The voracious void just kept coming
form folding over the rotting room
swallowing swollen husks of failing furniture
until undulations of wood and plaster play
like lively school kids riled rabid
and all I could do was watch
spell bound
such a fluid motion
progressing without sound
with intent and notion
consuming all it found.
There were others before me,
there would be more to follow.
Souls sent out into the rift
destined to shift or wallow.
I shifted on my first trip.
There on a ship with strangers
drunk with the promise of gold;
bought and sold to the dangers.
Only a few of us knew
what would ensue past the line.
I had heard stories of course;
but their source seemed more the wine.
Now it seems very sober;
fears shared over wine are weak,
without drink they rage inside
amplified by self critique.
As the ship approached the field
some of us kneeled in lament.
Of course, nothing could be seen,
but all gleaned the ripe event.
I watched the first of us go,
with a soft, low clapping sound;
air snapping back into place,
in the space it now had found.
Somewhere else, my friend was lost,
surely a cost justified.
We had no hope or function
past what this junction implied.
I stood there at the threshold;
one amongst the bold souls left
until I too disappeared
Found new fear, the rest bereft.
One moment I was at sea,
the wind around me, whipping;
the next, stagnation. Darkness,
held by harness and sitting.
The light and dark in this place
had a strange pace, throwing fits;
flitting as if in a fight,
no focus to right my wits.
A companion beside me
with arms like a tree, pleaded
strange sounds, pounding my torso,
I don’t know what he needed.
Then there arose such a crash;
a giants bash against the steel
that ripped our carriage in two
pulling others through with zeal.
We screamed, a sound we could share,
while the air ate us with greed,
watching the mountain and sky
pass us by in blinding speed.
A bright yellow thing dropped down,
bouncing around on a string;
While I mirrored its progress,
I could not repress puking.
I awoke being dragged out,
through some strange route to the light
and oppressively cold air
with the few that dared to fight.
And fight we did, night and day
to keep at bay cold and fear;
to eat enough to survive
stay alive though death was near.
A fortnight passed, we drew straws.
We had cause to eat the dead,
but one had to try it first
and be cursed, so it is said.
Months of eating were thus found,
in every pound of our friends,
but no one would ever state
that we all ate in the end.
Like me, this reality
became debris undefined
up until our extraction;
the reaction was maligned.
Though I could not understand
none would remand another,
I may no longer have a home,
But I roam with new brothers.
Wind blows gently across the plane,
It’s soft hands sifting through the grain;
A golden ocean crashing endlessly,
Relentlessly splashing,
Colliding with the setting sun,
Deep purples on the horizon,
Lulling the world to sleep with hues of blue,
And sweeping clouds askew.
A depression hides in the field.
A secret quietly concealed,
Some wandering soul now lost to the earth;
A cost assigned at birth,
A body of anxiety,
Now bereft of society,
Become a bloated, bountiful buffet
All decayed and fetid.
Yet the wind still finds its beauty;
Perhaps a false sense of duty,
It circulates the smell through the valley,
Life rallied with a knell.
A perfect place for young flies,
One decides as it lands on an eye,
And then skitters about to find its place,
On the face to be mined.
It rises and lands on the cheek,
A landscape both supple and weak,
But then the cadaver struck the fly dead
And said none would have her.
Then settled her hand to her side,
Contemplated the world outside,
And enjoyed her death as best as she could.
The good life, she thought in jest.
Friend, you are the universe.
Know that as you weep alone,
All of this was unrehearsed
Expressions of the unknown.
You are as much randomness,
As an echo of battle,
Old records of callousness,
Made self reflective prattle.
An apex of existence,
Speaking to it of beauty
With unyielding persistence
And a false sense of duty.
You do not owe anything;
To live and breathe is enough.
Why spend your time worshipping,
The jailor and his handcuffs?
There is much to venerate
With no need to stray outside
Instead one should celebrate
What existence has implied.
One: You are here observing.
That from which you were sculpted,
The success of preserving
Knowledge in one who’s trusted.
Trusted for your survival,
Trusted to keep on fighting,
To witness your arrival
And to put it in writing.
Two: Much has been overcome,
Once lame, now you run meters,
Once deaf to everyone,
Now an eloquent speaker.
So much world was ingested
That you were set to rupture,
But instead you invested,
Putting those forms to structure.
Three: Nothing is eternal,
Once you are gone, it’s finished;
There is not an external,
No reward, nothing punished.
The birth and the conclusion
Bind your story like bookends;
So enjoy the delusion,
And let your fiction distend.
The earth buckled beneath her weight,
A form it never could create.
A swirling mass of colors,
Consuming all it discovers.
Ripping through the fields and mountains,
Hot magma wrenched out in fountains.
Time and space bent in around her,
Reality left to flounder.
They used all the tools of the state,
Extremes winning out each debate,
Soldiers, missiles, bombs and others,
All sent out while our hope suffers.
Losses beyond accounting,
Figures all reduced to nothing.
From great king to lowest toiler,
Razed by Gertrude the Destroyer.
I passed through those dead fields of ash and gray,
To find a tall tree split, sullen and breached.
Figures around it in sulfur stone prayed,
As if words of faith this oak had just preached.
I approached slowly, not sure what I’d find.
My belabored steps sank into the mud,
And as I moved a void was left behind
That shortly after would well up with blood.
Suddenly, I was pierced by a loud voice;
One I knew to be the tree inside me.
“I offer you now, friend, a simple choice;
Leave now, forget, and forever be free.
Stay, and I will bring all things to an end.”
From madness, to this. I braved to ascend.
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.
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.
Grow Gray With Me 