Super Random

Seriously more random than anything yet posted here. Strange things recently found in a notebook:

I remember the days, snow packed, across two streets that separate school and home. Quiet, walk around old brick building, alone, though fresh footprints suggest others are here, inside, waiting. Those same wet footprints navigate hardwood hallways, glisten under lights suspended a bit too high for precise illumination. The classroom is cold. Ancient radiators spit and hiss as they try to counteract the windows above. The lights in here are closer; they provide more modern light. I remember blood blisters in kindergarten, lies and tickets in first grade, burnt hands in second, glasses in third, static water fountain shocks in fourth, snowy halls in fifth...


This page, already tainted by the first--
And on the table I find a single hair. Long, brown. With the proper technology I could make a clone of whomever left his hair here. Would they be the same? How well an automobile runs depends on the quality of gasoline used to power it. Or, you can make the same machinery operate differently by using different circuitry. Or, a brain can be physically identical but I can't imagine it would work the same, have the same thoughts.
How did I get here? This class, a drone, to infinity by way of every rambling backroad imaginable, never changing pace or intonation or randomness. Hidden fidelity. Who is this woman in the rowboat? An image of peaks and valleys; just find me the girl. Minimality is a factor, L.A. riverbed longshot. Perfect apex -- dry lake -- salt flats -- slowly tilt -- water and energy -- an ocean filled with plastic

Random

One from the archives (maybe parts of this found their way into other things):
Forgotten cats outside the window. Wrappers from many teas, assorted on the linoleum. Remembered cats stretched across circular dinner tables, creating curved meridians. Another cat prowled back into the light, from the dark between chairs and couches. The sole desire, the primary mission: cashews. Cashews and Nut-thins, and maybe the delicious background flavors of Goldfish crackers. Sudden cats, spiraled up and down. Lips thick with salt, such a good time to be had fainting for the orange and red keys, fuzzed together, a sort of plastic melted over as a cover

Different Keys for Different Locks

His voice, pinched off at the end of sentences / Revolutions Two through Eight / And walk through the clutter, the dead automation / Circuits bled electricity until nothing was left, no power just silent snowflakes, the buzz and hiss of high tension lines conspicuously absent / Bare walls and hardwood floors and cold rooms. Oppressive empty space / You need to see the timing, like Tetris blocks locked in place / Serpentine vibrations that pass through flesh walls, while in the corner stacked journals tell dusty tales of imagined possibility, dry ink flaked off yellowed pages / Frightened by the speed of his tonal recognition / Wet reflections / wild lights / cloud passed electricity / Lightning is cloud feedback / This storm is a song, thunder chorus and lightning verses, rain fell like liquid percussion on glass ears / All of the songs in the world play at the same time and I try to decipher them, individual melodies like cells in ether / Planets and cells suspended in ether, the sound of a compressed spring / Burnt tongue coffee, like a swollen piece of sandpaper between my jaws / Yellow-tipped power cords and quarter-inch input jacks; again, in the empty cold room. Cracks in the floor, wide / Cracks the floor wide, like veins in the marble or rivers bisecting themselves on graph paper / Everything ends with a g / Golden maple floor, cracks wide in the marble, veins or snakes or / rivers / Little skeleton fingers make a fist around a pen / The floor is basement cool in front porch heat / Perfect cylinders / gears in motion.

Of

The expected glow of a computer screen conspicuously absent. In its place the shallow hues of old Christmas lights stapled to the walls, so he sits, a basement stoner, on the corpse of a couch, at least as old as he is, in the dull orange light, smoke tendriling up through the hot summer air trapped in the room, deprived of the freedom of midnight breezes, the smoke now pollinating the air, tickling the gentle hairs in the nostrils of those with noses for such things, like the addition of cheese to a burger, that little extra ingredient that makes the whole meal better, or so he tells me, or tries to tell me, but his speech is too slow, too stunted to decipher properly so all I hear is a string of ums and likes and totallys , the true language of those types, sadly content with inferior communicative abilities, unable even to deliver the most basic indication of coherent thought, whereas I have vastly superior skills and a functioning knowledge of human emotion, like the perfect cyborg assassin, programmed with just information to complete the mission, whatever that may be.

Counter-Reality Machine

This weird fog; a need to be focused. Walking through it is like walking randomly through time. To walk through it is to walk (through?) random time. Shadows of people, only outlines or silhouettes, never more visceral than a light fog or mist. I have a counter-reality machine. When I turn it on everything reverses. Dead becomes alive, warm becomes cold, wet becomes dry, dry becomes gaseous, gaseous becomes liquid. Make it clear, though. This is no bizarro world. Nice does not become mean, hello does not become goodbye. No, only something with physicality can be altered. Exist becomes not exist. This fact becomes something of a problem, then. Everything exists. What doesn’t exist? Would some extinct planet be the home for bigfoot and the loch ness monster? Only things that don’t exist? Then how do we decide what doesn’t exist? This conversation is getting out of hand.


Sometimes I write with no goal in mind, in the hopes that some amazing idea will work it's way into my mind. I really liked the sound of 'counter-realty machine,' but the more I wrote about it the less sense it made. Ideas are easy, logistics are not.

Furry Carnage Locomotion

Church bells and train whistles, the wind grazing over the tops of wheat. Imaginary ropes tied to the couch. Twice blinked. Dark brown / frail earth battery. Charged, broke, rotated spindles. Spinnerets. Bitten toe spider, venomous. Full of sand, inched across the sweltering desert pavement. Black roads 100mph small wire fences on the sides, collected tumbleweeds and roadrunners.
A man, standing in sudden rain. He notices that his feet are liquid, flowing away with the slight current of the minuscule stream. Humorous things happen, as this is meant to be tragic and comedic simultaneously.
I can feel myself sliding down the couch, slowly melting, like a humanoid stick of butter in an upholstered saucepan. So far no sizzling though, only casual melting, skin so smooth. Distant music provides atmospherics. A quick scan for open padlocks reveals judicious chains.

Depth

When I am here in my bed, propped up against the wall, lights out, eyes unfocused, I can feel every shadow. I can feel every shadow that probes the darkness, every shadow that surfaces into perception from inky depths. I can feel the abyss creep up my bed, over my sheets, held at bay by the light of my computer screen, a non-dark island, a sanctuary. Or maybe I don’t want sanctuary. Maybe the island is a hindrance. Maybe I am stranded. Maybe I want to escape, jettison myself into the abyss and let the dark wash over me and surround me and cover my body and fill my ears and mouth.

The standard conception of death is a tunnel of light. I see a hand of darkness. A hand that rises up from underneath my bed, like a shark surfacing underneath a boat. The hand approaches the surface, breaks it’s plain, makes a fist around my bed. The fingers rise like bedposts, close like tree branches. The fist pulls my bed down, down into the absolute darkness that you can defeat if your eyes are closed tight enough. Tight enough that bubbles of colored light bounce and pop under your eyelids. Reds, purples, low intensity wavelengths. Death is water. Death is drowning. Death is depth and the resulting pressure. The goal, then, is that moment when you cannot hold your breath any longer, that moment where the part of your brain still wired for primal survival takes over and forces your mouth open, forces your muscles to contract and fill your lungs with water. Only instead of water your lungs fill with oxygen and you open your eyes and the bubbles are gone and you are no longer at the bottom of a dark ocean but rather on your bed, where you were in the first place, propped against the wall, lights out, eyes unfocused. But they are focused now. They are focused on the one point of light on the wall ahead, the one point of light broadcast from a needlepoint hole in the curtain. And this one point of light becomes a tunnel, a tunnel of light that leads to heaven or Eden or maybe just a library of memories of life up to this point. The goal now is to remember birth. Remember the transition from warm dark to bright cold. Remember placental fluid sucked from unused lungs, the first particles of real oxygen and how they stung fresh tissue. Death is drowning and life is that first breath after.

Random Generator

1:36 in the morning and I’m eating fistfuls of raisins, smashing them into my mouth, agape receiving raisin nutrition at a small but massive pace. Trying to equalize the pressure in my nostrils, to find an even ration of pressure. My eyes are tired, their surface, marbled slightly , encrusted with various proteins or whatever it is that forms over old eyes--like soft glass, still clear but with an adhesive quality to the clearness. Fast violins in a hallway full of soaring cellos [nafgigating] cloudform sunrise. [qhwn m] more raisin food energy will sustain further developments of upstairs [drui,ciorl;es]. Think I am beyond the point of coherentness, the yellow cigarette fog descends on the room, leaving everyone vacant [wywa xloaw rhwy rKW QIRH RHWM RHW BllNXW ns feCIRT RHW AXEWWN EOCISWA. NOQ MT QOELS AHkwa NS REWBLWA] that should have been a disaster but it should be fun to decipher. Ready to jump off a roof or lie completely still before I leap off the building into the night. Turn away from the globes [gloves] of light before they are attracted to your eyes. Replacement and replication are two undesired outcomes of the current situation. Beat concentric watercircles [watersuckes] until [tghe caroet fkiirm oretebd ut us a kaje] if shaggy fibers shake [sjjake] the world [wirld] until balance is negated entirely, strings thin as spiders web [we]. From the electric light abyss word projections spew out of the screen, cascade onto the keyboard like rainbow waterfalls, the yellow cigarette fog descends on the room and leaves everyone vacant beyond the point of coherence co hairance cohairlance parliament druggadelic. Best [fuistemate ate guess riddleface lclain twi opriwlcats lurk in stomach ulcers. Lungs dried sponge or cinged catgair, land avasting catfood tail lock zixxle ie bnabdjdwikghg7asdluihgfskiswjuefnjds] This is how my mind became a random generator.

Snake, Typewritten

We must move quietly. Stay low to the ground, man. Hands and knees are necessary, to be sure. Hunch over the keyboard, placed on the ground. Focus only on the keys, not the screen. A typewriter would be a more critically useful tool at the moment. Machine-gun punctuation.
*
Cats loom over the bed like, owls? Something that looms, menacingly. Little marble eyes reflecting my terror.
*
You’d think his fortress would be delicious, but it’s actually quite dangerous.
*
Now there are two of them, looming. Menacing me into the corner. I will escape under the bed. Freedom/Victory is only a crawl away. Now, if only I could fit. Need to be something like seven inches tall to get through these parts.
*
Pull the blanket down over you. Make your cave of bass sounds. Perhaps there are some Oreos in the refrigerator that need attending? Perhaps there are several tasty delinquents locked up in the refrigerator's iron-bar belly.
*
Slink away from the keyboard, or screen, rather. It’s can’t know you’re here. “Don’t mind my hands. They are just typing. They are alone in this caper; Special Forces acting in guerilla typeface."
*
I smell peanut butter. My god, what doesn’t smell like peanut butter? I am the peanut butter Keeper. You must go through me, should you want a spoonful or so.
*
I’m pretty sure various shadows are becoming cats. When I look they know to act like shadows, but when I don’t look they creep, menace. When they open their eyes and look at you, you know you’re in trouble. Acknowledgment, in this case, means instant death. No way out of it this time. Maybe if you had a horse.
*
I am positive there are Oreos that need to be eaten. What good do they do in their package? They are not fulfilling their destiny when they are not eaten. I must eat them, to complete them. To complete the circle. One needs purpose, and they are chock full of that. Now, time to make their purpose realized.
*
Forgot about those fans. Now we have battery power, though the lights are off. It makes it easier to avoid the fans.
*
It’s getting very loud now, but I don’t want to relinquish the volume. I’d have to fill its place, yeah? Might as well be with good volume, controlled volume. Maybe we should Dance? Or return to the refrigerator? But I’ve had so much chicken.
*
Will me phone vibrate with text messages proclaiming great love and willingness to copulate? God, I hear it vibrating, but it doesn’t move. I’m the one doing the vibrating, here.
*
I remembered where the peanut butter is, I’VE FOUND ITS CASTLE! I’m letting this happen.
*
How can I hope to explain, then? Relationships become too magnetic. Magnetic in the sense that it takes great effort to separate. I push my head into the side of the bed, expecting to make contact, but instead I keep leaning until I’ve become a snake eating its tail underwater.

Hey Man, Slow Down

Stuffed into a desk like over sized carry-on baggage-
sweating and vibrating dangerously
like Duke and adrenochrome.
"Yes! Fantastic! Finish the fucking story man-
what about the glands?"
Creaking in a chair,
fingers tapping furiously the Formica desk,
feet dancing wildly to the unheard rhythm of some song.
Eyes swelling, bulging, about to burst.
"Yes! Fantastic! Finish the story-
what about the glands?"
Clenched fist tension, sweating, though it's cold-
is it hot in here?
Lips bleeding from being chewed and tongued too long.
Skin on the top of the hand rubbing raw abrasive stubble.
Are you certain it's not hot in here?
Teeth grinding molar on molar,
boiling blood steam powering anxious scribbles.
"What about the glands?"
Sweating, sweating, sweating-is it hot in here?
No, it's just me.

Deep From The Archives

This page is set up for lengthy exposition, which is ironic considering the large amount of empty space up here. I can hear footsteps upstairs and I can hear you talking to your cat. I don't think she (your cat) appreciates the high-pitched voices. I don't. I sit and listen to your conversation seep through my ceiling, footsteps like machinegun punctuation. What is purpose? Purpose is the near-constant fluctuation of pen choice. .05 versus .07. It would seem as though I cannot make up my mind--but how does one make up one's mind? This is a most perplexing issue, I feel. Perhaps a .06 is in order. And a quest for right angles. Ghosts, air, and vacuum. I spilled a sip of coffee into a cut on my left index finger. It hurt. Burned like a smallish star lodged between the joints. Children, full of teeth. The decision to flee came suddenly. So what is this experience, now? Let us go and rob the supermarket. I will take all the Wheat Thins. You will take all the orange juice. I will also take all the chicken alfredo Hot Pockets, for research purposes. Fear those people who say things. Can you grasp that, man? You can take all the sparkling grape juice. And here is a new test: the things that we deem normal. Only with pink pants and apple juice. But how is this possible? Initial mystique gives way to horse beating messiah posing. Swimming in death. I will eat the sun. I will eat the son of god. I will eat god. So many words that want to be written--perhaps if I cloned myself and had the clones fill this book with words to complete the book-filling requirement and then take the clones and make a baseball team out of them--I guess it would take at least nine clones to fill this book in a reasonable time. Atmospherics are in full effect, keep this in mind at all times.

Except on Leap Years

Craft me a riverraft for an aquatic adventure where snakes infest the rapids and rabbits roam the shoreline, all waiting for the eagle to swoop down and snatch away all their sins with talons sharp as deep space where dead souls reside in icy slumber waiting for some sun to come and thaw frozen dreams like TV dinners or maybe chicken-alfredo Hot Pockets that taste great but leave a lingering aftertaste of guilt like some lurking fear of silent windmills or orange globes of ball lightening streaking down high tension wires on the side of some deserted prairie highway that hasn’t seen traffic in a long, long time, save a lonely mail truck that carries letters to the dead every other Tuesday except on leap years or when it rains red war on the innocent grass that has been taken hostage by the guilty dirt which is undermined by millions of blue ants who dig and dig until there are so many tunnels that the ground collapses under even the softest footfalls of the fox that scampers in search of Leonard Nemoy’s decomposing corpse which is buried around here somewhere under heaps of earth and white wooden crosses that speak of the yellow human condition that brought him here in the first place, the third place on the podium is left empty out of either respect or maybe unbridled enthusiasm that the pretty girl seen in passing will somehow find her way to the vacant pedestal and receive the glory usually reserved for movie premiers and sales at The Gap where she buys most of the black underwear everyone imagines she wears when she dances alone in front of a mirror that only reflects ideas and only bad ones at that, like making wings out of wax and flying into the sun, or flying into the sun without wax or wings, just the grey remains of Paul McCartney and his troupe of naked actresses down on all fours crawling through pleasure and shame and general dislike for the kid in the back swallowing swords and thinking everything is perfect the first time around before they begin to go around the circle saying every one’s name at least seven times and one of them says “I just can’t wait to die” and another one adds “I just want to die slowly so I can really feel it and not miss anything” while they drink tea and dance toothpicks across their plum lips which have felt their share of rotten apples or overripe bananas if that is what keeps distracting them from scratching green eyelids and digging for gold, silver, or any other precious metal, perhaps even cobalt or uranium, any radioactive material is a welcome distraction from these other, less interesting, non-radioactive materials that are used as makeshift drugs to subdue those people who do not understand the simplicity of social interaction underwater or in any other low-oxygen environment, like space.