Kenneth
Wolman
| Katzenjammer
Columbine: The Kidz Escape To Coconino County Where They
Hit Passers-By With Bricks And Bullets (for Eric
Harris & Dylan Klebold)
[Prologue] Mutterschtupper! Maybe, Eric, wir lighten das Fuses, blow der C4 unter der Schoolhaus, ja, ja! EWIGE VERNICHTUNG, woo-hoo! Sterben alles, sterben glücklich! [Das Lied von Eric und Dylan] Wir sind das jungen Katzenjammer, wir gecroaken der Kapitän (er ist unser Vater NICHT, der grosse Schwein!) und die Frau Mama. Und die Kinder und die Teachers. Das ist ein Cartoon, aber wir slashen und burnen, leave not a rack behind! Wir morder alles, alles! [Der Sprecher] Ach! das Katzenjammers, kleine Ungeheuren! Sure as Höll: aber ein Candle nicht holden zu Dylan und Eric, going nach Valhalla, Die Götterdämmerung of Littleton, auf der School Library. Himmel, diese kinder aus Hans und Fritz! Denke der Our Gang lynch boys, Spanky pulling on a Schwartze’s legs to break his neck, or R. Crumb drawing Charlie Manson sending out his disciples to do his holy will. [Das Lied von Eric und Dylan, II, translated into English] Once too often, tough guys, we carried the burden for every kid every victim of the school bully, we are the secret saints of the insulted, the injured, the high school kid who shits himself in fear on the school bus. Our mistake was shooting the wrong ones, but no! no wrong ones, even Cassie Bernall she was a Gospel bully, die all die merrily or not, just die! Our revels now are ended. We invented Zero Tolerance. We had none. We are not America, not 1999 not now, we are forest-bound beasts, Georg Buchner walken und sprechen, die Wasser is Blut, Blut, good night, Herrgott Teufel, now turn up the goddamn heat! “Everything is Beautiful at the Ballet” After the decision, the movements are choreographed, gracefully timed, as though we were a pair of dancing swans circling on a mist-covered lake. But the lake is dry, the swans are dying. You are in a room I quickly skulk across; I am by a window and you slide through silently, at an oblique angle, to go from one room to the next. We have long since learned the arts of silence, of how not to touch. The swirl of our separate motions counter each other, create a whirlpool of air. The music of the dance is sucked into the silence. The House Of The Spirits (On Learning She Is Moving From The House We Lived In) 1 First me, then our sons, now you. 2 The first day we were there I left to buy new knobs for all the bedroom doors– for Ben, our three-year-old son, immured himself cackling in his brand-new room, and I, with the instincts of a housebreaker, had to use a screwdriver to pick the lock. 3 Five years beyond that marriage house, memories still flood the spaces. They fall like grand pianos in a shipwreck. Boilers crash into the prow, harps jangle and steam scalds. 4 The fall was bottomed long ago. Serene now, the hulk rests in the silt, destined for the bottom by its makers’ arrogance. Fish swim through it, past extinguished chandeliers. Life continues somehow, at its own depth. 5 Hawthorne blessed the pure emotion, dreaded a life where perfect good or evil are in short supply. Impurity was everywhere, secrets—mine, ours—buckled the walls, concealed like whiskey bottles in a briefcase, breakable as locks on bedroom doors. 6 “I hope,” Ben says, “no one ever lives there again,” and my mind runs to riot as it always has. In medieval Europe villages sat emptied by the Plague. Houses where no one would ever live again were unprotected from starving dogs and feral cats, doors swung back and forth while the winds blew through the empty space. 7 Ben can dream. I can nightmare. We will both be disappointed. 8 I do not believe in curses upon houses. No Unholy Spirits will penetrate the brickwork. No Anne Boleyn will wander the downstairs hall carrying her severed head across the ratty carpet. 9 You will leave and strangers will live in the house that was a house of strangers. The house will look like grade schools we attended, turn from reality to a place we could not believe ever contained what happened there. >>>Renee Ashley
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