The Midnight Longing

I’ve lived so many years beneath the shadows of midnight that I’ve become a specter of a man. I was in love once. Maybe I still am. My heart bled for her but she just bled away one day. And I was left alone, haunted by memory. If time were a guillotine, I would have long been decapitated. I have my soul, but for what it’s worth, I can’t buy matchsticks to start the fire in my gut. My inspiration was devoured one day by a ghost. I begged for it back but the banshees bartered for it. I was on the losing end of a balance of dead charcoal. No bonfire would ignite my divine consciousness. Now my mind is a quagmire of fear and destitution. If there is a solution, I haven’t yet found it. My spirit is starved.

I’m thirsty for you, darling. Return. We are strangers lost in an ocean of darkness that I cannot drink for the salt. Parched, I crawl into the killing horizon. Maybe I’ll find God there. He’s not here with me. Not even the evil cares to entertain my presence. Do you know what its like without you? A realm of nothing canvassed in a matrix of black plasma thicker than tar. 

The seeds of determination are caught between my moth-eaten socks and my toes. It’s so damn uncomfortable that I want to fling my shoes against the wall and scream. Everything that I was is everything that I am not. I’m not Buddha, I’m not Jesus or Ghandi. I lost that power in the waning tides of love and life. Stripped of my titles, my pride and my muse, I became just this lonely man. Where is my spine, my smoking gun? My military dedication to you absolved? Never. Whatever. I won’t think past yesterday until my spirit becomes shackled to the pillars of future events. What these are, I do not know. Darling, did you know that only my burnt creativity keeps me from silence? I leaked yellow humor and bile as I trotted down that green mile of separation. Remember that? We became detached but I want you back. Our divorce was not supposed to happen but it did. Do you pity me? Self-deprecation, may you rust in pieces. I still love you. Amongst my infirmary of uncertainty, I just wanted you to know that.

A Tasty Playground

I am light as air!
crisp as a crouton
on a warm bed of lettuce
Gentle wisps of fragrant jasmine
envelope me snugly
as I spring gracefully on a pond of blue jello
my little feet pitter-pattering through the muck
Now I piruet high into the sky
with arms outstretched to the sheep
crawling across a crimson field
of sunlight at my back.
When I tire of my solo ballet
I will wander over to a bowl of fluffy mashed potatoes
and dive in with a child-like cry of joy
at my lips and a twinkle in my eye
This land of delightful delicacies is my home
and I, its most grateful resident. 
Here I am 
to enjoy and peruse a playground
of stringbeans, long-grain rice and cooked cauliflower
I squeeze with my wee hands a slice of savory nectarine
sucking out the tantilizing juice 
and then procede to munch on a speckled jelly-bean
My tiny mouth puckers from the tartness of the candy
and I release a sigh of pleasure at this ultimate form of relaxation
"What a lucky being am I!" I cry out to the sky
This was were I was born and so too here I shall die.
Heaven is here where the cherubs sing and the angels fly.
I am an ant and I love this life!

The Old Haggard Man without a Name

The blunt cigarette he holds between his aged fingers slowly chars as the ashes are carried away by the dead breeze. A blood red sun fades into the horizon and his gaze travels with it. It may only be 7:35 pm but his wizened mind is at midnight. The remains of the burnt fag shrivel away, and it, he carelessly tosses into the black volcanic sands. He sighs. This was supposed to be a relaxing vacation to Maui but it had turned out tortuous and lonely. Salty tears begin to well up in the corners of his eyes. He falls to the cold sand on his knees and screams out to God but God, too, is on vacation. The first infinitesimally small pinpoints of light appear high in the sky. Their cold, uncaring photons dazzle the old man on the beach into a frenzied state of insanity. He rips his moth-eaten tweed jacket and rolls over the sand like a rolling pin. He is performing the argathanon star motions that he learned from his initiation into the Brahmaputra.
Overhead soars a mighty Titan hawk. He will not tolerate the blatant insubordination to God of the haggard old man below so he swoops downward with his cruel talons retracted. They make contact with the man born without a name and tear into the gelatinous blubber of his flank. The hawk cranes the man away to the top of the bombastic volcano named Jampato. The man screams an aching shrill as the mighty Titan hawk releases him into the bowels of the hungry volcano never to be seen again, at least in human form. Some vacation! 


He is reborn as a fungi. A boring old mushroom. Perhaps this was because he had scorned the fun guys of his youth: the delightful art connoisseurs of his neighborhood, and the gregarious bourgeoisie. He never felt like he belonged to those cliques. At the ripe age of twelve he became a Brahman of the highest degree and a celibate since initiation into the Brahmaputra. He had worked very hard as an Indian priest, a priest with no name. For he never liked labels, being born without one anyhow. He was of God and not your ordinary individual. Yet despite his faith, he one day, after many years had passed, arose from his bamboo-framed bed and suddenly felt empty. There was a void in his heart without the light from above. At that precise moment, his belief in a God disappeared. He decided to do what the average Joe would do and have himself a period of debauchery. He would now dwell in the mundane and the ordinary. He took to smoking the cancer-stick as an idle pastime and his eyes turned toward the fairer sex for the first time.


Some time passed in his new life of sin, but he soon became bored. He needed new stimulation. Thus, off he went on his first vacation to have some fun in the sun. Hawaii would be his first port-of-call. Then Bangkok and Madrid. Only the higher powers that were, knew that he would never make those destinations. His 'vacation' turned out to be a self-imposed period of internal destitution. He felt both spiritually hollow and alone. Sure, he ended up imagining that God did indeed exist in the end. But it was too late. And his ritualistic motions in the sand were in vain. Now, as a benign mushroom in the decaying bed of a great forest, he would have all the time he needed to question his reality and perhaps find peace with his God once again. 

Chant "Hare Krshna" and be happy!

I challenged her to take a chance with me. I asked her to look deep down inside her heart for that buried ember still glowing in the ashes of our once cherished love. I almost drowned in her eyes that night. Here gaze was so gentle yet sad. Tears welling up as she offered me a soft smile. God I love her so much!

But then she said she was with child and that father was not I. She explained to me that "had she, with hairy plumber, three times on carpet and twice on head of dinner table where bread is broke." Her Punjabi accent cut strongly across her poorly grammatically-constructed English as she told me this on her knees. I mechanistically applied swift slaps to her mauve-hued cheeks--two small ones on each. However, I knowing first thing how lusty my plumber could be, him swinging both ways and I fleeing in fear, immediately forgave her most heinous of deeds. 

Then I said, "Ghyldidra, I, Chitmahutni of Hydrabaad, renounce the inquietude of having heard this most despicable of acts. I adore thee with all my heart. Wilt thou be mine lawfully wedded wife?" Her countenance was one of surprise, but in a flash she acquiesced. We were to be betrothed on the third Monday of the month of May, with the setting of the solar eclipse. We were joined in a state of unholy matrimony by the archbishop of Canterbury and then we fled to ancient India where we spent the remainder of our days relaxing and eating yogurt-curried chapatis. 

Well, not quite. There's more to this tale of requited love. You see we went to the great battlefield known as kurushsetra where 5000 years ago there was a catastrophic battle between good and evil. As we were 72% good, 5% bad and 21% spiritually malnourished, we opted to remain in our holy pilgrimage for another three nights so that we could chant the great mahamantra one-hundred and thirteen times on our japa beads provided by our portly shirpa named Sanpath Sabahababotachu. We meditated humbly on Krshna's sacred names:

Hare Krshna Hare Krshna
Krshna Krshna Hare Hare
Hare Rama Hare Rama
Rama Rama Hare Hare

The very sound of this sweet nectar  projected itself into our third eye and made us cry in ecstasy. We then took prasadam, or a vegetarian meal first offered to Krshna, and then proceeded to go scuba diving in the Ganges river. Despite the fact that the cremated remains of countless Indians drifted by us, we could still clearly see people bathing in the river, although this was not our intent. We merely were curious to see if any hippopotami habituated beneath the weathered mangroves along the shoreline. There were none to our great dismay. Nevertheless, we had a splendid time frolicking like a couple of school children in the tepid water. 

Afterwards, we snacked on some pickled mangos, chutney, as it were, and then climbed up the chundramundra, the astronomical structures built long ago. As you may recall from the discovery channel, or sesame street, if you prefer, these chundramundra are a conglomerate of massive staircases that lead to nowhere. Amazing really. One just climbs to the top and that's it: you either are teleported into space, directed toward the heavenly planets, or you inevitable fall 20 stories to an untimely demise. Since we had the choice, we opted for the former rather than to be reborn as a fungus or peanut. We underwent a transmigration of the soul that evening, anyhow. I became a doe-eyed cow and Ghyldi became the lovely cow-herd boy with the conch horn named Arjuna. To this day we remain inseparable dancers within a grassy knoll of Krshnalandia. 

A Leaf in the Forest

The midnight sun sets rapidly beyond the florescent horizon. As if in the blink of the eye the glowing red ball of fire then sublimes from the darkness. Time is racing. Humans are born, grow old, and then return to the earth as flowers and trees. Buildings are built, reaching heaven only to crumble to the ground as sediment. For this is the age of Kali-yuga spanning 432,000 human years. An era of sorrow and shortened lifetimes. But our soul is eternally recycled into new corporal vessels. Reincarnation. Until the golden age of satya-yuga, we are but whispers in the wind. As ephemeral as butterflies moonlighting beneath the aurora borealis. As transient as a second, yet consistent like the clock that bares it. We have our purposes. These are meaningful and unique to each of us. Then we pass our essence, the spirit of our life onto our progeny. A memory carried forward by the ones that we love and love us in return. This is the future and this is the history of all that is. And this is but a leaf in the great forest that is Time.

The SuperTransmigration of a Lackadaisical Carrot

The deepest of aching ripped through his eternal core before he was transformed into a carrot. What might have been an epoch of spiritual awakening was instead an auto-catalytic, zero-g, negative free-fall mind-revolution, an implosion of his vapid consciousness. He failed to think on His holy names before he translated across the void of existence. Thus, he was condemned into a vegetative state on rebirth. If only he was comatose! Here he was: the byproduct of a wandering psychosis, awakened into his new form just as a pensive geriatric crunches into his orange fleshy frame with her peroxide-bleached dentures. His succulent flavor provides impetus for a didactic explanation of reincarnation to her great-grandson, Henry, she so affectionately dubbed ‘Chubbs.’ 

Not too far into the distant future of the past, a meditating Hindu sage sits agitatedly in lotus position saturated with iconoclastic thoughts of his creator. A limp carrot suddenly invades his nuclear brain-works at the event-horizon of nirvana and he is ejaculated out of the black-hole of superconsciousness. Alas! He is witness to the transmigration of one lost soul caught in the raging sea of Maya. He mutters secret incantations to Krishna and prays that the carrot will find salvation in the belly of a fellow devotee. His prayers are heard and answered in the form of a wild cocatoo that suddenly soars through his open window and lands on his nest of hair. The blessed bird facilitates in the immaculate conception of a ‘baby ‘too’ the sagacious Hindu names, ‘Yanitha,’ meaning ‘that without the taint of darkness.’

On the other side of the universe, Krynthx-Z28, devours another minor planet as she rapidly approaches the Astral Sea of Blinding Light. Her twenty-six, arkanoid, helium-cooled computational devices, ie. Plaxzor brains, ruminate over imaginary numbers when a disturbing anomaly perturbs her mentations. A saffron-colored, crested, flying organism manifests in his network of ‘neurons.’ It carries a bulging, conical, orange ‘thing’ with tufts of green appendages at one end. The fluttering creature cackles ‘Yanitha, Yanitha!’ and then disappears to beyond the range of her internal optics. In the natural course of events, Krynthx-Z28, slowly becomes undone as she experiences radioactive decay. Her years have been numbered by her terminating half-life. Fortunately, her Plaxzors are focused on Yahwee – Jehova – Christ, so she inevitably will return to her maker following a brief stint as a ruddy young chap dubbed ‘Chubbs.’

A shortcut to a Better Day

RISING out from the detritus we call society 
a weathered sign flamed the words meant to inspire:


^%~^^+^^~%^


Hope is eternal:
Shadows are fleeting
The spark of rebirth
could be instantiated
Within 
The blink 


< Of
  An
  Eye >




‘Create-your-own-Civilization’ corporation:

Hiring the humane
Beings bring their crayons
to colorize a world outlined in grey 

The Reward:

It’s Intrinsic
(the product, incidentally, will be the pay)


^%~^^+^^~%^


It begged a wonder… I, the wanderer, off the beaten path of time, 
set sore eyes on peculiarity: as the sign’s words burned colorfully into my mind
Is this an open-ended opinion of fancy words entwined?
Or just some godly euphemism patterned poetically line by line?

I couldn’t tell. Nor would you, 
But the script continued…….

….in deliverance of its righteous point of view: 



^%~^^+^^~%^


We, the Imperfect, wear the following beliefs sewn on our sleeves: 

1) That civilization, and the ultimate potential of its people, are obtained though the creation of a global community made aware of humanity’s accomplishments and catastrophes. 

2) That the knowledge derived from the experiences of life promulgate thru the memories cultivated within the fertile garden that is the mind. 

3) That living out a more sympathetic coexistence requires continued audit of the mistake and lesson-laden history of our species. 

AND

4) That even the pedantic tenets of a probabilistically-unattainable utopia have value as substances of serious contemplation.


^%~^^+^^~%^



I read these words--- How they stung my eyes!
The sign’s complexity was unexpected, and I was surprised
If reality is a conglomerate of truths and lies
Ambiguity bridges the certainty common to the foolish and the wise

Then I remembered something I learned not long ago: 
And the message simply clicked! 

Here’s how it goes:

If one listens carefully to a silence rarely found
The resulting quietude often brings clarity to a background of sound 

So patiently I mulled through the nothingness ---
For the musical silence not resonating inside of my head
In an attempt to extract meaning 

Wondering……..,

if such a sign could be interpreted fairly. 

You see I soon realized that the sign was allegorical; rife with metaphor 
Touching on circumstance, happenstance, and how it’s all ‘meant to go down’
Making the essence of fact 
quite difficult to extract
but as the science of living is seldom exact,
perhaps its true meaning never was meant to be found. 

AND SO IT CONTINUED:

^%~^^+^^~%^


Can we validate an existence nested snuggly here on Earth?
Does life lose all meaning at our death or does it diminish from birth?
Like most other forms of life on this planet, we fight for survival.
Yet we make the struggle worse treating each other like strangers or rivals.

Why?

IF, the grass seems greener on the other side,

Perhaps we just cannot relate 

IF, we were born to the toss of the die

Maybe our intrinsic beliefs bind us probabilistically with impunity….. 

Although we enter the world naïve as newborns, bound to the self-vested interests of immaturity, the time soon comes when all of us must embrace maturity in the interest of our own well-being and for others coexisting alongside us. If ‘civilization’ is to become more than a throw-out term--- a global reality rather than a dream, then working together to make this world better is as important as it seems.

^%~^^+^^~%^


I’ve journeyed the Earth far and wide but never have I felt what I feel now inside. So many signs of creativity and calamity along the way 
BUT, this sign struck a chord: 

What if we could always walk at least two steps ahead of apprehension? Maybe then, we’d be skirting anger, anxiety, and yet another wasteful war. Oblivious are many to the fears and tensions held world-wide: Poverty, political oppression, and renewed nuclear proliferation to name a few. But a heightened awareness is all that such a sign asks of you.
I’ll uproot it from the earth if it will help our cause. Bear witness to the upheaval or let it go. Some of you would agree with me that this philosophy should be spread. 
Some of you might not think so. 

Hey, that’s okay. The sign is free. 

It’s the message that I’m willing to carry visibly. If it hits you, do your part and make it count. Even the smallest attempts at peace, add up to great amounts (when all are on board). 

As I walk beyond, I say ‘Be Brave and Be Strong’, to you as a smile is shot your way:


^%~^^+^^~%^

‘I hold in faith the truth embedded within these words I now carry
Faith in the temerity of the righteous
Faith that their convictions can be translated into a universal language that makes sense
Faith that solidarity can develop across diverse populations
Faith that each of us might someday hold the hands of those more fragile
than our own’


^%~^^+^^~%^

And with this faith I see us living out better days
After all, a little faith in humanity goes quite a long way


~ The outcome for tomorrow is determined by the actions of today ~

My Life as a Space-Time Traveler: A True Story

My Life as a Space-Time Traveler:
Vortexes, Human-like creatures, Blackholes, oh my!

Chapter 1

Life harbors suffering and struggle with harrowing impunity. It has neither remorse nor reticence in its self-serving existence, and its only aim is survival. Yet, somehow my life strands have been woven together to form a greater design over mere self-preservation. I was born for this, I thought, as I jet-streamed across the killing horizon. The great vortex of whitewash beneath my conversion board was the unitary pulse fed on by my heart, but felt by my feet as they gripped the board with over 9 G's of pressure. I am lightning. Electrostatic discharge races over every square inch of my body-glove as I surge forward and down into the abyss like a bat out of hell.

Vortex I-C-niner is buried deep in the hadopelagic, nearly 7000 meters below sea level. I will be the first human-like being to enter its roaring mouth. While other more well-known sea vortexes have been traversed into deep space, this mighty vortex has only recently been discovered on deionized depth-charge radar two months earlier. This journey that will last for merely a few seconds has seen years in preparation time and 32 billion dollars in accrued expenses. Yet, I was not one to worry about dollars and cents. Now was the time to maximize on living!

My third arm aches as I grip the throttle with swollen white knuckles. The Redline conversion board I ride on is state-of-the-art Xentaz technology. The best in its class. Telemetric diridium paneling and laser driven fission combustion propels this awesome craft. No plutonium needed in this baby. I was fortunate enough to have out-ceded my main competitor for this venture, and it was I who was chosen to explore sector Q-17z of the NGC - 4414 galaxy located in the Coma Berenices constellation. Sure, this region of 'space' is located approximately 20 million parsecs in distance from Earth, but that is but a heartbeat if one travels via worm-hole navigation as I am doing today.

At the moment of the quantum flop (the point at which matter transfers from deep sea into distant space), my eyeballs and other gelatinous organs compress to diamond density. No sooner does my backwashed scream exit then reenter my mouth as I flop, do my organs return to standard earth-field density. I soon am drawing in deep breaths of the xenon/argon mixture coming from my tanks holstered to my neck.

'Made it!" I disseminate to the heavens with pleasure as I observe my surroundings. I am bathed in a racemic mixture of light and dark matter and the trinary star system of Athos, Deutron, and Pithyia shine with a brilliant radiance before me. Not too far away, a quasar pulses arhythmically, yet my external vestibula filter the radiation it emits and converts the energy into the most beautiful of aural music. It is believed that leviathan arrograuts reside here feeding off the bountiful dark matter decomposing into neutral gravity. Perhaps I would encounter a few of these truly unique and obscure isms. While arrograuts have no organs, they manifest a lifeforce analogous to the baleen whales of ancient Earth. They are truly magnificent creatures rarely found closer than a million parasecs from the inner rim of the Orion Arm of the Milky Way galaxy. Their observance, however, would not be the main purpose of this trip.

In deep space, light refracts shallow. It is this arc-inverted energy that allows teleportation through time. I aim to harness this force with my flux algorithm redactor device. While I don't intend to become mared by fame, I know that this utilization of space will make me known, the galaxy-over. Nevertheless, I dark-slide forward one parasec at a time until I reach a wide pocket of interstellar medium with the correct amalgam necessary for time teleportation. 

Although I am quite excited by this adventure, I quickly realize my stark loneliness. Acid etches its way out of my poriforous cornea onto my weathered cheeks. "I wish Ladia were here" I call out in the same pitch as the quasar pulses. Ladia Rexgouz Bechral Orkrali Efron Kalifa was my 19th wife before I consumed her, like all the others, on one stormy Hexotember evening. She was not as tasty as Helicha Egreti etc. yet she was up there in succulence. "If only I had waited till after this mission to devour her with oreo cookies and halflaff tofu spread.Then I'd be with a companion here." My shoulders shrug signaling sweet misery yet my second sub-brain communicates with my corrugated cerebellum that it is time to focus on the task at hand: utilize the dark matter depression for picoflop compression and resultant teleportation expression. I do so with great care not to overload my internal flux manifold then think about where and when I want to be. 

Blinding gamma-rays enter area V6 of my occipital cortex and I am left chrome-hazed for an instant. Then I come-to smack in front of a real human -- a really tall female, who immediately smacks me over my cubic head with some sort of a club. I am out for the count and my consciousness becomes consumed by a supermassive black hole.

Chapter 2

My primary brain feels like a hypernova as I sit up suddenly into a vast rusted plateau. The particulate sky is a burning green with silver flecks tessellating like a lattice of white-dwarf stars ejecting their hot plasma. The air is drier than the Atacama desert and my tongue feels like sandpaper. I rotate my cubic head toward my captor who happens to be a beautiful giant of a woman. At approximately six feet, the head of this enchantress looms a good three feet above mine if I were to stand. I notice that my air tank and bodyglove have been surgically removed from my body leaving me as naked as a Brazilian water gnute. My third arm flops listlessly in the blusterous wind. This was not what I had envisioned as I wielded dark matter into my flux redactor. Yet I am here so I have to deal with it.

"Who are you?" asks the gorgeous creature before me.

"I go by the name of Hethro Xath Hyugg-gho Anzkrak Acon Syetz etc. I'm from Earth. Where am I?"

"You are here. Good 'ol Cyrus: 9th ellipsoid from the Swath." she curtly replies. "What is Earth?" the lady asks with more than curiosity in her fiery violet eyes. She has a highly angular body with prominent peaks located in the front and rear of her smooth cream-colored thorax. Strange, very fine blue strands emanates from her scalp, and she has a nose, mouth and only two ears. She seems to be missing a few. I wonder what happened to them? Her legs and arms (two only) are wrapped in some silk-like skin with fine follicles scattered here and there. Beautiful, but quite different from my carbonized scales.

"Earth!" I exclaim. "The 19th most exotic planet in the Milky Way Galaxy. I'm assuming by Swath, you are referring to your sun"

"Sun: Swath. Maybe!" She nods. "You don't look quite human, little man. Are you?"

"I would have been called that 2,500 years ago. But we've evolved, I suppose" I reply with a smile. "You must be related to my race as you look as the ancient articles describe 'human'. But I've never heard of Cyrus. What galaxy are we in?"

"Galaxy? What's that? What the dellzone are you talking about?!"

"Nevermind. Can I have my suit and my air tank back please? I'm dehydrating in this arid climate."

"You mean these?" she says pointing at my apparel."Sure. I just wanted to see what you looked like underneath." She blushes and a warm glow illuminates her cheeks.

With lightning speed I dawn the items and resume the breathing of exotic gases from my tank. I instantly feel better. "Do you have a name?" I ask politely.

"What is name?" she seems confused.

"What do you call yourself!" I spit out in exasperation.

"I don't call myself anything! I am! But you can call me Jane Doe." On hearing that name. I let out a hideous scream and I fall to my knees.

"What a horrendous name!" I yell out to her. "That's the name of our most evil demigod who lives in the fire pits of hell! Just that very spoken name sends daggers into my gelatinous heart!"

"Sorry! Ok, call me 'Bob' " she replies.

I scream again, this time falling flat on my face. My three ears ache in blistery pain. "No! That's the name of our second most evil demigod!"

Her beautiful violet eyes role into the back of her head and she says "Call me whatever you want then!"

I sit back up with a burp, look her straight in the eyes, and smile."I will call you Princess Petunia."

"Fine."

"Now Petunia, I need to find an ocean. Do you know what that is?" I ask her with fear in my eyes.

"Yes, of course. We have 11 of them on Cyrus. Why do you want an ocean?"

Not having anymore dark matter in my manifold, I know that finding a suitable vortex is my only way of returning to the substation of deep space for another try at time travel or to return home via supermassive black hole. "You wouldn't be able to understand even if I could explain it to you, Princess Petunia, but if you take me to the ocean I will drag you with me. How 'bout it?"

She beams with happiness. "I love traveling! Let's go!"

So the two of us head out by foot towards the nearest ocean known as Helicon-Six with only the weight of the universe on my shoulders. No big deal.

Chapter 3

The two ungainly strangers make their way across the rusted plateau with lightly-placed footsteps. Both are mindful of how the other walks. While Princess Petunia has a long yet delicate gait, Hethro's is more like a romp through twice-baked mashed-potatoes. Clumsy as walking is for him, he realizes the futility in using his conversion board for the two of them, so he hoists it on his back. Oddly enough, the lady has yet to ask about it. 

The windswept soil is barren and unfriendly looking. There is no vegetation to be seen aside from some chameleon-lichen growing sporadically here and there. Petunia carefully collects these as they travel forward and places them in a chartreuse tunic made of felt. She reveals to Hethro that they are used to dye her hair and he nods in contemplation.

"Are those edible, Princess?" I ask politely, my two stomachs rumbling.

"No, aside from the dye that one can extract from the lichen, they are also used as a fertilizer in the preparation of fungshoo: a bonzai cactus grown for recreational purposes." replies Petunia.

"Are there other people like you on this planet? Why are you the only one I see?" 

"We are many," she replies, "but we live beyond the Hills of Darthow about 450 clicks levo-dost from here. I am out her on my own doing as you see me now." She folds in half to collect more lichen. "It's how I earn my keep in the city. Hey, why don't I take you there before we go on our great adventure? It would be educational for you!" Pentunia gives me a warm smile. I hesitate for I have a mission to accomplish. Nonetheless, the discovery of this human civilization may provide useful back on Earth, so I agree, leaving my time-teleportation tactics for a later time.

We then change our trajectory towards the distant hills of Darthow as our journey continues. After 35 minutes of uneventful walking, we approach a cluster of purple shrubbery containing miniature banana-like fruit. There is a babbling stream that bisects the bushes as it meanders out towards the hills. I am fascinated by what I see.

"Look at those wee yellow fruits!" I exclaim, "are they safe to eat?" 

"Not unless you want swollen lymph-nodes by the evening. Those are terracox tasties. We let our livestock graze on them, but they are not particularly digestible to us."

Despite her warnings, I reach out and snatch a few, then scarf them down. They taste like sweetened meatloaf. "Yum yum! These are quite delicious! Perhaps my digestive organs differ from yours, me princess."

"I don't know..." she voices in concern.

I was hungry. Nothing would stop me from consuming more. Not even common sense, which wasn't in great abundance these days anyhow. I reach for more, but then it hits me. Like two trombones tooting in discord to one another, my mandibula begins to vibrate uncontrollably. "vvvvwhaat, theee heezwaaaarts!" I bark out! "heeeelp!" Petunia, reaches out with both hands and clasps my chin and noses in a vice-like grasp until the vibrations disappear. 

"Are you alright?" she trembles in fear. 

"I think so. That hurt! But I was so hungry that I couldn't resist." I guffaw. "Let's continue shall we?" She nods and we resume our motions forward leaving behind the purple shrubbery. We follow along the stream and it gradually grows as we approach the looming hills. 

Minutes later, we arrive at a brightly-lit and narrow passage-way tunneled directly into the hills. The sky still shimmers with the light of many white dwarf stars ejecting their plasma, but now the once aquamarine canvas of the heavens has turned a dark navy green. On the walled entrance to the passage, there are numerous glyphs and other curious artworks etched in. There is a sign that says: 'walk your shmoos here'

"What are 'shmoos'?" I ask. 

"Oh, those are our pets slash transportation devices. You'll see them once we enter the city." A cold breeze siphoned itself through my axillary ear and I registered the off-key notes of A-minor. 

The walk through the tunnel lasted a good seven minutes. On exit, we were greeted by the sounds of hundreds of congo drums and savory smells of nutmeg and lemon-balm. There were strobe lights flashing from every adobe edifice that I could see. Amongst the noise, the smells, and the sounds, I saw strange orangutan-elephant hybrids romping here and there through the pink-tiled streets. My senses were overwhelmed. I once again fainted much to the dismay of Petunia.

Chapter 4

In the city that seldom sleeps, a most unusual unrest would develop for its citizens on the arrival of this midget and his futuristic paraphernalia. No one had ever really expected to encounter an extraterrestrial in this rather pleasant lifetime. This was a shock to the system creating both turmoil and conflict to currently held beliefs. For most, the idea that life could derive elsewhere in the universe was a contradiction to common-sense. But now their faces would be rubbed in the evidence on sight of this midget of a man. Princess Petunia, as she was endearingly called by Hethro, was not one of those disbelievers, however. She was a dreamer of the highest standard. It was merely 15 rotations of the planet around the seth, that she envisioned giant whales singing out in space. At 37 rotations, she had deliberated on the deep future of her people. How would they survive when their seth supernovaed? Surely they would all be mercilessly evaporated in the hot plasma spewed off the seth. Perhaps a strange race of human with carbonized scales would come to their rescue and assist in an evacuation plan before it was too late, she had once thought.

Now her contemplations were of the immediate future with her new found midget pal. Would she get to explore the Triangulum Emission Garren Nebula, NGC 604 or perhaps the Eagle or Orion nebulae? Dust clouds of particulate matter in the heavens have always sparked her imagination. Looking into the sky with the 2.8 meter refraction telescope her great-great grand uncle, Pluto, had given her, she would often thirstily 'sip' down visions of massive interstellar battles amongst the ort clouds. Maybe with Hethro she would experience first-hand the greater universe. She would go nowhere, however, with Hethro splayed out on the alabaster tiles as he was now.

"Hey you! Help me drag my buddy to my abode will you?" Petunia yelled out to the first passerby that came across them. This happened to be a stout green-haired 'brother' wearing an emerald tunic and beige spotted underpants. He rides on one of the lovable shmoos Hethro happened to look upon before fainting.

"Who the Gnoozle is that, sister?!" he barks out in bafflement.

"This is our brother from a distant mother. He's here for the preliminary planning of planetary evacuation come Seth's aural ejaculations." she replied back to him. "Help me please."

Still in a state of confusion, the man asks: "How far is your hut? What number? We can hoist him on my shmoo."

"I reside in hut # 458, raycliff cul-de-sac. Will you help us?"

Being one of the more friendly denizens of Darthow, he promptly agrees. The man picks up Hethro like a sack of potatoes along with Hethro's funky electronic pallet-shaped apparatus (the Redline conversion board) and throws them into the deep and cozy pile of thick frizzy orange fur of the lovable shmoo. Hethro is still out for the count when they arrive at a hexagonal-shaped building made of reinforced Styrofoam and clay with # 458 engraved on the triangular door. These adobe huts are ideal for habituation as they allow for the balanced transfer of oxygen and sodium carbonate gas through its minute elastine pores while maintaining the temperature at a cozy 130 degrees kelvin. (There is no such thing as weather in the hills of Darthrow as the city is situated in a unique ecological enclave of stagnant air). Petunia thrusts her head into the door's 'head button' and it slides longitudinally into a recess in the wall. 

The stout man removes Hethro from his nest, carries him into the hut and then hurls him into a small swimming pool of yellow jello located in the center of the room. As this is revival goop, Hethro immediately and violently awakens struggling to remain afloat. "How could you be so rough with him!" Petunia scolds at the man. "You didn't even consider how the dravidya might cause him to react based on his neural circuitry. Now look at him!" She grabs hold of Hethro's arm and quickly pulls him out of the jelly and onto her shmoo-hair rug.

"Where the Jane Doe am I??" I pique out as I sit upright."

"Sorry about the rough handling, I gotta go" says the stout man as he rushes out the door after propping up the conversion board against the Styrofoam wall. I am bewildered

"My apologies for that bungle of a man. You fainted on entry into the city. It could have been because of the smells emanating from the 87 bakeries we have throughout the city, or perhaps the strobe lights got to you. I'm not sure exactly. Anyhow, you are in my bungalow now. Would you like something to eat. You must be starving based on the way you scarfed down those terracox tasties out in the wilderness."

"Yes, please, and something to wash down whatever you are going to serve me. Thanks." I say. Petunia leaves the room through a curtain of stringed chameleon lichen into the kitchen and then returns five seconds later with a tray of delightful morsels of various color and texture. There are crackleclop pieces arranged in a small liquid-filled dish of glass. She hands the dish to Hethro and instructs him on how to eat the snack.

"Here you go. place your mouth over the opening to the plate and let the zyuu juice flow into your mouth as the cracklepops gently roll into your gaping crevice. Don't be shy now. Eat up!" I do as she tells me to, allowing everything to just slide down my gullet thereby appeasing my two complaining stomachs. My third arm wistfully scratches the stubble on my forehead as I do so.

"This tastes like archanoid balm -- a delicacy in my country. Very fantastic."

"What is country?"

"Never mind, me princess. I am feeling splendid now. How about you take me on a tour of your city and then head off to the ocean?" I ask in all eagerness.

"It's late, and we've had a long quaz. Let me put you to hibernate and tomorrow, bright and early, I will share a bit of my life with you."

Feeling somewhat drugged, I nod in agreement. Petunia directs me through a barren hole in the wall to a tall vertical cylinder delineated by more shmoo-like material. "There you go, Hethro. Have a nice zauq. I'll see you in the quaz." she says.

Having never slept standing up before, I smile and think to myself 'why not'. I say 'goodzauq' to Petunia, having picked up the lengua franca, enter my cylinder and I'm out cold for the third time today.

Chapter 5

I dream a dream of shmoo
Orange fluffy hair
Not knowing where I am
Whether I'm here or there
So soft is it's down
On my carbonic scales
The universe awaits the calls
of the astral whales
I dream a dream of the arrograuts
Their mighty echos roar
Though distant from the Earth
I yearn for them more and more
But I am in a strange land
far away in space and time
I met this pretty human being
I hope to make her mine
Lost and hungry
she was great to meet
but now i hope to consume her
like my other wives, I eat
Till I awake anew
under emerald sky
Never stop to question
Where I am and why

"Wake up, Hethro!" I hear Petunia calling me through the haze of a dream. My eyes peel slowly open like butterfly wings soaking the sun. For a moment, I am disoriented. Still encased in my vertical cocoon sack, I writhe with such force that both casing and I fall to the floor in a spectacular tangle.

"Stop moving or I won't be able to free you from the shahyla," Petunia voices across the shmoo-like material. And then I see the light. Or rather, it sees me. My corneas siphon the gamma and infrared waves of the seth pouring into the overhead portal, and a cool teal color fills my sight.

"What a beautiful light spectrum you have on this planet, Princess! It's like I'm swimming in a sea of alpha algae." I say.

"Yes the light of quaz can be quite spectactular this time of the axial rotation of the cyrus around the seth. The elliptical nature of the planet's crustal transformation allows the seth's light to disperse off the crystalline-lattice composition of our third gorp rendering the sky various shades of green."

"Tell me. Is a gorp a lunar body resembling a small planet that orbits Cyrus?"

"Point-blank, my friend. Shall we quench our wanderlust now or tour the Darthow cavity first?" Petunia asks with a minor trace of petulance to her voice.

"I'd love to be shown around a bit. But first, my photovoltaic spinal sensors need scrubbing. May I clean them with something?"

Petunia deftly reaches around my body and extracts a scrubber from a cubby-hole by my shoulders and hands it to me."Try this. It's sphome: 93% organic, with 7% sulfur dioxidace for that hard-to-clean shine." she says to me with a grin.

...

After purifying myself, we immediately head out into the city. Our transportation is another one of those lovable shmoos parked out by the side of the hut. 'These really are fascinating creatures' I thought to myself as we galloped deep into the burroughs of Darthrow. Their orangutan faces resemble my third aunt 8 times removed, and their elephantine mass is a wonder of nature. This lovable shmoo is producing the exquisite musky odors of the terracox tasties I ate yesterday. That's probably what they feast on.' My thoughts drift along with the lumbering ride.

As far as I can see, there are various edifices of Styrofoam and clay, all more unusual than the next. One building before me is carved in the form of a perfect sphere with 12 protrusions at symmetrical angles to one another. Petunia informs me that the 'windows' not only serve as light portals but that they also allow the light photons to interact with the gelatinous material of the refreshing dravidya pools resulting in bio-thermal rejuvenation. Several citizens moving along through the city's many corridors freeze their movements as we come across their field of vision and gasp in surprise at seeing me. It doesn't phase me, however, and I continue to admire the scenery of this unusual civilization.

The strobe lights of yesterday are no longer flashing from the portals of the buildings although the boom of drums resounds, always seemingly emanating from a great distance. "What's the significance of the noise that I hear?" I ask Petunia.

"That is the sound of the castro-carver's. We use them to mine parponium at the outskirts of the city." replies Petunia with an air of authority. "For nine of the ten quazzes of the periodical grak, these monolithic machines output 482 million cubits per quaz of parponium. We rely on the mineral as an irrigating reagent in the production of bio-synthetic produce. In other words, the rock helps us to sustain the agricultural viability of this planet. Without it we would have neither food nor building material for our oceanic enclaves."

I was lost by the time she got to speaking of 'irrigating reagents,' yet I kept my ears peeled for the symphonic sounds of nature. A cacophony of disharmonic Q-pitched vibrations graced the atmospheric medium. Too hard to discern their sources, I ignore them and continue to analyze what I can with my limited myopic vision. I can barely make out pink smoke in the distance rising up beyond the undulating hills.

I hear and experience many interesting aspects of life within the city tour. Petunia explains to me how people make an income, what the typical day is like for the average 'meacon' living on Cyrus, the forms of entertainment available etc. By random approximation, I imagine that it is the earth equivalent of early afternoon.

"Thanks a billion for the tour, Princess, but now it's high time we go on a different sort of adventure. I will take you to outer-space and beyond. We will travel across many millennial ages, experience the harrowing echos of arrograuts and burn across the whitewased vortexes of deep-sea hydrovents." With a nod of her pretty head she acquiesces and we quietly and quickly make our way out of the city after collecting my conversion board from her hut and purchasing a hypoplasmic deep-sea pressurized diving suit from the local grocery story.

Once out of Darthrow, we traveled for three hours by lovable shmoo across the windswept plateau known as Hegel's plain, down through the Afrotristle forest of semi-aquatic fern trees until we reached the mangroves of Helicon 6. An expansive beach of iridescent sand shimmered as far as the eye could see left and right, and the mangroves happened to be attached steadfast to the shoreline. The glimmer of purple frequency band light emitting from the sand was hurting my occipital cortex quite viciously so in great haste we mounted the Redline and took of into the murky depths at an alarming 780 nautical miles per second. The journey into the abyss was a quick one and before Petunia could drag more nitrox into her gullet from her regulator we were there: A rather tremendous vortex was before us. I had warned her during the journey across land that we would experience sudden and excruciating body turmoil as we flatlined across the killing horizon and then gravity-planed across the outgoing black hole's event horizon.

Down we go, gulping down deridium as we furiously raged towards the singularity with bicuspids, canines and auxiliary molars clenched together in vice-like grips from which only death could escape. At point zero we become one with anti-matter and a complete annihilation once again consumes our eternal cores. We make it into deep space at the speed of super-charged lightning as we are ejected from our point of exit: a supermassive blackhole.

I was more satisfied than I had ever been in my life --- even before the thought of consuming the Princess crosses my mind for a second time today. I have an adventure companion that I can experience life anew, and for this I was eternally grateful. Loneliness had vanished and had been replaced with a feeling too hard to express in words. But it was there. That warm feeling of completeness. This leg of the journey was over for us but our grand adventures had only just begun. Only time -- and space -- could tell where we were to head off to next!

THE END

M-I-C-K-E-Y

Miniature Mickey bounces across my keyboard as he plays alphabet hop-scotch 
He spells M-I-C-K-E-Y m-o-u-s-e with the finesse of a world-renounced ballet artist.
I only notice this because he’s interfering with my vision. Damn-it Mickey! I can’t see the screen! I tenderly pick him up by his little black tale and he exclaims, “Hey hey, Pluto, careful now!” With complete disregard to his squeaks, I transfer him to the ground beneath my bonsai Quarkus Alba tree. He squeals like a piglet in frustration. I just cluck my lips at him and this quiets him down for the meanwhile. He is always pacified by my Donald Duck clucks, I don’t know why. 

Back to my exposition entitled: ‘The modern-day master-magician: manipulation of memorabilia using the Machiavellian method.’ I’m not supposed to understand what the heck that is all about, but I have some guesses, I, being the creator of such alteration absurdity. I raise my Walt Disney Mickey Mouse Mug to my lips and draw in deeply the savory brew of coconut and nutmeg-infused coffee into my big mouth. My soft, moist snout becomes saturated by the ethereal concoction

Allow me to introduce myself, sir or madam: I’m Pluto!!!
Yes, I’m a yellow-bellied pooch with a penchant for pottery, poetry and perjury. Case-in-point, I once swore under oath that Minnie was cheating with Daffy-Duck. Of course, this was misinformation as Daffy was riding me like Steam-boat Willie on his water vessel. Sadly, I did it because I was longing for attention. While I was indicted for the heinous deed, I was later exonerated by Walt Disney himself! He rationed that really I was just a dumb dog with dubious intentions but in possession of a benign heart. He beseeched the jury to render a verdict of not guilty. Under the guise of gullibility, they graciously agreed. And so I was free to perpetuate the ponderings of a perpetrating poochie. 

Here I am before you, a changed canine, carefully calibrated by a cleansed conscience and a canister containing a certificate signed in calligraphy which states my complete cooperation with the cops and citizens of cartoon-country. 

Oh, I forgot about my dear mouse. What are you up to Mr. Mickey? Awww, he’s curled up into a little ball snug on a nest of leaves. He’s fast asleep, a peripatetic rodent roaming happily across the rolling hills of La-la Land. Say hello to Ba-ba-Black Sheep and Little-Bo-Peep for me, will you buddy? Now that it’s all tranquil up in dis biatch, I think I’ll give my haunches a wee scratch with my hind-legs. Ahhh! That hits the spot!! Woof! Woof!

What was I writing about? War of the Worlds? Mid-wifery in the Middle-Ages? No, I was on the subject of magic, so I now turn to the magic of Walt Disney. (What a wonderful way to weald words, right?!) Well, I won’t wave my waggely whistle one minute longer. I now yield my yapping to a quote by Walt himself! And I quoteth: 

“All cartoon characters and fables must be exaggeration, caricatures. It is the very nature of fantasy and fable.” 

I hope that I have cast my cookie-cutter kind, and all of cartoon kingdom, not only into the limelight, but into the lap of loquaciousness. Lovely! Later, ladies and lads!! 

"I" Divers

Strange days see the wise engrossed in the unusual. As the nightfall of eternity approaches, they become acutely aware of the beauty of being. They gaze deeply into a river of self-perpetuated existence in search for an entrance into the "I." They find what they seek. It is at the epiphany of self-realization, that they, without a moment's hesitation, dive into and across the veil of darkness. What they discover for themselves is not new -- only it is a destination rarely arrived at. It is a swim through a sea of stars, the delicate energy of a million dandelions lazily releasing their seeds into the wind, and the exhilaration of soaring across a canyon stuffed with embracing rainbows. 

Beneath the mundane reality of the everyday, an extremely subtle realm exists. Every man, woman, and child has a place there, but the problem is access. Yet, from as little as a single lifetime of soul-searching a portal may sublimate from out of the darkest recesses of the mind.  

A cornucopia of scattered and directionless thoughts require a guide. The perspicacious divers, however, redefine raw intellectualization. They lead themselves. Their journeys inside and outside the winding passages of mind-space have been fruitful. They arrive at a matrix of answers so profound only the recursive questions spawned from the "I" can explain them. They travel over the vast expansion of the superego, through territory unbeknown to most, compiling a compendium of experience.

As the sun rays of a nascent day spread across the horizon, they return. Revelations are meant to be shared, so they invite in and begin to nurture the curiosities of  seekers. Their interpretation of reality slowly trickles down the chain of inquirers at a rate equivalent to the formation of stalactites. But it is enough to have an impact on the conditioned minds of ordinary folk. Some lucky ones are able to exit the material rat-race before death. Most, unfortunately, do not. Those that succeed become truly enveloped by an inner universe of consciousness, and the defining qualities of "I" reveal themselves. 

The sensation one feels when having this shift in reality is the same as when a memory crosses the threshold of conscious awareness. The machinations of the mind that underly the difference between remembering and not remembering are only understood when one has taken his or her first dive within the "I."

CrawWorm

Dry ice slowly evaporates from the pinnacle of Death Mountain and makes contact with the midnight purple sky. The thick haze suffocates the dim luminance of the moon as the blood-lust dragon unfurls its massive teal wings and rises into the heavens. Six miles above a vast expanse of land within the enclave of Doom Valley, the dragon soars looking for a meal. Her venom-encrusted eyes pierce the cloud line with infrared sight that sees more than just the simple life below. She can sense the warm blood of the grazing buffalo. With prey in sight, the ancient dragon releases a hideous screech and dive-bombs toward the weather-worn plains below. The wind licks her violet-flecked scales and fuels her rumbling furnace. In the last second, her cruel sharp talons retract from the ends of her wings and make impact with the skull of a lone calf at the rear of the herd. They dig deep into the flesh and bone, instantly killing the calf. The dragon scoops up her prey and then flies back to her desolate cave two-thirds of the way up Death Mountain. There she will dine alone as she has done for the last 3000 years. Rolling thunder reverberates off the sheer walls of the mountain causing echos to travel across the valley like a runaway freight train. The dragon's first mouthful is off the rump. She tears through sinew and bone as if they were butter. Her thoughts are dark and brooding. She barely masticates her meal, devouring whole chunks of buffalo into her gaping mouth. When she finishes, the satiated dragon climbs upon her mound of treasure, curls herself into a ball and falls into a deep sleep. She dreams of an age long long ago when she was a member of a brood of dragons that ruled over Doom Valley and beyond. A solitary tear trickles out of her massive eye. She really is just a melancholy dragon destined to die alone. Perhaps somewhere along it was a deserved punnishment for a lifetime of hunting and hoarding. Her thoughts cave in on her dreams and she becomes locked in a darkness not even light can escape from.

She Dreams of the Wind...

A young girl sits on the windowsill of an old abandoned schoolhouse watching the wind persuade the rows of wheat to dance. Quiet and pensive she gazes outwards across the vast field as the ripe sun melts across the horizon. She knows something that no one else knows, but its her little secret. If you asked her where God was, she would look at you quizically and say 'why, among the clouds, in the roots of the trees, resting on the wings of bees.' She is always with company, but not the kind one can see. A smile crosses her pretty little face, her eyes full of inocence as she imagines floating in space with flowers all around singing hauntingly beautiful hymns to her. The breeze through her brown curly hair indicates that time is meaningless. Although the moment has a very surreal quality to it, she is more alive than the millions of citydwellers leading their mundane lives in a state of monotony. Although the girl knows nothing of matters concerning life and death, she is aware of her mortality. How her blood feels as it is fed to her body by her heart. The tingle of the rays of the sun on her arms and neck. She understands that a grain of sand in the desert is significant and unique. That even a droplet of water can alter the course of an ocean. She was born with these ideas. They have always played their games in her head. The girl doesn't wonder where her imagination or her fascination for all the creations under heaven comes from. And with every breath taken, she experiences both a profound feeling of peace and elation. She is more than content being just the way she is: resting on the windowsill of an old abandoned schoolhouse, looking at the wind dance with wheat.

The Earth Caressed

How many ways can one affect the motion of the planet with fingertips across the grass?
As if stroking the very blades could set forth a chain reaction that would reverse the rotation of earth. Through proximal touch and nocioception one could instill a radiant energy that would reverberate below the soil, travel like a sonic tremor to Earth's inner core and ignite restless magma. Nuclear interactions would undergo autolytic catalysis retarding the angular torsion on the the inner manifold, and we would float in orbit getting a high-fidelity view of the horizon.

If lightning were to strike itself, would heaven reverberate with the aftershock? When two opposite but equal forces interact, a symbiotic procession of equivalent magnitudes ripples through the cosmos at 7 times the speed of nothing. We would see in reverse with sight that stretched inwards like taffy heated at ultra low temperatures. Then a cooling of the stratosphere would hyper-mutate into a parallel ozone with unique tetraoxide properties.There would not be any death but life would be sub-par for those trying to have a go at quantum meteorology or horticulture philanthropy. 

Political permutations would have exacting consequences to the civil-folk of a de-evolutionized human race. With Earth in anti-clockwise revolutions around its distal axis and lighting licking its own tail, simply sublimating into our congested atmosphere would not do to enlighten harrowed spirits. Rather we should regress than stand up for truth and liberty at a point of unrest.

Nothing could stop the meltdown of higher civilization but one tiny caress with gentle fingertips on blades of grass.

Doctor Shnagra Vadlinger IX+ 2 other ominous tales

THE toxic smoke emitted from the devil pit suffocates the pallid light of the infernal hydrogen orb. It peers down with its billion blinding eyes from a hazy vermillion canvas. The shadows become ever more menacing as they elongate with the departure of the sun. Doctor Shnagra Vadlinger IX pries open his sustenance chamber with his warped claws for hands. The eroded enamel of his jagged teeth appears as cutting devices that some hell-bent assassin might use. The rusty colors of essential fluids cake the bicuspids of his maxilla. If this was his smile, I would hate to see his sneer.

The burnt floor beneath us shifts under cataclysmic seismic pressures and my feet lose purchase from the wasted earth. Vadlinger IX callously reaches out to envelope me with his many oaken arms and legs on my inevitable return-trip. Then I’m tossed like yesterday’s trash into an ancient midnight-black oblong box. My skull cracks on impact and Sir Homunculus escapes using his tiny malformed legs. I endure a sharp negative 82g free-fall into the devil pit as Vadlinger IX’s heaving belly rhythmically moves in tune to the horrendous cackle of delight, brought on by my timely demise.

In the grey-goose universe of banal bourgeois, I was one of the most maverick of semi-sentient beings. My hallucinogenic and vicarious re-creations of what never was, seemed to pervade my marginally-mundane mind-machinations. For this reason, I was now here: within a Stone Mason’s coffin, with a cracked cranium, and catapulted by Dr. Shagra to beyond the event horizon of the devil pit. There would be no reversal to this fate. No second chances or slow romances neither. I was down for the count and in it for the long haul to do Hades dirty-work. 
Sigh….

I wonder if I could leave work a little early tonight. There is a re-run of Friends on the telly that I so yearn to see. I’m certainly not being productive. No sir! The crisp Winchester knot of my string-bean necktie makes me claustrophobic. I see the other minions in their self-contained cubicle prisons strumming their ergonomically-designed keyboards with the enthusiasm of dead fish floating in a tin can of bitter vinegar. The cold light of the neon overhead makes my digits seem like melted bars of Twix. Man, my nails taste horrid! A far cry from chocolate. The faded blankness of my LCD reflects a frenetic wildebeest of a man. Only one place to go to pass the time. Into my midnight universe. I devolve into myself once more.

I see Mama at the end of the tunnel. She is baking brick buns for Papi’s story-telling time. “So son, Mother Mary saw the second coming of Christ as another chance to ask for more Chanukah presents.” I ask Joseph to tell the story right. I wonder if all naughty boys bathe in boiling-hot barbeques at cleansing time. I don’t believe in the apocalypse, really.

I wasn’t a good Christian until I met Rama-Krishna in Rajistan. He said, “Hinduism just ain’t your thing, kiddo, but I can recommend Christ, Jesus or perhaps, Siddhartha Gautama --- Buddhism just might be down your alley. I chose the former for my hallucinogenic chemical fix that I would partake in every Sabbath and on odd numbered leap years. I believe that if we believe hard enough we might accept the skin that we wear when we wake up. Someone has to do the dry-cleaning, why not have God behind the counter when you go to pay for the service. Mine needs extra starch!

……….

What is it I think I see when I stare into the mirror? I stare deep, deep into my optical units and see portly gnomes bouncing merrily on see-saws of ivory. So that’s why I’m so zany! My munchkins are at play when they should be calibrating my internal super-computer. A little olive oil in the ear should get things running right. I stare very intensely once again into the mirror of my sub-consciousness. There I am. At my desk, dreaming up the dreadful machinations of my mind. Doctor Shnagra Vadlinger IX, that good-for-nothing shrink I see every vernal equinox hadn’t ridden me of the ghosts of my past. How I was a religious zealot on the brink of committing heresy in the name of Pope Pontious Pilot’s lovely daughter Beatrix. Or how I greedily reaped the long-grained rice of Master Fu Xong Chu in a moist paddy down by the Yellow river, 3500 years ago, while he was on the pot. I was a sinner if I was anything at all. My soul was still not absolved of the heinous deeds of my past lives…. 

I return to reality. The reality was that I had had it with ‘work’ for the day. I rise from my hard plastic seat just as the lead weight of the hour hand of the evil clock strikes 7. I slick back my cow-licks with my pasty Twix fingers, not forgetting to give my mutton-chops a resilient tug just to make sure that they were still there (The damn things keep coming unglued from the skin where my real non-existent side-burns should be but aren’t because my forty-something body is still pre-pubescent in nature.). I give my vertebrae a good crack as I stretch and fold like a plastic lawn-chair. Ah! I’m ready to head-on home.

I leave by way of the fire escape --- don’t want anyone observing my exit for fear that I’ll be followed to my brownstone palace. I scamper down the drab-stairwell, rush out the side door of the studio and onto the football field of parked cars. But it’s easy to find my vehicle as it is a jet black Aston Martin with 26” rims, mahogany finishings and Bombay caterpillar silk upholstery. It is as new as a premature baby as I just recently purchased it from my $26 million New York jackpot winnings.

At this point, you might now be wondering why I continue to work in such a dreary and mundane workplace if I have that much money to blow on a gas-guzzling V16 chick-magnet. Well, to tell you the truth, this damn place maintains my creative juices flowing. All day I pretend to do work beneath the cold, harsh light, while instead I imagine the most delightfully hideous scenarios to later write up at home. My mind requires the dismal stimulation of the office environment to be able to come up with my insane concoctions of creativity. I easily locate my car and then enter the custom hearse. The plush leather of the seat seems to melt around my chunky bottom. Ahhh! How nice it is to relax in heated cow-hide on blistery winter days like this! Wisps of snow nuzzle my windshield with their tiny tentacles. What a site before me as I leave the West Nyak lot. There are countless construction workers with there shiny orange helmets and their jack-hammers and what-have-you. Working as ants. Can be easily squashed by alien visitors. Glad I’m not one of them! Yes I am a vile man but I do have my good qualities too. For example, I have the uncanny ability to engross my fellow readers with my twisted lexicon. You see, I received my associate’s degree in funkatronics from Manchester Community College, but I have been a word-smith and book-worm debutant since the age of five. Allow me to demonstrate: 

My words are weapons, ejected from my ten digits. And with my cerebral midgets I can make you fidget. Scorch! Incinerate meaning with my dreaming, I’m a bit of a boast. Haunted by the shadows of the musical ghosts playing beautiful notes. On Mandolins of flesh and bone. When no one is home, they invade my dome. On and on I write, slave to the imagination nurtured by day and reproduced at night beneath dim candle light. Words can’t adequately draw a portrait of why I’m so great, but the English language is my best mate to illustrate how my words hold great weight.

Well, that’s enough self-inflation / ego-flatulation for one day, I think. Now to come to terms with the bitter reality of my existence. I’m the true 40-year-old virgin. My boyish demeanor never drew in the ladies. Not yet! But with all my mascara and false fur pasted to my face I’m bound to reel in a few fish. The sea, they say, has enough flounder to feed a five-hundred-pounder----And I only weigh 17 stone. Now that we are describing appearances, I ought to speak a little further of my unique attributes: I have a blind-man’s foresight, a Japanese over-weight’s appetite for sashimi, my bird’s nest-for-hair is like day’s old linguini. I have a pair of left feet, my nose is inverted, my grandmother proclaims that I’m a tad bit perverted. But I don’t see it. I don’t notice my faults, I’m flawless and lawless. I can be lost in my mind for days at a time but I always find my way back. And on my return to the light of day I carry back with me cerebral plunder of wonder.

For example, I was perusing through the archives of CNN.com when I came upon an article about a blind man and his journey into the shadows of his anti-existence. I imagined myself treading the eternal midnight swamps with his leaden boots and there I was, having a visceral experience like none other. Here it is written down so you too can feel what we felt. Warning, don’t let it depress you. It’s only a story after all:

I cling to the delicate hummingbird murmurs of my heart, but my spirit is chained to the throngs of despair. The streams of memory falling from my visual caverns slip away through my fingertips like mercury. I’m terribly afraid to let go. I cannot feel my humanity. The wonderful images of life no longer can be captured. The ends of rainbows – must exist, but impossible for me to reach now. Now they only terminate in darkness. I’m blind to the silver-lining of the moon. Blind, but really blind, not the malady suffered by most who take sight for granted.

The accident yesterday rendered me sightless. When the pick-up truck slammed into the flank of my tiny Ford Focus, the glass ejected from my windshield on impact tore into the flesh of my eyes. They had to amputate (so to speak) taking from me one of my most valued gifts.

Lead-filled eyelids shut under the heavy pull of gravity, no longer resisted by the precious aqueous organs. Uncertain neural vibrations lull me into a deep sleep from which I never awake. Trapped within my subconscious, I wander barefoot over desolate hills of sulfur until I reach a rejected city. The anti-California alleyways are empty, the inspirationless boutiques that once catered to the rich and famous are now lined with mold, the walls choked with hemlock. I enter an abandoned café. Here, the ghosts of my darkest dreams greet me in the false pretense of hope. The colors all around me are drab but at least they are there before me to ‘appreciate.’ I have only seconds to do so before the muddied greens and browns fade to grey. The holographic specters howl my name, and beckon me to follow them out of the store and into a garden of thorns and midnight black roses.

There I stop and rest beside a lightly crusted-over pond. There are fish with no eyes, blind like me. They wriggle and squirm in the fetid water hopelessly in search of sustenance. I reach for a thick patch of weeds nearby and tear them from the soil and throw them into the water. Better than pulling out my hair, I think to myself. A cold and biting gale whips across my flesh penetrating me to the bone marrow. Why can’t my dreams free me from the prison of darkness that I now I live in? I cup my hands to my face and begin to cry.

Something miraculous then occurred. As the warm tears were released, prisms of color became my tears. Each droplet falling from my eyes cast color creating a beautiful backdrop of sight before me. The grass was dressed in deep vermillion tones, the walls of the café that I had left turned a rich brick color. I peered up into the sky and noticed the heavens canvassed in a variety of pastel hues. Fuchsia, aquamarine and a vibrant yellow penetrated looming puffy white clouds. It was wonderful! But the sight was not to last. My tears dried up and as they did so, the vibrant colors gradually became marred in dirty brown. I picked myself up and dragged myself into the tired horizon, never to see anything again.

We now submerge from the darkness and into the great beauty that is my life. I’m Flat-faced Snorbelgorf by the way. I’m Icelandic. I have three loves: the love for my memories, the love I hold for my Vietnamese pot-bellied piggy named, Pigmaleon the Third, and my distinct buckminsterfullerene brain. Made of 64 interwoven sheets of neural carbon nano-tubes, I use my bucky-ball for predicting the future. I acquired it in Laos from a senescent junk-man named Queen Zuzzette. Yes, he was a tranny—maybe still is, I don’t know. Anyhow, these three loves fuel my life like a nitroglycerine-laced enema one would take if one had eaten one-day-too-many spoonfuls of mango chutney marinated Lufthansa falafel. And I had done exactly that, on more than one occasion after being high off of Eucalyptus Vaporub, which I found to be quite effective in alleviating the skin irritation I got from wearing my false mutton-chops. You see, I was a big fan of the Beatles back in ’62, and somewhere along the way of living I got to emulating Ringo Starr. I looked like him (after apply the prosthetic hair pieces) and I could bang out a dandy rhythm on my vintage kettle drums I picked up on the fly on a brief visit to Turks and Caicos in the Caribbean….

Where was I? Ah yes, my bucky-ball. What a magnificent apparatus! Why, without it, I would have never chosen the correct 22 digit combination for the winning lottery ticket. It is simply absurd what my bucky-ball can cook up, prophesy-wise. This unusual instrument also has helped formulate most of the story-lines that have sublimed from my dense brain. It’s like an intellect doppelganger: it augments the potential of my unlimited cognizance while at the same time makes me semi-clairvoyant. Use of my prosthetic brain has negative repercussions, however. Son of Johosephat! It makes its owner a little more pre-pubescent with every wielding. My last go at it, made my voice crack. Son of Johosephat! Now I sound like some poor emphysemic school girl when I first arise from my crib. It takes an hour or so before my voice begins to resemble a cowardly lad asking a girl out for the first time.

Why do I dispose of myself in a crib at sleepy-time? Well, first, it’s a rather cozy nest, I must say. But the real reason I prefer the crib to the socially-acceptable bed is that I have a fear of falling from high places. When I was a wee tod, my mum couldn’t stop me from rolling off of whatever elevated location or furniture I could I climb onto. It was all fun and games until my pet snail, Norgburta, found herself in my trajectory of free-fall and had an untimely demise. I was mortified! Truly dismayed! I shudder the thought of falling on anything even as small as a cicada or grasshopper. I mean, aliens coming to our planet to make mashed-potatoes of construction workers is one thing, but harming creatures with even an iota of intellect is too much!

So what’s my private life like? You would like to know about that, my intrepid reader. But wouldn’t you first like to dive into another dark whirlpool of my mind? This one is about a future that just might actualize if we are not careful. Who knows! 

At dusk the darkness creeps across the destitute canvas of the sickly sky like phantom fingers. The dreamers hold their breath as the dying rays of the incensed orb rapidly fade
Time punctuates every throbbing heart in this era of dread and the chaos of imagination rumbles like thunder in every mind. The children in bed cover their heads with sheets of lead. The cancerous x-rays cascade down from the ionosphere as the last light lingers, but their poisonous tentacles fail to penetrate the cold, heavy blankets tightly wrapped around the younglings. At least they can dream. In a brief reprieve from the sea of misery, their thoughts gently roll amongst fluffy marshmallows for clouds and interlacing rainbows floating in a vibrant stretch of blue. The curiosities of the kids rapidly lead them to beyond the golden horizon and into a world diametrically opposite from their own. There is no poverty of happiness in the direction that they venture toward.

During the daytime, it is a different story altogether. A great sadness deeply saturates the skin of the waking populace, trudging along like zombies from shack to factory, factory to shack, over and over again. There is immense poverty here but also sequestered wealth. At the end days of an industrial revolution, the laborers are merely a step beyond an existence of dismal slavery. There is no savings to look forward to. Only mind-numbing repetition day in and day out. The adults are no longer able to dream. The governing party has driven the populace with an iron fist and dark deception is in abundance of what really happened to cause the sudden and irreversible decay of Earth. The planet's manganese core now emits deadly radiation as the ozone dangles like cob-webs against the thick, polluted atmosphere.

The only hope lies in the minds of the children. They are the future cosmonauts. They will guide humanity out of the misery and into a new dawn. But not on this planet. It's a lost cause for poor, wasted Mother Earth. No, the children's scion will find shelter on the quartz-encrusted heloid satellite of Jupiter, called Ganymede. Of course, they would have to come up with a way of transporting the 1.3 billion cubic kilometers of remaining ocean water of Earth to their new home if they hoped to survive. But survive they would.

The years melt into decades, and then the kids who are no longer children, revolt, and overthrow the oppressive reign of tyrannical rule. A century roles on by and now the kids have developed the appropriate technology to escape from the toxic inferno that has become the planet they deem 'wEarthless.' They cast aside their lead-lined blankets and depart in there floating cities to begin their 26 year journey to Jupiter’s largest moon. For the first time, they find themselves as extraterrestrials sleeping in warm beds with soft, soporific pillows and sheets. They resume their dreaming at night. No longer are their dreams fantasies, but instead, they take the form of ideas and hopes that will help them bring in the dawn of a new age.

Home at last! It’s a 45 minute commute from work to my home in Upper Queens, but without my hotrod of a vehicle, I’d have to tack on another 27 minutes to the trip. I have my own parking spot within a small cave within Brooks Park. Just like Batman!

I cooked up that piece one day while I was delivering a profoundly philosophical monologue to Pigmaleon the Third. Piggy listens all so attentively to my ramblings. It’s such a delight having him here by my side after a long hard day of work. I scratch his gristly belly and he makes these little snorts of pleasure that are infectious. I just start snorting alongside him! So who am I really when the weekend roles in? I like to travel, you know that already, but I never venture afar alone. Oh no, I call up my kid brother, Ryykevek and out the door we go. Since coming into wealth, we’ve taking a few exclusive tours to exotic places around the world in the relatively short time since the big winning. We’ve traveled down the Yangtze River by junk boat, traveled via the trans-
Siberian railway, had a French-style picnic in a hot-air balloon above the Magnetic South Pole and we even have had the privilege of taking a tour of the private catacombs half a mile below the Great Pyramid. I tell you, you haven’t seen million dollar dust until you’ve known intimately the private chambers of the ancient dead! So what’s next for Ryyki and me? Well, we are on the short-list for an orbital adventure into outer-space. When extra-planetary tourism kicks off in the next couple of years or so, we’ll be the first to lift off! I can only imagine what sort of bizarre tales I will be able to concoct using my prosthetic cerebrum when it doesn’t have the pull of gravity to impede its neural conductivity!

I have so many stories to share with you, my patient reader, but now the hour is late, and they will have to be told another day. I will leave you for my succulent special unagi and tamago roles that await my rumbling belly. As we Icelanders say in Old Norse, ‘Skal!’