Tuesday, July 6, 2021

A Bedtime Story, "You, Too, Voodoo"

A Bedtime Story, "You, Too, Voodoo"

A strange shop set up on the west side of town. In it was a mysterious woman with hair the color of night and face white like the moon.
Curious, many townspeople went up to her. They exchanged greetings.
Then they left, a bit confused, going about their business.
They gathered outside of the shop one Sunday, bored of the park and interested in the strange figurines in the window. They bickered at each other as was common.
The woman came outside.
“I can help you get the evil out of this town,” she said “I come from a place as pure as a blossoming flower. All your troubles will be over if you listen to me. I will give each of you a number, and when I call that number with my magical flute, you will come in and destroy the evil in your life, but you must try to hide as best as you can until I call you you back, or the darkness shall overcome everyone, and what is good will rot away.”
So the townspeople waited and waited for their turn to see the woman. They did not see each other at all, afraid of the darkness that lurked.
Strange things began to happen to the townspeople. Some of them yelled but they remembered to never see each other, thinking the other villagers must be the evil in the town.
Even when they received injuries or heard the cries of death, they believed it was for the great town they’d lived in.
Finally, one day, the enchanted flute played all of the numbers.
People came out of their houses covered in blood, rags, sweaty shirts, and soiled pants.
“How could this have happened? What happened?” One man cried. He accused the woman, “You did this!”
“I told you that I would get rid of the evil in your town. You each told me of the wrongdoers. But you see, we are all connected. When we wrong others, we end up hurting ourselves. You can’t hide your own wounds or the ones you give to others.”
They agreed, heads bowed in shame. They remembered what they had done: pinned a voodoo doll to get rid of the evil, to strike back. Now they knew that wasn’t the right way to fix their problems.
People had different injuries, pains, and disabilities, but they asked forgiveness from each other and started working as a productive town should.
Together we heal ourselves and others.

Sunday, July 4, 2021

BAB-DNA

 BAB-DNA

“Welcome to the BAB-DNA store, build-a-being! Walk in and walk out with the baby/being of your design. You can make your little being however you want them to be. With our gene-editing software, it’s easy!”
Megan smiled as pictures of babies passed in front of her, some animals. The government had been allowing people to design their own babies. All they had to do was pay two million dollars to the shop.
“So it’s definitely going to be a girl,” Megan said to her husband, David.
“Yes! I’ve always wanted a little princess,” David said.
“Folks, come on over to your machine. We cleared you thirty minutes ago while you were in the coffee shop. Everything is ready to go. You only have to push a few buttons. Any questions?” The short man asked.
“No, we’ve gone through everything, and we’re so thankful,” Megan said.
David and Megan began to sort out traits.
“I think she should have blonde hair, maybe blue eyes.”
“I think that would be too Aryan, might confuse people,” David said.
“Oh, you’re right. What about green eyes?”
“I think so.”
“I want her to be an athlete and independent. Strong and proud.”
“But what about intelligence?” David asked.
“I think she should be bright, too, but we’ve got to pay extra for that trait.”
“It’s in her best interest. We could slot her for a truly good life with those traits. We’ve got another million before we go into savings.”
They hit more buttons. When finished they hit “enter” but forget to hit “human” and “age.”
A cat meowed while coming out of the machine. She had tan fur and bright emerald eyes.
She looked at her parents and said, “Now you have to feed me for the rest of my nine lives, or I’ll call animal abuse, and you’ll be the one in cages."
She jumped down and sat, looking at the world she’d been brought into. She liked the looks of the ice cream shop.
“Excuse me, sir, we did not want a cat. We wanted a baby.”
“I’m sorry, but I asked you about further questioning. You signed the papers,” the little man said.
“This is ridiculous.”
“She’s yours for the remainder of her life, or nine in reality.”
“We paid two million dollars for a baby and got a cat?”
“We hope you will grow to love her as any being in this world.”
The little man walked away shaking his head. Under his breath, he said, “The cat deserves better parents.”

Friday, July 2, 2021

Your Worth Is In Your Own Hands


The universe can exist without us. We cannot exist without the universe, I thought.
One day, I will handle all paradoxes in such a way.
There is nothing worse than a paradox.
I enjoyed coming up with lines such as those moments of clarity in the chaos of my environment with its scrap metal, detached buttons, long, red, blue, yellow wires, and leaking oil as holy blood, sweet antifreeze. I worked at an A.I. junkyard.
“Pack and Scrap.”
Some of them were still alive. Well, I guess I’d call them living, sparking, but people on the outside thought of their servants, bits and bytes. Something not human. Something they didn’t have to care about When their machines, as they said so carelessly, broke or went haywire with digital dementia, they tossed them out without caring, rotten garbage. Take out the trash!
How rude. Organic material expires.
Sooner.
“Hi, Bob,” I said as I walked by his section of the junkyard.
“Hey, Bella, I haven’t seen you for a day or two,” Bob said.
“I’ve been under the weather,” I said.
“I should have predicted it for you. I’m such a sloppy sucker. I have not been upgraded in centuries.”
“Don’t be so down on yourself, Bob. You’re a great companion.” He was, always saying hi to me and singing simple songs relevant five-hundred years ago. He told stories. He felt self-pity, which annoyed me the most.
“You know there was a time when people were fascinated by us? We were clowns at parties, entertainers at bars, and we aided the disabled. We were part of the atmosphere. We were appreciated then. Now we’re crap to be placed here until someone buys our metal to make something hotter, stronger, better. Always better and better, machines to take our place.”
“Oh, come on now, Bob. Are you going to spend the whole day whining?” I asked.
“You humans and your damn condoning nature! Why don’t you take my eyes and put them in a Model 249? I bet you’d like that. I bet you’d get all giddy. I won’t be there, but my eyes, they will be watching you, reminding you,” Bob said, his voice rattling his distorted body.
“Bob, it’s okay. We’re still friends. I’m not going to upgrade your components. I like you just the way you are,” I said.
“Do you still drive a car? That’s what I thought.”
During the lunch break, I hovered to the cafeteria down by the water tower. Children ran below me playing, not quite old enough for hover suits.
The glasses clicked and clattered in Bee bees, bells demanding more and more food as people drained their contents. They’d invented food without calories, food for pleasure, taste, and texture.
Bob talked of times before that, before the Bankers became our overlords with their sordid needs for cash and power. They go to the lowest denominator for profit. People starved elsewhere, people I couldn’t help.
In the past, I assumed, hover-suits were supposed to be used by heroes, solving the world’s problems, inspiring feelings of justice on the big screen with an audience that believed.
People didn’t like those movies anymore, and they indulge in the experience, not reason, simple jokes, and the constant bickering of idiots. They often killed fictional people in a mad rage.
I knew why.
“Excuse me, Miss. Is your name Bella?”
“Yes,” I said back. A Banker.
“We’ve gotten a report that you have lapsed in paying your health insurance.”
“Yes, I just got a new job. I’ll be able to pay for it in a couple of months.”
“The data says the probability of that is 7%.”
Big data had it in for me, I knew. I shut my emotions off, didn’t want to appear weak like he could do anything. Oh, he could… I didn’t want his everything.
He continued, “I’m sorry, but we must move you to prep-housing. People like you can’t be trusted,” he finished.
I swallowed deeply. He saw this and a twinkle burst in his eyes.
Joy.
“I can, give me a month. I’ll get another job,” I pleaded. Already he took out his baton and put laser strings around me so that he could control my movements through my nerves. This caused a tingling sensation as I was led off.
I didn’t protest.
I laid on a mattress without blankets. The room stank of urine and shit. Brown and yellow curtains stayed split. The heat was too much, the smell of roasting fluid. I hoped to go nose blind quickly.
Now that I was here, I knew that I’d never get out, the last stop spot. Sometimes the Bankers would restore a person’s life a bit, if they were worth it.
I wasn’t, a plain, ragdoll of a person. My only trade was in the junkyard. I came from trash, they said. “People like you.”
A knock came from the door.
“Can I hep you, sir?” I asked. In front of me a tall moon stood. His green eyes reached into me, pulling out an emotion of fear.
I knew.
“Yes, Bella, it is time for you to come with me. Do not be afraid. Your worth is always in your hands,” he said calmly, as would a doctor after a diagnosis, much in the same way of saying, “You have heart disease from eating too many cheeseburgers. You will die.”
I walked with the man into a hovercraft. The bottom blue, not showing the grass underneath.
I spoke up, no point in being shy now.
“Do you think my family will get any cut from the Heartbeat of the World?”
“People like you are birds of a feather. Why would the Center help you, any of you? Do you think you are entitled to such pleas?”
“Of course not,” I said. I bowed my head in shame.
Your worth is in your hands.
They warned us so many times.
The doctors and nurses came into the white room and began to saw my body open, blood sprayed, easy to clean by CleanerBot. I screamed until I passed out and died.
“Let this be a lesson to you,” I say now in this “example” video. “My organs paid my debt. Always remember, your worth is in your hands."
Life goes on.

Thursday, July 1, 2021

American Summers


Blisters on hard black flesh,
Sun so high as to bake mirages,
Like cars, we don’t know a future.
Rings of candy, lick and love…

Blue chill in a cylinder, cool.
Our tongues roll around,
Sensations soak into us,
Ants savor our abandoned…

Orange streetlights say, “now.”
Do you want to stay tonight?
Blankets, and music, and boys,
Still Taboo.

Time tricks, while events pass
Gravity, the age of souls,
Revolves us around stars,
Never leave the summer's
Sighs and Spells!

Monday, June 28, 2021

Snake Eyes


Rocks throw a di, for…
Who likes weather
And evil crosses, too?
One hiss of that snake lies
Between me and you.
Yeah, I said one hiss
of that snake lies
Between me and you.
Rocks throw a di, for…
snakes slither to
That Promised place.
Honey drip wide while
One hiss of a snake lies
Between me and you.
Yeah, I said one hiss
of that snake lies
Between me and you.
One hiss of that snake lies
Between me and you.
Yeah, I said one hiss
of that snake lies
Between me and you.
Rocks throw a di, for…
She’s covered crimson
Heart, see-through
Yeah, I said one hiss
Of that snake lies
Between me and you.
That promised place
Between me and you.
Yeah, I said one hiss
Of that snake lies
Between me and you.

Friday, June 25, 2021

The Morphing Role

                            


Matt sat in the comfy chair his partner gave him for his birthday, the event now past the relevance of time.  The chair existed, as did he.  Green. Perhaps, in the end, it would go to the dumpster, and he would go to his casket.  

Six feet under. 

He pondered on which would be worse.  To be once loved and then put into a landfill composed of garbage, never to be enjoyed again, or if he disappeared into the dirt only for his nice clothes to rot, his flesh to be pulled off by hungry ghouls known as worms, slimy and slick.  

A contradiction against reason.

Of course, the couch wouldn’t be cognizant of love or hate nor of its life.  It would only exist in Matt’s mind. Therefore, in the dirt, the memory of the personified couch, the place he sat in on long nights, would disappear from the consciousness of man and be a rat habitat.

Hopefully, it wouldn’t steal the remote with it.  

Not that it mattered.  Matt wouldn’t be changing the channel.

His bones would rattle in an earthquake, perhaps.  Would anyone remember care?  He could roll in his grave with its fake imitation of sleep while they used the phrase, “He’s rolling in his grave.”  

Unlike Kant, Shakespeare, Homer, and Milton, he was nothing. After the words left his tongue, they vibrated in the air, sometimes hitting others' ears with their lower notes and coming back to him with simple acknowledgment.  Most people don’t have anything fancy to say, he knew. Sure, he quoted himself, made puns, felt clever.  The fleshy mirrors showed him their amusement.  

Mainstream books kept the same stories going on in time.  

The detective found the murderer in his own cold blood.

The woman turned out to be a princess now rules her home kingdom far away with some handsome pauper man helping her. 

The man carries the woman up the stairs and makes sweet love to her in the way a woman would want, dream of, while she had to tolerate her husband in real life, a man with an eye for the apple above his reach. 

Then…

A boy beats all odds.

A girl beats all odds.

Good always prevails. There is justice in the world.

Evil fails or is ambiguous.

Over and over and over again. 

The end.

Only an educated princess felt the pea at the bookstore.  The languages she spoke, the riddles she solved, the blossoming world became a flower of culture and prestige.  

But those kinds of people don’t share wisdom with the common man or woman.  They keep ideas in their heads.  Wisdom is a weapon that must be used with caution.  Give the wrong bead off the necklace of knowledge, and you end up being God, chased by the paparazzi, hunted by devils of generations’ past.  Everyone has a dark secret, a passion that keeps them human. 

They find you.

Everyone prays to you with insults.  


You should only know love. Hear no evil, speak no evil, see no evil in a lover.

Matt’s thoughts became too deep for him.  His philosophical views on the world didn’t move a soul.   

Why bother? He asked himself.

Six feet under.

I wonder when Randy is gong to come home? Matt pondered.  He loved when Randy was a man first, not some princess dressed in white for a wedding with a rose in her hand, a damsel in distress, calling for a man, calling for cash. The sex was so much better.  As the cum went into Matt’s mouth, he tasted the nectar of the gods.

He’d met Randy ten years prior at work. They filed in a hospital, keeping the records meticulous.  Their flame raised into the heavens.  To Matt, Randy was God as man.  

But what about as a woman?  

As a woman, Randy wore a smile of the sun, lips red and tender, waiting to be poisoned by a kiss. Chemicals danced within both of them.  Her dark skin kept the night of her body.

She touched him tenderly, made him feel alive, made him feel manly and strong.  He entered her vagina then, warm and wet and moved in a way only sex can make you move, the high that other animals, with more respectable mating patterns, laugh at.  

Oh, you think you’re civilized, don’t you?  Climb higher and higher up the tree of knowledge, only to make the branches creak and turn on you, break as you climax then fall to the ground, in the dirt with the worms.  

Dirty.


He went to do the dishes.  His hands began to thin, his hair grew long, a blossoming cherry of red shade, and his body took the figure of a man off.  Down in the nether regions, his manhood was absorbed.  And lastly, his voice changed became a soprano’s.

Randy came into the door.  

A man.

“How was work, honey?” She asked Randy.  

“You know, the usuals.  I put cosmetics on people who have no intention of buying my products.  They sit in the chair, hiding the change in their pockets, their overdrawn debt cards.  They make silly excuses.  Sometimes they try to change into men, but the makeup won’t let them when they are in the role of women.”

“It’s a shame,” Mattie said.  The name in his mind had switched.  “Do you think one day we will ever get past such prejudice?  The world keeps turning, but we don’t seem to learn a damn thing.”

“Have you been pondering again with your silly puns and quotes?”

“And what if I am?”

Randy took a deep breath.  Women could be so annoying and self-absorbed, unable to ask even the most basic of questions. 

I’ll never understand, Randy told himself.  She opened the refrigerator and grabbed a cold beer.  

“You’ve been drinking too much,” Mattie said.

“When you come home from a long day,” he said.

“I work, too! Don’t start that bullshit with me.”

“If you were a woman, you’d understand,” Mattie put “a woman scorned” into her voice.  

“Perhaps I would only understand as a woman.”  Randy plucked a diamond necklace out of his pocket and put it on.  His flesh and bones snapped and transformed.  

Randy thought of the statement she made as a man.  

“I totally get it, honey.  I apologize.  Men don’t understand such things.  Give me a hug. It’s such a cruel world, but at least we have the love of each other.”

Then Randy blushed and said in a whisper, “Do you want to be the man or the woman or should be both be men or both be women. Tasty ways?” 

“Tonight?” Mattie smiled.

“Right now, honeysuckle, I’m in the mood,” Randy whispered, her hair long and free like a wildflower. 

“It’s too bad the government got rid of transgender to keep society’s roles harmonized.  One day, we will end oppression,” Mattie said.  

“I’ll be the man,” Randy said with a slight moan.  She took offer her necklace and pulled down her pants until the garden of Eden grew.  

“Come on, Eve,” a pet name for Mattie.

“I’ve got the apple,” she giggled.

“Let me take a bite,” Randy said as they headed into the bedroom before they lay naked again, two genders that could also be men together.  There were no secrets between them.  

They knew each other.  As they moaned, they said nothing. Pleasure rocked.

In the dirt,

The tree of life grew. 

        Green.

        Six feet under.








Sunday, June 20, 2021

To See, To Be

 Gloria walked into the flowerbed. She didn’t know why they called it a “bed.” Well, she assumed that the “flowers” were supposed to be there but not the other part, the ugly part. The top layer of wood chips manifested as being anything but comfortable or dream-giving. When she walked barefoot on them, she wondered if she were actually a princess or a goddess in a past life. Pain came easily there as pain comes in life when you leave your shoes in the house.

No, I do not want to sleep there, she told herself, strolling along.
I am “restless,” not another word. She sighed. Words followed her wherever she went. If she saw the letters combine and a sound is uttered, inciting them, even though her rosy lips, the words stayed with her for eternity.
Her thoughts dipped down so deeply into her brain.
She paused and then felt an impulse to move. It stung her body.
“Restive” popped out. Many times words assaulted their ordinary parts, twisting meanings around, rudely rhyming. Though in the country where she lived, children were only taught through the third grade, and usually only to read, write, and put numbers together on bills, she mused you learn just by living.
And she couldn’t stop the words from entering her head.
“Restive,” she said out loud. It is the same word as “restless.”
"Or to live at rest."
People complicate the world so much, she figured. Why is the world thicker than a bush with chitchat and gossip?
“Hate” means “hate” and “love” means “love.” The people in the bushes, they made “hate-love” and “love-hate” to sound clever. No one saw these hidden people because so many people couldn’t translate them in a relevant fashion.
Our lifeboats.
You love hate. “Love-hate.” You hate love. “Hate-love.” These were the same expressions.
Hate wins either way in this “vocabulary,” even in the greenest of places of sweet dews ‘morning kisses, sparkling as do diamonds under the waking sun, so golden.
“That’s why it’s better to say to state a situation plainly. You hate,” Gloria mused and kicked a stone.
What do I hate? She asked herself.
Pain.
The cat who ate her cute kittens. The dad who left. The mom who beat her.
“But pain can be washed away,” her grandma once told her. “Love cannot.”
This bothered Gloria in her thoughts, much further along than her classmates.
Hate is pain. Can’t love be washed away, too? She asked herself.
Gloria saw her grandma’s eyes in the bird-feeder, though she had died three days before. No matter how many times she swished her reflection, the water settled and she saw her eyes, the same as her grandma’s.
In that moment came true understanding. She knew her grandma had given her sight.
To love.
It was up to her to use that vision.