CEREAL AFTER SEX

The Orange Motel

It was somewhere between Q-Town and the LA basin of all that glitters and orange grove cathedrals that there came the great snow and I was forced to shut down in some Arizona town— I was in between lives, feverishly dodging the corruption of compassion that come raining down all over the world like a meteor shower, and I watch them soar through the sky and hit the snow land with a restless thud, they vaporize, we sterilize … every sense known to the jungleland juke joint spread all haywire on fire through the spires piercing the all heaven sense bandage bowl of God’s finely-bleached robe.

I sat out by the pool in my parka at The Orange Motel watching the bar maiden get ice for my drinks from the ground. She was still wearing shorts and her legs were turning blue as she walked over to me carrying a tall glass and a snow shovel. She passed me peacock periwinkle strangulation and I asked her to clean the pool, for I wanted to take a polar dip before 6 and when the news came on to spill all that bloodied guts on the monitor screen, so it seems, always screams and rarely a tender hug at the tender claw ripping the sky wide open and screaming for a cleaner to vacuum the golden halls where I walk with purpose, as the world spins so recklessly, so topsy-turvy beneath a linen-scented sky blanket, and gas blue demon dryer chewing on the laundry in some long-lost, perfect Wisconsin town.

On the memory ship … every drip of her laugh as we tossed the witch puppet skyward and to the outer cast regions of all mind space lest we forget county fair good times and smells ripping through like vibrant magnets sucking on the carnival lights, of night, of altitude flight, harmonious vapors all twisted in glorious gut roar, and the corn smells like machine, dive deep down deep blue baby blonde beneath the tree, you smell like Arabic perfumed, bleached cotton, and I colorize every breath you take beneath this butter-yellow moon, beneath the old pine in the backwoods of grandma’s joint, I was honking for you late into the night like mad cap Harpo Marx, going around in circles and circles, sucking the eclipse like a drag stone, hoping you would fall forth from your window like a mannequin come to life, to light a fire to the day, to burn deep down together in the brown hut on the hill, that place that smelled of sour wood and inky red geraniums, my brother in his death suit, eating potatoes all alone in the corner, he already knew, God would punch his lights out all too soon, with drugs fantastic ferocious and with the tortuous scrape of a metal spoon.

Monsoon mind as I dig into the ice bin flickering in the outer hall of The Orange Motel. TV bullshit is blurping through the cinder-block, comatose, American fuck night walls … down the cascading lighted halls, the yellow puncture of deep night, the road raging right over there, the snow falling like chandelier light, the color of milk and tequila all spit out on the falls, like pastoral glitter bombs raging shoulder to shoulder with sun flares in the soul of all she rips from the veins, brother, brother, brother … do you remember the orange kitchen floor and Daddy doo smoking Kent fags at the supper table? Do you remember all that up in Heaven as I sway and sweat in The Orange Motel in some Arizona glow on the highway between here and there and ever after?

Locked in room and thinking about how disappointed I was that the sick ass fish joint Smith Bros in the Port Washington had somehow collapsed and shut down on that dreary day I arrived under that electric sun to watch the waves crash and roll … how I so looked forward to the perch, the fish sandwich all dangled up in my mind like fat ass tattoos and circular taboos wailing mad at the peaceful street at Beach City where I once held your hand and collapsed to the beat of your beautiful heart … all static and mad now down the river head where I breathe alone in room 6 foot 12 and all the walls look the same and it’s all caged corporate heat up in here … knock, knock, four-o-clock … “I’m afraid all the highways are closed, even so you wish to float away, to LA.”

Static fissures burn a hole in the roof of my mouth as Parka Pam comes pounding on the door … “Sorry love, no time for the old in-out, I’ve just come to wish Mars good luck in its search for extraterrestrial life!”

And so I want to keep going, but it’s Canadian orange vinegar that’s got my head all knotted up and thinking about razor-sharp love, you know, the kind that cuts you and leaves a trail of blood behind you as you walk home to step into the empty flat and you can think of nothing else to do but turn on the stereo really loud to chase all the heartbroken voices away, back to the clouds, back to the period of time where indigo beauty at dawn in the radiation void desert wasn’t so beautiful after all … but you shake it from your head, yet she does not swim to the other side of the ocean, but she lingers, like all scent exploded, forever in the air, forever, everywhere.

By
Aaron Echoes August

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The Tomatoes of Oz

The doorbell rang at dusk

The old woman came bearing fruit

She held three tomatoes in tired hands

One was the size of a softball

The other two she cradled like bloated testicles

They came from her very own garden and she beamed with pride

I had to accept the gift, for it would be rude not to

But inside my tired mind:

“Old hag, have you not heard my decree in the dead of night?

For I loathe your foul tomatoes.”

My hand shook as I reached out to take charge of the vile fruit

The skin was orange-red and smooth

There was the tousled cap of dark green on the large one

I wanted to vomit on her canvas shoes

But I feigned delight instead

And closed the door

As the sunset roared

The Wicked Witch of the West was cackling

The fireballs delivered

And I stowed them upon the counter of cold granite

And they looked up at me

The brainless one

The heartless one

The scared one

And I looked down at them

I, the most powerful wizard was crackling with power

And I denied them gifts of love and grace

I reached for the switch and snuffed out the light

“Suffer for a while in silence and darkness,” I boomed with evil

My large onion-shaped head on fire…

And I returned later

Drunk with tiredness

Longing for my cuddle cobra

The Dorothys now rolling about and chanting a high-pitched menace

“There’s no place like salad, there’s no place like salad, there’s no place like salad …”

I quickly reached for the glinting kitchen hatchet and hoisted it high in the air and yelled out with a heart full of psychosis

“Fukison smash!!”

I stopped just short of the kill

I caught my breath

I was moist with sweat and I whispered over them

“There will be no salad. There will be no sandwich. There will be no salt and pepper. Your lives will end tonight at the bottom of a barrel.”

I scooped them up and they cried

I punched the pedal of the trash can with a socked foot

The lid flipped open and I dropped them in

There was a thud, thud, thud

And then all was peace and darkness

A real quiet, country dark

The frogs croaking gladness in the grasses near the pond.

By
Aaron Echoes August
Roswell 1969

The low machine hum of the big, big city is entrenched in gaslight dawn.

The birds and the killers are mum, waiting for the razor light of god’s heart to percolate and breed as the handmade souls rise, wash and run.

And it was a hot day in the desert, a blowtorch sky was blowing up my eyes as I steered the ship down hot highway grace and peace, the vast and beautiful wound, an Irish pub in my lap, the steel wheels of a Santa Fe hulk grinding away to the east. A mystery and a fear twitching in my belly, a calm anxiety described only as sickness in my nerves.

We all have addictions in this shitstorm

I drove mine to the desert and wiped its crucifix clean

And it all came undone again

My legs heavy with the sweat and sand

Constructing a sundial and a time machine for the Swede

Near the apex of the Ink Pot porn shop

When the deer came through the brush in a rush

Followed by a pack of wild coyotes tripping on bloodthirst

I jumped down into the mud of the fleshy soft creek bed

Found that crown of thorns and spelled out someone’s name

Large enough for the spaceships to see

Those ancient alien gods shaking their yellow heads

At the world we’ve stained with sin and greed

Americans too fat to walk

While others shiver in a blanket of their own bones

And there’s no sympathy anymore for the broken

No desire but thy very own

The royal ice cream lady back from Haiti

And her eyes have changed

They burn with images and swirl

Now eclipsed by fucking REALITY TV and all the other brainless passions of my AMORIKA.

And then there was a dandelion

Sitting in white Tee on summer lawn

Watching the hot orange blossom take its final bow

Getting up, running to the tracks

Like a bullet, flying off

A new world calling

Like a hit of dreamtime opium

And a red, savage bar.

By
Aaron Echoes August
The Moon Has Its Own Scars

Photo by Romain Kamin on Pexels.com

The moon has its own scars, just like the sun and all the planets. Most men and women have scars if they’ve lived any, if they’ve breathed any, loved any, hated any.

I stood out in the yard last night because the moon was big and bright, and all those scars were visible to me and the entirety of the world. The alien invisible wounds brought to light, along with the green streak that went past us and them.

Police helicopters hovered above the interstate a few miles away. I watched them go round and round in a tight circle, casting their watching eye. I tried to peer through the winter trees for any sign of fire, any sign of destruction or the usual dismay of the world. Instead, I saw the electric pearl eyes of white-tailed deer. There were four, and they were as still as statues of dead men as they cautiously watched me. The slightest fall of a foot and they would dash off.

Here where I am there is grave darkness and then plumes of light dotted around. This place is tucked away and most of the world is unaware that this is where we sleep, we eat, we laugh, we love, we wonder in quiet. The outside world is so unaware, but here we are, right up on it, but not in it.

This morning my wife turned in the sheets and went back to sleep as I got up. I looked out a window in another room and the sky was colored in layers: white, pale blue, oxygen yellow, a wanderer’s green. I fed the cat in quiet, save for the chirping purrs of hunger and excitement. I made myself some Guatemalan roast coffee and the aroma filled the kitchen. I looked out that same window again and it looked like winter with spring waiting in the pen. It looked cold. But there wasn’t any snow.

I reread the birthday card she had given me the day before. Her loving words give me hope and peace as I eat vanilla yogurt and sip my coffee, the meditative sleep sounds still coming out of the small stereo. I fire up my computer and try to think of words and how to string them together. Some days they flow like Niagara’s waters, nonsensical and with a rabid heartbeat. Some days they linger at my feet and are unable to come to the light. Some days it’s a little of both. Some days life halfway hurts and halfway heals. I never know what the end result will be. Not until the review when I return to my bed at the finish of the day, when I’ve run down my battery and crawl in and hold her. I always look toward that and the dreams beyond.

By
Aaron Echoes August
Velour Beans

Photo by Rachel Claire on Pexels.com

Velour Beans hid deep in The Garden of Carrots in Laos. His uniform was made of unicorn fur and torn. The remnant war bombs in the wet, green Earth cornered him into a basket of worry and long-lost wonder. Code name bath and bask and the tribulations of mind grains… The gongs in the hills washed down a hollow, haunting soul from the temples above, the ones cradled in snow-capped mountain guts, the ones that sparkled in her blue eyes. Immortal blue eyes like rare crystals.

Now that memory from the times in the summer sheets, the winter comforter with its mandala pattern, the delicious smell of her lingers on the pillow, her nightshirt applied to the skin and dreams of the man with the strange name, the strange purpose, the strange reason for being and breath. The demigod of dictators and shaman.

He was looking up at the sky that moved so slowly, like a marijuana brain. He smoked an invisible cigarette. It was a deep blue sky with lacerations of periwinkle in between, where the world was rubbed wrong and raw and the windows to everything open to a parapet of princesses in flowing gowns so neatly tapered to their royal souls.

Garbage and granola, French lessons from her mouth, fingers tangled in the work-swept hair. He couldn’t get enough of her. He will never get enough of her. He was addicted to her taste and her laughter. Velour Beans was in love beyond any kind of love there ever was or is or will be again. Not even universal gods of immortality could love like that. Not even when they throw marbles and talk about Hollywood.

She clutched him tightly in the cold of a February morning. It was the beautiful crushing love of animals with true hearts. Suddenly, there was no more helicopter Laos. He had retuned from his dreams, carrot stains on his hands from all the handling and peeling and stabbing of the enemies fueled by a delusion that was a neighbor and a friend, a bad friend.

But then he thought: The enemies linger throughout history like the smell of burnt toast in the morning. A morning where a sunburst orange fog molested the hills and valleys but not in a felonious way. He wanted to write an opera about that. He wanted to write about the sky and the landscape getting heavenly humped below, but he didn’t know where to begin. (Take a step, and then another).

He needed to unclog his muddled, overcast brain of sizzling worries and frenzied dissipations left to fecundate. He tried to eat a simple man’s plunger, but it didn’t work. So, while she slept, he went out for Chinese buffet. The silver spoons were big. The sauces bright as orange blood from a capsized ox. The plate was bleached white and still warm from its time in the commercial dishwashing machine. Why did she smell like that?

Velour Beans was suddenly taken back some 30 years when he wore a white uniform in another Chinese restaurant in that other time and life. The Wongville Orchid. The restaurant had nearly burned down. He could have killed people. He was being careless with the tins of blue methanol gel used to keep the buffet platters warm. Some had spilled in the hideout room and the flames took hold like liquor on fire light. Velour Beans quickly grabbed a busboy’s dingy yellow plastic pitcher of water and threw it on the blaze. It worked. It worked. But his heart was never the same again. The stem of fear. Those rattled nerves that came about from a rough birth were always there. He would never be normal. Except in that love with the forever girl with the eyes like a primordial, clean ocean. Deep waters from a time before man soiled the Earth with greed and war and hate among the same.

To think of Laos 10,000 years ago. It wouldn’t even be Laos. There would be no arbitrary borders. There would be no remains of bombs, only bones, only chiming monkey gongs. The world would always be better off without the cruel minds of men. The guardians of the space above dropped them here billions upon billions of eons ago. They had to rid themselves of the prophesized downfall they would bring and so cast them out to the outer rim of another astral plane. The third pebble in God’s eye.

Then there was a puff of reality, like looking at her morning loved lips in the bathroom mirror, and someone shook Velour Beans’ shoulder and said, “Sir… Please bring your seat to its full and upright position. We’re beginning our last descent.”

“Vientiane?” he wondered through eyes of dreamy dust.

“Why, of course not, sir. Chicago.”

She smelled of Khao Niaw Mamuang.

END

By
Aaron Echoes August
Awkward Llamas

Photo by Andreea Ch on Pexels.com

She is fireworks over a city that sits like candles torchlit and like flames.

She is a walk on a quiet street in the dark with murals of Dylan in her head.

She is quiet glances out a window, sleep drifts, warm against me in the rain of our devotion.

She is life as I never saw it, see it, predict it. She is my future from 50 years ago.

She is a summer lawn, a winter bay, an autumn sway in another way, another time and place.

She is a magnet for my heart, and everything broken in it, my focus, my angel, my precious attribute.

She is the most beautiful gliding reflection in a shop window, hands clutched, hearts forever touched.

I need to unbreak my soul and always turn to the wave. I remember Myrtle Beach and the way the ocean called.

She is wet in the rain and dry in the sun, when I always come undone. She is tonic when I am nerves.

The voodoo vibes laid out at her feet; she lifts me up to forest canopies and says: Here is the sun.

And pushes me through.

We walk on broken sidewalks, the world is loud, then the world is quiet. We cling to each other like frustrating wrap. There’s blue elephants and precious wood. There are pictures of mushrooms and phallic Mexican holy ghosts colored like an acid trip. Beyond a movie-screen window there is a circle of ceremonial people playing out a nervous drama. Fidelio.

And when I walked into the dimly lit kitchen of dawn today, I knew I never wanted to be alone. I knew I needed her forever, again and a million times again. From the edge of the ocean to the edge of never-ending space. She is the one.

Outside the old windows of the house, the world is new white, the houses are white or red brick or yellow boards. There’s a peacefulness in the asphalt. There’s the temperature gauge that is the rain against the window. A weeping willow prays invisible. A city awakes and people break, and people save, and my heart plus more quietly sleeps as I rake through the leaves of my mind. Maybe my name should be Tumble. Maybe my game should be Clue. Sometimes I don’t have one. I forget and forget and forget. I fear fading. I fear leaving her behind. I fear the bad trail I leave at times that she must walk and tether to. Then she shows me steak rub in a fudge shop. She smells like candy and love and warm kisses. That smell that binds us, passionately blinds us. She reaches out for my hand and takes me along. This life together.

We sit across a table from each other seeing March Madness and human madness. Our future, our past, our forever more reflected in all those pizza souls. She is my shelter in all those storms. Just breathe. Just love and let love. We walk up that quiet dark street. Her and I are the only ones in the entire world at that infinitesimal second. The funeral home turret looks like a haunted elf cap as its tip points to a streetlight moon. A hand moves aside a white curtain in a high window. I’m afraid, but I’m not. She thinks I’m being silly. I am. Because I can, and I don’t feel uncomfortable. That’s one of the greatest gifts one can give, receive. I don’t want to be awkward like llamas in the highlands of New Mexico.

By
Aaron Echoes August
Deities of Decision

Photo by Mike B on Pexels.com

A black building with windows of orange light played sentinel over a dark blue river at dusk in a city I did not know. It may have been Riga, Latvia or Baku, Azerbaijan or maybe even Milwaukee, Wisconsin. There were other buildings, old buildings of red and sand-colored brick defaced by time and the scourge of man. There were long, straight streets and bridges and rows of perfectly manicured trees, rows of imperfectly born maniacs. There was smoke rising from the vessels of the wrinkled people that sat in the carnival-lit squares. I got lost in the lights and the noise as the night pressed down. I came out of a machine.

The very next morning I woke up in a silent yet humming hotel room overlooking the guts of a different world. I ate a quiet breakfast in a warm lobby. A pale woman from another time watched from the shadows between the back and the front. She spoke mystery through the dust in the sun like a rain of whispers. I went out to take a walk and I was wearing a long western gunslinger coat and it was somewhat cold. I didn’t understand what anybody was saying. I couldn’t read the signs. But I had other things on my mind. I was thinking about murdering God.

When I walked into the old dusty church with the golden strands of morning light filtering through the stained-glass hands of Jesus, he was waiting there for me at the end of the velvet thoroughfare. His back was turned, and he was looking into a complicated machine that looked like a technological pipe organ. He seemed to be studying the world, many worlds, the entire universe perhaps in his sight. The multitude of multi-colored planets floated like marbles in an ocean of amniotic fluid. He tapped at various points on the large screen before him. He laughed deeply as an explosion materialized somewhere, a clear vision of man and war and other untidy things of those particular worlds — Earth and Earth 2.

He then spoke deep without turning, as if he were a mighty mountain gazing off onto a distant land with a different set of eyes. He was hairless, large, and pale, draped in a single covering of universal brown flecked with gold. “If you plan on killing me, you’ll have to do better than a dull machete. I’m incredibly powerful.” He shook his hands as if he had just finished washing them. The screen he had been working on dimmed like dark mode and he finally turned to face me like the preface of an Old West duel. His face was contoured and cruel. He looked broken. “What is your complaint?”

A crow descended from somewhere and sat on an ancient stone.

“The world is on fire with hatred. You let people die. You let people suffer. You let me suffer nearly every day.”

“And you blame me?”

“Yes.”

“But I have nothing to do with any of that.” He turned back to his machine and tapped on some keys. He was searching for something. He groaned like he was exhausted. “I have no control over the faulty wiring of your world or any other world. There are no guarantees for any living being.”

“I thought you had control of everything. Everything! You supposedly created it all, yet you just leave it to derail and burn.”

I looked up at the looming statues at either side of his cybernetic altar — one a wooden caballero wearing a full-metal bandolier and cast in a wandering, far-off stare; the other an Asian egg man dressed in the colorful armor of a misplaced childhood. His wide eyes moved side-to-side and ticked like a clock.

The lord of the universe stepped down from his elevated space and walked upon the velvet path of forest green toward me. He must have been eight feet tall, the bottom fringes of his cloak swayed against the carpeting as he moved. He raised his arms in the air and lifted his chin of white granite flesh and bone and he spoke to the sky even though his words were intended for me. “So, then your intention is to reprimand me for the whole of my creations? Infinitely impossible. You are wasting your time here. Go off and leave this place.” He lowered his head and scowled at me as he waited for my reaction. His eyes were an unnatural green.

“What planet are you from?”

Just his eyes glided upward. “I am a member of every single one. There is a propagating drop of me in each spinning stone I placed. But it’s gotten away from me. I can no longer control it.” He turned and gestured with an outstretched arm. “Even with my device… I cannot stop the exponential madness of men and all the other beasts out there.”

He suddenly had a fragility I did not expect. He read my thoughts. “I am, even as you are,” he replied. “Imperfect.”

“Then we are all doomed? Every ounce of this universe… Doomed?”

He repented. “That was never my intention.”

“But rather your conviction it seems.” I threw the machete to the floor. It made a muffled thud upon the carpet. “Then it would serve no purpose to do away with you, would it?”

“None… There are a trillion and infinite more just like me.”

“What do I do now?”

He motioned to the doors at the vestibule. “Go back out into the city. Walk. Breathe. Eat and drink life until the end. Love everything without flinching.” He turned away from me and returned to his apocalyptic chancel. He made motions with his hands and the entire universe ignited once more before him and he resumed his endless work.

END

By
Aaron Echoes August
The Baker

Photo by Vaibhav Jadhav on Pexels.com

The murals of human clouds. Bakers in bakeries thinking of what it would be like to not have to wake up so early. What would it be like not to have to press out into the day when the sun has barely begun to breathe, and the world is painted a worrying, cold blue.

He moves along the sidewalks on Huron Street. Those gray linear sidewalks, pathways to the chores of life, pathways to work, pathways back home. Some of the cement squares are buckled by tree roots pushing up from below. For they want life, too. They do not want to be merely trampled upon by the egregious notions of men, woman, children, politics, war…

His hands are stuffed deep in coat pockets. His breath shoots out, lingers with the cold, and creates his own brand of human fog. He stops a block from the bakery. He looks up and down the street… Michigan Avenue. A few cars sputter by in the growing icicle dawn. The entire world feels encased in cold. Instead of turning right to go the bakery, he turns left and walks toward the lake. The big lake. The lake that bred life here. The lake that made this town so many years ago.

He stops at a 24-hour diner. He decides to have coffee and a sweet roll. A sweet roll most likely made by someone he knows. The place is mostly quiet. There is the periodical clanging of cups of plates in the back. There is some soft talking. Someone is rustling a newspaper and clearing their throat. A new day of life. But why? He wonders. He sips. He takes a bite. He places his hand to his heart, and it is still somehow beating. Why?

He puts money on the table and bundles up. He pulls his knit winter hat from a pocket and straps it to his head. He makes sure he covers his ears, so they won’t freeze to death and just fall off. He needs to hear things. He needs to hear the lull of the lake waves as they drift across its own body on its way to touch the shore. He pulls on gloves. He brings the zipper of his coat to the very top, turns up the protective collar. He smiles at someone, nods his head. “Thanks,” he says, and he walks out the door. His nostrils fill with cold air. He walks east.

He stands on the frozen sand of the shore and looks out at the water. It looks incredibly cold. He is beginning to feel incredibly old. He ticks off his lifelong accomplishments in his head and is unimpressed. But still. What are accomplishments if they cannot be shared with the absolute perfect love of your life? he thinks. His eyes reach out across the dark gray waters as far as they can go. There is no other side. It is like looking at an ocean except it isn’t an ocean.

The funeral will be in two or three days. He isn’t sure he can take it. She is everything to him. He never figured he would ever have to utter the words, to explain to anyone why there was no one by his side… But she is suddenly gone. Like a lightning strike. He misses her terribly. He suspects the terminal ache will never pass. How will he ever be able to go on in this sort of a world without her. Where will he live? He can’t. It will all be too much.

Then someone touches him on the shoulder. He turns and there she is. His love beyond love. She is slightly opaque but glowing. She is beautiful. She is alive on the other side. But which side? She smiles as she looks at him through the plastic barrier. He can see the love in her crystal ocean eyes. Her lips move. “I’ll never leave you. Even now. I love you.”

END

By
Aaron Echoes August
This Obtrusive Dimension

An ice-cold sugar cookie sun glosses over the lonely bones

Of a world derived from godly madness and space dust

A sepia depression dawn shimmer of light

The people of the world are shapeless and seemingly gone

Lost within the confines of selfishly habitual minds

The curvature of humanity has snapped like a summer-weathered animal spine

The wasp workers clear snow from parking lots to make way for all the religious-like gatherings

Where the people of the world fall to wounded knees and worship products and prices

Reach up with quaking bones to fondle molded mannequins void of heart and blood

Curdled music dangles from the fluorescent heavens like silver ribbons

The Karen and Brad monsters snarl and curse the uniformed sad angels

As they move robotically, tethered to the social mechanics of immoral survival

Lost deep within the electric neon guts of blocky cathedrals nested upon historic rubble

Uninspired architecture that devours the once green and golden landscapes of the world

In long chaotic visages beneath purple and eggnog-colored skies

Loneliness rattles along the alabaster boulevards like an abused and abandoned shopping cart

Exploratory burglary everywhere in the burnt brickwork

Vicious viaducts are concrete cradles for the unfortunate dreamers

This obtrusive dimension merely a labyrinth for a lab man

This planet does not suit the skin of everyone after all

These cold, autonomous days; spirits exalted, spirits snuffed

Like embers and emperors in Iceland upside down.

By
Aaron Echoes August