The Road to Disney World

Suddenly as

a car through the living room

at 70 miles an hour

you are in a fast food joint again

colors projected with fluorescent gloom

you order the picture of a hamburger

and are not disappointed,

the tastes tied to that picture

you unravel with your teeth and tongue

when you were a kid

you got a plastic toy, a cartoon something

inflated into your dimension

cast in Taiwanese molds endlessly

it broke the next day

or you lost it in the back seat

where the belt buckle sprouts

the buckle with the red button

guarding the space between seats

where fidgeting hands dive to discover no end

but the grit of dirt, dust and knotted hairs

now you are the driver

at 70 miles an hour

your son, a precocious child

after four hours deliberation

on the road to Disney World

resolutely unbuckles his car seat

with two hands grips the red buckle

glances behind him

at the steady eyes of the rear view mirror

and pulls himself in

you find him in a week

covered in dust and sticky grit

40 years old with a thousand yard stare

clutching a blood-smeared Aladdin figurine.

Dream III: Possibility's Debris

At the beach I stroll past a series of immense sperm whales locked in combat with giant squid arranged in a neat grid in the shallows like a field of cabbages, immobile, frozen in mid battle, each one a quarter of the way submerged. I look on indifferently since not one of them is yet ripe. I continue on my way and realize that this is no ordinary field, but one which has no end, that I am browsing the set of All Things. The tiny portion I currently inhabit is every oceanic battle in all its permutations, set aside and indexed like the loose frames of a million movies and smaller still the sector which only contains giant squids fighting sperm whales, and yet more minuscule the subset of fights where the squid has a sucker three down from the tip of its fourth tentacle in place on the whales left eye. Even so, this infinitesimal segment of a division is the size of universes clustered like the stars within galaxies. I see a highway overpass in the distance which spans the ocean and continues on into infinity past the horizon like a rainbow's ugly skeleton and I sit at the water's edge defeated, for there is nothing left to imagine.

Love Me or Leave Me

Should I spread my kisses over you like cold hummus, letting the cold, mealy blend of garbanzos, tahini, garlic, lemon juice, cumin and hot peppers drip down your belly and over your gorgeous cunt like an avalanche of spicy lava whilst I apologize profusely for accidentally getting some in your eyes and causing them to water like your father's sprinkler system on that one dark morning I emerged from your bedroom clutching my ruined asshole and the bandoleer of elaborate iridescent dildoes gleaming in the starlight which we used to pleasure each other till we both erupted in the throes of passion like the ripe, red zits on an adolescent's chin as he squeezes them in front of the mirror and basks in the shameful delight of feeling them burst between his dirty fingernails while simultaneously realizing that he has forgotten an important trig test, but continues on popping them with increasing ardor as he silently decides to just screw the test and go on indulging his sinful habit, but then suddenly recognizes in a constellation of unpopped pimples on his left cheek a perfect right triangle and can't help calculating the sine, cosine and tangent and finally "getting it" and going on to ace that fucking test and just totally shove it in that Mrs. Peterson's stupid bitch face and then go on to major in math and make six figures working for a defense agency designing guidance systems for ICBMs used to search and destroy cocaine labs deep in the Colombian rain-forest.
So yeah, girl, I'm totally down to fuck tonight.

A Day in the Life

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Dream II: On Certain Relentless Geometries of Life

Persistent and versatile forms. They are little more than tiny wills to live, or tremendous algorithms animating exoskeletons. Somewhere expressed in their equations is the fear of light, a predilection for corners, for edges followed in the night. And wings used only to flee. Panic is accompanied by sensations of floating, or of tightly tucking oneself away in the paper-thin spaces between stones. I wonder at the orgasm of a cockroach, if pheromones are their prime motivator after the recognition of nutritious molecules on their antennae and mandibles, and at the white gushes of guts flailing legs I've stamped out before. My shoe's all mucked up with cockroach again so I wipe it off in a long smear on the floor, legs still jerking as senselessly as my own. I fall asleep soon after and it's crawling all over my face, into my mouth. Teeth mean nothing to this idea of a cockroach. The more desperately I try to chew its life away, the more it regains its form; my teeth unwittingly sculpt its body ever more perfectly until it can scuttle with gusto past the chisels, beyond the protesting tongue to burrow into the soft palate, squirming until safely enveloped on all sides. I wake up as suddenly as if I'd just died, coughing and sputtering on imaginations persisting from the dream, from the damp stain on the floor.

The Viewing

No one showed up late and everyone accepted their invitation. The crowd mulling before the auditorium emitted vague staticky noises; the contact of smooth bottomed shoes with polished stone floors, the brushings from the crotches of freshly pressed slacks, the click-scratch of nervously lit cigarettes trembling between fingers and pallid lips. Yet even the background noise was somewhat muted, softened by each individual's private battle to minimize the sound arising from their person. Every nascent sneeze was talked down as cautiously as a lunatic at cliff's edge and let heaven damn anyone who should drop a bit of spare change, for the sharp metallic ringing would desecrate the area as surely as the slaughter of cattle in a Jain temple, blood stains spidering on milk-white marble as the priests watch on in speechless terror, one frozen amidst the delicate motions of ushering a gnat struggling between his eyelashes to the safety of open air. 

Mostly they were male, distinguished-looking gentlemen with thick beards and firm handshakes, upstanding citizens, Freemasons, city council members and their ilk, bearing visages ever poised as if modeling for a sculptor who would transfigure their likenesses into busts destined to sit on daises in the forgotten hallways of their familial mansions. However, there were a smattering of women peppered about. Not the young pretty ones currently engaged in child bearing and rearing, for this sort of lurid display couldn't be suffered by their unblemished minds and fragile demeanors. The men that stood here now in their stead did so happily, granting their spouses a spurious image of tranquility accepted by their fashionably womanish ignorance. The females that did attend were matriarchs casting sagacious looks about, flourishing noble locks of gray hair crowned by elegant hats and enveloped in a haze of expensive perfumes which trailed behind them like an ethereal surrogate of the wedding train they had worn decades before.

A tuxedoed man unlocked the glass doors of the building from inside and with a polite gesture invited the crowd within, checking their embossed invitations and two forms of identification. The group entered in single file and found their seats in the same auditorium where they had appeared for innumerable benefits, reward ceremonies, school plays and concerts given by touring orchestras. All was familiar except for the stage, upon which an imposing structure had been built, rising flush from its edge to about 12 feet high, with a wide dark window spreading across it. A few medical types stood in front, smiling and nodding to each other, clutching their leather doctor's bags filled with hypodermic needles and ampules of clear liquid labeled with incomprehensible polysyllabic names which could have been lifted from the incantations of a spell-book. At their feet a straitjacket was unceremoniously cast before two expressionless police officers equipped with riot gear and holstered pistols.

Suddenly, lights flashed on from the interior of the cell which could now be seen clearly through the window of one-way glass. At a table facing the audience sat a man of about thirty with long hair and an ethnic background, a glass of water with pitcher beside, a bowl of fruit with a pinwheel sticking from it and a large microphone. He looked nervous or a little giddy. A stern voice sounded from the numerous tan megaphones arranged about, sprouting from the ceiling like inverted mushrooms, “Do not feel any sympathy for the man you see before you, he has committed deleterious crimes against both society and his country for which he will pay, in part, with the demonstration you are about to witness.” The commentator paused portentiously. “Forty-five minutes ago the man you see now ingested 1000 micrograms of lysergic acid diethylamide-25, commonly know as LSD, a dose which can fit on the head of a pin with room to spare.” Hushed gasps escaped the mouths of a dozen people scattered throughout the auditorium like the unwanted hiccups of small children. “Ladies and gentlemen,” continued the authoritative voice, “This is what it looks like to see a man trip.”

Screeches of bliss or delirium or wisdom or insanity reverberated into the audience or thudded echo-less against the padded walls of the viewing chamber, depending on which set of ears one listened through.

Dream I: Advertisement

A macaque monkey swings down into a wide and flat drainage ditch, within a party rages. I can't get down from here, the railings are coming apart, so it isn't safe. But somehow I wander around and end up between these two chicks, no doubt going back to their place, roommates or something, who cares. We arrive and upon opening the door I realize they live in a closet, nothing more, their clothes are hanging up neatly, above them the shelves have been reappropriated into some sort of bunk bed like system. Now the first one is in my face looking me in the eyes holding her hands out saying, "I need a thousand bucks! I need a thousand bucks right now!"
"Um, well I certainly don't have a thousand in my wallet, how much more do you need?"
She goes to the rear of their closet home and in several neat piles on the ground near the wall various denominations of American dollars are laid out.
"I've got 367..."
But she barely gets to say this, a pounding at the door eclipses her chattering and shortly after the door's kicked clean open. I dash behind their hanging clothes in a poor attempt to hide. Incoherent yelling, presumably about the money. I'm kicked square in the chest through the clothes like the bastards knew I was there all along. The man screams at me with wildly animated gestures, but another, calmer man walks by him, superseding him with his impeccably tailored suit and turns to face me proudly, feet wide apart with confidence. Silently he draws two Uzi style machine guns and, pointing them at 45 degree angles at the ceiling, lets loose a tumultuous tear of bullets with no regard for anything in the way. He approaches me and naturally I flee, out the door and into the street where he follows me and we meet other citizens who cry out in fright at the scene: me, stumbling backwards in terror as bullets fly from the dual weapons of a well-dressed man I now realize is of Korean descent, with a buzzed haircut. Now he begins to scream at me in what is presumably Korean, and I cannot understand and try to communicate this to him. He pauses briefly, with a flicker of acknowledgment, then hits the button on a small, smooth purple device attached to his lapel. He starts monologuing at me again, only now the device translates in real time into jittery robot English and makes his attempts to communicate even more incomprehensible as it sounds in tandem with his voice. But no matter since at this moment thirty stubby missiles stream overhead at a height of no more than 12 feet, leaving iridescent silver-shining contrails which widen to encompass my entire field of vision and the Playstation 2 logo fades in slowly, the commercial dims to black and I wake up.

Read before bed for strongest effects.

Wisely, wisely right by the tree trunk, don't trip. Mercy, pause, stop for breath vision vibrating. I chanced to recall that fetid canine over the river crossing the bridge sullenly, sullenly, space tied to our feet, I say, whimpering mostly like a dog kicked by a stern old man sets down his drink, his leg rears and swings the pendulum strikes once, again, error take him to hells beyond time and sin, the bottle empty. It isn't right, his expression pitted skyward soul sifted by aged stiffening vessels, neurosis intact after all these years, vile osmosis of the brain. I shudder the remembrance of his indifference, I think, that or convulsions.

Sanctioned by tightening muscles, speed wanders fearfully through me at a horse's gait rushing in the forest as natural as intoxication. Stampede without end in mind. Crowds of intense tree presences that filter light with splitting fingers like branches spread the succor of forbidden knowledge boiling up from the syrupy sewers of their roots beyond sight, crooked arteries growing gridlocked under forest floors past hidden veins of gold and they tell not one of us prospectors mulling about sucking the last nutrients from beards drenched in spilled gruel turning up empty canteens of last drops, drifting off lost memories stumbling our quickening steps over gnarled roots delirious as horses fleeing from dogs kicked by old men, hooves pounding all of a kind, silver-shod. Impermanent. Panic's last flight exhausted, fall down knees to dirt, dead.

Nuptial Bliss Delivered

"Sarah, come closer, I have something to tell you."

"Phil? what is it?"

(Stoically) "You're the wind beneath my wings. I'm leaving you."

"I..."

"Shh... do not ruin this moment, for we will remember it always, a diamond is forever, my dear."

(Phil takes a box out of his pocket pondering on it)

"Yes, Phil, of course, yes!"

"But love is not forever, it is a joyless fraud dressed in the trappings of passion, disgusting and carnal, like the brutal coupling of two animals in a dark wood who, by chance, find one another in the night and shudder upon each other like toys of broken clockwork, committing the same motions until they are unwound."
 (He opens the box and reveals a huge diamond ring, holding it aloft.)
"No, not like this diamond, which will remain unnaturally stable in this our world of biological flux, a diamond whose facets I or anyone might view 30 or 90 or a million years hence and find that the only thing changed about it is the reflection of one's own face shriveling and retreating to the bone, as this dead mineral looks on stupidly and laughs at our mortal forms which flicker past and finally, on our deathbeds, curse and bemoan its witchery as we falter into the abyss."

"I love you, Phil."

 (To the ring) "Yes, wear this woman within your torus and from the vantage of geological timespans, wait while she withers and rots to fragments less tangible than the complaints of bacteria and fall into ages without life, human or otherwise, consorting with the grinning devils who bask in the bowels of eternity."

"Phil, take me now!"

"Alright."