Aries, if you breed you'll regret it.

Introducing "The Horoscopes of Josh, with Joshua Chris Bouchard"

Haruspex. Astrologer. Empath. Since the age of 37, Joshua Chris Bouchard has felt a powerful intuitive connection to the spirit realm, and has dedicated his life to helping seekers find their way. Now, he has kindly offered to put his clairvoyant abilities at our disposal as Discordia’s resident soothsayer. Whether your questions pertain to love, work, creativity, or even the nature of existence, the Horoscopes of Josh hold the answers you seek.

ARIES (March 21 - April 19)

Mostly unconscious. What you’ve done, you’ll do again. On the street corners of your mind, where pulpits are erected, pigeon nests of fire, the bloody hands of the store clerk. I guess it’s something to be proud of. That you even woke up this morning. That you had the courage to empty your guts of your low-hanging perversions, or the loneliness of never having them, or the nearly silent puff of a fart from that err of emptiness. Maybe you’ll invent a new language. Maybe the moon, if you ask nicely, will caress your head as you make dinner and put on that show you like. If you breed, you’ll regret it. If you sit still, you’ll die of guilt. You’re fucked.

TAURUS (April 20 - May 20)

The things growing from your floorboards are not edible. Nor are they alive. Each black tendril of hairy wet sinew is just there for you to look at it, like a boring art gallery. The coffee is too hot. Your refrigerator goes BZZZZZZZ but there’s nothing in it anyway. Just like you, in the loud rooms of the places you’ve been a thousand times, the light turns on only when you’re open. You’ll have a revelation, Taurus. Suddenly everything will become clear when you’re mowing your lawn, checking the mail, taking shots at the bar, thinking of new and creative ways to make yourself cum. I suppose if you find a hammer, wield it carelessly. Replace the hammer with your own head. Beat your eyelashes before bed above the carcasses of your uneaten dinners.

GEMINI (May 21 - June 21)

You thought you escaped. It’s okay, we all did. From corridor to corridor, large room to infinitely large room. It’s like a game even if you’re not playing. At work, the days stretch endlessly as the computers melt into one hellish pile of congealed plastic. Outside, the world is blooming. Everything is fucking. The wind, as if its only purpose is to find you, vomits the detritus of flowery eggs and insect sperm. So many eyes on the prize. Wow, it all seems too familiar. You’ve been here before, haven’t you, Gemini? In the crooked knots of the corners of your mouth, trying to say something irreverent yet captivating. Getting lodged neatly in an open bow as the curtain slowly closes. The joke is that there is no joke.

CANCER (June 22 - July 22)

Language will always betray you. At the bar or coffee shop, murals of hotel art rip-offs and framed photographs of attractive women in grass fields, exposed brick walls to imprint your brains. Everyone is going to find out who you are, Cancer. Anyway, you’re a fucking liar. Everything coming out of your mouth tastes like the metal ash of the bridges you burned. You act like you have nothing to lose, but you’ve already lost everything. When you’re alone at night, it’s too quiet to hear your own thoughts. The kennel in the corner is rusting from neglect. Your asshole has ground the stick down to a spear. The phone rings, but there’s nobody there. You make dreams out of matchsticks. Meanwhile, your friends have all gone on to get married and raise children. Condos built on diaper heaps. They’ll do anything to forget you. I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this, but they're happiest they’ve ever been.

LEO (July 23 - August 22)

According to both accredited experts and local Wikipedia editors, the groan you hear so lightly in the kitchen sink is not a ghost. Neither is it a loving thing stuck in the pipelines among bacon grease and old condom lubricant. The citation of your life leads back to a quote you never heard of before, and even if you did, you can't understand it. You hold a mirror up to the drain to hopefully catch a glimmer of condensation from the breathing sun. It has teeth. It has armour. It has the black gate of stringed marble beads in the doorways of your grandmother’s house. But it's useless. The sky is not the sky. It is the image of a sky in your mind. Like brand new and shiny saran wrap, the coffin of the earth is transparent, but nothing could be more invisible than the identity you told your parents about when you first left home. You’re a super soldier in the PSYOP of your self-diagnosed personality disorder. At least there are cigarettes.

VIRGO (August 23 - September 22)

PUT THIS THROUGH YOUR THICK FUCKING HEAD, VIRGO:

Eat
Shit
Dance
Shave
Sleep
Read
Work
Listen

SUBJUGATE

Laugh
Weep
Binge
Fuck
Smoke
Birth
Enact
Supplemate

ENGAGE
ENGAGE
ENGAGE

LIBRA (September 23 - October 23)

Stay in tonight. Watch countless hours of footage of strangers cleaning their apartments. Get into that cool new thing called ASMR until you're soothed enough to turn incontinent. Take a seat, shit your pants awhile. Analyze the refuse in your bin. Hollow chicken bones, cat food, heads, credit cards, a portal to the centre of the animal in your abdomen. We can’t say we didn’t warn you. Libra, you’re going to burn for what you’ve done. Pillaged an entire friend group, tied your therapist to a horse and buggy and dragged them through the town square. You’re sick. Or, maybe more accurately, just lonely. Maybe those are the same thing. Throw out the bin. Watch the garbage men haul away the couch you and your ex bought. Give it time. Eventually you won't feel anything.

SCORPIO (October 24 - November 21)

You’ll find the courage at a Halloween party. Dressed as the reference that knew too much or too little. Sycamore trees line the foundation of hospices. Neatly cut grass borders the edges of the brickway. Where is the dawn? Where is the face you constructed from papier mache? Nobody's impressed. The smell of old fireplaces as smoke pisses itself downwind from the garbage heaps. The kind of warm you'd sell yourself out for. Walking down the empty streets trying to glimpse the glowing televisions in backlit apartments. How do so many other people manage to be alive? Pills. Fucking. Giving up poetry at long last. Welcome, come in, order takeout, turn off your head like the satisfying click of an old radio. Don't say a damn word.

SAGITTARIUS (November 22 - December 21)

The trick to a good life, Sagittarius, is action. Follow the winding river below the mountain to another mountain, a brackish lake pure as piss, and tracks of bunny rabbits who move from valley to valley. There’s the wreckage of a plane crash. Twisted metal reaching for the sky like conical trees praying for forgiveness. The bodies have already been removed. Shifted from earth to earth, oven baked, reduced to a fine powder. What led you here? The answer is obviously everything you thought you had the courage to believe in. What does McDonald's taste like here? How does this town arrange their street signs? Everyone needs a special reason to keep moving.

CAPRICORN (December 22 - January 19)

Don’t forget, dear Capricorn, the eyes of the birds under your black duvets. Each one is a disease you expertly carve out of larger, much deadlier diseases. Thankfully, that’s all you’re good for. A conquest of the world, of sorts, as you practise stretching the skin of your softer parts over your fist. Nothing is surprising anymore. Everywhere you go, a grand canyon is formed by dragging your ass on every little task. Do you think they’re big enough to lay to rest the corrosion of your memories? Systematically organized in chronological order for you to finger through, like files in a drawer. Do yourself a favour: it’s over now.

AQUARIUS (January 20 - February 18)

Sleep well. You earned it. Money comes and goes. Friends grow up and pass away. The tender touch of your hands over the small-of-the-back of your pillow. Finding pink discarded hair elastics. A single brown strand as long as your arm in the shower drain. Aquarius, never stop being you. That’s what your enemies want and they are everywhere. Let’s try an experiment: you wake up, go to work, come home, sleep, wake up, go to work, come home. Now do that until you’re dead. I guess there's the whole “cosmic ocean” thing happening, or you can succumb to your own particular brand of emotionally-detached nihilism. Let me tell you a secret. Come closer. Feel my hot, moist breath in your ear. Shit or get off the pot.

PISCES (February 19 - March 20)

1. EXT. IDYLLIC BACKYARD - DAY

SHE IS beating a dead horse. The freshly laundered cotton shirts dry on the clothe’s line. In the distance, behind her, a babbling stream. Just over the horizon of the field of fire, A MAN runs closer to the house. It's the year 1958. All of the children are dead. The horse told her to do it.

Joshua Chris Bouchard is the author of *Burn Diary* (2023, Buckrider Books), the lead singer of the band LINENS, and the editor of BAD DOG MAG. He lives in Toronto, Canada.

Listen to the latest from LINENS on Bandcamp.