In Control – a flash fiction.

Hello there observer.

“Tom, there’s no way that they can take another round. See that ocular leakage, way over tolerance.”

“Yeah, yeah I know Bill. I can hear too can’t I? Ancestral recall or personal identification with Canis lupus do you think?”

“No family resemblance but that baying is putting my skin on edge regardless. How you want to do this? We’ll get some sympathy views if we drag it out—personal favorite of mine I’ll have you know since this is our first time working together—might even get a couple more weeks out of the budget. Holds a lot of risk with this pair though from what we’ve seen and neither of us wants to explain why we’re carting off a pair of body bags.”

“Fair point. How would you feel about a hybrid? Start off slow but keep an eye on a drop dead date where it all crescendos again and forces a clean cut. Watched Geoff do something similar once. Takes finesse, as always, but it can be done.”

“I’m game, closeouts are your arena anyways from what I hear, I’m better at the fluff and the early game. Just let me know the confidence and insecurity tables you want to use before we start so I can keep things on track.”

“Retro-consideration and empathetic quotients are going to be key factors as well. Can you send Jim to let psych know that we will need their numbers first. Future orientation has always been lacking in 5KY3 and like you said, we don’t want any b-bags.”

“No problem. Such a shame.”

“What?”

“Really thought it was going to work this time.”

Night Tan Under the Supermoon

Layer a white cold blaze

in circular pool

hung

where the reflection of day

carries to the infinite

teeming void.

Shadowscape of eternity

ever beyond 

incandescent blue skies,

milky clouds,

beyond sun-blinded sight,

always sitting.

Wonderland of possibilities

bending even science

to use imagination.

Endlessly faltering

towards an unknowable end.

The Gods baubles

spin deftly

through the deepest darks

of cavernous black gone noir.

Never bound,

never stuck,

not clasped tight inside

of opulent bondage 

as we marching mortals

on our madhouse Earth.

Into that idea –

that dizzy concept which

forged new words

to try and constrain

something so terribly VAST –

where all is birthed

through cataclysm,

fiery destruction,

demises so profound

dust from their corpses span eons,

rages as a furnace

crafts awakening

in billions of new forms.

Peace is found

within mirrored 

microcosm eyes

of any

who would choose to pray,

take silent reverie

in joyful awe,

of beauty without boundaries,

and their own

immeasurable nothingness.

Shadow Boogie, Starlight Feast

Baby, give me gasping galaxies of infernal heat to warm the vacuum where once I lay. Cut dusted fragments of the stars from my body and my mind–it think find its soul which till remembers the last whisper and caress out there where we made our nests in nebulae, powdered our faces in fractal fission and wept at the insane beauty that stretched to the unknowable ends. Give me whetstone tones of tenderness to grind on down these rough edges, I know you will. Fine tune my harmony to match the orchestra, I know you will. Love me gentle and love me brutal, I’ll do same. But, on the nights I go to bathe in the shimmer and glimmer of dead Giants birthing monstrous infinities while listening to shadows hum their lonesome shaded songs….on those nights, I am forever free.

Regrets on Repeat During a Rabid Quarantine Contemplation

1000th Album from Out of Line Records
Album cover from German band Signal Aout 42

Give me back the good ole’ days,
when I didn’t know I had been a dick,
before my eyes got opened wide
when I didn’t know I was supposed to think that I was slick.
’cause now there’s nowhere left to run,
the drugs aren’t making new connections,
copper wire all stripped bare and caked in black,
who knew that feeling guilty wouldn’t be so fun.
When disassociation was best friend,
wide-eyed ignorance was true enough
shame comes boiling on
like napalm from
the surface of a once forgiving sun.
So self-important in critique
that I’m burying the good parts inside the shit
convinced that its still black and white
and regardless of the truth,
I deserve to be punished.
for the right, the wrong, the sick,
that stupid mindless babble
even my well-intentioned songs.
Keep it all so serious now,
that panic seems always at the door,
instead of basking in the freedom from
that monster inside that damaged so much the world.
Enjoy the chance to roll again,
spin through ridiculously insane normalcy,
let feet hit a brand new road and leave behind insecurities, all fallacies–

—start the insurrection.

Books, Booze and Blues

Boozehound image from dadadreams showing a dog drinking scotch.
Image borrowed from Dadadreams

John Lee Hooker says whiskey and women,
the blues man before asks for another pint.
Pour me a tall glass of that liquid summer
down the hatch and off into the night.
Pounding embers of wisdom shed into fluid form
its time to get wasted to the tune of a misfire
and the sobbing caterwauls of mans plight.
Joy measured into shared company is compounded
misery dissipates in that carefree state. .
Spider Robinson says that Callahan’s is the cure
that telepathic understanding would make us pure.
Three shots of jack and the curtains reveal
magic bullets in glass containers of sin.
Esoteric breakdown of barricades sitting strong
imagining the beauty in words as music hits the song.
Dusty lungs coughing out something foul
to the satisfaction of another cigarette horked down
sitting numb eyed in a daze that seems to follow.
Chest sits warm in dispassionate easy grace
somber living never gets you to these places
never breathing deep enough to indulge in phantom chases.
Down memory lane and into the brambles
a stumbling mess of skull fucked cobwebs
and woven disasters of recollection branches.
Drop those spiders on my spirit and proud face
its not for nothing that they call it a sad display.
But here I’ll sit until the noonday sun
calls out my moon tanned skin for daytime fun.
Polish the bottle child and don’t leave a drop
there’s a ride to be ridden this evening,
no conductor to guide us
and no idea where it stops.





Tide of Chimps

Welcomes indeed to the rising sun,

an eyepatch fucker blessed to rain heat

a tidal wave of heartless blistered air

nuclear semi-shock of exhalted explosion.

Soaked in sweat, dribbling water,

remembering whethering worse weather

and praying for that bastard to set

while pondering the insanity of sweaters.

Living like a hillbilly hodgepodge

happily met with tight stagnant air

stuck in the sky crossed room,

we are feeling less like “human”

much more like baboon.

Externaphizing

Hoping the jury is out.

I’m coming to the realization that on so many different levels I am either a remarkably calloused and demanding individual or there is a screw truly loose (several more likely) upstairs. It’s the only thing that can, or would, account for such indiscriminate moments of self indulgent burbling and behaviour as leads me to regularly overlook the concerns of those loving figures in my life. Unless I am well and truly an actual certifiable dick.


I’m even finding a flair for it in the fact that I tend to fixate on my own reactions and actions in situations – pre-emptively justifying some flagrant display of asinine “my way or the highway” choice making prowess with a fixated smile plastered in disregard on my face (which I will only later realize to my own chagrin). If I were to explore the world around me, step outside of this little glass room and observe that what I previously represented as fun was actually a brazen push off of my wife’s emotions and verbalized needs (supplanted by my own), irresponsible actions that drained coffers and put us at risk, and a worthless extension of a wonderful day into the doldrums and mire of a night huddled at opposite sides of the van.

Somewhere along the lines there is a lynchpin moment – like when I say, “wow, we are getting along great recently!” Klaxons should go off inside my head that any moment now my own self-destruct sequence just silently clicked on and started down. If I can chase back that singular moment as it happens and repetitiously drill it into my head that this is the moment where a choice can mean the validation of goodwill and genuine happiness being experienced and a continuation thereof, or disaster and a repeat of the same overplayed mistakes once again.

It seems intuitive that anyone would want to sustain positivity and goodvibes that are making themselves felt in an interpersonal dynamic – so why does my brain blank to suddenly and with seeming intent when it comes to taking the basic neccessary steps to do so? I don’t like the burned out husk of joy that is left when I don’t, no one does. If I have to be self serving enough to recognize the discomfort that the miss of that moment will bring to myself in order to identify the external impact that will precede, so be it.


I really hope I’m not just a dick. That would really be terrible.

Stuck

Stuck on,

Wash, rinse, repeat,

Stuck on,

Reading the same page.

Stuck on,

Making the same mistakes,

Stuck on,

Being stuck on.

Errr….and then words….

Composite a spectrum,

Diagnosis alternative nostrum,

Qualifier doctrine placenta,

I’d call it a kid if only it were one.

So, birthplace be lobed,

Rounded and gray matter globed,

Because words man,

Them is the things that I once loved.

Whiptail Smile – a Romance

,Burning.Woman

Whiptail fun times,

She laid back and threw that hair

Fire doesn’t have that shade,

Red on shimmer on length,

A fold on the mobius loop,

No drinks for breakfast man, reality is already soup.

She’s got a lily to her eye,

A tone to her smile,

Edge to her skullmeats,

Nothing average, not at all.

Beggars for fun,

And in a whisper,

Airy as a feather,

“Let’s do without the sorrow for awhile.”