As If This Means Anything...

The Patient and the Subversive

2009-04-05T11:37:00.001-07:00

The miraculous rivalry that keeps us in check. Fuels our saviours and brings us to peace with ourselves. To stand against and take back the stolen for others' benefit requires identification with the struggle. Subjectified into revolution, rebellion and the invention of peace. Oh, such a long drawn out process only fit for the patient and the subversive. In the meantime, they teach by example. Fretting the wind to make beautiful noises that reminds of an earth that we knew. There are people who have never seen a tree. In their fatal darkened mistake, those who still know the trees will fair the best as long as there are plants. Sustainability in practice and action and it strengthens our struggle's resources. Hunger is no longer the punishment for poverty. "You don't own the food anymore, we don't need you: go away..." The imaginary lines were still drawn. Divided, conquered, imprisoned and enslaved to an ignoble foe set on hellbent destruction.
The populous trapped in a state of disillusioned fear and apathy that keeps them tied to the grindstone. In a moment or so they will all be weeping for reasons yet to be told. Their blinking eyes shake at the sense of their potential freedom. Wrapped in distance of memory past they wonder if the behemoth will set them free before something else does. Faced with such a grand decision, they will either decide it will, it won't or "fuck the behemoth! We're taking back our freedom!" Now that the clouds are a blacker grey and rain eats our skins, popularity for the latter is growing, rising. People are losing their faith and their minds and this means they need new things to believe in. New things. But the new things are really just recycled old things that we realize as the foe forces us to believe them. The strongest believers are often the new ones, at least at the moment. Flag burners, ya bastas and rioters: just stunts to prove themselves? Backlash, paranoia, bad press and they raise the stakes and surveillance.
Fight of flight used to be the answer. Now the only flight left to use is by plane. So, in this creative rebellion we must not always avoid the use of the master's tools. But the master's tools don't share very well so they punish the use of their tools, although often with more chains.
In chains and cages, however guilded, the instinct is to escape. Confinement by force or finance is not an option that usually warrants survival. Even the fittest get caught but the bars are only as strong as the doubt that you can break them. So curious as to where freedom might lead and the insistent thought that it will be good. Alas, if you break the bars, they will hit you harder, chase you faster and watch you closer. Thus, the struggle remains in the hands of the patient and the subversive. Sneaking up from behind and meticulously dismantling the foe piece by piece.
The raging stench of humanity, vanity, aimless, apathetic eyes. The mystery of knowing: pale winds in an otherwise unforsaken drought of thought and hope. Perils of merciless waste we made to try to save ourselves. We made it and now it is ours, our problem. Through blank dull gazes we justify the situation by saying we had to--lies that will deal the fatal blow and we're gone: dust in the undying shadows of doubt.

Strike The Witless Steam

2009-03-22T12:37:00.000-07:00

dripping like waste from the colour spectrum
the eyes you taste and see are false
like plastic blossoms dissolving in the acid rain
hearts afire and the species is left to drown and burn
fearless impertinence strikes the witless steam
and cold hands shutter against blistered winds
the mind grows quiet, listless and unsettled
like the threads of time lost in historic shocks
while wandering scowls abound the flocks alight
dusk sets in and we are blinded by its light
noiseless hours go by and chew at our beings
sands and soils eroded amidst the grey skin
hung in haste from shattered chalky bones
that will smell of life yet once again soon
in the relative passing of aeons and millennia
fields of twisted wires, cables, spines and cords
we knew these answers well at some point
before we guessed what questions we should ask
and left our thoughts impaired by ghostly image
seeking hope amongst the ruin, light amongst the dark
frost between raindrops and the dew of blasphemy
that has yet to be unknown but still forsaken
strangled in the arms of joyous sentience
withering away in the depths of innocence
forgotten it would be if memory could hold
these faceless notions tight and love them still
open into these words a song, a sound, sin waves
numeric dreams with broken codes upon which
we could set the record straight, to play it
listless and absorbed with twinkling smiles
on the lips of young and old, alive and dead
friend and foe, beast and beauty, hill and valley
where we shall soon be set free to roam
while we sleep the rest are journeying further
into the intrepid, unwanted and undiscovered.

The Landstonian Method of Methane-based Atmosphere Creation

2009-03-22T12:35:00.000-07:00

Dinosaurs are smarter than you think. But, then again: what does science know? Numbers add up to nothing. Many people today think of humanity as some sort of logical conclusion to evolution. If dinosaurs weren't a logical conclusion to evolution, then I don't know what will be. Neither does anyone. Human perception of time doesn't even come close. The planet is still evolving. Other planets, galaxies and universes are evolving too. Mars is currently developing an atmosphere using a methane based technique devised by Brimmy Landstone.
Brimmy came from a small island in the middle of an ocean on Earth. When Brimmy was a child, a spaceship came falling out of the sky and landed in the water. They had come to the island and as one of the only people living on the island, Brimmy got to meet the astronauts. Brimmy was fascinated. She decided that she wanted to be an astronaut. So she asked them to take her for a ride in their flying boat. They didn't understand. Brimmy decided to just go to the flying boat. Maybe they would understand. When she got to the flying boat, the door was open so she went in. There were all sorts of knobs and gauges and things she'd never seen before. Brimmy thought for a second that the astronauts must be aliens. But then she figured that the rock covered in water must have more islands with more people and perhaps it was commonplace for flying boats full of people to fall out of the sky.
Brimmy still wanted to try the flying boat so she started pushing buttons. Suddenly, the door slammed and the boat began to whir. The ground began to shake so hard that the flying boat bounced into the air. Suddenly, an enormous volcano erupted straight out of the water and blew the flying boat into the air. The flying boat was going through the clouds, faster than it had ever gone before. Brimmy was rather uncomfortable with gravity flattening her against the rear wall of the vehicle.
Suddenly, Brimmy was floating around lighter than air. Brimmy was not previously aware of the existence of space. She figured that it was probably different beyond the clouds but eventually figured out that she couldn't jump that high. She certainly had no idea that things floated in space. Now she floated around inside what was a lot like a flying house. This was a puzzling situation to be in.
Suddenly, a box inside the front of the boat started speaking. Brimmy went to the front of the boat to look for the person who was speaking. "One of the astronauts is in there," she thought. "Speaking that astronaut language." Brimmy answered back in her own language. More astronaut language and no astronaut.
She finally decided that there was no one there and that this was an extraordinary talking box. It kept talking and she kept listening. Eventually, Brimmy started to pick up the language. She already had figured out that "astronaut" was the word for the people who had come to the island. Brimmy heard the phrase "Are you an astronaut?"
"No, I'm an astrologer." Brimmy thought it was funny. Astrologer means astronaut in her language.

But she was hungry. There was no food in the flying boat.

However, the flying boat was going faster than anyone knew, faster than anyone had gone before. The time-space continuum was wobbling and Brimmy started hallucinating. Suddenly, the flying boat smashed into a solid red surface. Brimmy was the first person to go to Mars but she didn't know it was Mars.
The flying boat was going so fast that it put a large hole in Mars. When the boat stopped moving it was well underground. The boat had cracked in half. There was an underground cave of sorts surrounding where the boat had stopped. Brimmy climbed out and relaized that she could see because the walls glowed with beautiful multicoloured mushrooms. There was a small stream running through the long narrow cave. She wasn't surprised to find an underground stream on Mars. She figured that Mars had water just like Earth.
Brimmy looked back at the ship to see that several cows were coming out of the large crack. the flight before her's had been doing research on cows in space. They began to graze on the mushrooms. Brimmy smiled and drank some water from the stream.
Many years passed as Brimmy and the cows explored the tunnels, grazing on mushrooms and drinking from the stream. the herd of cows grew . Thus, there was always methane in the air. Brimmy didn't know that methane was a greenhouse gas. she didn't even know that methane existed. Thus, Brimmy didn't realize that as they kept getting closer to the surface, the methane released by the cows had been causing an atmosphere to develop. In fact, when Brimmy first stepped out onto the surface of Mars, it was raining.
But, alas, this is the impossible story, the story science can't tell you. No one ever really knew taht Brimmy went to Mars. The Landstonian Method of Methane-based Atmosphere Development is virtually unknown.
When humans did arrive on Mars, many, many years later, they were surprised to find a fully functioning ecosystem dominated by talking cows. Cows don't usually speak because they don't have anything to say. These cows spoke to tell their story. Sadly, depsite the abundance of cows on Earth, humans don't speak cow. Thus, they didn't understand and are hunting down cows as alien invaders to this day

Poesis Sans Nom

2009-03-22T12:34:00.000-07:00

Beaucoup des personnes ne mangent pas
Les bastilles riche est le fin du monde
Par chose et par chance
Ton province ou ton distance
Fait plus travaille pour l'argent de rois
Si vous morte, je suis innocente
Vois pas, ecoute et menage
Les images est soulement papier
Et mon visage est soulement corps
Dans la ville, ne dormier pas
Buvez, fumez, sensitive
Si vous tombez, je suis dormis

Hands Across The Sky

2009-03-22T12:33:00.002-07:00

linked hands across the sky
reflected in shades of black and blue
amongst the pale grey moonlight
the voices stutter realms of hope
to the tired hands waving from the sea
clutching at the curtain of dawn
distant bells shake the air
and feed the chirping ears
contained within these empty hands
eyes averted, faces drawn thinner
then smudged like ashes in the wind
somewhere a child is singing without a sound
time breaks and all matter of opinions meet
we are dreams, lies, hands across the sky
clenched into fists, clutching, caressing
feeding the hungry mouths of the myriads
fragments in a blink of dust
burning out the excess, left for dead
the frail hum of this slow pulse
a drum that beats life, breath, blood
wrapped in tongues, tomes and tyrrany
breaths of fire rest amongst the flame
places, the hearts we've warmed and broken
carved our names into the ancient stone walls
and climbed back up to this vantage point
beneath the words the stars fall silent
sand and snow both drift in search of a home
then reverberate in these long dark hallways
left here as a reminder of progress
a process of decay, deterioration, loss
as the sea washes away these marks:
our footprints across the sky.

Of Temper and Reign

2009-03-22T12:33:00.001-07:00

clouds weep grace, impress a stain upon this dream
nightmares of indecision hope and sacrifice
meaningless is meaning, less than we know
but the eyes of dawn blink and shutter as
memory waves and makes ghost faces at the
naked unborn children choking on their wombs
unfettered by the im-perilous scope of this
impatience magnitude drowned in the hands
of the raped and the damned and the crusted
with star-crossed voyages to immediacy
of temper and reign while blinking
faking the impossible and making it look real

In Microcosm's Hope

2009-03-22T12:31:00.000-07:00

amalgamating faces dripping eyes into your mind
the sighs of dead whistles and lost paradigms
inside all of these wonders are dreams that we fed
to outsider imagery amongst smokey grey bricks
when summertime comes we'll take off our coats
drag out our feces and fertilize with it and grow
into the dark canyons and things we must be
paralyzed demons in syncopated luminosity
hope is a void and we must fill it with the joy
of the choices we made, the words that we say
in microcosms' hope, loss and unwanted desire
missing the point clarified in broken tongue
opposable thumbs that work for and against
the stakes have been driven, the claims that we've staked
i am the particle, the participle and the clause
actively passive within painted white walls
noises make it sound like it was never here
reaching hands grab it and then disappear
posturing poets with nothing to say
they make funny faces and run away

Without Words

2009-03-22T12:30:00.000-07:00

purple metal raindrops obliged in the drifting sun
communications in paradise that cover the domes
where once laid a faith that knew nothing else
but peaceful love for community and love of the self
without words they were torn from their towers
left high and dry in the needless thrown hours
all of the songs that were still left to sing
were frozen and hammered out flat upon
the earth that reflected their struggle, their sun
and when all of their voices were cut out
from the heads and the meaning they cared about
oppressors stood laughing, kicking away skulls
all the masses they slaughtered, they thought animals
now the story be told by the folks that did win
it's not just a shame, in fact it's likely a sin
generations lost to never again be found
of those who eaten, burned or drowned
as the populace sing another popular song

the face of unknown bodies

2009-03-22T12:29:00.000-07:00

decadent fools believe
what they do not know
the energy of wasting
perhaps drought, famine
they are all alive now
pictures of the ending
thirst, sadistic need
a droplet on the sand
our ghosts roam the waters
while suns bake the soil
the workers wished for shade
the chains of humility
capital, greed and prisons
placebo votes for no one
pastures of methane livestock
inflated populations displaced
these reasons reveal ends
begins, middles and mediocrity
the faces of unknown bodies

Immaculate Fools

2009-03-22T12:28:00.000-07:00

they turned up like goats, the immaculate fools
of the conquest, blusters of sunlit reunions
into the wilds of the lost they went screaming
pieces of this are missing, boats on a shoreline
the dusk in my eyes is forsaken, drowned
first on the shit list and last to get paid
indifference means distance, time
treasure hunt, fire up and get on with it
sounds through the broken message player
predictable change, chaos, comparative blocs
the sounds are all organized noise, life
barriers of tactile demolishment, standing
up on a hill in the middle of nowhere
someday memory's future again
tossing fishing line at the abyss, hole
missing the end, the beginning, physical
places of misrepresent, hope, the empires
frontiers of everyday nowhere land
where sunlit skies are casting shadows
imperative subtraction, additional divides
somehow regarding the evolution and empire
milking the facts until they become true
eyes afire standing in a glassy row
laughing at imaginary noise, electrical sins
the people are bored and they want to go home
such a message in the wind of fire
take your timing self away somewhere
the business is no longer here

Adventures In A Poisoned Foodchain

2009-03-22T12:27:00.000-07:00

Termy Thunker was a radioactive mouse. Termy had just recently escaped from a scientific research laboratory. The radioactivity had made Termy so big that he was able to overpower the scientist by biting his hand off. The commotion allowed time for Termy to escape. However, Termy was a mouse the size of a small dog. A mouse that big is pretty rare and gets noticed. Termy went for the forests outside of the city. He figured that the further he could get away from the laboratory, the less chance he had of them finding him. He ran for hours and hours. He finally reached the outside of the city and disappeared into the forest. Suddenly, a snake jumped into sight and swallowed Termy whole. The snake was named Raoi. Raoi was now infected with radioactivity. She began to get longer and larger. However, just then a bird swooped down and ate the snake. The bird, named Squabby became radioactive. Squabby began to get bigger. now at that moment, the scientist from the laboratory was relaxing with his family at a nearby cottage in the woods. The scientist was recovering from his hand being chewed off. The scientist's brother was out hunting. He spied the now gigantic Squabby and shot her down. The hunter took the giant bird back to the cottage for supper. The scientist was sleeping and did not see the bird until it was on his plate at dinner. Though still struggling to eat with only one hand, the scientist still ate several large portions of the bird. Very soon after, the whole family was sick with radiation poisoning. The scientist's family all died, leaving the scientist to be a one handed bitter man--much weakened by the poisoning and grief.

Sybiotism For Sleepwalkers

2009-03-22T12:25:00.002-07:00

Symbiotic relationship:
Purple ships with little black bells that sound like morning.
Tradition and myth:
Tigers, brontosauruses, pigs and neon coloured birds.
The wolf ecstatic, punctual like rain;
Migratory guess-what-mind-o-phobia.
Purple. It's out there.
Mindless.
Worked them all into the ground.
The waves turned them into the sands.
Waving, pulling them under the water
Diving wet eyes see past the shadow storm incarnate
Beams--they intersect with our hording of life.
I picked yer pocket maybe once or twice.
You should have been paying closer attention.
Fragrant mynosorgic paraphones pretend to be the answer.
I'd disagree but that don't mean anything.
Perhaps it should(n't)?
Lilacs.
Gold porcupines.
Glue and nylon.
I wish I was to be unafraid of.
The market doors are open as the climb of the sun and the corporate ladder invoke another day.
Pestered.
Microcosms of peace from within and peace from without.
Taking leave from the senses and just letting go to a place far away
where star-berries twinkle and no roads go there.
I ate your face by accident...
Apologies.
Oh geez.
Pelted paradigm shifts at unsuspecting disbelievers.
Tripe.
I wipe my ass with it.
Shitty.
You are the first person to read this.
Perspective, perceptive sprinkles and thyme rot on the window sill.
I should've known...

Illiterate Nouns

2009-03-22T12:25:00.001-07:00

Mundane proverbs from Medicine Hat.
The milky stardust that followed me there.
I don't know. It must be winter somewhere.
The frogs have been masticating.
I told you this would happen.
It fell out of the sky into my eyes.
The leprechauns will never tell.
Take your eyes and fly fly away.
Incessant chatter.
Microphones and holes full of dirty underwear with holes in them.
The hilarious freak show, the paranoid blue scalpers
Indecent, I says, but they won't let me back in.
I'd jump over the wall if I cared but it don't matter much.
The river is free and so is the water.
The snakes and the rabbits play by the shore.
Nouns, illiterate nouns: verbatim
Horoscopes in haiku...the dynamic chapters of diaper im-paradigm--
Y'know what I mean?
Electric firecrackers and signs without words.
Token-finances, magic meal beans and inkblots: done;

Poison In The Well

2009-03-22T12:23:00.000-07:00

approximate your infamy and store it in a jar
hope was left in a box, nailed shut and locked
subsistence, silent irony, the chains of what we know
persisting in economies where we are bought and sold
the dead won't stop their screaming anymore
for when you stop believing they aren't gone
buried in the frozen ground to keep their regrets fresh
sanctify the reasons that you chose yourselves
alone amongst the masses; drifting chaos; crowds:
the implements of modern technological demands
wired to the circuit like we're meeting its advance
choking on our knowledge, we are frying in the blood
that we spilled across this planet wide and still do
to thank this great creator for the love shared
and shown to all the species upon this rock in space
judging not the presence or the absence of a face
inside the bearing effort of us all is in the living
the patience and forgiving when we forget to give
beauty that's inside of us all, never seen but shown
joyous celebrations like when capitalism fails and falls
and all the tyranny will only serve to justify in time
the means, for there is no meaning in the end
to dream and wake in the freedom of ourselves
an accident, an incident, poison in the well

This Sleepy Recluse

2009-03-22T12:22:00.000-07:00

Branches reach to grasp at
The cold indifferent night sky
As the cold wind blows the snow and stars
Seeming to bend the light of these
Towns below, the audacity of smoke
From each humble chimney's hearth
But the branches stretch higher
Grasp at the moon and holding it
Gently in those wooden palms
The radiance of reflection, time
Algorithms of unified reach
Infecting melodies beyond
Thoughtless paranoid indiscretions
In an anti-social galaxy:
This sleepy recluse has gone to bed.

Letter From Space

2009-03-22T12:19:00.000-07:00

1) Final Days

"Mastadons! The empiricist is cutting the folks on the sledge. In the strangling depths of reunion, paradigm crinkles and the acid wash fleets. The pounding daze upon which we've been thrown is beating in the twilight: Alone and perceiving the end of nocturnal social gallantries. Abroad and abroad the ship that goes over, perpetuates in random sense and time the stones of the future; a blink in the eyes that count eons.
Your peace is still, do deserve it. The powers that be are obnoxious, perpetuating madness, the ending:
We are doomed and have no escape.

But, the beginning was yet to come. The eyes of inspection were furrowed in the mid-tempo strait of malignance. Blind blue eyes in cedar night shining with unmistaking depth of purpose. Slipping relief as the boughs shake and drop us on ourselves. We eat words and they feed our beings. Frost in our hearts, the burning insidious burning, open throats wheeze at the stench. Perpetuating meaningless nonsense, the void in which we sleep and drown. The pools of sand coated flesh and the corresponding eyes.

The sky was torn down in such a hurry. Those merciless blanks that swoop abide in the fires of meaning and demise. There on the mornings waking did the plaster dreams hollow and whisk us away in delusionary fits. Then, there was no remembering: just wicked feats of abbreviated juncture in mounting karmic debts that seal our senses and open our mouths.

Perimeters amid the dust and vomit persuade the persuasive, challenging their thoughts while their fears grow eyes, go limply choking into darkened holes. Things that they've made, things that they've played, things that they've laid and said.

The scenery is embellished, post-human and grey. Days have grown longer and darker and colder. Tuesday might be a hundred years from now.

The dawn is on fire. Creatures awake to the burning and find that it is only sensory: Media shocks above the billboard lights drowning us all in flame and prediction. Endings are just recycled beginnings.

In the morning, the sirens will still be wailing: the shrieking metals ghosts that haunt their screams. Words of display and convenience: a sword in the side of freedom in the name of justice and commerce and systematic nosiness.

Perils of unmistaken doom, forecasting in the inevitable flashing lights of trouble that are too late a warning. Passengers exceeded the risk and broke out the depths for the mystery to incorporate the future, quiet down and rest amongst the grasses in the dusk that fills the sun with longing for a fertile earth. Immaculate suns, the stars, that distant burn as creatures that can only see darkness. Determining eyes that won't see the end as they melt across the time space continuum and explode into solar systems. Minds are not aware this has happened. Its all too big to talk about anyway. Words just wouldn't allow it.

2) The Reflecting Pool

Superstitious periscopes, the dirt in their eyes. Sunbeam in retrospective and the lies of these crimes. Perpetual debt and longing for the clouds to blind our sights, to take us back down stream through the blissful oasis and out to sea on a raft fashioned from the last standing building.

When dormant soils took back dreaming, fed to the earth like waste in these still sands and waters the vines creep softly amidst swallowing unsuspecting fools drowned in the stagnant wilds. The impertinence of unknown tides, wide blankets of mist across the sky--meaning lost in dysfunction of time. Our feats were conquered, corrected. The dust in these eyes knows that sight is just a sense and hear them crying for home.

3) In The Words Of Asteroids

The games were over and saddle was blackened with soil. Then in the east there arose such a clatter. Dawn was breaking again. Sounds of the ringing sarcastic laughter reached my ears as i went to sleep. in dreams without i had spent too long and my likeness was smeared across the wall, dripping in tyrannical whispers and it seemed to have ears and eyes,

The suspicion of dusk passed through and the context faded. There is no hope without winning. Pieces of tattered endearment strike the match and I too am wasting. Fury for the crutch that laid me here. My eyes wider open, unwilling to see. The mockery of freedom and emotion, I have exceeded in a place far beyond the stretches of this earth. But in time, even the sun fades and this indifferent chemical reaction turns us into stars. Feats of unrecognized expanse where life has different meaning. Amidst the consciousness of giant gaseous stars are the memories of our sun's supernova, which is bound to happen again sometime.

Galaxies fade and are swallowed up or exploded they'd say. But they aren't hear anymore, so they don't have much of a say. The people in charge of things knew it would happen but they didn't much care because it couldn't be helped. Cleared at the ending bell and raptures of solar wind tore me apart and blew my bits into the asteroid belt.

One of the most unpredictable rocks in all of space and the cause of mass extinctions. Hope so dreary for mortals but atmosphere clouds their ways. In the midst of all the turmoil, there's a target. Time is counted in eons and patience is enduring freedom. Empires have nothing on this vast open mind of some yet unknown super-being. Within these voids, there is fulfillment and in the absence of time, I do my best to carry these spores home. When I crash, I'll leave my mark in the form of a seed or a spark.

Through the distant realms of chaos, the beating of hearts never ceases.

A Bullet In The Pavement

2009-03-22T12:17:00.000-07:00

An old man named Jimmy-Paul sits in a rocking chair on the porch of his house. His dog lies beside the chair next to a case of whiskey and a pouch of tobacco. Across his lap are a guitar and a loaded shotgun. When joggers, bikers, cars and pretty much anything else goes by he rolls the butt of his cigarette up into a little ball and throws it at them. He remembers when these little balls used to hit trees. Many years ago he had left the city to go out into the most isolated spot in the forest he could find. It was upon on a big hill near a river. He planted a garden and ate wild food. He taught his dog to hunt and sand songs with the birds. Jimmy-Paul’s favourite pastime was to sit in the rocking chair on his porch and play guitar rocking back and forth.
One day he saw someone coming up the hill. He had not seen another human in years and was not anxious to see anymore of them. Having no weapons at his disposal, he built a slingshot and used it to fire a pitchfork at the invader who was quite narrowly missed. The intruder ran down the hill, tripping over a protruding root and rolling head over heels into a tree. The impact shattered the intruder’s spine resulting in total paralysis. One would think this was a bad thing but at least it numbed the pain when a porcupine fell out of the tree and landed quills first on the intruder’s face. Jimmy-Paul has a very broad definition of humour and he laughed for hours. By this time, his dog had all ready devoured most of the unfortunate intruder’s flesh and was building a fire to smoke the rest of it.
Supposedly it happened that the intruder was an official of a supposed governing body and his presence on the hill was to inform Jimmy-Paul that the land on which he had been living had been sold to a logging company. Thus, he was coming to ask that Jimmy-Paul vacate the land. Jimmy-Paul did not know this, but even if he did the official would have likely been launched from the slingshot. It just so happens, however, that Jimmy-Paul is not a stupid man and while examining the content’s of the victim’s pockets he realized the extent of the message anyway. A few days later, another two officials came up the hill. Jimmy-Paul loaded porcupines into his slingshot because he thought fondly of a porcupine to the face having seen it once all ready.
Soon the domestic army (AKA police) helicopters were flying over his house. Jimmy-Paul made lard bombs that when straight up into the air out of bear’s fat dumped into cauldrons of boiling water. The helicopter fell from the air and landed kind of sideways in a tree. The propellers thrashed through the branches and did a lot of damage. Two officers fell out of the door and landed on the ground headfirst and unconscious. Jimmy-Paul tied them to trees and left his dog to guard the prisoners. He climbed up into the helicopter and managed to coax it out of the tree and back into the sky. He flew for a few hours before finding a small town. Jimmy-Paul really didn’t want to see anymore people and really didn’t care about the helicopter. He also felt that he really needed a gun to protect his shack and his privacy. Thus, he flew the helicopter through the front door of the hunting shop and grabbed a shotgun and thousands of shells on the fly. Since that was fairly easy, he also flew through the liquor store. The helicopter was a bit wobbly on the flight back but he ended up having to crash-land it on some people who had wandered up the hill.
Jimmy-Paul returned to his captives. His dog had all ready eaten one the officers’ legs. The other officer was even more scared in anticipation of being eaten. He told the whole story about the loggers and promised to help Jimmy-Paul if he could leave. If Jimmy-Paul had been thinking clearly, he would have realized that cops carry guns and not left in search of one. However, he had really wanted to fly the helicopter. He also really preferred a shotgun to a pistol and the selection of the liquor store to that of the random fermented concoctions he made himself. However, as the one officer tried to run away carrying the one, Jimmy-Paul fired with both pistols and the shotgun. Jimmy-Paul didn’t think it was fair to shoot someone tied to a tree.
A few weeks later Jimmy- Paul heard logging going on a far distance from the shack. He walked out to greet the loggers but their personal logging machines were bullet proof. One of the logging machines was malfunctioning and the engine caught fire. Thus, Jimmy-Paul ran to the river and tried to build a dam to flood the area. Jimmy-Paul smoked like a chimney but he always rolled his butts into little tiny balls between his fingers to make sure they were out. The dam didn’t work very well. It managed to save a little bit of the forest around the shack but for as far as he could see the forest had burnt away. Before the new plants had taken advantage of this the construction vehicles were moving on to the land and within a year the hill stood amidst concrete and pavement as the last of the local trees. The dam had caused a moat to form around the bottom of the hill. The moat was beginning to smell from the bodies of yuppies who thought they’d make a Saturday afternoon out of canoeing out to the hill for a picnic. Concerned governmental officials and curiosity seekers also left some corpses in the water.
Some of the city dwellers tried firing back at Jimmy-Paul but he was such a good shot that he could shoot a bullet right out the air. He never got hit. The day Jimmy-Paul ran out of bullets they enlarged the ghetto to encompass his house and swallow up the hill. The dirt path in front of his shack became a busy road with noisy traffic and a sidewalk right in front of the steps of his porch. On the plus side, they put a gun store and a liquor store on either side of his shack. So Jimmy-Paul sat on his porch flicking cigarette butt balls at passers-by, drinking cases of whiskey and occasionally firing his shotgun. He played guitar a lot and sometimes Jimmy-Paul would busk from his front porch or rob the audience (depending on his mood). He really liked to shoot at tires and cars in general. The police refused to patrol the neighbourhood because they were scared.
The problem of the matter was that Jimmy-Paul was actually a really nice guy. He spent a lot of time playing guitar and singing songs for the locals and usually only managed to shoot really irritating or troublesome people. Thus, his killing spree went unstopped. Besides, no one else could out shoot him and the shack eventually became an impenetrable fortress. Not that it needed to be. The locals feared, respected and thought strangely fond of Jimmy-Paul. Perhaps because he was the oldest person any of them knew. Perhaps because he was one of the few people left who had ever seen a tree. Who knows? What we do know is that at the age of 146 years, the leg of Jimmy-Paul’s rocking chair he’d had for 120 years broke off. Jimmy-Paul was thrown from the porch into the street and paved over by a paving truck. No one’s seen him since but every once in a while a bullet pops out of the pavement.

Myron Hallington and The Hole

2009-03-22T12:14:00.000-07:00

Ironically, it was a sunny day and the birds were singing. One of the first days of spring that it was not raining. Myron Hallington walked out of his house into the unusually smog-free day. Myron was a little stressed. He had been cooped up in his house ‘hibernating’ and watching television all winter. He had a lot of pent up misspent anxious energy to dispose of. Thus, Myron decided to dig a hole. His original plan was to dig a hole to bury things in—his television, his couch for starters—later possibly himself. Myron started digging. He liked digging. As the hole got bigger, Myron was struck by the strange intoxication of the musty, coolness of the earth. He kept digging and started staying in hole as much as he could. For easier access, Myron dug the hole on a slant so it eventually became more of a tunnel. He also began reinforcing the tunnel so it did not collapse on him. He began to eat soil instead of climbing out of the tunnel to find food. He really could not afford food anyway. He had been employed for many months and this had afforded his winter hibernation.
A certain depth, Myron began to discover that there were other tunnels under the earth. Some of them were natural, but surprisingly, there was an entire community of subterranean hole digging folks living amongst these tunnels. Even more surprising was the fact that these people were working together to dig a tunnel that would connect The American Midwest and an undisclosed area in the Middle East. This tunnel was later to be fitted with a device, which was a combination subway/elevator to carry passengers between these two destinations. They had planned it so it did not go through the centre of the earth and theoretically avoided the many logistical problems that would cause. The plan was to sell this tunnel for a large sum of money and thus a myriad of unemployed subterranean hole diggers could become idle rich subterranean folks. Some of their dreams were filled with hopes of business commuters using this tunnel. Other imagined transporting oil through it and thus minimising the risk of oceanic oil spills. Some thought it would be sold to military interests.
Myron thought this seemed like the best thing he had going on right at that moment so he started helping them work on this project. Comparative to the people working on the tunnel, the tunnel was actually quite professionally and safely constructed. Much of the material necessary for reinforcing the tunnel was readily available in underground rock and mineral deposits. For the first time in his life, Myron actually had an interest in interacting with other human beings: perhaps one would call it common ground. They all worked on the tunnel pretty much constantly. They ate very little and slept even less. The determination was inspiring even if it was for a goal that all in all had some questionable capitalist ends. Without the light of the sun to mark the passage of time it is difficult for anyone who was there to say how long the construction of this tunnel actually took.
The builders being subterranean, the tunnel was started from deep within the earth instead of at the ends. Affects of gravity had been considered in as much as estimates showed that if one entered the tunnel they would fall for the first half of the way and have to climb the second half. However, these effects were supposedly avoided by the slant of the tunnel. This was not to be.
As the tunnel neared completion the earth began to shake violently. Later reports suggest one of the most massive earthquakes in history. The tectonic plate on which the Western coast of North America sits slid into the ocean and under the prairies of the Midwest. This pushed the Appalachians back up in the sky, higher than they had ever been. The prairies that no longer had mountains to keep ocean of them flooded deeply as far Eastwards as the Great Lakes. In the Middle East, the oil sank deeper into the earth never to be found by greedy human with dirty hands again. Tidal waves left a multitude of lakes and river where there had once been the dry arid land of the desert. Many Pacific Islands now stood much further out of the water than they ever imagined possible. Even Atlantis had a chance to dry out. Worldwide there was transformation as water and land changed places.
Miraculously (and as a testament to their craftsmanship) the subterranean tunnel digger were completely unharmed, although well shaken. The tunnel has undergone some transfiguring as well and both ends were now open. Gravity had caused the effect of making a clear straight tunnel lined with solidified volcanic rock running from the New Appalachians to the lowland plains somewhere near where the peak of Everest used to be.
However, the weather on earth had become completely unpredictable. Even the right-wingers recognised the climate change this time. The whole Earth was wobbling on a weird angle. Physics wanted the tunnel to be the axis but centrifugal force would not let the axis change that much. This went on for what seemed like years but the recollection of time is questionable as the Earth spun three hundred and sixty five times in what clock-time estimated as a few minutes. Eventually, the Earth crashed in to the moon and sent it flying into the sun. Details after that are a little sketchy because after that Myron Hallington woke up from his long winter ‘hibernation’ and went outside to dig a hole.

Le Salon Refuse

2009-03-22T12:12:00.000-07:00

A painter awoke to the glory of another sunrise. This was the day he had long waited for. “Today,” he told himself, “I paint my masterpiece.” He arose and gathered an easel, a palette, some canvasses, some brushes and some paint. Walking down streets until they turned in roads and then paths he found himself in the home of his muses. This home was and might still be a meadow covered in a colourful multitude of different flora and faunas where the sun shines through the branches of the scattered trees in a way that made the colours radiate and shine in particularly spectacular way. At one end of the meadow there was a cliff that dropped sharply, giving the illusion that this meadow was some sort of worldly heaven at the end of the earth. To capture such beauty in paint would surely be the achievement necessary to gain the respect of the ever so critical and pretentious artistic community back in the city.
Such a masterpiece was not painted that day, for as any painter knows the sun moves, the earth moves and thus shadows move. However, after spending several weeks in the meadow painting many different sequences and shades of light reflected on the ever changing, ever-growing meadow there developed a painting. This painting surely must capture the meadow at its most beautiful with all the insight and sentimentality to be able to give meaning. It was the masterpiece in the opinion of its creator. He took his work from the easel and compared it to the meadow one last time before gathering his equipment and walking back into the city.
There still much yet to be told about our protagonist the painter. Firstly we can call him Xavier, for that was his name. It originally was simply ‘X’ because neither of his parents could read or write so that was the name they gave him the only name they knew how to write. However, many children of the illiterate had also come by this fate so when X learned to read he called himself Xavier. Secondly, Xavier was completely colour-blind. He only saw in black, white and shades of grey. However, he was unaware of this malady and that his own conception of colour was completely different than that of those around him.
Thus, as Xavier walked into the prestigious pomp and circumstance pretentiousness of Le Salon Des Beaux Art, the painting of the beautifully coloured meadow he carried with him was completely in black and white. Xavier was completely unaware. The Salon was excepting works of art, the best of which would be put into their upcoming summer exhibition. It was considered an honour to have one’s work displayed there. Xavier had never been so confident in his life as when he filled out the forms and handed his work over to the snobbish clerical staff on the other side of the large oaken counters.
The history of art has often been concerned with the emotionality, feelings, experiences, etc. of the painter and of viewers of paintings. However, is erroneous to disregard the emotionality, feelings and experiences, etc. of the painting itself. The painting in question was named Meadow for Xavier although literate was not much of a wordsmith. At this point in the story, Meadow was wishing she were still in the meadow instead of hanging on the dingy walls of the artificially lit Salon. As a painting cannot see itself Meadow did not know she was black, white and grey. She had been absorbed in the confidence of her painter and believed that she was the most beautiful sight ever to grace these walls. As she looked around at the other paintings in the room, she entertained herself with fancies of being heralded above the paintings as far too superior to belong in such a competition.
Alas, the judges and critics entered the hall and went from painting to painting making notes and muttering and discussing each work. When they got to Meadow the judges recoiled in shock. They had been to the meadow and were shocked that someone would attempt to portray it in black and white. One judge remarked something of ironies and some metaphorical gibberish about the lack of colour. Within the span of thirty seconds Meadow had been passed over with little acclaim to outweigh the criticism. Later that day she was taken down from the wall and out of the building, through the filthy streets of the city and hung on a different wall in a different building. Meadow did not know where she was but the paintings around her were much less attractive than those she had hung amongst at the Salon. This was the Salon Refusé. It was here that paintings rejected from the Salon were placed. In her short life Meadow had never been so sad. She cursed Xavier for painting her ugly and swore a revenge that would make him suffer the same fate.
Eventually, Xavier came to visit Meadow. He was now aware of his inability to see colour as others saw it but was still in denial. For hours he stood staring at Meadow unable to believe that what he saw as the pinnacle work of modern painting in hues of brilliance was merely a dull greyscale sketch. Unknown to Xavier, Meadow was trying to look her ugliest at that point just hurt him more.
Time passed and Xavier left the Salon Refusé in a cloud of shame. He wandered the dirty streets of the city in a listless blank stupor for days. When his body refused to carry him any further, he collapsed outside an apothecary shop. The apothecary business had been a little slow since the advent of modern medicine so the elderly woman minding the shop was looking out the window to see Xavier collapse in front of the shop. She went outside and found no challenge in picking up the long un-fed painter. She placed him on a cot in the back of the shop and left him to sleep.
The next day Xavier awoke but refused to open his eyes. The apothecary woman brought him soup and made him eat. Xavier had difficulty eating with his eyes closed. The old woman noticed this and would have no part in this stubbornness. “Open your eyes. You’re not blind,” she said. “If you were blind you’d know how to eat without seeing the spoon.” Xavier opened his eyes and after some prodding and questioning told the old woman the story of Meadow and his embarrassment at the Salon.
“Colour-blindness?” she muttered. “That’s easily curable.” She left Xavier’s bedside for a few moments. He could hear her rummaging through some cupboards and then the scraping of a mortar and pestle following by the sound of stirring. She returned with a vial of clear liquid.
“In this vial is the cure to what ails you. However, as I am a businesswoman, I cannot give it to you. As you seem to be in a shambles of a state, I could neither in good conscience take your money. However, I will give you this cure in exchange for this painting you call Meadow.” Xavier readily excepted such a proposition and was given the vial of medicine. The woman bid him farewell and instructed him to return the meadow before ingesting the potion. Xavier promised to return the next day with the painting.
Once again Xavier walked through miserable streets until they turned into roads and down the roads until they turned into paths. He sat in his favourite spot in the meadow and opened the vial. The liquid inside was colourless and odourless and for a moment Xavier thought this might be some sort of hoax (until he remembered he had yet to pay the woman). As instructed by the woman he held his eyes wide open and poured the liquid into them. A few minutes later the potion began to work. The trees and the flowers and the bushes and the sky and the ground all began to move ever so gently in waves. It was like they became a sort of liquid and floated without a vessel in a space where gravity might no longer exist. Then it hit him. Colour. The glowing radiance of refracted light that most people take for granted. Xavier’s joy was indescribable. He finally saw the meadow in all its colours and all of their shades and tints and gradients. Since words will fall short of describing the ecstasy of his experience and new insight we will leave Xavier in the meadow.
Meanwhile at the Salon Refusé something had happened that was being heralded as miracle. In these ever so disheartening interiors, filled with the works that brought their creators shame, the meadow materialised. That is to say that the mediocre painting we have known as Meadow became a window into the actual meadow in all its brilliance of colour. Meadow shone like no painting had ever done before. Bystanders dropped to their knees enraptured by the beauty. They could not look away nor could they quite look directly at her for Meadow was intensely bright and in full colour.
A few of the people who had witnessed this ended up speaking to people who were to attend the opening of an exhibition at the Salon. The opening was for the same exhibition, which the Salon had rejected Meadow from. When word got to the crowd at the Salon about the mysterious painting that was glowing in the radiance of colour like life the crowd left the Salon’s big opening and went to the Salon Refusé. The opening at the Salon was very poorly attended. However, there was a three-hour wait to get into the Salon Refusé and all because of Meadow.
Xavier eventually got through the most intense effects of the medicine and in his gratitude wanted to go retrieve Meadow for the apothecary woman. So he walked back into the city, now noticing a whole different range of colours of dull and dirty, which all in all is still pretty exciting to someone who has never seen colour before. Coming to the Salon Refusé he pushed through the crowd. He figured he would have to buy the painting back since it the purpose of the building was to exhibit works of shame. He went to speak to the curator and offered a meagre sum for the painting without having gone to look at it. The curator did not know him as the painter of Meadow and laughed at him. “You’re several thousand francs below the lowest bid. We’ll have sold that painting for millions by tomorrow.” Xavier was shocked and went to look at Meadow. Just as she was coming into sight, two art collectors began to argue in front of the painting. One of them grabbed Meadow from the wall and smashed her on the floor. The colours exploded like fireworks into a million hallucinations of the purest beauty colour could make. Xavier stood and watched in the double shock of the explosively hallucinatory demise of Meadow and the lost of monetary fortune.
The truly remarkable thing that happened that day was the change to the actual structure of the Salon Refusé building. The explosion caused changes in the building, which made for more favourable conditions for viewing paintings. All along it was never the paintings that were unworthy of being in the Salon just merely the fact that the Salon wasn’t necessarily the best place to hang certain paintings.

A Decalogy of Elemental Forces

2009-03-22T12:07:00.000-07:00

Elemental forces, the burden of truth and movement. This is the future looking back at us as we think in the past and eat. It happened quicker than we could see, half a second ago. Mysteries between indifference.

1) Time

Hommy Hoer was an expert (although someone told me once that just means you're far from home). In any case, Hommy specialized in tenses. Having realized the time lapse between happening and perceiving, Hommy set out to see if anything changed in that half second.
Time is just an answer to an irrelevant question. Seasons were undoubtedly named by people who were oblivious to knowledge. The seasons run together into a predictable pattern. Anyone who plants things generally knows when spring and autumn are without having to consult a calendar. But structures like Stonehenge were made so that people would know when to plant and harvest.
Next came months. There should have been thirteen months as there are thirteen full moons in a year. The solar calendar established those years that were twelve months long solely because people wanted to know how often we went around the sun.
Amounts of time are standardized. The standard being based on the amount of time it takes a laser beam to travel a certain distance. They also use this system to standardize measurements of length. Thus, the standard for a unit of time is a length and the standard for a unit of length is a time.
No matter how much we try to hurry, we will never get to the present--even though time is speeding up. To live in the present, you have to slow down. No one would ever think to slow down to go from the past into the present and towards the future, but it works.

2) Hope

Benevolent foes then assuring
The map said we have to go back
Total dis-assurance in the wings
Standing without faces in freedom
Miracle lapses and beginnings of time
Before the invention of hope did come
Something needed to be better
People hoped and sometimes what they hoped for didn't happen.
To explain this circumstance, disappointment was invented. But people still hoped.
Everything hopes.
The plan had already been written in stone that would soon wash away.
Terror scars from another lost war.
Creatures are eating and breeding.
Feasts aplenty: the gluttons are full.
Trespass the majikal indifference swan
Poison berries in the pies fed to the masses--the pie in the sky when you die.
Faces in fields ingesting, masticating, regurgitating and remaking the end.

3) Light

The bother was elliptical and there were bright lights shining at the eyes of the one many.
"What have you done?" they say as if they hadn't thought it up yet.
"We will not close our eyes and we will not be committed to blindness in light."
So they sat and saw in the dark
Darkened, without lights that pump wretched foul into the air and run amok with the colour spectrum.
Hourly they checked it.
Eleven days later, it was broken and the power was silenced.
People were taken away in baskets and wheelbarrows.
Into the heat of the monsoon, they cast their boats for the mission. A safety at sea.
Wide strokes in the puddle to see how the waves are changing, choking on plastic and shipwrecks.
In eyes of the minding, the troubles were shipped with the package.

4) Shadows

Trampling across a foot in the muck. Thematic strands of chaos amidst darkening sunshine. The shadows have left for the sky. Oh, terrible moons that host this festival. In terror, the light stricken myriads run from each other because there are no shadows to hide their secrets. But, the shadows will return in time and it will be weird at first.
"Where have you been shadow?"
Silent shadows know that you already know. You can see the shadows in the sky yet it's sunny and there are no shadows on the ground. It happens once a year, maybe twice. On that day, it looks like Earth is the centre of the galaxy with the pictures they show in the sky.
If reception is good the festival will continue longer. More days without shadow means more days without darkness. All darkness is shadow because of the Earth's deflection. Many bright days without nights will ensue before the shadows fall again. The creatures look up and wish the shadows a safe landing. As shadows fell, the darkened places no longer advertised sleep and gossip. Night is a great camouflage and a great disappointment to gossips.
With night restored, everyone slept a little better with shadows on their consciences.
Secret information is irrelevant, to the point. It stands at the end like the light from the galaxy fire. In the end, no one remembers it anyway. Just floating little bits of molten stars somewhere in an endless void.

5) Space

Way off in the yonder distance, this happened at a different time.
The approach was the same but the believing eyes just tore at the sky until it fell in big blue pieces.
It was a significant blow to credibility of science but it was something that obviously needed to happen. We don't live in a bubble no more; just right out in space with the asteroids and garbage.
In the floating out in space there's no nonsense. Always looking out and always floating away.
Gravity is a strange friend to miss. There are many eyes within the mind that no longer touch the ground.

6) Immortality

Myriad hopes for fruitless wasteland curving in upon itself, the spiraled end.
Ends by the dozen keep coming: over and over, just to begin again.
The sun has burnt, the sky has fallen but evolutionary gusts are wittingly trying to outsmart a supernova. Outliving the ending is an ageless pursuit. The immortals who will never die float forever in space hoping that a planet will pass their way. In memory and time, immortality might seem like the only alternative to mortality. Yet, many immortals find themselves bored and floating through space for billions of years.

7) Systems

Left handed zephyrs
Hope of the malicious
Sideways in circumstance
The eyes pound at the darkness
Making light of its mystery
Sounds abandon their makers
And float softly clanging into space.
We are the missing link.
There's everything and nothing strange about it.
The red carpets were rolled up and the festivities over.
So much for the bread and circuses of pomp and circumstance.
Cruel minds of deliberant thought evaded words of the tongue which are oft broken in speech.
Ideas of the mind must be telepathically transmitted to avoid subjectivity.
The purpose is optional.

8) Peaces

Wild fields of sandy daisies cover the killing fields while words have the last say in some other realm.
The meaning is irrelevant. They are talking which makes the listening optional. Change your "peace talks" into "peace listens" and get it over with. In the end, grammar and semantics will fuel the fire of confusion and argument. At the end of the day, we will be better off in peaces.

9) Wealth

War strengthens the economy and creates gaps between and within the things that matter most, yet get the least funding. In famine's bleak eyes, gold cannot has no nourishment. In the future, wealth will be measured in happiness, health and sustainability. When the market falls don't rebuild it. Just lay down your wallet and run.

10) Escape

With the grey eyes that watch you, they know you've escaped. Still, many attempts will be made to rescue, rehabilitate and/or resuscitate you. In the pale dark of night, the meanings have no truth. Just faceless minions herding the myriads. Organized tyranny has always found its way into our homes. We need to stop voting for it, take back the consent, level the cities and the playing field: start fresh. When the waves come crashing in, we can be glad that we have a place to drown our fears, sorrows and oppressors.