ScrewTape

Now I'm going to tell you about my epiphany. It actually isn't recent, but it's the first time that I've felt compelled to release it to the general public. I'm sure it's been covered before by someone somewhere...but in case it hasn't, I offer you my take on it. Don't believe a word of it!

Apparently there is this issue floating around out there, also not new, having something to do with some arguement over a certain spontaneous explosive act of creation. Now, some people find comfort in the idea that there was a plan being fulfilled with this whole big thing we call existance. That something or someone out there mapped it out on a cosmic autocad with each and every detail already in place and then brought it into being. These people, for those of you woefully out of touch, are called creationists. They believe the world we live on is the same age as the universe and that it does not at the date of this posting exceed 5000 years. So they are not to be confused with the other sect of people who feel that the spontaneous explosive act of creation was unplanned and that only now are sentient thoughts being pointed in the direction of the origins of the whole big thing we call existance. They believe that an action was set in motion, and continues on in motion and has become a constantly changing and "evolving" universe. Let's call them evolutionists. They put the age of our planet closer to four and a half billion years. Yes, a slight discrepency.

So now we have these two groups of fairly intelligent beings who seem to have run into a conundrum of sorts concerning their separate beliefs. They even seem to have come to the conclusion that their beliefs are irreconcilable and hold mutually exclusive rights over the truth of the origin of everything. I think perhaps this is in error. Don't misconstrue, I'm not arguing the validity of either belief, merely that the two things might actually be inseperable. As I said, don't believe a word of this, I'm an unrepentant charlatan! That being said...

Let's take a small trip back in time to the night, drunkenly, that this whole thing first occured to me. I was in the middle of a special on the Discovery channel about the nature of time. Not being a physicist I was only able to process about a tenth of the information being presented to me and so, drunkenly, my mind began to wander. It led to the creation of this poorly written little poem:

What if...
time isn't linear?
You know, if it didn't start there and travel out in one direction off until forever?
What if...
it isn't circular either? If maybe the cosmic cycles that run in circles all around us are not only one dimension continuously.
What if...
time is spherical? Rolling along speeding and slowing. Tilting this way and leaning that way
shivering through space in three gravity heaving dimensions.
What kind of a God would play with such a ball?

My lack of visionary poetic skills notwithstanding, it brings up a valid question about the nature of the relationship between God and time. So with my head leaning in this direction I began to weigh in other misconceptions that had been presented to me through the years about the nature of God's power and the true meaning of the word omnipotent. The most common that I've heard bandied about being the ever popular "If God is all powerful can he create a rock so heavy that even he can't lift it?". It seems paradoxical right? I thought so too, for years, until my perception was shifted entirely with an actual answer to the question that I had never considered before. I was told that the real question wasn't whether God could create a rock so big he couldn't lift it himself. The real question was whether or not God could take that same rock and split it into three halves.

Now stop and consider that a moment.

Weight and energy, as they apply to us personally (though I'm sure a true physicist would argue this) is a three dimensional problem that always fits into the same equation. With this much energy I can shift that much mass. It's simple and static. It is law. So what if you exist outside that law and have the ability to change it at will? If instead of fitting physical things into the equation, you define the equation first and the world conforms. What then? Ok...so here's the big reveal. Finally.

Imagine you are God and for reasons of your incomprehensible own have decided to create Man. In order to do this you have to first create an environment for Man to exist in. This starts with movement, with time. The alpha from which springs the stream that flows towards the endpoint of existance. Now, in doing this, because you're specifically creating time as the environment for Man to move inside of, you are going to want to do it simultaneously with the creation of Man himself. That being the whole point of this experiement. Because of that you would have to start in the middle of history, at the point where everything is just right for Man to come into being and then you'd expand creation outward in all directions. Moving the beginning further back and the end way off down the road. Man being the central pivot that creation revolves around, the point of singularity which the spontaneous explosion of creation rushes away from. Thus, all at the same time, during this spawning of the timeflow you create billions of years of past that have already passed in the instant in took for Adam to take his first breath. So that Adam can take his first breath, and then wander on along the stream of the flow created just for him. In this way a creation only 5000 years old not only could have billions of years of history...it would have to have them in order to work properly in the construct of time. Tidy no?

And that's it. Don't misconstrue, I'm not advocating the veracity of the statement. I try not to get involved to seriously in the politics of either side. I'm just curious and found the idea intriguing. Thought perhaps you might too. This of course leads to all sorts of other questions...and possible answers about God's desire for man to exercise free will (and so needing the ability to form an alternate viewpoint of creation without the influence that proof of God would entail). That's an entirely different post though.

Time spent while away finger breaking

could have been done like this with you;

glasstip tendril extended

rosily, sideblood rushing

into

the cherrycoat glob pocket

of a lip stutter.

Or;

with arching steepled moon grins

clavering muddy decesnsion

against

a hollow spent tender

that hillcresting rockswells.

Or;

with glazed sweetteeth achingly lucid

wrapped cooly finger feasting

and

serrating the lust junk

while love rusting.



But three times I didn't

and by the fourth

we weren't.

Drugs don't make music great, they make it memorable. I boiled it down and that is the essence of every excuse I've ever made for not being a fan of classic rock.
Tonight I'm feeling very old, and republican. Anyone want to go shoot handguns and drink whisky this weekend? I'm available...

So at the bottom

Lifelessness has become something more than just a euphamism for death. But you, come close, we've done this before, come closer.

Expectations make for a much softer bed than truth.



What we are is all we are and what we believe is slowly more turning us into vegetation. To believe is to accept and when we are able to do that we have stopped considering everything that is ourselves.


(for those of you who are still kicking carcasses, things that aren't useful aren't worth considering)

Wither doth the warm wind wander
Through golden willow glen aglow,
There if you should follow it,
Also will I go.

And after twilight into eve
With slivered moon acrossing sea,
Should you dance into the dark,
There too I would be.

And up insensate cold on heights
Passing white wrapt mountain through,
As you crevice crept along,
I'd stay near to you.

Over oceans come salty onto shore
'cross the endless blue horizon lined,
When you came to ground again,
It's me there that you'd find.

Through winter leaving summer sad
Where spring finds it's fall began,
You would know that I'd be there,
There right with you, once again.

Until an age that ravaged wrinkled time
With months of years gone by,
So when you lay your lovely head to rest,
Beside you I will lie.




So I've taken on a new role. I've never been the anonymous admirer, until now. This piece, that you've just read, is an event, truly, something special for someone deserving who isn't aware yet. I hope she likes it. When she recieves the finished product it will be, lovely. Boxed and gussied up, as declarations of unexpected and previously unexpressed love should be. Or, infatuation at least. Any of you local lechers following along need to keep quiet, should you encounter the soon to be quizically confused female. I'm not sure I want this to progress past the point of anonymity. I like the idea of a long distance love who lives just down the road. Salut!

Sometimes she paces the hallways late at night. Like a bug after the lights go out and the music gets turned down, she scuttles around on the wood floors, all eight legs click click clicking in methodical cadence. Blonde hair bristling and standing on end she walks and walks, looking for places that she day-dreams of but that don't really exist. Not in this place at this time. From my bed I can hear her in any of the rooms of our house, even when I'm almost asleep. She dances in my dreams then, as I sleep, behind my eyelids she's waltzing through the unlit coridors of where we live, clickity-click, until I wake up alone and go looking for her. She isn't really dancing though and she never goes very far. It's always easy to follow the sharp edged trail she carves into the walls and floor with that long slender angry barb on the end of her tail. It has a point it does, her tail. She uses it to scare off everyone else but me. I only get dangerous caresses and carefully considered pokes. Occasionally she'll even use that great green syringe to tickle me where I'm soft and pale because breaching my defenses makes her laugh right out loud. Knowing she has me entertains her. To be honest, I hate that, but it makes her smile and her four eyes they light up like jewels, each facet sparkling with desire. Her dependance. I let her get away with it because she needs me like I need her. I think.
I say I think because we don't really talk about it. Sometiems when we're not working to much we instead drink to much. Expensive wine flows all rich and red and we discuss how things are in parts of the world that don't concern us. We're big on esoteric conversation, on existentialism and the whole world at large. On people we don't know and places we've never been. She skirts the parts of herself that matter, and I go along with it, not wanting to know or tell the whole truth. We enjoy ourselves that way. We enjoy each other that way. We pretend that each of us knows precisely The When and The What and the Why of the other. Actually all we really know with any certainty is The Where. The where being here, in our house by the water, on the shore. On the big comfy cream sofa where we curl up and watch the sun rise. On the gorgeous shiny wood floors and in the serene lovely bedroom. Across the kitchen table that we built last summer out of beach shells and driftwood. Up and down the solid stairs. Through thte tall oak doors and the colored glass windows. And of course, sometimes late at night, along the ahllways that stretch forever in each direction. Click click. Click.
Even as I write this so early in the morning I can hear her out there in the dark. Each time her chitinous toes touch the ground they seem to echo the stroke of my keys as I type this in a vain attempt to make you understand. To tell you about how I've been taken and tamed. How I'm ruled in my own castle, dominated in my domain by a bug. How evenas she stings she says she loves me. How that's the only way she says it. The only way she can. Amonster of few words would be a very good way to put it. She doesn't articulate well because she lost her words a long time ago. Most of them leaked out you see, when she was just a young thing. Her exoskeleton was broken in so many places so many times and so many invocations and pleadings just fled into the empty air. She's never said it outright, but sometimes she begged way back then. Over the years, in that house of torment, with those evil boys who put small bugs in jars and made them fight, or backed them into a corner and watched them burn under the magnifying lens of unbearable scrutiny, all simply because they could. She'd never admit it but the holes in her armor where her soul seeped out still rub rough against my fingers when I pet her in certain ways. When she lets me get that close I mean. She's still skittish and sometimes she latches on with those big iron claws and tears and tears at me, crying great acidic tears the entire time while that wicked devil tail lances into my body. Slitting me open and slicing out pieces until she's slaked her pain with mine. Filling up her emptiness with me. With parts of me.
It isn't her fault. She really can't help it. She doesn't know any better. Because...
Those evil boys. And I am one of them, so how can I protest?
and her, so full of a sadness that she can't kill even with her most potent venom. We don't talk about it much, but I know. She knows I know. I think.
She is mine you see, even as I am hers. I can hear her sharpening that barb on the end of her whiptail right now, it's being dragged along the concrete wall in the secret room we keep for nights when walking hallways just isn't enough. Steel on stone it sounds like a ten ton pressure pain, rough against the inside of my ears and razor edged, whirling in the moist warm place where I keep those special memories. The place I call my compassion. The bleeding hole that's filled with love. My love. But oh that horrible hideous awful mean and menacing sound so much like...

...steel on bone.

I'm afraid of her and of that sound but it's the sound that means she needs me. So...
I have to go now. My lover is calling and I want nothing more in the world than simply to obey.

The fuckin' thing was three god-damn hours long. Really, three whole god-forsaken god-damned...three entire hours of mindless inate blah blah blah. Three of them, consecutively. All in a row. I don't even like modern art.
"But the sculpture garden dear," was how she told me I was going. It was a lure, a sacrificial offering in order to obtain an expected verification. I've always been obsessed with classic sculpture. Whole bare bodies, perfect, white. Smooth the way an ideal should be. No little scrapes or scabs or pieces out of place. Beauty. Perfection. Things we have concepts for and stories about but absolutely no living examples of. Love on a pedestal. That's what she used to segue a natural acceptance of how things were happening that evening. It was an offroad for the casually uninterested and completely resigned. Love. Easy.
"Breathtaking," they said in the magazine, she said, without a hyphen. "Brilliant,".
It is brilliant really, a garden of things that don't die. But...

Clean. Right at the beginning of time, there in the nexus of where nothing ended and everything began we met and fell in love over lunch. Or I fell over your lunch and in love with you.
On a bench you sat nibbling something, rabbit like, very girlish. A book in one hand perfectly in place alone on a bench in the late afternoon. The sky wasn't very big just then, and it wasn't blue either. Sunlight traced the outline of you on your bench against the seawall and gave the impression of a stunted but scholarly centaur in hat and scarf. Trying not to be caught staring I looked past you and your shadow at the still enormous ocean that also wasn't blue. I couldn't help myself, I constantly cut my eyes to capture you in repose, enjoying your quiet lunch, undisturbed. Clean. I came closer hoping to get a good look at your face, it was elfin, spritely. You were small like a child, fragile like hot glass. Beautiful in a porcelein perfect way. I've always admired short blonde hair. I couldn't tell yet what color your eyes were, but it didn't matter. Secretly though, I hoped they were blue.
Attempting anonymity I walked past you slowly, still admiring the waves and not looking down for fear of giving away my interest I tripped and knocked you sprawling splashing apple juice all over your ugly brown shoes. It was a very sticky catastrophe. I apologized and you introduced yourself after I inquired about your book. You said your name was Jill and I laughed at that. You cocked your head oddly and smirked until I said my name was Jack and you got the joke. Then you laughed too, tiny white teeth sparkling, sharp and quick. Your breath was sweet with an orchard smell and I imagined your lips tasting like apples. They were the right color for this late in the year. We talked briefly, and I found out you lived just down the shore, a house I recognized from many walks up and down the beach early in the morning or right about now, towards dusk. You spend a lot of time not there you told me, and I understood without asking for anything more specific. I want you to know now what I think you knew then, it didn't matter. With all your soft skin and smelling of fruit, it was only you. Just you. Clean.
Having ruined your repast and concentration I fumbled for a reason to continue contact I held out my hand to help you up, hoping you'd join with me in a walk to nowhere in particular and then, with luck, all the way back as well. You did, you had somewhere you didn't want to be. We walked. Sometimes arms behind our backs and studious, seriously considering what little we found to talk about between being distracted by ourselves and the not blue sea. Sometimes we linked arms and leaned a little into each other, pushed by the wind we went, sand crunching shells into more sand underfoot. Gritty. I told you about the story I just had published, it was a little of a boast because I knew you liked to read. Maybe as much as me. You said you don't read fiction really, you were still working on figuring out the first world you'd been given in life. This struck a chord and I admired your outlook. Still though, I laughed at your statement partly because you were wise in thinking such, and also because I wanted you to smile again like you had that first time on the ground looking up at me, cursing about your ugly shoes and juice wet socks. You didn't though, interested, you wanted to know what my story was about and I told you, sheepish now, that I didn't really think it was very good.
I lit a cigarette and offered you one, but you declined saying you'd quit a year ago and didn't want to be one of "those people". Smoking, I told you about the museum, about the man and woman. The garden, the statues. All the ancient Greekery I was attempting to revive and play with. You told me that you enjoy the classics. When I got to the part about Ero's office your eyes danced a little and you giggled. You said it was getting kind of hoaky. That's when I slapped you hard enough to knock you spinning backwards into the dune. Cunt, I said that, actually spat in your face. You lay there on your elbows bleeding a hot stream from your mouth onto the chilly sand. It absorbed quickly, turning brown, and you curled up slowly like a dying bug. I watched you silently, breathing in the salt air and exhaling smoke, until finally I reached out a hand to help you stand, you leaned on me, stumbling, because you were still a little shaken. With a heavy boot I nudged a bit of white sand to cover the small dark puddle of blood on the ground. Clean. You watched me do it then looked up at me and gave me a gory little smile, tiny red teeth, quick and sharp.
"Let's go."
Arm in arm with only our personal space between us we turned to walk back down the beach to the house on the shore. To our home. Clean.

It's important that you understand how this works see, I'm not evil. Not particularly so anyway, granted I've got my days but that's more to do with this human condition than any outright allegiance to aggressive negativity. I try and stay away from those situations that find you hanging limp from the end of my knife and bleeding out. I don't like/want/need/wish to do this to you. As much as I enjoy the slow penetration of your rough exterior. As much as I enjoy feeling how soft you are inside and tasting the honest air of desperation that you breath out in gasps and sobs when I pull out. I would be anywhere else, given the choice. That never happens though. I'm always left to clean up, which I do thoroughly, I sanitize my heart out in the name of good fatih and conciousness. I do what must be done now, because that's all that is left to me. Maybe it's an ego thing. Maybe it's a defense. Either way, it's what is. Small comfort in that I know but this is for me, not for you. Heh...bullshit...

Fuck. That hurt.

This could be Heaven right here on Earth...
This could be...
Our haven

and I whisper to you right now in the loneliest of voices
and sing those songs to you that always melt your eyes
into small oceans I catch in thimbles
and I can fly but I want your wings
and I shine but I crave the light that you bring
I need your heart to beat
against my ear as I lay my head down on you
and whisper in the loneliest of voices

That this could be Heaven right here on Earth...
This could be...
Our haven

and in beautiful ways you can unmake me, but I'll never be undone
and you sing those sacred songs that melt my eyes
into great rivers you catch in tea cups
and I can feel but I miss your touch
and I have all this but I still need so very much
I'll have to be stronger this time,
stronger than I've ever been as I lay my head down on you
and whisper in the loneliest of voices

This could be Heaven right here on Earth...
This could be...
Our haven
Always and Forever



I hope you know this is for you.
With love.

I know there's a big world out there like the one I saw on the screen.
In my living room late last night it was almost to bright to see.

Startling really. Utterly unexpected, how could it be? The sensation, roughly like being shoved into a warm wet tube sock, that is, a well muscled tube sock intent of preventing your escape. Yes, just like that, I awoke nearly quite exactly in the middle of being swallowed whole. I'm not certain where she came from, or under what pretext she snaked her way into my sleeping chamber in the early hours of the day but this soft serpent creature all curly hair and hinged jaws managed it. Took advantage of it. Found me vulnerable and pounced so quietly onto the stage of my bed, the platform of sex and slumber, she wiggled her way into it and began to feed. I can only assume she started at my feet, I can't really say though because by the time I realized what was going on I couldn't see my feet, they were planted firmly in her slick insides. I was dancing on intestines and leaning against her tonsils before I came to my senses and realized that like quick sand, this sort of trap is best escaped calmly and collected. Initially I wriggled, I did, panic and suprise made me twitch and tweak much to her amusement. I think she even laughed a bit, when I first started to struggle. Her kind, they enjoy the fight. Overpowering their prey makes it all the more worthwhile. Turns a feast into a festival. She did laugh though, the way they do, when they do. I felt her vocal chords vibrate lightly against my pelvis and her eyes they lit like little match fires. Her teeth scraped slowly up my belly as she pushed against the floor to force more of me into her gaping maw. I swooned at the thought of living my remaining years entirely ensconsed in this pale scaly woman flesh, wrapped up warm and tight like a newly conceived child. The horror! Wet and wobbly viscera my only scenery in a humid red solitary prison cell. That's a difficult thing to explain to an employer, trying to call in swallowed. Most people wouldn't believe it. So I did what seemed to be the only sensible form of action to undertake. Taking a cue from poor Pinochio in the gut of a whale, as one wooden boy inside to another, I tickled her. I did, unmercifully. At first she resisted and it seemed my effort would be in vain. Apparently this wasn't the first time someone had attempted to distract her from eating them alive. I persisted though, I explored various parts of her sleek pink form, I traced lines here and there. I crawled circles in tender places until I felt her moving way down deep. I followed fingers with a light breath around her ears. I poked and prodded, desparately now that she was past my chest and nearly to my neck. By the time she started to tremble I was down to only three free fingers and a head. I saw it in her eyes though, and knew I had won. She coughed a bit, and choked and I stopped moving, I only wanted to extract myself, not to hurt her. She was kind of cute and I have a thing for snakes. Even mean ones. Especially mean ones. Her sad eyes made me re-consider for a short silly moment whether or not to immigrate away to a dryer climate. I even felt bad, a little, depriving her of breakfast when she was obviously starving. It couldn't be though, I had work and life and friends and family. I had concerts to see and lectures to attend. People and places outside of her insides. I crawled slowly using my hands on sheets and blankets like a laid down ladder. I extracted myself and she whimpered quietly the whole time, disappointed. It worked out alright though, once I was out and fully toweled off I spent some time speaking softly to her, petting her fur and making funny faces until she laughed. I even bought her breakfast and taught her how to eat with a knife and fork. It was a strange way to start the day. I can't wait to see what she has in store for tomorrow.

I wondered tonight, after a chance coincidance. An omen it seemed; or simply amazing. Either way it led me into that fanciful land of Nod where I sat and contemplated the hazy inconsistancies of the world I was from. So what happened...

I was in the local pub. The lounge, the bar, the place we drink and make merry, my sort anyway. That place. I was there, enjoying myself, seeing someone off to a far away land and celebrating their last night. Four or five people were circulating, no less than three at the table at any given time when I became distracted. Seated, solidly, enjoying my drink and the conversation I was drawn away. Briefly to begin with. She reminded me so much...
She looked like someone I love..so much...
Her hair was just so, teased up slightly to a pert attention, black like forever.
Her dress, her voice, the way she moved just so in the clothes that were her. It was slightly eerie, being moved so easily from all the way across the room while I'm only idly talking local art and hardly paying mind. I fell out of my chair, metaphorically. Or rather, I was knocked. I started into nostalgia mode as a knee jerk response to the painful past until I sobered up enough to realize how much I'd had to drink so far. I was well insulated, it was almost one. So, given the circumstances what else could I do? At that point, really, what? Yeah, I bought her a drink. And we sat. And we talked. And I spent so much time looking into her eyes that reminded me...
so much...
And I returned to the party that was previously scheduled, I had people to see off. But all that night I kept thinking of her. Of HER. The distinction of two big letters is profound. I had been reminded. Forcefully.

Then the odd phenomenon. The miracle, the strange manipulation. The omen, as it were. The next day being entirely useless due to being entirely fun-over I felt the essential need of a cab to spare myself a bike ride to work. It was raining too, a little. When going to pay the fare for the glorious delivery of me with change from the previous nights shenanigans something caught my eye. There was something scratched in blue ink on the backside of the bill. What was it do you think? It was HER name. HER name not being especially unique in itself, but the spelling of it is. A ghost letter, it seemed. A summons from the past for...what? I'm still trying to figure that out...

P.S. Anyone who guesses what I did with the bill that had HER name on it wins a free dinner. On me.

I'm so sick of the sight of you. My magical muse, the sun and the sky and the clouds passing by. I'm so far gone now and I'm not coming down because I'm afraid of you and the promises you pretend to mean. I find your fullfillment frightening.
Go away,
stay,
away.
I need you like the parched red Sahara needs acid rain.

But I love the way you dance for me. I can't stop the rush when you move that way, with your foot on my throat. I think I love you like that. Someone I can despise in disguise. No really, I wouldn't hurt you otherwise. Touch me deep inside like that again and I'll make you wish you hadn't. I'll eat you alive, darling, and smile while you scream for me to stop. So take your finger print bruises and smudged mascara away and away somewhere I can't follow. Or I will. My meager masochism making me take you again and again.

So get close sweetheart,
get real close,
and say goodbye.

The angels they respond in different ways, to touch. A push, lightly. A caress. Fingertips and the rough soft edges of hands in contact with other skin. Slow seduction played lightly over sensitive nerve endings, plucked gently like hair thin harp strings. Lovingly. The young ones, the angelas, respond readily. In urgency finding new heigths to fly to and softer places to land. They're learning and loving it. Easy and free in not so familiar sensations.
Until they are. Then it's all about uncommon.
I must admit, and be candid...I'm a back man. The lines of shoulders and spines. Strange blade shadows thrown across a sharply dwindling expanse of pale pale pink flesh. Contours to lay claim to and develop, straight lines and edges...
...soft edges...
Strong and certain, clever edges.
To be candid: sometimes my lust is geometric.
It runs in infinite lines that spiral up and down, around in curves that end just..exactly..
where you do.
Like the angels plunging to the depths to appreciate the sky, needing to be touched. Just so. Moved in ways not physical but still so sensory. So necessary.
My geometric love of angels, all of them is to love the sight of them...
from behind...
and slowly walking away.

I've come to recognize that I'm an angry meat machine.
Holidays bring it out, especially the ones associated with
a need to do some drinking.
My St. Patty's was mediocre at best.
The green tide was fantastic but,
the entertainment...

{aside}
I don't know about you but I'm fascinated by our cultural cheerleaders. We seem to employ mascots for each and every holiday. A face for everything, giant bunnies who bear eggs, and a Santa Claus (who didn't wear red until a Coca-Cola comissioned Norman Rockwell). Leprachauns and cherubs, miniature idols, throwbacks to things not past but...produced. Mt. Rushmore Presidant's day faces and our mothers and fathers. They have their day too, separately. Father time and mother nature, The Lord our savior and Satan himself. The list goes on and on and they each implore an individual message. Buy/Spend/Paper/Silver/Diamonds/Sin/Salvation...and war bonds.

{aside}
I want a diamond. I really do.
I witnessed a proposal this chartruese evening. An odd occurance, drunkenly.

However, tonight's highlight was the mascot hit by a car, really. The emergency lights were festive, all red and white and blue and...not green. Someone was drunk(er), and I'm not sure which one it was, but we all were. Fantastic everyone being Irish today, or, as in the common vernacular (this evening), Irsh, and holding up an imagined heritage. Let's have another...

Did I mention my head caught fire? Briefly.

Monsters always have, and always will live in the dark. In the cold quiet places assigned to the snarling snatchers. The clawed and tentacled. The festering pestulent venom toothed demons and dragons. The bogeys, the windegos, devil-dogs, and goat-suckers. All in the wastes we shun mostly for reasons of convenience. Theres never been a doubt about the world unseen and the horrors the unknown holds. It's a learned behavior codified into our genetic make-up, it's passed on from one cautiously fearful generation to the next. If you're practical though, if you're sane and keep your cool, those terribly territorial beasts stay to themselves. On their islands, in their closets. Afraid of the light and enlightenment. It's only when we go looking that they pounce, slither, slime, writhe, claw, climb-bite-scratch-tear-slice their secret ways into our heads and hearts. Into our flesh and bones. They don't want to be found. They know that by owning their faces and stealing their names we'll render them impotent. They know this, it's their legacy.
But in their legends, they also pass down knowledge...each mangled disfigured deranged generation to the next. Tales of true horrors. The dreams that nightmares dream. Stories of things that live in the bright worlds above and beyond. Purse grabbers, pick pockets. Pederastic priests, crooked cops. Maniac men in roaring metal death machines. Evil corporate gods with business suited acolytes for fingers. Mean spirited cyclopean kids and their shamed and bullied people pets. Poverty dealing war mongering hydras with multiple heads of state. Shadow governments riding rocket propelled suns through the fire licked skies. Your every day love-drug addled lust junky carrying serrated heart tipped dopamine darts looking for someone to stick it to. You and I.
I've read in books all over, light had to be created, the dark just always was. It makes me wonder which came first, our fear or theirs?

This has been a response. Keep wondering, keep dreaming, dear BellaDonna, it's the only thing keeping our monsters at bay.

I stay away...

I traced the line a drop of rain made falling from the sky today. Starting there, up way up, I watched it leak slowly, beading on the underside of some stray granite rain cloud. Silver from gray it stretched mightily, pulling itself along gravity's slope towards the great green below, and me. I caught faintly the sharp but squishy elastic snap as it tore a tiny umbilical and separated itself from the sky. It plunged, or dove. It danced down driven this way and that in the high wind that blows above our collective perspectives, here, in the great green below.
This skinless balloon bomb, it chased the other drops and raced fearlessly and fast, sometimes bumping other plump moist babies, sometimes passing through them entirely. It danced, and I followed it watching. Fascinated.
So it fell and soon began to grow. Small supple round bellied body elongated, straightened and slimmed. Clothed only in surface tension and scraps of sunlight it spiraled and slewed from up way up and caught rainbows as it fell. Throwing them blindly, gloriously hurled shards of tinted air all colored became confetti falling...falling. The world became more beautiful instantly, amazingly. Briefly while it rained.
And as the world grew to great proportions down down down below, it sang. Raising a reverberating rubber crystal voice in chorus with it's clan. Singing back in response to the rolling thunderous bellows of the parent clouds above. Joyous and free it fell, an independant piece of the whole. Angel in a liquid choir. Streamlined wings whistled quiet melodies, whispering winds accompanied. I listened, fascinated.
Finally, with a great loud collective groan, the swarm of newly born angels ascended to their greatest depths and washed themselves ashore in the new world. The green below, where I watched. They thrust themselves with a running beat against the ground and trees and cars and people. And me. They forced themselves into places of warmth, places hard and musty. Some found this world of meat and metal to much, and steamed their way back home, into the up way up. The others, the one, I watched and as he found the ground and dug his way in I cried a happy tear to follow him down. Company in the rich black flesh of the earth.