MAIN POINTS STORY BOARD

1) extinction, the air is becoming un-breathable [except for Samsari—the others end up wearing a breathing device when they return to the surface] and there are unexplained disappearances. the males are taken in larger numbers à Sang’rea Dahl à After Habra Dal’ya fails to stop the disappearances, Sang’rea is elected to head of the council. Habra’s body is “spoofed” and made to commit atrocities. [The burns the holy city of Transia] à Sang’rea suggests the building of the tower of Dorin, to save the species. à Samsari finds out that Sang’rea Dahl is responsible for the disappearances and goes to see the Chief Cleric of the Order of Araeosis and learns of Sang’rea’s Lullaby. à he asks his mother why she chose his name. à She has a seizure and goes catatonic, so he takes her out of Dorin to the Witch Doctor at Dorinia. When she recovers, he asks her again, why she chose his name: she tells him about the dream, about his death, but she can’t remember what she wanted to name him. à The Witch Doctor bridges their minds and he explores her mind to find out, and once he finds the name of Araeosis, he starts to scream and the Witch Doctor waves a patch of burning hair in front of him to bring him from the bridge.

Chapter 1: Seven Yah’rin are sitting around a campfire at twilight, eating, and singing songs. A mother hurries onto a campsite, where 5 females and two males are sitting around a fire, passing a pipe around, and smoking [the sacred flower.]  She tells them that someone broke into her home and took her son. [Have you seen my son? Samjeza?) 3 of the women and one of the men form a search party and track footprints until they come to the spot where the footprints end. They stop for a moment to take a rest. They discuss the disappearances—and they hear a brief scream silenced by two gunshots, they see two flashes of lights, and run down the twisting gravel road with their flashlights jerking and shaking as they run.

Chapter 5:

DESCRIBE HER DREAM AND WHAT MAKES HER CHANGE HIS NAME.

The girls named Mae and Laila went home when their mother recovered from the delivery. Her son, who she still did not have a name for, would be kept and tested for fertility to see if he could be put with the young group of developing boys. she spends a night thinking about what she’ll name him and she goes to sleep.  DESCRIBE HER DREAM AND WHAT MAKES HER CHANGE HIS NAME.

When she finally went into the dream world, it was a strange dream. She saw herself in a crowd of others like herself, all with the same face, all with different expressions, all attending to the man behind the pulpit, backlit on the stage: the time of Sang’rea Dahl is upon us. So, when I call your name, please step forward.

   When her name was called, Sari stepped forward. The rest of the caricatures faded into a shade of gray.

   “He will be a false prophet, he who calls himself Araeosis. He will not be our beloved. In name only will be descended from the kings of old”

   That’s all she remembered. She woke up and rolled over and tried to make sense of all the odd elements of the dream, to try to make sense of her thoughts: she remembered the birth of her son Araeosis, the list on the wall, the soldiers that arrived to take the child.     

   The men forced their way into the home and stabbed the child in his bed. Sari covered her ears when she heard the child shout in the nursery. She was shown another list of names. She shook her head and the soldiers left. She went to the nursery to find her dead infant in a bassinette with white sheets stained a crimson red. She thought she heard the screaming of a child and she sat up in bed. She rolled over and checked the time. The eggs were in their tenth day of incubation and there was a good chance that a birth would take place.

A collage of terrible images washed over the shades of her eyes and she resolved to change the name of her son, not history’s villain or demon from the ancient world, no hero from the ancient tomes who froze the city of fire, yet a pacifist philosopher—Vasari, the beloved—not because she thought he would hear the words of Amati, or sing the blind and violent Sang’rea Dahl to sleep, or offer him pleas of reason: that was the ancient times, before great migration, tucked far away in the past, preserved only in the texts in the city of Transia. She did not name her son the monster of the ancient nightmares or the hero who slew him and lulled him to sleep; she just liked the name, Vasari—son of Sari—the beloved.

   She called her egg’s sitter and registered the children’s name: her son, Vasari the beloved; her daughters Mae and Laila: so, with his new name scheduled, he was assigned another pod on the opposite side of the nursery. The sitter relabeled the beds the beds and switched the name, and Sari’s son was moved to the other side of the room, right at the edge of the table.

Chapter 6: JUST LIKE A DREAM

There is a mudslide that kills the other male born to Allele—named Araeosis—after the prophet from old. He’s suffocates under a mudslide, leaving the impotent child (incorrectly marked as a female because of his name) named Samsari, which is mistaken as a female name, and the only other child to live was a female—who went unnamed as there were no identifying parents.

Dania was waiting for her when she turned to leave her home the following morning to go to the hatchery on Dorinia Prime. They were both early and so decided to wait at the edge of the ledge to watch the procession of lights in their impeccable order and precision of luminescence. The lights lit up as usual and started in the center and gradually spiraled outward and upward, lighting each level and dormitory in crescendo until it got to the top of the temple. Sari noticed the light for the nursery hadn’t lit. Dorm lights came on in the surrounding pods. A group had gathered around the door. Sari sat there for a moment in a trance, the lighting ceremony always woke her up to the world—but to see perfection broken made the beauty all the more beautiful and real.

  Her dream proved eerie and prophetic: the nursery were her eggs were incubated was partially destroyed in a mudslide.

  Two children of Sari survived, despite Mae’s death; Vasari, the beloved, and Laila; other children came out of wreckage scarred and bruised, but the only other child to die was a child bearing the name of Araeosis.

   Though Vasari was scarred by a crack in his head, Sari was assured that he would live, but would require more time in incubation.

   On the first day of the coldest month, when the vines had dried and frozen like stumped trees and waved in the water. The schools of plankton and sardine fragments fell from above like snow in the hall of dark waters, on the abyssal plane where the nursery was moved after the accident

Chapter 7: UNKNOWN SPECIMEN

The surviving children, the unknown specimen—so much different than the Yah’rin—named Samsari is taken to opposite ends of the city; yet they interacted for as children in the care of the witch doctor of Dorinia, having been able to hear the thoughts of one another as they grew up, and when she finds out that she’s fertile, she goes to tell Samsari at the pairing dance. The day of the dance, she goes to tell Samsari that she’s fertile, and, since he isn’t he walks away and leaves her by the fire.

The child lived but he had a strange marking on the underside of his mouth, a strange shape. When he was old enough to move, he was taken to a fertility clinic on Dorinia prime.

   The male children were put in sleeping pods upon their arrival at Dorinia prime. Their bodies were connected to monitors, feeding devices, and waste extractors; their mouths were connected to a tube and the birthing membrane was connected to an imagine pod, where the child’s dreams played out through the floating mirror. The mothers would be able to see the children briefly, tell them the story of their name; The chief cleric of the order of Araeosis would adorn the birthstone and attach it to the mother’s necklace. 

   The immediate family and friends of Sari showed up at the naming ceremony. The mother stood beside the pods of her two living children. She gave their names: Laila and Vasari. The Mari passed the pods in a procession, to give the new mother their blessing, and nodded to honor Sari as they passed.

   Every Mari that passed by Vasari was taken aback by the appearance of the child. The oxygen gland on the underside of the neck wasn’t present, and the color of his skin was almost beige. His eyes too, instead of yellow were blue, and there was a strange marking on Vasari’s chin: it was a strange shape, almost like a fish, and had the color of a scar, a most interesting birth mark. The tentacles on the top of his head were gone, which was most unusual to those who passed the child, as though he was something else entirely, different than the Mari. The doctors and scientists that examined the child, found numerous discrepancies in his internal organs, an outgrowth of a pre-frontal lobe of the brain.

   Upon his birth, it was understood that Vasari was not a Mari, but something altogether different. The word mutant became quite common. Of the two children of his generation, Araeosis was in perfect physical condition; strong, virile, and bore the most noble features of the Mari. And among the religious, esteemed to be the child who save them from Sang’rea Dahl, but they were also conscious of the mutant child, Vasari, on the left hand, weak and sickly, and was impotent—though born with abnormal genitalia—and therefore unable to be used at a fertility clinic, as such he was sent home to his mother and his sister Laila.

A lot of talk was spent on the mutant child Vasari; the face, the marking, a marking that was unknown to them. They did not know what to think of the child, as he bore the name of Vasari the Beloved, named after the prophet of an old religion, thought of as ancient lore, recalled the coming of Vasari:

   When the beast roams through our lands,  

   Vasari will speak to it, and tell him such a

   story that he calms, and sinks into his

   endless slumber.

   His face will be marked, and his skin will

   be pale; he will be of you, but more:

   he will hear what others can’t,

   he will see things no Mari has ever seen,

   and when the beast is upon the land,

   Vasari will follow the Beast of the World

   into the ocean, into the abyss, and defeat
him on the great expanse of the abyssal plains.

   His voice was soothing to hear, and calmed those who listened to the stories of his dreams. In his dreams, he claimed there were fifty mirrors, and that those fifty mirrors led to fifty worlds.

   The child Vasari was quiet, and timid, and his hands shook when he talked. And when people brought up such religious matters around him, he sighed, and did all he could to discourage the comparison between him and some ancient storyteller, or prophet, who would hear only what the Mari heard, and see only what the Vamari saw.

   It is not known when Vasari became aware that he saw things the other Mari didn’t, but from his earliest account, he began to be visited by creatures from another planet, the killers of their disappearing people, who were intelligent and affable. Of course, there were those who doubted him at first; until he was able to use an orange cable—a color the Mari couldn’t see—to trap them and suspend them by an invisible rope.

   He was thought of as a madman, of course, and it didn’t help when the creatures from the other world began to talk to him. His mother thought he was mad, and so took him to the hospital for treatment.

SANG’REA DAHL AWAKES

After she is turned down, she’s in the woods crying, when the face of sang’rea dahl swims up to her at the water’s edge and starts to speak—promising her respect, love, power, adoration, and is asked if she will speak forever as Sang’rea Dahl, and she says yes. The image in the rippling river vanished as though into the center of the young Yah’rin mind, becoming one with her personality

9 THE SILENT CERENOMY

she is brought before the tribe for her naming ceremony, and as no parent was at hand, she swore her name to be Sang’rea Dahl. The crowd is eerie and quiet attended by the eldest of her living relatives. When the words Sang’rea Dahl were carved into the burgundy birthstone, alone with the sign of the star that marked her—Kah’lae Yu’gya—and becomes to attend a lot of political meetings. she decides to use what always works best on those who aren’t in the know: deceit.

10 PROTECTION FROM THE MONSTER

She claims if he’s just going to let the monster make them extinct, he might as well be the monster himself. The spirit of Sang’rea Dahl takes over Habra: she speaks through him that he has no idea what he’s doing, and that he hears strange voices, telling him, guiding him what to do. The gathered crowd found it odd until he abruptly left, with Sang’rea’s stationary body set meditation on the grass; through Habra, Sang’rea Dahl burns the city of Transia through the ground and leaves Habra without ears in the middle of it all.

11 THE STORMING OF THE BELL TOWER

Dahl focuses on becoming the next tribal leader; to protect them against the monster / the beast: she claims that Habra hasn’t done anything but make their people run like cowards, and proposes he be replaced. her group of ears storm the temple and bring Habra before the crowd and those of Sang’rea’s party cleared out a circle. Sang’rea puts his face on a brick and holds it down with her shoe and hits it until its just splashing puddles and the crowd cheers. Sang’rea Dahl is the leader of the remaining Yah’rin, and he proposes that they build a giant tower and enclose themselves—and not allow the monster to get in.

12 THE TOWER

After the city of Dorin is built, it is arranged in circular, self contained pods, with the goal of saving the species. ‘Sari spent some time Sahm’sari believes that Sang’rea Dahl is responsible for the disappearances, because of a visit to the witch doctor in which he sees the leader changing shapes to manipulate other forms, including the monster in the dark then back into her slender self with a smile in front of the mirror. she hears him looking at her through the window and sends her ears to catch him but he seems to lose them when he falls asleep at the temple at the feet of the highest cleric of the order of Araeosis.

13 when the temples burn

he speaks with the cleric and learns learns about the strange shape on his chin, and says I’ve been waiting on you for a long time. He says he isn’t Araeosis never returns under such a name—only Sang’rea Dahl, because she reincarnates as the most unlikely form for her to take—a savior of her people, named Sang’rea Dahl—the last name she would take.

He learns about the myths of Sang’rea Dahl and Araeosis and the time of trial and all the mythology of their ancient world. He learns that he is Araeosis, and that to put Sang’rea Dahl to death, that she may be locked outside of time, is for him to write a lullaby; he learns that the only thing that saved him from being killed is his inconspicuous name. after going to see her at the Temple Peak, he asks her why she gave him such a name: she has a seizure and almost dies—he climbs up to the temple peak where Sang’rea watched over Para’ja, and he opens the door and sees a reflection in the mirror of Sang’rea Dahl changing shape; she changes into Habra Dal’ya, then into the shape of one of the Dah’ja Vah’lae. (the black monster cloud.) he tells Mitka to get a good night sleep and seemed to vanish from the room.

14 ) the sermon

Mitka woke next morning and stumbled int

o the temple to hear the sermon.

It is written—there are cycles in this world of ours, and two very different eras: the Era of Amati, the a-Dahl gifted love by Amari God of All, these years of peace we’ve known the fruits begat by love; our bellies have been full and happiness has endured amongst our people. None have wanted or cried out; and we have lived to see the Era end, and now another, very different Era has begun.

   It is written—that at the end of the Era of Amati, the Era of Sang’rea Dahl begins. Sang’rea, the a-Dahl gifted fear by Amari God of All, will bring to Para’ja the Time of Trial. There will be murder, confusion, panic and anxiety, and all the untold horrors of her heinous heart.

   It is written—when last She roamed the lands of Para’ja, there was murder and destruction and violence in her wake, and Amari sent to us the Bridge named Araeosis—the child who lulled Sang’rea Dahl to sleep. She was blinded and imprisoned in the body of a dead Mari and locked outside of time.

   It is written—the lights in the treetops will go out, the Mari will vanish into darkness, and herald the coming of Sang’rea Dahl and the Time of Trial. She will play the Mari as her puppets as she hides behind the names of the virtuous and peaceful.

   This is the time; Sang’rea Dahl will soon be reborn, and she will walk amongst us undetected, in the shadows, and to what end—the means to an end is to create a world of nothing but fear—to feel the world with the curse she bore upon creation.

   The Era of Amati is over. We are living in the Time of Trial—the Era of Sang’rea Dahl. We are children of the blind God now—who will not listen to our calls, our prayers, or our pleas, and the world she will create will be a world of nothing fear—the only world Sang’rea Dahl has ever known.

    She will walk amongst us as one of us, in any shape she wishes to take—the Mari, the trees, the stones—the darkness. Though she is immortal, the bodies she takes as hosts can die—and if she suspects that her body is to die, she can invade the body of anyone that she can see, and take control of all they do and tear apart their life. We will not know who she has taken until it is too late, when the trees have been burnt and the lives of so many Mari ruined.

   It is written—Araeosis will return and lull the blind Sang’rea Dahl to sleep and lead our people to the Great Oasis—unless Sang’rea finds him first, and then there will be no hope, just fear that the Time of Judgment is upon us.

   The Marin in attendance did not speak nor move. The council leader made note of their unrest, and, knowing the season of change approached, spoke before the gathered Marin:

   We’ve dealt with these situations before. Stay closer to the tree-tops, and accompany anyone who goes onto ground. The heat, I know, it’s rising; our God Amari, Lord of All, will bless us, and bring us warmth. We will endure. Shan’hara.

15) Mitka goes to see his mother, spends time hearing about how they live, her clay pots, etc, and then he asks his mother why she chose his name as Mitka. She thinks for a moment and has seizure and is taken to the witch doctor of Dorinia and he gave her a bowl of water and the tar of a burnt seed pod. When she wakes up, she tells him about her dream, but she can’t remember what she wanted to name him—but she tells him about the dream where he almost died and how she had no idea what to name him and she remembers deciding, and going to sleep, and seeing him with a name she didn’t know being killed, struggling to breathe—[he was a small off shoot with two lungs instead of one and a nasal passage]—so when she saw him die because of the name, she decided to make it something no one would expect. He wants to find out what she wished to name him, so a bridge is made between their minds.

16) the exploration of his mothers memories, everyone of them being her three children, always smiling, until he finds a rock that blocked a cave [Where Araeosis is buried] that he can’t move. He finally opens the stone in her mind, and comes face to face with an Avatar of Amari. He learns of Sang’rea’s Lullaby, and learns that, had he been named as his mother wished, he would’ve died upon the day of his birth—the day the child named Araeosis died at the nursery. Mitka returns to the towers of dorin.

‘Ere each day fare
with tangled hair
she stood above her village fair
and it was her land-Counterpane
in towers, blocks, and figurines
across the floor was scattered more
plastic men-their children wore
Queen Lily’s royal robes
they fell- her tresses, silk the folds
like clouds they swelled, the billowed, rolled
hills of glass and velvet grass
Her plastic figures silent passed.

Lego castles, puppet kings-
origami fish in streams
the land of Counterpane-her dream
Where she was loved-where she was queen
There hung porcelain ballerinas
Puppets-their spine a string
paper shapes of boys and girls
birds that could not sing

Each house, the homes, on different roads
a lightbulb sun above them glowed
Her city stretched across the room
flanked by flowers, full in bloom
each street had its own unique name
desolation drive and memory lane
at the end of the road, so read a post
the outside fringe of counterpane
a portrait of her dead father hangs
in each home, each father gone
a mother with the children lone
the only life she’d ever known

Lily put out the lights each night
star stickers on the ceiling bright
the horses on green carpets plain
were taken to the barn, they laid
over which hung a model plane
in the dream world Counterpane
where plush horses roamed the carpet plain

Her blind rooster crowed at dawn
a digital clock croaked monotone
she took her origami dolls
down paper boulevards
houses that she made of wood,
the tracks-
a car rolled up, she sent it back
in Counterpane, the sun was but
a high wattage coiled light bulb
that hovered above, balloons
over what was Lily’s zoo
lions, tigers, caribou.

An electric train weaved in and out
back alleys, highways, all about
around the town, their daily routes
intersecting broken homes
some got off, some more placed on
and sang the train an electric song
some went to work, some went home
above them all the queen looked on
a stray lost in the rain
she couldn’t find her way back home

She wandered through the night alone
longing for some far off dawn
humming still her father’s song
the one he sang in church
Whistling as birds on a perch
She took her dinner on the porch
As the wind picked up with force
She slipped into a calm day dream

Piece by piece, year by year
she lost her lovely village dear
How hard it is, how it must be
To be in love with a memory
And all those birds, to beauty bring

Lily only longed to sing
oh-it would be a wondrous thing
she spelled hope, her fears, those dreams
And she grew up, her story told
how cold–
to lose your loved ones young and old
and her village, Counterpane
had turned into dusty plains
so much, now vacant- gone
until there were three roads,
just three streets lone:
Desolation lonely drive-
where guardian angels go to die
and miracle mile where children smiled.

Those plastic stars above shone bright
when the light bulb sun blinked off
no light
and in those fevered dreams it seemed
she wore such fancy diamond rings
the mic in hand, about to sing
yet no words came to mind

Lily-she-in her fantasy
sat on a vacant stage and cried
again she tried to sing but no words came
the audience booed, and chased her off stage
where once was a flame went out
she tried to scream and had no mouth
in that darkest hour, though bitter she had found
she had nothing left to sing about

That same old song was lost, and lo-
She had no place to go, no home
Autistic-letters in her pocket-

A though Z, Queen Lily-Got it,
such love imaginary–
she gave the blocks to her mother Mary.
I love you, she wrote on the board.
I love you, too, she said, Amore.
she patted Lily on the head
Her mothers mouth was stained and smiling
though in her eyes-she sighed, she cried

If only she was capable,
to speak, no blocks instead
to sing the sweet songs in her head
like all sweet voices which she heard
not just television static-
a hopeless feeling for a girl
to fold her hands to pray, unheard
she was a silent ballerina
who jumped and whirled, she twirled
until stopped the hand
she bowed before quiet clapping hands

On Hera’s necklace, our blue world
covered in newspapers and words
have we amongst all of the worlds
yielded tender green, and herbs
is mother earth herself in search
for meaning-a lost stray too
our world another ballerina
lost and wandering too
another lone star shooting by
with Lily’s head turned to the sky

Such a strange blue marble here
on which we all are trapped
coming together with a silent storm, a pearl
in the hydrogen, and wastes of space
another ballerina lost,
unconscious turning-leaving puffs of clouds behind
a crystal ball of gathered snow
under which we come and go
quiet shadows in a row

Time went by
and year by year
Pieces of her city disappeared
another family gone so dear
from her throne she looked with tears
all that beauty, make believe-
how hard it is, how it must be
to be in love with a memory

Now an old lady, lonely, old
the tree of memory where once
she hung he
that portrait of some stranger hangs
and when it went but three remained
three dead end roads of Counterpane
Desolation drive and miracle mile
and the worn out road of memory lane
how hard it is, deaths fingers cold
miracle mile where children smiled
they laughed, they sing, and they grow old

Where the portrait of the stranger hangs
in the ghost town Counterpane
each day that passed her by turned gray
and she spoke through her blocks
to her children by the bed to say
I’ll see you in Counterpane.

BRANDON K. NOBLES

The Public Face of Fireflies

FACE OFF:

IN SEARCH OF A PLOT

Time reference, Tuesday, a Tuesday; I’m not sure which… but it was Tuesday. I’m certain. The prior sentences will in no way contribute to this story, but I had to have a beginning, like the cool novels. ‘All happy families are the same…’ Let me try to top that.

I woke with a pen in one hand—normal—and a Mason jar with a cockroach in it in the other.  I was under my glass desk, been down there before, been there since last night; Vodka is a harsh mistress. It’s Russian coffee.

FAILURE … you sound like daddy!

Some background information here:

I went to Duke University after graduation.  I emerged eight years later, almost twenty six years old, with a Masters degree in biology (biological and technological evolution)—my minor being psychology. To put it as succinct as my lucidity (Drugs!) allows: In graduate school I did a lot of work on artificial selection—forced adaptation, adaptation preconceived as quantitative improvements with a goal in mind—keeping the subject alive, to watch evolution taking place—and, based on factors that made adaptation a necessity—They either adapted over progressive generations or died. Quite a few of these monkeys, even Harold—a close friend of mine—picked the wrong number. Never forget.

The experiment took place within the parameters of a closed environment and each subject had a specific evolutionary goal preselected. You won’t believe how many chimps graduate students can get. I got one, one whom I named Donald, and he and I introduced bonobos, and the cool kid chimpanzees, tobacco and partnership Whist. It’s amazing—their moral center—you can get drunk and have a cigarette with a chimp. Don’t arm wrestle a chimp, though. He will fucking destroy you. But, I digress …

The most valuable and informative experiments were performed on the most prized and dangerous of all animals: Homo sapiens sapiens. This is why I have no friends. Putting peyote into the professor’s liver pudding, flashing lights on him, FAIL ME NOW. Large doses of ketamine with a secretary strapped to a chair with the Mandelbrot sets pulling her into infinity. Most profound experience of her life, she said. It’s wild. (Drugs!)

In my work with people, I’ve intended to predictably ascertain the fluctuation of behavior as subjects are introduced to certain stimuli in a closed system: by these experiments I saw that any man or woman can adapt to any group or culture in the world, if survival depends on it and they will, after generations of prolonged exposure to a culture once unfamiliar, will culturally, naturally, and psychologically adapt, and become a cog inside the social mechanism. Other hominids display these traits—they pass along information. It is true culture, lineage, and heredity.

In line with Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, the open system experiments, of course, with varied mates and different subdivisions of the same genus, created complicated trees of variation on design and functionality. Smaller animals, animals who can produce generation after generation in the course of months, are as well adept for in-life evolution. As the man who walks upon gravel each day, his fleshy, weak flesh, hardens to provide him comfort on his walks, building thick callouses on the bottom of his feet.

All living slugs are the reincarnated souls of all of history’s assholes. I’ve stepped on Genghis Khan. Squish, you Mongolian dickhead. I’ve sent Adolf Hitler through a blender—if you ever put a slug in a blender, don’t use it again—master race my ass, you sour Kraut. And I showed Henry the VIII no quarter, that fat glorious fuck. I drowned Cleopatra in salt on the front porch. She writhed and wriggled like a dying whore lost in the throes of ecstasy. As a pathetic Mantis Praying, I showed Henry the VIII no quarter, that fat glorious fuck. And Caesar … stabbed his ass. I wonder how many reincarnations of Julius have been stabbed in the back, as dogs, cats, American teenagers, slugs. This very thought brings light into my day and a wonderful sense of comfort in my being. I see trees of green, red roses too…

Etu Brandon?

I’m trying to make a point about slugs here but I’m having a difficult time. Because they’re worthless and boring. That’s why they’re so cheap. So let’s start with the obvious: I didn’t order a crate of escargot just to put them in the blender and kill them—that came later, when I found out who occupied their bodies. The very invention of the slug, if by creationist claims we are to attest, however, I came to the inescapable conclusion: if there is a God, and there are slugs on the Earth, then God really needs an editor.

“Alright, what does this animal do?”

“It slides across the ground and leaves a slimy trail.”

And he’s around the yes men, intimidating secretaries wanting to see the Temple Peak, and these toadying sycophant angels, of course going, Bravo, bravo, glory unto God and the highest (Drugs!): his new magnum opus: undulating balls of slow moving goo. You’ve outdone yourself this time, man. ‘Truly a masterpiece. I mean, you kind of overdid it with those Homos. But now you’re back, feeling good? Let’s make something that is easily destroyed… Something a slug can kill. We’ll market it as a natural predator, or something small, for prey. Hey, It worked for the platypus.

Digression complete. .

There isn’t one!

What’s all this shit about the slugs? Is it a fetish?

No, it’s just kind of trying…

Kind of?

It’s suggesting that God, had he created animals, is a pretty shoddy creator. I’ve seen Siamese twins play twister; intelligence design my ass.

Touche. Finish this bit with the slugs; that was just supposed to be the first tiny bit of exposition and now you’ve tried to turn it into a treatise on artificial selection. Focus on what you know.

Nothing?

Yes. Now run with it.

In 5

4

3

2

1 To facilitate accelerated evolution, slugs would be put into its natural environment with one restraint between them and food: a passageway, a maze—a maze made out of salt. Salt does to slugs what water did to the wicked witch in The Wizard of Oz To make it through these elaborate mazes, I thought, slugs would adapt to the salt and, once learned would spread to the rest of the population; slugs, in this manner, would evolve the intelligence, or instinct, for preservation under so cruel and terribly funny a test I put them through. The idea was to see if they would someday make it out of the maze. And over the course of eight cultivated cultures, only two ever made it through. The Einstein, the Darwin of the slugs. The rest? Right into the salt man, every time. I was Lord of the Slugs. To conclude, my findings:

Fire produces terror in the specimen; they undulate in unhappy spasm. This is noteworthy as an infant human, at first, might not be able to project the possibility of coming pain and thus fear fire. The slug has, by nature, evolved the complicated nuances of the famous adage: “Fire hot.” Roaches, on the other hand, are perhaps more like children than slugs. That’s just pure fun. Moving along to roaches. The only survivors of World War III.

Roaches run right up to the fire, then try to feel it with their antennae, and then they run away and hide in a coffee cup, only to there find the parting Seas of Moses—it’s a miracle! The water parted! Its done it before but fuck, we asked this time. Glory to God on the highest; however, a boat would’ve been just fine.

In my studies, I’ve made lots of friends. The most remarkable was a roach named Rerun. He was a French philosopher in a prior life punished for wearing berets and cheap turtleneck sweaters to dinner parties, and we signed a symbiotic host agreement. He’d feed off me, and I’d let him. It’s always the same with roommates. In working with slugs, I was able to discern the recurrence of new souls, old souls transferred into new slug bodies, and where the in between is located. This must bear elaboration: In the mean time, my roommate, given my permission, will cease to appear in the story until I’m done with a Yank’s bit of exposition. It will become important again on page 39. I’ll remind you.

Look at this sentence. It’s in a book. It may or may not be on paper. Are the words the objects? They are descriptive and represent understood abstracts. That’s the veneer, the veneer of life as is, what you can touch and see, there’s more than meets the eye. (Like Wagner—his music is better than it sounds. I got that quote from someone, not sure who, but maybe I said it in a past life and thereby I am acquitted of any charge of plagiarism.)

The soul essence, the animate life as was, when your spirit sheds the body, it is returned to Parlo. This is where the mystics go to when they blink out: a world that Dante missed. It’s, in the highest dialect of the transmigrating entities, it is called, in the human, English dialect, the closest resembling name is Parlo, with a Russian rolled R. It is the train-stations between the worlds of life and death. A great place to pick up chicks. And then buy their body, hop right onto a fresh train heading to LIFE, and there you pop out confused as fuck screaming.

Tickets are handed down like cash-receipts from the office above if, in Karma’s calculations, in other words, you fucked up. You’re ordered into occupying certain bodies for certain past life glories or failures. Glorious failures get to choose for themselves. I was a jet-setting celebrity Harpooner in 19^th century Germany. We’re not told why the bodies shuffle, who does the math, and who is his scandalous assistant,

Page 39…

Like myself, you’ve seen Heaven and seen Hell. Hell doesn’t have cable. And it’s just sweltering. Really dark, too. Everybody gets their own imagined hell. If you conceive of hell by concept, in your own life, it is set for you and awaits you. It’s like sending your essence to time-out. You have to pay for a new body with toil and sweat. Nobody is just going to give you a new one. Making bodies is a lucrative industry. Some do have shoddy workmanship. If you’re good enough, you won’t be sent to anywhere preconceived as terrible. If a nice home, family, and a good job sounds appealing (my projection of hell) then sooner or later the Karma calculations will carry the remainder and you’ll be on Happy st. in some corner of a thriving culture. If you’re a bad boy, they’ll send you to Australia. ((A fate worse than death.)

Back to third person narrative story. Let’s start somewhere familiar. There are shared experiences. You and I, whoever you are and if that is your real name, have probably on more than one occasion been guilty of the same crime: love. Never fall in love; it’s sticky, and nothing gets the stain out. Not even heroin. My friend has a real problem with the stuff.

“I thought I loved her; now she’s gone.”

I told you it would be familiar. Have another beer, you miserable fuck! (That’s what they tell me—is it not conspicuous to researchers that all schizophrenics have a they?

“They (even my fucking roach is crazy) make new people, relax,” said the Roach. “She might be a kitten you someday love. Rub her belly like you always wanted to. Pervert.”

The body industry in Parlo is booming.  It’s the largest body portal in the Milky Way. People are dying to get there. HAHA SEE WHAT I DID THERE? APPRECIATE THE IRONIC STYLINGS OF THE POET MASTER. Please buy this advertisement. It’s for a good cause. Drugs!

I’ve been after her for rears, Rerun. Chasing Yesterday. That’s not a poetic allusion to something deep and meaningful. Her name was yesterday. Talking about her to other people will make even the most shrewd and astute sound retarded.

“They make new people, relax.”

Roaches say most peculiar things.

Feast on her belly, they say, the lamp is the moon; the saddest of people in the body market picked roaches in house. {Roaches are ignorant, no cultivation; they have no fine clothes, just those spindly little bodies. So fragile. Poor fuckers haven’t the pleasure of a nice warm, bath. Warm baths, in some cultures, are considered a graduate school affair. Books are written; studies undertaken, etc. I’ve got my PhD. Cold showers was an elective. College, am I right? (Subtle implication! Cold as ice!)

Why are you so down mate, you’re not always about to die. Let’s go to Sea World, would that make you feel better? What about a funeral? Those always perk you right up. Amicable enough, nice, responsive—Something is wrong.

South Carolina, 1995: I sat in the high grass across the road from a retirement home with a bb gun; it didn’t hurt them, too much morphine to register pain, the tiny bullets bounced off. Sometimes you could catch one on the bench with his mouth open. Wait, what, wait—some gnat… Gotcha, you old fuck.

The time period dissolves like smoke and the codgle in its digital voice questions: What do you want to do and where?

There are trapdoors in reality. You could get to Parlo through a window in the wall with a codgle; a codgle has many functions; it can transport one’s identity and essence into another body after first vacating the body’s owner; and it could be a shortcut to Parlo, to the train station between the static stages of the world, where the view from the machinery of life falls away like a neon curtain to reveal the dirty crew behind it slaving.

The passing trains go in and out, sleek like silver bullets, their tops shimmering like swimming pools under the blue-white dome above, God’s apartment. And time was an illusion there; where you went, in actuality, did not always be into a projected future. Their time was arbitrary; all points in time are physical, accessible and static. Selecting one is like selecting a picture from a photo album. The Empire Never Ended…

            With a start I sat up in bed, and before I woke I heard the scream, felt the fingers losing grip and just as it slipped away I was back in my old apartment, the oscillating fan lying to my face like a politician. But I heard the chatter in my head, knowing it to be some product of my disease;

“What kind of body you looking for? just got that one there. Yeah not a popular case, birds are at an all high time. Gives me these young fellas a something to do to their bosses cars. We’ve got eagles, owls—for you insomniacs, buzzards; man was for the not so bright kind of life I got it in last night—the view is crazy. Eighty eyes. That’s a popular one, that is. I don’t know why so many people choose the human host. In tough times, souls of less value prohibit us from being the highest form of life / apex predator. Compared to a whale, her eye is larger than we are: but we can kill it. It’s a shame; I’ve never understood while there were whalers. What did the whales do? I mean, did the people eat the whales? That’s terrible. Eat the chickens and fish and cows! Murder what we murder! Together, that’s a good song.

“Maybe I could bring her flowers,” I said. “Where’s she at right now—what is she? When?”

“Alright, from this file here, says she’s in 19^th century Russia, she’s an Amur leopard, and she has six kittens.

“Damn,” I said. “This always happens to me.”

“You’ve played the Roosky game before, right?”

“Kanyeshna.”

“So, track her down. I don’t know how you could, but what about a Romanov king—it just became available—I’m sure he could have all the damn leopards he wants.”

“I can’t raise six leopards on a Tsar’s salary. And, more importantly, since you in the body shop think that flesh is flesh and meat satisfaction is meat satisfaction, it’s not right for a King to fuck a leopard he believes to be reincarnated as a leopard. See, even saying it—or putting it on paper—is fundamentally ridiculous.”

IT IS.

“Yeah not a popular opinion… (extremely awkward silence) But birds are at an all high time. We’ve got eagles, owls—for you insomniacs—buzzards; that’s a popular one, that is. I don’t know why so many people choose the human host. In tough times, souls of less value prohibit us from being the highest form of life or the apex predator. And man’s on top of it all. But is a man as happy as a well fed house cat? Not even close. Or a blue whale? Just out there rolling along. A whale’s eye is as big as we are, but damn if a human being can’t harpoon it… I’m not trying to bring that up…

“It’s alright…”

“No, really, I’m sorry. I just think of whales, and I see you on one of those large humps smiling…

“That’s enough…”

I’ve never understood why there were whalers, after my brief stint as a celebrity Harpooner, I’ve been trying to get my Karma credit score above five hundred, be a Roman, you know the type, knee deep in oily bodies.

(It must be noted: at this expression, my editor chastised me and called me decadent. He’s a warm-hearted man. I shall send him decorative body scrubs in lieu of pay.)

“Why don’t I just give her some flowers?” I asked. “She’ll be back to Parlo long enough. Those cats they’re…you know…”

“Yeah man,” He said. “They’re fucked. They’ve been saving up their Karma though; they’re all going back to Earth as house cats. And good for them!”

“I was talking about flowers,” I said. People in Parlo, they’re transfixed only on the notion of going in or coming out. The body odyssey, that’s their kick; like a high price pharmaceutical hawking kiddy pep pills, those folks in Parlo slinging bodies like bags of coke.

“Why give her flowers, just be one for her. You don’t have to lie, buy her lunch, and much less get tangled up in the body market, one host to another ‘till you’re right. Just be a rose, right across the road. She’ll pick you up, and a bit of dirt, bring you water and you’ll get to sit there in her window; beautiful and loved. Flowers, that’s the busiest market. How it must feel to be a daisy in the wind, or a bee to hop amongst them in the burgeoning fields. I have insectoid; find her in the flowers—you know what they do when those flowers pucker like they do the bees come in and after that it’s all natural…”

One wrapped in money,
one in sin:
The shadow puppets dance begin,
They eat each other in the end.
A summer in the country—bliss,
Our Mother takes, our mother gives;
New flowers born, the daisies die,
And the monsters come alive.

2

How numerous the limbs, the vines,
That Mother Nature twists through time—
Each after another of their kind:
The changelings as they come to breathe;
pass through newborn forests in the spring.
A walk amongst a place once bare,
The great Magnet—it moves them all,
From the orbit of the sun,
to shooting stars that we see fall.
From the first path to the last.

3

The threads behind it all, they loom,
In the stillness of a rented room,
In the Autumn I watch bloom,
their endless walk upon the road:
a walk amongst once empty places,
walking on hallowed ground.
Ivy runs under the house,
Her tear-stained eyes turn pink, they swell:
truth is the poor man’s holy grail.

4

Beyond the rug in Hera’s hearth,
In the unending cosmic yard—
Saturn is another piece amongst her lighted pearls;
And Earth, a mote of dust, perhaps,
Between the gates of hell and heaven trapped;
Caught in the mouth of a breeze,
In one pale beam of light—
And in the night when they get quiet,
dust settles on the floor;
to wait for another breath,
to put usfiid into flight again,
to send us out the door—
adrift amongst the stars once more.

5

Sometimes a stroll just down the street,
where the last flowers grow
A kaleidoscope of patterns,
Mixed in a goldfish bowl:
In a circle down they go,
And back to that long winding road,
On the bank between the stream,
I thought I heard an old man scream:
“Why nod the weary worshipper outside?”
And “T’was the grape!” some shadow cried.

6

Seeing you go down the drain,
Your burial at least;
Don’t worry for a brief reward—
You’ll make it out to Sea.
Memories are written in the sand,
And by sand away,
The Madonna was yours for free;
She wouldn’t stay, he couldn’t leave;
So instead they made a world between:
A ballroom make believe to meet,
so in love, out of their minds,
dance two people of one kind.

7

That angel, my Dear Fantasy,
Miss make believe across the Sea,
Of land that parts like sand.
And, in the ballroom, dancing there,
Not one worry nor a care,
A polonaise hung in the air,
And they together sing, they hum:
My epitaph:
The best is yet to come.

Unspoken words, how sweet the tone,
soft as the grass of dew soaked dawn–
where often we together walked,
smoked our cigarettes and talked,
and that, the touch, the warm caress,
is gone:
How awful for a man in love,
to sleep with his jeans on.

Lying there awake he thought,
of trasured moments that he lost
The sound a kiss makes, can’t be told;
the sound a pen cannot express,
the warmth, the breath, upon the neck.
At the table, tears they stole:
over the cheek-bone and into the bowl.

How awful for a man in love,
to go to sleep still dressed.
To toss and turn, to look above,
and never get to rest.
And in the vision on the ceiling
was at last complete:
his angel wrapped in satin sheets.
Who long ago had left the bed unmade-
and there he laid, with greasy hair,
his face unshaved.
And languished on the couch all day.

How terrible for that same man,
who knelt before a candle stand,
absence is a presence,
and sometimes stronger than,
the feeling of a fluttering heart,
the joy of holding hands–
It can be more powerful,
than anything you can see,
the stars the way they dance at night,
the gardens in the spring.

The absence of the changeling hope,
the bringer of despair.
As he was walking up the stairs,
he met someone who wasn’t there.
And like an addict, who in vain hopes,
he prays:
for his misery to be assuaged:
to hear that voice, to see that face;
In the heart there is a place,
where the blossoms of a romance blooms:
in the foyeur of an empty room.

The things you miss, when you’re alone,
over and over playing that song-
even though not comfortable,
together on the couch,
he’d sleep on a bed of nails,
to sleep with her right now.

To miss her is too long, to need,
a letter, call, or anything;
Without the rhythm of the gentle breathing,
it is quite hard to sleep.
Every fault that has been found,
is cherished when you’re not around.
It’s hard to see, to know how come–
you thought the zero was the one.

You bought the games, just for the kids,
they thought,
If they looked so hard and long,
Their Waldo would appear;
And for but one print’s mistake,
Waldo wasn’t on the page.

What a joke that it should be,
Nothing there, no glimpse to see,
And looking thus neglects what’s seen,
The people of the world in need,
What’s there of which can be observed,
The stories of their lived unheard.

You’ve seen those pictures, as a child,
One face a midst a crowd beguiled:
The children looked, yet could not find,
Amongst the trees, against the sky,
no glimpse of Waldo walking by.

What if that man, in red and white,
Whose painter gave no alibi,
When left him off the page,
Wondered if the children playing,
Would give up or cease to play—
Or would they some false statement make,
And swear that they had seen the face.

The face in all its glory, theirs,
Free to name and twist the words,
And pass it onto unto the heard,
Until the Seer overheard,
And turned the group of gaggling geese,
Into deaf mute mockingbirds;
Mute they sang their silent songs,
Undisturbed strangers walk on.

And now they but repeat,
What once they so selfish preached;
Just whistles on the road, at dawn,
In a language by no one is known—
And pluck about at chicken feed,
On the windswept gravel roads.
The blind rooster crows at dawn,
As dogs will find their own way home.
The light that guides them in the night,

By their faith, the stars, the land,
The nomads in their caravans,
Go in circles in the sand—
And endless search in vain.
Perhaps they should just let it go,
And care about each other
more than rumors of Waldo.

Through the torrents and the rain,
the men and women yearn and strain—
to look to find something their mind,
won’t let them see—
for what they pray
is right before their face;
if only they would look
from fifty feet away.

The outcast men who coughing pass,
the shadows of some tragic past
downcast;
hands in their jeans, they see the ark,
of gasoline rainbows in the dark;
passing bums push rusted carts,
and artists with their beggars bowl;
they paint themselves into a hole—
a frame around them, and they’re trapped,
the page—
becomes the starving artists grave.

They may as well be lost at sea,
the lost Madonna theirs for free
as lost ships passed by in the streets
each other rarely seemed to see,
themselves an island in the stream—
Lost love passes by unseen,
déjà vu of some old dream;
when the night comes,
mute are the birds;
their mating songs above unheard.

Fleeting moments thrown away,
the drafts:
one after another—trash,
a pen in hand, still waiting, and,
on empty streets the gutters string,
There are no u-turns in a dream.

Were artists robots to convey,
their dreamlike musing during day,
with what they’ve seen,
and what they’ve heard:
The artist learned, if to return,
to the past and Eden save.
only to have to have a portrait
of lost paradise on page.

Something true, before the fall,
if only it’d be seen by all.
What is it for the writer, then—
oil on canvas with a pen>
The vibrant golden orange groves,
to only be transposed to prose,
and neatly filed away by page,
They the lost souls blindly stray,
into a self created maze,
they look and strive; they peek, they pine,
and yet they find no peace of mind.
There is no piece to find,
just daily drives, down memory lane,
still cradling the infant flame.

The silent highways dying pale
rose up from the streets a wail
the trash the cans the cups,
dying crying cigarette butts
stubbed out not needed, not enough
The Mona Lisa turns to dust;
and that lighthouse with no shore,
the light the beggars all strive for,
confused Arjuna in the war,
lost in the dreamscapes of the mind,
out of space and out of time.

Driving down the dusty roads,
music up and both eyes closed,
visions of Madonna,
of Loretta on the stairs—
her arms around the Christ child bare:
before her knelt two sinners lost in prayer.
And languid lays the muse,
the queen with golden hair:
holding a heart electric in the air.

A moment, just one minute please
From her hand the neon flame
was eaten by the Beast.
To search, our raison d’etre,
to wander is our creed.
And finding nothing,
in the end—
we’re left with nothing but a pen.

A soldiers life the price for war,
for freedom isn’t free.
it costs one hundred thousand lives
They should just let it be.
The foundation of a nation
Is more than bones and slavery.
The hope is faint but hope is there,
That in the future, someone—somewhere,
the whole world shared, the whole world free.
Perhaps the eldest man will see,
A world he would not disavow.
The question why replaced with how.

Perhaps someone will someday come,
To see the earth with no divisions,
If only this deaf Earth could listen.
Earth has no ears, no sound,
the last lines he ever wrote:
Three months later Vera found
a ragged flag left by the door,
along with an envelope—
the last words that he ever wrote:

I should’ve brought my coat, it read
The one you always wore.
I left it on the coat rack by the door.
They gave me a replacement,
But it doesn’t—hell,
But all I have is this.
It’s one of you sitting in the boat,
With Molly’s dog and overcoat,

Your scent was with me when I left,
And every time I took a breath,
I saw you laughing in the bed.
And if that’s all I have, I guess,
I could be better off.
I love you very much, my Dawn,
I’ll see you when I get home.

It was simple in its prose,
and when she read it there she broke
into pieces like a glass;
She lay there as a shattered mirror,
Memories flitted past;
She heard him laugh,
and saw him smile,
walking toward him down the aisle—
that spark of light that once burned bright,
Inside her dimmed and died.

Wars are not always of land,
Or conquest, genocide,
Sometimes the worst of battles,
Take place inside the mind.
An early night, a glass of wine,
A night alone, the curtains drawn—
One chance to live, one chance to die,
To peek and pine away the time,
And wander night-time like a stray,
The moments die and fall like flies
And you are eaten by the day.
Some hope, some wish, some kill themselves,
Some just to get away,
And they all sing the same old song,
It shouldn’t be this way.

Diane became a shrieking wreck,
Crying wrapped up in that jacket,
Popping pills and drinking vodka
Playing with a loaded shotgun—
But when she slept she saw him young,
When they loved each other dumb
She slept in front of him at night,
Listening to his breathing quiet,
Waiting on him for a while.
To hear him sleep to see that smile,

Euphoria mornings on the beach,
From here to Eternity—
Then she got the news,
He was just another letter,
His wife she dared not read;
but when she saw the folded flag
She fell to her knees and screamed.

Every day she washed the clothes,
But never Roger’s coat.
It smelled like him, his must,
And in the end that was enough.
They rolled around and played
When they were young under the sun
When the future waited warm
They wrestled on the trampoline,
And pinched each others arms.
Of his embrace, and that old coat,
Still in their old room brushed.

That future dreamed of them had flown,
As daffodils in the wind are blown—
Once there for the taking,
Once right there in your hand—
Until the specter Death arose,
And sent you down another path,
Just another unknown road.
You can resist, you can persist,
But you know you have to go.

That old coat was in his room
Still with a man’s Old Spice perfume.
She tried to see the good, their past,
Not Roger in a grave.
Between them all the best they had,
When together holdings hands,
Such a beautiful life to come;
After a pint or two of rum,
She talks to him at night,
And if she’s drunk enough,
She hears him say goodnight.

Soft are the petals when they fall,
And beauty too grows old.
It’s going to be all better,
In the next world we are told
and if that story’s true,
I might see you again
I’ll return that worn-out coat
If Heaven lets us in.

Memoirs of Eden in a dream,
Rolling fields of ardent green.
Lilacs upturned to Sol to drink,
Mother Earth, the sun, a spun,
Hangs overhead—by none forgot.
The night-time comes, wind slows its pace,
The sun went down,
And the crickets sang:
another lament for the day.

And friends you’ve lost, all those gone,
Will meet you at the shore to see you on,
The day will sleep, Luna takes the throne—
Her cloak was ragged and star-strewn,
when in the shadow of penumbra,
where the lost light strays,
the creatures in the shadows roam,
until was killed by bejeweled Dawn.

In the hole are those who stole,
a shelter from the rain;
to wake, to laugh, to sing,
They bring,
The golden harvest in the spring.
The wheat in the gold fields sway,
Mother Earth, she breathes, a breeze,
as though the glimpse of Eden,
was just a fevered dream.

All the beauty they had seen,
The last of dying daylight bleeds.
Moments cling to days and blink—
The tether left behind.
Elaborate a tapestry of twine.
Sewn together scraps of cloth,
The interwoven pattern lost