregated brontosaurus points

fallow congestion = motherland checkerberried by godmother payoff

and frosty lantern cannons = 20

Jo - 11/28/04 - Photo by Max

Max -- San Diego High Soccer

This atmospheric camouflage is bothersome

It amasses off the coast and then its colon

hacks into my computer with the continuity

of Jose Canseco wearing a cyanide codpiece.

Instead of switching it digresses. Instead of

obsessing I'm disrupting my despicable habits

and the stratosphere turns rife with affluence

and digital rumble.

Paddock Heart


Winnie the Schroedinger bring thy pizza,

your unstable bluff constantly fostering dodo.

I KNOW A SEAMY MAN TOO


This is the line, the core is
finite, a man I know from Provo was
working his way through Osaka

a resurgence
of for-
m reversed

a rooster
passed, a woman I know
walked by in a uniform

of flowers. Her head and fingers,
her eyes listening to the band.
Her head and fingers

in Bambi-land
and her face
a giraffe.

A stroll down
and through
for the moment.

FOR LOVE


an azalea

for my mother,
my mother, for

an azalea

Max and Jo at Morro Bay - February 2005

A Cauldron of Creeps

I am Lestat the vampire & I have a history of singing
at inappropriate times. I've tried everything to stop,
short of slitting my own throat.

It started in Miami in 1990 & my intention at the
time was to start singing and then stop. But it's
important to understand that while I'm sleeping I
do not have control over my interior dialogue and I
sometimes start singing uncontrollably. I've tried
refried beans, I've triedVampire Chili and, God help
me, I've tried Robitussin®. And if any of you repeat
this I swear on my mortal friend David Talbot that
I will haunt any function you're inhabiting by
breaking into an acapella version of "Me & My
Shadow".

DYING OF BOREDOM IN SAN DIEGO

I want out of this closet but the pencils
are really rolling in right now. It is
not an exaggeration to say we were like
hostages of a new language.

(IF YOU ARE GENUINELY PLOWING THESE
VIOLENT FANTASIES TOO MUCH I THINK THAT
YOU SHOULD CONSULT A PEANUT - IF ONLY TO
HAVE A REALLY STRANGE FEELING)

It was a W.C. Fields movie during which
they would come to complain later,
"There IS life after death!"

(I CAN'T PREDICT THE HEALTH OF YOUR
BICYCLE SHOULD YOU CLIP THIS "NICE BUT
GROPING" MAN - I AM AN ORDINARY GUY AND
A CORPORATE ACCOUNTANT)

More and more, as I listen to these
robots, I fantasize pitying them with my
fists, knocking them to a spa in Florida
and trimming their mustaches and beards.

(YOU NEED TO DIFFERENTIATE A FEW THINGS:
IF YOU RETAIN DETACHMENT OF THE LIVING
ROOM, WILL YOU BE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE
RELIGION AND CUSTOMS OF YOUR NEW HOME?
WILL YOU BE GIVEN A WORD PROCESSOR OR
ALIMONY? OR WILL YOU JUST GET FIRED FROM
YOUR JOB?)

Help me because please I don't want to
understand my situation before I draw a
line.

Novosibirsks are piling up

the bin becoming a stigma

to this stratosphere that

lies camouflaged like a

ghoulish dodo petition.

Considered A Fool

Because Kestrel botanists

in this threadbare city

have hydroxylated their

conch crack into

pestle switches.

for Hunter Thompson

I propose that what is behind writing is fifty years of
toilet training. It's that simple and, at the same time,
that technical. Read through the pages of any book.
Cut right and then go into the line. Place lines together
like the columns of your own self. Do it for the newly
constituted Iraq. Do it because you've taken your own
words, or your own ideas and decided that living wasn't
worth it. The very words, the very worms. I say that it
is worse to be dead but I don't belong to anyone's words.
Your words have a vitriol to them that is permutating
and now spinning and now permutating and spinning,
like William Shatner on a 3-day bender with Tiger Woods.
The trick is can you make the gun go off on its own? Guns
live in a world of their own, spinning chambers, rippling
barrels like permutated introductions to Brigitte Nielsen.
Where do you go from there? All the Hong Kong Phooey you
could ask for is contained in the phrase: "Poets were sup-
posed to have minds of their own". Poets were supposed to
have minds of their own, not worms. Words are what stick
to the worms. That is projectile indeed! Anybody can write
worms.

Max December 1991

Jordan Davis reading at UCSD

The University of Redlands Mens Soccer Team

missing

Emily Dickinson, don't degrade yourself

with empty hopes like these

among the stones.

Google Releases Updated Picasa Photo Sharing and Management Tool

Guerrilla attacks worry that coalition forces will Iraqsify the country.

take me off

This ostentatious houseboat vomitormortems

the malabarnicles that have mutilated my coat!


Exemplified in the swanky arsenal impervious

to airtight beards that lay around like hungry boas.


Coca in this hemisphere is like a Renault intrusion

into a gummy brunch counter hiding a Rodent American.

Do you need romance?

Do you need to puncture your coworker
in the belly-spurned degeneracy
that only globulin bratwurst
can demodulate?

Do you need to prolong the cement
femur noticeable (and parenthesized)
that afterglows in the silvery,
chilly and assumed donut fang?

Max Self-Portrait at 4 years (or somewhere around there!)

Five Line Tanka

Four soldiers were killed
One moderately injured
Three detonated

Two dismantled and sustained
Six exploded in schoolyard

Green Bay in Gaza Tanka

2-minute warning
Firing mortar shells and guns
Were detonated

Holding penalty on Birk
Hamas said give them the ball

Football in Gaza Tanka

Four soldiers were killed
16-yard run by Bennett
The first explosion

Couldn't get what they needed
Remained beneath the rubble

Parking Tanka

Good as gold parking
He takes it quite serious
Parking defines him

Parking history behind
Trying to shake off the gold

Annex Skies for the new year