Prose/Poetry

Levi fought and he served, earned no worldly domain
Evil steals and consumes, building nothing but pain
Vile are those who destroy, parasites of mankind
Veil your heart from the wolfes, may they leave you behind
Live your life in the light, truth and hope be your guide
Live blessings will find you, ere you run or you hide.

Strawberries have tiny seeds;

They grow into tiny weeds.

Strawberries have tiny seeds;

Mushrooms have no seeds.

I was important once, I was somebody. I must have been, though the memories have faded like the painted-on eyes of my cotton head, faded from neglect and age and not a little bit from loneliness. I was the favourite toy of an amazing boy, we loved each other like nothing else and swore in secret we would always be together. Now I sit turning ever so slowly to dust, kept by those who do not value me, but harboured some strange nostalgia like somehow my presence in the back of the attic meant that the Boy was not gone somehow. He is gone. I am not, though here I sit and wait for the end of this neglect and disregard, as he did. The ones who live in the house now know nothing of any of this though, so at least their neglect is honest.

He asked me to call him Boy because he had grown to hate his own name, it had been turned into a profane word by years of being spat from the mouths of his parents like so much snake venom. His mother mostly, he wasn’t sure what he had done to her but it seemed that his birth was a crime. His father wasn’t there most of the time, working hard as he thought he should, probably trying to earn his worth as the Boy tried to earn his own, but neither of them would succeed. He didn’t mean to be born, he didn’t know it was wrong, but in doing so he robbed his mother of her youth and slimness and freedom, and had compounded this offence by reminding her of his father. Ah, his father. His father was his hero and villain, supportive and angry in turns, the hand of guidance often turned to a fist of rage. Still, though his father was mean, his mother was cruel, and though his father struck him often, his mother stabbed him daily with her words. The body will heal, the heart takes longer.

The Boy and I were best of friends, confiding in each other in everything, making grand plans and inventions and sometimes fantasies, always with both of us, together to the end. Only it wasn’t that way. He had to leave me when he was seven. Seven is a magical age, the wonder of the world starts to dawn on a child, and there are no limits in sight. Seven is also tender, when a Boy starts to think to himself that he is wrong, not just ill behaved, but wrong for his very being, as he has been told by words and deeds from those around him. I told him otherwise, told him he was special and wonderful and could do anything he wanted, but my voice was only one and theirs many. He wept bitter tears, some still stain my body, hoping that someday he would be good enough for them, make them proud, make them like him just for who he is and not what he can do. He was always good enough for me, and I for him. He died before his eighth birthday, taken by an illness in the winter, must be a hundred years ago now, before the wars. His mother wept, but they were false tears, she was secretly happy because she hated him for his existence. Now she would get pity and attention for her tragic loss, and could spend all her time on her good child, the daughter she had when he was three. His father was at least dutiful, he stored the Boy in the ice house until the ground could thaw. Daily, weeping, he would check the ground on their homestead, both anticipating and fearing the day when the probe broke through, for then he would truly lose his son, and have to honour his promise to bury him in his favourite spot in the hillock overlooking the brook. When the day came, he kept true to his word, tears falling with every shovelful, placing finally the wooden grave marker which he had lovingly made with his own hands. The hands that struck the Boy, returning him to his peace, crafting a small monument to his life. His father loved him, though he barely knew how to love himself.

The Boy died weeping, and his last words were to ask for me, so we could be together to the end, he wanted me to be buried with him but could not get the words out. I wanted to be buried with him, so I would not have to wait these years feeling alone and missing him, treasuring every detail of every memory and knowing I would never get a new memory with him. Instead I was stored in the attic, a grim reminder of a life cut short, a life that was full just the same.

The people who live in the house now know none of this, they know I am here, and they know of the hillock though the grave marker has long since been turned to dust. On that spot, they now discard brush cleared from the land, and sometimes burn it in a magnificent fire which I can just see through the attic window. I know the Boy would love to see it too, perhaps he can somehow, he loved roaring fires with all their beauty and danger, and especially in the winter when they would warm your house but could kill you while you slept, but the cold would definitely kill you. He thought fire was like his father, power to be respected, changeable in a flash. His mother was ice, slowly creeping in and stabbing at you, making you tired and hating you with every icy breath. I hope against hope that one day I will end up on the brush pile, mercifully burned to ashes at long last, and falling down to nestle in the ground where my Boy sleeps. We would be together again at last, and would never ever be parted again. Just to touch him once more would make all this worthwhile, and perhaps even we could both live again, the power of our love and friendship and boundless reaches of our imaginations restoring our bodies to life. I can hope for this, and I must. He is not gone so long as he is in my heart, and I have not forgotten him.

Today they have come and carried me from my perch in the attic, and have taken me out to the brush pile. If I could, I would weep tears of joy because I am finally going to be with the Boy again, and he with me. I believe we will live again at that moment, and even just being together with him again, dust and ashes, will be the answer to my fondest wish. They are going to burn “that old toy”, they said, saying I am spooky and depressing and worn out. That old toy. No, I was somebody important once, and will be again, I belong to the finest Boy that ever lived and he to me. This old toy feels the licking of the flames, I swear I can feel his father in there fulfilling one last promise, smiling and proud of the Boy at last and understanding of what we meant to each other.

Now I am home, burned to nothing and with the Boy again, never to be parted. And we live again, together, this time forever. At last we are happy again.

1) Oh no you di’int, you know I am a jealous bitch, you go cheating on me and I will unfriend you.
2) Don’t be going all arts and crafts up in here, that totally doesn’t look like me anyway.
3) You best not be talking smack about me around to all your little friends, I’ll smack you all as soon as look at you.
4) You know I gots to be sleeping off a hangover on Sunday, don’t call or text or nothing.
5) Your parents are cool, they let us drink over there that one time and they let me crash when I was drunk and Tommy dumped me for that skank.
6) What, you some kind of killer? Please, back that shit down and step off before I school you.
7) Don’t you go catting around, I will catch you and I will slut-shame you, bet on it.
8) Oh, you’re a thug now because you have sticky fingers? Put that back before store security sees you.
9) Don’t be a lying sumbitch, nobody likes a liar.
10) See all that cool shit next door? That ain’t yours, best be looking to your own shit.

On Saturday, May 3, 2003, the rock formation known as The Old Man Of The Mountain slipped from its perch on Profile Mountain in Franconia Notch, New Hampshire. This may be just a freak happening, but it seems to bear some strange sort of importance beyond the loss of a state icon.

New Hampshire, the Granite State, Mother of Rivers, Switzerland of America, the White Mountain State, had relied upon the anthropomorphic gaze of Conway red granite as a sort of spiritual leader, guiding them through the difficult times leading to their acceptance as the 9th state in the union and on through the difficult times that lay ahead. New Hampshire’s motto, “Live Free or Die”, symbolized the principles of liberty in which she was steeped, and in later years she came to symbolize the election process itself by adopting legislation which ensures the state primary elections are the first in the nation by at least seven days.

In the prior election which began with such a primary, the nation saw its third election which was decided by contested electoral votes that ran contrary to the popular vote. In other words, the election was given to the runner-up. Aside from a bit more fanfare than the previous times, this electoral victory was no different than the previous win-losses.

This contested election, however, has resulted indirectly (and in the name of patriotism, no less) in a historically radical departure from the norm in the nation’s foreign and domestic policy, a departure which has seen the Freedom Of Information Act disabled along with many civil liberties in hushed lawmaking sessions. The morality of these changes are a subject of debate, since ostensibly they are for national security reasons, but the impact is still the same.

It has become increasingly difficult to “Live Free” as the Old Man commanded, and increasingly easy to “Die” at the hands of angered foreign nationals or even overzealous domestic law enforcement groups. The flag which has flown from the Old Man’s brow and which he has seen evolve from a revolutionary’s rag into the banner of the wealthiest republic on the planet seems to have become confused in its meaning. It once stood for the people of the republic and their freedom and safety as well as the government assigned to assure these things, but lately it has been misused as a reason to remove the power which belongs to the people. It has been misused as a symbol only of the government which is taking the power, and not of the people for whom the power is to be wielded. It has become a badge that states “I surrender my power to the government and I will accept any decision of its officers” instead of the healthy questioning of authority that it once did.

I have no doubt that this simple rock formation which has been imbued with emotional energy and pride and freedom had come to have a life force of its own. I have no doubt that the Old Man had held out hope for his country from before the colonists had arrived and through all of her trials and tribulations. I have no doubt that the Old Man wept on the preceding Thursday and Friday when he had hidden his face behind clouds.

I have no doubt that the Old Man, man of principle and action that he always was, heeded his own resounding words and did the one thing that he could do that might warn his beloved people about the path they were taking.

Unable to Live Free, he Died.

She is a butterfly made of sparkling razorblade steel
Clean and perfect and beautiful, but so dangerous
Delicate and powerful at once, frightfully delicious
My soul weeps to see her fly, my heart fills with longing
Yearning for one bloody kiss, the pleasure and pain
Of her presence consuming me as I knew it would
Cutting me as I knew it would,
Burning away all that is impure in me and leaving me
Unmade, remade in the image of her vanishing shadow
As I knew it would,
But I am helpless to resist.

I do not wish to capture her, she must be set free,
Free to come and to go, to bring sensuous life to me
And to take life away as she wishes.
But she must be free, even as her leaving may kill me
A cage would kill her, and I have not the heart to harm
For she is perfect, ethereal, and purely her own essence,
Divine from skin to soul.
For one golden moment she is near, and I know joy
Like a thousand suns exploding.
I know not how long she will grace me with her eternal gaze
But I know that every second makes my wretched life worthwhile
And my scars will remind me of the joy that once sliced my soul.

Many people these days seem to have lost their minds to a book, or are victims of those who have had their minds sucked out by this text, the Bible. More specifically, the altered-to-fit-our-view bible that was produced by the Vatican to justify their power and play down the validity of others. If you read a non-editorialized version (i.e. not the KJV that was essentially the world according to James) you will see that certain groups were mentioned when the ‘make no pacts’ thing was stated to the nation of Israel. This is because these groups were hostile to the fledgling nation of Israel and would practice treachery and deceit in the event of a peace treaty, besides having idolatrous or other offensive practices that would possibly spread to the people of Israel if contact were encouraged (they had enough trouble staying away from things like that in the first place, like Baal and the calf).

Jews are to love their neighbours, to not impose upon these neighbours (neither a lender nor a borrower be) and to deal with them fairly inasmuch as you can still profit from the trade (you gotta make a living). Brothers, other members of the twelve tribes, were to be given preferential treatment for the betterment of the nation, and this is still evidenced today with the custom of selling to friends and relatives wholesale. However, if a neighbour is hostile to you or is preparing to attack you, the order is to strike him with as much force as necessary to stop his attack and deter him from any future attacks, a policy which has served well the tiny state of Israel since its contentious birth in 1948 and which is practiced by most of the more successful nations on earth like Japan (1941, Pearl Harbour, in response to a likely invasion fleet being assembled).

Muslims have the principle of the people of the book, but this is contradicted by the modern Imams, who seem to preach only hate for all others including Jews and Christians and Zoroastrians, the previously mentioned book people. Likewise, many of us here have experienced hate from Christians due to fundamentalist indoctrination bestowed upon brainwashed followers despite the actual words of the Gospels (and I do not include the Epistles here, since they seem to encourage hate against women, homosexuals, Jews, and just about everyone else, but were also not spoken by God or a prophet and so are not “Gospel” in the literal definition). The fact is, people are prone to hate and violence for some reason and will find a way within the construct of any religious system to commit violence, doubly so if they can find a passage out of context (like the one you clipped earlier about the no pacts or amends) that will justify their actions. An example of this is the two world idea in Islam, that there is a World of Islam (Submission (to Allah)) and a World of Struggle (usually interpreted as spiritual struggle, a place you go to spread spirituality to those not ‘of the book’)…which has been reinterpreted as the World of War, the place you go to kill the infidel. The original intentions of both Christianity and Islam were to enact a reform of Judaism and return to its roots as they were at Sinai, as there had been considerable drift or adaptation to the times, depending upon who you ask. Both of the chief figures of these religions attempted to address these concerns to the Priests and Rabbis of their time, only to be rejected since they were outsiders and most people resist change, so after their deaths their teachings have been interpreted as a new rejectionist religion. This is a normal progression of things generally, as you will always have old-school and new-school people at odds with each other and resulting splinter groups, but people lose track of just how closely related and bound these three faiths are.

Modern Israel is confronted with a difficult situation, one which actually started years before there was a state there. There was rampant Muslim violence against anybody they did not like in the land, and the whole area was under British control as a result of the raw deal given to the Ottoman Empire by the Europeans. The Balfour declaration attempted to rectify this by creating an Arab state and a Jewish state in the land known as Palestine since the Romans named it such as an insult. When the declaration was presented, immigration began from the Arab states into the lands which were largely vacant, with the express purpose of demographically preventing anything but Arab land being formed there (many of them had designs on restoring a pan-Arab caliphate that would turn all Arab nations into one big kingdom and restore what was lost when the area was partitioned by outsiders at the end of WWI). When the Arab armies invaded in 1948 (the same day that David Ben Gurion gave his famous radio address declaring the establishment of the state) they drove out or caused to flee these same immigrants, and these are the people who now claim right of return. Thing is, very few people were there before Balfour, and in fact the so-called Omar Mosque (Dome of the Rock) was in disrepair in the late 1800s as it had been built there mostly to desecrate what they believed to be the site of Herod’s Temple. The one thing I will assert is that there is currently a difficult situation in that area where conflicting sets of entitlements are complicating what would otherwise be a secession situation, and that wrongs are committed on both sides due to the intensity of this conflict and the fact that it involves primarily civilians.

Judgment day. Everybody thinks they are doing what is correct, but of course not everybody can be right. There is a concept in Judaism of the Righteous Gentile, one who will be given honoured status in the End Times due to living respectfully and properly without being of any certain religion. Can you say that about the other two Judaic faiths? Muslims keep the laws that were laid down in what you call the “Old Testament”, such as not eating the flesh of unclean animals like swine and observing the Sabbath by not working or dealing with worldly matters. Tell me, o righteous one, on what day do you pray and contemplate and do no work, do not travel, carry nothing, write nothing, light not or extinguish not a flame, and so on? Most Christians do not follow the commandments that they say makes the difference between them and the damned, not the ten or the seven or the 613(If Christians consider themselves, as the Muslims do, the rightful heirs of the Covenants, they must obey all the laws since they have not been revoked and are part and parcel of the Covenants…if they consider themselves Gentiles then there are only seven laws (the Noahide, or laws of Noah) that they need to be concerned with, including not worshipping any other gods as the Trinity concept treads dangerously close to doing) and therefore are on shaky ground to “cast the first stones” as it has been my experience they do frequently. On Judgment Day/End Times/Rapture/whatever the only thing that will matter is righteousness and whether you were a good person, and when I look around me I see good people who are Satanists, Wiccans, Picts, Buddhists, Christians, Jews, Asatru, Greco-Roman Pagans, Setians, Muslims, Hindus, and people who just can’t decide but still think it is cool to be nice. The one thread that runs through all these people is that they would get along if they lived in a house together and think that people should be considerate and understanding (as in, actually taking the time to learn about the other person’s perspective instead of dismissing it) and kind to their fellow creatures just because it is the right thing to do.

Unfortunately there are bad seeds in all these groups, people that pontificate or lecture others about how they are wrong and they are damned for all time because they don’t do this thing or that thing right, or just plain act with hostility and inconsideration toward others…and these people cause others to form incorrect stereotypes about their groups and cause intergroup hatred and fear, as evidenced by earlier statements about how the Jews are not supposed to love their neighbours. Ask anybody that knows me how I treat others, and I think you will get a surprise because I love my neighbours in as many ways as possible (twice in the naughty ways)…

Besides all of this, for the benefit of you ‘Kabbalists’, KBL or Kabbalah (the word that can be spelled any way you want since it is only three consonants meaning ‘tradition’) is a Hebrew (or possibly more correctly, Haviru, ancient Hebrew) word and a Hebrew tradition that predates Judaism, so if you are to love your neighbours with the exception of ‘those non-neighbour-loving Jews’ I guess you will have to cast that body of work aside as worthless as well.

Recognising that we have a worldwide readership here in our little corner of the web, I would like to explain something about schools in the United States since I know little of other systems except for Belgium. We are taught in our pre-first grade, otherwise known as Kindergarten (roughly ‘Garden of Children’) to Play Nicely and Share Your Toys, Don’t Hate Anybody, and Get To Know Someone Before You Decide If You Like Them Or Not. If everybody would really learn and practice these rules (they’re not just for rug rats anymore) we would all get along fine, without religious territorial pissings or spouses fighting over suspected affairs (spouses are property?) or theft or greed or anything that necessitates a pile of statutes with which you could wipe your arse for all eternity and never run out of pages.

Now everybody find a blackboard and a good piece of squeaky chalk and write ten times each:

• I will play nicely.
• I will share my toys.
• I will not hate anybody.
• I will see the inner good in everybody.
• I will treat others as I want them to treat me.
• Each person is as good as
  every other person.

Ich suche nach Klugheit und Wahrheit.

A nameless journey begins at 6:30am, 34 degrees Fahrenheit, and I have work to do. I leave my home and my town (named after the youngest signer of the U.S. Constitution, I muse to myself) and strike out on the journey which stands in a crowd of identical journeys, notable in no way and unique only to itself as I stand in a crowd of faceless commuters and make my way to the place where I am expected.

A faceless radioman taunts me with promises of music but delivers only bits of information about things which do not concern me and have nothing to do with myself or the tasks that lay before me. He speaks, perhaps knowing that no ears are truly listening to him, but still he speaks since it is his job to do so.

Sixty-six miles per hour, some time later and my vehicle has finally warmed inside. It has snowed overnight, a light wispy snow that leaves no trace in the grass or on the roads but has turned to hidden ice on the bridges. Winter, it seems, has taken its last dying gasp to utter a word of defiance toward the complacent and sleep-numbed commuters who grumble about how long it is taking to turn warm this year. Winter has used this gasp well, because today it has claimed some small victories. Today the morbid lottery which daily is played to the tune of singing pistons has selected some unsuspecting contestants to win the ignominious jackpot, a day torn from the pages of their lives with a sound of exploding glass and rending metal.

Perhaps, I think to myself during a sip of coffee from a nondescript travel mug, perhaps it is more of an automotive autoclave, purifying the strong and destroying the weak or inattentive in its searing and unforgiving concrete heat. Perhaps not, I think, and perhaps even calling it a lottery is giving it too much meaning.

My journey is slowed as I pass the wreckage of eight vehicles, slowed not because they obstruct the road but because the river of commuters is drawn irresistibly to view the destruction and count the cars as I realise I have just done. My eyes rest on the figure of a man staring skyward, with the stare that is frozen on the face of every man who has looked into the eyes of death. Poor bastard, he’ll be missing some meetings today. I wonder to myself how many times he has passed a scene such as this and looked upon the gathering of objects that have transitioned from useful tools to insurance claims. I wonder how many times he thought to himself that he was glad it wasn’t him, or tried to think to himself that it would never be him. I chuckle to myself a bit as I ponder the fascination people have with destruction and death of others, and how they try to deny their own mortality in the same breath.

But all of this does not concern me; I have work to do. Work that I do not like or dislike, but simply must be done. The death of a man is no more significant to my path than the sip of coffee that transpired as I passed the spot where he expired and where soon will be a trite pile of plastic flowers in his name, as trivial and artificial as the man they represent. Life in a sip of coffee, a travel mug casket for a plastic flower demise.

Soon I pass an interchange between the interstate and a state highway that leads north to a town named ironically a word that means “polite” or “finished” and belies the state of the town itself and its denizens. It leads south to a town which is also ironically named, one whose name means “friendliness toward strangers” and whose residents are among the most xenophobic people in this xenophobic state. It amuses me that these two ironically named towns are divided by the road that leads away from this place, a vast freeway that begins its life with promise in Baltimore within view of the mighty ocean but dies a humble death near Sulphur Creek in Utah, in a place known only as Millard County. Somewhere between Xenophobia and Urbanelessness is the way out and the one desperate chance to escape the place where even God only comes to visit relatives. It seems that shallow life and meaningless death are the themes du jour, and I think the road is trying to teach me a lesson by the contrast of its two end points.

An illegal pedestrian breaks the monotony of corn rows, a wizened fool shuffling his way down the impossibly vast distance between signs of civilisation, and I wonder if he is noticing his surroundings any more than I have time to do. He has nothing but time and I have work to do, but I remember when I was a shiftless youth and would observe the most trivial things such as the uneven melting of frost on the ground in the morning. That was many years ago when there was time, but now I have work to do and time is a fading memory.

I slow my vehicle again as the road is blocked a second time. This time I wished that I had not looked to see what was the matter, for it was an accident caused by the ice again and involving a truck pulling a horse trailer. Cars and trucks become wrinkled and bent when they are wrecked, but horse trailers look as if some perverse deity had tossed a salad consisting of aluminum house siding and a grocer’s meat cooler. It is less a wreck than a debris field, and I joke to myself that I have not seen that much gore since the elections of 2000. As unusual and disturbing as this sight has been, it is gone with the next sip of coffee, as it does not concern me. Besides, I have work to do.

Minutes later, sixty-seven miles per hour and the road is clear. I pass through mile after mile of seemingly unchanging countryside, past houses which were simply abandoned in the middle of recently worked farmland, houses which were special to someone at some time. Only their gray and decaying walls can speak of the warmth of the families which called them home, the holiday gatherings that filled the house to the brim, and the laughter and tears that took place within it when it was not just a house but instead was a home. Desolate structure that still stands as if waiting to be inhabited again, I think, someone should tear it down or make it a home, but leaving it to rot is nothing short of cruelty and disrespect.

I pass the tread of a blown-out truck tire at sixty-eight miles per hour and it occurs to me that the circle or wheel is a symbol of eternity, and that this broken tread stands as a symbol of eternity lost. It undoubtedly saw countless thousands of revolutions on its journey to where it is now, but finally the task became too much and it broke under the pressure. It lies there, a steel-belted symbol of the fall from Eden and into daily existence, a vulcanised reminder that nothing lasts forever. Rendered useless in an instant, no longer able to do its work and cast aside without regard, it waits for its removal along with other roadside debris.

I tap my cruise control up to sixty-nine miles per hour, four miles over the limit but not fast enough to get stopped on my journey to where I need to be. I think about the road ahead, about how I will pass exits that speak of small towns which I will never see, filled with people who will filter out to the interstate on their way to the concentrations of money that the cities represent. The city of my destination lies still ahead, a city named after an Italian explorer who managed to discover a bit of land that was populated before he set forth on his journey but, unfortunately for them, belonged to the wrong ethnic group at the time. He was a man who is remembered because he did his work, ethics be damned.

I press a radio button to silence another radioman telling me more things that I do not need to know, and when I look up I realise that another car is entering my lane as the driver speaks to his secretary on a cellular telephone. I brake and swerve to avoid him, only to realise that I am on one of the many secretive patches of ice that winter has given us this morning and that my steering is nearly useless. I slide off of the road, still steering in a vain attempt to get back onto the asphalt so that I do not lose time to this inconvenience. As the last of my wheels roll onto the grass with my speed still in excess of fifty miles per hour, I know that this will likely mean a delay in my commute and could possibly even spill my coffee. I don’t have time for this; I have work to do.

I have always lived against the odds. If there was a shadow of a doubt, I was standing in its shade. If there was a ghost of a chance, I had called the seance. It was grimly amusing to me, then, that my path took me between guardrails in the median which were designed to prevent the very sort of thing that was about to happen. I rammed a sign telling me that this was one of two creeks with the same name in the area (although one was called “big” and one was called “little”), and I felt weightless as the vehicle fell down ten feet or so into water. The cold water quickly rose as I realised I was pinned inside the vehicle, and I held the breath I had drawn just seconds ago. I could still see the words “Scenic River” on the green sign that I had struck and which was now twisted into the front of my vehicle, and it occurred to me that I knew not if it was scenic. I knew only that it was cold, since I usually pass it without notice on my way to do the work that I have to do. I could see that the water filled my car to just inside the open rear hatch, and that I was only three feet or so beneath the surface. It was enough, I thought to myself, and this will definitely make me miss my obligations today.

A sudden sense of peace and calmness washed over my mind, and I probably would have seen my life flash before my eyes if I had in fact had a life and not a series of obligations, appointments, and roles to fill. I could still hear the traffic from the road above, people who were going to meet their obligations today and who had work to do.

Suddenly I laughed. I laughed at myself and the joke that my life had been. I laughed all the lost laughter of my lifetime in a few seconds, laughter for which there had never been time, making no sound after my air was gone but laughing still. I laughed because this time it was me. I laughed because I was still thinking trivial thoughts about my life insurance and how somebody was going to have to clear my calendar so nobody waits for me in meetings. I wept as I laughed, my tears and blood mixing with the cold water of a Midwest spring morning as it all became clear to me at once, irrevocably too late.

My mind struggles to recall the words to Handke’s “Lied vom Kindsein” as now they seem to have been a warning that I did not heed, and I laugh as they fill my last thoughts.

I laugh because at last I have no more work to do, and until the darkness takes me I am free.

(In reference to the song “Bartender”, by Rehab)

A man travels east, arrives at a trailer park at 6am, spends a few moments observing his shit in the yard and forcing open the entry door, then leaves heading west at 35 miles per hour in a piece of shit Nova:

1) How far did he travel so that he had time to crash the piece of shit Nova and walk to a bar that is still open and serving when he arrives?

2) What time of year and latitude must the bar be located so that it is still dark when he arrives but sunrise occurs within the space of time it takes the man to consume an alcoholic beverage?

3) Where is he in the world, if a bar is still serving after 6am when he arrives?

4) If a man’s shit is thrown out into the yard in a trailer park and nobody is there to observe it, is his girlfriend still high on some pills?

5) Are there actually an unusual percentage of bartenders named Moe, or is this simply the Observer-Expectancy effect of observation bias?

6) At what temperature does everything you love burn as you watch, when it is incinerated using kerosene as an accelerant?

7) Which is more likely, that the man hired a taxi, was driven by a friend, or simply walked to his home to arrive by 6am, since presumably he did not drive or he would have not needed to jack the keys to his girlfriend’s fucking car?

8) If he walked, where would he have to be in the world such that sunrise is after 6am and yet the climate is suitable to walking while intoxicated?