We Own the Shame.

Flickering light on the tomb,

the theme song from The Young & The Restless

permeating the womb.

Years upon years upon years of encoded electronic images.

Face the screen, look forward to the dream, plan your life

around the scene. Joystick, controller, touch tone, cell phone.

It’s new! It’s improved! This one’s smaller. This one’s wiser.

Keep your head buried in the wires. Addicted to the diction.

Too strange to be fiction.

Playtime for hours. Pavlovian towers. Devolution of a species.

Crap trap the whole thing's tapped. This is what we've been working towards.

Don’t call. Don’t talk. Text me. I don’t want to see your face or hear your voice.

Just send me the codes already. I don’t care.

These lies are becoming threadbare.

Reveal the zeal with which our souls are being stealed. (sic)

I don’t know but I’ve been told. Once there was a way,

but everything must be bought and sold.

A soul cries out in the wilderness, manna in the form of prana.

Or is it prana in the form of manna?

Must be electrix, must be Celebrex, must be freezone, ozone,

motorhome, no place to call your own.

Run that treadmill as fast as you can.

All hail the Toucan Sam. Slam bam, thank you Ma’am.

Great balls of fire, send me your ire.

Burn some tires, the flames licking higher.

The black smoke disappears into the atmosphere.

We’re here. We’re queer.

We’re funny little creatures, scurrying ants

in and out of the plants. Bubble canopies of rubber and steel,

aluminum, windshield glass, we got no class.

Burn that gas, tap that ass, work that dick.

What's making us tick? If everything is okay...

Well, then I guess I’m the one who’s sick.

But this shit’s got to change. Are you ready to name names?

CIA hurricane? Get ready. You know who’s to blame:

We are the game. We own the shame. We flew those planes.

Nothing will ever be the same.

The Art of Fetching Water

Carry two gallons of spring water

across the meadows.

Breathe deeply.

Heady air, cold hands.

Laboring breath.

Holy breath.

Black mountains wrap their arms around.

Twilight in the heavenly holler;

sleeping grey trunks of trees.

Focus mind meditation.

The pond is the mirrored mask of the skies.

Rippling water.

Two birds

take wing and fly.

You are here.

I don’t know if there is any rhyme or reason to it. It starts in the gut, rises up into the chest, surrounds the heart and presses against the rib cage straining to be free. It cannot escape so you choke it back down and try to find some purchase to pull yourself through. Everything fails. Social anxiety. Please don’t engage me. I don’t want you to see the darkness inside me. I am ashamed of the storm clouds in my belfry. These purple machinations of madness are for me and me alone. I am haunted by the past, dreadful of the future, spinning daisy chains in my mind of oh how I wish my world could be. I need to be loved and I need to love. For the past 10 years it seems I’ve fallen all over myself to push away anyone who has had the misfortune of trying to love me. There is a poison inside, a thick black tar of self-pity and fear, an adolescent mind in the body of a full grown man. Self-loathing is second nature to me, isolation my defense, solitude my crutch. In the deep cold of a star-struck night I feel connected for a few moments. I see the universe rotating overhead, planets shining, a bright white moon superimposed against a sea of blackened purple space and time.

“You think too much.”

“You are too sensitive.”

“You are too needy.”

If it weren’t for my little furry family of dogs I think I should have expired. Truth be told, it’s money matters, a brooding, self-centered sense of entitlement, a bitterness. I’ve got so much ugliness in my craw to release, so much phlegm and rotten dogma. I’ve knelt and prayed for hours on end for women I once loved, for them to be happy, for them to find some joy, love and peace in their lives. Almost without exception these prayers have been answered. And I am happy for them. I am happy they’ve found someone to share their lives with. But inside I am so very small and I think, “But what about me, God? Can’t I have someone too? Can’t I love someone and allow myself to be loved by them?”

I have slept alone for years. I wake alone; make coffee alone, soldier through weekends alone, holidays and years pile up like slabs of ice on the bank of some lost creek. At times I make peace with my loneliness, take pride in it. Other times I am filled to overflowing with sadness and longing. I stuff it down, way down, further now, be spirited away self-pity. Damn you covetous heart! It’s easier to allow yourself to turn to stone. It’s easier to turn again and again inside oneself. It’s easier to block out the world, to lay fresh mortar in the cracks of the wall. I am bitter over my career, what it’s taken from me. Nights, weekends, holidays…year after year, decade after decade serving smiling families and nuzzling couples. After the shift you go home to leftovers and an empty house. It’s madness. It’s untenable. And now I’m in this place, this place that is supposed to be my home, my motherland and I feel as ostracized, incomplete and unloved as ever before. There are moments of peace sure, ephemeral time-ticks of non-polarity, of oneness with my station and fellows, but they are few and far between. The standard is melancholy, not just a surface affliction but a deep, abiding sadness that has been extant since childhood and that I believe I was probably born with, a dis-ease with the human condition.

I really have no right to bemoan my lack of female companionship. I have reaped what I have sown. I have been reckless, thoughtless, unforgiving, cruel and merciless. Ask anyone who has had the misfortune of trying to love me. So many wonderful women have crossed my path. I’ve taken their love, balled it up in my hands and tossed it aside. By rights I DESERVE to be alone. I deserve the pain. Never mind that my cruelty and insensitivity were born from childhood traumas out of my control. One must grow and evolve, throw back the security blankets that once served so well. These blankets have grown so comfortable even as they are slowly suffocating me. I am so lucky to live in this place, lucky my grandfather purchased this land and that my parents kept it. I’ve not known what the hell I’ve been doing here. I had no real plan. Just move up here and figure it out later. I’m glad I didn’t know how I would be affected. I’m glad I didn’t allow the fear of the unknown to dissuade me. As fortunate as I am for the right to live here on this land there is so much for me to do to continue living here and I often feel overwhelmed. There have been many challenges and I feel I’ve risen to them. As one problem is solved a hundred more arise in its place. I am very far out of my comfort zone and of course, this was one of the chief reasons for making the move in the first place.

At night I step outside as if onto the surface of the moon. The only electric light I can see is that of a satellite in the sky that beams down television programs to dishes across the countryside. There are no other lights visible save for the lamplight creeping out of the windows of my house. When the moon is out and bright the mountains and fields and streams glitter in the lunar light. The mountains are dark and lovely against the heavens. Constellations make their ways across the universal sea. I stand on my two human legs, vapor from my breath rising hot from my face into the cold ether.

Sometimes the only answer you will hear is “You are here.”

“You are here. The rest is up to you.”

Hollow Man

God I can’t wait to get back home. I miss the grey-trunked trees, the primeval forest, the barren mountainsides, the cold earth littered with dry, dead leaves, the nothingness of the stark, star-studded night sky, the silence of the hills, the yawning emptiness. The quiet loneliness of the land reflects my own sadness back at me. The river winds its millennial path through the valleys, slipping over rocks and washing memory and emotion away with its cold clear waters. I need the emptiness; the soft, caressing touch of the invisible ether soothes my soul. The cold hard ground comforts me. The dead weather surrounds me and comforts me in my solitude and introspection. I need the crisp, clean air, the hushed stillness of desolation, the absence of any sort of love or care. These things fill my hollow husk of a heart. These things bring me what might be described as a kind of joy and peace. There are no judgments there, no reprisals, no longing or ambition. There is only the vacuum of space and time. I am aware that my heart is turning to stone. I am aware that I receive no love because I give no love. I am broken and I don’t care. And the mute mountains don’t care either. We were made for each other. I am the silent grey mountain and the silent grey mountain is me.

Bats!

The other night I was driving home from work. It was a bit foggy but not as bad as I had seen it before. The day was warm and the early evening saw brief, violent thunderstorms whose showers were now slowly, eerily rising up from the river valleys and blanketing entire watersheds in thick, dense, ethereal white wisps of fog. So I’m totally zoning out on the landscape all John Muir-style and shit while I’m driving along, around the turns, decelerate here, and speed up there for the long, slow climb out of Dunns into Camp Creek. I’m listening to tunes and keeping a sharp eye out for deer which gather in this valley by the hundreds at night. Then all of the sudden, out of the smoke and fog, a motherfucking bat smacks into my windshield, bounces up over the cab of the truck and disappears into the darkness. It happened in slow-motion; or rather my mind seems to have captured it that way. I saw him when he was about six feet from the windshield, shrouded in smoke and the fractured cones of headlight. His wings were spread as if he was trying to put on the brakes. The light from the truck shown through a pale grey scrim of tissue-thin fabric framed in the most beautiful black wing structure. The body was black as was his head. As the slow-motion frames click on his wings begin to flap wildly, click, click, I can see his face, click, click, his beady little blind eyes and his black head, click, click, his mouth gaping wide still filling his belly with insects…click, click, ...THUMP! He tumbles over the truck and into the darkness never to be seen or heard from again.

Several nights later I am at home, sleeping out on the screened-in porch when I have to get up to pee. I do this like a veteran somnambulist. I draw back the covers, slide my legs to the edge of the bed and drape them over, search with my feet until they find solid, unobstructed purchase on the floor. My eyes have not yet opened. With my feet firmly planted on the floor I then assume a sitting up position at the edge of the bed. Now I open my eyes, not open really, more like pryingly crease my lids so that the tiniest sliver of light makes it through. I am seeing my back porch through a forest of eyelash. Noting the floor is clear I stumble onto my feet and then gangle forward in a monster of Frankenstein manner, up the step, into the house, across the creaking pine floorboards, the moonlight casting on the boards and lighting my way, hands outstretched and probably mumbling to myself I awkwardly bumble along until I reach a threshold. A doorway! Hooray! I grasp it with both arms reassuringly and push my way through.

(Now just to pause for a moment and consider the quantities of urine that must have been pressing against my bladder to cause me to (semi) awaken, leave the Holy Sacred Warmth and Comfort of The Worshipful Bed and journey off into the night in hopes of relief.)

Through the doorway I shift my body to the left and lumber through an open sliding-glass doorway out onto the wooden deck. I’m multi-tasking now. As I lurch the last few steps I fish out my penis and ready it for draining. At last! I find a comfortable stance on the edge of the porch and just let it rip, full bore wide open high pressure fire hosing going down. I’m already beginning to feel the relief. I begin to smile, kinda laugh a little. Now I’m really getting into it, swaying back and forth with my hands on my hips, listening to the puddle form on the ground below when all of the sudden out of fucking nowhere this motherfucking crazy-ass bat dive bombs the shit out of me and gets all Kenneth Shuler up on top of my head. Somehow (the startling fright I guess) my valve immediately shut off as I 1. Screamed outloud. 2. Started waving my arms all around like a lunatic. 3. Lost my balance and ate shit onto the deck floor in my boxer shorts. I was pretty much asleep during this whole thing, up until the moment I hit the dirt and found myself wounded, on the ground, outside, at night, with my dick hanging out. In a matter of seconds my pack of dogs had me surrounded and was investigating the scene; barking loudly and charging fearlessly out into the front yard to attack. Three stayed behind and guarded me with cold noses and wet tongues. I gathered myself up, pulled myself together and stood up. I felt soreness and dull pain coming from my left knee and looked down to see a nice two inch gash cut across my kneecap and blood running down my shin and calf. Being somewhat used to this kind of thing I just said fuck it and got back in bed and went to sleep.

So if you ever see me waving my arms around wildly and muttering incoherently about “the god damn bats” you’ll know I’m being totally fucking serious.

Reckoning

It is mid-day and it is dark and ominous. Friday night I was sitting in the mountain house having dinner with my sister and a couple of friends. It had been hot as hell all day and we were sweltering inside the house while eating but no one seemed to mind too much. All of the sudden, literally out of nowhere, the wind picked up outside and began blowing HARD. The temperature immediately dropped about 20-30 degrees, the sun disappeared and the air was filled with a wild and frantic energy. The electric lights began to flicker on and off before finally deciding on “off.” We lit a candle and continued our dinner, just went right on with our evening. My friends went home and my sister retired to the cabin. I spent the night on my fold-out sofa on the screened in porch. It cooled down so much during the night I had to get up in my sleep and find more blankets. When the sun came up in the morning I shed the blankets as the light shone on my skin and I began to sweat.

When I left the farm to go see about work and my food at Mountain Creek the reality of the storm that seemed nothing more than an anomaly became apparent. Trees were knocked down everywhere, power lines dangling, branches snapped like twigs….and there was the eerie, ominous silence in which we have now became engulfed. I got into town and was startled by the long lines of cars at the gasoline pumps. The temperature kept rising and rising and the day was spent in a surreal mindscape of damage and ruin. The heartwarming aspect to all of this is how people behaved. People were patient and kind with one another, even in the gas pump lines, there was no cutting, no honking of horns, no yelling or bitching, just calm as if there was nothing out of the ordinary.

I wonder if this is how it will be when it all really goes down and goes down for good. We won’t know it’s for good at the time. We’ll think it’s just a matter of time before order is restored. But when it really happens order will not be restored, the power won’t return. We will be left to fend for ourselves. The small community I live in will survive. These are country people with country ways. Sustainability isn’t just a catch-word or a trend to these people; it is a way of life. Hell yesterday farmers were out cutting and bailing hay just as they would have been doing anyway. There was a slight air of panic in the towns from tourists coming off the interstate but the local people, for all their flaws and faults, were non-plussed and I found myself happy and proud that I was among them. My two years living in the cabin has prepared me for moments like this. All the trappings of civilization fall away and you find yourself surrounded by the silence of the real. I gave up TV over two months ago. I use the internet sparingly, a bit at work and a bit at a coffee shop in town. I can now live without these things without going mad. They don’t matter. What matters is the cool air at night, the feeding and watering of my dogs, the checking in on my neighbors and family.

I’ve long known there will be a reckoning…a reckoning we will see and experience in our lifetime, a reckoning that will make things worse before they get better. Storms come and go through time, it ain’t nothing new. But when a combination of events takes place, it will change. I don’t know if we are headed for a new dark age or not. I don’t know how it will all play out but I do know that our current civilization cannot continue on the path it is on without dire consequences. Our leaders are still completely blind to the truth. We are meant to believe that if the “economy” just gets better, things can go back to “normal.” Well, I’ve been alive for forty years now and I can tell you that there has been nothing normal about the past four decades. Our economy is a lie, it assumes continued growth. On a tiny planet among the stars there is only so much space, so many resources…it is up to the earth itself to shake off our beehive madness. Whether or not this is a conscious act of the planet or just a matter of cause and effect is irrelevant. We have grown beyond our means and it is beginning to show. We need a time-out. We need to pause and reflect. If we won’t do it on our own the earth will do it for us. It will knock down our towers and silence our televisions. It will remind us of the preciousness of clean water and healthy food. It will learn us to be kind to our neighbors, to look out for one another, to finally realize we can’t do this alone. Our addiction to fossil fuels and a way of life that is beyond our means will be broken sooner or later. There is a reckoning in this wind.

SPYCOGA cont...

In other moments I am serene as a Buddha, calm as a Hindu cow, light and free as that dancing plastic bag in American Beauty. Multi-colored butterflies flirt around my skull, the waning light at sunset streams through the forest and into my eyes, the bright golden spears of light fracture into an infinite kaleidoscopic pattern of rainbows. This is real. This is not the fantasy world I live in, the one we all live in. This is the winking of the earth, a nihilistic nudge from our Maker. Moments like this I am conscious of my breath, conscious of the weight of my bones and muscle being held down onto the earth by gravity’s pull, conscious of my organs pulsing inside my body, aware of the steady beating of my heart within my chest, the thump thump thump thump that meters out the beat of my life, cognizant of the wind caressing my skin, conscious of everything around me and inside me, conscious of the moon and stars and planets circling, the universe of which we all are part and no one is separate. This lie of separateness is the plague of humanity, this cosmic con that there is anything to lose or anything to gain when we are all husks of dust glinting in the breeze. This comforts me. Death comforts me. I do not long for death but the irrefutable truth of death is difficult to not admire. I can’t wait for the veil to be lifted on this world. I know there is a loving, benevolent force to the universe. If I didn’t I would become a criminal.