Perhaps A Little Bitter

The land is big under us as we move across it, not thinking of the size, consumed by thoughts of payments, sex, making it big, life as a greedy human. One life to live. We arise from that ground with the sound of a wet balloon rubbing on skin. Pthluuup! and we're out. Always screaming for more.

This conscious and subconscious is a game we play to keep our minds from being too bored. Never mind if it is real. The stab to the stomach which is hunger, that kicks the mind from you until you feed it. But I am mortal. In your dreams pal. Fucking time worm. Too frightened to concentrate on that queesy feeling of the vastness of space, that each of us is a tiny expression of. Gone in a blink of the eye ... and you call that important? But it is all that I have.

Smooth skin rubs together as they dwell in a mind they create. Liquid feeling as the molecules call back to earlier times of water ... ocean, the mother's womb. Life slithering about, leaving crystalline fractal trails. You see the silliness of their decisions, then realize that you look the same way. Well, we're all in this together, aren't we? Cool is in since way before the Fonz. Heyyyyyy. But so is hot. Don't let the fires die. Since the space is so cold.

Don't worry be happy a #1 jam. Set, etched, stitched in the fabric of time. Going too fast going too fast in McLife. Plastic crystals slide off each other, macroenvirons that are very exclusive. You want to eat here? Not if you are this way or that. So tight not a drop of life can seep through. Packaging is more valuable than what it holds, though this attitude seems to be shrinking. Registered Trademark.

Mind flies open, to those special spots, conglomerations of power, spread across terrain this body has traveled. A mild gut feeling of death, crystalline xaos, with a warm wind surround. An environment that captures what it is to be alive. You could sell that and make millions... just as long as you don't make it too easy. Perhaps this is what we are already living now. Just someone else's dream. Is that god?

Is the navel the center of your universe? Connection to the earth mother, the power within. Wet ballon on skin again. Barely audible sounds fill the mind, able to pick parts from them and compose beautiful music, more of a vibe than anything else. Raw and real, nice and nasty.

That is our time, raw. "This packaging thing has gone too far!" cigar chomping politician in a bowler says, smashing his hand down on the podium for emphasis, "I need to feel clean." Evil dark men in expensive suits murmur to themselves, bidding their time. "Fucking reactionary radical! Red!! Let our children worry about that. It's too much to think about. We've got busy-ness to run. Profit margin, snort. End of transmission."

Primative sits on slag heap of macromolecules, born of industrial despair. There is no confusion, just one mind. Raw power, locked by an ancient key. We've got allot to learn before we leave this house. Billions of years before we have to go (down with the ship?). Satori as the lungs fill with ice cold sea water. The mother strangles her young when they misbehave too much. With a smile of satisfaction. That will teach the young upstart. Another two are born.

Jostling, bumping, packed hot and close listening to the throb of heavy music. End mind games, they think to each other. I just want some. The games must stop if we are ever to get there, ever able to confront extraterrestial space. We are not worthy, smashing the Challenger back to the ground. From Phoenix flames rebirth, but not always the way that you want it.

Drunken parties across the world, expressed in different language, saying with the same sad stone song, you can't always get what you want, but you might just find you get what you need. Sorosis livered pop chart millionares. What gives them the right to tell the truth? We awaken the next day with that particularly acute hangover. Two steps forward, one step back. Hurry up and wait.

Take lesson from the cat, content to be alive, reveling in just sensing. Steady foward motion as seen from afar. No emphasis on trivia. Cellular, genetic learning. Da man separates himself from himself. A self fulfilling prophesy. An exercise in frustration. Is that power or what?

We are one, strong.

Through A Tube

He lay on the edge of the ocean, warm in the noonday sun, caressed by the breath of the joining of water and earth, listening to the crash of waves marking the gentle passing of time. This is the life, he mused, the pressures of social living leaving his soul with every heartbeat and breath. His closed eyes registered glowing red, upturned toward the light. Deep in a relaxed trance state, his eyes began to flutter as he slid into sleep and the stories began to flow, not all so gentle, for he was thinking of the night.

The booguloo drive is fast and crazy, bumping with the rhythm of bodies sharing sweat in the fading light of hot summer day. It is the language of sex, electric crackle burning through the land. Later the day's lessons are shared dancing in packed and smoking places hot with liquid love. New love baby... Quick glances from across the room, until their eyes meet. She moves to him and now they dance together, teasing, feeling each other out. Others more quiet, also thump to the beat in dark corners. They visit extremes with slight looks as they pray to the poisons, shivering in little deaths, watching the time go, impotent with power, suffering in the warmth together. Hot terror in the audience, each wondering will I be alone tonight, dreading the answer. Each person's desire flames to the beat. What savagery in the couplings, kissing, licking, getting off on the whole scene. They begin to drift off in pairs, some in groups, now that the happening has peaked. Some of the audience retreat like fading blooms, melding with the other half inside. Others are more desperate, drunken on excesses, move in with crude one liners and inappropriate grabs, leading some to success. They move off the scene in search of the quiet nook. Then the law moves in with its bevy of strong arms and enforcers of all types, cops, bouncers, feminists, rapists, cons all proving their valour in ways more extreme. Shutting down the party, ending the fun. Its time for the reality check, the suffer. Plenty take the challenge and the blood pulses and flows, usually all in good fun. A chip of tooth flies high.

The mortar shell lobbed over in the dark air crashed down with a loud explosion in the building behind us. Its freezing cold winter at war. We shivered in our trenches, seeing their determined faces reflected in the glow of fire. I can't see if they're crawling forward from their trenches. Dark green blue light with flashes of red. Gnawing sick fear in my stomach. Our line all knows that they are better armed than we are. I think of the kids that I was playing with in the morning, how they laughed at silly things. I think of the pretty girls I want to sleep with, the ones with dancing eyes. Must protect from the creeping death that is approaching. A brilliant flare goes up, illuminating all this craziness in beautiful light. I see them, they are the same as us, want their women and a peaceful life. What are we doing here, united in our struggle to render change? The light flares out as quickly as it came, leaving only terror. Bullets cut silent paths over our heads. Shut up, don't think, this is not a game. Flares don't show much, I wish I could see. Shoot some in the light and they lie still. But the creeping continues and the flare is snuffed out. We can't hold them back. Recognition hot in our throats strangling the breath from our bodies. The glint of a gas mask in the green light. "VX! VX!" Nerve gas. No! The eyes of all those beside me shimmer with fear. I can feel them in my brain. We have nothing but bullets against them and we're low on that. We pull on our masks and protective clothing, obscuring sight and making breathing even harder. Fear making me sick inside of these constricting clothes. I control it, but give in to it; they are using the gas to break our last defense. The people behind are counting on us. I shoot blindly into the swirling mist before it overcomes me.

Dwelling in himself, he decided for a change and began to clean his cramped quarters. There was a pile of books lying on the carpeted floor, having been thrown there at least a week earlier. Upon picking the pile up a moth flew from the floor released, having been pressed flat against the carpet from mid flight by the falling books, happy again to be free.

And suddenly I saw life as something that only comes once. Very precious against the backdrop of eternity, not to be wasted. Somehow it seems that these words have always been with me, that they are me but at the same time as old as all things are. That this truth is something that can't be escaped even though we continually try to escape it. What is it to look death in the eye when it is always staring you in the face?

Waves of orgasmic bliss roll over us and we cuddle in the afterglow thinking simple thoughts to ourselves, feeling joined as one. I listen to the soft blowing of the wind. Sometimes such sounds seem so outside of me, but now they wash with me, in the purity of bliss. It is fall. The last stray acorns fall from their mother's to uncertain future. Leaves rain down with each breath of wind and scurry at the feet of the trees that shed them. Trees' self defense against the approach of winter; they take it in stride. Last years' leaves give spring nutrition. Cold snap tomorrow. The last bugs will shed their battered bodies which served so well over the summer. They call to love until the end. Live it full... got to go, don't always last. Frost brings violent change in fractal pattern. A slight crackle as time slows. The change caused by only several thousand miles difference in the angle of the rays of the sun on the earth. Fragile difference between life and death, conscious and unconscious, awake and asleep. They seem so different from each other, but are really only different phases of the same. Time change.

Frantic pacings, activity in spring weather on a Friday night. The hum is loud, begging for release from the doldrums of the week. Girls' shoes echo smartly, mixed with laughing and calling and one with gum cracking. Boys honk horns and whistle, and rev their engines, one nervously laughs. Just gimme some action.

After teasing back and forth, drinking, laughing, calling, forgetting things and generally stretching things out the tension has mounted and the flows like a river downtown, uptown, just out. The old people sweep them out with brooms and laughs, cries and shouts, and sometimes fists and worse. But then it doesn't matter because it is out and free, life vibrating strong in the souls seeking to see.

A creeping vacantness, bleary eyed loss of dreams gone bad. Sad turning of the stomach as the chronics take their dose. Sitting like vultures awaiting prey to share their misery with. Empty souled.

The bars are full, leaving watery pissings as we float through the night with grace, filled with yearning and love. Hopeful in heart, souls tenuously grasping one another, half remembering the complete melding of the other time, rushing forward, every bit, to complete the cycle again. Blank and unending, patterns part sought, drifting, drifting anguish of anarchy, nothing firm to grasp. Crying with laughter.

The thought is there, as they peak into the beyond, calm reassured between them. At last!... with that thought tumbling back into selfish domain. Humdrum, humdrum, humdrum. Repeating endlessly with the beatings of their hearts, still as one. Then parting.

She lit a cigarette and began to look mean, "You call that sex?" He was embarrassed at the thought. Actually it unnerved him that she had seen through him, for he had been plotting with his other lover, his bank account. She felt that his quick shift of attention was insulting, but then questioned herself if it had been her that had first broken the bond, when she had quickly compared the aspects of this experience and the one with Bob last week. Which had been more enjoyable? Was that the key to getting that right man?

He thought that perhaps if he had more money...

"Do you want coffee?" she asked, suddenly scared of the silence.

Lining up at the quik stop for our convenience store mates, beer and cigarettes clutched eagerly in our hands. Fun tonight, the want heavy. It's the men now, the women have already come and gone pretending that they really have someplace better to go. The only thing more sad than a woman without a man is a man adrift. Man world. Looking for that connection that sizzles the brain with a white hot pop! Later carnal connection with ourselves, lonely but good. Oh, we want the other, praying as the bottle drains in a sea of blue grey smoke. Turning in is the next best thing to turning out. Nose pressed against the glass. Why such a tender place for a battleground? The gradual loss of innocence. Hand held to head in mock swoon performance, for out of the strong comes false weakness. It is a little bit harder to get up each time, though.

A new strain has infected him with crushing weight. Aqualung moving heavy diving bell equipment across smooth cement submerged baseroom floor. Insect-like he buckles up yet again and moves the bell on, just beginning to see through it. Is it metal or glass? Undecided. Just when he is strong enough to move the bell at will with ease, fissures open at his feet in the floor, releasing noxious gasses into the bell, revealing the molten heat below. He abandons the bell and swims to the surface. Why had he tried to suffocate himself in the bell? Gee, it is a little bit cold out here. Maybe a ship will come. Bobbing gently in the cool sea, fog shrouding sometimes close and sometimes far, all swirling through his head. He can feel the water surrounding and pressing on him, and he began to feel small. Still he knows that it is part of the mother.

Fog clears with the coming of night, revealing the open sky, still just a bit of the breadth of existence, enveloping his tiny form within as well as without. He is delirious from the magnitude and depth, shocked by the recognition that has always been there, though for so long obscured by the bell, which now seemed far away and distant. He felt uncomfortable, wanting this to stop, then total breakdown, raw until nothing is left but the stark cold truth. Nerves frazzle and are overwhelmed as he coughs and cries, shivers and moans, screams and begs and tries to hide, floating in the evervast ocean. Calm takes hold, a dry airy feeling, but definitely down to earth. Life burning brightly inside, straining to get out. Channel the raw power.

After drifting in this new understanding for what could be days, weeks, months, years or only just several brilliant intense seconds, he is at the next phase of control. The sound of waves lapping the land starts first faint and far away, then growing ever louder with closeness, settling to a soothing rolling roar. He encounters the land, soft sand feeling strong beneath his feet as he lifts himself to his next destiny, the smile of the dream on his lips.

He reminds himself, "Do not forget the light bulbs."