space bender

Flickering light shimmered out of the box. Traced patterns, track left and right. The clickity clack of the projector spins hundreds of fragmented grizzlies trough the rift. The stain is still drying, tacky to the touch, but it works. To glorious result. Ecstatic moment woven from years of preparation. Wondrous, simply wondrous. Time slowed and minds traveled. Back, back to older things. Celluloid and smoke. Light and mirrors. Tied together with witnessed intention. In the crescendo the Earth itself seemed to shudder. Through those ancient eyes the light cast shadows of memories, dark and cold. Face your fear. Turn the inner eye. See it's path and remain.

And remain.

...timey wimey...

It's hustle and bustle. Movement in space, one task at a time. Clock ticking with less minutes than are needed. Always like this, never enough head room. In these moments it's easy to skip the important things. The little bits that make it all worth it. The restless drive to float incorporeal with no tether to these fuel driven meat machines hangs like a tangible thing. Which, by it's very nature, is utterly ridiculous. Breath deep, take the steps. Forward, but never straight.

End times reproduction

Trees and bushes burst with buds and flowers, not to mention pollen. It's a constant money shot. All over your face, all day long. Plants know it's going down, the sixth mass extinction. When the bombs drop people fuck more, lots more. With lustful abandon fully aware that life could be snuffed at any moment. It seems plants do the same. Awake crusty eyed and bleary with all the congealed plant spunk on your face and mucus membranes.

Debt and Dreams

It's a scam. Been running it for a little over a year. Started with selling off the collection of junk packed every nook and cranny at the folks place. Packed and shipped all over this huge land mass. Another job here another there, keep the money coming in, pay those old debts. All of a sudden, on paper, it looks good, this weird little life. Lines of credit established. Same as cash, 6 months to pay. Ridiculous. It's brought back how destroyed it was. Shattered, stomped, teeth kicked in and crushed. It only took seven years! Only seven, and they went by quick. In the here now it's all forward momentum. These dreams are built with other peoples money. A Loki style approach to manifestation. A powerful glamour wrapped around this dirty old metalhead. Some nights you wake up laughing at the hilarity, others in a cold sweat at the horror you've embraced.

...

Call comes at bar close. Her voice swollen with drink, looking for another place to go. Listen to the rambling as a scream builds deep down. Manage a fairly polite declination to entertain amidst mild verbal abuse. It's right back to that first apartment when the drunken call comes and other whisky swollen voice curses from the other end. A shriveled meat pump labors in a cage of bone and blood. Pieces of a life long left behind lodged into the cracks leak poison. Years long it creeps, waiting to spring out and scream "REMEMBER!" at the slightest provocation. There is no trust, no warm embrace to take the edge off the days labors. There is good built into these hands though. They make things, beautiful things. There is dirt beneath their nails and thick calluses. There is solace in that.

One spring day

Seventeen years. Numbers like that are the way it is now. Seventeen years. Jesus, where does it go?  I stood in front of the gods and everybody and made an oath to stay with her to life's end. Last I heard she had done time for identity theft and was living in North Dakota with her new husband. Not exactly death due us part. There was an effort made, ten years of effort, but only so much abuse can be tolerated. When there is no better and only worse and worse and worse. Been out of it for almost as long as I was in it. Hasn't stopped it from haunting me, kept me in the same patterns. Repeating patterns of love. Like the song goes. Heh. Cooking a great feast for mostly myself. An exercise in loneliness. Sad songs on the jukebox with a couple revenge of the nerd style joints. Going to drink my own wine, feast on the fruits of my labors and drink to better days ahead.

Nightime

These nights grow so long. Sleep an elusive thing that twists and turns like a twisty turny thing. Managing a few hours of actual REM time, but little else. Sleep deprivation is a harsh mistress. Everythings washed out and coffee stained. The place where normalcy exists, balanced forward thoughts, is long forgotten. This brain matter has rebelled. No amount of medication/meditation brings that once restful thing known as sleep. Seems to be growing worse as time progresses. Focus remains somehow. Possession of will makes all the difference. The real question is, can this be maintained? The answer has always been a great big capitol NO. Hasn't changed the nature of things though. In the dark moments, twisting in the grip of some creeping thing in the hiddy spots of the subconscious, time ceases to be and there is only that moment of frozen horror. An infinitesimal macro universe spins, huge and terrible. It seeps down into the quantum spaces between the protons. All the while it's just me, my mind, and the dark.

Equinox

The spring sun has risen and I hunch for a moment over the death box before the shovels fly. Too cold for planting yet with the weekend lows hovering in the high twenties, but much work to do regardless. Good thing too, the "too much to do" keeps me moving. If I stand for too many moments my mind goes dark. The loss, the fall, the horror of it all. Growing things keeps it at bay, with the aid of some choice chemicals and healthy dose of artistic endeavour. It's a struggle to be sure, even with the "best I've ever done" on the table before me. I stand outside many of the little joys now, and always will. A societal anomaly with an empty nest whilst the others bring forth new lives with the loving support of lifelong partners.
I have a cat and five guitars...

mirror, mirror

Faded technicolor kodachrome. Hands full of glass shards and plastic burns. Blood dries on the cardboard while the stack of heirloom seeds, both saved and purchased, wait for the soil to warm. The hum of strings and her haunting voice float through smoke filled air. Flickering light takes on all the shapes I could hope for, but lacks any of the solice. The cold air seeps in from between the cracks in the door and these bits and pieces of ideas rattling around from year to year have become something. A real existing thing, bending light and time in it's own little cycle. The puzzle is still so far from done and, as always, as a new piece falls into place someone snaches another from the board. Still, progress is progress.

New Ground

Winter winds down and new soil waits under grass. To till, shovel and  prepare for the seeds and starts. A cycle that takes more and more precedence. So many things go astray, lost to human drama, but the growing things are a constant. There is still much in the larder from years past, but the looming reality of fresh from the ground food always makes my blood quicken. The days go by fast, though, and the tasks are always so, so many. The soil here is thick and dark. Doesn't need much to grow fine, fine veggies. It is also the climate I know how best to work in or at least it was. It grows increasingly difficult to know what each season will bring. Daylight's a wasting. The old rototiller waits.