Aberrations and Adventures of one Lost soul

The soul leaves the body on its search for answers, we only retrieve these answers when we die, we spend a lifetime searching, it is only in death that the soul finds these answers, the ones you wanted to know forever, like who your father was or whatever, but the soul has its own adventures, its own revelationl, and in death these are uploaded into your spirit as you move to the afterlife

Dan the Doppelganger

This is a revision, a bit more fleshed out, the other was merely a skeleton of what I intended. I may revist this again in a few months.

"The day of wrath, that day will
dissolve the world in ashes,
as David and the Sibyl prophesied.

How great will be the terror,
when the Judge comes
who will smash everything completely!

The trumpet, scattering a marvelous sound
through the tombs of every land,
will gather all before the throne.


Death and Nature shall stand amazed,
when all Creation rises again
to answer to the Judge. "

- Giuseppe Verdi: REQUIEM

She arrives to Lime's coffee shop at exactly the same time each day. She purchases the same thing consistently: quarter coffee with a bagel and cream cheese. Every once and a while, however, she may delve into scrambled eggs, which trigger long dormant memories of her mother. Mom would always shake them in the most perfect of circles, but to our fledgling little Gemini, they were the same circles as those she made in the sand as a young girl, the same circles she created in love triangles during college while frolicking naked on her dorm room floor, and the same unifying circles that wrapped around her finger before her untimely divorce.

She always sighs, flips through the menu, then sets her head in her hands for approximately 7 minutes. Her menu is always stained, it always reads the same. Somehow she always misses the popular lunch specials and is always too early for the "Dinner Delights" menu. Her bagles are never heated though they advertise them to be, which frustrates her occasionaly . . .but it does not matter.

The man sits alone in his stuffy, hotel room and sees her arrive like she does at the same time, every day. The peaceful churn of the dryer and the Verdi requiem haunting his room seem to be unable to drown out the continous stream of recent sorrows ricocheting against the tacky, wallpaper. He perks up as she sits to read the menu. He has discovered something is not right at our fair diner.

As the fog rolls low over the ocean, a schism in the universe, an abberration, seems to be moving with it, calling for a resolution to this disruption.

"Come on . . .the same fucking bagels with cream cheese spread 2/3 end to end," he rambles to himself in a very calm, low voice.

He rubs his nose and coughs. The slurp of lemonade burns, it is tart, and its acidity blisters his tongue. Resting it on his arm chair, he closes his eyes. He can feel his pulse rising like the nearby tides, the pulsating drums of his own venom brewing against the vasculature, revealing the many tasty poisons in his blood, its sweetness fiending like a mongoose before its serpent.

Our lovely woman now looks out the window, peering through her reflection, saturating the rain as it hits the pavement, calling for a reckoning. Her tears are always the same; the same texture, same riverbed, same crease leading down the mountainous terrain of her sensuality. He is always inside her, and "her other" is always nearby. She is unaware of it.

We should be thankful for this.

The smoldering cigarrette blossoms like a cherry tree in the dim hotel room as he dismantles smoke alarms, and exhales behind crimson curtains. "Damn it, there are two of 'em! Both living in the same dimension, at the same time. That isn't fucking possible, man."

This anomaly is freakish, somehow contributing to his internal debate about the reality of a deity. If such a thing could happen with two reflections of the same woman appearing in the same coffeeshop, on alternating days giving the same looks, always picking at the same cold, bagel with the same bitter, cream cheese. . .then this meant more than everything. It essentially explains all the wrongs in the rights of reality, proof beyond a doubt of things greater than this small, insignificant world. Given this groundbreaking realization, the cold, confused man has become obssessed with anatacids, Fox Soccer Channel, and his former girlfriend now eating across the street at Lime's coffee shop. It took awhile to figure it all out, but he has now got to the heart of the issue. He has made a disfiguring discovery.


As the jukebox changes to the sound of "Everybody Knows" by Leonard Cohen, the woman gets up from her seat and heads to the door of the ladies restroom, which is covered with pictures of limes. Upon entering, the cool ocean breeze ripples through her hair as she gargles salt water and spits it out. Looking in the mirror, she feels like she is lifting off into space, crawling through time codes and time tunnels, soaring through dimensions and dimensions becoming different people in different places on different planets. Maybe she is a president, an ape, a nurse, a doctor, a nerd, a lawyer, an artist, the possbilities were endless, and this knowledge led her to a new decision. It is to make this reality, this dimension, the best of the many. Maybe this is our purpose, to bring all the dimensions in space and time together. If one makes all their different selves uniform, then all her future and former selves become the gateway to reaching something akin to nirvana. Just thinking of such an outcome, squirms like piggies in her chest, there is this feeling of union, of clamping down on the entropy that has dismantled her life. It is a burden lifted.

The daft character focuses his night vision goggles, which are altogether unnecessary, but bring a certain complement to the magesty of vocal heroins belting through his silver stereo. He smokes the last of his cigarette and blows the smoke again through the haze of sunlight peering out from the cloak of the fog. Looking through the emerald glow of his goggles, he can see her twiddle her thumbs and lift up her skirt to scratch her knee. He begins to remember being with her. His heart races everytime he sees her enter and exit. At the end of the day, he assuredly did not expect to see her again, espcially Lime's of all places. This whole situation was mere coincidence; a fluke, as he did not set out to find her, he merely had wanted to get away from the creditors. He never knew she came here to have breakfast until a week ago when he began this vacation. But sure enough it was her car, it was her mannerisms, that appeared out of no where. Yet, there was something was different about her from day to day.

After finishing breakfast, she always writes for a n hour while sipping and sipping on her coffee, scattering her thoughts onto the canvas of God. She feels his voice, her internal character telling her what to write, giving her detailed schematics on how to escape the simple reminder of her former relationship. She wants him back, yet cannot figure out how to change things. She believes it is her fault, thinking about her tardiness, her distance, her unending conflict with her ex-husband. It eats away at her like Bob Goodman eats his custard pie.

But it is more than that. Fear eats away at her. Ultimately, she fears loss, she fears losing, and she fears moving on with another man. Her last marriage was long gone, it was her life, but the memories will not go away. All seems transient and elusive. The thoughts will not come, a mental block prevents progress on her latest short story due by the end of the semester. She decides she needs to run some hot water over her face, maybe this will waken her right brain, make the neuronal connections hot like molten lava, so they may fire in procession and create a circus of words, metaphors, and visuals to being others into her life. She moves forth. Across the way, at the hotel, the man's body lifts like a leviathon facing its aggressor for the first time.

All is set; all is ripe for the taking. Therefore, he makes the call.

The other is not at Lime's, she is at home and unaware of the break in the space time continuum. The soft voice pretends to be a potential employer looking to interview recent college graduates. Her excitement shakes his receiver and she accepts, asking questions of when and where. The voice reminds her to meet him in ten minutes at Lime's Breakfast Diner, and so she rushes out her forest green door throwing on her new business suit. However, this is not a real interview, it is all a test by our gentlemen in the lowly lit hotel room. He wishes to discover if his hunch is right, to see if this is all supposed to be happening. He is aware of the consequences but remembers what awaits him at home: the lost love of Lime's most dependable patron and a stack of bills as high as the Golden Gate Bridge.

Just thinking of their meeting makes him smile soundly, and so he closes his eyes again to imagine the implosion of the universe. The grin is not as sinister as it is kniving. But someone must do it. Someone must shut off the TVs, shut off the hatred, shut off the constant beguiling obsession with material things, shut off and fill up the empty hole of our civilization. He is simply a player in the doppelganger of our Lord, our Savior, the explicit duality of man. He is doing the will of God by exposing His one glaring error; that being His inability to regulate all of the dimensions He has created to amuse Himself. Each has its own freewill and nature will find away just as atoms and molecules disappear and reappear out of nowhere. God cannot stop it. The same people do not encompass the same space, but each character experiences its own life, displays his or her's own free will. The probability of a meeting between two of the same person from different dimensions is simiar to the probability of being hit by a piece of an airplane while sleeping in your house at 5AM after a threesome with three of the hottest pornstars of all time after flying 3 jets at lightspeed across the galaxy like the Millenium Falcon.

But with time, anything can degrade, anything is possible.

So he sits back and sips on his wine. The beauty of the vocal chorus contrasts the peril ahead for the 10th dimension. It is soon to be extinct, and our other protagonist, our young lady, may then live out her other lives as a prison guard perhaps or maybe a liason to the pharmaceutical industry or in the 3rd dimension as a bag lady hurdling Bison in the Golden Gate Park. These are all possibilities. If all ends, all may not be possible, however.

She sees herself in the restroom mirror, looks down at her hands, enjoys the ocean breeze again, then leaves the restroom to complete her transcript.

Like slow motion, she moves to her boothm, the coffee and bagel undisturbed, and her other is facing her, across from her. They both stop. Ghosts from other lives bursting from their skulls, dancing in midair, with their hair on end, now free to haunt and be haunted.

It is an atom bomb times 1,000; everything evaporating as these paranormal spirits move through the crusty yellow ceilings.

Everything is a furnace, a grass fire on the great plains of Wyoming, and it leaves the daft fellow across the street with his with eyes aglow and his mouth gaping wide.

The goggles are the only thing holding his eyes in their sockets.

Daft Fellow in the Dark

you are soft spoken like
crimson shifting into
rectangular configurations
with spectacular displays
of nationalism
its flags now
set half staff
a loud sound moving
down the street
while
two shadows of light poles
duel as
gentlemen
in england
settle scores
and continue their
whispering to one another
about
positions
of power of
wanting
of fucking
for change
for a glimpse
of temptation
sitting quietly
in a leather coated
desk chair
with night vision
glasses strapped
oh so tightly there
in the dark
in his hotel room
dreaming of all the positions
they could tangle
with angles
of the misfortune
seen and glimpsed
as we retreat
into
dagobah
into the swamps
of your illusions
infusing him
with hallucinations
about
love
life
philosophy
oneness
loneliness
wrapping its
vest around this disability
in the library
of her excuses
where he reads
all he needs
to know about

the truth

The Doppelganger

Going to do a doppelganger story. Name: Smith O'Reilly.
Two stories, polar opposites, funeral two sides of the service, both opposites. A funeral of doppelgangers. A convention of doppelgangers. Duality. Dichotomy. Story of man who accidently killed a man, learns he enjoys, killing spree? Too cliche. Just some ideas.

work in progress

I have a story to submit after final exams, then try and keep this project on its two feet. Here's a pic of me doin a reading at school in Friday with my nigerian friend, Joe, who is also in my program.

enjoy.

Week 4,5,6: Zeus Zaps Like a Thunderbolt

response to the watcher story:

believe it

it is time
to unwind
the dangling signs
from your hotel window panes

the cool frost building
on the cheap window sills
the pills grasped and
dropping
and
evaporating
like shuttles
burning through
the atmosphere
like the mixing hues
of Fall crispy leaves
decorating the
matted forest floors
and doorways
into my mind
into your mind
the kind of find
you have as a boy
wandering
through the caves with bats
all around the sound
of their screech
resembles the peach
bursting into pulp
diction of this fiction
residing in your skull
flying into your bedrooms
fearing the demise
of the wise
of your other
side
your other caretaker

whispering

that he has come

for the last dance
the stance has been made
the train is left to steer
itself over the last frontier
as my tear
rolls
over your sunken
pale face

frozen in a moment

what were you thinking
what time did you wish

to venture back
into and out of

this mind
as

i become a human being

and not Zeus
on high

Week 4,5,6: He was Omniscience, He was a Watcher

(NOTE: For the below, take each story and break it up in the entire scope of the manuscript. This will be like little chapters throughout the book, familiar, Vonnegut-esque stories to return to. Might be a cool little set up.)

God is not above you or below you or even inside you. He is this individual controlling things from some distant planet resembling earth but totally a parallel universe. The only reason this is being revealed to you is simply because He speaks through me. Not in the sense that I want to relay the meaning of life or tell you the future or explain the past or why many individuals pass on every day. Listen; there are a lot of people. Get it? How can one God possibly control or keep track of so many blips the size of atoms in a universe whose scope is beyond the imagination of the very beings that inhabit it. Exactly, you can't.

In order to really know God, I decided to petition Him one late night awhile ago after inhaling on a cigarette for most of the evening. The eyes were dilated and the lights were pulsing through my optic nerve, and unbeknownst to me, the master of all creation uploaded Himself into my psyche. That's right; God infused himself through my retina and into my mind. I must say, this is not for everyone as my eyes have been inflamed & burning from his presence for the last month. However, for research purposes, one must sometimes expose themselves to the very treatment they are out to discern.

My petition was not to change my life or corrode the pervasive sadness of not knowing what is to become of me or of us. I knew he would strictly forbid such questions. What I petitioned him to allow is to experience a sense of omniscience, because God supposedly knows all. Since I can remember I wasn't sure if I believe or want to believe or if I will believe in a higher power. For all I know, I am a schizophrenic experiencing hallucination and need to be on meds as soon as possible. Even with all that, you must trust me. You and I must get to the heart of the matter, and realize that after this experience, many stories are to be revealed. Not long, trite ones, but bits and pieces meant to illuminate our existence.

The petition was not submitted through prayer. It was sent out in the vacuum of space by a satellite. I didn't expect a response until one fateful night where everything froze and I felt a presence unlike any other.

Having God inside you is a bit like being disoriented after too many shots. You are literally drunk with power, drunk with spirit, intoxicated with a bright light burning up the fuel of your cells. It's a bit all encompassing, very trying on one's physiology.

So why experience omniscience, where did the ambition stem from? Well, let's see, it has been a dream of mine since I was a young, fledgling writer. Bundled up in my dorm room in college, I tried diligently to compose my first novel where its main character had the ability to take memories from the minds of a population of people under a strict dictatorship in some apocalyptic future. The mission of this mysterious character was to make these random people face their mistakes, relive their joys, to show them that this pain is fleeting; it is an illusion, a facade, a breath of air. Although it remained incomplete, I felt this would be the ultimate power, omniscience.

Too many times, one sits and gathers thoughts on some bench, while the stream of a crowd rolls past you. Don't you think about what is really going on with these people? Am I the only one wondering why this man is mumbling to himself? Or respectively, why we seem to do too much, spend too much, or be the Bluto chasing Olive Oil too much in the game of love? What are the stories that make a man, a woman, a child live on? See...if anything could help me unravel this mystery in a long line of mysteries, then having God live on in my mind for a brief period of time to show me his power would be quite enough to satisfy my undying curiosity. Thus, for the next few weeks, we will be given the opportunity to see what it is like to be God, to see what God sees, to feel what God feels.

As a disclaimer, I must admit this could all be disappointing. To convey God is silly, it is as ridiculous as all individuals claiming to be prophets, of which I am not. You may learn absolutely nothing, as none of this is supposed to change you. What I saw was random montages of images from the minds of people sitting with their heads against the wall dreaming of what life they had wanted, not what they were given. I wish I could ask God what the hell that is about, but the guy simply wouldn't respond.

Faith, God, religion, these are all mysteries, not meant to answer every question, but to confirm what makes us special, unique. This is what it seemed to be from my experience. So beware of false prophets who may have easily petitioned God as I have, as they may have distorted what they learned. By the way, it isn't as hard to get His attention as you may think. It is entirely feasible. I lived through it and it is beyond comprehension.

So on with the story.

A few weeks ago then, God flew through my retina; pushing the iris wide open while I tapped on computer keys as machines punch widgets in some Midwest town. The hot tea was steaming and the music shuttled through my speakers all distorted.

Unexpectedly, I found myself in a train.

It was not recognizable. It was a vast echo mixed with rattling rails jettisoning its bobbling heads back and forth. Memories were probably rattling around in their misfortunate little minds. Grogginess was all around me, I seemed dead or gone. There was a woman glancing at her watch and out the window repeatedly, while her husband was stared down the train walls. He was Asian, his shoes were brown, scuffed, and his sweater was grey. The woman had a scarf around her head, it was blue, her dress was a light shade of green, and her shoes were pale white.

I sat across from them and made the determination that these were folks I wanted to know. Not because there was something miraculous or massively intriguing about them, but there was some kind of despair coming from the movements of their bodies. I saw only a moment into their night evenings, those nights where they were old beyond their years and the days all coalesced, sticking together like spaghetti noodles.

Fluid and monotonous, the nights were usually ceremonial, rituals of how fleeting their days had become. They were skeletons of the past, like when one going to bed and it meant rising to a job, to taking the kids out, to looking forward to the weekend. The weekend was a Ferris wheel, you moved towards the top, you saw the Promised Land, and then it would end every time in the same spot you started . . . the cubicle. Life seemed contained back then too, because in the office in the scope of things, it was like passing the time and at least getting compensated for it.

These were the ghosts haunting the senior couple as they brushed their teeth, used the restroom, and cuddled late in bed with each other. Their solace and regret were all they had left. Life was not bad per se, but it offered no more rewards than the prospect of being another's brittle burden.

These thoughts seemed to barrel through their minds.

The man asking, "why her?"

The woman asking, "why him?"

They both asking, "Well, when?"

"Well, when" was the time when they would close their eyes and say good night and good luck to the world once so nurturing and vibrant.


My friends, there were no easy answers to such questions as to why they chose one another, but God did not offer me a resolution. So, I learned omniscience is a bit like people watching. You don't have the power to mediate or meddle in affairs. You simply are the watcher, the witness, ensuring that someone or something of greater magnitude can say, "Yes, this person mattered, as I was there to vouch for her or him." If this is all God can do, he does it, he is the witness to the crime.

It had been very silent the last few days ago (prior to their train ride I was witnessing). I saw this with the help of the Lord, mine eyes, mine brain.

They hadn't done much but search through the newspaper and call their grandkids (who did not return them). It was comparable to any other night, yet again; they were lying in bed staring off at TV recycling fuzz and erratic pulses of molecules. And they were on the same wavelength.

They broached the silence by coughing.

"I think it would be best if I die first," the woman said.

Her husband stared straight ahead similar to how he looked on the train. He was emotionless to her comments.

She stood up from the bedside, still with the knowledge that her grandson was visiting, in the other room in fact (hearing all this), and she should be happy.

All she can do is cry silently.

She longed into their arm watch chest mirror and saw her once beautiful body, frail, wrinkled her eyes and breasts sunk like pirate ships on the ocean floor gathering moss and schools of fish. This gave her confidence into her prior comments.

"Yes," she thought, "I would like to die first."

This is not something depressing; this is the realization that this...this is life. Because death is swinging you around, tangoing with loud bongo drums and mariachi horns. He is wearing a white tux, slow dancing to Air Supply's Greatest Hits and staring this woman's eyes. But all she could see was me in those eyes, burning through her pupils till I could see the movement of fires bursting along her Nodes of Rainier. In the end, it forced her to speak these thoughts aloud to her dazed, confused husband.

"Why you?" She asked.

Her grandson turned over and closed his eyes.

Her husband did not answer. He realized life had seen better days. Days where his grandson slept until 7AM and stuck around to discuss the paper (and nurse the coffee). Those days had been long gone, and so he began to envision himself as astronauts on moons and starships, as captains in WWI movies moving through mustard gas and bayonets. This was passing the time, these days and days imagining him in every profession, in every race, in every gender and sexual orientation. His wife used to bring women home, now she can only bring obituaries with their pictures. This is the cycle, the circle, the emblem of life: a paragraph summing you up at death.

"Oh, this is so bleak," I whispered and turned my face to the steel, train floor.

But God's fingers were wedged between the folds of my brain. He spread them apart and suddenly the thought popped into my head that maybe it is death itself that depresses us all. It isn't our fucking work days or our money or the Apple computers and Krispy Kremes or worrying about our fuck up kids; no, it's the constant knowledge that this will end indefinitely. This depresses you, and keeps those neurotransmitters at low levels. So maybe we should all block it out, we should remember that one of us will die first but we can sit in our beds and cry about it, ignoring one another, or we can rise up in the middle of the night, knock on our grandson's door and start a random conversation about the Great Depression and our Great war. Maybe it will be the time to discuss our ancestors in Japan, and plan for the next year's schooling. These are the decisions we make in our final days, do we stumble around in abandoned homes listening to the sounds of crochet and pool cleaners, or do we take a fucking trip to the Congo and ride down a river in the deep brush?!

The train bumped and bumped. As I sat in the seat, I seemed to slowly evaporate as we passed each exit, each tree, each insect deceased on passenger window surfaces.

My God, it is all a gigantic dead end, a dead end.

I love death. I love it.

Because in between, there was life.

Hiatus for a few weeks

in lieu of midterms (4 in the next 2 weeks), week 4 & 5 & 6 will all be one
Premise- God looking down, how does he explain, use people of paper type format, omniscient with aware characters, use summary of stories from xanga blog

Week 3: Your Face and Plane Drifting to the Bottom

here is the companion ie inspiration from writing, conversations with this girl from the bar



in your eyes,
there is sadness,
a red light,
blinking and blinking
but no cars are stopping
in the midnight fog

so there are horns
there are sirens
there are loud gasps
as the waves recede
like the mourning of monks
that cannot chant as loud as
your heart
cannot mask its murmur
from what it is whispering in dubs
trying to swim through the subs

like sluggish snails creeping past you

while you
close your eyes
and drift off to sleep
the medication
is taking hold
the page of your latest novel
is folded over
your widow's peak
is wrinkled over

the pink cardigan is on its proper hanger
your green shoes
empty as the entropy
scattering your dialouge
while brushing your teeth
reflecting back
to your actions and
words you will say
on judgement day

not too soon ahead

as the airliner
plummets into
the middle of the british isles
drifting like castaways to the
bottom of the sea bed
your head pressed against the glass
your eyes open
gazing
trying
to feel
the air inside the bubbles
as you pop

the pressure too great
your body too fragile
lying in your seat

the cushion under your arms
the oxygen mask around your face
the seat belt attached

how fast you flew
as you knew

your nastiness was leaking out your ear
pleading,

"come home "

Week 3: Conversations about the girl from the bar

So let's talk about what happend the other night?

What? The girl?

Yea. What happend?

Man...it was pretty fucked up.

What happend then? What did this girl do to you? I mean, you briefly discussed it in your last phone call.

So I am going to the bar with my friend. I borrow Leon's Aviators, had to cover up that red in my eyes. Mad faded. I cover it up with these sunglasses, mind my own business, take a seat at the bar, and order a round. Somebody taps on my shoulder. 'Yea,' I said,
this random girl says, 'Hey is there sunshine in here?'
'I said, 'Naa.'
'so this fucking bitch says, "I wanted to tell you that you don't have the style to wear those, you don't have the look, and you should really take them off."
'In disbelieve I look over at Dutch. I turn to her, 'So are you trying to be the nastiest person of the year?'
'I'm not from here, so I don't care.'
I pause, pulling back for the punchline,
'Oh yea, no wonder you're such an asshole, where you from?'
'Portugal.'
'Oh, remember in 2002, US, fucking dominated your asses! Look at that shirt, pink, look at those shoes, green? Are you Kermit and Miss Piggy's fucked up bratty kid? Exactly, now get the fuck out of here.'
Bitch turns and leaves.

Wow! Haha!

Exactly.

So what did you think about it?

Honestly, I sat there a second, totally processing what had happend, and it made me kind of shudder. So she like takes the time to WALK over and try to ruin my evening, to break, the only thing I have, my sense of self? Because, no matter what the hell anybody else says, style...art...that's fashion, it's a reflection of who you are! That's not the worst of it, because I actually felt like David Brent. Ya know, like how he would act cool to Garreth, try and show he had style, posing for those stupid pictures with the leopard, ya know? Was I the fool?

How could you be. That girl came over and said something very mean spirited. It takes a cold, unhappy woman to walk up blindly, with no idea who that person is, and simply treat him like that!

Right. It was saying, this is what PREJUDICE is about. She didn't know anything about me, those glasses fit into who i am, a complete and utter asshole (laughs). But an asshole most people can tolerate and even have a good time knowing. That's who I am, but she took me for someone with a weak sense of spirit. That wasn't the case. I burned a hole in her. She was like that fucking movie, Army of Darkness, with the blood squirting out in buckets from her chest, that's what she looks like on the inside. And that accent?! Oh you europeons have all the style, all the flair . . . bullshit. Listen, I know many europeons would hate and peg me as the obnoxious American.

Why is that? Look at Ali G? He's fairly obnoxious.

Yea, but he's a simpleton. He talks like he is a hip hop star, which goes beyond race by the way, but is still endearing, sincere, harmless. He asks questions he believes in. Fuck, look at our president! He's simple.

So why is this the topic in therapy today? What, in essence, did this experience hit upon? How did it make you feel?

Well, it spoke to something very insidious about human kind. What could ever persuade a human to take the time to walk over and say something down right nasty and disrespectful?

Maybe she wanted to sleep with you.

Naa, this bitch looked like the ugly chick in the Pink girls. Ya know, with the long face, pale skin, some ugly bitch who became a vampire, but the vampire was fucked up on meth when he bit into her.

Ok, ok, ok! Here's the line and this is you going completely over it.

Is that ok for a shrink to say?

Shouldn't be damaging.

Not as damaged as that girl. Man, what makes someone do that? If people can do that, then this explains the current state of things. The world, it pains me to watch how fucked up we are to one another. But there are times, I feel like being bad like that. I was reading about Psychopathic Personality disorder today in Vonnegut's latest book. He basically relates how most leaders are well to do folk but do the bad things they do because they ultimately are entirely indifferent, with no feelings or remorse. This priest in high school once told the school at one of our Friday Prayer services that he'd rather have someone hate than be indifferent, because we can change hate into love. But indifference, there is nothing to sway, they simply do not care. In his mind, that was something gruesome. He's right. That's who these people are, and I even feel like that somedays. Walking around with all this pent up, stress, aggression, for no reason? I feel like i love and hate and they're both in a constant state of flux.

What makes you feel that way?

I don't know.

Maybe it's in your dreams.

Nope, don't dream.

Really?

I used to but don't recall any particularly significant as of late.

So this girl said some disruptive things. How do you feel after this encounter?

Well, I felt unattractive, like there's this self cross examination going on, where I am thinking, do I dress ok? Is there something wrong with me? Will any girls want to talk to me?

Why do you ask yourself these questions, you always seem concerned with these issues but have never shed any light on them.

I always have to be sure I am neat, tidy, presentable. It's this thing, my dad said some shit to me as a kid about my weight and body, it bothers me, drives me to be presentable at all times, or fear being imperfect. It's not any other than that, imperfection as dress, looks, have something to do with the idea of perfection.

Do you really think so?

Well, it's part of your overall character. See, my looks alone, the way I looked, generated this lust for her being nasty, disgusting to a fellow human being. Hell, I could have been American and she was upset about the war so she had to vent, I don't know. She was fucking ugly anyway, like I cared.

That seems hypocritcal to say.

No, I was kidding.

So how does this manifest in your life, these feelings of inadequacy?

Reflections.

Reflections?

Yea, I check out in any reflection how I look, to be sure all is in its right place, even when I know I a look okay. I have these internal conversations telling myself stupid, overly macho things, to build confidence, to psych myself up when working with people or whatever.

So is this internal dialouge your voice or your father's? In essence, does this say something about what drives you?

Exactly, my pops picked on me a bunch, nit-picked my appearence, everything. He yelled alot. I shy away from conflict and also try to be sure appearences are well kept. Maybe that is who is the voice in my head, my dad screaming at me after spilling my fucking milk.

So when this woman said these things about your appearence, your style, it was like your father standing over you. It was the full figure, the shadow smile rising through the moonlight, cascading shadows of fear billowing through your esophagus and upsetting your stomach; his large grin and stern eyes taking your spirit and burning it to ash, crumbling snow from the top of the highest peak of the largest mountain, a Tower of Babylon calling for your patronage. You have given into this many times, haven't you? It has you by your fucking throat and you are a replitian swimming in sin and decadence. Change your ways or be destroyed.

F? F? Wake up, are you there?

What, hmm?

So you were talking about this girl you met?

Naa, it was nothing. She came up to me and took off my sunglasses and ran off with them. People stealing! Why sunglasses, why not food? She looked destitute.

It seemed more than that from your message. It seemed like there was a big conflict.

Naa, it was nothing.

Okay, what did you want to talk about this week? I was thinking of writing you a prescription today, we had talked about it before. How do you feel about medication?

Hmm, actually, I gotta go, I forgot about this meeting I have. Sorry, I'll see you next week!

What? Huh? Ok.

Week 2: The Hominids We All Want To Be

you want one
in every home
in every car
in every mobile phone
is the nuclear zone
alone in this
blue, expanding mass
devouring
the man
the hominid man
out front
cutting the lawn now
fast forward
cutting his credit cards
selling his
B
M
W

this is the life
this has always been our lives
it will always be
a stream
a silence
with no light
& no numbers to dial

there will be a lust
there will be a fire

cooled by the icy eyes
of the man lying
still
in the river of Isis
down to its pebbles

one with the fishes
with his
body becoming
tiny patches of color
seperating out
forming pixelated pictures
becoming incorporated
becoming fluent in the
technical language
of genomic technology
becoming streamlined
becoming the heir to the throne
the next
big
time
C
E
O

is nothing more than
men hunting in packs
soldiers burning down plantation mansions
no longer a fashion to hold
and keep
the deep
long nights
filled with drums
the chirps of crickets
the thickets
all blown over
and
severed

Week 2: The Hominids are All Asleep

In streams
you seem to move
ever so slowly
a hand swimming in
the river bed
the head relieved of exhaustation
in
one
fail
swoop
loops
into your membranes
and lies there
the fungus
the virus
grows
and grins
and sins that
you will not
forget
ever
because you cannot
predict

you
can only remember

and lest
you wish to
become
the mouse
now preyed upon
you will not
forget
the senses punctured

ever there
glimmering and glittering
to gather and horde
millions of eyes
looking on
shifting in
the quiet of
this dead air space,
musty and filled
with the mist of gun powder

showered with rose petals
she will still not give in
and so the membership
will long
they will sing
they will design
they will dance
and draw
to worship her countenance
in the reflections
staring back right from the
stream
serene
the sun light
no longer a memory
the cool water no longer
a burial ground
an explosive rush

of putting this
shoving this
of believing this
will go right through
your chest
and shatter your
heart

it falls to the ground
the act complete
her face hidden
by the hands
now stuck

touching

fixed to

hers

Week 2: The Hominids are the next big thing (prose)

In the enclosed space, there are no lights, only the soft sound of a river rolling over rocks; as it had for millions of years, a tide of water moving over the forgotten skulls of hominids who, like salmon, performed sexual reproduction at death. It would seem that as the male released himself into the female hominid, the female would pierce his breast plate with a whittled away stone sharp blade. She would sit and watch as her once virile husband slowly extinguished before her and fell lifeless into the stream. Imagine hundreds of couples coming to one spot only to dispose of their true loves, a mass extinction of middle aged, midlife-crisis ridden men. The river would run a fiery red teasing out the mystery to the color of Arizona river beds.


So as these male hominids perished from the hand of their loving spouses, their blood would mix with left over semen and sweat and move over their still bodies. All the village would stand upon the hill over looking the river moving between barren green hills, dreaming of a sunset not as crimson as the massacre below them. After 3 weeks, the males would be retrieved, wrapped in animal furs, and left to become one with the environment. With the moon still watching, the females would pretend to sleep, their tears finally allowed to come forth, the pain of the situation rumbling under their pillows.

Even with such a massive display of murder, these ancient peoples did not deny the necessity of their nature. As we should know, nature is unflinching, indifferent to its inhabitants. It waves its sword and hacks apart limbs with no remorse, its sole protector from justice being the concepts of time and memory loss. The rituals of various cultures have long passed from the minds of its new residents on Earth. However, the cruelty of culture lives on in the world's drive to purchase fire arms, watch violence on telly, and preoccupy themselves with the memory of the past. A past so ingrained in all that we are, we cannot shake its glare. It lives and breathes throughout every tissue, cell, and atom.

Our protagonist now stands naked before the mirror, his muscles each highlighted by the shifting candle flame. It is like a torch leading him down tunnels into another time, another forest, another night with only the sense of smell to lead the way. In this peaceful moment, the walls surrounding him seem riddled with wildlife bent on chewing the tendons from his brittle bones. He only remembers the last few days in his room with songs of new wave tragedy bursting from the speakers, leaving him staggered at the development of the cold feeling circulating around his chest. To capture the indifference and disconnect of the modern man is to dwell inside a closed off space with the sounds of impurity fervently spiraling into the soul and pulling out its brainstem.

He remembers nothing of his life. He does not remember painting the walls neon or the way he boarded up in his bedroom. He does not remember the drawings, the hours of sex with some random woman only a few moons ago, or remember her grinding her nails into his back, as he released, wanting only to die. Each drug, each drink, each fuck was only a means of forgetting while remembering how these meaningless embraces once meant him lying in an ancient river bed with a dagger in his chest. In the complete darkness of his steamed over bathroom, he can stare and recall how it would be to lay with his heart exposed to a running river of plasma, its red cells healing his wounds, bringing him peace.

If his world was to end through violence, then this would be the only means. A nice round of sex with the music bursting through the floors, the wallpaper peeling, closing one's eyes to a silence never conceived of in biblical scripture coalescing into a symphony of slurps and gurgles. The quiet surrounding him as he dies is not glorious or heavenly, rather it is altogether haunting. It is a ghost returning to the southern plantations and waiting for the dew to settle upon Bermuda grasses. Grasses once disturbed by rifles firing over its amber waves, popping through the chests of southern gentlemen. In a time, large blue masses were storming through towns, leaving Yankee dollars on the eyelids of their confederate enemies and burning their Orange groves and mansions. He remembers his forefathers, he remembers Your mercy, he remembers their sins, and asks forgiveness.

Through his nostrils, he smells the violent stench of iron, the steam from the water wetting his lips. The lights above him flicker, the pulse of the drum in sync with his cold, charcoal colored heart. As its fluorescence reflects off the mirror, the hominid of the past flickers with the image of our protagonist. It is all too real, his brow moving up and down. He tries to remember something, anything, but he will not. He will not recall the days soon to pass with him lying against the wall snorting cocaine and masturbating for hours. He will not remiss and know that only a few days ago he had put together a bathroom atmosphere mp3 track, a song sent to him by a friend of a sister's best-friend's friend. He had it on repeat.

See, he will not remember and neither will you. You will not know the outcome, you will not know why our friend now sleeps with southern belles in vast plantations every night, or why he is standing before a mirror thinking of hominids and being killed while having sexual intercourse. I won't fucking tell you, because it is up to you. Not to figure it all out, but to remember that ultimately we do not know why we are here or what will happen as we fade off into a sea of darkness. Why it is our friends and family must die all in the name of nature, or why we come up with these Gods and these rules and these regulations, when ultimately we know nothing!

We are nothing but memories and resolutions and compromises and loves and sexes and powers and monies exchanged. We are only... only memory. In stones, in plaques, on rusty statuettes, we have our souls all waiting for the return of Atom bombs and Cold Wars. We want only to leave these silence filled planes in the afterlife, and finally destroy ourselves. You see, as the planet extinguishes, we are free to redeem ourselves and the prophesy is complete. But you will never know because we can only remember. We cannot tell the future, we can only move back to the past.

The shower stall shatters. The toilet is on its side and the bathroom is flooding. He stands naked staring into the mirror, the sounds of a pounding drum continuously looping over and over and over. His face is red, his eyes are blue, and his heart is black.

This is a man, this is a hominid, this is a middle aged man.

He stares into the mirror. The notes held long, the beeps increasing bpm, and the falsetto calling to him from another world, another place, and he cannot shake it. He cannot remember why he is now standing here, he does not know who this is standing in the shower next to him. Everything is now dark.

For many days, the sun will rise and fall. For many hours, the sounds of speculation will simmer in his uncomfortable space. All this time will pass, but our protagonist will still wait.

Introductions are in Order

We are two brothers, who although are different in many ways, seem to agree upon art as one of the master achievements of mankind. But isn't its expression ultimately what distinguishes humans from other species, yes. We have been writing music together for a long while now, recently have done some works that resemble industrial, spoken word, hip hop. I have been writing for quite some time, many collections of poems later, I decided I needed a challenge, more focus and structure in what I am doing. I wrote a short story or vignette recently that interested me and found a suitable title. I decided that for this year, I will write a short vignette then write a poem inspired by the happenings within the story. So these will be paired up, everything is fair game, all characters and events mirror images of what I am feeling and thinking at the time.

My brother is a very talented musician, whose instrumental work is incredible, I can listen to it many times and hear little details, I appreciate his work. If it sucked, believe me, I wouldn't listen nor would i care. Anyway, he and I decided that I will send these literary works and he will write an accompanying score if you will with samples, guitars, bass, synths, whatever. He will also design the artwork. The idea is that at the end we will have made a literary work and a musical work that are both consistent and relevant to one another, we have made an entire art work by inspiration and challenge. We hope to have books with a CD made, hell submit it for publishing if people dig it, I don't know, nor do I really care. This is art for art's sake. He and I both have our very different career paths. This is a way to challenge ourselves and challenge any friends or random readers out there. Feel free to be critical or whatever, I don't care.

We are Geppetto Gestapo
The album/book is The Vignette Marionettes

Week 1: The Wolf Has Emerged

So these two gentlemen approach. I'm in the laundromat reading the lastest edition of The New Yorker, a great piece on emergent property and the intelligence of organized ant colonies, my scuffed up, obsidian Pumas left to swim in a puddle of detergent and dryer sheets. These cats look real nice, seem real nice, even though they spend hours peddling around trying to convert folks just as the past religious, mass conversion by Catholics and their quest for world, theological domination. Martin Luther nailed a revolution to a door, but I burned it to a pile of smoldering ashes.

Must be doing their missionary work, riding those silly bikes with the cold, black & white, name tags, carefully inscribed by some manufacturer in the midwest, where bigomy isn't allowed but everyone sleeps with everyone else's own sister or first cousin. .

"Good evening, sir."

Insert song: Silence, something bout silence makes me sick. rage man, rage. I stay silent, the last fragments of thought about to roll onto the next page. All I want to do is finish the rest of the paragraph on the other page, then I'll deal with these clowns.

"Have you heard of the Church of Latter-Day Saints?"

Fucking A, I'm almost done with this page, this is wrapping up the research on how this may be applicable to modern day business models, how to gather the most intelligent idea from groups, rather than the single most intelligent person working in the open window office in the next room over.

So I finally acknowledge their presence. Looking up, it seems they are as glazed over as the donuts at the local 7-eleven. You know it, the Krispy Kreme's left in the wintery freeze of Atkins, no longer touched, or eaten for that matter. These glossy donuts now relegated to melt for days in a make-shift oven while these guys sweat it out over this incredibly, out of the ordinary hot San Francisco January.

I say, "Do I look like a sheep?"

And they say, "Excuse me, sir."

And I say, "Do I look like a sheep, man?

They say, "Well no, you look like a man we'd like to talk to about the Book of Morman."

And I say quite frankly, "For a second there, I thought you had me for a sheep. 'Cause if you didn't know it, I'm a fucking wolf. I eat people like you whole, like a snake . . . slow and with precision. You know me as I'm the same good ole boy prophet you idolize, just like a Pope, man. You spend hours and hours trying to figure out who I am, how wonderful I can be, because that's what you want to know: How to think up here, in your head," I motion to my head and its slicked back hair, the rims of my glasses glossed over by hair product. "See there's more to God than praying or faith or any of that other voodoo you pass onto the masses. See, it is to know God not through some story, to know God not through the rigor of rules and regulations laid down thousands of years ago by a culture who solely needed these rules for self preservation, for cultural preservation, but to know God by unraveling the mystery before you. Man, you follow the bouncing ball across the street bc you are told to, but I realize there may be traffic, I stop. Self preservation, and I see the trap. But you two? You're left to blink aimlessly as you drift into a coma and sleep, in a daze trying SO hard to learn what I want to know . . . but you claim to know:

Is there a heaven? And if so, will I go there? And if I do, will I learn how absurd it is that you think there's a place set aside there for you, like the fucking Beverly Hills Motel. As if God tagged you, as if in a mountain of souls beckoning through the tunnel of light each second, he knows who followed Jesus, Buddha, etc. You're ridiculous, man. Now let me do my laundy. And next time, identify your prey before you realize that he is the predator."

They don't say a word. And I finish my paragraph and my dryer buzzes and the frigid wind blows their rejected hair as they step out, step out of the door and into a world that could be a glimpse of what heaven is like. A stage where the players, in robotic fashion, unravel a world that created them.

And I chuckle to myself, while the old lady next to me pushes off the bench and quickly vacates the premises, her old puss soured by my obvious, irrational response to the fine, well dressed gentlemen. As she struggles to carry her laundry, I carefully set my magazine down, avoiding any opportunity for its pages to be wrinkled, and whisk my way outside as her basket thumps to the ground.

"Let me help you."

Just like that, I help her to her car and lift it into the trunk. She looks destitute, and I slip a hundred into the basket. She is gracious and not as frightened.

I look up to the sky, "Are we even?"

She closes her door. There's this strange muttering and I turn thinking its the vagrant from half and hour ago, but it's her boat size, white Lincoln starting and then reversing like a stuttering 1st grader.

I watch her retreat and I mosey on inside the Coin-O-Matic laundromat to continue reading my wonderful article on emergence.


Geppetto sighs, interesting, finds the following etched into his bench:

He reveals the stage
set up on the pages
of his 1967 almanac
it says here,

"the attack of the killer seas are
crumbling the sea shores into
pieces of shark teeth and sea shells
all there for the taking like a
spiraling parachute into a blinding sunspot."

the only thought
going through his mind
is:

I got to get there somehow
someway
or no how

to meet an end who
will show me a means
to this purpose which
is not to propose
but to impose one's will
while the open faced palms
of the hands of God
on his right hand, there extended,
is the entrance to the valley of death
a sand storm, no longer born from
the movement of the heavens
but from the movement of the tumultuous
truculant bee hive mind,
a whirling windmill of honey &
milk mixed into the drooling blood
of the lamb with its eyes in the corner
speculating
about the afterlife
now found in his bleached socks
and mashed corn meal
reveals a brooding light
as bright as the instant
he was born, a tiny, vulnerable babe
whose whole life was revealed
before him

and, as with all newborns,

he wept . . .
he screamed . . .
he suckled.