Maggot's Work - A poem. A story. A life.

 

 Maggot's Work

 

 I’ll clean this up, assures the maggot

The voice whispers in my ear as I pick myself up

After a sucker punching shadow grew from my candle

Standing in a field I continue the work

I train a sun dog to sit

I dance with Grendel

I absolve a murder of crows

 

I’ll clean this up, assures the maggot

The voice whispers in my ear as I pick myself up

After a pleading shadow clawed at my feet

Standing on a road I continue the work

I buy a value

I cheat a mettle detector

I reflect on a mirror

 

I’ll clean this up, assures the maggot

The voice whispers in my family’s ear as I am lowered

After a light stepped out from the shadow in my eyes

Lying under a low ceiling I continue the work

I count the sand of the world

I hold tight to a moment

I ask for more

 

 

 

 

Speak Loudly, Do The Ghosts We Carry.

I startled awake afraid, hands raised seeking a threat to strike. The sensation of weight and confinement crowded me as I grasped at anchors to pull me away from the dream. I remembered dirt. I remembered a small space. I remembered malice filled eyes looking down at me. They wanted me in the small place, to stay there, to keep me there. I don’t know what they were or what animal or nightmare form they were part of. I do know they saw me as sure as I saw them. Intelligent as they were uncaring. I don’t know if they were part or cause of whatever placed me in the filling, pressing dirt but that they wanted me there was without doubt.

I asked Diogenes to stop barking for a moment and tell me what this dream could mean. He brought forth a lit lantern holding it close to my face before asking me how honest I wanted us both to be. I tried to answer but the lantern’s illumination was so bright I had to turn away. 

A hand then fell upon my shoulder. Friendly Seneca smiled at me and asked where it was the dirt came from. I said I did not understand as all dirt comes from the Earth, is the Earth. He nodded and asked how is it in the Lantern’s light my hands were so clean after digging so hard. 

To them both I leveled a finger. I need answers, not lessons! I need truth, not riddles. Be clear or begone for I am troubled and need peace. 

A sudden roar of laughter struck my ears. I turned as the lantern changed in tone but not brightness. A bald cliché of the devil draped in cheap black satin poked his long fingernail at my forehead. You need to get out more, kid. he said. You need to relax and just take in all the angles, dig? It’s all a sideshow. Go west find both your ticket booth and your stage.

He probably dropped them in my river, Anton. came a voice to the side. We turned to face a bearded man in robes. His feet and legs were dripping wet. The dollar store Satan laughed. Your river, my midway, Uncle Bob’s triangle, and Jim’s Dublin, you old fool. 

He shops at the Scottish Rite Aid whispered the first man from the shadows. A women’s voice, hard a railroad spike and hot as steel, shot back. Leave the comedy to those who truly understand destruction. 

Stop! All of you! The ones in the shadows and the ones who are the shadows. Stop it! The ones on thrones and the ones licking the best of gutters. STOP! All your voices. All your thoughts. All your ideas! I AM A WALKING COFFIN. My back hurts and my ears are sore from broadcasting all I have heard. I need to set you all down and just…rest. 

I sob with fatigue and sadness. I have no map and the waves grow higher and higher.  

Excuse me, pips a quiet voice. Do you know what time it is?

Yes, I reply. But longitude is not the problem.

Then knowledge is not the answer.

That’s not a new idea.

To continue is not new. To end is not new. To question is not new. To be mad or angry or contented is not new. That’s the point. 

Where is the Lantern’s light? Why can I only see platitudes now? Is this all I have left after falling? 

Material falls from a sifter. The sifter is not falling. You have what you hold whether you see it or not. 

I tire of this Hidden Master facade. Identify yourself and explain how you are one voice when before I was a multitude. 

You have what you hold.

I need answers!

You have what you hold.

I need…You have.

The Illustrated Boy (flash fiction concept piece)

Once there was a young artist who suffered a terrible shyness. She spent her hours in blank pages filling the emptiness with lines and curves coaxed into graphite photos.

Lonely days inched into lonely years like growing links of a chain. Her isolation grew atop stacks of her unseen body of work. She glanced over unfinished landscapes. Portraits of forgotten strangers. City skylines only seen in books. Life explored from a room. She picked up a discarded page. It held eyes. They were small, round, and unfinished. She added a new line but immediately erased it. She then added a soft curve where a mouth might be, staring at it for a long moment. Then a touch of shading. Then another line. Then another. The outline of a face grew until a child’s bright face smiled up at her from the tip of her pencil. She covered her face to shield him from her falling tears.

A child. Her child.

Toys and games and gifts. The laughter of two heard through the voice of one. A procession of holidays and seasons spent with her boy. The days of fast, confident lines were gone. Her joints ached and twisted having become abstractions of their former shape. Some time ago she had fashioned an album of their favorite moments together. She looked through it on days when she could not grasp the pencil or hold her hand still. When this became most days, she did not recall. Their time together was coming to an end. Her and her boy. She was withering while he still sprang over puddles and stomped in mud. He still rushed to show her a new drawing of his own. He still hugged her tight when it was time to sleep. The weight of so many years alone were coming to an end.

She suddenly trembled. Her thin frame shook in the grip of a realization. So many years alone were coming to end for her, but they were about to start for him. Her little boy was inheriting her life. Worse. He’d forever be a child left alone. She wept. She wept for him and for her and at the pain they would share. What could she do? She imagined her boy trapped in the last image crafted by her ruined hands. She cringed and wept harder. What could be done? She gathered her album close. It felt small, like him. She reached out and plucked a page from a nearby stack and jammed it between her and the album. Then another. Then handfuls, frantically pulling them in tightly around the album until the bulk was almost too much to hold. She clutched the wrinkling pages close. She sat this way until her strength failed spilling the pages and the album around her. She looked at it all feeling its absence and the growing coolness on her chest. She reached out a trembling hand and pulled the album back to her. A shade warmth returned to her, but not enough. She opened the album. Her boy sat upon a tall, proud horse. His cowboy hat was too large forcing him to hold it above his eyes to wave at her. She smiled back turning the pages of his little life. What can I do?

Once there was a young artist who suffered a terrible shyness. She spent her years in blank pages filling the emptiness with a boy of lines and curves and shades. Her very last days and minutes, though, were spent on a portrait of a man with his family. He had a kind, but resolute face. Close to him stood his wife, straight and proud. The couple were flanked by two children who wore trouble in their grins. No one knew it, but they had their grandmother’s eyes.  

DNA testing and a lesson in sex.

Spit they want. Spit they shall have!

With the looming shadow of 2018 upon the Gregorian Calendar's doorstep I decided to take a break from throwing bones, reading tea leaves, and lithomacy to take a quick look back upon my sexual history.

Okay, not mine exactly but the long history of those known and unknown couplings my ancestors made time for between finding food, not getting killed/eaten, and not dying of disease. Kind of takes the sin out of it, doesn't it? No fun looking at sex as something that might happen IF YOU LIVE LONG ENOUGH. But, that's life for you. Real Life. Remember, it wasn't that long ago that things like, oh I don't know, the H1N1 flu virus killed between 3%-5% of the entire human race in roughly two years. Perhaps you've heard of the misnamed "Spanish Flu" of 1918 to 1920(ish)? We have it very easy today, my friends. Don't think we don't.

Anyway. Back to sex. There's a "special hug" between a Mommy and a Daddy, who historically speaking, are fortunate enough to have disease resilient/well-functioning genes and a safe food/water supply to even allow attempting the "special hug". (Don't even get me going on female selection strategies and competition dynamics.) This "special hug" usually produces offspring who hopefully also have the same or better resulting genes and who hopefully are taught to create or recognize the safe food/water sources. And thus, Life Makes Life. That, gentle reader, is the story of you and I and most other lifeforms back through the Corridors of Time. You, in fact, are highly unlikely to even exist given all the variables and means of Death in the world. Let me put it this way...

Shall I put it another way? Break it down to brass tacks? Fine. The ponderous and I dare say miraculous molecular machine comprising the self you identify as "you" thanks to an odd tension somewhere behind or between your eyes, the undefinable "you" as the Zen masters would try to say, is a unique creation never before attempted by Universe (in the Buckminster Fuller's appellation sense) and to our knowledge never to be tried again on this planet. Lots and Lots went into making you, gentle reader. Generations and generations of struggle. 

Settle down, Patsy. That's not what I'm doing.

 

Back to all the sex in my family tree. I want to know where my ancestors roamed, lived, found mates, and where the children lived to repeat the cycle. In all likelihood I will repeat this DNA test with other companies for comparison sake. Scientifically speaking, that's the best plan. Look, Life is the only true minority in the Universe as far as I as can tell. So why not study my small part in this great play, right? I hope to find surprises. I hope my understanding of my family is vastly incomplete. I hope to look at a map of the Earth and ponder the vast multitude I might call kin. 

What a great way to start a New Year.

Be seeing you,
Sam

For Those Lost, Those Hurt, and Those Who Fight

It's my birthday. I turn 48 today. I was going to post a list of fun accomplishments by fellow 48'ers, such as how William Shatner was 48 when Star Trek The Motion Picture came out in 1979 or how Hugh Jackman was 48 when Logan came out in March of 2017. Hugh, by the way, is one year and ten days older than I. Neat!

But then you and I awoke to news of Las Vegas. The pain and the heartbreak is still unfolding. Many are dead and many, many more are hurt. Why? No one knows at this time. And is there a GOOD reason for it all to happen? No. There isn't. There can't be.

People are lining up to donate blood in Vegas as I type this. Families are learning the fate of loved ones as I type this. Politicians in both aisles are trying to steer the narrative and draft fund raising emails as I type this.

People die everyday. Always have and always will. THAT IS LIFE even on good days. But that doesn't mean the how of the death is unimportant. It actually makes is very important. You know what I mean. It also makes the HOW OF LIVING even more important. It necessitates decision making, life building, and relationship building as the most important things in all of existence. Why? Because existence is all we have. No one gets out of here alive. Just accept it and let the stress go. Hug the people you like and avoid the people you don't. Move toward what is important to you and avoid what is not.

"Less suck, more awesome." as someone once said.

To all of humanity, I wish you well. I wish you clear thoughts, kind intentions and worthwhile friends. I wish you peace and strength. I wish you fortitude to never forget the world is ours to make for the better.To those who have the scars of battle big and small. To those who bring laughter and wit and light into the world.

I thank you.

If you ever need a hug. Here it is --- Big Bro Hug!   It will always be here for you. 

Be well, gentle reader. 

-Sam

Of Life and Gratitude (not my usual type of post)

This bird died near the entrance of a grocery store I frequent. The proximity of death to abundance is a multilayered koan.

I bitch about work and stress.

I never bitch about being hungry.

I bitch about television and movies.

I never bitch about being unsafe.

I bitch about commuting and chores.

I never bitch about finding a place to sleep.

I bitch about replacing my computer.

I never bitch about my family living in poverty.

I bitch about common Western problems knowing how lucky I am to have them. I don’t feel guilt over the fortune of my birthplace, to be clear, nor do I understand people who do. I didn’t pick it, nor did I push some other soul out of the line to the best of my metaphysical knowledge. What I am is deeply, deeply grateful. The unlikeliness of my circumstances given the scope of human history does not elude me. I am equally grateful that I was raised to try to make quality decisions. I am grateful the mistakes I made of my own volition did not ruin my life. I am grateful I learned from them. Living in the West in and of itself guarantees nothing, lest we forget. Finally, I am grateful for those who planted the concept within me that (hopefully) one day most humans will only have my kind of problems. They give me hope. 

Be safe. Be well. Prosper.

Thank you.

Sam

 

Dry Bones - philosophical zombie flash fiction.

I found this. I hope it is non-human.

The sun drifts untouched across its sky as birds fly beneath it unaware or uncaring of the changed world beneath them. Morning has again followed night. Survival has again followed fighting. Another day alive on a world with millions of pale, putrid eyes searching without pause for the few clear ones left. 

How many more days like this? you wonder. The massive horde of undead has shambled past you for over two hours. You listen to every faltering step and scratchy moan trying to guess if your hiding spot was discovered. It sounds like the flow is thinning, but you don’t dare look. One misplaced footfall would call down a rending flood of tooth and nail. A year? Five years? Twenty? One day old age will catch you, even if the dead don’t. More likely they will team up with injury and sickness to finally end you. Either way, death is all that awaits you at the end of your struggles. A small chuckle escapes you. It wasn’t waiting for me before all this? That much, at least, hadn’t changed. It was cold comfort, but some comfort is always better than none. Yet, the thought behind it all would not be silenced: what now, what tomorrow? Survival is not living. Drawing breath was not the same as being alive. 

Your enemy is unburdened by such thoughts. Their philosophy is simple and enviously complete:  Consume or Convert. It’s the clarity one would expect from the simplistic strength of a virus. It was a virus, right? You heard that from the early reports of the first outbreak. Seemed logical enough at the time, but it yielded so many unanswered questions afterward it was an explanation almost not worth having at all. A virus from where, for starters. And why? Most people you encountered (those who didn’t covet your provisions like the dead coveted your body) didn’t care about the how. 

“Cat’s out of the bag. Too late to care about where the bag came from.” they said.

Maybe. But the knowing, to you, of ‘how’ was important. The balance of how/why you could not shake. Something so big should have an equally large why, right? 

Right?