CEREAL AFTER SEX

Firefly Eyes

There is order
There is disorder
There are purgative drugs
And there are clouds to sleep on

It was a day that was easy to dance to
It had a beat
and a really good rhythm
with the angel ship standing there like she was
some great gift slipped directly from God’s palms
and she didn’t even begin to sing
she just stood there
a microcosm
a star
a California thread
beating down my doors with her eyes
and a long highway lust
stretched as taut as the yellow line
from which she had just begun
the long-toed tip toe
with valleys of grain
whipping by her temples fast as light
and she waved goodbye to her scar tissue
as it flew out the window
and died in the past
for now all she had before her
was the whitest milk
and the blackest nights
snuggling a cold mattress
reeling in the chill of it all
as does he

My chorus ran through the checkpoint
my liver was aching something fierce
on that Arizona wideband
that Calypso horizon swimming like a fish
across the rusty pinnacles sprinkled with salt
and I dreamt of snuffing it and devil tattoos
calling to me from the other side
and I begged for the lush
of some green island adventure
with vodka and bright vegetables
canopies on wheels
and jalopies with no steel
a theater show for the man on his homemade bed
peering out a broken window
watching all the wealth rain down on him
and he was indeed the meek
and all he wanted anymore
was to inherit the Earth
she being queen sun
and he being king moon
and he would lay out carpets of stars for her
so she could step over the puddles of empty space
ever so elegantly and precious
like a newborn baby
kept clean and pure
behind a bell jar of kaleidoscopic glass

He stepped on the white, feathery scorpion
and it played the tune of a harp when it squealed
and he wondered if he were in Heaven
rolling snake eyes and sin
across green velvet lawns sprinkled by the belch of a
crisp hose
he pondered fame
he pondered glitter
he pondered perfection
and the price you pay
for not living what you feel
when all is a cool, light, tapping reverberation
and your soul feels as empty as some wicker basket
beside a raging river run dry
think of the music inside you
think of what smells good
think of letting go
and feeling for once
with that wrecked soul

He was playing a baby grand
cigar crunched between his teeth
the whole of NYC bouncing around in his eyes
and he looked around at the clean carpet
and all his plush interior
and he felt as dirty
as a slaughtered lamb
he was too cold to think
and too hot to cool down with ice
he was wrapped up in all the fornication
society was performing in front of him
and he climbed out the window
and started to fly
like some great bird
startled free from a bush
all around the world he soared
like a rollercoaster of flesh
and all he saw was her
standing there with her small feet
planted firmly on the long, yellow line

He dropped the porcelain figure on the highway
it was crushed by large wheels and scattered amongst the tacky asphalt and cryptic road kill
so he knew now it would be a mad journey
to hell and back
with an English girl
and an American man
and he rolled her on the dandelions
in some London park
and they ate squares of cool, orange Jell-O
making glasses out of them
and seeing the world through a
wobbly, blood-stained sepia glaze
the antiqued film made them sentimental
the statues and cobblestone
had a look like one would find on Mars
not the planet,
but the god’s personal person
and he pulled out a slide
and the world was indeed an orange hue
and the English girl
and the American man
never wanted to leave London in the summertime

And he steered his teary-eyed red rabbit
near Joseph City, Arizona
gunning it hard toward Gallup
and the museum
of green pharmaceuticals
but the meditation gave him a vision

Like a small film painted on the cold, white wall of a
motel room
and this particular film taught him about writing letters
and the waste of getting wasted
because he knew the angel would return
in one form or another
and she’d be happily holding out a plastic platter
filled with jars of glass eyes swimming like fireflies

Castaways, in some bruised Irish sky.

By
Aaron Echoes August
The Hip and the Cruel

There’s a super fresh reality

percolating

in Albuquerque

Nob Hill groovy pubs

Ruby red placentas in Placitas

fall from hospital skies

of red brick, brown and gold

and sexy satin flesh

fresh

as newly fallen snow

on the ultra-hip Sandias

cruising on Central, Montgomery or Indian School

to smoke the city lights with the hobos

and the unfresh are like the undead

under Belen

down by the Rio

that brown ribbon curling through

bordered by the lush locks of green tree chicks

there they sit by the curls

with their hippie lamps and high times tales

bros of goodness

with mellow yellow pints clutched in claws

and the groovy fresh hipness of night descends

like clouds of far out turquoise ink

bludgeoned to the hue of a bruise

with Rio Rancho rancor

and the fist of super fresh God

the Q-Town queens line the electric neon boulevards

the Duke City duke boys say they smell

like slutty cigar store Indians

when they lift their skirts

and the desert air catches their scents just right

crippled life beneath the night fights

leprechaun green cascading beams

beckoning notice

out here like an exploding pinprick

in the desert roar of old Spanish shores

this is Albuquerque

this is super fresh

and this is what it is like

to be on maniac fire

this is what it is like to be hip and dead in the city of dusted dreams.

By
Aaron Echoes August
Mundola Fantastic

Sometimes a man gets too sad to breathe, too sad to see, to sad to sit or stand or fall or lie down. Sometimes a man gets too sad to eat or drink or wish upon a star or look at Mars or hang out in the underworld of Old West bars in a time without cars but only scars from the red sun, the blue mountains, the green sky and all its hearts popping like balloons over a river down in the snug of some psycho cult compound where the women bake pies and wash babies and the men shoot arrows and ride horses and build flying machines to some other astral plane.

He stood at the end of a long narrow hallway on the 19^th floor of a tall building in the middle of a city that bustled far too much for any man. At the opposite end of the long hall was a rectangular window that reached nearly to the ceiling. From where he stood on the other end of the hall, he could see the blue sky and a few white clouds that skittered by like marshmallows thrown into the air by an unsettled and spoiled child.

The man took a deep breath and then ran down the hall as fast as he could, he ran straight for that window because he wanted to burst through the glass and just fly like some great bird or a spaceship untethered to any sort of gravity. He wanted to fly into the ozone and beyond, he wanted to fly so he could escape the mundane and the worthless and the obsolete and the unloving hands of whoever was in the bed that month. He wanted to fly to Sri Lanka or Yemen or maybe all the way to Pluto in space and beyond, to waterfall stars and deep blood blue oceans with fish that glowed like neon and maybe somehow smoked magical cigars.

The man worked an incredibly boring job in a very boring office in that tall building and he had excused himself from his boring cubicle. He told them all that he needed some air for just a moment. He told them he was sick of looking at the computer screen and talking about complete worthless bullshit on the telephone with people who were assholes. They had all turned in their cubicles to look at him, but just for a moment because they lost interest in everything so quickly. It was five seconds later and not one of them gave a damn what he was going to do next. They didn’t even watch him walk out into the hallway one last time. No one even bothered to say goodbye.

And as the man ran down that hallway toward the window and his attempt at flight, he screamed at the top of his lungs. He screamed something wild and unintelligible. It was just an angry scream, a heated spew of pent-up frustration, layers of it, his angst could be measured in geologic time, each layer another chapter in the circus, a flash in a pan, a long, drawn-out nightmare in the sun, trying to choke down a dry chicken sandwich at a Sonic Drive-In in a land of vapors and ghosts and green pulse lines of a failing heart. One failing heart after another. One more parking lot rung by a black chain-link fence. One more iced tumbler sweating in the corner of a lonely midnight of some hotel garden.

He hit the glass at full speed. It did not break. He bounced off it like a beach ball against a man made of ice. It threw him back and down onto the floor with a thud and a grunt. He just stayed there on the carpet, that real flat carpet that one would see in an office, a wild pattern of colors like purple and wine, or green and blood. His heart was pounding. He was trying to catch his breath as he looked up at the boring, meaningless ceiling. The man heard the far-off ding of the elevator at the other end of the hall, like falling into the precipice of a dream when going to sleep. He thought he heard someone coming toward him, he could nearly feel the vibrations of someone’s polished shoes flowing beneath him, scratching his back. It was a soft thundering vibrato through the ornate fibers, burrowing like the flushing evil of a corpse god. Then there was someone standing over him, looking down at him. He could hear him breathing and thinking. It was a man in a very fancy suit, and he was holding a briefcase and chewing gum like some high ferocious prick. He looked rich and successful, well-polished, nearly perfect, everything life wanted out of someone.

“Are you okay down there?” the man in the suit asked, blue eyes blinking in perfect rhythm to the heartbeat of a dripping wet jungle a million miles away. “Did you have a stroke or something?”

The man on the floor of the hallway looked up at him and sighed. “No. I’m fine. But why does this glass never break?”

The other man took a moment to look at the window. He went over to it and touched it, examined it like a gynecologist or architect. “It’s designed not to break. But I don’t know why. You would think people would want it to break… You know, in case of a fire or something. It might even be bulletproof considering the thickness of it.”

The man in the suit knelt beside the man on the floor, smiling like an idiot, still smacking his gum. “If you’re trying to do yourself in,” he said in a whisper. “Why don’t you just go up to the roof and jump from there.”

“I’m not trying to do myself in,” the man on the floor protested. “I just want to get out of here. It’s awful.”

The other man stood back up and looked down at the man on the floor. “You mean you just want to get out of here? Out of the building?”

The man on the floor propped himself up on his elbows. “I suppose that’s right. I hate it here. The job is awful. The people are awful. Everything is awful.”

“That’s why they call it work. It’s not meant to be pleasurable.”

“You seem happy enough.”

“I’m not, though. I’m just pretending like everyone else does. No one is happy in this glass cage doing the bidding of the gods that aren’t even gods. But we do it anyways. That’s just life, friend.”

“It’s not a life I want,” the man on the floor insisted. “I just ended up here… And I don’t even know how I let it happen.”

“That’s right. It’s designed to work this way,” the man in the suit said as if he knew everything about life and perhaps designed it all himself. “We’ve been conditioned to it for eons. There’s no escape. All you can do is just get through it.”

Then he reached out a clean and perfectly manicured hand toward the man on the floor and helped him to his feet. They looked at each other. “I have to get back to work,” the man in the suit quickly made clear, and he turned his head and looked at a large brown door. “In there. I hope you have a better day, friend.” He smiled and went through the large brown door. It closed with a heavy click. The hall was silent and lonely again.

The other man, the one who had tried to jump out the unbreakable window, slowly walked back to the far end of the hall where the elevators and the entrance to his office were. As he walked, he reflected on his entire existence. It went quickly. He was terribly bothered by that. He was bothered by the insignificance of it all.

When he got to the opposite end, he took a deep breath, turned, and ran down the hall toward the same window again. This time the glass shattered when he struck it, and he flew like a magical bird for just a few euphoric moments before hitting the sidewalk and breaking for good.

END

By
Aaron Echoes August
Independent writer and photographer.
The Axiom Caboose

Content warning: Adult situations

I sat at the control panel in the red room. I was looking over digital charts and trying to plot out the best course for the continuing journey on the love ship. She kept coming onto the bridge to show me something or tell me something or maybe she was just flirting. She was wearing a tight pair of light gray leggings, you know, the kind that cling to everything, and she definitely had everything going on.

I was trying to focus on the ocean of space through the wide viewing window in front of me, but then there she would be, right beside me at the helm, smelling good, and I couldn’t help but to look over at that sweet caboose packed so tightly in those leggings.

She was tapping into her little electric pad and the look on her face was far too serious.

“Why don’t you turn around a bit and let me get a good look at that,” I said to her.

“Captain? Look at what,” and she was turning herself around and around trying to see if there was something stuck to her.

I made a twirling motion with my finger as she slowly rotated. “Wait. Stop. Stay just like that.”

“Is there something wrong, Captain? What is it? Is it a spider?”

“Oh, there’s nothing wrong. In fact, it’s all right.”

“Sir? I don’t understand?”

I reached out my hand and took a good squeeze of one firm cheek. “Mmm, that’s what I’m talking about. Nothing like a nice piece of ass.”

“Captain!” she said with a slight hint of alarm in her voice, her face reddening.

“That’s right. I’m your captain. That means you have to follow orders. Don’t you agree?”

She took a step back. “I’m afraid I don’t understand what you’re getting at, sir.”

“What I’m getting at, lieutenant, is that I want you to wear those leggings all the time. In fact, that’s an order.”

She reddened more and awkwardly tried to change the subject, her voice trembling. “Have you gotten today’s Wordle, sir?”

“Wordle? The only game I want to play is handball against that firm backside of yours. Wordle can wait.”

“Captain… You’re making me very uncomfortable in the workplace.”

Like all good captains, I knew I was perhaps pushing it a bit. It was time to slightly shift gears to soothe her growing anxiety. “How would you like to learn how to fly the ship, lieutenant?” I slyly asked her.

“But I’m a communications officer, not a flight officer. That’s not within the scope of my duties.”

I looked around the bridge. It was very early in the morning and none of the other members of the crew had yet arrived. “It’s fine. Nobody will ever know. And besides, it’s not that hard. Most of the controls are automated.”

She bit at her bottom lip and looked around as she considered my offer. “Okay. I’ll give it a try. I’ve always wondered what it would be like to steer this big thing.”

“I bet you have,” I mumbled.

“What’s that?”

“I said that’s perfect. The only thing is, you’re going to have to sit on my lap,” I told her.

“Your lap, sir?”

“I need to be able to help you with the controls. I need to give you proper instruction.”

She set her electric pad aside and climbed aboard the platform. I had her turn around in front of me, that delicious rump roast staring right at me, and then she slowly worked herself down upon my lap. I immediately felt her heat. I reached around her and held her wrists and moved her hands toward the controls. “Now,” I said. “This one is to slow the ship down… And this one is for thrust,” I breathed into her ear, and I bucked my captain’s log against her.

She immediately jumped up. “Captain! You have no intention on teaching me how to fly the ship, do you!? You just want to be a dirty boy in space. I’m sorry, sir, but order or no order, I will not be taken advantage of like that. I will not jeopardize my career as an officer… And neither should you.”

I looked at her, puzzled over why she was rejecting me. I mean, I’m the captain. She can’t deny me like this. “Let me get this straight, lieutenant. Are you saying you don’t want to work my throttle?”

Sher rolled her ocean blue eyes at me. “Do you really think that’s the way to win the favor of a woman? By acting like a spoiled, full-of-himself fraternity prick who uses naughty talk? I’m here to tell you… It’s not.”

I got up from my seat at the helm and walked toward her. “Now, now lieutenant, speaking to your captain like that could land you in the brig. You wouldn’t want that, would you? You wouldn’t want to spend your remaining days of soaring through the universe like that. You’ll go mad. I guarantee it. Things would be much better for you if you just gave in to my desires, and yours… And besides, deep down inside, I know you really want to get sucked into my tractor beam. I can tell you ache for my burst of plasma. Release yourself to me now, and later, when you are comfortable in your quarters, you will be able to reflect on a far better day than if you continue to turn away from me.”

The director suddenly called out “Cut! … Excellent work. Take a break guys, we’ll pick it up in twenty.”

I smiled and got closer to my co-star. Her name was Jennifer Los Angeles. She was a real fox. “You did great,” I said.

“You really think so?”

“Absolutely. I would never have guessed this is your first science fiction porno.” I rephrased it when I could tell she was a bit dismayed by the terminology. I knew she needed to feel better about it. “Adult film is what I meant. This is real art what we’re doing here. Real artistic cinema. It’s a very unique genre.”

“Right. Just naked,” she purred with a hint of innocent distrust in what I was saying.

I pointed a finger at her and smiled, making a clicking sound with my mouth. “Some of the best things in life are done naked,” I reminded her.

“I suppose you’ll be getting on top of me here pretty soon.”

I chuckled. “That’s what the script says. And I just have to tell you… I’m really looking forward to blasting you with my proton torpedo.” She tried to laugh. “I want to do this scene with you more than any other scene I have ever done in my entire career,” I said with all sincerity.

“Do you mean that?” she asked with wide and naive eyes of bleached lapis lazuli, a hopeful, absorbent look on her face. “Or are you just saying that to make feel better.”

I moved closer to her and played with the blondish platinum locks that fell down upon her shoulders, a light rain of the softest yet broken ringlets. “I mean it. Wholeheartedly. You’re one delicious babe. And you have a great ass. I really love it.”

She smiled sweetly. “Thanks. That’s very nice of you to say.” Jennifer Los Angeles looked around as she struggled to find something else to talk about. “I suppose I better go freshen up before we get back to it.”

“Sure. I’ll see you back on the set.” I started to walk away to get myself a Fresca when something truly genuine and real suddenly hit my brain. I turned and rushed after her. “Hey,” I nervously started off, because this was going to be something real. “Do you want to come to my place tonight. I’m starting this new show on Netflix, and I really want someone to watch it with me. And I hope I’m not being too forward when I say… I want to share the experience with someone special.”

She smiled shyly. “And you consider me someone special?”

“I do. Very much so.”

“What’s the show?”

“It’s called 1899.”

She looked beyond me as the gears inside her mind whirred and whizzed, and then her eyes returned to my face, and she looked at me strangely. “But captain… We’ve already done that.”

END

By
Aaron Echoes August
Red Star, Blue Plate

Who am I but silent scream
who am I but dizzy dream
drifter in the daylight
mummy in the night
who is there to make it right
right, right
what is right
what is wrong
don’t know what I am thinking
a long, broken song
running through my head
nerves all a twisted and surreal
neon is lightning
pauses are thunderstorms
solid becomes liquid
liquid becomes melting
shaking becomes catastrophe
big orange bombs bursting inside of me
knuckles red and dry
burning sensation in the eyes
what is happening
changing yet dying, again and again
living, not breathing
every morning a train wreck
every night a balloon ride to space
every dawn a handshake
every moon a distant plate chock full of unanswered destiny, a van driving north, south, east, west – sunset seeker, mountain keeper, a drizzle, a fog, pounding my head wondering where it all went wrong – all gone, gone, gone

Red stars and atom bombs
gas globes spinning in the heavens
dripping flawless arms of colored smoke
the sun startled the blue plate awake
a dinner of history set in stone
a playground for the mastodon
a curtain of pure beauty
out east somewhere
far from the roads
far from the buildings
far from the dust storms
stinging at my skin
the aroma of beer
and cigarettes
illuminates the interior of the vehicle
as I sit
in sun-splashed happy horror
the moon dangles there up high
in its casket of deep blue
a lone pearl
cast from the string of space
an ivory stone
embedded deep within the sky’s bruise
spinning motions all around me
wash machines and black tires
crazy drug laced eyes
peering deep into the belly of a dirty tumbler
the earth itself
spinning motionlessly
and there’s some sharp-edged wedge
stuck deep in my back,
deep in my neck
cutting off the circuits
that make others human
and I taste like anti-freeze
spitting out the thing
that clogs my veins

But I am merely choking on the memories of LA, blue dead Vegas, the frozen North, the lava islands
where the cars run roughshod over grooved freeways slick with oil and the sweat of the sun, great mighty machines boiling over in the dense sense of pollution and crimes, dying down on Vine, the lepers and the shark-skin suited monks wiping their wallets on the palms of dirty phone booths, palm trees swaying to the pop music of this pop culture in a pop-ignited fury furnace with its breast nestled gently against the shoulder of the Ocean Pacifica

Jesus tries to pacify me
with a hamburger and a Coke
it’s a Christian monopoly
with Buddha playing pieces
priests raping babies
and sinners serving soup
to the poor, the homeless, the disheveled
presidential nominees
and silver-spooned dynasties
racking up the big bucks
while single mom sells a suck
the price of everything keeps going up, up, up
while my means keep going down, down, down
proud to be an Amorikan,
proud to be starving
and losing the fight
give me a library card
so I can check in my brain
throw away my umbrella
so I can drown in the rain
stop walking,
you better run
this heart is stretching its seams
this heart is stopping
at the end of this dream

Red star, blue plate
alarm clocks are boiling over
as I am about to go to sleep
one more nail to pound
one more tear to stop
time to say goodnight,
it’s heaven-o-clock at the terrace plunge.

By
Aaron Echoes August