Lifeline
To be in the world in the Heideggerian sense.
My thoughts will become actions, my desires fructify,
and fears be kept in the shadows for the night
sweeper to come and remove. I touch nothing.
The environment of my present existence is false.
A dream place – I wander a composite of landscapes
where I have been and suppressed all memory from:
hills of concave mortar craters in a bygone battlefield;
generic interiors of empty houses; desert rock promontories;
seaside ghost towns that smell of salt-distended clouds.
Blown in over the waves, across an abandoned parking lot,
over ineffective barriers of hanging elliptical chains,
stands still my nightmare pursuer, a person who I can
barely make out, in my hurry to turn and leave.
At most, I lean against walls and hover over counters.
Hold notes across and receive things in exchange:
food I have not cooked, rented weapons, torch to pass
on the flame to another. The creator closes his eyes,
looking down on the supplicant, who has come
over mountains on knees, through oceans without a boat,
across vast chasms unbridged. He holds my head
against his heart. I can hear how hollow it is:
a storefront in a movie set; a business in painted wood
and decorated window. He charges me grievously.
The old crook rips me off. No recourse to retribution
or justice for this crime. The response to get away
and the resolution to lie if anyone ever asks where I was,
though in the aftermath no one does, not directly.
Sounds reach into my corner; voices whose words
I have no choice but to process. Few are in my language.
I have only the timber and tone to decipher to determine
whether their vitriol might be referring to… Arthur,
they address me. I cannot deny that this is my name.
You are expected to answer for this outrageous bill.
Who authorized you to go on a spree?
No one Lord. I did it on my own accord.
I am meted out my punishment: a dark phase of demotivation;
actions carried out with the cooperation of the body;
my taste sense screaming – This is not what I want!
O well, it isn’t so bad. The baited hook on offer hints at sympathy.
I engage them to listen to me talk about my general dilemma
in consciousness so full it sometimes distracts me from speaking
in the middle of a sentence of the utter vanity of my pitiful plaint.
A rope inside the well deeper than the light at the opening
can penetrate brushes and shocks my face, startling me
to realization that I had not been numbed by the fall,
as I had only surmised from the lack I felt of pain.
I thought I was numb, but was too afraid to try to prove it
by budging under my own will. Now I find I have hands to grip
and climb the heaven-sent lifeline – the spider strand of Buddha.
I am reciting myth: the soul in hell is offered paradise,
immortality in the Garden of the Lotus Flower.
He has a way to go to get there. This is the variation
that is interesting: what thought causes this soul to fail?
Shit! Merde! Mierda! Scheiss! I was Jesus Christ
leading shadows out of a tunnel. And I could see light
up at the opening. But I… stopped and called off
the emigration for some reason.
Hmmm, the psychoanalyst looks up from his pad
and raises to an angle an eyebrow.
A reason? What might that be?
I… the mental case reflects, gosh doc, I don’t remember.
He gasps, expresses contempt. Behind the couch
I am lying on I hear papers that he has thrown flutter.
He storms out of the room. Alone, I sit out the session
for the hour I have already paid for.
The soul was near enough the surface to smell
something other than the cold moldy mist
inside this hellish well. He can hear fall the sparkles
of a fountain gushing… Why did you let go?
a former follower asks hundreds of years after it happened.
Finally, suddenly, the karma of my guilt is up. The event is expiated.
Someone can come and talk to me. I have now the lucid perspective
that suffering in perdition can bring. I am able to say ingenuously
my variation on the myth – but I cannot describe my response,
nor my fellow lost soul’s reaction. The Buddha frowns
and turns away – the creator closes his eyes.
He pets the spider’s diamond back to thank it for spinning
its strand. You will be rewarded well my little friend.
Your buddhahood has been hastened by your act of generosity
to that soul who unfortunately couldn’t take advantage of it.
The spider’s karma advances. It prospers in flies until,
at a ripe old spider’s age it dies a natural, animal death.
The baby wasn’t rescued. The savior must have been martyred.
As a child I saw a show one evening on television, supposedly
based on true events. In a backyard in Texas, a baby fell into a well.
The mother discovered the accident and, weeping, called emergency.
Crews arrived: ambulances, police, rescue workers, news reporters.
The entire drama consisted of these adults’ adventures. It was
quite a boring movie, actually. The part that was poignant for me
was when the sound effects of a baby’s screams stopped
and everyone around the well went silent in acknowledgement
of what that meant. While I knew this to some extent,
even as a youngster, now I am fully aware that although the baby
was central to the story, it was a fictitious artifact. There were
a couple of shots at the beginning and the happy ending
of some baby that maybe belonged to one of the director’s
friends, which they used for not more than half a day of filming.
But the poor baby at the bottom of the well, for whom I felt
the movie viewer’s empathy, whose screams quieted
at the climax did not exist. Just a bunch of cheap actors
dressed up as mother, defeatist policeman, heroic news reporter,
pretending to fret around a hole in a backyard in Texas.
The thought that occurs to the soul is supposed to be the lesson.
To me, the writer, I have to admit, it is a total mystery.
It is a hardship to have to think about while still involved in the cycle.
I have been in hell. I survived on only hope. I got knocked
back as the hope exploded and the shrapnel from it blinded me.
I touch nothing. The mother’s breast with which I came in contact
was a booby trap; a residual mine in the gentle country
where a bloody war once took place. I have lost limbs;
been rendered castrate. I’ve been deafened by the flash.
My mind is idiotic from having to cope with the consequent trauma.
Ornaments bedeck every available space inside the palatial room:
stupid, useless objects manufactured by slaves for the waste market
and sold in souvenir stalls for a cheap price that can be
negotiated down yet further. One is my friend, the king, who is
imprisoned under a spell. If I touch his corresponding ornament
he will be released and reestablish his rule. But they are all
indistinguishable. The jade lion, I decide. Doubt seizes me though
as I reach my hand out. If I choose incorrectly the day is lost;
I become an ornament too. Which other one then?
I vacillate between the jade lion and the pewter ashtray,
toy memorabilia, a tiny heavy statue of Manjushri,
a gun studded with gems and jewels, stone fruit,
the crystal bowl that contains the grey apples and oranges,
the plate on which this stands, the mandala in the center of which
is obscured, but from its edges looks like the Wheel of Life.
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Millions Dead
We worldly moderns know the ultimate results of both
corporate capitalism and totalitarian communism.
Can we compare now, and agree on anarchy?
Consider China, for example, in the early 21st century.
They have been developing into a superpower
at an insane, fatalistic rate: 10 per cent per annum.
The government has coerced the people
into suffering under oppression toward a perfect society -
Chinese communism. Everyone works in factories
and content themselves to have camera cell phones
and personal TVs. “Yes please. We want more
consumer products. More! We’ll do anything. More!”
No, sorry folks, it doesn’t exactly work that way.
You think these human beings won’t wake up one day
and not notice that they don’t have souls anymore?
Wouldn’t you do a little digging to find if something
had been robbed from you? Of course you would,
rich men. Yea – we didn’t know we had to exercise avarice
in order to have the right to live in freedom, lives full
of love and never worry. Trauma scars.
A guy loses his parents. You expect him to be submissive
when he becomes an adult? They died of cancer in their forties
because of the industrial waste stream that seeps
into the city’s water and air supply. And I am doing it too…
Yea right. Sure I’ll stand by as my fellow villager
is beaten to death in the custody of the police.
On the opposite pole, we have America. Think about it
circa 1950s, the decade during which my parents were born.
(I am of the ‘80s). America had won the war.
Through the ‘40s they pulled themselves out of the Depression,
the result of the 1920s, which was an era much similar
to the one we were in during the 2000s. (But all that is
forgotten stuff. No one is alive from then. My own remaining
grandparents are dying. My immediate parents are getting there.
And so am I, I have to add. I am dying myself.)
In the ‘50s, every American had a car. And any blue collar
honest worker could support a home and a family.
Life was rosy, as depicted by the burgeoning ad industry.
Where to begin? So many stories branch from then…
Should I reveal my own history? Of Catholic Irish people
from in and around New York City? No, I am irrelevant.
The point is the illusion. The jobs offered in the Dream
were in the service of the war machine. Korea was a preamble.
Vietnam was the first massively violent endeavor
that the United States engaged their troops in.
How many millions died? Three or four, including
and especially peasant Vietnamese. Ok, so war works,
the new president was explained on his first day in office
by those who were really in power. Not that he didn’t know.
To become president you can’t be a complete idiot.
But he did not know to what extent the maxim was true.
The offshoot of that fiasco was Cambodia, an event which would
rival the holocaust in notoriety if the Cambodian contingency
were as close to and ingratiated in American culture
as the European Jews are. About a third of the population
was wiped out. That is our nationality. Uncle Sam shits
upon a throne of skulls. Our next adventure was Latin America,
a secret war which no one knew about because none of our
own were killed, or extremely few. But millions dead in Nicaragua,
Panama, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Colombia, Brazil, Chile, Argentina,
because of us; as well as Mexico because of the drug trade.
Indian blood is on our hands – the government we held in power.
The ‘90s were an era equivalent to the ‘70s in terms of benignity.
And then, as everyone knows quite well from having seen on TV,
or seeing the filmed images of afterward, came – Boom Tower I –
September 11 – Boom Tower II – 2001. The latest war
has been most interesting in manifesting different methods
by which the leaders of major world powers wield their influence
and corrupt the possibilities of peace. America attacks its own.
George HW Bush was an investor in the Bin Laden Co.
It’s a fact. And so, I ask to whoever may be in charge,
the Great Oz, you pathetic, balding charlatan, do you honestly
think we could be so stupid as to continue buying this?
We do not want consumer products in exchange for souls.
America today (winter solstice, 2011) is shaking off the mantle.
The red white and blue flaps with palpable wind into tatters.
Its greatness was always illusionary. The death agents
and thought police do not exist for the American people.
The country can be taken over with little if any civil war.
Every serious revolutionary should know that to overthrow
a sovereign, you must as a first step infiltrate its military.
The CIA’s tactics in South America have taught us that.
Let’s apply the lesson. Let’s move into the White House.
(I get the Roosevelt Room!) It will be all too easy.
Do you think the young 20-year-old soldiers on Facebook
want to return to the Middle East? How about we tell them,
“Listen son, there is no war… Yo brother, why not fight for good!”
Sure some generals will be upset at losing their mansions
in Washington DC. Let the old men cry. They’ll get over it
soon enough if they don’t commit suicide like Romans
for the old, fallen order. China, however, is another story.
The Burners could take over the States, but it won’t make
a difference overseas, in any case, because that is what
the Chinese have been expecting. As soon as we declare
our nation to be one of libertarian pacifists, they are going
to point nuclear missiles at us and hold our people hostage,
demanding that we labor for the great Communist Party.
Their mind control system is far superior to ours.
Do you have any idea what their people endure
to benefit the ongoing development of the Land of Make-Believe?
The grotesque anomaly to grow out of the China predicament
is the prison nation of North Korea. It is an extreme example
of what China is actually like: people who, when the leader dies,
are paraded in front of cameras and commanded to cry on cue.
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The Devil in the Temple
Mephistopheles cackles evilly. He is riding on a bicycle at just such a speed that it is a challenge to maintain balance. He must frequently jerk the steering column in order to stay on.
He is circling five times around the wooden temple where bells have already begun to chime melodiously, heralding his arrival. The rubber tires leave tracks as they roll through the desert dust.
A gate is posted at the entrance. Twin pillars are connected by a beam along the top. “The death canal,” Mephistopheles pronounces as he passes through, making those near enough to observe aware that this represents a portal between dimensions. Each time he completes a round he enters it, several times going in one way, a couple of times the other.
The clarion tune is climaxing as he dismounts and lets the simple machine drop on its frame to the ground among the many scattered around that have been ridden by the congregants to this place. The temple is located out in a desolate waste, hours by foot from the closest outpost of human civilization. Back there in the ersatz city he painted his face in a mirror and decided on assuming this, his current identity. ‘I am a demon,’ he thought, looking into his own eyes as he dabbed the cool white acrylic makeup onto his face, cheeks and forehead. ‘Or rather, I host some demon inside me. Yes,’ he went on as he chose the black to darken his brow and eye sockets, ‘that would be more accurate.’ He finished his mask by applying extreme red to his lips. He puckered and kissed the mirror, squeezed more red from a tube and replaced the paint that had been worn off, while leaving the moon-shaped smudge on the reflective glass.
He enters the sacred space and proceeds to step between seated bodies to the center. He drops his bag of tricks and sits down. He sloughs back a few gulps of water; grunts as the pure liquid infuses into his bloodstream. His blood must flow lightly as he brings about a state of religious ecstasy in which everyone present is to partake.
His head drops between his legs. His hair hangs. Wind through one of the five open archways blows in and rustles the dusty, golden strands. His head is bouncing rhythmically over his bent knees to the tolls of the temple bells.
He makes a mudra with both his hands; his thumbs touch his pointers. The rest of his fingers become contiguous and straightened. Mephistopheles throws his head back. The people in the upper tiers see his crazy Joker face. His teeth glint in a ray of sun shining in through one of the structure’s upper porticoes. Spine rigid, out his mouth flies the first vowel sound of the magical incantation: Aaa…
The bells as if by a tempest are thrown into a frenzy. He mingles the timbre of his voice with the variously toned tintinnabulations. They seem to respond by ringing more ebulliently.
Up the people’s sacral columns electricity dashes, sending shivers throughout their sensitive extremities. God, they feel (though no one cognizes it), is here.
After the first five-minute round of chanting, the bells slow. Mephistopheles closes his mouth. He continues humming, Mmm, with slackening intensity, until the temple goes silent. The bells cease. The wind declares itself: gone.
He opens his eyes and looks into those of the faces around him. His neck twists to get a gander at everyone within a three hundred and sixty five-degree radius of his center. He fixes on the gaze of one to his right immediately in front of him: a girl staring back in unabashed awe. He laughs; turns his eyeballs back to look as directly straight up as his forehead will allow. The blue that fills the open windows is magnificently dazzling.
He reaches into his bag, rummages around, finds and extracts his book of blank pages. He takes his pen out of his pocket and begins scribbling furiously. The words he writes remain unknown to all who gawk out of curiosity.
As soon as he fills up a page, he rips it out of the book and holds out the dithering piece of paper for the girl to try to grab. She realizes what she is supposed to do and goes for it. He jerks it away teasingly. She lowers her expression. He extends it back toward her. She is quicker this time. He lets her get ahold of it, but does not let go of his end. He rips it off and takes it back into his personal sphere.
He produces a lighter and sets fire to this piece of his poem. He keeps it until burning pain encroaches on his fingertips. When he releases it, like a scarab aflame, it darts about in the air, where it is soon extinguished. The ash dissipates.
He holds out his hand, palm flat, to the girl, indicating to give him the remaining piece of the paper. She shakes her head in refusal. He insists by cocking his and with the Joker’s trademark grin, smiling evilly. Spellbound, she does as be bids.
He rips the poem into many pieces. The stillness inside the temple is augmented by the collective tension of the congregants. The girl is scared, yet captivated.
Mephistopheles raises up his arms. His hands are clenched. In the left he is holding the scraps. He spreads his ten fingers suddenly. As if in response to his command gusts shoot through the space, taking away the paper. Some they send careening for the faces, the bodies of those who are seated, while most they exit and push into oblivion in the vast desert landscape. And in that very moment, the bells begin making music again. Also simultaneously, Mephistopheles sings out for the second time during this ceremony the sacred syllable. He screams it actually: Aaa!
The wind reads the words. This is the poem that the desert airs received, once everyone who had caught a line upon themselves removed that particular scrap and set it along with the rest to the winds: Aa…
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Alcibiades
The nobles of Athens needed a justifiable reason for their sentence to appeal to the public and exonerate themselves to the future. “Socrates you have corrupted the youth, a transgression for which you must die. What now, filthy philosopher, are your final words to say?”
“Www philoi! W deinon kakon! Www Hw Oiwww… You kill me for speaking truth? Let any lover of reason challenge me in an intellectual dual and we will see if I can’t convince him of my universal point of view. The youth know, by nature, my right, which we share especially when I unravel dialogues. Let one of them speak for themselves on my behalf. I give you my beloved pupil, the handsome stentorian orator Alcibiades, who you all know through his dealings in the profession of poesy.”
The following words range from open avowals to inner soliloquies: “They will not withstand my logic. I bring a blessing from the deity, Mind. She is my full-moon daemon, the director of my course of considered argumentation. In his present acquiescence to the death they administer to my master Socrates, I say, why stand frightened before such fantastic sunsets, sinking into the distant horizon? I am faithful knower of the secret that they seem to let no one in the Kingdom admit: that there is no such thing as End. So, Socrates spent his life asking, why stay stagnant against progression? To prove to the good people of posterity that he does believe in and stand by every word he has said…” Embrace the chalice you hand me vulgarly – the pewter consequence of spewing Truth – the hemlock to drain to the dregs!
In a histrionic act, Socrates picks up and drinks, doubles over and lies himself on a bier. Tears run on his beloved disciples’ cheeks. Alcibiades again takes the floor: “W Athenaioi! What in the world are you doing? putting down this holy thinker as if he were an abandoned dog? Shame on you and your Republic. You can claim no justice, no right to rule if you insist to advance this heinous dictum, that our teacher must die in middle age, so terribly unnaturally. And for what? the man’s ideas? I’m so shocked I can’t even speak (I write). I am biting my tongue to suppress a violent outburst of rage.”
“Brother, do not be so emotional,” Plato, the quiet one, whispers, “it is malign to the constitution. The master wants to die. Look at him lying there peacefully. Remember what he taught: there is a reincarnation that happens over and over again to every glint of soul in Father Zeus’s phantasmagoria of spatial eternity.”
“Yes,” the hot-blooded advocate counters, “I know, Plato. I agree that death is beautiful. No doubt Socrates’s example will do more for his far-flung fame than any singular act, capable of man. It is the system I inveigh against: this all encompassing mockery of Truth, this farcical freedom and human purpose, the State. Behold how they do not push the hemlock onto me, though I am directly insulting them. And yet they killed poor, innocent Socrates. He was, to me, the kindest philosopher.”
Scene. The actors freeze. The curtain comes down. Applause. The curtain rises. Socrates is standing, holding hands with Plato, Alcibiades, and the actor who had no lines. His direction had been to keep to the wings, wearing the tunic of the Senator of State. The four bow to further applause; twice, and exit the stage. After a standing ovation, the audience files out of the theatre. Some wise-guy shouts out, “Fire!” But no one finds him funny. “Huh,” he observes out loud, “I guess you people didn’t get the performance.” The actor playing Socrates, however, who had remained backstage watching from the shadows cast by the theatre’s ceiling and aisle lights, chuckled and applauded. The noise of palms being clapped together struck those stragglers who heard it as ghostly.
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Light Healing
A writer cannot have any compunctions about shedding
chronological threads. He must do this compulsively; break strains of contiguity and
consider time itself to be both the mentor and the enemy. Our minds are under assault
by the day-to-day. Challenge and internal conflict are vestiges of the struggle to forsake
belief and thenceforth to recall it only as a comparison to the current truth, to which he is
in a constant state of coming to new realizations. To do so it takes work, especially
under normal conditions of having no support, verification nor encouragement. Learning
how to swim, to fly, and then to walk on solid ground – in a limitless vacuum. No one is
born with this ability. The most we have are inclinations to a widely varying degree. It
might even be said that the natural human state, that which dominates most prevalently,
always has in history and will until we as a unified culture all attain individual
enlightenment – this is the trumpeted rapture in the Book of Revelation – is easy: to go
with the flow. He, however, would rather go against the grain; fight the beast tooth and
nail; subject himself to experimental laser surgery. Be cut-up into a million pieces by
light of every color in shapes white like pieces of paper, green direct cylindric stalks, star
rains of red. After the operation his parts each stir with life, jump up onto feet and do
dances expressive of unbridled joy while also waving arms about wildly. Then they
coalesce as he looks – every part has developed an eye – toward the source of the
barrage. He puts his body back together and acquaints it with his mind.
No! I detest idleness and vanity. There is a sense of urgency toward life. True
though there are others; heavens, hells, you name it; parallel universes, whatever;
something about right now is special.
What the fuck am I doing?
Here? Why… O yea, now I remember.
I came here because I…
This dialectic penetrates to the essence, the proverbial meaning of life.
Two bozos on stools in a bar.
-Hey man, can I ask you something.
-Sure but I donʼt know if Iʼll be able to answer.
-What is the meaning of life?
-I dunno. That is a very deep question.
They contemplate it for a second. Simultaneously they sip their beers.
A raucous cheer arises around the corner television set, glowing in the dim
barroom light. The football team has scored.
The bozos join up in crying “Hurrah!” They bang their palms on the counter.
The meaning of life is simple, they think as they give each other congratulatory
pats on the back and take up the guttural chant, voicing from old menʼs throats the
anthem of the patriots.
Peripherally, life has many separate meanings that converge on the central
question. The people of earth tend to keep their foci unwaveringly on these.
Sigh, a rush of pleasure. Uh, I think Iʼm experiencing ecstasy. A state of bliss.
Itʼs nirvana!
-Really? Can you describe it for us?
-Well, itʼs like thereʼs a lot of light and everyone is beautiful. Look at us! We are
beautiful human beings! Yellow! I am so yellow today I canʼt believe it!
-Yes – the spiritual guru soothes the overly excited woman – yellow is good. You
feel happy? Yes? Everything good? I want to see everybody smiling. Big grins on all
your lovely faces as you swing yourselves in frenzy… Now how about red? Can we dip
into that for a minute? Letʼs descend from yellow down the scale of the seven rays and
get into red for awhile. Everybody move your pelvises like this. Hoo-wah! Hoo-wah! Yes,
this is it, dear ones! Make balls of your fists and really push your pelvises out! Hoo-wah!
Come on! No need to be shy. It is common to have trouble with this exercise because of
all the shame we have around our sexuality – our personal power. But I want you to be
free and let it go! Hoo-wah!
-The red is flooding my aura. I feel so strong. I am a very virile man!
-That is excellent – the guru condones the outburst of the novice – but we as men
must not get carried away with ourselves. We need to stay grounded and not let our
ambitions go beyond the realm of reality. Okay, before we get too bogged down into that
earthy energy, let us rise to a higher place. I want you to focus now… on green! Green
is the goddess Gaia, Mother Earth. She loves us because we are her children. No
matter how old we are, we are always infants suckling her abundant teat. And she is
ever young, in her prime, a woman of not twenty, ablaze with soft femininity, blossoming
in her season. Opening this is the hardest part of the process for most people. Have you
noticed how many of us slouch? We are all the time as if doubled over, trying to protect
some secret we hold precious. Here in our hearts is our love repository. When we do
this we are dually blocking from coming in and keeping from getting out. We donʼt want
anymore – we have more than enough. We canʼt give any away, not a single bit – we
have so little that we can spare. And so, what I invite you to do now dear ones, is to
open up your arms like this, nice and big and wide, as if you are welcoming into your
embrace the entire universe, then I would like you to close your arms and give
yourselves a hug. And as you are in this great, green mode, say to yourselves, “I love
you. I am perfect.” For we can be no force for good on this planet if we cannot first love
ourselves.
-I love you. I am perfect – a few voices venture timidly. Soon the cry is taken up
and everyone is shouting it. Thrills of religious electricity shock through their nervous
systems.
-Good – the guru grins – this is green.
-I am sorry. I am not like you. Despite that you claim such authority, I disagree
with your way of thinking. This stuff may work for some people. But certainly not for
anyone of my ilk.
-Brother, accept that you are scared. Admit that love frightens you and that you
are succumbing to your normal compulsion to run away from the light. Let us try to heal
you, please.
-You are wrong. I canʼt explain. I have been in arguments before. Iʼve rarely won.
I give up too easily. I donʼt really care about what you think. The only time I might try to
convince you is if you were telling me to do something. I donʼt like being told what to do.
Argument is useless. It is a shift of spirit that we want out of our adversaries, but that
can come about only independently. I have never been convinced of anything objective
through an argument. I have, however, agreed often to someone instilling in me that I
have done something wrong. When it has come to pointing out the culpability of others -
o – what do I care about it anyway? It has already happened. Best to forget it.
-Huh huh – the guru chuckles – you are speaking nonsense dear one. Calm your
worries and relax. You are safe amongst your brothers and sisters here. We all love
you, as ourselves.
-Poo-ah – he sticks his tongue out from between his lips and raspberries – this
isnʼt helping. You are trying to enlighten me, but I feel revulsion toward you. Itʼs not the
content of this course that irks me; itʼs the lack of it. Youʼve got this big stupid blow-up
happy balloon that is completely empty inside floating up to the clouds because it is
lighter than air. And at the same time, you walk around barefoot on synthetic flooring;
you prance around like a little fairy. I am standing here frowning. And you are telling me
to cheer up and smile. Why? Because I am green? If I am any color itʼs black. Here, I
will teach you a lesson. Already it is night. Turn off the lights. Letʼs all sit down in the
dark together. No touching. Everyone open your eyes.
-But in the dark I prefer to have my eyes open.
-Shut up! I said to keep them shut.
-O! I donʼt like the way you are speaking – the insulted guruʼs wife whines.
-Well Iʼm going to be speaking a lot now so I suggest that you get out. Before you
go though I am obliged to say that you are free to stay, provided you change your
attitude and open yourself up to darkness.
-Darkness causes cancer – he protests.
-Prove it – I challenge him.
The guru departs. A couple of others go with him. I think, good riddance, but do
not say it out loud. I want the silence to stretch out for an unnerving interim. The
atmosphere has to settle into stillness somewhat after all that false exuberant light
energy has been flying through it in a dissonant mix.
-There may very well be seven light layers of aura within and around us. I have
personally never found it necessary to get in touch with any one. Far more important, to
my mind, are the distinctions between the five elements: fire, water, earth, air, and ether;
along with their corollaries to the constitution of the human being: spirit, body, and soul.
The spirit is of fire-water. It sparks, conflagrates, consumes, and dies. It also subsumes
into oceans and moves in infinite currents under influence of the tides. Spirit is
something objective we can use, as when we light a fire in order to burn a church down,
yet it is also subjective in the sense that it displaces for our forms when we swim. It
thrusts us when we ride the waves. You step into spirit as in an ancient footprint. You go
to a place, get possessed by the local ghost, the precise atavistic identity of primitive
man, becoming aware of his divine urges and learning how to balance them against his
human necessities – killing, eating, fucking, going to sleep – setting out next morning, a
nomad – far away a place to stay – repeat the orgiastic night – tear down – bury the dead
- and do it over again – kill – eat – fuck – make fire, feel warm and go to sleep. That does
it for the spirit. The soul is another matter. This is nothing transitory. In the soul we are
as trees rooted where we are in the Earth. We are able to ascend upward, stretch out
our arms, yawn gaping green, exfoliate leaves, shake them in our fellow element, wind
(which is air-fire), but we may never budge a centimeter. The soul stays within us. We
are human. Face it. Science fiction stories can be very entertaining. But give it up. I can
guarantee you. We will never colonize any other planet. Real estate entrepreneurs of
the future, you will never convince rich people to live their lives in glass mansions on the
moon – no matter what sleek Madison Avenue advertising firm you retain. The soul is
your eternal self. It stays with you throughout your lifetimes. The soul is what makes us
human. Animals too have spirits and minds. Can you see? They do not have souls.
Through this we are a family. Yes, I do not disagree with everything my predecessor
said. We are of the earth. The color of love is green. Which brings us to the body. It is
the aggregate of earth and air. Breath and nourishment sustain our lives. This is the
mortal coil, the aging skin that we have to cope with as we come to terms with death.
The spirit and the soul are similar in that they are both imbued with ether. That element
takes them through time in one shot from beginning to end through cycles of eternity.
They partake of immortality. The body, on the other hand, is susceptible to time. Why do
we do anything, apart from performing basic functions, obtaining superficial needs? All
of our actions are directed toward countering the dark death force that we are born with,
screaming against. Time grows through our bones. The rigid candle melts into a puddle
of wax. The body is wonderful because it is the perfect vessel for our divine souls and
the spirits – the beatific and the malign – that we from time to time embody. Time… that is
the mystery. This darkness… Now it is night. Would you rather we have on the light?
Why? do you find shadows menacing? Would you like to light a fire to see by and be
warmed with? Do you find cold uncomfortable? Do you want to touch each other? Now
you may go ahead. I have just one more thing to add. This night is one second in the
hour of our extended lives. Listen… There is silence. Everyone who has been born after
the nineteenth century has heard the sound of a clock tick, a belfry gong, a wristwatchʼs
tiny audible register. Imagine it in your mind… the death toll. Open your ears again to
reality. I am going to set loose the silence in a moment. Know first before I do that
tonight is the temporal space between the tic and the toc that countervails it.
Posted in Fiction Comments closed
Towering Apparitions
Beyond western windows, to which bars are fixed – not made of metal,
but a synthetic substance that is just as, if not more, strong – shaped
as squares; and out of each quadrennial corner comes one line into
the center to form not a cross, rather another square within the square,
the tower to the power plant blinks a bright red warning light.
A shutter rattles. A shooting star flashes. Moonlight casts a shadow.
Apparitions bulge like graves over great big capacious coffins.
Headstone teeth in the decayed brown gums of the damp, dead-leaf
autumn cemetery ground. The ghost on the monster’s tongue
looks through the hollering open maw to see the glossy sheen
that coats those ossified swords. Jagged crooked crystal edges
garishly protrude. The process that had formed them to grow went
at the rate of mineralization inside a hollow rock, in shark-baby’s jaws.
Electricity is precious. To the tower bow reversely. If not for its fire,
your memories could never have happened, not in a million years;
twelve million of them mine in my adipose carbon footprint.
New Errinyes, come into my embrace ghosts, and be warm like
the fluid inside the spinal column. The landscape of the country
is painted in celluloid pictures. The chief fantasies are dominated
by violent and comedic themes in increasingly dumbed-down films.
Destroy the old museums. We do not need any intransitive art.
Melt Michelangelo. Dynamite Sistine Chapel. Exploding shrapnel
flies into the faces – blinding the eyes and deforming their aspects
horrendously – of the dwellers of Baghdad. We European mutts
sit at home masturbating ourselves. Sincerely saying stuff like,
“I must say I am very good-looking. But that is my only quality.”
Ours is the Vietnam war story forty years afterward. Burn the Heart
of Darkness of Uncle Sam, the pharaoh made mummy in 1920
around the same time as Lenin. The same American surgeons
who worked on site in Roswell did him. This was an inexcusable
incident in which government-paid scientists had mutated monkeys
to do tasks in test spacecraft. But the monkeys proved to be stupid
and crashed the ship in the desert. FBI from Washington flew in
to neutralize the situation. In town there was a lot of brew-ha-ha.
Yokels are generally superstitious and suspicious of strangers.
Rumors of a coverup of an extraterrestrial visitation arose.
Sixty years later some crank in Hollywood tells the studio,
“I have got top secret tapes of the original Roswell autopsies
that were conducted on the cadavers of aliens: Full-on frontal
open guts of the bodies, while weird masked figures in smocks
with scalpels poke around in and dissect them.” “You do?”
the overly excited executives ask. “No,” the crank replies,
“but imagine what it would be worth if I did. Give me two
million dollars, and I will make it happen.” Sam’s sarcophagus
(I Want You!) was dragged by teenage soldiers, farm boys,
with 20lb guns through defoliated jungles in South Vietnam.
“Sir! The enemy is shooting at us! Hide behind Uncle Sam!”
the panicked soldier implores his superior.
“Nah!” the manly veteran of war grunts,
“These here ain’t nothin’ but zipperheads.
These dumbass peasants – progressively backwards rice paddy babies –
They can’t do nothin’ to me.”
Bang! “Sir!”
The general drops dead from a gunshot to the head.
The PLF exhibited some impeccable marksmanship.
Reinforcements came through the air and bombed the entire vicinity.
Once the battalion was assured by headquarters in Saigon
that it was safe, they gathered up the corpse of their leader,
the general, who was a fearless hero of the Vietnam War,
and posthumously would be awarded a medal for bravery,
and threw it along into Uncle Sam’s sarcophagus.
Around two hundred of them – that is how many it took,
the thing was getting heavy with fresh bodies every day
and the soldiers’ shoulders were beat down and weary -
got underneath, lifted, and commenced their inching march.
“My fellow Americans,” the president – whichever one, take your pick –
opens his famous victory speech, “the communists were
a worthy adversary, but despite their ungodly tenacity
I am happy to inform you that America prevailed.
We have won the war. I want to thank our courageous troops f-”
“Woohoo!” the cry goes up in bars, schools and offices across the land.
“Hooray! Yippee! Weehaw! That a way boys great job alright that a way!”
The president, normally a highly composed man, grins over the uproar.
“Okay,” he continues, “let’s settle down now everyone.
I say our country is v-” he puts forth his hand to signal
that at this word they should not cheer; they are to hold
their applause till the end of his speech, “-ictorious.
Our beloved Uncle is still intact!”
“Prepare stock image,” the director orders in the black room.
“Three, two, one, cut!”
There is Uncle Sam. “Yay! Look ma, there he is,” the child points a finger.
“Yay! Clap your hands honey,” his mother tells him.
“Um, ma, why is that guy pointing?”
“Because he wants us sweetheart.”
“All of us?”
“Yes, everyone.”
“Even Charlie?”
“Sure, him too.”
“But I think Charlie is mean. What about Stefanie?”
“He wants her too.”
“Ew. Stefanie is ugly. And ma, why is his eyes like that?”
“Like what? Be more specific son. Mommy does not know
what you mean when you use ambiguous deictics like ‘that.’”
“They’re weird. Kind of scary.”
“Our Uncle is not a real person like you or mommy.”
“Why? Because he isn’t moving?”
“Yes, he is a mummy. He is dead.”
“Like Yeller?” the boy shrugs, referring to the family dog who passed away.
“Like Yeller, yes. Exactly like old Yeller. Except Sam
is more important so his body has been preserved and his image immortalized.”
“O,” the child pretends to understand, when in truth he doesn’t.
His mother spoke with such certainty and he wants naturally to trust her.
She can tell the boy doesn’t get it, but she, being an impatient woman,
would rather drop the subject than try to pursue it further.
I won’t bother either. I have given enough, she thinks –
ma patrie et tout mon coeur puisque tout ici ressemble a ceci – la Mort sans pleurs, notre active fille et servant, un Amour desespere et un jolie Crime piaulant dans la boue de la roue. – Rimbaud, 1873
“Look Bull let’s… burn the heart, okay? Can we bury the hatchet?”
the white-skinned son of a well-to-do Wall Street businessman,
without any of the grace of his counterpart, requests Big Man Chief.
“The Navajo can never forgive your people for what they have done.”
“I know Bull,” the young man, who took Debate at University
uses the chief’s familial name, rather than his tribal one, disrespectfully,
“it’s very sad. But let’s face it… Honestly… the Navajo are all gone.”
The chief speaks to me here as if I am stupid:
“You whites can still be unforgiven even though your victims are dead.”
I am about to back off, giving him the argument,
but to my luck he continues to spew nonsense stuff about spirituality.
“Their souls have not moved on.
They still are haunting the plains.
That is why the watchmen in the factories – nocturnal by profession –
lead such miserable lives. Everyone in Manhattan
is somewhere on some high-up story, dreaming while awake.”
“Don’t let’s talk about souls now Bull.
Don’t you know the First Amendment forbids it?
Didn’t they make you memorize the Constitution as well as
the Star Spangled Banner when they made you get your citizenship?
Shit, if I were president – “You can be Johnny!”
a banshee, his grandmother, screams something she read
once in Life magazine. “You can be president.
But you have to really want to. There are a lot of other little boys out there
vying for the same prize. You have to be good and behave well.
And make sure to study and get straight A’s in school.
You gonna make old grandma proud by becoming president some day?”
“Um, yea I guess so,” Johnny diffidently mutters to shut
his grandmother up so that he can concentrate on watching TV…..
I woulda had you wetbacks sent back to Mexico where y’all belong!
But I guess that ain’t too PC a view now is it?
Listen Bull, are you gonna sign this treaty or what?
Are we gonna have to get the bank to foreclose on your land again? Huh?”
Are you gonna force us to push you off even further over the coast
till you drown because you pathetic plain dwellers can’t even swim?
Be a good old boy, Bull, and just sign it please.
It’s coming up now 5:30 and I got a game to catch soon on the tube.”
The ancient Indian’s eyes tear.
To save his people from any further genocidal persecution
he says with the fortitude of his fathers, “Alright white man.
I will sign. I will scribble something on a piece of paper
if that mere, effete act will pacify you from using your vile guns.
But as I do, you must know this: that you are courting grievous retribution
for yourself and for your people. Wakan Tanka will not overlook this crime
on the day of the redemption of the souls of the Navajo nation.”
He takes a feather from his headdress, dips it in ink
and asks, “Where is the dotted line?”
“Here,” I answer and in that instant raise my right hand,
giving the signal for the firing squad to shoot. I back
a couple steps away to watch from a broader vantage
Big Man Chief Bull fall. Some blood
spatters on my boot. I order my nigger over
to kneel down and polish it off. Once he is finished,
I feel the urge to get on my horse in a great burst of glory
and lead my men charging away back to Washington
where I will give this contract document to the president,
then once he has read it, to the Smithsonian Museum,
for, I hope, as much as 10,000 dollars (which was a lot on those days).
The nigger will no longer be necessary
so I order him to be shot too, on his hands and knees.
I back away more quickly this time so that none of the primate’s blood
could possibly drip on my shoe. I mount my steed Ulysses
raise the pole and proudly wave the Stars and Stripes,
yelling out my personal war cry. The men take up the call
and we ride off in a cloud like a gang of heroes.
We make a hundred and thirty miles by nightfall,
just in time for the kickoff that starts the game.
We settle onto our barstools. I order all two-hundred men
three-quarter pound steaks with gravy mashed potatoes
and as many beers as they can drink.
Pitchers of golden ice-cold brew flow.
It is a pretty good game, I start to notice after my meal, by my sixth drink.
Still not even half-time, and neither team has scored
though there have been several close calls.
“I sure hope my team wins,” I say to the soldier beside me,
a handsome fellow who I am attracted to,
though I ain’t queer. Nah, I tell you. I couldn’t be more straight.
Can’t a man talk to another man about sports without people
going and thinking that something might be up with them two?
“O yea?” he raises one eyebrow flirtatiously.
“Which team you rooting for John?”
“Me I always go for the Colts. You?”
“Yea, I’ll tell you. I am more of a Broncos man.
But in this situation, since it’s Colts versus Chiefs,
I am definitely going for the Colts.”
“That’s what I like to hear! Here let me buy you a drink.”
I pat him on the back, then draw my hand away nervously.
We drink around six more together,
clinking Cheers! with every glass.
Tim, my new friend’s name, says, “Salut!”
Tells me that’s what they say down south of the Texas border.
I am impressed by how well traveled he is.
We talk about all sorts of things; our favorite movies and songs.
We recommend each other things to watch and listen to.
We talk about babes, tits, and pussy.
We wax vulgarly about our proudest sexual experiences.
As the game is about to go into the fourth quarter,
I say, “Okay Tim, I think I’m finally drunk enough.
Let’s me and you go and get laid.”
He raises one eyebrow quizzically. I see that I have said something awkward.
“I mean… why don’t we both go get up on my horse
I think you might be too drunk to drive –
and ride on over to the cathouse to get some tail.” Tim agrees.
Behind us as we are walking out of the saloon issue groans of disappointment.
The Chiefs have scored again. It is now nine to three against the Colts.
I mount up on Ulysses, take Tim’s hand and hoist him up behind me.
His stomach breathes against my lower back.
His soft hands wrap around my waist.
As the horse trots us to the brothel, he sings me
my favorite rock song, right up close to my ear,
“Come as you are – as you were – as I want you to be.”
We hang out in the den with a few of the prostitutes.
They all are old and ugly. Tim tries to talk to one of them.
Asks her if she happens to know the score of the game. She doesn’t.
We go into separate rooms with our whores.
I miss him from the moment the door closes and it is just me and her.
I try to forget how sweet it felt being on that horse with him
as I start stripping off my uniform. She lies back on the bed,
opens her legs and spreads herself wide open with both hands.
Her cunt is crawling with worms. I ask is she’s got a condom.
“No,” she says, disinterestedly, turning her head on the pillow.
I reach into the pocket of my pants on the floor,
though I know already that there is no prophylactic in there.
O well, I think as I kneel between her open legs; align my loins with hers…
Ahhh! Did somebody scream? Tim? is the first thing I think.
The madam is ushering me out of the brothel.
I am wearing my uniform on backwards; both shoes on the wrong feet.
Strange reddish stains that stink are smeared all over me.
She pushes me out the door into the early morning.
No sign of Tim outside, nor my horse.
Do I have any money? I try to check my pockets
but since my pants are on backwards it is difficult.
Nope. Broke. I lope away, unsure where,
trying as best I can to ignore the itching, burning
unclean discomfort that is gnawing at my genitals.
Atlantis
Skygazers stare into the blue above unblinking.
They struggle to maintain their eyelids open wide.
For the most part people’s gazes are glued to the ground.
The eyes become balls of goo, diluted, in sadness, by tears.
Skygazers be steadfast!
Though you may be inclined to, do not let your head look down.
Your irises are weak.
These palliative measures must be enforced
if your ocular constitution is to get well again.
Eyesight links to the heart.
Have you any darkness in there you’re holding?
Are you protecting your pain by hunching your shoulders?
Meek, temerarious guards at the gates of Secrets
slouch, standing, hands in pants’ pockets
or sit slumped, crossing tightly their legs.
Obsequious wretches, they face their superiors;
try to impress them by maintaining equipoise
when they must, customarily, engage in dreaded eye contact.
-You are a fortress. But I will betray nothing.
I will work as though my sole concern were to get the job done.
Boss, Mister, Man, Sir,
can I count on you to trust me?
-Of course you can, faithful follower.
Welcome to the fold!
-Ba, the sheep bays;
nudges against the shepherd’s knees
as he placates her with affectionate petting.
The sheep demures like a puppy dog.
The shepherd opens his shears.
Scissor sounds accompany cuts
to the animal’s dusty debris-flecked jacket.
Naked, the straitened sheep are queued like cattle for branding.
A is sizzled into their skins. Blistering,
they are sent out again to graze the open field,
to sustain their scars in the pastures of the Country of the Sun.
Behold, blue.
This is medicine.
Your eyesight has been sick from excessively staring indoors.
No better than any invalid,
you stay in a single place practically all day long.
Shame on you, filthy boy-girl.
You have forgotten to wash your hands
as I thought you had been taught to.
Look out! There are cars.
Be careful when crossing the street.
Always look in both directions and down.
-Stare at the sun, little a. It is good for you, young author.
-I can’t, father. It hurts.
-Then you are not my son. I disown you.
Off with you! Go wandering. May you never again find home.
a trudged shoeless in mud under his father’s curse
gladdened of the rain clouds. Today he would not be taunted
by the imperious sun commanding to seek shade.
Underneath a canopy somewhere deep in the Desert
a tea part sits on a carpet in a circle.
Each confesses sins out loud, taking turns, to the group.
-I warded over darkness; buried it in the flesh of my heart.
And thought of it – no, although it remained always available
I never returned to claim it – as if
the idea were a precious guarantee for earthly security.
Gold inside my savings box
that I will never have as long as I need more.
The whole group agrees.
-You have your gold, hero, the solace goes around,
and are using it right now.
The axiom serves to assure.
But constantly there are dark doubts; struggles with disbelief.
-I have had it. I am going out.
-Brother, what do you mean?
-I am fed up. I have had it. I’m sick of your wordy promises.
I am leaving now. Goodbye.
The deserter ventures into the Desert at the hottest point of day.
The people sip some tea.
More is poured from the pot.
The hour advances. It is late afternoon.
Silence. This is siesta.
Between dreams the bodies reflect on the plight of the deserter.
By now he is likely regretting his rashness
and that it is too late.
Stomachs hunger for the evening meal
which will commence once the fire starts
after the sun completely goes down.
A sheep will be sacrificially slaughtered. Its blood
will be dropped out of brimming containers on sands beyond the firelight.
Thus the pious people propitiate the Desert gods
before they feast on roasted flesh.
And when, at last, the night ends, they enter their tents to sleep.
Wolves, jackals, coyotes, wrapped warm within sheep’s clothing:
blankets stuffed with dusty debris-flecked jackets shorn.
One of their minds’ final thoughts
prior to passing through the threshold of the consciousness,
apart from anticipating further absolution tomorrow,
is a memory of the deserter. One thing he said:
-I am fed up. I am sick.
They then note where he is now, shelterless, alone in the Desert.
Satisfied with their decisions they let themselves fall asleep.
But this is not the end. All night
they are having nightmares about themselves being the ones
alone, and the darkness of the Desert,
where only stars, distant suns, shine,
being their surroundings in their minds, the contents of their hearts,
which murderers try to get at maniacally
chasing them down hallways with glinting daggers.
The deserter, despite his ex-companions wishes, doesn’t die.
He survives the night in fear to discover next morning the City.
The streets are all abustle with the early energy of commerce.
He hears peremptory callings of pecuniary agreement.
Draw One this way and that.
Those who do not know the language
are shown in figures how much to pay.
-Dolla dolla sah! Dis lucky!
He hides himself in the crowd
because he wants to be loved but worries he isn’t deserving.
He feels cold. The season is winter in a climate
that while it rarely reaches freezing still is uncomfortably chill,
especially with the wind.
Music floats out of the mouth of a gaping arcade.
He emerges through the end of it.
He pauses to take in the length and breadth of the passageway.
He steps forward next in search of the music’s source.
The volume doesn’t increase
though the origin seems ever farther away
the more he keeps on expecting that he will find it soon.
What is the song they are playing?
The slow march, the quiet dirge, the anthem of the City.
For purple mountains’ majesty above the fruited plain.
Window signs on either side of this surreal
flashing attraction tunnel read the names of stores.
Vacations to the Sea.
Beaches, waves, relaxed island communities.
This Christmas, children costumed as angels
in sparkly halos and white wings will recite why they are happy.
-Thank you baby Jesus! Thank God for being you born!
A funeral parlor offers coffins; a car lot, the latest models.
Salespersons are locked in rooms filled with luxury toys
with which they only play around when customers come
poking in, dumb, confused, and curiously interested.
Long-faced diners look out of restaurants quizzically
while chewing. At last, the music stops
at an establishment called the Garden.
Curtains behind the windows hang.
I try the door. It is unlocked.
I push it open and enter inside.
The maitre d’ in the front room ushers me into the back
where a party of people is lounging amongst
a plethora of lush greenery. Fountains bubble,
at least four, the flows of which each are unique.
I settle down. A waiter takes my order. Tea.
-Are you sure that is all you want? You appear to be weary
and in need of much replenishment. Please,
allow me to bring you some lunch, okay?
-Why, yes. But no meat. My digestive tract couldn’t handle it.
-Not to worry. The menu here is one hundred percent vegetarian.
Our chefs are also highly skilled gardeners.
They pluck just when the fruit is ripe. They know exactly when
to uproot the tubers and pick off the leaves of legumes.
Everything is fresh, raw, as you would find it
in an unadulterated state of pure nature.
-The salad then, followed by fruit for dessert. And any grains?
-We have them, yes. The choicest, marinated in spiced olive oil.
-Mmm that sounds great. Can I have that to start?
-Absolutely, straightaway. And to drink you will have tea?
-No, on second thought, I definitely would rather have wine.
-Excellent decision.
-O but I have no money, I say to myself
after the waiter steps away. Somebody next to me hears.
-The Garden doesn’t charge, I am told.
-O really? How do they stay in business?
-They don’t. This isn’t a business. It is a haven; free sanctuary.
-Then why would anyone ever leave?
-That you will have to find out.
-How? I ask but receive no answer.
My new friend isn’t interested in talking on this line of discourse.
She recedes without casting me out of her range of attention.
She remains right near me, ready to help,
I can sense, when and however I need.
The repast arrives. Voraciously I start eating.
Mmm I have never eaten this good.
The Garden sure provides pleasure.
But too soon I am satiated. The wine has gone to my head
and made my lucid insights bleary.
-I would like to have some tea now please.
There isn’t any waiter. I ask my friend where he is.
-Can’t you see he’s off duty?
Across several clusters of bodies I see there the maitre d’
intimately caressing the nude body of the passive waiter.
I guess I cannot ask for tea.
-I wanted some tea, I tell her.
-The service works here in shifts. I will be coming on in an hour
or two. I will get you your tea then if you still want.
For now, if you must have it, get up and get it yourself.
She finishes rather rudely and retracts her focus away.
She ignores me as she moves more into the arms of the man
who she was with. I abstain from interrupting. I would like to know
where the kitchen is but everybody with their lover seems busy.
-Get up and get it yourself, her voice echoes inside my ears.
I should I suppose, I determine.
I decide to depart from the fountains, the greenery, the empty
plates and cups, fellow human beings.
I make for the front room door through which I came in
to go back outside to the City arcade and continue wandering.
As I am stepping over somebody he speaks up and says:
-The exit is that way, and points in the opposite direction
where I did not notice, behind an enormous frond is another doorway.
I thank him, turn around, and step lithely over bodies toward it.
From off the Garden’s stone tiled floors
I step into a bed of soil.
Coolness imbues my feet.
Careful not to crush the buds, nor disturb the plants’
sweet sleep by brushing against one too brusquely
I walk through this outdoor garden without respecting the rows.
What happened to the City? I wonder.
It was so close, and yet here there isn’t any sign of it.
And what about the Desert? Could it have been only last night
that I was lost in the darkness, hopelessly terrified?
These musings of mine lead to the sea.
I recall that advertisement I saw before for Vacations.
I move on in the direction that my last friend showed me.
I am mounting up the foothills. Soon I can hear waves
crashing on the shore and being sucked back into the sea.
I round over the peak. Looking down, not very far away,
I see her: ocean mother.
I am parched and thirsty.
A female figure in white garments is dancing in the sand.
Rhythmic winds blow through her clothing carelessly.
-A shadow is standing up on the hilltop.
He is descending; coming toward me.
Continue dancing. Act as if he is not there.
-She is a white apparition. She doesn’t seem to see me.
I am phantom from another realm. I am within
her dimension on a certain level, but not in matter; disembodied.
-He is here. He is handsome.
Does he mean to dance with me?
-To feel the wind in her long white veil brush my closed eyes,
my mildly smiling cheek and to smell underneath it her hair…
I walk, my feet sinking in sand, through a square wooden gate
adorned with fluttering sea-salt white drapes.
-He doesn’t speak a word
as he comes inside me. I am filled.
He passes through; is gone.
-I let a brief recollection from the Garden entertain me:
the one when my friend looked loved and lovingly.
It flies out of my mind like a dove,
a seabird soaring smoothly along the line of the horizon.
My soul returns to my body as my feet
step knee-deep into the seething sea-foam.
I stumble against clacking rocks. I walk into a wave;
a giant wall of violent white.
The moment it takes, it carries me.
I thrash, my breath occluded, fighting
to control my movement against the pounding tumult.
I swim up to the surface. I am in the center of the sea:
no land in any direction, no boat to come to my rescue.
The sun is going down again.
On another side of the world the people of the Desert
are waking up to morning and choosing not to move yet.
Elsewhere in the City, lights are going on: domesticized electricity.
Finally, in the Garden, the girl who was my friend remembers me
once, briefly, while I along with the sun set my eye on darkness,
succumb to the pull of submergence and at twilight drown.
I land in the modern alien City of planet Neptune.
-We have found the minerals here to be quite salubrious.
The atmosphere of course is intolerable. Therefore
we have the biosphere. And if we ever need
to go outside to do repairs on the outer dome
we have space suits which fit us snugly.
We do not even need to move by our own volition
when we have them on. They do the work for us,
automatically. We receive our non-
mineral energy supplies from the Garden
-Which is where?
-Down there on planet Earth.
-May I see? I would like to go there?
-As a matter of fact, yes. A diplomatic ship is headed
there imminently. Blast off!
A timeless incubation period later
I am back in the Garden. It is now in a Desert.
The only signs of death around are rustily
pumping rigs in an all but abandoned industrial field.
The Desert people are miserable slaves,
indentured to survive in a waste in which
food cannot be grown. This is the status of Earth:
No garden, forest, or grassy pasture;
Desert from ocean to ocean.
They rely for sustenance on the minerals provisioned them
by their masters from the City of Neptune.
Each is allotted just enough to get through work everyday.
Sophisticated Neptunian economists have calculated
using elaborate models how much the people are good for.
I arrive on the ship with the diplomats. They disembark
wearing special space suits designed to withstand
the climates of earth. I go out naked.
I streak and outrun them, yelling to the people:
-Come, follow me! I have been here before.
I know the terrain. I can lead back to the Garden!
We go together, the masters in pursuit.
As long as we stay ahead of them, regardless of what they will do
when they inevitably catch us, we are going to be okay.
We cross the mountain range.
Some unfortunates die of thirst.
Most make it with me to a lake
from which we drink as we swim and splash one another.
In the days while we still are awaiting the coming of the Neptunians
I expostulate to the people the art of irrigation.
I finish giving the teachings and even have time to oversee
the project initially put into practice;
until the aliens, the masters with the diplomats,
arrive and apprehend me for the crime of high treason.
During the interminable spaceship ride
as part of my punishment I am allowed no incubation.
Through the years, while the others are in peaceful sleep,
I meditate. Maintaining positivity is extraordinarily difficult.
The circadian rhythms are decimated
over the course of decades unbroken by either day or night.
By the time the ship reaches Neptune again
I am different. I have become a wise old man.
I receive news of the current status of Earth.
The Garden is going well. The liberated people
are healthy and happy. And while these tidings are conveyed
pejoratively and in dour, impotent attitudes by my captors
The words sound beautifully true.
The victory of the people is the thought that solaces me
during the mock trial that the Neptunians –
false claimants to a just democracy – physically force
me to sit through prior to executing me
using a highly technological nuclear method of murder
that eradicates the soul as it disintegrates the body.
The torture of this slow death is exacerbated by nihilism.
In normal cases of dying, the human will experience
fear as to what might be beyond,
yet in those moments it is always certain that something
whether it is heaven or hell or one of infinite realms in between
is opening up ahead. For me this fear is focused on the fact,
which I can already discern plainly, that there is
I could have said “nothing”
but silence, while still vastly inadequate
gives a more onomatopoeic description
of the state of
Alone in the execution chamber in the City of planet Neptune
the atmosphere still is settling
from the frenzied activity of killing
that once -
when? –
took place –
for me? –
here
-When staring up at the sky it is important you do not squint, the effeminate priest said to the congregation of disciples. Open your eyes as wide as you can.
The rebel, however, when he tried to do as the others, found that he could not succeed without thinking: Why can’t I squint? I feel better when I -
His eyelids narrowed. He breathed several times while taking in a truncated bit of the blue. Then he did not halt the natural urge to close them shut completely.
The acolyte, whose task it was to walk among the bodies lying on the ground looking down at their faces to ensure that they were following to the best of their abilities the dictate, spotted the rebel and singled him out.
-Hey you, he called to him encouragingly, why don’t you open up your eyes? You don’t want to be choosing darkness over the visible light, do you?
-Leave me alone, the rebel responded. I’m thinking.
The priest heard this and, fearing that this recalcitrance might cause curiosity in the others enough that they would avert their gazes from the collective focus to see what was going on, hurried over to ameliorate the incipient mayhem. He leaned over and whispered in the most gentle voice he could muster,
-Beloved, you are disturbing our friends by speaking out loud so gruffly.
The rebel whispered back menacingly, -Get out of my face.
He paused so that the command could sink in, then added politely, -Please.
The priest thought, I have got a problem on my hands. He touched the rebel’s shoulder.
The latter reacted, startled as if he had been an innocent boy who had been sound asleep and was ruffled awake to put on armor and go to war. He lashed out and stood up.
The priest cautiously backed away. They stood level, eye to eye; the rebel a couple of inches taller.
He abruptly turned and started stepping over the bodies to get away.
The priest would have rather he had angel’s wings in order to rise up and pursue the dangerous iconoclast without impressing on the people’s minds that trouble had arisen, to which he had to attend. But his only option was to chase after him on foot.
Outside of the circle, out in the sunny Desert, beyond the shade of the canopy, the priest caught up with this poor, dark soul, who was rushing ahead furtively, fell into step with him and said in a low voice, -Hey, in an effort at engaging him in such a way as to pacify his tantrum.
Rather than halting his gait and standing still to listen, as the priest had been expecting he would, the rebel continued walking without saying a word.
The priest ran up in front of him so that he could not be blocked out of the escapee’s attention range.
-Come back, the priest panted. Look with us at the sky!
-No. I would rather look at the ground right now.
The priest hushed realizing that at this volume, from this precise distance away, those people at the outskirts of the circle oriented most to the direction in which the rebel had gone off in a fast, straight line, might have heard what had been said.
The two walked a few dozen paces more; until the priest felt sure that they were far enough now to speak and shout without being heard.
-What is it? Are you allergic to the blue? You know well that there is a cure for that. If you weren’t feeling well at the start of the session, why did you not tell me or one of my ministers? We could have brought you to the infirmary.
-I felt fine before. It was your voice that was bothering me.
The priest did not know immediately what to say. He was not an unintelligent man. He knew the implication of the rebel’s last statement was that his voice still would sound odious, whatever he might say.
The priest summoned some fortitude and asserted authoritatively,
-Beloved, there is darkness in your heart. Do not let it cloud your eyes, the organs of the mind, by bringing them down and cause you to do disruptive things like shout with anger and put yourself, your soul, at risk of perdition. It is a rash action that you are carrying out: getting up and walking away from the circle during session. Instead, let the darkness see the light. You are smart. You have been well educated to know that in the kinds of moods that you are displaying the best thing to do is lie down while it is still day. You know that the worst thing that can happen is for the sunset to set before darkness has ceased to creep, and is hiding, unexpurgated inside your heart. You might go to sleep and be afflicted by nightmares; then wake up the next morning a bane on the community.
The priest could see that his arguments, those of the City religion, were not going to be accepted.
The rebel seemed oblivious. It was doubtful he even heard the jist of these words of reason; so immersed was he in his dark thoughts and in his fixation on the mountain range as they advanced toward the foothills.
-What do you think you will find out there? the priest raised his voice and spoke out erratically. You have seen the maps, been instructed in geography. You know there is nothing but waste – emptiness and solitude. I know what you are experiencing. It is human; something we all go through. But you can have the solitude you want in the sky! All you need do is look at the blue to scatter the darkness away. And once you have taken your fill, you can roll over and find a lover lying right next to you.
-So you’re associating solitary brooding to darkness? the rebel, who had some spiritual inklings himself, responded to the propounder of the religion. You’re saying it is bad and its only purpose is in being wiped away by the other?
The priest preferred not answer. But the rebel silently insisted.
-Ah, yes. I guess I am.
-Agh! the rebel gasped, exasperated.
He was never one to go in for debate. To him the truth was evident. If the priest admitted this, he was a fake. And what is the use in engaging with one?
-The sunshine is our father, the priest recited the religion’s creed coldly, in a vengeful tone. He gives us light through the blue. The people are our mother. We must treat everyone with love. The darkness is the enemy. Squelch its bilious stirrings when you sense them arise in the stomach. Stop the fumes from entering your chest, corrupting your heart, contaminating its lovely purity. But if this bout of darkness is exceptionally insidious and you discover it seeping into your thoughtful mind, open up your eyes then child, lie down and look up at the glorious sky!
Having gotten the final word in, the priest halted, turned around and started walking back, leaving the rebel’s soul to be lost, to disappear behind.
I hope he goes to hell, the priest thought.
Shocked at having generated such a negative idea, he realized why it was: his gaze was on the ground. He flipped his chin upward, felt the warm sun dissolve the shadow that had been on his face, opened up his eyes wide and chanted the sacred syllable: Aaa.
All thoughts of darkness or hell fell away. And from then on any recollection he would have of the revel would be accompanied by feelings of amorous pity.
The rebel was ohming alone at night
camped in a cave in the mountain.
His vocal vibrations echoes throughout
the cavern’s farthest depths, he could hear
each time he sniffed vigorously to draw in
another ohm of breath. This earthier syllable suited him
much more beneficially than its opposite, the Aa, which despite
being a staunch contrarian to almost every aspect of the doctrine of the religion,
he was prone to intoning in his days as a denizen of the City.
Greatly energized, he went on like that all night long
until outside the mouth of the cave rosy aurora
tickled the spectrum of sight with her masculine fingers.
He then felt tired and lay down to go to sleep
in the unmolesting comfort of cool, quiet darkness.
He meditated like that for centuries;
sometimes ohming; sometimes Aahing out in the full light of day;
but usually abiding in silence, wondering at the
He survived the time consuming bark, roots and leaves
and drinking of the cold clear water that ran in a nearby stream.
Eventually he became bored with himself
and the familiar vicinity of his cave. He longed for human beings.
Being brilliantly adept at entering the ether even while still in the body,
he began to communicate telepathically with the people of the City
that he had long since in the past forsaken.
Meanwhile, within the city itself, the population was restless.
Lying and staring up at the sky had been phased out
as the main religious practice in favor of a more
technologically rooted alternative. They now,
thanks to gravitary boots and conditioned muscular structure,
were made to ascend by ambulating up a vertical wall,
facing forward to the sky, in line, shoulder to shoulder.
The wall that they walked up became revered as a monument,
as sacred as a sphinx. Once they attained to the top –
the height was always in the process of being lengthened,
alone with the breadth, also ever expanding – they were returned
and landed on the ground via an elevator
that had an unarched glass ceiling, through which they could
continue admiring the sky as, en masse, they descended.
Polls undertaken by the priesthood, the main governing body,
also in league with the sovereign, indicated that the traditional methods
were succeeding less and less at instilling happiness. The City was unsatisfied.
They instigated more forced marches,
which was the most they could do, at least until
some incendiary event happened that could serve to justify
a more innovative and drastic action.
The priests and the kings and queens
and especially the princes, who were next in line to rule
were waiting nervously, biting their lips and scratching themselves.
The rebel told them, -Come and follow me,
not failing to make clear that this was no order.
You should always be free to do exactly as you wish.
But come on this is not the way.
Whatever you are worshipping, be it the sky or the law
or this fantastic modern technology, do you truly believe
that divinity could be in some god-object other than yourself?
-But the darkness. their minds countered.
-Yes. I don’t deny it, the rebel, now prophet, conveyed soothingly.
Darkness can be scary.
But we have to accept that it does exist.
There is no dogma that holds water that is based
on denial and ignorance of that fact of reality.
The frightening thing about darkness is that we cannot see.
We don’t know what is there when we are in the dark.
Nothing cannot be explained.
Still, I assure you, it is navigable.
And the course through it might just lead to the Garden.
Possibly, fruit trees and crystalline waterfalls thrive behind this veil
that you are unable to penetrate because you cannot get the training
so long as you are in the City, a member of its religion.
The people’s minds were still unsure.
The prophet mobilized to clinch his mental manifesto:
-I have been involved in darkness for hundreds and thousands of years.
Do I sound any worse for the wear?
Could the devil be in possession of such omniscient powers
as to have mastered the meditative art of using ether to communicate telepathically?
No. It doesn’t work that way.
Evil – to put it in moral terms, which are as good as any –
is necessarily impuissant. It only derives
its apparent power by means of the great lie.
I tell you, I speak from the grounds of darkness.
My message is echoing out of my cave.
I have discovered much that is interesting here.
And I would like to share it. Why? Because, well,
the only thing to really do with something you have used
and found useful is to pass it along to anybody who wants it.
So here it is. Come and take it if you want.
But no pressure. It is just a suggestion.
Blip. The transmission ended.
The people of the City had to decide what to do on their own.
Spies of the sovereign monitored this interchange.
They had machines that could render alterations in ether
into official language. They compiled reports, citing quotations,
and delivered them up to the king.
He read them and asked his counsellors – members of the priesthood –
what they thought he should do.
The prophet looked about himself at the old haunts of his retreat.
This is no place to entertain guests, he decided.
He was expecting company. He got up
and crossed the mountain to walk down to the ocean on the other side.
After several months of journeying, at last he wet his feet
in his vast destination. Out beyond, to the west
the sun was setting. He sat in the sand and ohmed
until he no longer could make out the waves
due both to the dark and the fact that the tide was ebbing.
He lay on his back and opened his eyes as wide as he could
to admire the maximum number of stars.
Supine in the pliant sand he passed the night singing out Aaa.
The exodus started in earnest.
The king pretended not to notice.
He and his priests had other plans
than to interfere at this stage in the game.
The people, free to leave, headed out of the Desert City in droves.
They lived on the food stores they carried over the mountain;
slaked the thirst brought on by the grand endeavor at the abundant stream.
Once they came to the prophet’s abandoned cave
they stopped and without once deciding to,
spent as much as a decade there,
paying homage to the emptiness that they discovered everyday.
-This is good for you, the prophet let them know.
This interim will prepare you for the time when we will meet…
This was not good, on the other hand, in that the duration
provided the City authority ample time to amass its reinforcements.
The army circumvented the environs of the sacred cave
and the beach on which the prophet lived, patiently waiting,
eating coconuts and drinking the milk,
taking strategic position for the ambush they were planning.
-The time has come, beloveds, the prophet finally communicated one day,
using a term that he had once been called
under the old order, somewhat facetiously.
His sense of humor never diminished. In fact, it became
even more enhanced by the years he spent in solitude.
The people agreed with him and headed, holding hands,
down the mountain to the ocean’s shore.
-What is the prophet intending to do?
the head priest asked the technician who monitored the ether rays.
Doesn’t he know we are going to kill him?
-Yes. But he doesn’t seem to care. As for what his intention is,
he thinks it is to make salt.
-And?
-That is it, literally. “I will make salt,” is what he thinks.
-Well, we’ll see about that, the priest cackled malignly.
The man is mad. He will really be much better off
if we kill him. Yes, cadet, do you agree?
-We do, certainly, your Holiness.
-Wonderful. Now I must be going. I am to meet with the king
tonight to apprise him of this development.
The old, gray man, the same idealistic young priest
who encountered the rebel in the beginning,
who once espoused so ardently his belief in the blue,
scurried out the iron door to the tunnel. Following a flashlight
he stalked for miles up the passageway to the sacristy
where his kingship was housed, feeling self-important
for being one of the few confidantes to the highest power in the City,
but at the same time suppressing the supposition
that he was truly barely worth anything:
the message he had to deliver was given him by someone else.
Ohming to the crashing waves, the prophet foresaw everything
in abstract concepts that were obscured from the City’s telepathic trackers.
He would teach the people how to create life out of the salt of the sea.
At that very point, the army would move in and attack from their
scattered hiding places. The people would be very scared
and ask him what they should do. He never wanted to be a leader.
But because he loved he had to show them the way
out of the place where they faced a deadly danger.
He would use his magical power to part the sea.
They would follow him down into the drying depths of the liquid conduit.
The army would drown in pursuit. The king and priests would subsequently
commit mass suicide by climbing up the great wall in boots
then leaping off barefoot, to spare themselves the humiliation of loss.
He and the people would climb a mountain, the Garden Island,
the umbilical nib of the maternal ocean.
Once they had all reached the peak,
the waters would reformulate. The traces of their sojourn
would be forever eliminated, and everyone in generations
for thousands more years to come would be integrated
into the doctrine he had discovered, concerning darkness as being
the corollary of light, the standard analogy to which would be
the conflict of truth to the lie. The human beings’ bodies
would evolve via natural selection into non-material,
disembodied agglomerations of selected mixtures of energies,
which they would learn by themselves how to substitute and proportionate.
There would be love, but also contrary hate;
the only aberration being injustice exacerbated by disequilibrium.
He smiled to foresee a son far down in future history;
not of his own loins, for he was still until then
and would remain for the remainder of his life effortlessly celibate.
The father of the man who would be the deserter of the Garden race,
as he once was of the City one, would be none other than
the life that he would form with his own hands out of the salt of the sea.
One day, the prophet reflected, that rascally rebel –
he dubbed him a term of endearment – will defy the Garden’s priesthood,
disgusted by their emphasis on earth versus eternity.
He will set out from the Island and, taking advantage of being in light body,
he will walk away on water to climb a tidal wave
that will for him be his mountain, in which he will find his cave…
These dreams proved to be the idylls of an old, ascetic man.
The people arrived at the beach to find the prophet seated,
dead, in the sand; his corpse mummified by the special salt that blew
in off the surface sea in breezy sprays.
Having at last come to the end, no one knew what to do.
Just then, the army moved in to take everybody prisoner.
Gradually, through an invasive process of re-education,
the priests turned the people into slaves and used them to erect
an entirely new City on the model of the previous one,
under the mountains by the shore. The Desert City remained
the main holy place, the center of command for religion and bureaucracy.
The satellites became more popular to live for those
who held no sort of power, and wanted simply to work
as diligent slaves and assist with personal interest in the City system.
The mummy of the prophet was encouraged by the authority
to be revered and idolized. His statue,
the body his soul once had occupied,
sat enthroned on a pedestal in the center, right where he had died.
The water had been pushed back for many miles by means of dams,
levees, and artificial mountains, at the tops of which
with seaside views, the rich most commonly held their residences.
The priesthood used the prophet’s reputation for propagandistic purposes.
Atlantis – he came to be named – was undoubtedly a man of God.
He taught our ancestors how to expand out of the Desert
for the City to multiply in interconnected cells
throughout the world’s every region and clime.
Therefore, may the sovereign bless his memory.
There was no mention in the new City religion of the soul
or anything, for that matter, apart from immediate material life.
The children brought the statue flowers and laid them at his feet
on every annual holiday. Apart from that his mummy was mostly ignored
except by dissolute groups of dimwits and old ladies.
Frequently the concept of the prophet would be resurrected by the City educoentertainment agency. There were essentially two recurring
versions to the story: In one the hero would be portrayed as revering the City
so much that he could not stand how pitifully small it was.
He wanted passionately to see it grow,
so he set forth and conquered new territories.
People followed him and became happy slaves. The End.
Alternatively, another version of the true life of great Atlantis ran,
especially among the youth, who comprised the widest consumer class.
They were drawn to movies and books
that told that the prophet’s ideas were preserved
still within his statue, his mummified body.
Speculation went that the priesthood, being savvy of this,
monitored his mental transmissions, and maintained their monopoly
over media in order to keep them from coming to light
because they were afraid of what the youth could do if they knew.
As for what Atlantis – they too imagined him as this name
which he indeed, as we have seen, had not been once before –
was striving to get across, there prospered yet more
outlandish popular beliefs. He was an anti-City atavist.
Atlantis was a rebel. He lived once in a City like ours.
He left because he hated it and thought of something better.
He wielded the power of God.
He cleaved the earth apart in order
to create a basin in which future generations
were to plant a Garden, where they would never have to work;
only experience sweet delight. Our ancestors went with him.
Together they succeeded in establishing a Garden
that promised an abundance of good for the rest of eternity.
But people by their greedy, disingenuous, competitive human natures,
wanted more than they would have been able to use all by themselves.
Hence arose the City, which has ruled ever since,
governed by the sovereign from back there in the Desert.
Our only hope, if we are to someday escape the City
(as we all secretly desire to, though we cannot express how we mean)
is for Atlantis, whose soul is still in his statue, though it has long lay
dormant, to break the bounds of mortality and rise
up in monstrous ferociousness and – here the agency went
to great lengths to fantasize using every hyperbole in the
book, the priests decreed, to subliminally discredit the promise
of redemption – Atlantis, a great, big lizard-like dinosaur, more
powerful than a speeding bullet, faster than a cruising jetliner, able to stomp
on the tallest buildings at a single bound, to wreck apart the City!
Then amidst the movies’ concluding resolution,
as the people are standing bemusedly around the smoldering
mountains of metal and cement ruins,
Atlantis, the great Godzilla,
will lie down for us to climb up by ladders onto his back!
And he will spread his wings and soar out into the universe,
taking us on a tour where we can touch the stars, dip in and out of suns,
and smash laughingly into planets, knocking them out of their orbits,
and sending them careening through infinite space!
The concept of the prophet was a joke, a comic book story distributed to
the youth to prevent them from learning to think seriously on their own.
The City figured it had the market cornered and that from here on out,
or at least until the fourth quarter of 2050, there would be nothing
but cake served with champagne on smooth sailing boats.
The power of the sovereign became
increasingly consolidated in the hands of a cabal of evil priests
and witches who were their frigid wives by common law.
At meetings there were motions to destroy the statue.
-What if the rumors are true? some worried. And his mind is still
inside there, biding its time until it explodes to become Godzilla
to step on and devour us all along with our cherished City.
-Relax, that’s ridiculous, the calmer contingency of priests replied.
This business about life beyond death is a myth. We’ve proven
as much through technology. Look, if the stories were true,
our technicians would detect messages emitting from the mummy
via ether. But we have done tests and come up with no such thing.
So don’t worry. The City is more than secure. It’s a fortress: indestructible.
Let us not sink down to the level of the slaves by entertaining
such superstition and incinerating an innocuous statue.
Come now, by this stage in our modernity we should be more intelligent.
The proponents of doom were assuaged.
-Well then, the City chairman took the floor,
shall we call this meeting adjourned and move on
to the deck of the yacht for strawberry champagne and chocolate
cake? No one raised an objection.
-Great! he barked as the gavel dropped. Bang!
This meeting is hereby adjourned.
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My Judges
People are named stupid things like
Ritz, Crack, Blum, and Udder. I cannot abide
them except by referring to their personages
in the second person form: you.
This face I reserve for this “you,” Crack, is offensive.
When I think of it I cannot stand it.
I have to sit down. And often, once I do,
I need to put my head between my knees because
I am holding my hair, crying
the prosaic dilemma “Why O Why?”
But Blum, do you know? No? Udder?
It’s massive, Crack, these abysses.
God, I feel like a warning. Or no, a threat, rather.
Have you any suggestion other than “Yea man,
be easy. You find it doesn’t matter…”
I know. Because we forget. Honestly,
of the past four months there were three times maybe
when I methodically delved through my memory store.
And you know what I come up with? Nothing
but regret. Sigh over,
“Why didn’t I do that why aren’t I the way I should be?”
Well, Ritz, do you have any idea?
Spit, you campaign against the industry that makes
the drugs we ingest, the beers we imbibe,
the publications to which we subscribe
with signatures. Scribble, my personalized
affirmation of a purchase made unseemly.
No, I will not have that!
Death exculpates the wound that we’ve opened
by living; pried apart with fingernails.
These are not mine. Borrowed outgrowths.
I paint them black or have them manicured
by money slaves with chemical-smelling gloss.
The hand is closed. The fist is formed.
Violence, Mr Udder. Do you, like me,
want to feel pain? Do you feel me
prodding your nerves with my taser?
Mmm weather’s rain. Climate conversation.
The elevator backs us up; supports us as
we ascend heavenward into the future.
God, I am abashed! Waiter, um,
this isn’t what I ordered.
I wanted the lamb steak. This is shank.
Pyeh, the taste is execrable.
Damn, I did not expect that so soon
I would be blind-sided by such a weak
utterance, “freedom,” in type, diminutively small.
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