Black

What sort of self important egomaniac sits around quipping about all of the incredible things they have done, how momentous their accomplishments have been, what great heights they have achieved? Simple children might at first be impressed, but even children and the illiterate can begin to recognize false pride. Falsity oozes out of braggadocio until it covers the speaker in a shit-like film that spreads stench for miles around. Truly to tell you that anything about my life has been momentous, incredible or important enough to make me better than you would be a lie. It isn't good to make your writing smell like shit. The problem that I have faced so many times is that I really know nothing other than what I have lived. It would be foolish of me to think that my personal experiences demand elevated description, that these experiences make the life of the average person seem small. The only way to avoid the trap of pomposity, then, must be to focus on the minutest of details of this, the most unimportant of lives. Somewhere meaning must have been hidden underneath the endless layers of pointlessness.
I think I might have some idea of what I want to say. Around the time it occurred to me I had thrown away the greatest opportunities of my life in favor of a good feeling I realized it was going to be infinitely harder to win back my self respect than it had been to burn it up. Maybe the only thing I will ever be able to teach anyone with talk about my own life will be that you are nothing if you lose sight of what you have been taught is right, and that once you are nothing it is a long way back home baby. I don't think I have returned yet. I don't think I will ever escape this trap I laid for myself. I am, and will always be, the most miniscule speck of dust beneath the heel of the society that didn't lose itself, that didn't wonder what its own name might be after getting into the good feeling far too deeply.
Listen to the fool who has seen the passage of great things given him out of his hand, traded for a wisp of smoke the wind all too eagerly yanked away, laughing. The ability to know who you are, what you are worth, that you are good, makes all the difference in the world. Never let a good time present itself as all important, because once you believe the lie you have traded your spirit and only pain will bring it back. Those who do not believe what I say can refer to these words as self important quipping, but know that in so doing you are really telling yourself you are too important to learn, to hear the pain in my voice. If you can't see the pain is real then you should give it a go, lose yourself in the big party, spend a few years under the influence, and then try to get out yourself. Then you'll know.
I don't know why I even think now that anyone will come after me and read the most important thing I have ever written. I don't know why I harbor some small shred of hope that these words will save some stupid teenager from the ceaseless nightmare I have seen, and which still wakes up inside me to take over my reality. When it wakes up the world turns black and there is only hurt. Maybe I hope because if I had not written this then there wouldn't be any hope at all of ever saving anyone. Maybe the hope isn't so wrong. Maybe this writing will do something positive. If I were to ever let go of that hope there would be only nothing, and I am a hardy fool who doesn't let the void consume him without a long fight.

Worst Ever

[This was a dream transcription from a very bad year]

slow motion train crash

The faces of the gathered people seem to indicate they are experiencing pleasure. The assembly has been gathered for the purpose of playing music to the students. I was having some intense problems with my identity as I realized I was a minority in a place that much more closely resembled a communist society than a democratic one. I had turned to the woman next to me, someone I had known for some time, and told her that I had to get out of there. When she asked me why I told her it was because I was an illegal, and in my mind I was in Russia. In fact, that was true. I really wasn't in the United States anymore, I was in Russia, and I could clearly remember the boat trip I had taken to get there. The male across the table had no idea what I was talking about, and the woman seemed to think it was some sort of syntax problem, not a real problem. I felt as though I were reaching a crisis as the concert was about to begin. The concert hall was small, and I had begun to cry over the alien nature of the things around me. It was then the power came to me through my sorrow to say something. Everyone who could hear me crying was ignoring me. This was not the sort of thing that you were supposed to do at the concerts. The director of the concert, the person in charge, in fact was looking at me with a look of great disapproval. That was when I began to speak out. I said, "Round out." I could see that he could see that I was different and he was trying to stare me down, which I would not allow to happen because I was so unhappy with my new perception of the crowd around me. Even though I said that loud enough for the entire audience to hear (I had been crying much more quietly) no one would look at me. I could detect the irritation as it crossed over their faces. The director stared at me even more pointedly without pausing in his introduction of the pianist, so I simply mouthed my response to him. I knew he could see my lips saying "F*** you!" all too clearly. The grief was still pouring into my head from where I had no idea, I just knew that suddenly I was a stranger in a place where before I had been just like everyone else. I refused to be sucked back into the illusion of similarity. I thought about an ice skater trying to climb out of the water after she has fallen through thin ice, and the ice you try to climb on keeps breaking, as I reached out to the male across the table and began to shake him. I knew that this man had been my friend just minutes earlier, and for what reason he could not focus on me I did not know, but I wouldn't allow this to happen to me. I shook him until he could see me. The concert began across the room over my desperate attempts to wake up my friend. I could see the light in the back of his eyes as he began to see me, really see me, for the first time. It was then I began telling him we were going to have to get out. The woman next to me caught on to the reality a lot faster than he did, and she leaned over as I began whispering to both of them that we had to fight this school, we had to get out, we had to get out. An attendant came over to the booth we were supposed to watch the concert from and gave me the message that there was someone waiting for me outside. Immediately I knew that I should not get up and walk out, because that was the last time my "Russian" friends would ever see the Cuban "wet-back". I refused to stand up and leave. I began to get louder and louder as the attendant insisted more strongly. Finally I hit him, and the assembly was upon me. I could see the woman, who I knew that I must have loved, and my friend, fighting them before the crowd obscured my vision of them. From my pocket I pulled out a knife. I don't know where I got the forbidden object, or how, but I didn't care. I knew how to get my freedom at last. And then I was stabbing the students who were tearing at me and beating me. I must have hurt several of them critically because the armed guards came quickly. They must have seen that the students would not be able to take me. When the bullet entered my forehead I opened my eyes. I was on a beautiful sea, with an island nearby. The sun was shining and there was a trade wind blowing. The woman was next to me on the deck of the ship, and my friend appeared down closer to the keel. Opening her eyes she smiled at me and said, "That was easier than I ever thought it would be." Death had finally delivered us from the prison that we could not even see.

One Might Ask

Author's Note:
Uncharacteristic lines discovered and eradicated.


Roll Call of the Lesser Devils

102.
Bleeding tears and crying blood
My eyes awash with unpurged emotion
I am torn across the wasteland.
The wreckage of my life I see
shattered attempts at stability and peace
Thrown back in my face by the scorpion winds.
Standing out in the crowd
I see a regal lily.
Dare I seek solace from her?
Flashback to the last
The rose with the poison thorns
Soul deep slashes pumping out my life’s blood
Somehow even now I seek to clasp
The delicate flower to my breast
To accept the pain as well as the pleasure
For beauty in bleakness is to be cherished
Though sometimes it wounds one sorely.




[102 is dead to me. How many times can a teenager compare a woman to a flower? A lily? I couldn't come with something a little more complicated? Yeah, a woman is just like a flower because see, they're blossoming out of a plant that's rooted into soil. Exactly like a woman.

Moving on from that failure there's, you guessed it, another flower metaphor. This time it's about a girlfriend who dumped me. She's a rose because I got stuck by one of her thorns and bled. Aaaargh! That sure makes me out to be a wimp. The big man got stuck by the tiny flower and it hurt, bawww. Now that I'm grown up I want to go back in time and say: Put a fucking pair of gloves on, dumbass. You got dumped. Be a man."

There's at least two lines of the poem you could spread on crackers to make chesy finger foods for a New Year's Party. Bleeding tears and crying blood. Rage! What does that even mean? It's like I was auditioning to be a screenwriter for a terrible soap opera. "My darling, since I left you my hot coffee has been lukewarm, like the urines, except black, like the night and the stars that look down upon our forbidden love. Hold me, Rose, oh thorny, thorny Rose."

Besides that 102 is fine.]




103.
A Life In No Chapters

Another roiling cloud of thoughts
Passes through the air,
Slightly tinged with the taste of sea salt,
Passes the altar and no on cares,
flickering candles as it goes.
The altar of fading, forgetfulness
In a room nowhere in particular,
Off a hall with door after door,
Scents of somnambulism heavy in the air.

Before the altar
A young man sleeps
Prostrate before a vengeful god.
The room was small and dark and carved from rock
In every way his own,
A home to the horrors of time.

The tale of the titans is sad and long
Beside the rolling oceans it has been told
Again and again.
Night sets.

The gods still rise, and still they take away.
The misty sunshine closes in
The brightness burns like a crucifix
Somehow he could tell
Though he no longer could see
Out in the void there must be others.

One came to him,
Emotions snapped and ground
Thin ice under heavy treads,
Spoke as if the heavens had fallen
In the voice of an angel, soft musical tones.
The comfort seduced the man,
But then it passed away
Long ago
Before anyone could remember.

An epitaph to a small world
Passed away with everything simple
Out in the void there were others
With eyes like lasers,
Gazers, penetrate through
Charade of charades, the reality.
Forever clung to weariness form
Decay of structure
Tantamount to animus prime.

The man prayed for release in desperate words,
Prayers sent in vain to a god who hates prayers.
He woke up in an ocean of light.
Pulses of visions too bright to see,
Too important to ever forget,
Solar flares from a million transparent suns,
Cascading blips of color washed clean away,
Waves washed over his drowning form,
No perspective to latch onto,
No up or down or past or pain or life or wonder
Nor wonderful irony
And all he could do was let go
Just let it go and watch it wash away his own
Small sins, begotten in his own
Bathtub gin
Where once upon a time a man lived
Before the creature he became
Snatched happiness away
And left him to die
All alone.

The strange floating daydream of newborn morning
Swallowed him alive, atheist dreams and all.
The damp dew spewed forth a myriad of thoughts.
On that morning
He was sure there
Only nothing could be more pure.
His savior was garbed in white flowing robes
Cresting waves of thought bowed down to Her freely
For She was like the moon on a warm summer night

The stars were Her friends and lovers.

With a knife that symbolized truth
She purged his desires,
Snickety snackt click clack,
Cut out his disbelief with the blade.
When no more black ichor poured out
She filled him with a desire
A lust potion that allowed him only to love Her and life.
At least for a while he was happy
Though on a leash did She keep her young man.
At night he was let loose to play
Amid the warmth of closely pressed sheets,
In a bed made of clouds and pheromones
Perpetual wanton gluttony of pleasure
The main event, the only event,
The end and the beginning
The alpha and the omega
Yet somewhere people scoff at sex magick.

Even a blind man may see on occasion
Through a veil of deception and lies.
Somehow this man caught an inkling
A barest glimpse of the tiniest of truths.
When his mind finally listened to reason
He quite suddenly went mad.

He fell from the grace of his graceful goddess,
He fell from his heaven to earth,
Like a seven second virginal birth,
Like there was no law 'gainst heaven and hell
Or monsters at the gates,
It was simple, evolving, all at once
The dead man into life fell.
Through flashes of fever and delirium
Through altered mental states.

When at last the man woke up alone
Naked against a bleak backdrop
Shivering from the cold
He was baptized in uncaring
To the silent sound of a battle hymn
Written by the lords of the underverse
As some men have once had it called.

He had become both predator and prey,
No salvation, no damnation
Just hollow memories and the sounds of waves,
On that long forgotten shore.
His body had aged until nothing was left
But granite and his will turned to stone.
He had seen the horror
That one can not unsee,
The doom reserved for the seeker of Taboo,
The forbidden knowledge
That tears the soul from its home.

Before a simple altar
Of pine cones, sticks and shiny stones
He kneels in submission,
Hoping beyond hope to forget,
Not praying, not hoping,
Only empty, he wishes no more,
In a room that is dark, and small, and him.

The man, if that he could still be called,
Found the end of a long, painful life,
And there was nothing, no light, no more.
Like a toppled Titan
Chained in the darkness below
The sands and the mountains and the fields.

The wounds never healed,
But persisted into eternity.
Even in the greatest days
There was no goal, there was no god
There was nothing but fever and dreams.

In headlong flights through fancy and fiction
The man lost even his own identity,
And then, of course, there was nothing at all.
His life had occurred in no chapters.




104.
He had fought the good fight
On a hill amongst the multitudes
He held off the forces of evil
As they washed towards him.
The soldiers had become
A sea of blood and death.
They died in waves
Uncaring in their ignorance.
He had fought the good fight
Like a stone in harsh winds
In a desert of wilderness
He wasted away through no fault of his own
As the wind blew on.
And it blew through his heart
It chastised him in his solitude
Blew him away like dust in a storm.
Yet still he had fought the good fight.




105.
The Transit Station

Sitting quietly in the transit station
On a bench in the sickening throng
-People walk by him
Unknown to the masses
He stares like a hunter in a forest full of targets.
It is the stare of crimson ages past,
Gleaming on like an eagle’s eye
And the ignorant people just keep passing by.

Come Saturday Morning

Don't go near the water, I mean dentist's office, I mean:
Torture is Bad.

Baaaaaaaaahed!

101.

Serpent City_____Then: Then: Ho_____Thin_____Generation brown_____Come back from the gone_____ago_____Again_____Test tube_____Wine flask_____Amour_____But you should hide it_____fool!_____News flash_____The foundation slants_____To the hate fit_____To hate you_____And while Faulkner_____was never you_____Or Yoo_____Still_____Hearing the name sounds like_____Flattery_____Mean why_____No mow_____woof chirp vroom_____don’t_____do not_____no_____don’t_____question_____beautiful_____Hey you_____the etch_____rector_____instant_____shredder_____a halver_____prestidigitator_____simplification_____starlight_____stratify_____station_____tracing no meaning_____leaving_____giving the room air_____simply do not care_____envision_____history_____unlike the one_____given to the free_____and whispers of greed_____lick_____at the air_____how can the intrusion_____be justified_____a war_____on the individual_____treason becomes reason_____the world grieving_____lonely enforced_____and simply_____learning_____fear the season_____of open love_____the dove_____will_____fly away_____home left me_____go wanton_____show_____love is true_____though shivering and cold_____the blood_____slow_____in vision frozen_____beholds it_____history entrapped watching_____viscous eyes corner_____floating river_____back broken_____tell me, tell me_____flow on down_____crown_____my mind must_____follow_____the eyes_____stick inside your own skin_____and I’ll never win_____slick thick_____nudge trick_____bump pocket thief_____last night_____never seems to end_____the bad_____dream_____won’t_____go_____away

can be fun time nao?
all werx n no play makes day a dull goy

Roll Call of the Lesser Devils: 97-100

97.
two
what did you see
that made you real?
(everyone
must always
ask)
but to this question
can be said only
please
do not speak to me
just know that I am not like you
turn away
the queens of the night
do not exist
for the sunshine boy
take your corrosive imagination
and go
my enemies
are all real
by action all has been betrayed
to be a play
set to darkness’ cruel ways
words burn the guilty
searing the flesh
especially if they are
wholly holy
even burning shadows
unsteady shaking hands
holding candles made of tallow
where will I lay
when all my darkness
has been slain?
all of my figments
dashed into pieces
reflected in mirror slivers
bludgeoning stability
into a cowed and beaten pulp
twisting in the corner
writhing in agony for no reason
what for
the abused need not worry
about finding a home,
or didn’t I hear
the drip
of someone else’s tears
in the night
winding out from a frail,
agonized core
to trickle out and
onto the ground
providing sustenance for the evil
that gnaws at the heart,
gnashing teeth in all or in part.
I shall withdraw
self proclaimed and bitter king
Of sunlight,
you have lit the place
where my only comfort lived.
To which then [I]he] responded
withdraw, then
pretty ripple of the imagination
go in peace
and so be said
and so be sad
but still the scourging retribution
of growing cleansing fires
seeks me out
wants to slay me in
wants to lay me
in the filth upon the floor
in the corner breathing no more
some all too petty whirlpool of worldly
pleasure sucked all the juices down
and then cast aside the husk
nothing left on the wind but slight scent of musk
and memories of the moans just then stopped.
whose king are you
anyway?




98.
I will never follow
The foolish dream
Embodied by public acceptance
And mass applause.
Poetry may be a
Languid caress,
But the educated masses
Have cast aside even the best,
History's brightest and most renowned
Vanished in an instant
When the modem made a sound.
The pieces all fell into place
One by one ravaging, laying waste
To the simple lush, language's whore,
The poet would grab his ankles
For a sweet piece of meter, and just a little more.

For the poet, words' sluttish prostitute,
The final stand was
An attempt to escape,
To run from the guilt,
Declining and eternally destitute.

Overcome denial?
It was never a problem.
Even dementia must have substance,
Even delusions must admit
All the inherent flaws of humanity,
When surrounded by constant reminders.
Words have divorced their tyranny
In the world of earthbound beauty,
And now nothing's left but
Babbling images, compressed video,
Passionless fellatio
Of guileless breathing dildos,
Or men as they prefer to call themselves.

Until the final check is in the mail,
The dwindling poets
Seek fame like a wanton travesty of decency
Kindling for the fires that kill sanctity,
A flame to light torches for
The lynch party meant for eternity
The essence of my soul,
That wordless insanity,
Has been captured.
It is true.

As the memories of life depart,
I can not help but wonder,
Where was the spark that made it start?

If the imprisoned spirit
Reflects upon discarded values,
From whence came the negative reflection
That led to its downfall?

Maybe laughter can heal those wounds.
I know that I have not come here
To be the trumpeteer for my misery,
Nor have I ever wanted to cause any.

To the cherished flowers
Of life’s ethereal garden,
You blushing, wonderful beings,
Go forth, beauties, and flourish,
My misery will not follow you.

[That is not to say
That if you run from yourself
You will not find it
On your own.]

Fear the healing laughter,
Child,
For it means that all else has failed.




99.
So it has now been said that the only recourse to divine transmissions must be through militant declarations of the omnipotence of our god Art over all other gods and dedications. Let it be known that our divine leader has spoken against the infidels who seek to usurp the power of the left brain, to destroy it, and of these usurpers the high one has condemned all to death those who destroy the sacred works of the beautiful self. So he has spoken, and so surely we will kill as many of you as possible, never forgetting the holy directive that has been given to us from on high. Our small lives mean nothing in the face of protecting the great pursuit of perfection of human artistry. The infidels in the employ of the rich and damned owners started this war in theatrical tones at the behest of that money, during a play filled with cross dressing jackalopes, written and designed by a poseur with the sole intent of feeding the flame wars that have raged since last Thursday before last. All of their comic relief will fail them when the victims finally manage to bite back. Until then they learn to control information more and more effectively. Every trace of opposition disappears, except for the occasional lyrical explosion and the families shedding tears. Our god has spoken and we will see that his will comes to pass. Death to the followers of the accursed Lists of Fortune! Death also to the dogs who herd the victims like sheep to the slaughter, keeping them as isolated from ancient morality as they possibly can: killing their spirit and stealing from them during the blight of poverty they have unleashed upon the unsuspecting. The weeping of the widows of the watchdogs will only be surpassed by the cries of the lost souls as they descend into the hell the caring and gifted god of the intellect has prepared for them. Having seen this hell it is possible to be both jealous and extremely fearful of going there. The end of the age cometh! It is more of fire than of ice, though close in measures between them equally, and this should probably be considered an awkward denouement for a short and garbled manifesto that lacks the verve and gusto to draw in even the most developmentally challenged of people prone to following or being led by people not much more intelligent than they.



100.
The most honest confession a writer can make (about the sick nature of worthlessness) is that his own writing is crap and must be thrown away.

The goal behind the art becomes creating a piece that has been optimally designed for ease of trashing. Embarrassing and unfinished pieces ache especially painfully until they have been thrown away, at which time the pang felt at the destruction of art,
No matter how pathetic,
Strikes.

Only by experiencing the pain
Of watching hopes go down the drain
Over and over,
Again and again
Will trivial concerns
Be transcended.

In the act of writing useless things,
And later throwing away the sayings
The writer fulfills his true role
In the modern world:
It's the painting of the fruit bowl.

To agonize over his usefulness to,
And place in society around him,
Is to make the writer's antipathy grow,
Is to see the dismal straits
Where fate drowned him.

More and more predatory
And less and less forgiving,
The words become self fulfilling
In universal condemnation.

Forgive him for all the awful things
He said to strangers on paper.
Throwing away writing
Is like exposing your children to the winter air
And then watching them die of pneumonia,
To kill them because they were deformed or weak.
Be sure, depression would own you.

As hideous a practice as it may sound the exercise insures that no extremely incriminating evidence of your inbred mutations hang around.
Murder of art for the sake of a stronger image,
And a better public identity.
Yep, that's poetry.


[Note: While all of this was written long, long ago, I did not just restore these. I was working from a third draft (still handwritten). I don't have the originals, but I remember these for some reason. I made a few changes. I can't help myself. It's like mental masturbation, without the sex part or the orgasm part. LOL cr8z]
['Nother Note: It's late. If I missed any corrections I'll be making them tomorrow.]
[I'm not sure 100 sucks badly enough. I may have to work on that. Never mind. I couldn't take it. I had to make it readable before I started cutting myself for fun.]

Games People Play

Zero:
Ray Family:

Gamma and his wife April stood on their small porch overlooking the lands that he and his brother, Ecks, had spent the last two years restoring from the ravages of the war. The brothers and their wives had been lucky. Atomics hadn’t fallen as heavily on the huge peninsula as they had elsewhere. Much of the wildlife had survived, but even luckier was that the area remained a secret.

The Ray family was from the city-state island of Poe, less than a hundred miles to the southwest of the peninsula. Before the war Poe had been an attractive leisure destination, with it’s ancient architecture and beautiful beaches. After the war things had changed dramatically.

Gamma and Ecks brought their families into the scorched lands when the authorities in Poe had ordered involuntary sterilization of all men of the lower classes, followed in short order by a declaration of state ownership of all women between the ages of fourteen and forty. That was something the brothers simply could not abide by, even though the orders were the direct result of the desperate water shortage.

When the orders were issued the Ray family was living in the northeastern coastal district of Annabelle Lee. For that reason the two couples decided they had a chance of escape. The gulf currents on the northeast side of the island flow directly for the northern mainland. If they had been living on the south side of the island they wouldn’t have had any chance to escape at all. All travel to and from the unspoiled mainland to the southeast was strictly controlled, and there was no possible way to make the voyage without an ocean vessel.

The roads out of Annabelle Lee had been guarded. Ecks had never been the peaceful kind of man that Gamma was. The road they took only remained guarded for a few moments after Ecks approached the guards to “talk”. He was kind of sore about having to leave his home. The unfortunate men on duty at that checkpoint would not forget him for a very long time.

Being to poor to afford the so-popular bubble gliders the Ray family had been forced to walk out of Annabelle Lee, to a relatively deserted section of beach. They knew all along that there was only had one option. They had to leave the island. The scorched lands were only 150 km to the northeast. It was well known that the trip could be made on a raft, and that was exactly what they had done. Gamma and April, Ecks and Laura, clung to each other in fear almost the whole way, but then they had sighted land.

They almost died of thirst before they found a source for water they could trust, and that was just the barest seep coming out of the ground. Ecks had all but given up hope when he found it. He had spent three days scouting with his portable Geiger counter and miniature pathogen detector with no luck. When he got a mouthful of the precious stuff he jumped up and down, and hollered so loudly he might have been heard back on Poe.

With their precious water source located the Rays began to build a compound so that they could live securely. After a day of searching the ruins of a settlement on the western coast they had shovels, saws, hammers and other important tools, as many as they could carry. They dug down at their water source until they had a deep basin some twenty feet below the ground, and they shored up their well as they went down. Being poor men of Poe the Ray brothers had done many things to make a living, and, by the grace of the Holy, carpentry and construction was foremost among those occupations.

They built a wall around their gardens and their home to keep out wild animals, and so far had defended them against refugees on two occasions. The brothers managed to find guns and ammunition in their daily scavenging runs to the various ruins in the area, and these proved invaluable. As excited as they were to find those items, which had been forbidden to the lower class on Poe, it was the former home of the bow hunter that had provided them with their most valuable discovery of all: a compound bow and a cache of carbide tipped arrows. This meant they could hunt without fear of running out of ammunition.

Gamma, or Gee, as everyone called him and April stood on their small porch feeling each other’s warmth, and as Gee looked out on their compound he realized he was happy, truly happy. He nuzzled April’s neck and she giggled playfully. He knew she had a very sensitive neck. He put his hands on her swollen stomach and lightly twirled his fingers around. April was pregnant with his child.

“What do you think it’s going to be?” he asked her.

“I’ll be happy no matter if it’s a boy or a girl,” she answered.

“I hope it’s a boy. It wouldn’t hurt if he was born ready to work,” Gee teased her.

“You just better keep your plans to yourself. My baby won’t have anything to do with them,” she laughed.

They were waiting for Ecks to come back from one of his scouting missions. At times when they couldn’t bring their wives along only one of them went. As April’s pregnancy advanced that increasingly meant that only one man would go out at a time. As a safety measure the one going scouting would only travel in one direction, and straight back, so that if he was longer than the time they decided on the others would know where to go looking for him. It was almost time for Ecks to come back.

As if on cue Ecks came walking up to the compound from the south. He had been gone for two days to see what had become of Hemingway, the great city that for centuries had been known as Miami. One look at his face was all it took for Gee to know that something had happened.

“Wait here, April,” Gee told her.

“Don’t do this, Gee. I have a right to know what’s going on,” she answered in irritation.

“I just don’t want you to get upset if it’s something bad,” he insisted.

“If it’s something bad, then the more time I have to absorb the news the better off I’ll be.”

Gee knew better than to argue with his wife when she made up her mind. He resignedly strode across the compound to meet his brother coming through the gate. As they neared Ecks raised his eyebrows and sighed.

“Where’s Laura?”

“She’s sleeping, bro’. What’s up?” Gee ventured.

“Men have set up a base in the ruins of Hemingway,” Ecks told him.

“That’s almost 80 kilometers from here. Surely we won’t have to worry about that,” Gee said hopefully.

“It’s a military base, Gee,” Ecks told him.

“What? From Poe?” April asked.

“No, the uniforms aren’t familiar at all. I didn’t want to get in too close for fear of being discovered, but I caught a few sentences on the wind. They’re from the old countries,” Ecks revealed with growing anxiety.

“How many soldiers, Ecks? Ecks? How many?” Gee demanded.

“It’s worse than that, Gee. They’re guarding a new space port.”

Roll Call of the Lesser Devils: 95, 96

95.
Glory Darkness

Places of light
Cradle fascination
The idle mind
Becomes enamored
Of darkness
Places devoid of light.
Simple reasons
For simple beings
Ever overwhelmed
But it won't stop

The eyes desire rest
Some sort of scenery
Graduated out of the emptiness.
Always gloomy
Backed up against the wall
Forces use the mind
To conjure up
Happiness filled images,
Brighter days and better times
A feeling of control
Harsh realities
Overstated.
Obversely
A well lit setting
Conjures darkness
More comfortably,
Entertaining all of the surfaced
Loves of lust.

The mind needs to be soothed
From the sight of all things
That revel in the glow.

Darkness often befriends
The soul
Of Man Who Sees Too Much
With light.

The morbid companion
Envelops imagination
So that the judgments
Of others will stop,
Short of penetration
Of deeper thoughts
Of fascinations.

Thereby darkness it's glory
Guides to a carefree existence.

Shadow worship
Quite explicitly
Leaves a permanent scar,
Leads the suspect
Carrier of forbidden knowledge
Further into the light.

Light left all open:
Judgments, dogma
Token enthrallment.
A vaunted observation point
Shows hidden inspiration.

The earliest creatures of this
Animal race
The first glimmer of conscious thought
All walking and talking
In the grip of fear.
Even they too knew
The life cycle never stops.

Death in its most miserable stages
Spreads itself open
Granting visions into the beyond
A cold haunted place
Impenetrable to living awareness.

Analysis
Divine sentience
The challenges
Of mere existence
Reason and insanity
The victims
Must bend to blend the psyche
Perfectly, profanely
The setting
Never more hostile
And what divine intelligence?
And what will one be looking for?

To take a little enjoyment
From the wriggling of
The prey’s death throes.

Even the ignorant knows
That no one can hide forever,
And so the march to death
Every moment filled with a sense
Of importance.

The mind then
Must do
As many minds do
Seek to derive
A greater justice
From the passage of time
From the ponderance of shadowkind
In the passage of life
Across the horizon of thoughts.
It should be no less
Dominant
Than droning adoration
For lightheartedness
And cheer.

Though enemies of one another
Shadow and light
Have roots in the fiber
Every being
Holds up for dissection
By inspection.

Every great act
Owes to the forces
That bend into position
Those traits
Suited to the preferences
Of imagined divinity.

The fascinations
May be morbid, that
Means little in the face
Of the fact one
Is capable,
May hold the fascination if
One so desires.

Humanity approached life with thought
Seeking only knowledge,
But finding only anguish instead.

Simple wonder
Dark, obscure thoughts
Are held dear by the eagle's prey.

In darkness can be found
A sense of security,
Even if it is a false one.

Life cycle, surely that's jest,
A more apt title,
Disquieting at first,
Would be "death knows no mercy."

Organization only
Carved out footholds
As the eons passed slowly
In the deadly environment
Humanity would one day rule.

With a refusal to succomb to
The vacuous ebb
Etched into race memory
By all of the death,
Humanity wooed darkness through conflict and warfare,
Calling on the abilities given by
Life to create suffering,
Mortality induction,
beyond any “timid morality."

There comes a time
When can be seen links
Between order, problems, chaos and law.

Death severs the link,
Freeing or dooming
By the purity of nature,
Both parts create freedom.

This purity concerns itself,
And all those who follow it,
With taking power from the unknown
And using it to aid the passage of life.

Undeniably
Had we never ventured into the darkness
And embraced what we could not see
Nor understand,
Nothing around us
Could possibly exist.




96.
Voyage to New Orleans
the musical background:
heavy radical
black racist
inspired violence
Bourbon at Esplanade:
the dark
a stairway up
to a locked door
confusion in the street
a building in the throes of demolition
the wall weak enough to push through
the principal figures
wet and cold
no protection afforded by the building
somewhere in the mind a voice
keeps asking
“how did you get here?”
but the answer keeps coming through
in some foreign language
none of the streets look
the same
the long walk to the Garden District
ends in failure
except for the comfort
of leaving the disease of the quarter
at least for a little while
the bones ache
but nothing can be had
until the guy comes back
later on
the musical background:
black and very violent
the uneasiness returns
and the illness
as the answering voice
finally comes through in English
and you know
really
nothing is all right.



Note: Glory Darkness had a lot of problems. I attempted to restore the language to reflect the original intent. I have the handwritten original. What I don't have is an exact knowledge of where I was at in my life when I wrote it, which holds the key to really understanding what I meant when I wrote it. I think it was in 1991. I did smoke weed, but I had forever quit doing hallucinogens.

One thing I do know beyond a doubt is that this version I am posting more closely resembles the original work than the one posted on Angelfire. I must have hated myself a lot when I posted all that shit there. I basically destroyed my artistic reputation for a long time with the Angelfire posts. Bawwwwwwwww.

It's like sometimes I don't get it. I went to /b/. There was so much vile hatred spewed by posts in almost every thread that I thought /b/ was about hate. The truth was that it started as great fun, intelligent games and original content. There was a lot of sex, because that follows people around everywhere, but /b/ didn't have the AIDS yet. And so I stupidly added to the death of a once great novelty by joining in with nasty talk and hateful sentiments.

Why couldn't I see it? Same fucking reason I don't know when a girl likes me, or I go after the wrong girl. It's because I am stupid. I am too educated for my own good, and not educated enough to rise above it all through knowledge.

"In the midst of life we are in death, etcetera."

Chiara Bautista

The artist's name is C. Bautista, but also uses the name Milk. Milk is a great artist whose work is highly reminiscent of S. Kirby's. I found the first thing I've ever seen by Milk on a cap from a desktop, during show and tell.

The image was small, but the screen capture was HR. I kept zooming in until I made out Chiara on the bottom, and the words Hunter/Monster/Love. After that it was only a matter of tweaking the Google search a couple of times, and I found the MySpace page. C. Bautista incredible. Below is something she did:



If I had the money I would buy a painting. The beauty and genius blows me away. Very seldom do I find work with such incredible vision.

The work belongs to the artist and the artist alone. Chiara's MySpace page.