Pillow of Darkness

 

I lay on a pillow of darkness

Pure black

Except for the tiny flecks of light

Moving in random patterns

I imagine intersecting lines

at 35-degree angles from each other.

they fade intermittently

and form other shapes

I cannot remember the shapes

I cannot describe them

 

xxx

 

I feel as if I disappear.

perhaps for a few moments

perhaps forever.

I become invisible

a thing that was

but is no more.

 

Xxx

 

I hate the graveyards

the long lines of tombstones

lawns overgrown with weeds

decaying presents for the dead,

weathered teddy bears and deflated balloons.

I hate the roses left to decompose in the sun,

To be later thrown in metal dumpsters

like forgotten dreams

unspoken conversations.

I hate all of it.

the sales people

the ground crew men in dirty pants

the people looking for solace amongst quiet bones.

 

xxx

 

i want freedom

water

waves

I want to slide into oblivion like the other nameless souls

come and now gone.

Will anyone find our music

our words

our small attempts at transformation?

 

xxx

 

I lay on a pillow of darkness

floating somewhere between ocean and desert

between hot and cold

between life and death

The desert now blooms with newfound moisture,

purple flowers and panting lizards,

mermaid clouds.

The oceans begin to sing,

singing of sun trees and orange fruit that drip with sugar,

forming puddles

lakes and creatures that would become myths

and great dreams and nightmares.

 

xxx

 

I will become nameless

i will descend into the chaos I came from.

Into the blood,

the dirt,

the blackness

the specks of light in strange patterns

the nothingness that somehow becomes something.

 

xxx

 

Out of the chaos I am whole

for a moment,

such a short moment.

I am a sentence,

a name,

two sentences and then another,

and then one year, and then another.

I emerge from rough ideas

and soft kisses

from pain and chaos

from dirt and blood

from stories that were lost by people I never met

from stories that may be told long after I’m gone

I am all the people that are now lost,

forgotten,

buried in the blackness

in the darkness

in the soil that made me,

the waves that quenched me

the sun which fed me,

the same sun which crushed and bruised

and landed on my lips

that touched my eyes

and made me whole,

the sun that pulled me out of the darkness

for a moment,

such a short moment.

 

Horizon

Suddenly part of the purple blackness,

the glorious dark begins to tremble.

An idol emerges in the sky,

its body in bondage

its soul tethered to my own.

I was on the bridge

and then a moment later

the bird at my toes began to twinkle,

and turned to pale powder.

I remember a pack of wolves

in their cages

worshiping death.

They were loud enough

that the abyss became the horizon

and the red sky

began to fall.

Broken graves glanced my way,

their texture and smell no longer hidden.

Now I know that was the beginning.

The water's shining light

would soon be pale

in the absence of moonlight.

The Battle

The battle for her, for the thousands of infinitesimal parts which combined to make her, was in full swing.  For several weeks she could feel it building, the pressurized energy mounting, doubling on itself in the course of thirty-six hours. The pulsing of her chest was like a metronome with spastic batteries.
She could not remember another time like this, if there had been one it was so long in the past as to make it non-existent. She knew now that she was oscillating between hell and clarity, and hell had a much stronger pull. It was the black hole, sucking her inwards with a relentless drive. Her mind, her limbs, the heart, her smile, her jaw and teeth, every part of her ached. 
Her heart was hard, lifted only momentarily by a soft touch or smile every now and then. Her mind, a constant deluge of thoughts and anxieties, leading her always downwards, further away from the people she almost stopped recognizing.
In the bursts of clarity, she could feel the movement of every muscle. She focused on every step across her kitchen, grabbing a glass of water in her hand, bringing it to her lips with careful slowness. In those moments she remembered what was nearly always in the background, disguised and disfigured by the daily rhythms of work and obligations. Through the fog she could move beautifully through a space, her attention moving both forwards and backwards.
But mostly she tumbled. Out into the black space where not a hand could reach her. Straight-jacketed in her own misery, she watched the passing world though a car window, the flashes of color and shapes, billboards, couples, conversations. As she saw it fade she was barely conscious of her own desperation, just the tears, the sting of heartache that descended quickly, firmly, coating her in its shell, a thick organic membrane that even those who loved her dared not get close, for her misery was transmittable and they knew to stay away, keeping up lively debates as she fell, further and deeper beside them.
She wondered if this was madness, if it was the natural state of her body.  Was she in the deepest hole or were there blacker lands still to find?
Could she climb? Did she want to? She was frightened most by that thought, the simple thought- did she want to make the effort to climb, to push herself upwards? What if she wanted to sink, what then?

In The Dim Light

In the dim, fractionated light of the sunrise, the fourth world was visible.
It was often she found herself outdoors as the darkness faded, as black and the glitter of other places seeped away, her ability to watch them slowly absorbed by the coming fireball and blue tinged ceiling overhead.  Night after night, season after season, she gravitated to the small patch of weeds outdoors, unable to fight the body’s urge for the night air, for the cool breeze which would come in from the ocean, usually full of moisture and the scent of deep amphibian life and the waxy plants that lived in salt water.  She could not resist keeping her mouth open, tasting the elements that had traveled far, changing their form to accommodate new modes of travel, mutating from water to air.
The night was delicious, alive with life unseen to the mass of sleepers. There was something about the pattern of the moon crawlers, carried out undercover, with only a sliver of light and stars. The shadows calmed her, they hid the vulgarity of her movements, muted the body so only the most obvious of forms was apparent, though there was no one to hide from, no one was there, no one was watching.
She swung alone in the hammock strung between two rusted poles, each of which were buried deep in the earth and surrounded by patches of clover and a few sparse clumps of struggling small-faced violets which released their perfume with sensual abandon.
The night was her time to rest, not as most people did, warm in their beds, tucked into the rooms of four walls and closed doors. But she did not sleep so much as sink into a trance. She never lost consciousness. As time moved, flowers opened and closed, she was aware of herself and the sensations upon her arms as the planet shifted and dawn approached, the bitterness of moonlit breezes, the nocturnal insects which sometimes landed on her cheeks and hands. The trance drew her awareness to the gentle swing of the ratty hammock, the cocoon like swath of the nylon mesh as it hugged her body, rocking her like a mother’s arms.
She was out there, wild. The night not hers, but she was the night, her presence affecting it as all attention does. The darkness was the companion who had no words of love, no scolding, it was presence and presence only.  It was movement, contact flow- neither caring for her or in any way disapproving. It moved with her or without. And in her trances, she felt it all. The path of the moonlight as it traveled over and by, the birds, the waves so far in the distance that they became just a whisper.

Missing Words

How many times will I dig through the mud to find those missing words?  Hands cupped, probing the thick dark folds of silken sludge, I move with the instincts of an animal, all seeing in the darkness. Through the buried remains of world and beast I move, finding remnants which in them contain entire galaxies, though I see them as tiny bits of stone and meadow grasses.

Those words, I released them in an undulating pattern of body convulsions, clicking, and rocking spasms. I sent them up into the air with warm breath and panting and so much fire.
There is still more in me. Deep in the caves guarded by secret mistresses in black hooded robes and pierced pink nipples, hidden in such dark places it might take years or lifetimes to find. There the sound swirls, a deep well of red hot amber, swelling and irrepressible.
Palpitating and prepared for all the fingers of every god who can make the journey. Every beast. Every mountain man covered in fur and curls, white powder on his heels. 
If they walk the thousand steps, slay the thousand dragons, enchant the guardians, they will find it there, swimming through the thick pools of combined water and earth, stone and plant.

Those missing words released in a momentary fluttering, they are tucked into small ponds with tiny golden fish, red and yellow stripes along their bellies. Bubbles and little waves sometimes push them to the surface where I can scoop them up and swallow them whole. There are none left for the wild dogs on the days I wade into the waters, naked and just slightly stiff in the cold air.
Always a bitter wind will sweep down off the mountains, rushing towards me, an avalanche of sound and roaring desperation.  How can it tell?  Finding my body as it moves, coming towards me gracefully as a large-winged bird. It covers me in a frozen embrace and races towards the great ice caps of the north.

I dropped my clothes long ago in the meadow. I walk with red painted toes and black stripes marking my breasts and ribs, barely breaking a blade of grass with my weight. My breathing, smooth and shallow, just enough to keep me alive as I search the waters. There are bees darting and iridescent songbirds and cicadas drowning out the noise of other living creatures, creating an undulating drone which corresponds to the water ripples slapping against my white skin.
Do they react to my rushing heat or do we move together? Desire and bubbles and fish and lost words pushing against each other, naked and sweat covered and moving without language.

Thin purple petals are covered in dew, they sparkle in the brilliant light. The wind keeps racing over and past me and my heart runs after it, a high pitched scream following our decent into the caverns below the sea of time. The ache inside bursts out, swelling outwards towards the sea. 

Gripping the wind for comfort, deep and voluminous snakes emerge from the holes in the ground, from my ears, out my mouth. Overcome by scales and hissing, I finally sink to my knees. They suck on the tiny beads of sweat below my breasts and coil around me, bringing me back into time. Where things happen, where words are formed.

The Confession

Isa was in a narrow room in the Santa Cruz police station.  There was a window on her right, but only darkness peeked through the frosted glass.  Even though it was dark, both in the room and outdoors, she could sense the moon leaving and the light beginning to change, it was all stirring within her. 
The rectangular room had several rows of individual desks made of steel with wooden tops.  There was a large chalkboard along the front wall (the opposite wall she was facing).  She imagined the officers gathering here in the morning- drinking steaming coffee out of styrofoam cups and hashing out the day’s details while the bullets sat, restless in their chambers. 

She was leaning on one of the hard fake wood surfaces of the desks. Two cops sat in chairs in front of her- they were asking questions. She had been up for 24 hours and knew no better, she filtered nothing.  The lighting was dim, a yellowish black. It was as if she was on stage and they were her audience. Words flew out of her mouth like water, her brain barely registering the questions before her lips would move.
“Where did you get the heroin?” 
“The guys got it from someone downtown.”
“Who gave it to you?” 
“Like, who literally gave it to me?”
They nodded.
“The guys, my boyfriend.”
“Did you shoot it?”
“No,” she said smiling, “We could never find a vein. Ray shot it into my buttcheek, I needed him to do it, it’s a little hard to reach." 
She smiled and they smiled too. She didn’t know that bit of information could lead to a felony charge.
It was almost like the men were not there in front of her, as if she was alone and a milky white film separated her from them. She was beyond tired, she actually felt energized.  Words flew out- every one of their questions got an honest answer.

After questioning she was led back into the room where Ray, Travers and Anne were sitting in a corner on some plastic chairs.  The light was bright and harsh, matching the cold color of the walls.  Their despondent faces, lacking expression and warmth, looked different than the way she felt. 
The two police officers asked Ray to come with them. He was still handcuffed, as was Travers.  They were gone for a while, then they came back in and Ray took a seat while Anne left for questioning. 
Ray mouthed something to her, she couldn't hear him so she made a confused face, scrunching up her eyebrows. 
He mouthed it again:
“You fucked me.” 
She did not really know what he was talking about and looked at him with a blank face, though a cold bit of dread started to bury itself inside her chest. 

A little while later, Anne and Isa were taken to another holding cell towards the front of the jail.  There were two other women in there and a steel bench and a pay phone attached to the cement wall. 
The escorting officer told them they would be released in a little while.  Isa asked about Travers and Ray.
“They’re being charged, they’ll be here a while.” 
Later she realized that it was her words alone that had been used to charge Ray with four felonies. 
Anne and Isa stayed in the holding cell for another hour. Then they were processed, given their confiscated possessions and they walked out the double wide glass doors into the bright morning light. 

The Nature Of Pain

Pain demands remedy.  It demands attention, it creates an end.  Ends are found wandering down many paths. 

Little by little I felt like dying.  I drove home up the 15 degree incline that went on for seven miles from the ocean to the mountainous woods.
The late afternoon sun was bright and hit my shoulders, browning them slightly.  The heat came in through the window and he sat next to me, a 200 pound man with the potential for artistic expression and a capacity for miserable effort and run-ins with the law. 
As I began to reach the peak of the oak covered meadow before a curvy 2 mile long descent into wooded Felton, I felt overwhelmed. The man had a multitude of chemical addictions and twenty nine years of pain that needed to be dulled and a father that had just died.
The family would not wait to hold the funeral and as a result, the tattooed addict beside me would never, as my mother said, have closure.  She could see what was coming more than I could, that girl I was with firm round breasts and idealism that had somehow sucked her into a cave full of murky water.
My tattooed addict, sitting in the cushioned chair beside me had a history of minor crimes and outstanding warrants in a few states and credit debt that would haunt him until death.

Each one of his problems fell on my shoulders. I opened my arms to them and held them.
For a time I hoped that they would get better or change or that he would change or that his jail stays would alter him or that visiting the county hospital would at least provide him with methadone or some legal compound, but none of it changed.  He took the methadone and then went to the streets moment later.  Even after the doctors finally approved a physical therapist and a reason was identified for his unbearable back pain, he never stopped mixing and injecting, he never followed through on the recommended exercises. He was in a cave of his own.
He let me carry all his problems. I took him to the appointments and to the streets. I went to work and then handed over my cash to his open hands that were like magnets. I picked up his cigarettes and cringed every moment he stood at the doorway smoking, wasps of pungent odor coming right back towards me, covering my clothes and books with their stench so that one day I would have to throw them all away. 

His problems were my problems. And his problems where too big for me and I wanted it all to end.
I remember saying: “but I haven’t made my mark on the world yet.”  And he agreed.  And so there was no double suicide.
But every day he got worse and I felt the dark cloud grow bigger and thicker and so strong that I could not see light beyond it.  Every day his tolerance grew and he needed a little more black tar.  Every day he needed a little more money.  Every day he sunk deeper and I watched from the edge, teetering on the side, looking in and then beyond. 
I went to work, I went to school.  I brought him money and he took it to the beach flats and got small brown goo wrapped in pieces of plastic. After disappearing into the bathroom for hours and poking in every vein he remembered having he would emerge all sweaty and pink. 
For a precious moment he would be free of pain, he would forget about his dad and the mounting legal problems and his back and the mountain of darkness that hung over our heads. Then time would slip and we would remember and the rattle would begin once again.

Dinner For Alice

The hunger was undeniable. Alice would awaken in the dead of the night, stomach growling, feeling stretched as though it might break into pieces. At first, always at first, she would try to be quiet, she would try not to wake up Ben, then she would remember that Ben was gone. She was alone.
It was the cold hard fact of this singularity that drove Alice into the yard, into the victory garden that had fallen into fecund disrepair since his departure. After a day spent in tears and rotating cycles of hair tearing and screaming, she would fall, utterly spent upon the bed and almost forget his absence in the dark desperation of sleep. Until her stomach called her awake, gurgling, forgotten and denied during the regularly scheduled emotional storms of the daylight hours.
In the endless torrent of wishes for her own death, for the death of Ben’s new flaxen haired lover, for Ben’s death, there was no time or motive to take sustenance. But in the darkness, after the exhausted blackouts, her appetite would take control and lead her barefoot into the yard. Under the pale white face of the moon Alice would kneel in the dark soil between the bug eaten chard and rhubarb. With one trembling hand she would scoop up a hand full of dirt and greedily thrust it into her mouth, wriggling worms and all. Turning over rocks she would lick at the scurrying surface, swallowing things that were still moving.
She fed with urgency and abandon, alternating between unturned bricks or stone and fistfuls of cool moist dirt. And when she was satiated she would return to the house, crawl with dirty fingernails back into bed and sleep until dawn, whence the appetites of the night would give way to the convulsive grieving of the day.
The nighttime excursions came to be extended. Rather than returning to bed Alice spent the rest of the night walking through the neighbors' yards, skirting around the edges of houses and tool sheds and compost bins, sometimes stopping to feed in a freshly tilled flower bed. In the early hours of morning before sunrise she would creep home, entering through the side gate, back into the yard, through the back door.
Pleasantly tired, she could sleep away the hours of the day. She tacked cardboard over the windows to keep the light out. As long as the sun was barred from the house, grieving could be suspended. Alice rested peacefully in her dirty bed, a layer of soil accumulating between the sheets. Waking after dark, her stomach crying with pain, she came to rise instantly with the knowledge that she was alone, that there was no one who could see her, no one who could stop her from doing what she wanted to do, no one to stop her from eating what she most craved. And what she craved for a time was the earth itself and the things that hid within it.
The change was gradual. Her skin first developed a certain sheen. It darkened. Then it began to harden. Her legs and arms had grown just a little longer. Her movements during her nightly excursions were quicker. There was a sound that her altered feet made over the concrete and asphalt, a soft skittering as she moved fleetly into the shadows along the walls.
Alice herself, resigned weeks ago to dying, accepted the changes unquestioningly. With a goal as simple as death, anything that happened in between was superfluous. As the changes came, however, as Alice pursued her appetites without regret, the death wish diminished, even vanished. Alice no longer thought of herself at all. She simply followed her instincts.
Her new form demanded greater sustenance. Neighborhood cats began to disappear. Soon the power lines bore pitiful photocopied announcements of reward for the safe return of a handful of different family dogs. One night Alice went out into the garden and spread her new pair of shiny black wings. In the city she kept to the alleys, terrifying the homeless drunks hidden beneath papers and soiled sleeping bags.
They had nothing to fear however, Alice had a hankering for something particular. She found it around the corner from a popular new nightclub; a young man laughing and wobbly with intoxication tugging a pretty young woman into the alley with him.
“What was that?” the young woman asked sharply peering into the darkness ahead of them.
“Nothing, nothing baby.” he cooed. Alice shuffled closer.
“Uh uh, no way, I’m out of here.” The woman broke free and hurried out of the alley, back to the street and its lights.
“Mary hold on.”
He called after her, but only managed to lean against the wall catching his breath. He laughed a little as he started towards the street and lost his footing. Alice scurried forward and took hold of him, mandibles sinking into his soft pink flesh as he screamed. The sound was drowned out by the beat from the club next door. Soon it ceased entirely, transformed into the gurgling of his own crimson internal fluids as they spilled from his lips.
Alice thought that he reminded her of something called Ben, although she could no longer quite recall what Ben was. Nonetheless, she felt sure that Ben was what she wanted, and this was almost it. She found it deeply satisfying.

Ecstatic Fury

It all begins this night, a night of fright and terror, this night when everything descends into a lethal silence, a silence in which all things are paralyzed, everything has stopped due to what has happened on the other side, the other side which on this particular night has come into this side, this side which is afraid to lose everything it has ever known, everything it has ever seen during its forty something years of life. (I remember being unafraid of loss, unconcerned with either living or dying, but this too I lost eventually.)
Nothing was forever, that was the simple rule to remember, everything was temporary and without sense, it was others who gave it sense, others speaking, others looking, others pointing things out, all the other things that in one day or another could be found along the path, a path full of life or full of nothing. What could it matter if everything was made of nothingness to begin with, if everything is and was an essence of nothingness and came from nothingness and to nothingness would return?

The things that happened on that night are indescribable and heart wrenching at once, because of the fear and the accent on horror, life had horrified itself. In a matter of seconds nothing that life had accumulated for years and centuries, none of it had any more importance nor substance. None of it was real, none of it was worth anything, everything was garbage and shit. It was all the worst hypocrisy in which a spirit could get into so that it might get away with what it could, to escape from whatever it would be, from whatever it was. Here nothing mattered anymore, it was a life whose only purpose was to observe a particular situation, an event, a something, a nothing, and that turned everything into a loss. It made life from what it wasn't, but nothing was what it could be. Everything had lost its brilliance, the color that it once possessed. In everything there was a sense of agony, of darkness, of harshness, of laziness, life in full degeneration. A slow decay of things that would never again return, things that would never be happy with themselves, the things that happened on that night.

“To hell with so many expectations! To hell with life itself!” it said.
Who said it? It didn't matter if it died, it died all the time. Badly born, recently deceased, thoughts weighed down by irony and by this life which had cracked like an egg, it had fallen from an unknown distance. What difference could it make? Everything was the same. It was all the cursed agony of an ancient being, covered in tumors, having repeated this agony so many times, this weakness, this same foolishness of dying from lack of skill at living.
“Life and its heaven,” it said, “what a disgusting prison! How large it is! And how narrow is heaven!”

More confused, more painful, is that blue expanse which laughed at us at every moment. With its pretentious greatness, perpetually showing us its unreachable dexterity in being able to be anywhere. And we are down here, unable to move away, unable to emerge from under its damned sphere of cursed power. We are unable to escape its cowardice and refusal to show us its liberator face, the face that could free us from so many sins, sins which we have been subjected to during all these years of being newly born in an egg that is dead and rotten, broken by the damned beak of a bird that flies over us, reminding us that up there is a heaven of sheer agony. A heaven dying every single day in all the tones, in all the colors, in all that could be a single stumble, a single moment of union. Whatever it is, it is everywhere and it ends everywhere.

This is a snack for gods of the void, of whatever is and whatever isn't, whatever manages to be what it can't be, whatever manages to truly be what it is. I don't understand anything. It is simply life which talks about itself and says whatever it wants to say, as if it's asking me to fuck it, to make love to it, asking me to throw it from a window, from a corridor, from the fifth floor of an empty building, from something that is also made of everything and nothing. Asking me to kill this agony inside of me and kill the rats that are part of your glory and your desolation. Your fears are your gods, your gods are your loves, and the rest is not important. The demons don't matter. My tomb will be in the nothingness some day. Deep under the earth I will sleep.

I go through the dying during a long period of tenderness and of eternity. What matters is to sleep and nothing else. It is the same to me, the state that is the agony of living and of dying. Nothing matters, not anymore. Life, death, they are both here. They have always been here and they will always be here. It's the same to me; a monkey, an elephant, some other thing that tries to jump, tries to die, tries to achieve something in which it might find a way to live, to feel, to really feel, to feel anything at all. To feel hate, real perfect hate and not that garbage that they show us on the radio and the TV, on the Internet, in these words of 'who knows what this man is trying to say here', this imbecile that is writing to try to say what he doesn't dare to say in his own insides, this damned idiot that is just barely learning to say a half truth that he learned somewhere in his country of El Salvador, The Savior, as if this was the savior of that fucking word that is hell, in which everyone burns and then remains confused. The fucking fear of burning playing for eternity among the heretics which were burned alive and crucified so they could reach the endless glory of hell, where they would never be able to understand their own martyrdom, waiting to sense that everything that is, everything that can be achieved, could come one day to liberate them. Something else would come to do the hard work of sacrifice, so they could keep on fooling around and making trouble with the gun powder that one day was in their words. The fire that they picked up from a virtual garbage can in which man found himself due to the thousand speeches of centrifugal language. It all begins this night, in the things that happened on that one night, the things that I will forever be at a loss to describe.

Radical Feet

“DO YOUR PART!”

The letters swept across the face of the floating billboard in a font Dayne recognized as Aero Brazil, something from the pulp adventures of early 20th century North America. Under the excited slogan a there was a picture of a smiling young blonde woman posing with the bulging black hulk of an antimatter gun. Her crisp blue uniform fit her smartly and Dayne felt that she wanted her own breast to stand so pertly at attention, she wished that her lips and cheeks could be so rosy, her eyes so sparkly and blue. She could vaguely remember the ancient black and white films of 1941 and the brighter than life Technicolor of 1952 that her mother had spent hours manipulating on the ComPad, creating new material from the fecundity of publicly accessible digital archives.
That had been before the arrival of the Aeons, before the archives were destroyed and the artists, videographers, musicians, and poets were rounded up and executed. All creative work was banned. The Aeons, emissaries of The Absolute insisted that it was a crime to emulate The Absolute with acts of creation. Creativity was a source of confusion that led to a path of madness like that which led Sophia to steal the creative light of the Pleroma, inseminating herself with it in order to birth Yaldabaoth the architect who in turn created this dimension and the first creatures that inhabited it.

“Where are you now grandfather?” Dayne asked the fallen God under her breath, her feet hurrying away from the billboard, slapping against the concrete with a clack. “They punish the children for the sins of the parents.”
“THE ONLY GOOD ARCHON IS A DEAD ARCHON.”
Another billboard announcement, depicting the Archon Astaphanos being dethroned by the beautiful blue uniformed mob of the New Earth.
Dayne hurried by as it drifted nearer. The children are punished for the sins of the parents. Dayne herself was like Astaphanos, a child of a renegade creator.
“But where are they now Astaphanos? Your father and my mother? Where are they while these angels punish us and pit us against our parents?”
Betrayal was so common. How many shining young faces had proudly delivered their mother or father into the hands of the Aeonic Avatars, other pretty boys and girls in crisp blue uniforms, for a crime such as making up little songs while doing the housework, or whittling a useless little sculpture of an owl? Even the Archon prince Horaios had aided the Aeons after his capture in the pursuit of the terrible architect Yaldabaoth.

“There are no parents in this age, isn’t that right Astaphanos? No brothers, no sisters. An end to family. The end of history.”
Weren’t the sidewalks crowded with the citizens of New Earth? Stations were set up every three blocks or so where a citizen could become a member of the armed forces and fight alongside the stewards of New Earth. One could enlist to help storm the stronghold of Archon loyalists bunkered down on Mars or travel to another sphere of light under the wings of these angels to make war with strange alien demons in parallel worlds. Or one might stay home and police the streets as an Aeonic Avatar.
What will it be Dayne Strothe? The army or the police? A different sort of civil service perhaps? Food industry, garbage disposal, weapons manufacturing? There was an appropriate outlet for that inappropriate urge to create, make antimatter guns or sew little blue uniforms. Forget your mother making videos on the little ComPad, forget the music of Bach, The Beatles, that little band that played in the garage next door…
Administrative work perhaps, making and issuing the papers of identification.

Dayne’s feet carried her swiftly, independent of her mind, clack, clack on the concrete. It was of course always dangerous to walk alone on the street. Only dissidents sought solitude. So hurry, hurry to the place your mind hasn’t fully realized it is traveling to. Ah there it is, now that you see it, you know where you were going, where you meant to go all along…

Dayne slipped into the alley without a hesitating glance over her shoulder. She had been watching the reflections in the glass buildings all along, taking notice of those who did or did not notice her. In the last 8 blocks the beautiful glass buildings and clean but crowded streets had given way to bombed out brick ruins, to buildings of charred plaster and mortar. The streets were empty.
Dayne could remember those films her mother clipped and pasted in the ComPad. In those films, on a street like this, a piece of old newspaper or a plastic bag, or a leaf might have danced a lonesome dance and folded into the gutter.
Not now. There were no newspapers or plastic bags left in the world since before the Aeons arrived, and the trees that were here once had since been burned. It was even more desolate without a desolately drifting newspaper. A little water in the gutter, a few broken windows to search for reflections, but there was no one behind her, no one ahead. So Dayne slipped into the alley without a hesitating glance over her shoulder.
Her feet, her radical feet, carried her to the grimy yellow door. She found herself standing before it, felt her hand lift and tap out a little beat, heard her voice, alien to her own ears, singing waveringly:

“Are you going to Scarborough Fair?
Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme
Remember me to one who lives there
She once was a true love of mine.”

Then the silence rolled over at her feet. The sound of rats scurrying, a sound more silent than silence. Suddenly there was the sound of a bolt scraping and the yellow door swung inward on to a darkness deeper than that of the alleyway.
After a moment she made out the silhouette of a bearded face. It leaned out the door and scanned the alley in both directions and then jerked for her to follow it back into the darkness. Her eyes slowly adjusted to the deeper gloom as he re-bolted the door. Picking up a little saucer upon which a nub of candle glimmered faintly, he motioned for her to follow. They crossed the room entirely concealed in shadow and began the descent down a flight of stairs.
Dayne heard her voice bubble up in her throat once more,
“I am a great granddaughter of Sophia.”
“All of us here are.” The man ahead of her answered and she felt her shoulders relax.
The descent went on and on and Dayne heard the rumble of drums, the wailing of a flute, strange music swirling down in the dark depths. There would be no questions here, no need for answers, no papers of identification. Here perhaps Iao, Sabaoth, Adonaios, and Elaios were hiding from the prying light above.
‘Mother,” she wondered silently, ‘Could you have escaped the executioners? Are you down here, cutting and pasting, cutting and pasting the history of 1941 and 1952? And what about the terrible architect? Is he here too? A golden child nursing at Sophia’s breast, still dreaming worlds for us to inhabit, spheres where we may sing and dance and cut and paste without regulations, without jealous eyes watching?’
The music was growing louder the deeper they descended and Dayne’s feet drummed on the steps, clack, clack, radical feet carrying her to the place she dared not imagine.

Wild Darkness

There is a wild darkness deep inside the crevices of my heart. It shines like obsidian when I turn and face the sun, though no one, not even I, can see its sheen. It is like a forgotten forest, left long ago when I was just a child wearing little pink dresses. I used to know this place, I could visit and sleep in the world of trees and fallen leaves, it was a place just as pretty as the land of rainbows and laughter. Both were equally inviting and I could walk towards them on well-marked paths, eager to discover the messages they offered.
When I ran there with pig-tails and bare feet, I saw pine boughs grow heavy with pale aged moss and green leaves that held in their color a thousand other hues I could not see. This place used to be another chamber in which to play, a place slightly darker than home, a little less bright, but full of dark open-ended mystery. There I could explore, I turned over heavy gray stones and looked into the holes of knotted trees, asking for their stories. But when I left this place in a slow fit that covered my body in bruises and fear, the path faded in seconds. Cobwebs clouded the canopy and blocked out the weak sun. I left this place and did not go back, abandoning all the crickets and wolves that still take up the call each night, beginning the chanting until the ghosts join in chorus.
The wild darkness can no longer be reached by foot. The paths have disappeared and are covered with poison mushrooms and miner’s lettuce. The map I once sketched and vowed to keep is buried so deep I cannot reach it. I glimpse it in dreams and forget about it upon waking. The darkness cannot be touched by my hands anymore, but I know it’s there. It is waiting for me, and the night animals sing to me when I breathe deeper. It is there, and I look to the left and the right, I look under the covers and behind closed closet doors for a way to enter. But when I sniff the dank air of rotting earth, when the thick strands of a cobweb catches my hand, I run and hide in the bath, submerging my head in the safety of warm water and a mother’s sheltering womb.
The darkness is buried inside, and while one side of me hides, another part searches. The wild darkness swirls with all of my rage and clouds of anger. It dwells there. It grows among the chaotic spider webs and fallen logs and the knotted trees that always resemble distorted human shapes with humps and missing faces. My exiled pain feeds off of the moist low-hanging clouds and the damp fallen needles.
I have banished all my demons to that dark land. Ghosts walk the forest floor, feasting on other new arrivals and the echoes of tears. I have pushed everything in there all of these years, all the things this body living in the sun cannot face.
I see my mother, my daughter, my husband, my lover. Parts of them walk through my darkness. Shadows of me walk there too, dancing with old memories and biting their fingers. Shadows of me flicker, some are missing limbs or just a hand. Some hobble, and some are bleeding from the chest. They are everything I cannot face and they hang suspended in this place, wandering the grounds, dodging trees and poisonous beasts and sucking on mushroom caps. It is a forest of hidden emptiness, though it fills itself with sorrow. I hear it going thump, thump, thump, thump.
The part of me that still looks under rocks, she looks for the place without a map, but she cannot find the door. She slams into walls and gets lost in the closet. She knows she must go back. She must visit the place that was always there, the land where everything exists at once, the past, present, and future. It is all hidden, yet repeating the same well-worn cycle. It is waiting for my return.
I can smell it now, dank and moldy, smelling of earth, tasting like rusty blood. I turn to the left, looking for a new path to carry me back.

Toni And The Police

I awoke in a haze of sleep, my dreams evaporating instantly. The room was still dark, nearly pitch black to my half closed eyes. I pulled the thick covers away mechanically and stepped onto the carpet. Holding my hands in front like a blind man, I sought the hard realness of the desk against the wall and the glass doorknob I would find to the left of it. Holding the knob, I slipped my feet into the slippers I had thoughtfully left by the door. There was a sea of cold tiles that stretched from my bedroom to the bathroom, and I tried to avoid the frigid shock. I pulled the French-style door open, and a cool air hit my face. Without central heating- a cold darkness lay just beyond the bedroom walls.
It took me a second to realize it, while my brain computed and bumped along, but there was an unmistakable flashing red light coming from the garage. My door was open just a crack, and I pulled on the knob. The garage pulsed with flashing red and blue lights, like an empty nightclub. I urged my feet forward, carefully stepping over the guitar and microphone cords that criss-crossed the floor. The light source came from outside, just beyond the wood panels and high frosted glass windows that made our garage door. I stood on my toes and looked through the diamond shaped window, an architectural necessity for any house constructed in the 50s.
Two police cars were double parked in the street, one just in front of our house, the other in front of the first car, almost out of sight. Both had their lights on- blinking red and blue that seemed to scream silently in the night. There were the cars and the houses on the other side of the street, illuminated in the blazing lights. I immediately thought of our next door neighbors, the ones who had just moved in and brought with them loud voices and almost a dozen children. I listened hard for voices, but heard none. No sobbing women, no shrieking children. I pulled a green and cracked vinyl chair towards me and quietly stepped up, looking through the diamond window once again.
Partially shadowed by the night, then brightened by the lights, was Toni, our neighbor, with her hands behind her back, surrounded by four large police officers. Three of the men were white and large, one of them wearing a black beanie on his seemingly bald head. The fourth officer was a stocky Asian man. Toni looked so small and thin next to them, her chocolate skin illuminated and somehow looking pale.
“They don’t take care of my mom, I do!” she shouted. The men mumbled their responses.
They walked together towards the car closest to our house. One cop in front with the black beanie leading, one next to Toni, the two others following. The man in front was shaking his head, and from where I stood, he seemed to be looking right at me. I wondered if he was. Was it a warning? I felt myself grow cautious, wondering if they could see my curious white face through the small window. I felt a fear creep inside. The men felt dangerous. Men armed and willing, ready to take a life. They closed the backseat door behind Toni, then huddled by the trunk, looking at something the one with the beanie held. Toni shouted from inside the car, but her words were muffled, just the anger escaped through the closed metal door.
“Shut UP!” yelled the man wearing the hat. He turned instantly to the Asian man on his left, smiling. His smile filled me with fear. Bullies from high school, men with a license to shout and abuse, kill if need be. He thought it was funny. He did not have the insight to see that his actions altered the course of lives. What was a job, a routine night perhaps, something he would write a report about and then forget as he put the pen down, it was different on the other end, between the metal cuffs, waiting in the backseat of a car. A river flowing one way was instantly diverted with his presence. Arrest wasn’t a minor thing, though he might have gotten used to being the figure with power. And when he laughed, like he didn’t care, like she was just another piece of trash he had to deal with before his next coffee break, it etched a dread in me I had not felt in a long time.
The men conferred behind the car, looking at something. The Asian man broke away and walked to the police car. He opened the driver’s door and spoke through the metal grate to Toni.
“What’s your name?” he said quietly, but distinctly. I thought I heard her say Jessica, but I probably misheard.
I thought of Toni confessing months ago that she used to do crack, that her grown children were still mad at her for how she had been when she was raising them. What had she done tonight? I imagined her in a yellow lit house, wandering from room to room. Which one of her family members had called the police? Who would take care of her mother with dementia? I thought of the old woman who sat in the easy chair in front of the window, what would happen to her? What would they do with Toni? I imagined her heart shattered, crumbling in on itself as she thought about the helpless mother she was being dragged away from. What had she done?
I left the window and walked back quietly through the garage, careful to step over all the cords. I used the bathroom, never turning on a single light. I stood by the doorway to the garage, wondering if I should go back to bed. But then I heard my friend’s voice, asking me questions. I thought about Toni and thought someone should keep witness. Moving gently to the window again, I stood on my tiptoes. I looked into the windows of the other houses across the street, looking for other faces. If they were there, they were hidden. And if it was just me, watching as Toni was taken by the four men. Then I should watch it through to the end, whatever would be the end at this hour.
As I stood, the word boredom crossed my mind, and I felt guilty that the events had lost my interest. The scene was a bit more quiet, Toni had stopped cursing. Two cops now stood by the hood of the police car closest to me. The steps leading to Toni’s front door was illuminated by the porch light. I could see the purple exterior paint and the metal gate at the landing that was slightly ajar. I watched the quiet scene for a little while, then the light above her garage door came on. I wondered if it was a motion sensor, maybe a cat had walked by. Maybe someone had turned it on. A few minutes passed, then the sound of jingling, perhaps keys, though it sounded more like glass.
One cop came down the front steps, taking each step quickly, with a sort of bounce. His large black Maglight was beaming and down-turned. At the sidewalk by the steps, he began to search the driveway, carefully looking around the red car that was parked there. Toni started cursing again and another cop turned on his flashlight, joining the search. They didn’t find anything and within a few minutes two cops walked towards the car parked just beyond our house. I heard the ignition start.
The cop with the black beanie walked to the other car and took his place behind the wheel, his partner sat beside him. He turned on the engine and then turned his face to the left, in my direction. The shadow of the car’s roof hid his eyes, but I felt like he was watching me, perhaps daring me to do something. A deeper sense of fear moved through me, the man was dangerous, more ugly than many I had met. He stayed like that for several seconds and neither of us moved. Then he looked straight ahead and drove away.
I stood in the garage for several minutes, the space now black again without the police car lights. I moved back towards my room, but lingered in the doorway to the garage, wondering if I should lock my door. The space seemed less safe, not because of whatever Toni had done, but because of those men. The police and what they stood for.
Men without any hero’s code of honor, but simply men that had passed a few tests, a few obstacle courses…men that had been given a gun and the power to enforce laws, the power to hurt, the power to change destinies. They were nothing special, but they were backed by cells and judges and an entire system of repression that would bite down on the prettiest of flowers without a thought.
I was cold. I got under the blankets again and stared at the blackness of my wall until the sky turned blue.