Icky Styxx
By
Richard Parish
Chapter I
Icky Styxx was born in the usual way,
On a unusual day.
Icky, A weight for Bearers.
1957: the year of the Kings who sing & Dance,
A chance in life of one not so desired,
When only a child, held the world wrong.
A never ended song.
What Icky lacked most was hotly contested,
One or both arrested,
Domestic violence, sex, Icky’s life next.
Up over an out for the youngster’s fun,
An ever-present fear in the eyes of the Bearer,
too Tricky a task always the mask.
The Bearer found love, a too tireless chore,
too tired an sore,
Icky’s trust waned,
Icky learned pain.
The deepest parts of life so struggled and drudged, memories too,
Icky found love had failed him too.
A liar to the end, at least unto Him,
Icky could cry a river of blue deep,
and not make a peep or smile at a time,
unto the undo of a momentary care,
the blue rhyme at the right time,
Untouched me there too, a river of blue deep,
Down to sleep.
The romantic depiction of real crucifixion, began Icky’s addiction to whatever was had,
more better the bad.
A stumbling thought of Icky’s crossed not with the best of all friend,
Who only put up with him, now and still to the end.
Chapter II
How Icky Got His Name.
The name ‘Icky Styxx’ stuck at six,
The ants caught his legs and waited,
Covering them as socks,
all stung at once and Icky knew fire.
If legs could be sticks then the name stuck sticks,
So swollen and skinny, first word “Icky” and second “Styxx!”
Icky Styxx he remains, happy with his name,
A ‘fish-on!’ response, reactions, a few.
At year twelve,
Icky was free and glad to be there.
The TV a lie, “that’s not how we die,
The Blood shoots out like our small hose at home when the water’s not all the way on”
The Bearer then groaned as Icky described, just how the ugly-face-man died.
The Bearer just cried, but a voice said ”Hide!”
Chapter III
The kotex kid hit town about 10 minutes to five. The Bearer Needed Kotex or she wouldn’t survive.
Icky’s little brothers one and two,
Both shook heads ‘man we feel sorry for you.’
The Marketeer didn’t look as bad as he at first felt said,
“I’m sorry there Pard’, but if this they have to be, then all I got is these,
Super Max brand in the Economy Size!”
A box as big as Icky,
Kotex emblazoned,
Icky thus laden began to huff the stuff,
tough it was, slippery box, sliding hands.
The sons of the brakeman,
Laughing laughers them,
Saw Icky the box, A school of hard knocks coming Icky’s way,
“hey man the kotex kid is on his way”
No more jumps for Icky,
Sticky situation an’ all,
Doing his best to not let the box fall,
“didn’t you hear me you ‘pinko-fag’,
From now on you kotex kid! The Rag!”
The rocks flock quick as nick to Icky’s hand, Flung hard to the right,
A might just might land.
The sand sandal vandalized toes,
Blood, pain, punches to nose,
Knows it well enough,
got to get tough,
gotta learn to throw rocks,
and a lot of other stuff.
ChapterIV
The Curtis bros. Vs. the Kotex Kid.
Icky Styxx the Kotex Kid set the Klingon Death Hold on the box. Squeezing it’s blue to black and back.
Curtis ride 2; the older not new,
An attack of hack “look at that!” said Curtis rider two, Hey! to number one, I see it too!
“You know what I do to rider three,”
Who slammed on the stop,
and Icky, the walking box stopped.
Curtis riders three, glee dripping lips, noses freshly picked had Icky on all sides.
No hider Ick had to think quick,
The box went up, full field of view,
Now just what could Icky do?
Un-necessary dirt thrown in Icky’s eyes.
Suddenly the Kotex became Icky’s prize.
Curtis times three,
Hit Icky in slice.
Once had done it,
But they did it twice.
Chapter V
Benny had watched from the roads bend,
always hated the Curtis, and even more then.
The pitiful stab suppressed,
The Kotex Kid a mess,
Bennie watched on,
the Curtis gone.
Icky Styxx picked up maximum pads on flower street.
Pants ripped out shouted holes like the box in shreds.
A mad Icky cursing his boots, For not saving him.
No kick came when needed,
Icky’s Chi’ of death un-heeded.
Benny watched Icky un-lace laces and tie up a brown box,
Icky’s not stupid Benny almost thought.
Benny didn’t think a lot, mostly when drunk, Thoughts with fuzzy linings of lingering truths.
Chapter VI
Icky Styxx,
Days ran on end for Icky back then.
Toyon brought green trucks and green men,
all to take another stab at the Indian.
She walked from
She was Icky’s permanent goad.
Ick knew not,
Just thought it all up,
Placed Her with Him,
Him, the love of her life,
a wife her to Him.
The Ashton Rd. Mormons were strong there for a sect,
Moved enmasse,
impasse too prophetic.
Mormon’s norms being clean of such things,
The drains of others,
The offings of offal.
Religion awful.
Icky had it figured, knowing no thing,
Blank slated slate stone carved hard on Icky’s little brain.
Mind-numbing hums of the non-bums in God’s house,
Louse free, free of tics free of Icks.
Chapter VII
Toyon
The prior liars fires of hard cash,
A stash of cash for just such a day.
Toyon, Toyon,
Icky knew no-thing,
His mind languid dreams,
Hauntingly primal screams.
Seems a Federal agent told the Bearer a story scarier than searing the meat of the feet.
Sidewalks hot, hotter than Not Her,
A flu fodder of broken sandals,
Broken strands,
Hot burning dirt and sand.
Icky’s toes burned on the street.
The learnings learned
Toyon from the burnt feet.
Chapter VIII
Icky’s first Genie.
There’s a certain pleasure a measure of abounding Grace,
Haste confounding Icky for life,
Twice born, hair shorn,
The bald arrive the soft not surviving.
There’s a certain rhyme, there is a certain time,
A why and why not,
a backdrop stop.
Astounding Grace smiling.
The Jinn’s trick wish, dare not dare.
Give in giving in, gets you there.
There’s a certain pleasure to treasure. Another Jinn’s win.
Astounding Grace is at it again.
The Jinn’s invitation in itself a trap, declining the wish is your only wish out.
Chapter IX
The flashing tab tabulated blabs of constituted stabs.
Where lies in the winter of Ick’s discontent.
The pressures that be are all right to see.
The never never lands,
The free.
Hard to be in the real,
it almost seems that unfolds the dream,
that all that dream to dare or seem to care.
But what’s needed most is care,
Not even there,
In this mis-matched everywhere.
Let the heart plead.
The real in the seed. The need in the need.
On the school’s first day,
Things went a bad way,
When Benny, drunk skunk in hand,
Slapping the windbag coach of it all,
The gall of the man, to call Toyon a den of thieves.
Rude n’all grand mauling,
Sprawled waiting for the bus,
Already signed up and away,
With sway barred tooth fairy,
sparing fist fulls of nothing.
Show boat brunting,
High Spirited meanies who ignorant of rants, rave.
On the outside the onset,
Gets way old for business.
It could only hurt Ick to know,
That they all knew what he didn’t know.
That was how it would always go.
Benny by the roads was supposed to go home,
But bottles of nicked,
Picked-Red mountain gallons called jugs,
Fed the thug in all of us,
Played as Ick prayed,
In a day for play above all other things.
Shifting wrenching thirst quenching, Drunker than not there.
At lost as to care.
Toyon a home not to some,
Just a matter of the gun,
People singing to the FBI,
The cry crier of the tie-dyer.
Benny’s head told a tale of whys in a sale of lies…
”Oh Toyon you feature-less sticks.
All cut straight to match.
No patches for roofs, trees rotting at root.
Is this all mine?
Am I supposed to be blind?
The taking takers the faking fakers
Chapter X
Toyon
Benny came to the same out pouted deliriums,
The serum close at hand, sunrise, multi-shafted beams.
Revealing stitch lines hiding the FBI,
Man to tree and back again.
Swigin the fix,
Benny spied Ick.
Hands blue black.
Staining two dollar bills.
Ignorant kid pasting Feds in green. Total, unseen skip to Toyon’s back side.
“Hey, white boy!
You lost”
Don’t know the ground? don’t make a sound.”
Ick stopped dead,
Feet bleed box slipped on strap
“Shhh!, said the fingers and nod,
Ick then make out the
pod of feds talking into radios.
“Whats in the box?”
Ick showed the kiwi tins.
“You doin’ boots?”
nodding Ick.
“That ought to bring in a dime,
You wanna get some hootch?
Maybe a girl to smootch?”
Icky blushed red,
Fattening his head,
Benny laughed out loud.
“Come with me”
Chapter XI
Ishka’s eyes left no white,
Her sight a site better than most,
Compost cooking of Icks big fear,
no girl ever got that near.
Hair to knees, All went jello,
Ick too tripped to even manage, ‘Hello.’
Bennie laughed out “Shh! Take custer inside, I’ll be back soon.
Take him to your room,
go through the window broke”
Ishka dropped her top,
revealing breasts dark and hard
“you can touch’em if you want to,
Boys always do, grown ups too..”
Spinning hard on Icky Styxx,
The eye transfixed,
She moved closer only her lips separated face, a receeding dream.
Icky ached to taste her ginger-snap mouth, Rosemary’s softness gone.
Ishka’s breast from now on.
Icky reached up to cup,
The opening door the interrupt,
Benny with a gallon of wine,
Elbow holding it high,
”Hands of the tit, nit-wit,”
Spell broken,
Flush-faced stagger to see the first smile since Christmas.
Icky stumbled out “I,I,”
“Save it, white man, you know you want it,
It’s written all over your pants”
Benny weighed in at 210 without breakfast, staggered, fell in,
All in the laughing.
The warm wormed its way felt.
Only once in a dream,
the shuddering wiggle.
Ishka giggled at brother three,
Then turned her deepest eyes on him,”
you are part of me now, Kiwi-Tin.
Benny, air drowning laughter,
shifted High gear
“Kiwi-Tin! Kiwi-Tin!
Hear that? Bootblack?
She’s named you!”
Icky’s shame zeroed the out,
his back drawn to it.
“Nah, don’t go man,
its good ‘Kiwi-Tin’ means;
‘Eagle that walks the Earth’
because, because,
He’s too full of shit to fly!”
Mad Benny now,
Air grasped, lungs rasped,
Sad Benny now. No breath,
no nod,
laundry swallowing him,
Ick and Ishka watching him
“Too ….Shit..fly!”
The pain of funny Had Benny in rapture
Capturing comedy too sad to mention,
extended extentions
Chapter XII
The Hungry Woman
The hungry woman walked,
Hunting hunts,
Style blunt,
Stunted stunts of worrified stretches,
Sketches of art not paying the bills.
Toyon non-existent,
White race resistant,
Screams of justice torn,
Sheets,
striped bandages,
Former flags,
Such a drag.
“Hey kid,” to Ick,
Had to think quick,
Tricks turning her mouth a blur.
“I think I’m sick sticks”,
She knows,
Ick froze.
Stopped and turned,
Her dress burned from ashes dropped off the top of a cig,
“You just a kid sticks,
You don’t know what its like to be sick.
Shoved around (Ick frowned)
Be pushed up and down,
”I’m an artist sticks, my kicks surreal, my pleasure I feel.
Ick’s thoughts stuck to the roof of his brain, a big drain on the main frame.
What a shame.
A shame to see,
To be in the same universe,
The same ride in the same hearse they call life,
A strife of striving,
Surviving the run and the hum-drum,
Struck dumb in the prime time.
The Hungry woman passed at last.
Chapter XIII
In the fullness of moments,
torments came and went.
The fullness,
the madness, heaven sent. Laughter hurt.
Icky’s patience ran amok stuck in the stuck,
them at the house,
Pamela the mouse and Judy the lying lion,
to the dock of Ick’s house.
They where all there, the kids the butch bitch that hit and hit wouldn’t sit still for a question on sanity, vanity ruling the roost. Shaking the moose lodgers from hunkered elbows and rows of goes in the back.
Alkies all at the Mooses’ hall. A pall mall cloud of dazed hazes, small winnowy mazes of blue to gray. Sittin all day that way.
Judy and the bearer friends to the drunken, sunken ship end and back again. Dysfunction crunched and prescription speed, filled needs upon needs, sowing little seeds of codependent cohabitations.
Ick’s heart sank like a tank, No warning, ever-clever the bearer could be, never let both feet get set, that’s how they hit, flat footed, jackbooted bootings coating most of Ick’s life.
Pamela the shy the most likeable of five, and most alive. Did bend the heart part elastic.
Four other brothers, the oldest a set upon lunk lunking, junked hunches for bat at the world he landed in, born of sin, so said the good, the mike hiked and hiked to the top and back of saddleback, never scared when the Eater wasn’t there.
Chapter 12
Using fear upon fear to get the near nearer the bearer and butch, set up the torture place, in a room made perfect perfections secreting screaming pleads while munching on the seeds sown in the motion oceans curls, whirls and whirls.
Rice on the cookie sheet where naked knees meet the sheet metal on skin. Hell was at it again.
Icky Styxx stood by when he could, till they sacrificed Pamela the good.
Too too much rough the touch on the angel in hair. The mad-hitter hit her and then Ick bit Her the hitter hard. Sreaming bitter now, the drunken cow bleating out her curses upon all things Ick, Icky quick to get Pamela the shy.
No hero Ick, just not quick enough for the hitter to grab no hair, so much of Ick hiding in there, the hitter had Ick by the head, a Japeneese demonic mask showed the hitter’s tongue bent back against glaring teeth, Ick lost breath as the Hitter emptied him. Ick saw death when the hitter laughed at him.
The Bearer held back a hack, and said “shit boy fight back! can’t you take a smack?”
Jacked, back to the black, Ick fought back. The Curtis fresh in the mind, behind newly kicked propelled Ick’s action as he thought it, Smash into the ugly face, face upon face. The Asian demonic’s facial colonic had it’s smile rubbed down to frowning frowns of Red Skelton’s clowns.
Ick had knocked her down.
The bearer sucked air, as the seedeater retreated. Ick coming on strong, First time for everything.
The bearer’s loyalties lay always with some other, The kick to Ick suspected, doubled over dejected.
“Let go of him! No kid ever gonna get away with that!”
Takes a flick of a cig second to lose a quick Ick, running on sticks.
Chapter 13
Down the sharp hill of flower street, a quick left At the gravel alley past the ‘house of fags’
Toyon, got to be a short cut, rut or draw.
Ishka voiced a flower power real in Ick. Not the late rich-kid-kind of power, flower and acid herbs. Ick had verbs, verbalizing action to take an make the bearer gone and the seedeater too.
Seedeaters like Her would never stir into Toyons soup. Nor the Bearer, scareder than scared of red skin and black hair, wouldn’t be caught dead in Icky Styxx’x everywhere. Safe there.
Moon out, moon shine soup to Ick, in the safety of the thick. Following the beer can highway to the ugly stick box by whites.
Ishka, Ishka on the front yard dirt, knees hurt and greeting curt, Ick blurt his hurt unconsciously, just now seeing his own hurt knees. Ishka too,”wha’ happened to you?” Ick’s sticks gave and he fell upon his grave. “Get up! Kiwi-Tin, are you stupid? The moon makes you a ghost, the kind of white uncle hates most, hide at the tunnel under the track back at the town. Toyon don’t know you without Benny around!”
Ick’s heart a broken snap of ginger figs, just as deep as deepness gets. Ishka hit a sore hit sore.
All he could manage, was plunging lungs heaved up once in full moan, an impulsive groan. No Ick, no home.
The tunnel of stone, Ick’s new home. So beautiful and round, sound a hundred foot long song.
Then the train, on the brain along with new rain brought new pains. Ick slid down the curved wall fifty feet in.
“you a mess, Kiwi-Tin!” black fat Benny in the circle of light at the end of the tunnel. “Don’t come to my house without me!” fat Benny in profile. Twidley dum on rum, “Let’s go, Ishka is worried, Uncle knows about you, he might kill you tonight.”
Icky Styxx started walking to Toyon, a puffing Benny refusing the tow, said the dogs he knows. Never gonna happen again, aint gonna have no Indian walk behind a white man.
Benny had a like for Ick, He knew what had happened to sappen the bootblack sack a white sand. Who he could see offered a good hand. Uncle might kill him for sure, though Benny thought not, not with what Kiwi-Tin’s got, the death on his face. He from some other place. It’s the Ick’s Eyes. The spies of his brain. Shows off the pain.
Chapter 14
Benny went into his house shutting the door on the hungry Icky. The door opened suddenly and two hands reaching screeching leather, a t-shirted Ick pulled in, feet off the floor a standing Ick no more.
Uncle was strong and tall, leather back against blanketed wall. “Were you not told I might Kill you tonight?”
Ick nodded, missing fright
“yet you still came, the same?”
Ick saw Ishka at the sink, naked baby a pleasant stink, Ishka shook her head, hid her face. Ick looked down in total disgrace.
Uncle grabbed his beer. Still noting no fear. “Kiwi-Tin! What does that mean?”
Ick manage to make air pass his lips. “Walking Eagle; too full of shit to fly”
Silence lasting longer than was healthy for white Icks in the kitchen.
Uncle then began to drown on his budwieser beer. It sprayed through his nostrils and as he laughed the foam was sucked into his lungs causing a lunging of lunges to regain the air missing. Like Icky’s fright.
Full house of laughing. All but Icky.
Chapter 15
Icky Styxx had nowhere to go but up, that’s where the stumps stumped, Ick’s heart jumped and slammed a sub-jam to his right hand.
The too tough tai-fighter holding cider drunk as shunks. Much too drunk to make an Ick fly, Ick still one ticked off guy. “I knew you’d come by,” said Pamela the wise. “You can’t stay in
Toyon you’re not there kind, They’re not our kind, I’m told by liars who strike the mouth to drive home the points”
Icky would talk to her, “You have choice voiced in the touch of your tongue to your teeth, You an extened grasp of my outstretched reach, You teach”
“How wonderfully crazy you’ve become Icky, sticky situation an all.”
Ick laughed at that, Pamela being there when Ick got his name, Pamela saw Ick’s pain. It was the drain that stains pain, pain without gain or reason, open season on Icks.
“seriously Icky. You are poetry, I see, do you hear me? This is my talk too, I talk a lot like you, The hero you are to me is my me to you, I wanna do like you do, I wanna be like you too”
Ick spoke again “ Astounding grace is at it again, Pamela you are my only friend, I will love you till the end, You take my counterfeit coins to spend, I would not let them harm you If I was real to you, But what can Icks do? I can only take you, then they, for you, would come for sure, the time out a blur. I only came to get my flute. I can’t take you, Pamela the eyes, Please make noise in front if the beaters wake up in the back, then I’ll go round the bend and back again, And I will think of you now and then”
“But Ick, you can’t stay at Toyon, I heard the bearer say that the ‘injuns where gonna learn a lesson that day, they won’t want any Ickys in the way,”
“What said where when and how? Does it seem that only white men have the secret out?”
“Icky? Why do you say ‘white men?’ when you are white as flour? This hour, and moon? Are you really biting the spoon that fed your child’s life sainted and drained in the stained pain of your day?”
What could Icky say?
“ Ok, the small-eyes man had a uniform on, the bearer had his inner thigh, a couple of turkeys worth at least, he said ‘Toyon, would lose it’s seat! Or fleet of Feets? Or Eats?’ a noontide east side island of rock at 3 o clock.”
The betrayal snail pacing gracing the side of an Icky Nod, spared rod and reel the feel the right, right side, the inside out of it.
The trail of beers was still in the moons last glance at night, or maybe twilight, either sight a might better yet getter’s get.
Toyon called in it’s Icks, and Icky Styxx came drawn. Near the dawn, at Ishka’s house of ugly straight sticks, Uncle spotted Icks from his Cousin’s girlfriend’s mother’s couch, and the sight of Ick turned uncle a grouch. “What do you want now? Kiwi-Tin? Haven’t you seen enough? Why do you haunt us still? A ghost ghosting.”
Icky Styxx knew in a flash dashed across the lines in sand. Icky a white man, doing it he knew, to show uncle he was true, true as grit ground.
“Pamela the true says, ‘a noontide east side island of rock at 3 o clock.’ I’ve seen the news, everyone has, the Island of rock is
Many motions whirled and caught in the air, Uncle’s questions didn’t get him there, “get in the truck, Kiwi-Tin, today you get to be ‘Indian’”
Chapter 16
What’s an ‘Indian’ to a white skinned ‘Kiwi-Tin’?
The hard-rock knocks to the concrete blocks of East La came into play. But Ick was Indian just for a day.
Chapter 16
Pamela the Wise who had shocks of blue eyes, pillowed the good for a cause, for a cause.
There in the moon coming up from the back side heart attack, came the man in Black, girl in the way, locked swirled wheels played with the air in what was there and again the everywhere.
It sometimes seemed to an over grated Ick, who plain as a candle wick, came outside the in.
Pamela the good may have never understood the tragedy of the time and place. Or seen the seedeaters face when news hit the run, all about the hit and run and the gun on the black clad Hun.
The truck on the backroad held out a special bluntness for running, each hole placed cunningly real, The likeness of feel made matter unreal.
Ick’s heart had a break in a breath’s intake. Into the black lake of his own making. Ick making Ick. Self produced, self proclaimed.
“Kiwi-Tin, Kiwi-Tin, you think you are hear for me? Be careful of your thoughts, On the cots of your dreaming, your screaming came to me in the night’s last breath.” Suddenly this voice from the ground producing not a sound as it spoke up the real. That Ick could feel. The surreal of the moment. Such portent that it felt, some card that was dealt.
“you should tell him now,” a voice spoke from the ground, “he will know in time, his own rhyme. But first the pain and the ripped out chest.”
The news hit Ick hard to the right, as His last sight of her came back in mind. Just in time to undo the un-rhyme. Split the rhythm hard.
When a young person dies, the cries of the criers gets maginified, hundreds, folded two inches thick.
This sacred ghost of a girl, who shared her whole world was whirled up into a cloud of unknowing the known. Priceless locks shorn of brilliant potencies.
Words fell like falling bricks, to the broken-hearted world of Icky styxx. He was not the sacrificed. He was not the nice; but merely a cog in the clock, a quarter to two, Icky Styxx knew. Before the first tear shed, Pamela the good, the wise, the shy, was dead.
How in the un-world of swilling hurts blurted out to then and now, Icky Styxx was hit and hit hard, life playing its joker card. No pain postponed, the unknown, known.
The dawn of that day had in it’s own weird way made a play of the saved an un-ed. Even the seed-eater had a seed-fest like all the rest, the testing test of a mess of feelings, feeling old and cold as steel. There where cords of vocals stung into motion, an emotional ocean. No metaphor this, the whole of the un-bliss was un-wished away with the death of Pamela that day.
As a part time player, a sayer of good, Pamela stood out and alone, without a real home, except in the heart of Icky.
It seemed as if a brainwashing was taking Icky Styxx away, a flood of pain hit Icky’s brain like a spider flaying away from the drain drawn down. “this is not your end, Kiwi-Tin, you’ll come back again, splitting up the outside on the inside, coming back for a hard ride. I’ve seen this all before the day you were born, My heart was torn in two pieces, You, a boy, and white at that, brought an end to my hatred like that. When your heart broke I was inside of that, I was that as you well know, and now it’s time for you to go.”
Icky Styxx walked down the beer-can highway alone in the world. Left without the girl who could only say, what she would see in the day. Who else cared anyway, except for Icky no one dared. To see inside the good, or even understood who was the what, when, where and why.
Icky, a testament to Pamela the shy.
To be continued....
