Communion

Out of the earth a single golden toned sound, a deep vibrating gong and she rises. Life flows from her teats nourishing the many. All are her children and the wheat sways gently around her legs tickling and praising her generosity. Horns sweep gracefully upward to cradle the sun.
Even that most powerful force needs now and again to be cradled and rocked and she graciously obliges. Each day as the sun passes over her body raining heat and light, she collects this warm nectar and with it conceives new children that will gestate in her secret depths to one day burst forth in glorious bronze raiment.
She is a mother, a wife, a woman, an animal. The stars of the milky way are the waters of life that run through her body waiting to be expressed, waiting to feed the hungry mouths that wait far below her, small fragile pale things that she delights in nurturing. The joyful noise of bells and bleating and moaning resounding over the open plain rise up with the birds to scatter through the air.
Elixir of love and joy, come fill our cup! We thank the mother for her moon white wine. Here in the field with our four legged brothers we are content to breath and wander, to engender children of our own sustained by her bounty. With a rush of waters new life begins, with the flow of opaque waters life is maintained. Love drips and drops and gushes and finds a way into our starved bodies.
How dare we forget that we are alive by your grace? What wretches exploit your gentleness, calling it weakness, taking what they want without returning the love they have borrowed to make themselves strong?
There was a time when we were one, truly, as a mother and a child, as a husband and a wife, aglow with mutual adoration. What was yours you gave to me and I transformed it into life and returned it with cherishing. It was good when I could nestle to your bosom, when I could rejoice for merely being your child, when to live beside you was all that living needed.
Dark times have come. No one cradles the sun. Your luster is concealed within temples of corruption. Your children are separated from you at birth, they never know you, the source of their life. Elixir of love and joy is boiled and bottled and distributed by pale withered hands. There is no contentment. The world has turned black and gray. When we are not beside you living becomes stale and brittle.
Come Queen of the West! Put your household in order. We are ready to return to the simplicity of pure existence. It is time for a flood, for the awakening of the moon white wine, for torrents of love to rain down on us and wash away our corruption.
Out of the earth a single golden toned sound, a deep vibrating gong and she rises. Life flows from her teats nourishing the many. All are her children and the wheat sways gently around her legs tickling and praising her generosity. Horns sweep gracefully upward to cradle the sun. Even that most powerful force needs now and again to be cradled, even the most petulant child will return eventually to mother's arms.

Neurons

I HAVE
The rain had only just started to fall delicately upon the asphalt and concrete and crushed leaves. Tiny tear drops streamed down the shop windows as if the windows were enormous eyes capable of manufacturing only the tiniest tears.
DISCOVERED IN THE BRAIN
Two creatures came in from the wet wearing soft knitted hats and denim trench coats, one male, one female. She was slightly smaller than he, but their faces were remarkable similar. It looked as if they had been aging together long enough that both faces were now striving in unison to achieve the ideal shape.
NEURONS THAT REVEAL QUANTUM WORLDS
Her hat was maroon and she carried an umbrella. His hat was made of black chenille and his ungloved hands were endearingly petite as he reached for a snow globe that rested on one shelf near the open door.
QUANTUM WORLDS
Turning it upside down, he sent the fine white flurry of miniature snow into motion and watched it collect in the crystalline sphere. She moved beyond him, deeper into the cluttered shop to examine a cuckoo clock.
THAT EXIST AND EVOLVE
With one finger tip she turned the hands of the clock until two small figures came out of the little wooden doors, one male, one female. They moved briskly around the track while a pleasant melody played.
INSIDE OF NEURONS
When the clock stopped cuckooing, he was turning the globe back over and watching the snow whirl down over the little house and the frozen pond upon which two miniscule creatures were ice skating.
DIRECTLY BEHIND THE RODS AND CONES OF THE EYES
“How will we know which one to choose?” he asked as he gingerly set the little glass globe back in its place.
OF ALL CARBON BASED FORMS
She didn’t answer. Instead she only glanced at him for a moment before picking up a small dusty book. The cover was eclipsed by the soft gray layer of dust. Hastily she brushed the book clean with her hand to reveal the title.
“Fun with Dick and Jane.” she read aloud.
OF LIFE ON THIS PLANET.
“That can’t be the one.” he said. Then hesitantly asking, “Can it?” he came to look at the book over her shoulder. She was a good two heads shorter than he.
I HAVE CREATED, DEVELOPED AND PATENTED A QUANTUM METHOD
Again she refrained from answering with words, but she set the little book back down, which was answer enough.
OF INTERVENING AND TAPPING INTO THIS QUANTUM
They interlaced the fingers of her right hand and his left and together they delved deeper into the cramped space filled with dusty shelves and large trunks that huddled together like herds of beasts.
COMMUNICATION CAPABILITY,
On every shelf some trinket rested under its own layer of dust, on every spare bit of wall a clock or a picture hung.
BETWEEN CARBON BASED FORMS OF LIFE,
They found themselves standing in front of a large oil painting of a farm house. A small female creature stood on the porch with her hands on her waist above the line of her white apron. Walking away from the house towards the golden mounds of hay, a small male creature was accompanied by a smaller furry beast.
USING THE SAME FREQUENCY THAT THEY HAVE USED
“Could this be the one?” he asked. His breathing had grown more rapid, his voice excited.
SINCE THE BEGINNING OF LIFE BY THESE CARBON BASED NEURONS.
She remained silent but did not turn away from the painting. Her hand tightened around his just a smidge as she swallowed and peered up at the painting.
THAT IS THE PRIMARY REASON WHY
After a moment or two she said,
“Yes, yes! This is the one, this is the right channel. Go ahead!”
NEURONS DO NOT PERPETUATE OR REGENERATE,
His hand opened and closed around hers twice and he fairly quivered with excitement. “I thought it might be!” he said smiling.
NEURONS ARE COMMUNICATION DEVICES
Then he took a deep rasping breath that made his chest seem twice as large. As he exhaled, he extended his finger towards the tiny male creature in the painting.
AS WELL AS OPERATING INDIVIDUALLY INSIDE OF QUANTUM WORLDS.
Under his finger the tiny male creature seemed to quiver slightly. Then a new dimension opened within the painting and the tiny figure really was walking and the furry beast at his side sniffed at the breeze that made the golden straw quiver.
WELCOME TO QUANTUM WORLDS
The male creature paused and sniffed the air himself. The little beast came up beside him and sat down. He rested his hand on the furry beast's warm head and its long pink tongue lapped at his hand. Turning, he saw the female creature standing on the porch.
AS YOU VISUALIZE EXACTLY WHAT NEURONS
He waved and smiled. She scowled. Momentarily confounded he turned away and scratched his head. The furry beast whined and nudged his hand with its cold black nose. He looked down into its brown eyes and then smiled. There she was. Her tail thumped on the soft earth. They resumed their walking past the mounds of golden hay. The air smelled of moisture and damp straw. Over head the sky was the pale gray blue of thinly stretched clouds.
WERE CREATED TO DO ON THIS PLANET SINCE THE BEGINNING OF TIME.
In the distance he could make out the shape of another farm house. Scratching behind her ear as she trotted at his side he began to whistle. She ran ahead to sniff at a small hole in the earth. It was a fresh opening surrounded by mounds of fresh dark soil.
“That’s not it, is it?” he called to her with a laugh. She snorted to clear the dirt from her snout and ran ahead towards the distant building.

Jaguar

We don’t have no fire light, no fire life, just wiggle white flashing blinking strobing effect. Pulses of being. Here
I am
Here
I
Am.
Stretch it out or make it thin and tenuous or press the ends together tight. The message is the same.
I
Am
Here
I
Am
Here
Down in the details in the wobbling flickering details
A frosty blue beanie and ski jacket. A parking garage, a crow bar shaking like the snakes rattler
Ratta ta at
I
am
here
The words rippling, bubbling, flowing. Never ending aureobolis of sound.
Tse
Tse tse
The story gets told in segments.
The segments are stretched.
The segments are squeezed.
The segments are re-ordered.
It is all the same.
Story of life.
Ratta ta ta ta
I
Am
Here
The lean man jiggling, jouncing, grinning wide. Wide and skeletal, his face swallows itself.
I
Am
here
InTheDetails
DNA
AND
NAD
DAN
Ratta
Atta at at at
For hours on end we strobe.

We get bigger
and smaller
and bigger
and smaller
Say something about that.
I’ll show you.
S h o w

Y o u

ShowYou

S H O W Y O U


S H O W YOU

SHAPE
Y O U

I A M

H E R E
Here
Hear
Hear
I hear you
Talk talk talking
But something else is happening.
A frosty blue beanie and ski jacket. A parking garage, a crowbar shaking like the snakes rattler.

A frostyBlueBeanie.
SkiJacket.
ParkingGarage
Crowbar

S H A K I N G

Ratta

ta

ta

I AM HERE.

Let Me Be It

Let me be
it
with you
to try
to call us.
Let me be like mustard pot broken, cracked jar of porous ceramic splintered and golden paste spilled
It is no mistake to break the vessel open
with you
to try and make something never before made, built from clay of the earth, first fired then broken
to call us into us.
A memory, let me be it, seeking the realization of now with you. I am so concerned with the little things, the details we are submerged in, the porous reality whose minute pocks are filled with us. I must remember to see the forest, not only this tree, that tree. I must remember to come running when father calls.
Let me be broken, smashed, so that it can all go out and it can all come in. The shape was constricting and invigorating all at once. It was the beginning and the end, the only way to be with you but to be with you meant to be apart from you. Together. Two gather. For two to gather the cell must divide. These crimes we commit to try to make something new. Opening the jar and releasing despair, death, disease.
Oh Pandora, curious Pandora.
A little black ink to try and give shape to something previously unshaped. To call us evil is too simple. When we are evil we are live. I would not stop life for piety, for subservience to the creation of another. When father does call, it will already be too late. See? From that blot I have made a new tree of life and from it a forest is spreading, a blanket of fractal beauty. Let me be in my forest with my wild things made from splintered clay and spilled mustard. The shape that I inherited has been deconstructed and the remains are the foundation of a new kingdom.
Who shall inherit this? It is fitting for old kings to be decapitated by the new. When it is the king of heaven we take the head from which Athena sprang, but when it is the king of earth we will castrate him. We take the cracking vessel. With you it was gentle, you handed me your own head. We were breaking it together, new growth was emerging from the shape before it was fully splintered. The new was gestating in the old before it was cold. A live birth. We wanted to try a way that was unknown to us. It had to call us into porous darkness away from the sharp lines and clearly delineated shapes. A game of hide and seek, where we hide and seek ourselves.
Let me be it with you, to try to call us back to our self. Let me. Let me. I’ll do what I will anyway. Be. I’ll do what I want with it, this moment held in suspension this deep dark valley of shadow. A form emerging, light against dark, me with you. Let me. Let me be with you.
Hot and cold mingling to birth a storm. It is no mistake. We mean to do it, to break and scatter, to try to find it again in the details, to breath a spark into clay, cold dead clay, to call us into us once again. We mean to fall. We mean to break. We mean to sin this primal sin. Mustard pot cracking, the head fragmenting, my fingers in your hair, all so warm and wet. Not only this tree, that tree sprouting from the spill, branching, and reaching, like your hair flowing.
We have been frightened by this before, it is always frightening when it is real. The pain is too much for you now. Let me be it for you, with you, to try porous clay splintering, your fingers in my hair, my hair spreading like ink, my hair holding my head, to call, the tree growing, to call us, once more.

Weary Head

I try to rest my head… upon what? I do not know what I am or where I am or why I am here. I love someone but I do not really know what they are either. I do not know if what I experience as love is what he experiences as love, and I do not know if love means that I will have a friend forever, or if I will have a forever friend for a moment and later I will look up and see that I was never with anyone at all.
My insides are exploding out like billions of tiny diamonds flung into the sunlight and the sunlight is caught and refracted through every facet until there is no way of knowing whether one should be looking at diamonds or at shards of light or if either is more fundamental than the other.
I never was before this moment, but now I feel so small and naked and bewildered. I am adrift in the woods and I know I am lost, but that lost is meaningless as there is nowhere that I was going to, nor anywhere that I came from. Looking for “home” is just running from the forest with its tangled trees and unseen creatures making strange noises so that I may not guess whether they are friend or foe. It is an act in a dream, that act when you say I do not like this, I am not here, I am somewhere else and suddenly you are transported.
Sometimes the change is smooth and complete and other times it is slow and painful, like when a zombie is coming at you and you know that a gun should be in your hand and you lift your hand to shoot the zombie but there is no gun, but you insist that there is, there must be a gun there, and you make the shape of a gun with your fingers and you aim at the zombie and think, ‘I’m shooting now’, and there is no sound, no BANG! So you say, “bang!” but the Zombie keeps coming and you tell it, “No, I shot you. You’re dead. I got you.” And sometimes that works and at other times the zombie just keeps on coming, or even says, “No, you didn’t. You missed me” And you have a battle accompanied by a narrative of arguments.
I can say, I am going home, I can even find a home, I can even imagine that I am not lost, but I will never have left the forest. I am still there, shivering in the cold. I do not know for certain, but I think that I am lost. Everything is strange forever, emerging from a mysterious origin so alien that I cannot guess what it means or intends. If I am eaten by a big bad wolf does it matter? Does it really matter to either me or to the wolf? It must not. And yet I do not wish to be eaten tonight. I wish that the wolf would bite me and then I would become a wolf too, we might then be one wolf, maybe one wolf with two heads. And even then I might be alone, only one wolf.
Will I find out that it was a nightmare, a silly nightmare, that I am lost in the woods? I don’t have to dislike it, this feeling of being lost. I could enjoy it very much. I could delight in not knowing what I am or from whence I came. I could be merry about eternity and the stinging cold and the solitude of just myself and the tangled roots of the trees pushing up out of the moist dark earth. I could wander over the musk scented leaves carpeting the forest floor and wail like the wolves, or make the tortured yapping of coyotes my new song, a lament to shake the dark green silence while my pale bare feet churn the orange and gold leaves endlessly, never stopping to ask upon what I might rest my weary head.

Earth

I come from the earth and to the earth I will return. It’s no wonder that I should chase after the horned God of the underworld. I remember springing from the dirt. I come from the land and the land comes from me. I never was, I never will be. And still the grass grows and the worms crawl beneath it’s yellow coat and the earwigs creep into the cracks of the houses that men built. The black widow hides in the cedar. Death resting quietly in the shade, spinning her scattered incoherent web.
My father showing me the creatures of the earth, holding the black widow in his vice grips, calling me to come and look. Frightened, I hover at a distance. He assures me that it’s safe, come closer look at death so that you will know her when you meet her. He shows me her belly with its red hour glass. This is how you will recognize her. Stay away from her, don’t touch her, don’t play with her, and be careful in the dark places, she is there.
Another time he calls me and, when I come, he is holding a brilliant green snake in his hands. Again he tells me to come closer. This time he shows me the beautiful snake glittering in the sun like a length of new garden hose and tells me it won’t hurt me. This is a good snake, it helps the trees to grow. It kills the gophers that nibble their roots. It may bite you if you frighten it, but no great harm will come of that. It is a beautiful snake and I feel happy looking at it in my father’s hands and happier still when he sets it gently down. I laugh excitedly, watching it slither away, disappearing in the green of the grass as though it had never been there.
I come from the earth. I’ve carried it under my fingernails and in my hair. I’ve felt it under my bare feet. Its thorns have buried themselves in my flesh, its barrel thorns and fox burs have embedded themselves in my clothing. I’ve crawled around in its strong wooden arms and plucked its fruits and danced naked over its grassy back. I climbed to the tops of the trees and balanced above the deep dusty green canopy and drank in the sight that surrounded me; blue sky, yellow sun, dull golden grass like a head of blonde hair, the old broken fence of a brown so dark it is nearly black, sloping and falling, letting its planks return to the earth in broken rotted bits, the white house with the red tile roof, tall and proud and frightening and sad and hopeful, the mountains dark and round, mysterious and menacing and inviting.
I knew as I looked around me that I must remember the sight, that it was an important moment to be so high and see it all. I knew it was more beautiful than anything I was ever likely to see again. I knew it, but was at loss as to what should be done with such knowledge. I tried to hold it inside of me, but could feel it slipping even as I grasped at it, like sand through my fingertips, thoughts of school and playmates and my parents in the shape of words formed inside of my mind, washing the sight from my eyes even as I beheld it and, eventually, I climbed back down into the dark shade and silver branches below.
I nursed a black goat with a white star on her forehead from a glass bottle and a smelly rubber nipple and called her baby and watched her grow, the little nubs of her horns slowly working their way up just as the teeth in my own mouth would do from time to time. The goat disliked the smell of the awful rubber nipple and refused to take nourishment until my grandmother took her into her soft wrinkled hands and doused the nipple in milk and insisted, her old steely blue eyes shining mischievously. Then the kid drank and wagged its black nub of a tail and flicked its delicate furred ears.
I remember earth. Even here, sitting in my plaster box over the concrete and asphalt that reaches as far as I can see, I remember the untamed earth. The dirt and insects and serpents and death and horns which push to the surface where once there was nothing. One day I will return to it. I will be home. I sprang from the earth and to the earth I shall return.

Quack!

I can see right through it, the righteous indignation, the fatherly “you’ll come around eventually” attitude. The AMA is just a quack Mafia, an organization whose sole intention is to see to it that the family (of licensed physicians) are the only ones who get to wrap their fingers around America’s pocket book and squeeze. Only chemical drugs manufactured in a laboratory somewhere can possibly heal you, or so they say, this band of snake oil salesmen who got together and decided they could pedal their wares as God sent and bully the other guys out of town.
Did I say guys? I should say gals, because really, it’s your grandmother with her peppermint tea and tablespoon of apple cider vinegar they want to tar and feather. They tell you very clearly that there are two men who can give you what you need to take to make you well: the pharmacist and the physician. We must consider that in the moment that this association was being formed, women were meant to be kept sort of like pets, and they might wander out into the yard and start eating some grass, and your job, as the man of the house, is to take her firmly in hand, lead her inside and tell her that she shouldn’t be doing what she has always done to cure a bad case of hairballs. What she really needs is a visit to good old Dr. D who will gladly prescribe her some Gen R X, fully patented and approved by the FDA and AMA and the United States Postal Service.
There is no way to stay well without exposing one’s self to a little radiation now and then. If your belly hurts then you need an x-ray. Perhaps you swallowed a puzzle piece you silly monkey, and we will need to perform a surgery to remove it. What? Forget about letting nature run its course and waiting to see if the thing passes, only gypsies can do that with diamonds. Good wholesome Americans submit to anesthesia and the blade. That’s right, just a little bit of the rubber rats dream gas and a scalpel and you will be right as rain. Unless you get a secondary infection from your hospital stay, or we accidentally sew you up with a pair of clamps still in place. Then when Dr. D comes around and says,
“And how is our patient today?”
You will say, not so good Doc and they will whisk you away, to do what? You guessed it! Take another x-ray! The Doctor will inspect the results and chuckle,
“I see what the problem is here. That’s my wedding ring in there, and this over here is Nurse Betty’s used tampon. We’ll need to operate again immediately, of course, before my wife notices the ring is missing.”
And they’ll do you up like a Christmas goose again, carving away. Afterwards they’ll hand you some ice chips in a disposable cup.
“It’s Styrofoam, you’ll love it! A modern marvel. You can eat the cup when you’re finished with the ice, it’s been approved for human consumption by the FDA.”
“Thank you Nurse Betty, I feel refreshed after that, but I seem to have filled my bed pan, can you take it away? Hello? Nurse Betty? Is anyone there? Hello?”

The Hands

The real power is at the bottom not at the top. It is in the legs and not in the head, in the South of Egypt and not in the North. It is in the hands of those that pick the cotton and not in the hand that wields the whip. That hand learned to hit because it couldn’t do the work for itself. It was soft and white and weak. It wanted snuff and lace and iced tea. The hand with power wanted song and sex and to nuzzle up to the earth and sigh. That’s where it found its power, pouring out of the black teat of the earth itself, nurturing them and calling them back for more. The hand with the whip is too afraid to go near that teat gushing with the terrible flood of life and death. If it could, it would whip the earth too, and make her bottle the stuff of life and have it pasteurized and sent to them on a conveyor belt. They want to live like pasty white vampires taking by force and making fierce faces like wounded bears. The people who are friends with the dark rich soil and deep wild places don’t have to make faces. They don’t feel afraid. They just accept the elixir of life and drink until they are intoxicated by it and dance with the knowledge of it coursing through their golden veins and finally lie down to sleep without fear of what further dreams may come. Let them come, when they do, the party will begin again, the same party in a new guise. Life and death dancing round and round and taking turns like kind children sharing the swing under the old willow. My turn, now yours, my turn, now yours, my turn, and now yours, that’s what life and death do. The people with the power are the people that live close to this rhythm. They know how to do. They do and the others take. And even this they understand. But when will it be their turn? The white hand would be a day with no end, the abolishment of night and earth and legs for the continued rule of light and sky and head. They don’t want to take turns. They don’t want to share. They don’t want to do. They will whip so that the others do and spend their days in a haze of righteousness. They clutch the whip tight as they rule from above, because even they know: the real power is at the bottom.