Author Archives: Brendon Behlke

Nova

Not unlike the sun,
I am a product of accretion
A swirling turmoil of simpler things
Brought unto catastrophe
Dissected
Remade.

Simple ideas became complex
Unrecognizable
Weighted down by substance
Complex ideas become clingy
Looking for others to latch onto
Creating relationships and
definition.

This way I am made fire
This way I am made air
This way I am made earth
I am made water
I am made Carbon
Nitrogen
Magnesium
I am made so many things
Both real and imagined,
dreamed.

Until I am made death,
Until I am made to explode
In kindness.

Quote

The portrait of an Immaculate Martyrdom; Canto 2:2

1

Gears rotate and catch each other in time;
Each cog a wheel of teeth running frantic,
Free of all the constraints found in a line,
Then two embrace, colliding romantic!
Love making in modern machinery
Is much the same as mammals in the wild
Strict purpose against primal scenery
“Make the motions, produce another child."
They live each day as the last, courageous.
Well… No, that implies they know how it ends,
Or at least that a future day exists,
Yet nothing of their place when it begins.
In fact, what makes them both so effective,
Is the lack of a future perspective.

2

Such will be the fall of man: “Tomorrow!”
Always the next day dilutes the moment,
Woe to their end; woe to this cursed show,
Always their final days are filled with lament.
For now, there is but a cab cycling
through the traffic like a marked card shuffled,
Ace in the poker deck recycling,
I within; song of the city muffled.
Images flutter past the fogged-up glass.
The cab, a haven compared to my home,
Reality in plain view and contrast,
To the well-kept and furnished catacomb.
Seats discolored from an ancient era,
Each seam was sewn deep to hide chimera.

3

A dissipating frame of existence,
These bottomless canyons of mystery,
Overcome by their own acquiescence,
Cushions stained with genetic history.
Crumbs of sandwiches, scones, or little cakes,
All relaxed between finite planes of cloth.
The sight gives cause for my stomach to ache,
Yet there was at least some truth to this broth.
The driver hurls little spears of words,
He asks where it is I would like to go
[Endless answers] I stare out at the birds,
[Finite time] assuming that they may know.
Or maybe the children, their sweet visions
Corrupted by dark imaginations.

4

Do not all of us partake in the same,
Creating worlds from perturbed desires?
We play around with these notions of fame,
To pull us out from within stagnant mires.
Again, I am asked for a destination,
But I was still transfixed by spectacles,
Some observed, some absurd speculation;
Not yet fit for the dialectical.
I could think of no place to find solace,
No comfort in home or conversation,
No warmth amongst friends or place of hospice,
Again, I am asked for a destination,
He persists, so monomaniacal,
“Mere habit put me in his vehicle.”

5

I lean close to the window between us,
bracing my fingers against the glass pane,
and hoarsely whisper something treasonous,
“I have a home, yet only by its name.
I can see no good reason to go there,
Is there some other place you would take me?
Wherever it is I don’t really care,
As long as we drive, that’s my only plea.”
He concentrates on the road, yet responds,
Offended by my close proximity,
“Sir, I don’t do tours and I don’t sing songs,
But I can keep your anonymity.
Just tell me where to take this thing, and soon,
Else get out the cab, I’ll leave you marooned.”

6

I hadn’t yet unpacked the day’s events,
Not that he should know my circumstances,
Or my plague of thoughts that made little sense,
Yet here I was faced with his advances.
I smiled and relinquished the location,
In a lumbering form of stuttered speech.
He cracked a grin, awkward from his station,
Then released a grunt, and inhaled a screech.
He only moved the right side of his mouth.
I imagined the opposing side seized,
A flat slab unmoving from north to south
Due to some old parasite or disease.
But he only needed his right foot to drive,
While I still needed more time to revive.

7

The night was swelling now, street lights huddled,
In the sky like stars shining through thick clouds.
It is strange how the night life gets muddled,
The day walkers to their shrouds.
As one progresses from day into night,
The people change as if punching a clock.
Those thousands that run around in the light,
Never feel as dense as the evening stock.
Once the carriage reached its destination,
My home; or better yet my apartment,
[Home is where the heart is indiscretion]
My money sank into a compartment.
I waved like I knew him, perhaps I did, 
And approached the address like a scared kid.

8

The door, another jailer but inversed,
Inviting me this time, and I pushed through,
Like the boundary of another world burst,
And past its opening was warmth imbued.
The decadent vestibule [aorta]
Capped with a rickety elevator.
I was fond of that one’s ancient aura,
Though the decades past saw it were greater.
I closed the gate behind me for safety.
I pressed the third-floor button and waited.
Its wire and motors whirring lazily,
A warm sound, industrial fires sated.
It tingled in my ears like years long past,
Reuniting me with myself at last.

9

The third floor only had one working light,
Just loud enough to seem sad and dying,
But tobacco stains don’t really get ‘bright’,
And the brown speckles were terrifying.
My housing was only a short distance,
Yet it could have been miles in the noise,
Televisions selling with insistence,
Phone conversations lacking tonal poise.
One apartment sounded like two people
Bound and yelling through socks in their mouths,
Some smothered screaming about sheeple,
John Wayne quietly conquering the south.
Each door a secret universe unknown,
Vibrant tapestries heard as muted tones.

10

Home was too familiar and foreboding,
Normally a place of refuge from work,
Now, a place of oppressive self-loathing.
Its finality greets me with a smirk.
The bond between work and home was fragile,
One serves the other to sustain purpose,
As if emotions could become tactile,
Parasites on one another’s surface.
With no work to go back to anymore,
The relationship becomes one sided,
A leech feeding off one who is blood poor,
And thus, our loyalties are divided.
Past the threshold to the hungry darkness,
I cast myself. No alms, no catharsis.

11

Inside, the dark remained immaculate,
I fondled the wall trying to make light,
Hoping in the act to emasculate
The receiving void before it could bite.
No decorative opportunities 
Had ever challenged the structure of my home. 
I treated it as its own entity,
Leaving no wounds for which I need atone.
Walls bare of abstract splashes of color,
A closet to hang my coat, by the door,
In the back, a bedroom, which was smaller,
The one mirror in the bathroom, no more.
The kitchen, gauged out of the living room,
left little space for furnishing the womb.

12

My stomach was chiming hunger in knots,
Reminding me the time since my last meal,
So I searched for food to stifle these thoughts,
None. This fridge is as empty as I feel.
When was the last time I bought groceries?
I thought, it must have been a while ago.
Since the gala, with all those coteries!
Longer since I have cleaned by the look though.
The bare shelves resembled my long-caged friend,
With rust and blooms of decay all over.
Though it was a mess I could soon amend,
I felt fatigue just over my shoulder.
I looked once more for hidden provisions,
At last closing the door with derision.

13

I contemplated sitting down to brood,
Feign some joy in this hostile living space,
but the same breath of thought had me subdued,
Hunger hitting my stomach like a mace. 
I settled on seclusion in my bed,
Quietly, as not to disturb the peace,
My jacket made sure my closet was fed,
And I discarded my full body sheath.
Everything was in its place except me,
And the light outside had died long ago,
I greeted the bed as keel greats the sea,
Sleep set in like a breeze on summers glow.
A kiss that tore through this vague normality,
To embrace a world in dreams [reality].

Portrait of an Immaculate Martyrdom, Canto 1:1

1

…Let us begin again. My self is lost -
 The path unclear. Immortal tongue leadeth 
 Unto my damnation, yet still, a cost
 To a thing of sound. As distance groweth 
 The voice becomes weaker. Day breaks as stone 
 Shaped unto its close, sculpted unto night. 
 The surface crawls with dark and primal tones
 Cold valleys basking in discarded light
 We seek for sleep and rest but not so long
 Only enough to keep us well and kind
 While the night invades the world like a song
 I find there is no rest for my weak mind
 Insomnia makes us stagnant water,
 Film forms on our surface; sleepless martyr.

2

The world itself is an insomniac;
 Endlessly turning through the void and stars,
 A stone as such, no moss will it attract,
 The Earth, alas, has gathered many scars.
 Winter season sets well this theory. 
 The summer becomes gruesome in its end, 
 Life awakens to its mortality,
 The bounty at its most vibrant is rent.
 The world must end in a great reckoning
 So that life can come forth again renewed
 Exchanged for those that death is beckoning
 Yet, there is still violence to the grand feud
 The great scythe of autumnal fury sings
 A sweet dirge, culling the land of all things

3

I have seen once a depiction of this 
 So acute as to birth a spark of joy
 A sour spectacle wrought with thin mist
 A kernel of truth lay within its ploy,
 There is no sadness found in the action, 
 Rather sadness is hidden in the form 
 Achieving consequential dysfunction 
 And yet still resolved to pursue this “norm”
 One steps forward, the others fall in line
 Words are spoken, deeds confirmed, tears are shed
 A body tumbles down into the Rhine
 The priest awaits the next to ash their head
 A queue of souls shuffled off a cliffs edge,
 All for the sake of a misguided pledge.

4

This was, of course, well after these events 
 In this tale of my form and its ending, 
 I should simply note that life has no sense,
 No place, no future without conceding,
 Life is not a guarantee or blessing,
 More a vessel we’ve stowed our thoughts upon,
 Waters and captains outside are pressing,
 As we attempt to make queen from pawn,
 All things have this guilty persona, 
 As if its essence was an artifact
 Stolen; a deity’s lost corona,
 A boon we care for to remain intact,
 And ensure it stays in our possession
 Yet the gods have not lost their obsession.

5

A time comes for that life to be retrieved,
 The gods are met by dual opposition. 
 One the face of outrage, the guilt perceived,
 A desperate defense to acquisition.
 More common is the face of shamed consent
 Its retrieval a burden changing hands
 Lives in which moral purpose they invent 
 Seeking sins, salvation and other strands
 They find comfort in a future promise
 Yet they make no commitments to the plan
 The life beyond is their one true solace
 And have no regard for their fellow man.
 They face death absolved by a confession, 
 Praise the lord, a life of indiscretion.

6

The Valkyrie is upon the city
 A soft white death encroaching the horizon,
 Trees make themselves meek, a ploy for pity,
 Some shed their bark as succumbed to poison
 So much paper unto the ground, naked
 In the wind as life reclaims what is owned. 
 Animals will burrow beneath the dead
 And lie through spring, with life that sleep has loaned
 It is all an endeavor to delay 
 Even at the most essential level 
 One finds reaction. Atoms are at play
 Evading capture through endless revel.
 A simple nightmare thus avoided now
 While others find more fitting shapes somehow.

7

None involved know of the end or after,
 Only that an adversary is near, 
 Save for the human being; the master 
 Of the forbidden secret and their fear 
 Keepers of the profane knowledge of death,
 A power we must obtain and harness,
 But one we yet take with a bated breath
 For it can also become our weakness. 
 Reading this now you know that time is past 
 And thus, the human became a lesson,
 Unto themselves and at that so very fast,
 And the death yet still on us will press in.
 Stop now and disembark from humanity
 Breathe deep. Imagine now life sans mortality…

8

Verily it is the knowing frailty 
 Of the human body that drives our heart; 
 An enemy to whom we’ve sworn fealty 
 To defend or risk being torn apart.
 Purpose in life is often a derivative
 Of one’s desire to perpetuate 
 Their own existence, which seems primitive,
 Yet a person’s apex is not this state
 To exploit economic resources
 To sustain the cost of simple living 
 To find purpose in the children we source, 
 To indulge companions most fulfilling. 
 To establish a luster to one’s ‘name’
 To each end we find results are the same

9

When the time comes, we must forfeit our life 
 Unto death we bestow less than is due 
 Like we’ve out maneuvered the fatal knife, 
 Surrendering only what is unused
 As if our life is now in our children, 
 In our friends, our namesake, our investments
 The major portion of that life bidden
 So that we can still live on in essence
 This all seems good and even romantic, 
 Until life expectancy is brought up
 An epic of sacrifice made frantic
 With all of the hurdles we have thought up.
 A quarter of our life is indentured
 Leaving us precious little time ventured.

10

In order to truly begin our life,
 To make any definition of it 
 One first obtains understanding through strife
 In a world of false floors and sharp summits
 Most survivors emerge indecisive 
 Panicked and wary of what lies ahead,
 The intimidation of life’s crisis
 Mingled amongst the frailty of its thread.
 All the more oppressive is the puzzle 
 Of what to do with the time that is left
 With our youth thus effectively muzzled
 And so much of our short time left bereft,
 To now higher purposes of comfort
 Perhaps in our twilight before slumber.

11

Daily function is thus divided once
 Two separate parts from this point on, 
 The goal divined earlier on both fronts. 
 The first of those is actions set upon
 As a response to one’s fear of their end, 
 Those subtle motions we make to convince
 Ourselves or others, “death we can transcend!” 
 Yet truly we seek others to evince. 
 With any fear it is best left to grow,
 Culture amongst the people whom support
 Rationalized in mob sanction they know
 The non-existence of death can contort,
 Fitting itself around the hearts and minds,
 Comforting as oil when water it finds.

12

The second is the avoidance of death, 
 These are actions of driven investment.
 Opportunities of one’s life made quest,
 The essence made to endure divestment,
 Exercise, effort, expressed elations,
 Through these act’s life is tamed yet at war
 Often displacing turmoil unto damnation
 One starts war renouncing what they fight for,
 Stamped upon the battlefield victory 
 Establishes his ideal elsewhere thus 
 Perpetuating life through history, 
 So long as the dead remain without fuss.
 Even the most glorious empire 
 Uses blood to mix their mortar; desires.

13

Yet still there remains a weapon unnamed 
 Many swords by which mortal knowledge was felled,
 Though countless lives it has and will have claimed, 
 By the legions of faith death has been quelled
 All serve one purpose in common; comfort.
 To console the people with ideas; bliss,
 Eternal life shrouded over deaths court
 “May faith give cause for deaths arrow to miss,”
 Grant us form; be it heaven, nirvana,
 Life renewed or whatever pleases you,
 As each religion is phenomena, 
 Yet when two faiths meet war always ensues, 
 Though all religions serve the same distinct function, 
 the diverse formulas birth compunction.

14

Each equates a conflicting solution
 Exposing the hand of deceit in others,
 Their presence thus defies absolution,
 The dim light of hope their darkness smothers.
 Truth is unquestioning servitude
 The answer is provided already,
 But it only makes sense without any feud
 Seeking places for the answers readied.
 Troubled still are those who find miracles,
 Strengthening their resolve, while others weaken
 Are these miracles born of manacles?
 Faiths shackles create phantasmic beacons,
 Or was faith first born of the fantastic,
 Regardless, these blades fuel acts too drastic.

15

Should a god demand you kill your first child
 Test one’s faith and answer without question
 Else risk the concept of god itself; riled
 It obliterates without concession 
 With no choice but to lose if not complied,
 All those they love, not just a single one 
 Certain in this that they are justified, 
 By faith in a god that won’t be undone.
 Thus, people are changed by obedience
 They grow as dogs chasing after their tail, 
 If they can keep focused upon themselves
 Their ignorance will lead them to prevail,
 Over the questions life often compels
 They don’t have to acknowledge what death is
 As long as they never look up from this.

16

I was no better than anyone else 
 When winter came, I bundled up and hid,
 Convinced myself it was warm, clothed in pelts,
 As if that helped. The cold has its own grid. 
 Every year was colder than the last, 
 Yet still I played along like I belonged.
 Work was yet left in me before I passed,
 Cusp of my existence yet far along. 
 When gravity and centrifugal force 
 Entwine an object approaches apex
 Something amazing is born at its source,
 Once understood is no longer complex
 Revealing childish glee in the event
 An opportunity for one to vent,

17

One can let go committed to nothing; 
 Relying on faith, so to speak; physics 
 Takes control and propels one out; thrusting, 
 The object launches straight as ballistics
 One only ensures not to deviate
 Or risk finding their way to injury
 This is the point I will strive to create, 
 I lost control in my trajectory
 Or within the apex control lost me,
 They say god is found beyond possessions,
 To explain the revelations you’ll see
 My job, the first loss in this procession
 A small part of a sequence encroaching,
 At the end of fall, winter approaching…

18

…Over the skyline, a searing red sun,
 Refuses to settle into its grave; 
 As a child who will not be overcome.
 The buildings below glow like the fires rage, 
 Suffering thus through the heated debate 
 Between the sun and the patient darkness, 
 My own eyes try their best to acclimate
 Expecting one of them to acquiesce
 And thus subdue the perpetual fires.
 I was leaving now and for the last time 
 My occupation, against my desires. 
 A notice to ensure reason and rhyme,
 And security to deliver it. 
 The elevator thinks I’m a “good fit.”

19

We walked past the illusion of a sky
 Unscathed by our building, held in twilight, 
 No floor beneath us. I compose a sigh, 
 Even that feels ridiculous tonight. 
 No matter how put together you look 
 Everyone knows what’s really going on
 When a guard is holding you by the crook 
 Above your elbow, and beneath your arm. 
 With a load of personal trinkets held,
 I approached the elevator in haste,
 Reached for the button but my hand was felled;
 The guard pushed it instead with a sour face.
 A harmonic eruption poured from inside
 Some hidden panel where sound must reside.

20

This moment here is the hardest of all,
 Outside of it one shifts gears easily 
 Yet standing here at the end of the hall
 The brain panics and pinwheels anxiously. 
 Backed now against the corner and pleading 
 Your body shrugging off things that aren’t there
 Brain asks, “Why the hell did you stop moving?”
 You expel some giggles or toss your hair 
 You unfurl every one of your red flags
 While your mind tries hard not to wet itself
 Then the door opens an expanding crag 
 Saved from the corner, yet placed on the shelf
 You- I count the numbers on the way down, 
 Decent into ‘L’ adorned by a crown.

21

‘L’ for ‘lobby’ as much as for ‘Leaving’
 Or ‘Lay off victim’s first stop’ at this point, 
 A thirty-story controlled fall heaving 
 Pits in my stomach and warping my joints
 My skull drops hard against the [Absent] spine 
 And somehow stress is alleviated, 
 Like floating debris passing on the Rhine. 
 Timing the floors as they pass I’m sedated.
 At twenty-seven, eighteen and fourteen
 The door chimes, new companions hop on board
 A philanthropic elevator scene
 Filmed the day of my terminal award
 The door opens to a conversation
 Cut short by my physical persuasion

22

A great joke unheard, meetings undiscussed, 
 The weather unknown, for the sake of me
 This portly officer, and his disgust
 Our best bride/groom pose not quite as carefree 
 “Yes. I am now being escorted out”, 
 So they shuffle behind me to whisper
 Diverse theories of what it was about. 
 Until we stop and they can leave chipper.
 The doors open for me like tired eyes
 revealing the lobby in its splendor,
 And those still behind me rush out like flies
 Smelling some other sweeter cadaver.
 Marble pillars and cherry wood veneer
 A masquerade for concrete and careers.

23

At length we reach two large revolving doors
 And here the guard just stands and stares; no words; 
 He sends my arm and me across the floor, 
 Tumbling against the glass like blind birds
 [A breach unsettling though just as meek, 
 The world beneath and intimidating]
 As a snake eating its own tail, I seek
 The world beyond this glass berating
 I break free just in time to stumble out 
 A prisoner escaped from their jailor
 And my trinkets like water from a spout, 
 To be rid of that box and its failure
 Despite the implication of these events, 
 I was relieved and felt a true presence.

24

Rain began to fall, screaming from above
 Drops shattered on the resolve of my flesh, 
 The ground was soon covered in the death of
 Those desperate beads that through air did thresh
 Were it not autumn, they would dissipate,
 Back unto the atmosphere, made anew 
 Now, these tears converge in a sewer grate, 
 All the world could cry, still this would ensue.
 I looked up. Smoky giants bathing me, 
 Only a small patch, shy in their endeavor. 
 Dark curls unfurled bowling wind through the trees
 The sun bright against the folds of weather 
 A caress to calm and provide succor, 
 The clouds toiled slowly in their cloister.

25

The turmoil within, illuminated,
 Seemed bizarre and outrageous in the light,
 I could see that the storm now resented,
 This exposure and would put up a fight.
 Thus, was made at my back, as if expelled 
 A great wind that lifted the ends of my suit,
 Like blue flames stoked by the building itself. 
 My trinkets quaked beneath the raging brutes.
 Skittering about for warmth or purchase
 As I watched them in somber reflection.
 A life askew and adrift of purpose 
 In a concrete sea without direction, 
 Yet an eerie ignorance flushed through me, 
 The world as is cannot sensibly be.

26

Even those who passed would not acknowledge 
 My abandoned, now drowning, artifacts; 
 Snapshots, supplies, a degree for college,
 Ashamed of what they suggested, hot wax,
 Dropped on ice, petrifying on contact,
 My career amounted to a candle, 
 Or worse yet, a sad still life in abstract,
 These, the icons of a life dismantled.
 Thus, I vowed to never see them again,
 A Moment later, within these musings, 
 Grew horse hooves and bells that made my face drain,
 Sound stretching a dark chill over all things.
 I looked up, a cab where the horse belonged, 
 The demon that compelled my ears now gone.

Kindred Spirits

Moonlight settles like dew over the sterile room,
A window as its indiscriminate escort
In the shadow a guest- an intruder stands
The moonlight hasn’t noticed yet.

A dryadic [Let there be…] light
stirs from his right palm.
The soft glow is lifted to his face
A siren’s call over those rough features.

A scar here – stubble there,
folds so heavy the light can find no purchase
no escape from their darkness
It’s a wonder he can see anything.

He holds the device level with his eyes
Adjusts his feet and rearranges his face
Some reflection of [Narcissus] horror,
abject pain without panic or retreat.

His arm drops as the light dims,
The poor sailor wasn’t worth the fight,
Moored to a far worse reality as he is
He searches the room for the past.

Careful to avoid the moonlight
Now dancing alone in the center of the room
Less than a day had passed since the boy was removed
But the moon doesn’t need a partner.
The moon dances for its own amusement,
while the sun, the sun dances for the flora.

House

If you were looking for a side street to get there, you’d be disappointed. It’s not like that anymore. It’s a ‘house’, not a ‘home’. The future has grown up around it, piling on top of it mounds of inspiration, newness and memories until it was forgotten beneath the accumulated past.

I’ve heard it said once the bright eyed and bushy tailed soldiers who first met with the innovations of war and machinegun fire found themselves piled up at the end of their conclusion. Hours; days maybe, of un-ending fire until they were stacked so high that they were no longer, “Roger” or “Bud” or “Kevin” or “That guy who always snored.” You’d forget their names and they’d slowly become “brick” and “brick” and “brick” and “That one brick that dreamed with his nose and wouldn’t shut the fuck up about it.” The house is like that. Too much time, tragedy and transition between anyone else and the house to remember it was ever a place to live.

So, they built around it I guess. I can only imagine the story surrounding that. So much of the city has been torn down and built back up again. Monuments, apartment complexes, family homes, you name it; all of them have been caught in the crossfire of the free market and consumerism. How this place dodged those heat seeking missiles is beyond me. I can only imagine the husk of that place was so long cold and dead, they couldn’t quite hit it and moved on to the warm bodies nearby.

It’s a wonder I saw it myself! Any other day I wouldn’t have noticed it. If it had taken me even a second longer to make out what it was, I would have already moved on, back to the meeting at hand. But it just ‘clicked,’ after a few moments. Ted had said something, you know Ted? Well he had said something during our call that triggered this whole moment where my mind disengaged and went somewhere else. I think it was something like, “It’s not like you ever go anywhere interesting on the Ferris Wheel, it’s all elevation and the marvel of how tiny we are in conjunction with how well we’ve compensated,” and I got lost on that train of thought looking out the south window into the unkempt grounds below.

As I moved from train car to train car in my mind attempting to unpack what he had said while looking down at this puzzle of vegetation, it snapped in place. I could see it! The house! Like focusing your eyes for the first time in the morning. It went away for a second, but sure enough I was able to click it back into place again, much easier this time. It was there, struggling beneath the waves of overgrowth around it. Below the briars and other hardy plants that couldn’t give two shits about the sun. I had to focus on the meeting of course, but I couldn’t hardly look away either. Each time I did I had to take a moment to find it again.

End of the day, I’m down on the bottom floor looking for a way into the interior grounds. Did you know there isn’t any? The whole south wall is concrete for the first two stories. And before you ask, I checked, it’s the same for the other buildings. The whole area is inaccessible. No wonder it looks like a tree hell down there.

Now I can’t stop looking at it though. That house. Makes you think doesn’t it? It has got to be a whole new flavor of darkness in there.

Fervor

Something is bleeding into the world around me.
No, not even that, not precisely bleeding.
Cutting,
Through the world to get at me.

Shapes rifling through the fabric of reality,
Puncturing the invisible shroud
Viscous violence
Kicking at torn edges upon exit,

The universe reduced
To a stretched balloon
now broken
at the behest of some purposeful needle.

The skin reels back, a fitful tirade of embarrassment,
returning to form,
offended to have revealed
so candid a vulnerability.

Now released the shapes are no longer discernible,
Only defined by the nothingness found between
Conception and its birth.
How could I engage such a thing?

How would you engage it?
Unanswerable questions,
Purpose and articulation
The final answer for me.

Guernica

I’m fairly certain my body has a better idea of what’s going on than my mind does. Sipping my coffee now it tastes like the first time. Shockingly acidic and hot, but it flows with a warmth that pulls you through that adversity into a deep hug of alertness. In my mind this shouldn’t feel so alien, I just had coffee yesterday. The food is a jumbled bunch of flavors I can’t make enough sense of to decide if I like it or not, but my stomach is clear enough with protests. I slap on one of those blue patches for the nausea and continue the routine.

Everything is green of course. I deliver the update, mark the cycle complete and head to the central pillar to meet up with the inspector from the east wing.

As the door opens on the pillar I can see they’ve finished ahead of me. I fix myself a drink while waiting for them to get done with the simulator. I can taste the tart of cranberry now and it makes me feel almost normal again. For a moment I just stare into the glass swirling the drink around. As long as I can keep that up the rest of this is suspect. I’m not looking up, but if I were to, perhaps I’d see my brother behind the bar, cleaning a glass or fixing his own drink.

There is a tap on my shoulder; it’s not him. The other inspector is finished, “Hey! So how’s it looking?”

“Green. You?”

“Same. We may not get much news up here but at least it’s always good!”

“That is true. I don’t think we’ve worked together before, what cycle are you on?”

“Sheesh. Ugh…” eyes roll back and they take the head with them dramatically, “This has got to be somewhere in the 20’s for me. You?”

“18. I have a little slip of paper I mark on each cycle before a I go back down. I’d lose track for sure without it, but it keeps me grounded in a way. I don’t know if that’s the most appropriate word, but you get what I mean.”

They force a transactional laugh, “Yeah, I get it. So what are we drinking?”

We talk for a while before going back below. Neither of us learn anything new about the other, conversation in the central pillar is more about re-calibrating the self, but in it’s own way the exchange is therapeutic.

All 18 cycles had been the same and tedium was starting to infiltrate the process. Physically, yes, there is a lot of down time. But mentally, it’s all continuous, like you’ve worked 18 days straight. Worse even, because you don’t really sleep, you lay down, and you wake up, mark the pad and get back to doing what you just finished up. On paper, in numbers and words, it’s feasible. In practice though, it’s tough. They said it would be. Hell, they are doing it too, so who am I to complain. At least they said they were. Who knows, all I know is the hash marks on my piece of paper. Twenty-seven now.

Green.

I mess with the simulator again, only to be reminded why I swore it off in cycle three. Never could trust the things back home and especially not here. What does that say about me though? Thirty-six.

Green.

I’ve had three glasses of cranberry and it may as well be water. I’m drinking red ‘less than water’. Forty-two.

Green.

The inspector from the east wing is pacing behind the door, I could hear it the whole time I was doing my own inspection and now I have to decide if I want to open it or not. Before I can decide he approaches the door, and looks through the glass window. The closer he gets the more of his face gets cut off until it’s just his eyes.

His muffled voice warbles through the panes of glass and metal, “Hey! Hey! Did you ever get any blanks? What do we do with blanks? What the fuck is a blank? Hey! Can you hear me?”

I don’t know anything about blanks, I tell them this with my face. He gets it and returns to pacing. I go back to the west wing report station and look up information on blanks. There is an entry of course, suggesting the blanks could be caused by a power failure. “What the hell does that mean,” I say out loud and startle myself. Purge unit it says. Forty-three.

Green.

I hesitate to approach the central pillar because my mind is telling me that the hyper anxious fellow was in there just a few hours ago, which is absurd. My eyes affirm this, it seems I was done first. A few hours later and still no one from the east wing has arrived. Forty-four.

Green, sort of. Green, but units are missing. When I file my report I look for information on that, and there is nothing. I can only assume they were purged. What does that mean though?

The central pillar is empty still, two days in a row my mind tells me. But the east wing door is open. I didn’t even know it could open from this side. When I step in, the floor is covered with technological sinew. Someone else shares my distrust for the simulator; violently it seems. I peek into the east wing to see that things are not always greener on the other side. I feel like these are problems I don’t need to get involved with. Somewhere deep within I hear a flood of anguished curses, and that seals it for me. Time for bed. Forty-five.

Stars. Nothing but stars, spinning slightly out of view.

Then I see the shadow of a thing, a relief of a wheel in negative space. A circle of black turning off the stars as it rolls through the background. Half of the radius erupts in lightning periodically. It gets colder and my viewing angle moves away from the lumbering shadow. Looking at the stars for the last time I can’t help but feel sort of relieved. “‘What do we do with blanks?’ he said. You purge them dumb ass,” I say out loud for some reason. All he had to do was look it up. Forty- six.

I need to find a slip of paper somewhere, to keep track of all this.

Jubelee

Sometimes it just falls down against  the ground and you can’t do anything to stop it. I’ve tried. Hundreds of times I’ve tried, but it just falls. Anymore I just look at it out of the corner of my eye. We all know I’m not going to catch it. After all this time I don’t even want to try anymore, but I don’t want it to be so obvious that I’ve given up so here we are.

The collision echos a sharp crack in the otherwise silent room. Everyone aligns their head with the point at which their eyes were already fixated, hoping no one else is the wiser. We look at each other as if dumb founded until one of us decides to go pick it up. Me, of course, I decide to go pick it up.

I gather myself off the floor like handfuls of cloth and saunter towards it. I have to use both hands now its been so long, “You really need to stop doing this you know. All of us have a place to go except you. If you keep falling they’ll eventually see you can’t support yourself, and none of us wants any of that guilt. Just-” I adjust it so that its wedged securely between the wall and the floor, “like this, don’t move. Don’t get upset, don’t get happy, don’t think about anything. Just stay here, upright.”

It listens for now, but just in case I continue to watch it out of the corner of my eye. So does everyone else.

Aardvark

“When in Rome, right?” I say as much to myself as to my companion and scoop up a bottle of spirits and tip its contents down my throat. This isn’t Rome though, at least I don’t think it is. I don’t really know exactly what Rome is, or IF it is. It’s just one of those things people say, and keep saying, and keep saying. A copy of a copy of a faded copy.

Is this Rome though? I wonder as the sharp liquid tumbles down my throat like a cool river rolling hot embers. Maybe I’ve already seen Rome, or will see Rome some day. Or. Perhaps it was assigned to one of the other inspectors.

I walk around the bar and take a seat on one of the stools and sit the bottle down with me. “What do you think about Rome, 86?” 86 is my wood partner. Any place involving a forest or lots of woodwork, we are always partnered together. We have a certain compatibility for those things. I interrupted 86 examining a table, a large amount of some entree in his mouth. He swallows it hoarsely to adjust his mouth for a response, “Huh, what was that?”

“Rome,” I say, “What do you make of Rome?”

“Oh! Funny you mention it! I got another guy, he’s my textiles guy. He was telling me that him and his mineral companion, they do a lot of stuff in Rome. It’s a proper noun.”

“Ahh,” I nod my head at the bar top with the half smirk that is born from a disappointed day dream. Proper names are sort of a lost art now. I get up and take another bottle from the shelf, ‘Gray Goose’ this one says. I take it with me to a booth this time. On the table there is already some food set out for whoever occupies the seat. I take a few bites, and follow it up with a few drinks. 86 joins me at the other side of the table. “This is the stuff right here. And the food? Oh man, the food! Oh, and have you tried the ‘coke’? Everyone goes for the spirits, but if you really want to try something that will take you back, ain’t nothing like carbonated beverages. That will make you 12 again, still snot nosed and fragile,” I shrug a response that 86 translates as what’s so good about being twelve anyhow? “Say what you want, but that was living.”

I stare at him a moment, looking angry I bet, I have that kind of face; having not shaved for a few days makes it worse, but really I’m just trying to remember what 12 was like before all this, “Briefly it was though.” I’ve broken the mood. Even if you can’t join the collective, you tend to think in a communal sense, and sometimes you forget your company, and I guess yourself too. Worse yet, he could have chosen this for himself. How can one reconcile that?

86 coughs. Not an actual cough, not a fake one really either, but one of those transitional coughs that help you clarify that everything before is wrapped up and shoved back in its folder, likely not to be brought out again. I get it. I knock three times on the table, “Hey, well, it was good to see you again though,” 86 stammers an attempt to jump back into the new rhythm of conversation, “y-yeah. Yeah, it was good to see you too 17. Next time try the carbonated stuff. I’m telling you, it’ll knock your socks off.”

“Sure thing.” The bar flickers a bit and fades away. We position ourselves next to each other for the surveys.

Question 1: On a scale from 1 – 10, with ten being the most accurate, how accurately did the environment represent a BAR as you remember it?

Question 2: On a scale from 1 – 10, with 10 being very familiar, how familiar are you with late ‘American’ history and old world politics?

Question 3: On a scale of 1- 10, with… 

The Podium

“You can’t possibly capture it. At its core there is a green ember that kind of whispers this soft light over everything inside. Beautiful. You can’t see it unless you’ve cut into the thing,” He pauses and looks off into the memory as if it were hidden amongst the crowd in front of us, “It’s truly remarkable, but then the thing starts to die, so you know, checks and balances,” He takes a drag off his cigarette.

I lean in closer, hoping to put some emphasis in my contribution, to show I am committed to the conversation now. I say something ineffectual. That’s my ‘thing’. He gets up and walks away, casting the cigarette against the ground where it shatters into sparks. I really didn’t want to capture it anyway. I’m not sure why he started with that, I was just curious about them. I clutch my belongings to my chest. Squeezing the hastily packed sack dispels some of the anxiety that is creeping in.