Cacophonic dreams
Places never seen
In the mind ride of Neptune
Orange rinds scattered about the surface
Domed palaces
Deep forests
Stone ruins
A green sky
Sixteen moons to gaze upon
No masses of humans to distort the days and nights
The sounds around are prehistoric
It truly is, the Land of the Lost
And I need shelter.
Here I am
Crushed like red pepper
Flakes of food
For a golden fish in a water tank
The river flows outside my door
But always stays in the same place
Listen to it now
Move over rocks
Fall and swirl
Pushing the trees aside
As if they were theatre curtains
Carving a new way
Into the Earth
Guttural caressing
Loving madly
Living inside a heart-shaped house in the forest
Present only here
Out in the world too much fear
Looking up at the last blue sky
Sketching hope with aching eyes
Red, white, and blue gnomes of rebuttal
Refuting all those hateful social lies.
The plastic streets
Are full of fear and neon
The ghosts of history erased
Clamber the halls of these
Our derailed dreams
Main streets motionless
Emotionless
Box after box
Horrid holes
Dusty windows filtering light
Threadbare yellow pins
Hopeless muscles move against wishes
A painter fills a cup
A writer runs a till
These senseless wakings
Broken souls shake bedlam
On a night at 11:37
The air outside cold like a freezer
The moon shivers
The trees gather around a fire
A man teeters on the edge of a porch
He looks up at the bounty of stars
And bellows to the universe
Take me!
I was standing in the grocery store looking at bread. My mind was kind of numb. I was thinking about a dream I had the night before where I placed an unwrapped Baby Ruth candy bar on the floor of a stall in a public bathroom and just left it there. Then I started laughing about it in the bread aisle. Uncontrollably. I just couldn’t help myself from laughing. I had to choke it down with tears because I didn’t want to make a scene about it. Then I thought about how very weird I was for even dreaming something so bizarre and gross. Do I have a gross mind inside this big head? I felt embarrassed and thought everyone in the store was looking at me. But I guess they weren’t. Maybe it was all those eyes bursting forth from behind the grocery store walls colored milk-white and wearing a badge of yellowed time. Like that book, The Yellow Wall-Paper. Those wide, crazy eyes from within. I was being observed.
After the fat crowd moved away, I finally grabbed a loaf of bread and placed it in my red plastic basket. I don’t usually use a shopping trolley because I am one being, and I don’t buy that much for myself. At least not in public. I often sit at home in front of my universal computer, materialistic doom scrolling through Amazon and other sites of commercial worship. I guess I’m a Capitalism whore. But I don’t want to be. I think Capitalism is a horrible way to live. It puts material wealth and corporate profit over everything. Everything — people, planet, pets, purpose, ghostly porpoises. And most of us suffer because of it. But not the million- and billion- and trillion-aires, though. They are the slave masters. They are the reapers of our toil. They derail our dreams with the dollar and don’t even care about us even when they say they do. It’s all lies and corruption, man.
But even so, I buy things, and it gives me a little joy in this gruesome world. I know it shouldn’t. Better things should give me joy. Real things should give me joy, not products. Things like climbing a mountain or being high and gazing at a fjord. Or simply sitting around a campfire looking up at a gigantic smear of stars whilst the wood crackles and turns orange then frozen-tundra white. But then again, I suppose we are all chained to it. Relentless consumerism is consuming the globe. Why do we let this happen to ourselves? Are we all, perhaps, nothing but factory-made machines? Maybe my skin really is made of metal and my eyes are made of colorful stones and all my thoughts and memories are merely someone else’s carefully wired-in dreams.
Lately, I’ve been intrigued by Marxism and the Baha’i faith. I’m also big on ancient alien theory, the Mayans, Aztecs, Star People, Native American history and philosophies. So why am I on Amazon looking at socks with a smile for a mile? I feel like I should be doing so much more. Something real and valuable. But instead, I am comparing prices of socks online, because I don’t like to go out in public unless I absolutely must. I don’t care about the bright lights and chaos. I don’t care about the screaming and the stupidity. It’s not my scene, man, especially now. I don’t care for all the signs that sway a baby’s cradle skyward toward a brand-new way. Plastic dolls with crazed glass eyes and broken teeth land in angels’ arms and then are dropped and forced to make their own way. In a field surrounded by corn stalk erections and rolling green hills and dust bowl dust and blue skies full of cotton-candy clouds the colors of well-lived tattooed saints. Swirling inky Jesus dripping down white light arms. And so…
On most evenings, I like to pull up a chair to my large living room window and look out with binoculars set against my face. The neighbors often leave their curtains open at night, and with all the lights on inside I can just watch their lives play out. It’s research.
I live in a Rambler-style house built in 1969 B.C. That’s the same year that I was lastly built. Out of cookie dough and bones and magic dust from the sea. I think that was what I was told by a nurse who was also a witch. I recall the yellow eyes she tried to hide. Yes, I was cognizant of everything right out of the womb. I was bloody and smart. I was blue and bombastic. I guess you could say there has always been something a little different about me. I’m still no sorcerer, though. But maybe I would like to be one. I’d make magic work for me, for once, instead of against me.
But I am here just trying to live this very, very long life. I’ve been sentenced to serve my time on Earth. The hell of the universe. Endless life. No parole.
Sunlight splashes through the windows
The bottles of pink grapefruit and mandarin bergamot soda
Throw shadows across the white tablecloth
The ice cubes float there like glaciers
Flares of white and ocean blue
We’re having lunch on the 11th floor in Oslo
Fancy menu, fancy place
Quiet, not many other people there
Some soft talking
The sky outside is blue
The woman across from me has her fist against her face to support herself
We don’t say much
We don’t have to
We’re ingrained in each other
We are one
We are completely comfortable
What a gift
Sometimes I wonder if it’s all true
Her and this love
When she comes to bed and falls asleep beside me
I’m holding her
I can smell her hair
I can feel her skin
And I know it’s all true
Who is this person?
What is she doing here?
What am I doing here?
My crazy mind
She’s wife, lover, and best friend
The closet to my soul there has ever been
We are committed, yet frightful
Of what the new world will bring
How will we live in this place of distortion and hate?
Together tethered forever
Not being one of them
Not bowing down to any of them
But standing in our love
Bracing for the hurricane
And always holding on.
CEREAL AFTER SEX 