World Turning

ALICE IN NETHERLAND

"War is like the wind," she said on a whim. "No one knows where it comes from or where it starts. We just hope it doesn't blow our way. And then one day it's over and gone, and we are left wondering if and when it will return."

"I saw the President today, oh boy. Many people are angry with him. He seemed fine to me. I didn't understand a word but he sounded brilliant. Life's too short to be angry all the time. Just let it go."

"Life is a miracle. Plants magically rise up from the soil. Every minute a new birth. Each day a new chance. We don't have to see the sun to know it's shining somewhere. No need for questioning."

"Someone asked me of my vote. I said who am I to force an opinion on others?"

"How do you know what you know? Does anyone really know anything? Who knows what the truth is. I know I don't know."

"Just let me be. Just let me be. Can you let me be?"

*************************

SLEEPING UGLY

"Here's the manuscript." I plopped it down on the table in front of her. I had worked day and night on it for months, straining myself to the limit, taking the writing as far as I could go. "I need you in order to finish this."

"Me? I can't help with that!"

I looked at her in disbelief. "Never mind!" I picked up the work in disgust, walking away.

"Well, wait! What could I ever do?" She got up to follow me. "What exactly is it you want? Who ever said I could write." I kept walking, not looking back. "You see, I've never really had a nurturing environment, and things didn't work out for me. This is all that I am." She would say anything as long as it was nothing. "I think you really have some misguided opinions of me! You must think I'm something I'm not!" I stopped listening. "Be like that! If you want me to do something, I will. Then you'll see I'm really nothing and can't help in anything real. Maybe I could sharpen your pencils."

Every week I got a new note from her explaining why she wouldn't/couldn't/can't have helped me ("Don't you appreciate my integrity in telling you this??"). Was years before she stopped. Then she lost her mind, dissipating into oblivion.

*************************

FAITHFUL INFIDELITY

Without warning she got old at the candidates' debate, a fossil fool. Embedded deeply in the mad throng she suddenly forgot why she was there, stranded among the masses. They knew when to cheer and when to jeer. Mad passion consumed their faces. She was one of them when she arrived. But not now.

"Could it be..." She dare not finish the sentence.

What was she doing alone in the world? She never wanted that. Can't vote oneself a husband and a family. Coming home to an empty house after attending her "Fix the world!" rallies drove her to a bottle of Gin. Her jokes were clever but her choices were not. She came to the debate so completely sure of herself and in the twinkling of an eye when she wasn't looking, her life reversed.

Back at the house building in the silence of her manicured couch, she had no appetite for the plate of leftist vegetables laid out before her. In her years of rot she'd begun to carefully manage her behavior to match the correctness of her political stances. In this way she'd avoid charges of hypocrisy. But her hypocrisy lay in doing what others wanted instead of what she wanted. She'd made a career of not living for herself.

That satirist who'd invaded her political talk show that morning had put a pea under her mattress.

"I call this story "The Weather Vains". There's a deadly toxic cloud east of the City and forecasters are showing weather vanes pointing directly to the town. But rather than evacuate and save themselves, the greedy citizens devise a plan. "We'll change the direction of the weather vanes - which means the wind has changed - and then we're saved!" These people had come to worship technology and were very proud when they devised mechanisms that caused the weather vanes to point in a direction that blows the cloud safely away.

"The leaders were rejoicing in their hero's reception when the news came in showing the vanes' new direction. Truth had lost all meaning to them. Then, of course, they got wiped out anyway. And that's how I view "balanced budget saviors". They are missing the overall. No possible way exists to make greed work. That's why everyone says it's "politically impossible" to balance the numbers. We are an unbalanced people. Fix the people and you'll fix the economics."

She had hoped to fix herself by fixing the world. But she needed to fix herself if to help the world. Damn. What can anything mean without a family? She was lost at sea. So many years wasted. She was motionless; embarrassed; the only sound the ticking of the living room clock.

Coward Ice Price

He was a pretender among pretenders - but did not know it. He thought only he felt they way he did. Sitting alone in his WWI machine gun nest was to be crucified under the sun. Every fiber of his being screamed to run away, to be free. This wasn't his war. He'd just been scooped up in it. He wanted to be with friends and girls feeling good but they told him this was his duty, that to want to live is irresponsible. It's the dead who rule the world.

This hell went on day after day, hoping against hope he'd never have to fire his gun. He saw the barrel glinting in the light. "What an ugly piece of machinery that rules my life." At times he'd convince himself he'd get out of the war unscathed in this quiet outpost of the desert. Other times he'd go to pieces. Only thing he knew for sure was that he could let no one know of this private inner war.

Shame tormented his sleep. He saw others laughing and carrying on. Obviously they had none of his self-doubts. He did see a few others with a lack of certainty in their eyes. They were a brotherhood who dare not speak. Slowly, the defect he so desperately tried to keep down bubbled to the surface, reaching full realization in his mind: "I cannot kill." He prayed to God to free him of this nightmare, but to no avail.

Musicians are frivolous, fighters are valuable. That's what he was told when they dragged him away. People who'd never known dreams were the mercenary messengers of this fate. These ice-hearted souls felt useful as they delivered their victims to the army enlistment camp. Those deliverers were machinery just like the glaring gun that lorded over him in silent insanity. It seemed to him in his daydreams that those who thrived in this war were cowards of peace, running from life to find salvation in death, that to die gloriously would somehow make up for a lifetime of failure.

The "Vacant Ones" had no issue when pulling guard duty. All time was the same to them. Their minds did not run a million miles a minute driven by creative impulses that had no possible release. He could foresee a time when wars ended forever that a creative explosion would occur. It would be a time of colors and celebration and tables would be turned with the men of war being on the outside, no longer able to hijack lives, stewing in the corner with things they must let go of or die. That was a definition of duty they feared more than death.

But this was not that time.

The Dream Killers were the worst, always talking about honor and betrayal. Turning men into instruments of war was their sick twisted dream. Like religious fanatics they hunted for souls like his to pounce upon if they dare not embrace the hells of war. This was their season in the sun. As they had felt betrayed by life they reveled in betraying others. As they had failed to honor love they demanded honor for self-betrayal. They claimed being a killer was the only way to live.

When the raiders came charging on their gleaming horseback run he saw the flesh of man and animal in all its wondrous life and could not put death into it. Turning to run away he was shot in the back. The outpost was overrun and men died because they depended on a musician to be a killer instead of a man. But this tragedy did not dissuade them, a lesson unlearned and doubled down upon.

A hundred years nigh the arc of insanity continues ever higher. Soldiers who can't fight are killed. Soldiers who do fight kill themselves. Children shoot children under heavy expectation. Nobody is a killer, only fools try; the time has passed. The world has become too cold a place. Every last thing that is named to be saved by killing will be destroyed. There's only one thing in this God forsaken shithole that is real and that is family. I want mine.

D.E.A.D.

I cannot escape the abyss. I kept looking for a way to be productive outside of my emotions. Now all I have is chores, chores, and more chores. Sterile, obsolete, isolated. I just want to cry. I walk in a perpetual minefield. Every step can blow me to bits. But I must find a place where I can rest. Can't stop moving. Hell upon hell. My sins are untold. But the price remains the same. No one to touch. No one to hold me. A ghost.

Happy New Fears

The ice is melting below my feet.

I still can't get well but that is to be expected.

Work is still terrifying. It's true I looked into the jaws of death last year at this time and the very most unexpected happened. And it's true I have lined up a way forward for the time being. But nothing dooms me like this "success". What would life have been had I not run away? I'm sure that's the source of my black dreams.

Life is beyond bleak. I must save the world in order to have meaning. The world cannot be saved. Can I save me in times like these? Money could give me a half-life. I need a whole life. I hate being alone.

Drudgery is for certain. Work breaks my heart, sucks the life out of my soul. I can't create for a living because I have no courage. Of course, I don't really know anything but what I guess.

I really miss girls. Debby was a whore. She betrayed love too. I'm the only person in the world she can tell that to. I'm also the last person in the world she'd ever talk to or believe she can talk to. But she whored herself out way better than I ever did. That makes me feel both proud and guilty.

Where is out? If I get the cash I need, what then? I can never get enough. Right now it's sleep first and ask questions later. But I need the right now money at the very least for that, who am I kidding? I pretend to be above it but it keeps me up at night.

I'm tired of the lying. But can the truth feed me? Maybe if I were not in my crippled state it could. How could I ever talk to Emily again?

Let me sleep in 2018. That would be victory.

Under A Rock

Everything I do
I do
For no reason

Every breath I take
I take
Without breathin'

Every time I feel
I feel
Empty greivin'

Cold ice-olation
Mildew
Beneath the rock

My only friend
The End
Departing death

A life ruined
In shame
Runs from the sane

Heart beats alone
Turns stone
Like rock above

Wishing it were over
No hope
Without a hand

No recovery
Sans fear
Of discovery

Claw reaches out
Steals life
From gods in the light

The creep underneath
Rotting
Conservatively

Never can get above
Starving
To having love.

So This Is Shitmas

Ho ! HO! ho!

i've been successful but am less enthused than ever. not real success, of course, just in lying. logistically, i need to lie to get by. i have maneuvered myself into position to do that. yippee. without death's promise of escape i'm more dead than ever, just trudging through the snow, going nowhere. i cannot defeat the money monster straight up. i can only defeat it as a byproduct of doing something i want.

and yet i am forced to grapple with it in losing battle as options of love are not open to me. the life force is draining out of me. it's like eating gruel day after day after day. what's there to give a shit about? always pretending. the man who dutifully shows up to work one day and blows his brains out. it's not then that he died.

how much have i cheated myself? a poor man doesn't make an offer on a ferrari. he believes he has nothing to offer. whether he does or doesn't, he feels deceived in each case.

so tired of this plate spinning. i want to get away. that takes funding i can't get. the whore bitch got her funding. i didn't get mine. irony is, hers doesn't mean anything unless shes uses it to help me. that's really fucking funny. she thinks she'll die if she helps me but truth is other way around. she can't even say my name. frozen in fear.

did i damage emily? i don't know what to think. she only wanted to be pen-pals. but i wanted to be friends. why would she care about someone she doesn't want to be physical friends with? how important could i be? i always thought of her as a long lost friend i finally met. how angry with me is she?

next year doesn't look good. bluffed my way through this one. i have to get these chains off me but have no say in that. i shall ask for the wisdom to do so because i am clearly lacking in that. then i can rest.

but i'd be resting in the middle of a desert, alone and empty as far as the eye can see.

Tomb Of The Unknown Writer

Listen children
But you won't hear,
Of the midnight ride
Of Paul Revere.

Someone asked,
What's in a name?
"I've never heard
"Of a man named Twain."

Don't serve the world -
You must serve Heaven!
When Judas died
There was only eleven.

I sang a song
Dreamed from Lennon;
She shook her head,
As if I was sinnin'.

She screamed to God:
"Don't raise the sun!
"Can't you see
"My book is not done?"

Dead secret dreams
Howl deep in the dark;
Homeless man cries
Pacing the park.

A very successful
Mortgage lender,
Lives for his weekly
Weekend bender.

Breathless reports:
"A sea shift change!"
As we reveal
More of the same.

Call MASH units,
My lines have been lost!
How many verse
Will this battle cost?

A purple heart
For losing his war;
Give all you got
The world will ask more.

You got blood on your face
You big disgrace
Kickin' your hope
All over the place.

He fought a struggle
That's never been won:
A man who serves two
Instead of the One.

Emily raised me
Up to the blue sky,
But the Unknown Writer
Lives only to die.