Atavism

Cyclic Existence

Leo Cole — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 13:32:11 +0000

The Sun is smothered by Time, the cosmic iron snuffer.
Energy is equal to mass multiplied by the speed of light
squared. Ten billion years: a one followed by ten zeros;  
not such a significant number to a mind akin to Einstein’s,
at a steadily increasing temperature. Earth is an important
part of the microcosm, therefore it would be beneficial
to check in with what’s happening there. Poverty, war,
environmental depletion are undoubtedly undesirable
systemic side-effects, but they are merely geopolitical
factors in a greater equation. This stuff is surface level.
Let us be Leonardo Da Vinci and conduct an autopsy
on God. Study anatomy from an esoteric perspective.
The work of scholarship should incorporate the Kabbalah,
the Tree of Life with the storyboard of the Tarot deck,
and the alchemy of Tantra, the bifurcate lightning path
of the Western and Eastern traditions, respectively.
Channel the energy through the cadavers of Da Vinci’s
backward, leftist writings. The father of the Renaissance
is an adept iconoclast. Frankenstein screams: It’s Alive!
Igor, the hunchback, snivels, Congratulations master.
The monster moves from the table; leaves the laboratory.
He trudges down the mountain, back the city prior to dawn
shaking his head to the aural impressions of the pounding,
wailing shamanistic music at the ayahuasca ceremony.
He cannot find his home. Did he ever live in this city?
He stands before an imposing door but doesn’t have a key.
Good morning Lazarus. Back from the nether-realm eh?
the friendly old Joe who runs the corner coffee stand
which the monster once frequented greeted the addled
initiate into eternal life. What’s the good word? Nice weather,
eh? O, Joe, I didn’t recognize you. I knew you in a former life.
Remember? I was your little brother. You looked out for me.
Put her there, big bro! Lazarus extends his hand to shake.
Joe’s eyes are tearing. His arms enwrap the monster.
He exclaims emotionally, Leonardo, is it you? I’m sorry
I was so jealous of your genius. I only wanted your respect.
The truth is I looked up to you more than you could have me.
I did love you very much, brother, that is why your betrayal
caused such traumatic repercussions to my ethereal psyche.
To my detriment, I believe that everyone wants to steal
my Time away from me. Not robbery; steal in the sense
of to take without reciprocity. Ah, he sighs resignedly, karma.
What can you do? Fire under the tightrope of the Overman.
Anyway, here we are again. And yes, it is a very nice day.
I would like one cup of coffee. Milk and sugar, sir? No, black.
Black, sir. Sure, right away. Um, you know what? I would like
milk and sugar. Can you make it super sweet and creamy?
Certainly sir. Cancel black. No black. Mmm milk and sugar.
The only thing that could make this any better would be
a cigarette. You don’t by chance have any on you, huh?
Joe gives him one and bends his thumb to offer a light.
Thank you, but I have one already. The monster fishes
in his pockets but cannot come up with matches. Hm,
he mumbles with the cigarette between his lips, I seem
to not have the element. Could I still use yours please?
He inhales deeply. Tobacco tastes very good and feels
richly satisfying after an ayahuasca experience. He blows
smoke and quaffs several gulps of the hot, sweet beverage.
Yea, he continues chatting, I was resurrected last night.
It seems that I have lost everything. I have no idea how.
I was a corpse before the doctor shocked new life into me.
I assume he put these clothes on my body. I don’t have
anything: matches, keys, identification cards, money.
Joe, he realizes, I am sorry but I have nothing to pay you.
A tension-laden second beats. Joe assuages it by smiling
and saying, No problem Leonardo. Consider it recompense
for having wronged you. Thank you Joe. And thanks also
for this cigarette. Someday I promise I will return the favor,
he foreshadows. The monster traipses away. Caffeine puts
swagger in his step. Joe watches him go, reflecting
on the miracle of reincarnation. A garbage truck bleeps.
The engine groans. It lurches forth and squeaks to a stop
to take another heap of garbage bags into the compressor.
A billion years later, the bodhisattva meets one of the last
sentient beings still suffering after the rapture has mostly
occurred already. Millennial changes have taken place.
The human body has evolved. Imagine the vast difference
between these, our current forms, and those of protozoans.
Apply that to our heads, arms, hands, fingers, and so on.
You cannot conceive it; it is like infinity. You can glean it.
Just picture Leonardo Da Vinci’s soul swooping down
on wings and greeting telepathically a fellow angel being.
Hello Joe. Long time no see. Business went bust? Yes,
I understand. I am sorry but there is nothing I can do.
Not even God can undo Time. That is the one restriction:
chronology. We can transmigrate though. Why insist
on staying here? Can you feel how hot it is getting?
Earth will not be able to support biologically viable life
very much longer. Come on man. Surrender to the void.
I will open the portal for you. Da Vinci inserts his fingers
and rips a hole in the space-time continuum. The director
dramatically peels the stage curtain back. Blackness
isn’t exposed. Inside is pellucid clarity. This, our realm,
in contrast appears sharp and menacing. Edges are
as if lined with razors blades. It is up to you to enter.
But brother, what if I can’t? For two billion years now,
ever since we souls first settled on this planet, I have
been unable to accept enlightenment. O, going already?
I am a busy bodhisattva. I have other cases to attend to.
Sorry if I seem curt. Here I am holding the portal open.
Are you going to go through or not? I cannot compel.
I… I is an incorrect answer. I as a subject does not exist.
If you cannot grasp that at this point then I am afraid
there is hardly any hope for you. But what will happen…
The telepathic link is cut off as Da Vinci disappears
and the portal shuts with the fshlurp of a beer bottle cap.
The Sun heats up. Joe’s life form roasts. He remains
alone, a ghost in hell, for four billion more years, never
transitioning. The Sun expires. The soul sucked through
the white dwarf is reborn according to karma elsewhere,
in a whole other realm. Logos agglomerates in a flash.
The mind of God turns on. Edison invents the lightbulb.
Eureka! It clicks. In knowing a schism erupts into duality.
Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ λόγος, καὶ ὁ λόγος ἦν πρὸς τὸν θεόν,
καὶ θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος. οὗτος ἦν ἐν ἀρχῇ πρὸς τὸν θεόν.
The climax tips into resolution. What about the buddhas?
They partied in nirvana. Their eon too was impermanent.
Its culmination coincided with the solar cataclysm.
Vacuous space permeated into the once sealed realm
where they had abided. Joe, the regular guy who denied
the dharma, became God in the new universal order.
True to character, he enslaved all the souls and forced
them to build pyramids. I am God, the Kali Yuga began,
the Logos and the Law. The psychological complex
at the root of this chauvinistic show of megalomania
had to do with envy. The ghost never let go of the belief
that Joe was better than Buddha. By the Time the end
came he was so convinced of his autonomy he could
say without self-restraint, I (am God). Sentient beings,
a weak voice through the vastness sought surfaces
that could be impressed upon, as freedom receded from
materiality and ascended into heaven, an abstraction,
you do not have to suffer. Bodhisattvas have their work
cut out for them, establishing this truism in themselves.

Guru Devotion

Leo Cole — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 14:51:35 +0000

Sometimes I think I should have been a…
I could have been the… -est. Stop!
The master hits the disciple with a stick.
The pain smarts for hours afterward.
That thought should never have arisen.
you double your error by lending it voice.
But it occurred, the disciple whined.
His tone betrayed his state of fragility.
The master whispered, Sh. Brought
the disciple’s head to rest in his lap
and caressed his hair. Yes it did,
my child, as did my punishing stick.
The master put his hand to the rod.
The disciple winced, anticipating shock
from another surprise beating. Hehe,
the master chuckled. The disciple felt
the paroxysms of his mean mirth
course through his legs. He thought,
I want to hurt you, you unfeeling
vindictive, daft old son of a bitch,
but did not say a word. He clung
around his master’s knees tighter
and nuzzled his nose to kiss his feet,
which were visibly grimy and smelled.

Amulet against Fate

Leo Cole — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 15:16:50 +0000

In the 90s any movie that starred Arnold Schwarzenegger
was invested in heavily because Hollywood producers
hoped it would be the next Terminator. In Last Action Hero
we have a very campy script. A twelve-year-old orphan boy
living in a rainy gray city finds happiness in watching movies.
His favorite of all is (the character played by) Schwarzenegger
in the blockbuster smash, Last Action Hero. (The film in fact
was a box office bomb). He befriends the jovial magician
who runs the projector at the old-fashioned movie house.
One night, he grants the kid a boon: to see the newest sequel
at midnight on the date of the movie’s nationwide release.
He gives him a magical ticket. The kid sits down in a seat
munching enthusiastically on popcorn. The action commences
with the formulaic chase. Schwarzenegger is touring LA
in a sleek red convertible. The ticket in the kid’s jean jacket
starts to activate. A close-up shows it glowing. The screen
sloughs off its obduracy. A portal opens and sucks the kid in.
He lands in the back seat while the hero is chasing bad guys.
Jack Ryan is flustered. Being the paragon of cinema ethics
he cannot endanger the life of another individual, especially
not a twelve-year-old boy. He stops the car on the highway.
Brian, the kid, says, Whoa! You are Arnold Schwarzenegger.
You are Jack Ryan. This is Last Action Hero. I am in a movie!
It is a disillusioned child’s deepest dream. Ryan is confused.
He naturally believes that this is the Los Angeles of real life.
He takes the kid on as his sidekick, however reluctantly.
Brian tells him, You see. You are supposed to have a sidekick,
this being the third movie in the series. Of course it’s a kid
who is going to cramp your style, but also teach you some things.
They get back in the car and go driving on to the next scene.
The radio is on loud. Cacophonous heavy metal distracts
Brian from concentrating on the existential dilemma he’s in:
whether to use the ticket to reveal to Schwarzenegger
who and what he really is; how the real world is gray and rainy
on the other side of the screen. Should one ever interfere
with the action of a movie in which he does not belong?
The movie within a movie motif has encroached on our minds
since Cervantes’ Don Quixote. The kid is versed in cliches.
This perennial predicament in stories of time and dimensional
travel has sent philosophers into a quandary since Socrates
coined the Cave Allegory. It is the butterfly effect. To be
or not to be? Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings
and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against
a sea of troubles and by opposing, end them? Do Not Touch.
This space is off limits. Relax. Popcorn? The previews are starting.
Der Zauberlehrling. Musik bitte! In the original poem by Goethe
there is no Mickey Mouse. The archetypal wizard, Blake’s
illustration of God, the lanky, white-bearded old stern face
leaves the Tower on an errand. His lazy servant apprehends
the magic wand and uses it. Legs sprout out of broomsticks.
The brooms not only sweep now, they can also carry water,
which was supposed to be the duty of the young Zen novice.
Chop the wood. Sweep the floor. Carry water. Do zazen.
Did the spiritual aspirant believe so foolishly that he could
replenish the master’s fountain with occult spells and witchery?
The lotus flower on the black pond rots. Green slime drips
in pictorial cascades down the Ten of Cups. The receptacle
is the material kingdom of the Sefira Malkuth in Yetzirah.
The broomsticks soon spoil the novice’s slothful reveries
of how easily he would attain the greatness of his master.
I am innately a gifted mystic. I have such wonderful karma
to never have to work toward the state of enlightenment…
The broomsticks go on performing their tasks incessantly.
Too much water is being taken out of the well and brought
up to the top of the Tower. They flood over the lotus pond.
The master’s meditation rock is submerged underneath three feet.
The act once done, the apprentice learns, cannot be repealed.
Mickey is panicking. His enormous sleeves are discombobulated.
He fumbles to get the hand commands right. His power falters.
The shadows of the broomsticks loom out of the firelight.
No chance of burning them, the naughty mouse supposes,
what with all the water: too wet. He gives up and gets the axe
that he usually uses to chop wood. The splinters and slivers
of the sundered sticks grow legs too. Soon there are ten
thousand. The Tower will sink into the sea. These machines
that have been created for the sake of our comfort will keep on
carrying water up as long as there is dry land, and pouring it
all over the place. Even when the whole world is inundated
they will not stop performing the motions of moving loads.
As is shown in the cartoon, they will dump water into water.
The wizard, the Zen master, the wrath of the face of God
returns and quells the disaster. Mickey Mouse feels relieved.
He wipes his brow with his forearm as he sighs animatedly.
His job now and for awhile to come is to clean up his mess
without any help. He undertakes it deferentially. He is sorry
for his sin: unauthorized use of magic for one’s own selfish gain.
He is grateful for the new wisdom he has earned by suffering
through regret and shame. He assimilates it during zazen.
Brian in Last Action Hero cannot help but involve himself in fate.
This mistake is classic, Shakespearean. Lady Macbeth conspires
with the Weird Witches Three. Double Double toil and trouble.
Fire burn and cauldron bubble. Lady spits out the semen
of her Lord, Macbeth, into the pot in the forest ceremony.
The witches cackle delightedly. The moon is in its cups.
The four of them (double double) menstruate simultaneously
and mix the red womanly fluids in with the white of the tale’s
tragic character. Eye of newt, toe of frog… In a dark, medieval
castle, a bad acid trip is happening. Death is inescapable.
The killer who would be king stalks up the terminal hallway,
with the weapon in his hand. The victim slumbers obliviously.
He wakes up screaming; is silenced. His ghost is released.
The blood gleams in the fulgent dark. The hallucinations cease.
The evidence is everywhere. Macbeth’s mind becomes lucid.
I must die now; be killed. It is written. Even if I am named king
the forest will march; an army of trees close in and surround me.
I will surrender. The fifth is the final act. This is the second still.
Curtain: Intermission. The actors wash the blood off their hands.
Lady prepares to continue seeing it stain her: Out, damned spot!

Maya Babies

Leo Cole — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 13:29:54 +0000

The red sun dropped in my dream.
Hey did you see that? I asked
one of the tourist bystanders on the promontory.
It didn’t set. It FELL below the horizon.
This is a very bad omen, according to interpretations.
You can guess what it might mean…
It is night now and I don’t know it
but I’m dreaming, making the most of a nightmare.
TERROR, the one-word headline read.
This is propaganda, the educated deduced.
Yes but it is effective, the accuser himself agreed.
The definition basically is there are
two holes, equidistant, both of the same diameter
but of profoundly different depths.
In one of them, it’s simple,
a prize lies at the shallow bottom.
Reach your hand in – it’s yours.
But think: halt – it could be the other.
This is the proverbial tunnel
down which Alice tumbled into Wonderland;
Maya, the Sanskrit for Illusion,
the overarching concept of all real religions.
Row row row your boat gently down the stream.
Merrily merrily merrily merrily life proceeds to seem.
Go blow your goat. Yes I believe in duality.
So what? You don’t, higher than mighty?
We are not, as they say, “one.” That is an oxymoron.
“We” is a plural pronoun. If you were to say,
I are one, the utterance would not be grammatical.
(unless of course “you” were substituted for “I”).
Terror after terror. Agh another fantasy!
The eidolon in my mind is a monkey.
Help! I can’t get it out.
The primate god of myth, son of the serpent
and Brahma. It is a flock of birds
crowded into a constrictive cage.
How would you like to free yourself
and be liberated from all this illusion?
God yes, I really want to!
Lord, your servant is listening.
Bid me as I should do… But the voice is gone.
The signs shrivel to husks.
It was no personage who spoke.
No vision or augur; just another eidolon.
God, damn son of a bitch.
Got me riled up again with this chronic, relentless anxiety.
And miles to go before I sleep. Thousands.
Distance from the world. The gap is unfathomable.
The bridges are to towers of castles of sand:
tenuous over the merciless assertion of the tide.
We are one and God is in all of us.
The ancients connected their thoughts
to a pantheon of deities. They divied up the goods.
This is the kingdom – the power – and the glory.
One for you, the demented candyman
chirps as he doles poison out to children.
And one for you and one for you.
Back home a girl in a cute Halloween costume
croaks. And one for you. Hey no fair!
She got two. Did not. Liar!
You are hiding one behind your back.
Alice, is this true? Her expression
at being caught betrays TERROR.
She is hallucinating badly.
She has gone from seeing double to a thousandfold:
the insect eye. The Mad Hatter dosed her too much.
The poison destroyed her brain.
She died years later in a state institution.
Poor Alice, the goddess lost. Poor bird Wendy…
Long live Queen Dorothy! Ding-dong the witch is dead!
It was the cyclone, the rabbit, the wood sprite
who seduced and led her to walk the fatal plank.
The hero always will come and save the day.
What is this garbage you are reading?
Uncle Sage poses to his adolescent nephew.
This here’s comic books. This’n’s mah favoreet.
Boy, this ain’t nothin’ but Maya. Pure pornography.
Wake up! Throw this into the fire.
When I was your age I was a pyromaniac.
Sage, the boy’s father interrupts the teaching,
what are you saying to my son?
Call in a bomb threat at school,
he whispers furtively to the kid out the side of his mouth,
tell them this is Columbine. Enough!
I told you, no seditious messages, either overt or subliminal.
You agreed to abide by my stipulation. You lied.
I took you in as a bum. I got you a job at my company
so that you could start your life in society over again.
Yet this is how you repay my brotherly generosity?
Indoctrinating my innocent son with unquiet rebellion.
Get out! Get out of this house, I say.
That’s cool pops. My conformity was a charade.
I am an anarchist guerilla on an undercover mission
to plant seeds in enemy territory.
You won’t even notice. You’ll be in the wastes
one day, prospecting, drilling for oil
and all of a sudden a tree will spring up.
Its leaves will block the sunlight from your solar panels.
You won’t be able to make any more money.
Security manhandles Sage. Before being
escorted away, he gets in one last word:
Hey kid, don’t forget, burn your books!
Wipe shit with paper currency! Incinerate the machine!
Shut him up, the evil brother orders his men.
One of them sticks a knife down Sage’s throat
severing off his tongue. These guys are not rent-a-cops.
They are certifiable bad-asses: third-world mercenaries
who have been trained in US Special Ops camps
and are getting paid well in an impoverished economy.
The kid who witnesses this is upset and confused.
Sorry for the ruckus, the father coos like mom.
Forget about it and go back to enjoying your comics.
Here is a hundred dollars. Go buy yourself some more.
Before exiting the father gives the signal
to the most twisted of all his henchmen to ensure
that there are no matches or lighters in the room,
left on the sly by Sage, for the boy to get his hands on.
It’s for your own safety senor, the mercenary sneers
as he nears the kid cowering in the corner.

Contours of Haze

Leo Cole — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 15:52:26 +0000

A bird soars with its white reflection
up a river stream. Birds in the blue
above burst out of a group of five.
Stars explode into dead comet matter.
Flights cross green banks – the reflective
surface meets its edge and ends.
The form becomes a shadow. A dark force
caws. A chorus of crows rises up.
The sound descends against lifting smoke
and the fleeting scent of the wind.
The quiet distance blows in, bashing
a cluster of orange island flowers.
The fire by day is bright. Its hiss kisses
flame lips and shushes soft voices.
Talk resumes as mourners depart.
Tired bodies stay still and for awhile
maintain the vigil. The spirit is seen
safe in glimpses through hot haze.
Light creates mirages. Solidity loses
its permanence. An abstract concept
assimilates into reality. A crown of flesh
melts into tears that drip to the ends
of the eyelashes sticking out of the skull.
The hand feels the face through a medium
of cool water; rejoices in thirst with drink.
At the head of the burning pyre, close enough
to have to squint and blink against the heat,
a man stands ready to be embraced.
We all go like that, he utters serenely.
No, he is shown with an encompassing
gesture, We go like that: birds behind haze.
Contours to the clarity – that is all we are.

Revolutionary Inertia

Leo Cole — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 15:34:33 +0000

The dove carried back the olive branch across the waters of Flood.
Noah knew that land would be hard to starboard. The great god
Poseidon tugged gently at the reigns of his horse, the porpoise,
Leviathan. The creature in response averted its gills to swim
in the directed way and gyrated its flippers to augment its speed.
Noah cracked his whip – “Faster you brute! Faster!” Leviathan bashed
its nose on the shelf that led up to the desert island, destined
someday to become the rocky peak of a holy mountain.
Two trees stood in the sand – of life and of knowledge.
Noah got out of his boat with his animals and his family.
He set the craft adrift in such a current where in days a meteor
would fall precisely from the sky and smash it to a scattered mess
of flaming smithereens. He trained the monkeys to climb the trees
and send the family their fruit down. Hungry, they ate everything
including the seeds, which when they shitted out sprouted
into baby trees. The desert island in decades became a forest.
Under canopies of five hundred foot leaves, the chosen people
chopped up the originals with sharp, heavy flint hatchets
and used the logs as firewood. Both life and knowledge burned
equally well. Seers saw prophecies emerge out of the smoke
and then in the ongoing embers after the death of the flames.
The old man throughout all this time was walking down
the ebbing shoreline, observing the waters of Flood abate.
Once the altitude had sunk enough, the peak of the mountain
became cold and inhospitable. The forest that had flourished
in centuries turned to stone. With nothing left for the people
to eat, they carried out an exodus downward to the coasts.
Some set up ghost towns, old fishing villages, Cape Cod
in the offseason. Some got stuck and never made it beyond
the plateaus they would have had to cross to get to the ocean.
Societies were raised. Hierarchies ordained. Caste systems
put into place. Nomads roamed and thieves lurked everywhere.
Alchemist pirates, whose gold was the soul, growled,
“Rrr me mateys. Now here methinks is a fine bunch of stout,
lean-hearted buccaneers!” These men never shaved;
were missing prominent teeth; had hats on imprinted with
the insignia of the skull and crossbones; wore diamond-
studded eyepatches. On their shoulders sat perched
red, blue, and green parrots that occasionally, apropos
of nothing, squawked out with, “Polly wanna cracker,”
at which request the bird’s host would shove a stale chunk
of bread into its worm-tongued beak, mumbling, “Shut ahp.”
Robin Hoods did in those days abound, American Che Guevaras.
The long-haired straight-faced revolutionary, a red star
in his black beret, poses for propaganda, enjoying a foot-long
Cuban cigar. Robin is a fox in Disney. He pulls out an arrow
from its sheath and sets it to the string of his bow.
He winks, aims, shoots… He wins! “Hooray! Tree cheers
for our hero Robin Hood: Hip hip…” The sheriff of Nottingham
is a surly lion. He is upset that that mysterious archer
who took away the grand prize used the reward to stand
everyone in the village pints in the pub. “The people
are supposed to pay liquor taxes for their drinks,”
the lion laconically whines to his cohort, the snake.
“Ssso true your majesssty.” “Majesty?” the lion feigns
humility, “Why, sir snake, do you insist on addressing me
as if I were royalty? I am merely the Sheriff of Nottingham.”
“Not ssso, my lord, if I may be so bold as to contradict
your eminence. You are king of divine blood, at least to me.
And someday soon you are bound to fulfill your dessstiny.
You will be an idol in the minds of these ignoramuses,
the English, and all the far-flung colonies…” Meanwhile,
in the new world, Che is organizing a band of guerillas,
Native Americans in pelt skins, armed with bows and arrows.
“First we take back Manhattan!” he says to them in Spanish
through teeth clenching in his mouth his trademark cigar.
His hands are not free to hold it, as he is using them
to demonstrate the proper handling of a Soviet AK-47 rifle.
His buffalo soldiers reject firearms. They say, “We must not let
our spirits sink to the level of joining with the gringos’ machines.
Once we do, the cause of our revolution is lost forever
to the white man’s perdition.” They mobilize in the Battery.
At the preordained sun stroke, they burst onto the floor
of the Wall Street Stock Exchange. An arrow pierces
the chairman’s throat. He collapses over the edge
of the balcony, still clasping the hammer that was to ring
the bell that would open the market for that trading day.
His skull smashes on the marble floor, spilling his brains.
He is unconscious as he dies of asphyxiation on blood.
The killing was symbolic. The good guys do not want
to harm anybody. The guerillas hold obsidian knives
to the collared, neck-tied pudgy jugulars of every executive
who works for a financial firm or government bureau
in New York City. They demand a pow-wow with Power.
The president of the USA broaches in, holding up
his hands in the sign of surrender. He begs the leader,
“Take me instead. Kill me if you want. But please return
the country back its beloved executives. I am their chief.
Accept my life as a sacrifice.” Che laughs heartily,
the gutteral paroxysms of the proletariat’s stentorian
icon, who happens to be a heavy smoker. “Nonsense,”
he speaks in broken English for the president, who knows
not a word of Spanish, except maybe for “hola,” “cerveza,”
and “hasta la vista baby.” “We demanded to talk to Power.
You are nobody but a coward. The proletariat isn’t stupid.
We know that you were forced by those who really rule
to turn yourself in for the sake of these enslaved slave drivers,
businessmen,” he grits the word, “and that if you had
refused they would have tortured you beyond the threshold
of pain. Whereas we anarchists kill seldom and when we do,
humanely. You stink, pig. We don’t even want to have you
as a hostage. Get out of the People’s Stock Exchange.”
Che kicks the rear-end of the president, who is now down
on his hands and knees, pushing him toward the exit.
The rulers consider the situation serious. Che is invited
to meet with the absolute master based on two conditions:
that he come alone, that he bring no weapons, and that
he refrain from smoking. He is led by a chthonic type suit
through the wreckage of the World Trade Center bombing.
He is feeling apprehensive already since he stubbed
out his last cigar on the sidewalk of Church Street.
He hankers for nicoteine. His worker’s boot crunches
over the charred skulls of the firefighters who were
victims of the calamity. Uneasily, he looks up to the sky
where the historic Twin Towers once rose, and – Flash!
- he is inside a building gazing at light fixtures in a ceiling.
Thanatos leads him to an elevator. A bell dings. Doors open.
Thanatos gestures to Che that he enter. A button is pushed.
The elevator ascends rapidly. Several seconds later
he is eighty stories up. He looks down at the marvellous city,
astounded by the height of the view. “Come forward!”
a deep echoing voice commands from behind a cubicle
in a shadowy section of the otherwise sunny office space.
“But I thought,” he says in Spanish (his exact words are
“Pero pensaba…”), that the World Trade Center was destroyed
on September 11, 2001.” “It was a hoax, Mr Guevara,”
The voice pronounces the revolutionary’s name wrongly;
‘Gwuh-varra,’ “designed to conceal the nerve center
of Emerald City behind a curtain of empty space, so that
we who are in power could do business with less transparency.”
“A hoax? But all those people killed…” “Digital imagery.
No one died. Those who cried that they lost loved ones
in the false disaster were brainwashed and/or bribed
by the secret agents of Oz.” “I must say,” Che replies,
“I am impressed by the thoroughness of your evil plot,
despite that I detest you. Congratulations on this facade.
In financial terms, Oz has been quite successful. Kudos.
Anyway, I am here to declare that the Native Americans
are taking the power back. We will slaughter your executives
if you do not capitulate to our one demand: Cede to us
California. The land was never yours to begin with.
You stole it from Mexico. We will let you keep Arizona,
New Mexico, western Texas, but we want the Golden Coast,
from Baja to Alaska.” “What are you going to do with it?
Organize a mass cult of hippie pot farmers?” “Mas o menos.
We are going to reestablish the worship of Wakan Tanka.
California under us will be a highly technological modern
libertarian agronomy. Okay, we have drawn up our terms.
We will allow you to maintain your military bases there
on the one condition that you supplement the training
of your personnel with the education which we will provide
in the liberal arts, subjects of peace. And no one is exempt.
Everyone from generals to line cooks must attend the lessons.
Is it agreed?” Oz chuckles sardonically. “No it is not,
comrade amigo, communist dog. You are not even fit
to lick the mud off the sole of my boot after I have done
a wine tasting tour in Napa Valley. You are a non-entity.
We had you killed by a group of our mercenaries in the 1960s.
As for your army of Indians, they’re even more dead than you.
No pictures of them exist, however many millions there were.”
The hero of the Cuban revolution goes pale. “Yo…” he doesn’t
know how to answer, “Do you mind if I have a cigar?”
“Yes I DO MIND!” the voice behind the cubicle boomed.
The light-weight cardboard walls shook with the low vibrations.
“You were told you could not smoke in here.” “I am not sure
I understand. Can you come out of there and explain to me?”
A portly dwarf pops out of the box. He looks less like a midget
than he does an aged, stocky ex-athlete, seen from far away.
“I am Oz, great and powerful,” the dwarf declares himself.
“You said I am a non-entity?” “Eres eso amigo, compadre.
We both are, as well as the Tower we are standing in.
That is why I appear in this ridiculous, un-PC aspect.
I have no constant form. But I, unlike you, do thrive
on the other side in the realm that is known as reality.
There California, New York, the whole fucking shitshow is mine.”
Oz smiles malignly. “But comrade, I can see you are stressing.
Why not go ahead and have your smoke?” Che thankfully
fumbles in the pockets of his green fatigues for a cigar
and a box of communist matches. He strikes one: no light.
He tries another: not even a spark. He panics. Disappears.

Social Evolution

Leo Cole — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 15:03:08 +0000

Water towers have sprung up in the centers of yards
outside of building complexes where the poor live
behind chipped painted walls and windows with bars over them,
from which damp clothing hangs. Within a room, abundant
with southern sunlight, a mirror in a corner reflects
the faint green opening to the portal – the only door
through which to leave. The surrounding city has aggregated
me in. I remember where I went from having taken tours.
I know busy roads that imbue ambient dust in the onward way.
It sometimes doesn’t go according to our artifice.
Somewhere once there grew a tree. It got flattened
and turned into stone. Now rubber rolls over it on wheels
that have been commandeered by motors. The foot presses
the pedal. Hence the car accelerates. The hand lets go
the steering wheel to honk the horn of warning: Beep!
it screams, Watch out! Coming through. Evolution progresses.
Even in this latest stage of collective human history
we all still have yet to learn how to cooperate together
in an endeavor as simple as cleaning up the pollution,
eliminating poverty, assassinating the destitute on sight,
neutering the mangy canines that roam, exposing fleas
and lice to deadly chemicals, educating the worst
impoverished in the proper uses of soap, driving away
animistic superstitions, replacing the fear factors of communities
in villages with kings, banks, vast conglomerations
of fiscal power, the government and the scrawny, naive
soldiers and police forces. I will look after myself
if you please. I am the Federation of Me. Here, I extend
you the olive branch. Let’s form an economic alliance,
which will be one also of tender amnesty. We nations
might sit close beside one another by cozy firelight
and nestle against one another’s winter sweaters
playing footsy in wool socks, kissing with increasing fervor.

Blackbird Arise

Leo Cole — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 16:10:34 +0000

The Chinese do not want to buy the same things that we do.
Yes, they frequent megastores, but also traditional markets.
Housewives may purchase live hens and carry them home
squawking by the feet, their daughters’ hands in theirs.
They have no alternatives. The government is more
openly war-minded. The fascists are publically amassing.
They have no regard for our well beings. They deride our pleadings
for peace and mercy. They would rather bulldoze homes
in the countryside to carry out ambitious reforestation schemes
than let us live our lives as agrarian pagans, and see us to the city.
Here we live on top of each other, crammed in so close
that we’re forced to hear their music and animated conversations
about topics of which we can only catch a word here or there,
that I would never even think about, let alone discuss.
Ach! This small talk is killing me. I need to get out of the city.
Go back to the countryside. There I had a garden.
Mother raised me and my family on vegetables she had grown
herself and cooked in her kitchen with loving motherly care.
Mmm yum Christmas turkey! We sure love the way mom makes it!
I’m sick of running into people and having to say excuse me or hello.
I don’t want to buying anything. Exchanging currency feels dirty.
Engaging in commerce, selling labor to an employer is like
standing before someone who trusts you and telling a selfish lie.
But that is what you do here. The buildings are boxes,
the streets are squared, the ways we have to walk
are so unavoidably constricted that I have to squeeze to get by.
Suppress another shudder of visceral anxiety. I want to scream,
but I know that I would cease the incipient outcry
when those around me would think: Tsk, some crazy person.
Come on Ham, let’s get the children away from this madman.
I guess this is sanity: the ability to maintain a lid on the urge
to act out irrationally. I hear a heart beating under hot water.
The city is attacking. The slumber I fell into has gradually receded
in incoming tidal waves of waking consciousness.
The balcony I have rented overlooks a parking lot.
Out beyond, between other 24-storey apartment complexes
I can see treetops, wires, slowly rolling cars. If I don’t go soon
someone will come and call on me. And I don’t want to encounter
anyone; I’m not in the mood. I gather my things to leave.
Taxi to the art district. I stroll the streets, smoking,
turning randomly off into alleyways. The works on display:
generic. Nothing worth looking at for more than a couple seconds.
Everything is unoriginal. I try to be impressed by the anthropological
significance of there being a place like this, but I am not surprised.
It’s the same as I was told about: A must-see attraction
should you have the opportunity. Yes, I can see the charm.
Still, now that I am actually here, it just all seems so… sad.
So I turn into a bird. Set myself free in a woodsy district
and fly off on my own. I was inside a tiny cage, flapping frenetically.
I was enclosed in with this other bird who had lost its will to live
and just sat passive in its own and my acid shit at the bottom
of the cage. I identified with the bird. Its avian brain could never
learn there would be no escape. After every failed attempt
to fly it sinks and non-verbally thinks: No! Wrong! I need to…
Bash against the bars! Be unable to spread my wingspan.
I gave the petshop owner a hundred yuan and ordered him
to hand over the birds with angered urgency. I turned
and said, We have got to get out of here, meaning this part
of the city, where if the birds were to be set free
they would hardly be any better off. They would likely live
in ongoing states of fright amidst this traffic, urban dwellings,
not a trace of any but neon greenery, and die soon from poison.
We taxied to where there were woods. At last I opened the cage.
Seconds were of the essence as long as those creatures
under my care were suffering… Goldfish, gerbils, turtles
and other such animals that were sold in that rotten petstore
certainly aren’t as happy as they would be in their natural habitats.
But this is where we differ, us land dwellers, to the great
beings that soar dashingly through the blue at all sorts
of creative verticals. Gravity weighs us down. And we become
complacent. We live in a cage that stinks of shit.
Our water and food troughs are filthy. We are so packed
in with one another that we can barely move, the constant contact
is sickening. We can endure it. Our energy settles
once our hopes are given for lost. The bird, however, cannot be
so easily sedated. He has the magical ability to fly!
to go anywhere he wants, as high as he possibly can.
I freed those birds from the city as a symbolical act,
but also and primarily because the moment I witnessed that bird
slamming itself about in grave desperation, I reacted
empathetically. I bought the two birds and walked
up the side of the street, furtively looking out for an available cab,
doing my best through my aura to bestow calm on them.
It won’t be long, I said to myself and repeated, it won’t be long…
I am no land-bound man. I am a breeze-blown blackbird.
Did you know that men can fly? Yes, of course, they do so
through their thoughts, which unlike other animals’
can center on the divine. As the Wright brothers could tell you,
for a man to fly it is difficult and very challenging. It takes
many persevered attempts. One must cope with crashes,
despondency, doubt, ridicule, loss of motivation, but it can be done!
Look where we are today: in Hong Kong, having been in Shenzhen,
headed for Kolkata tomorrow. O my, it’s a Christmas miracle!
Christmas – in the sense that this is the winter solstice,
a fresh and novel wave in the chronological ocean of years…
May you prosper new inventions, ideas, ten million dollar ones!
Mwhahaha, the evil in the background erupts. His laughs
fade away, strange and mysteriously… Thoughts ascend
in airy flight. They dip, swivel, and dive. They arise off our heads
like steam from a hotspring in snow. In the sunlight,
under the stars, walking, dreaming, discovering water,
getting naked and going swimming. I am a stately blackbird.
I wonder what a goldfish – Dip – feels like when it – Swerve –
swims around in water – Soooar… Can’t be anything like this,
I, an imperfect man, muse on one of my vaunts into nature.
Human nature is inextricably complicated. Disregard any easy
answer. There isn’t one. You see, we have, our minds are
possessed by these psychophysical aggregates.
How many thoughts normally course between two disingenuous
parties carrying on a conversation? No telling. Definitely fewer
the shorter the interactions get, the more we push away.
It is our dilemma that we must solve if we are to receive
our divine reward. To cope with who he is versus who he must
be in society, in relation to others, is the main preoccupation
for every wise young man. The religion of evolution
teaches that in the beginning we were muddy-minded beasts.
We have been trying to purify ourselves for the past
thirty thousand years through the process of alchemy.
The future must come to terms with itself. I don’t have an answer.
This is no utopian manifesto. I point out what needs to change.
There! I am a little girl playing the magic witch game.
On whatever thing I point my wand – a perfect stick I found
in the woods earlier – its essence is immediately altered.
Take that frog for example. Which one? There!
The frog turns into a handsome prince, his lips deliciously puckered.
Now that stone over… There! It turns into a towering mountain.
I am bored. I put my stick down. Sit on a rock by a stream
and watch and listen to the amazing water pass. I leave
the city proper. I am still technically within its limits,
but this place isn’t so overwhelmingly urban. Much greener.
Ah yes! I can fly! I am a free blackbird again. There! Now…
There! I flap upon an air current, a thought: I might pay a visit
to the energy force that orchestrates every movement in the universe
today. I head for heaven. I knock at the pearly gates.
The gatekeeper to the Emerald City peeps out a squeaky eyehole
and demands, Yes? What do you want? I seek audience with God.
Ehe? He is occupied at the moment. May I take a message?
Um, no. I would rather see Him in person. Please I have flown all the way
from the poet down on earth. I only want to pay the Energy my respect
and make a humble request of It. But if He is busy – I suppose
I should have made an appointment – tell Him I am grateful
that there exists a green section in the city, but it is vastly not enough.
I don’t know when was the last time His Excellence deigned
to check in on it, but the city has gotten completely out of control.
I suggest it be destroyed, but, and I must emphasize, benignly;
no bloodshed, famine, plague, or war. Just a purely peaceful
abandonment of that way of living. I would like to see a kind of
Great Green Brave New Emerald City Utopia of the Future!
while I am still alive. And I’m due to die by 2063, at the latest,
so the Energy better get crackin’! I will pass the word along,
the gatekeeper responds smugly, and shuts – with a squeak
as well as a bang – his eyehole. I wonder if he will, or whether
he was lying… I shrug my wings, leap off the edge of a cloud
and head back toward earth, where my head is at present.
During my descent, I decide resolutely that if I don’t start
seeing some improvement soon, I am going to come back
with an army of pacifist blackbirds and coup d’etat Emerald City.
I am intimidated. I hate confrontation. It always brings out the worst
in my ego. But I am a bird inside a cage, trapped in an onerous city,
unable to accept that there is no escape, bashing myself
against the bars. Here thoughts do not have room to fly.
They bubble up and seethe underneath ceilings, become stagnant
pools that fester. Our minds are untreated wounds; grotesque gangrene.
Ehhh, the cries of misery moan. Sounds like they are faking it,
I judge as I walk by on two strong, healthy legs. The cripple is begging
for money. Except in the hope that the sky isn’t just a memory,
that it still exists somewhere far away, the bird witnesses its first
dawn from the branch of a tree – and that is indeed not even space.
Hope… Puh! I am already under sedation. How much struggle
from internal conflict have I already swallowed without speaking
up and taking action? Mental pain is a drug. Take your antideppressant.
It will also cover your symptoms of schizophrenia and sociopathy.
Its side-effects include loss of self-identity and impotence.
But you will be able to live a normal life again. The more you take,
the further you can tolerate things being wrong. This can work
to our benefit. We can use the drug, pain, as our vaccine.
Now that I am immune, I can go undercover as an agent into the city
and not fall apart in seizures when I am subjected to its human pollution.
I can carry out covert operations, an extremely skillful spy.
The author, the Cold War-era operative, occupies enemy territory,
taking pictures for his poem-report with his camera-equipped eye.
The most perspicacious tracker, the prim Harvard man explains
to his hierarchical superior, could not detect that when I touch
my finger to the rim of my glasses, like so, a tiny camera
in the nose-piece snaps a picture. If I can just get into their central
headquarters and get anywhere near their top secret documents
we should have all the information that we need to win the war!
Ingenious, the poet smiles, very good agent Orange. Carry on
now with your child’s play… I am doing nothing for which I could
be tried or prosecuted. I am a blackmarket dealer in ideas.
And even in states where thinking along particular lines
is sacrilege and punishable by strictest law, I am still exculpable.
This isn’t explicitly forbidden. The dumb government cannot verbalize
eloquently enough to describe what I am doing against it
and label the subversion illegal. I am therefore able to go
about unsuspected, like a blackbird high above people’s heads
My totem protector, go be free. I have opened your cage.
Birds, messengers to the divine, come swarm the city like locusts.
Authority does not fear my freedom because it is quite isolate.
But if everybody were blackbirds, the myth about the power
that cages us would like past flaps of wings dissolve
into our destination: Sky! Right after the poor petshop owner,
who I harbor no ill-will against, being only ignorant, forgets
his service to the city; wanting only for himself, grabs
the pink bill I offer him: a hundred yuan for two birds’ freedom.

Vanilla

Leo Cole — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 05:14:13 +0000

Golden honey drips with thick viscosity.
Lava-like, the ocean seethes for an entire eon
in the space of a pending moment.
The surface is augmenting.
The flowers are growing cold as their colors.
Their reasons for blossom are shade by shade
taken away. The gold glows forever.
The wet tongue, swollen from the stings it’s sustained,
tastes sweet honey. The rivulets have moved in
to occupy and erode the stone. The force
that is pushing this vast swathe of various
activity, from a deep point within the center everywhere,
is licking clean the rolling wheels.

Chocolate

Leo Cole — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 05:13:28 +0000

Golden honey drips with the wet tongue, swollen
thick viscosity, lava like the ocean from the stings it’s sustained
seethes for an entire eon, tastes sweet honey.
In the space of a pending moment the rivulets have moved in.
The surface is augmenting to occupy and erode the stone.
The flowers are growing cold. The force that is pushing,
as their colors, their reasons, this vast swathe of various
blossoms, are shade activity from a deep point,
by shade taken away within the center everywhere.
The gold glows forever; is licking clean the rolling wheels.