Invaders

They are coming, spreading their otherness throughout our very personal space. Here behind the wall where we were once so safe, they are thriving, squirming, multiplying.
It seems, at first, like a dance. They are floating and drifting. Exotic visitors. Maybe they bring peanut butter. Maybe these are our lost brothers.
Their numbers increase. What was an interesting bit of choreography has become a swarming mass of bodies. There are so many more of them than there are of us. They are inside.
Maybe they bring liberation. Maybe what they bring is death.
This hostile presence, this thing that does not obey the laws we obey, this thing whose code is its very own secret way, it is an invader. It is the Other.
It is intent on making what was ours its own. It has come for our vital resources. It is feeding on the vein of our land, our body, the kingdom where we dwell. It is feeding on us, wearing us down, overwhelming us in numbers.
There are so many more of them than we can deal with. They breed so quickly. Clouding our skies with their awkward birth. There was a time when ours was the only culture. Now theirs is here, growing, expanding, reaching in beyond the boundaries.
Something is coming, closing in, frenzied by the heat of conquest, eager to breach our walls. It reaches into our space. This alien thing. Its shape, so unlike our own, so similar in startling ways, inspires our awe.
What? What does it want? Maybe it is playing. Maybe it is giving us a gift. This alien thing. Its shape, so unlike our own, so similar in startling ways, inspires our fear.
It is inside of us now. Its way is not our way. It does what it wants with us, this occupying force. We are infected by its presence. We are becoming they.
We resist. Our insurgence matches their hostility with violence. Their numbers are greater. They tumble out of the sky, out of space, from the abyss, they tumble, are hurling towards us to explode in our warmth.
They come to dig in. To make our body their own. Their culture will be grown in our soiled ruin. Whether we accept it. Or reject it. Something is coming.
There are so many more of them than there are of us. They are inside now. This is their kingdom, their land, their home. They are the “Us”. We are now the “They”, creeping around, hoping for a chance to recover, to strike back.
Maybe they have brought evolution. Maybe they have brought ruin. Maybe they have made a desert.
The land collapsed beneath their unquenchable hunger. Perhaps they never wanted to keep what was ours. They meant only to touch it, to rush through it, fill it in the heat of their passion, then abandon it after it was no longer ours.
Their need was never to have and to hold. They tapped the vein of our body to feed their conquest. Now they move on in need of another boundary to penetrate, another Other to subsume. They flourish in our waste until we are extinguished.
Now they march on to farther horizons, in search of heat, to rain down upon another kingdom. Maybe they will bring peanut butter. Maybe they will bring death.

Run As Fast As You Can

As fast as you can, run. Feet pounding against hard dry earth, then the sound of brittle dry grass and wild oats and wheat folding under foot. A frantic rustling sound, like the tearing of sheets of paper, run. The trees conspiring to make shade in a place accustomed to the tortures of the sun…slender young things, rebels in a desert. The white church with its friendly face and the weirdness tucked tight within, worshipers down on their hands and knees, new initiates stripped to their undergarments to be absolved of sin before their brethren’s eyes. Stripped of sin, of the mortal sin all begun with a bite into a crisp apple, sin originating from a resounding “crunch". See it in the jagged yellow action bubble.
Suddenly Eve beholds her nakedness. So now they take off their clothes in the basement of the church. But you don’t have to, you don’t have to go there. You can run. Run away from your parents and your teachers and the preacher and the neighbors. You can get away with strong young legs, but it’s not the strength of the body that they have restricted. It is the strength of the will. You are their slave. A sad host for their disease.
The trailers, the custom homes sprawled like mansions in a no man’s land, rest side by side, crowning hills and nestling within valleys. The woman with the high heels is coming, asking again if we’ll come help her with some work at her house. Smart gray knee length skirt and jacket, red lipstick, mahogany locks shining in the sun.
Everything looks just right. A fine outstanding citizen. We go, because we can no longer refuse and be considered polite, good neighbors, fine young people. Later, we can’t remember what happened at her house. We’re not even sure that we went.
Run, as fast as you can, run. The face of the house white as the church, charming green trim and the stairway around back that leads to another basement…
Smooth sun tanned arms and legs and freckled cheeks, walking through the fields, resting under the little trees. Scent of hot asphalt when we cross the only paved street in town for ice cream or magazines and bubble gum. Clouds of dust stirred up by our discolored sneakers as we race home along the dirt roads. Bigger clouds made by the tires of pick up trucks rattling along.
When we were younger we waved. Now sometimes we hear them coming and dive into the seas of tall grass. A refuge from all of their expectations. Lady bugs crawling up long stalks and other insects we haven’t named, pale green and yellow or black and red, also down here hiding.
The woman with the high heels smiling at us again in front of the white church. Won’t we come again? She always asks when others are present, ashen adults who admire her color, her charm. If we refuse they will frown at us. We are encouraged to go.
No!
We scream silently, hearts thundering, adrenaline rushing. Not even we know why, but we feel it from head to toe, a throbbing urge to run, as fast as we can. But with their eyes on us we can’t. We can only submit and walk back to her house, to the place we can only half remember. Back to the green sofa and tumblers of ice tea, the part we’re allowed to remember, the part that comes before the concrete steps and the cool darkness of the basement.
It comes bubbling up only in flashes, half remembered scenes that step beyond reason. Discordant images quickly pushed back into the depths, too incongruent with the shiny platitude of the surface. It is too late to act on the impulse to flee, but we do it anyway, with our minds, because it is too late for our bodies. As fast as you can, run, skimming over the top like flat stones over a pond’s mirror finish.

Colony

My sister was there when I was born. She helped me remove the shell that encased me when I felt complete in my beingness. I flexed my legs and scratched at the walls from the inside until the sheath trembled and shook with my efforts. Then my sister took notice and came to my assistance. When enough surface had been torn away, her antenna touched mine and I was soothed knowing that I was cherished. We shared knowing. Together we removed the white husk that had held me since a time before I was me.
I had been other than I was now. That time was lost to me, except the vague memory of my sister’s touch. We had shared knowing even before my transformation. She had always cared for me, and I was glad now that I was as she. We were now fully sisters.
When I had completely emerged, my sister and I touched feelers again. There was much that needed to be shared with me. Even while we communed this away another of my sisters came and carried away the birthing husk. My sister showed me the nursery where there were others who were as I once had been. They were so different than I was now. My long slender legs were now so quick and agile. Once I had none. Once I had lain blind and wriggling.
My sister showed me how she cared for these others. The understanding had already been transmitted to me in the knowing when we touched, but now I watched as she helped the blind ones, grabbing them with her mandibles and dragging them to the center of the chamber where they could roll and wriggle together. There were other sisters here, all assisting the blind ones who were as I had been and as my sisters themselves once were. I joined them in herding the blind ones together and saw to it that they were cherished and helped to nurture them so they could grow fat in preparation for their long confinement in transformation.
Some of the blind ones were ready. They were now busy cocooning themselves in fresh birthing sheaths. They would sleep the sleep that I had slept and would awaken anew when their own transformation was complete.
I was shown the eggs from which the blind ones had emerged. My sister touched feelers with me and asked me to help her move the eggs up to another chamber where there was warmth. We worked, letting the rhythm of work fill us with delight, carrying eggs from one chamber to the next through the tunnels. We were filled with pleasure assisting our unborn sisters, helping them to grow into blind ones so that they would one day undergo the great transformation and be as we were.
When our mandibles were empty we occasionally paused to touch feelers sharing the knowing. Our communion warmed us. We were also warmed by our work. Later when the upper chambers cooled, we moved the eggs back to the protected depths of the nursery.
We took a moment from our work and feasted on what our warrior sisters had killed. It was a fantastic beast that they had slain, huge and alien. Its mammoth size was a testament to our sisters’ courage and strength. We touched and sang their praise in the knowing.
When I was satiated I watched as one of my sisters carried away the body of another sister who had ceased to know us. This was all right. We still knew her. Down in the nursery, eggs were hatching and the blind ones were being fed and were spinning cocoons and soon they would join us in the knowing.
The knowing was shared before we were born and it would continue to be shared after we died. Our constant work ensured this. We rejoiced in the never ending flow of activity that was our communal beingness; carrying eggs, tending the blind ones, removing the dead, tunneling new passages, maintaining the old, exploring the world beyond, and hunting and killing, and scavenging and always, always sharing in the knowing.
My sister was there when I was born, and I was there when she was born, helping her to emerge from her cocoon, showing her all that she must know so that she could be there when her sister was born again.

Pink Satin Roses Unraveling

Pink satin roses unraveling and round moon white belly out running tiny breasts. The great hallowed halls of my makers and their room of mirrors, that is the place where I go to wait. The wall of windows lies exposed and I can see the fields all gold and brown and the dusty green olive trees and a far away lake of dark blue. The sun shines eternally in that place and there is someone to take my hand and the memories shift like the beads at the end of a kaleidoscope, always changing the view. I am young and strong and brave again with the stars of wonder restored to my heart. I can run with long legs and bare feet into all of the days that come with lungs pumping and heart pounding, aching in my chest. The pleasure of letting the spirit fly through life outweighs the pain of moving the body so that there is no desire to stop. They make themselves old in that world far from the room of mirrors in the halls of the makers, stooped over desks and hunched over steering wheels. They die bit by bit each time that a bell is rung and they begin to practice this little death while they are children. Poison in silver wrappers, poison filled with sweet cream and stowed away in neat plastic boxes adorned with our favorite blue skinned heroes sets the mind racing when it finds its way into the blood stream. That is how we grow old, loosing our bodies to false gods and cramped spaces and sweet toxic substances that give us a moment of pleasure. That is how I grow old and come to sag, that and by giving myself away to all comers. Anyone who asks gets my attention. My parents start stealing it away when I am small. I come to believe it is what I must do in all cases, and only when it is too late, I realize that it must be stopped. I must keep a kernel for myself so that it can grow and flower again and again. Never ever give it all away. Keep it so that spring can come again. There is a way that leads to life and a way that leads to death. Not for the body alone, but for something else as well. We must live for the shimmering sliding something that passes through this world. It passes through what we think we are, it passes through the whole thing. Later we will read these words and we will think that they make no sense, but that is all a mater of perspective. You must be much bigger to see, you must be bleeding through the paper thin world of the temporary. I draw a cross in the little world and in the room of mirrors a door opens and I find a tiny sword in the darkness beneath a fur coat. It fills me with fear, because I never imagined I would find such a thing in this place. It came from somewhere that I am blind to, it has come from the Other. Now I have the tiny sword in my hands. I knew of the place outside of places when I found the sword. I knew it when I met the terrible yellow unicorn with its red eyes and it dared to defy the laws of the world that I inhabited. I knew it best of all when I stacked the brightly colored boxes, little ones on top of big ones or inside of big ones and there was a special square way that they fit. That was what taught me to understand space and it reminded me keenly of the place outside of places. Soft and sweet with little bits of pink satin roses coming unraveled, and a hard sidewalk on a pleasantly warm night and the infinite open above me. Another right there beside me and we are amazed that we are here, amazed that we are alive, amazed that there is another amazed one here, right now with the one I call “me”. The great hallowed halls of my makers and their room of mirrors, that is the place where I go to wait. That is where I am. A kernel kept for myself so that spring will come again.

Dog And Cat Days

Oh the sea foam green dreams of young kitten girls with soft clouds of hair and stooped shoulders. They break on the rocks and spray the faces of bull dog boys waiting on the beach with their guitars and bon fires and all hearts have wings that beat against the cages of rib bone that house them. So often we feel them trying to fly up out of our throats and they get stuck there as a lump, or sometimes they flutter around in our stomachs especially when our eyes meet or some bit of flesh brushes up against another. We’ll be drug or gun runners and we’ll sit by turquoise pools in forgotten desert motels and sip drinks garnished with hot pink paper umbrellas until we get our stomachs shot out and we bleed out red blood into some old avocado green shag and hold hands and feel shocked watching the light go out of our eyes.
We’ll be rock stars with coke habits and old mink coats and big sunglasses and then we’ll look more than ever like the kitten girls and bull dog boys we are. We carve our initials into the sandy cliffs that overlook the surf and kitten girls know that the wind will blow the names away and there will be no more KG “heart” BDB some day, but still her eyes are full of stars and Harley Davidsons rumble through her cranium. They could just live in an apartment that smells like antiques and old ladies down by the sea, soaking the asbestos up while being nobodies together. She can write a novel that no one will publish and he can work in construction and play in a band that sounds like animals fighting in the guts of land mowers and each can maintain with pride their respective My Space profiles.
It was meant to be glorious and shining, our youth unending, the mysteries of the universe always sparkling over us, hearts always trying to escape these excited bodies, these chemical factories for building space ships for the Gods. We would die young and live in the kingdom of heaven forever. Maybe recklessly manufacture smurf speed in a bathtub in a sagging house off of Machado St. and wait for the fantastic explosion that would set our hearts free. Kitten girl would do anything, anything at all to feel alive, break her hymen over Tom Waits songs, bite and scratch, forget the condoms, take a greyhound bus to another state, watch strangers play video games and drink wine coolers in living rooms that smell like nothingness. She’d even shave away the soft clouds of hair and invoke demons in circles and stars made of masking tape and spend the night in cars parked at run down drive ins.
Somewhere along the way the dreams were trapped in black bottles and distilled into nightmares brewed in basements.
What happened to recording our newest song in the bathroom on an old cassette player and ditching school to play it on the old boss stereo for grandma? What happened to dancing half naked in the surf and bulldog boys in pink dresses and kitten girls singing songs on the fences of hot alleys?
In some tear drop of time we are there, like insects trapped in amber, our spirits were left behind in the golden sun filled afternoons of our dog and cat days. Now we march, life less old wrinkled things with guts too heavy to swing to the music and hearts too swollen with betrayals of self to flutter or even flop. Poor hearts, the wings have so hopelessly atrophied. This slow death is not the glory we imagined, is not the song to the immortal that we dreamed we’d learn to sing. When did we become tame old pets with small dreams? Little petty fantasies so devoid of life they can no longer crash onto shores but only slosh about like old beer in plastic cups?
Oh the sea foam green dreams of young kitten girls with soft clouds of hair and stooped shoulders. They used to break on the rocks and spray the faces of bull dog boys waiting on the beach with their guitars and bon fires and everyone’s hearts had wings that beat against the cages of rib bone that housed them.
We can live again in the bright and shinning moment, dancing and singing the sparkle of the stars. The night sky will once again drip with mystery, our hearts might again shudder with ecstasy and its promise. Anything is yet possible while we still breathe, even if there is a tear drop in which we are sour little pusses and sleeping old dogs, there is always another moment waiting to be born. A sea foam green bead of liquid life in which we rise from our ashes and live, live, live, live, wild and magick things from other times and other places, from fantasy books and independent films, soft kitten girls and brave hearted bull dog boys, the stewards of live hearts.
And now that innocence has become experience we’ll know how to let them fly. We’ll let them soar like birds of prey, graceful and far seeing carrying us to all new vistas of sound and color, to worlds knit of avocado green shag and soft pale clouds of hair and guitars and bonfires and pink flesh stitched together with boom boxes and reels of old film. Oh the sea foam green dreams with their Harley Davidson rumble and the red blood that sloshes like beer in old cups shuddering with ecstasy distilled into nightmares. The glory we imagined is the song to the immortal that we dreamed we’d sing with our tear drops of time wrapped in stooped shoulders. We break on the rocks and the wind blows the names away along with the cages of rib bone that housed them.